Failing Marks, page 21
“Leaked?” Remo asked. “How?”
“A mysterious letter was sent via electronic mail to our barracks this morning. I was not aware of it until now.” Heine glanced at the police who were waiting near the trucks.
A few of the men around him seemed embarrassed. Though they hadn’t joined the Nazis, neither had they betrayed their fellow border policemen who had every intention of joining the expedition they had been sent to apprehend.
“What is it with all these emails?” Remo asked no one in particular.
“Oh, my precious, precious gold,” Chiun moaned pitifully.
Remo was still thinking aloud. “The chancellor gets one, telling him about Four’s plan to wreck the economy. The top money guys get them, as well. Now you’re telling me your men got them, too. It’s like someone wanted to make sure this expedition was followed.”
“Why would that be?” Heine asked.
Remo shrugged. “I don’t know. But throw out enough bait, and you’re bound to catch a fish.”
“Is the answer not obvious?” Chiun lamented. “They wished to prevent me from claiming that which is mine.”
Remo nodded reluctantly. “I guess it looks that way.”
Heine changed the subject. “I have contacted the chancellor. On his order, reconnaissance planes are en route to the area. If they locate the missing trucks, they will inform us.”
Remo frowned, pointing down the road. “Where does this lead?” he asked.
“The Danube, eventually,” Heine said. “There are other roads that lead off of it along the way. They could have taken any one of them.”
“Chiun, didn’t you say the treasure was supposed to be buried under the Danube?”
“That was the legend,” Chiun admitted. “So why were you digging here?”
“The map indicated that this was the proper location. I assumed the Nibelungenlied’s mention of the Danube to be Siegfried’s final mendacity. The river is, after all, not far from here.” His face was clouded.
Remo crossed his arms. “So this Danube is pretty big, I take it?” he asked unhappily.
Heine nodded. “It is the second longest river in Europe,” he said.
Remo sighed. “I suppose I should be happy it’s not the longest,” he said. He held out a hand to Heine. “Keys.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the colonel reluctantly pulled the keys to his jeep from his pocket. He had only had them back in his possession for under an hour. Heine dropped them into Remo’s outstretched palm.
“Don’t wait up,” Remo said, trudging over to the jeep.
The Master of Sinanju walked behind him in his mud-splattered kimono. His cheerless expression never wavered.
. . .
Heidi had set up her surveying equipment in the clearing a few dozen meters away from the raging Danube River.
She had gone through the same procedure only a few short hours before back at the false site. Here, however, she was not merely putting on an act to fool the others.
She was far more careful this time as she peered through the eyepiece of the theodolite. Her fingers delicately adjusted the leveling screws.
Heidi had been genuinely surprised when they had discovered the stone carving at the other site. She expected the excavation to be futile. Actually she had planned it that way. Heidi had assumed that they would dig and dig until they finally gave up.
The more she thought about it, however, the more she realized that it should not have been totally unexpected. Her deviation from the map had been the logical turn it should have taken. It was the guess that someone might have made had they not been in possession of the entire map.
That had been the devious charm of the quartered block carving. Without even one piece, it would be impossible to extrapolate the rest of the map.
The runic writing on the other stone was Siegfried’s final joke from beyond the grave. There were probably many other mocking stone carvings buried all around the area.
But not here.
Heidi wasn’t having an easy time surveying. The reference points that would have been used originally were long gone. Even the geography of the region had changed over the past fifteen hundred years.
It was painstaking work.
In the end, Heidi was forced to use a mishmash of mathematics and geography to determine where the excavation should be. Even with the passage of fifteen centuries, there were enough clues for her to make a reasonably educated guess.
The spot was a minor declivity in a field a stone’s throw away from the cold, churning water of the river.
Leaving her equipment and notebook behind, Heidi stepped gingerly across the small windswept meadow. She felt as if she was disturbing an old grave.
Using four broken twigs, she staked out a square around the spot. It was the best she could do for now without any help. All she could do in the meantime was wait.
Heidi looked down at the area she had marked off. It was approximately six feet by eight feet. Mottled frozen grass lay damply away from the river—a weed army toppled by the relentless wind.
That it could be here! Just below her boots!
As she looked down on the spot, Heidi suddenly noticed something in the tall, knotted grass. It had escaped her detection during the hour she had been surveying. There appeared to be a single solid line almost completely buried beneath the clumpy soil.
She dropped to her knees in the grass, feeling along the edge of the long section of stone.
Her heart tingled excitedly as she realized it was not naturally occurring. It was man-made.
She used her fingers to rip up divots of grass, flinging them away. Clawing along the rough edge of the buried chiseled rock, she uncovered a four-inch-wide strip. Her hands were shaking as she tore away the years of earthen buildup atop the stone boundary.
It stopped at a right angle. Heidi followed this shorter section of stone to another angle.
She worked furiously. Her hands were caked with black grime by the time she completed the square. When she was finished, the outline of an ancient stone boundary was clearly visible.
Heidi knelt—filthy and panting—in the grass before the sealed opening beyond which lay the fabled Nibelungen Hoard. Unmindful of the ferocious wind that whistled down the neck of her heavy woolen coat, she stared in awe, sweating from both exertion and excitement.
