Failing Marks, page 22
Chiun paused, looking at the collection of men. There were only about twenty of them in all. “We will need them to transport my treasure,” Chiun said merrily.
He hopped down into the hole.
Remo and Heidi followed, along with the curious group of neo-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.
The moss-coated stairs led deep underground.
As the motley collection of treasure hunters made their way down the long, treacherous flight, more than one skinhead slipped and fell. Once, Remo had to grab Heidi when the heels of her boots slid out from beneath her. Only Remo and Chiun descended the ancient staircase with ease.
The waning late-afternoon sunlight from above grew dim when they were only halfway down the stairs. Their group had only two weak flashlights, which they played along the slime-coated walls and slick staircase. Adolf Kluge held one of the lights as he stepped gingerly down the stairs immediately behind the Master of Sinanju.
The staircase led into a narrow, stone-hewed hallway. There was a shelf