Her feeling of exhilaration was short-lived. There was a sound behind her. A dull clap-clap-clap.
Unenthusiastic applause.
“Bravo,” a voice shouted over the wind.
She recognized it instantly. She hadn’t heard his approach over the fierce gusts of frigid air.
Heidi’s shoulders sank in defeat. As she climbed to her feet, she began turning around, snaking a hand inside the unzipped front of her jacket.
“Uh-uh. Slowly,” cautioned Adolf Kluge.
Heidi pulled her hand from her coat. Woodenly she did as she was told.
Kluge was there with a few of his skinhead henchmen. He had also brought with him a number of Federal Border Police. Out of respect for the service they had abandoned, the ex-police had taken the liberty of removing their official insignia. However, their guns were still plainly evident, and were aimed at Heidi.
One of the former police trotted over to her. He reached inside her coat, removing her handgun from her shoulder holster. He stuffed it into his belt.
“Did you intend to keep the treasure all to yourself?” Kluge asked with an evil smile.
“Didn’t you?” she countered.
Kluge shrugged. “Of course,” he said. “But at least I had sense enough to bring along a little help. I suppose you intended to dig it out all by yourself and then carry it away in your pockets?”
Heidi didn’t respond.
Kluge appraised her for a long moment. Finally he pulled a shovel from the hands of one of his skinhead thugs. He threw it over to where Heidi stood. It fell near her feet, clanging on the stone lip that she had exposed.
“You have a few more hours to live,” Kluge said magnanimously. “They may as well be productive. Dig.”
Heidi considered refusing. However, that would surely encourage Adolf Kluge to shoot her that much sooner. She decided that if she stalled for time, she might yet be able to get out of this alive.
She picked up the shovel at her feet.
As a few skinheads came over to join her in the excavation, Heidi jammed the tip of the spade into the cold ground. She forced it in deep with the sole of her boot.
With no fanfare save the howling Danube wind, Heidi Stolpe turned over the first spadeful of earth that had entombed for centuries the fabled Nibelungen Hoard.
. . .
The tall pines of the Black Forest roared past at breakneck speed. Though they were driving like a bat out of hell, Chiun recognized the blurry clutch of conifers that flew past the jeep for the third time.
They squealed around a corner on two wheels. Long black skid marks from their previous two journeys around the same corner marred the roadway.
“You are driving aimlessly,” Chiun challenged Remo.
Remo was hunched behind the steering wheel. His hands gripped the pebbled surface of the wheel tightly.
“I can’t pick up their damned trail. They could have gone anywhere,” Remo said testily.
“They have not gone anywhere,” Chiun snipped. “They have gone to steal my gold.”
“I liked you a lot better when all you cared about was building statues of comedians.”
“I am through with that,” Chiun announced huffily. “Jesters come and go. Only gold lasts forever.”
The jeep radio suddenly squawked to life. The anxious, accented voice of Colonel Heine came on. He spoke in English.
“This is Colonel Heine of the German Federal Border Police to the driver of my jeep. Come in, please.” He had never bothered to learn Remo’s name. His voice was anxious.
“Answer it,” Chiun demanded, pointing to the radio.
“Um…” Remo said.
“You do not know how,” Chiun said accusingly.
“Do, too,” Remo replied.
“Prove it.”
Remo answered the radio. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, the windshield wipers came on.
“I told you,” Chiun said.
“It is urgent,” said Heine’s voice. “Please respond.”
“You do it.” Remo aimed his chin defiantly at the radio.
“It is beneath me.” Chiun crossed his arms.
“You don’t know how, either,” Remo challenged.
“Please respond,” begged Heine.
“I’ll admit I don’t know how if you admit you don’t know how,” Remo offered cagily.
Chiun appraised the radio. “It is a model with which I am not entirely familiar,” he admitted.
“Fine,” said Remo. “Let’s answer it together.”
. . .
They didn’t have to dig as long here.
The rim of stone Heidi had uncovered by hand turned out to be the topmost portion of four buried walls. The excavation went down only about six feet in this narrow enclosure before the first shovel clanked on solid rock.
As before, they used their hands to clear off a flat stone. It rested level in the buried square of rock. A horizontal door.
The edges of the stone were cleared away, revealing a stone casing. Again icy water was brought from the nearby river to wash off the ancient accumulation of dirt.
When they were finished, a narrow gap was visible between the large stone and the strips of interlocking rock that bordered it.
“We need to pry this up,” Heidi called up to Kluge. She was squatting in the hole atop the stone. With her hand, she felt around the edge of the ancient slab of settled rock.
There were two skinheads still inside the pit. They were on their knees assisting Heidi.
“Get the crowbars,” Kluge told a few of the border police who were standing with him at the edge of the hole. The men ran obediently off.
Inside the shallow pit, Heidi was trying desperately to contain her excitement. She had to keep reminding herself that under the circumstances it did not matter if this was the right spot. The discovery would do her no good if she was dead. Somehow she had to get out of this alive. And she could. If only the others showed up in time…
“It is a pity you didn’t see me following you,” Kluge called in mock sympathy from the edge of the pit. “From your perspective, of course,” he quickly added. “After you turned onto the access road, it became a simple enough matter. There are no paths leading off it. Those twisted genetic bastards had the right idea for once, it seems. They had sense enough to steal my trucks and make a run for it. Not you. You led me directly here.”
As Kluge thought of the missing blond-haired Numbers from the IV village, his face suddenly clouded over. He peered more closely at Heidi Stolpe. All at once, his eyes opened in delighted surprise. It was a spark of joyous realization.
“You are one of them, aren’t you?” he asked happily. He beamed as the truth of his words sank in. “I knew you looked familiar when I first laid eyes on you. But I never knew our friend Dr. von Breslau created a female lab rat. Perhaps you were an accident? An improvement on the men, I must admit. You at least can talk. That is, until now.” He smiled a wet, superior smile.
In the pit, covered with dirt, Heidi tried to hold his condescending gaze. She nearly succeeded. But as she stared into the fiery blue-gray eyes of Adolf Kluge, a sinking feeling of inferiority seemed to settle like a fog over her slender frame. Her shoulders sank. She averted her eyes, ashamed.
Kluge knew in that instant that he had guessed correctly. Somehow Heidi Stolpe was the freakish sister to the hundreds of Aryan males mass-produced by IV more than thirty years before.
He would have been fascinated to learn more about her life. About how she alone of all the embryos concocted in that Nazi lab in South America had been born female. About how she had come to be where she was today. About her apparent knowledge of IV. But it turned out that Heidi was not the only one surprised at that moment.
Kluge felt a rough shove between his shoulder blades. The air was knocked from his lungs from the severity of the blow. He toppled forward into the open hole.
Kluge thudded hollowly atop the huge stone slab beside Heidi, banging his knees painfully against the rock.
He rolled over onto his back on the cold chunk of stone. Kluge was shocked to see, framed in the square of light above him, a familiar mud-splattered yellow kimono. Above it was an enraged parchment face.
“Claim jumpers!” the Master of Sinanju announced.
The two skinheads who remained in the hole with Heidi helped Kluge to his feet.
The IV leader had to think quickly.
“Ah, you made it,” Kluge called up to Chiun. “Excellent.” He smiled weakly.
Remo Williams slipped into view beside the old Korean.
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” he advised Kluge.
“No, really,” Kluge insisted. “It was bedlam back there. I am genuinely pleased that all of the interested parties have found their way here.”
“It wasn’t luck,” Remo said. “The German air force spotted your stupid convoy headed this way. They radioed your position to the border police, who put us on your tail.”
“It is fortunate that I knew how to operate the radio device,” Chiun announced. “Or we might still be driving aimlessly through this bleak forest.”
“Hey, I thought we were going to share the credit for the radio,” Remo complained.
“Oh, please, Remo,” Chiun remarked testily. “While you occasionally display signs of almost being a good son, I live in constant fear that you will someday die in a bathroom after misremembering the operation of the doorknob.”
“Man, you’re nasty when you’re greedy,” Remo said. He left the edge of the hole to go off and sulk near the river.
Chiun was too busy to be concerned with Remo’s fragile state of mind.
From beyond Kluge’s and Heidi’s limited field of vision, the Master of Sinanju produced two handfuls of long metal crowbars. Each weighed approximately fifteen pounds. Chiun held them in his hands as if they were plastic drinking straws. He flung the bars to the bottom of the pit where they clanged in an angry pile.
“Remove the stone,” he commanded imperiously.
. . .
It took longer than either Kluge or Heidi had expected. Perhaps they had imagined it would not be so difficult after seeing Chiun fling the previous stone with such ease.
It would have taken Chiun no time at all to pull the ancient stone from its age-old resting place, but the Master of Sinanju was not about to dirty his hands this time. He let the others strain and tug along with the neo-Nazis and former border police.
It took twenty minutes.
Remo tried to remain aloof for most of the time, but curiosity eventually got the better of even him. He stood above the hole alongside the Master of Sinanju.
Panting from her exertions, Heidi joined them up above, allowing the men to pry and tug at the stubborn edges of the fifteen-hundred-year-old block of buried stone. Her eyes strayed only once to the woods at the edge of the field.
After many long minutes of grunting and straining, the stone finally popped loose. A burst of fetid, swampy air poured up from around the edges of the dislodged slab of ancient rock. The men in the pit struggled to avoid the urge to vomit at the stench.
The worst of the smell passed as they labored to stand the rock door on its side. With difficulty, the men managed to lean the huge piece of stone up against the dirt-smeared rock wall of the shallow pit.
Below the spot where the ancient stone had rested for more than a millennium was an empty blackness. Stone stairs led away into darkness.
The Master of Sinanju couldn’t contain his joy. He bounced happily on his sandaled feet.
“Come, Remo,” he enthused. “Let us reclaim the treasure of poor maligned Master Bal-Mung.” He headed for the edge of the hole.
“What about them?” Remo asked, indicating the skinheads and border police who were still standing in the small field.
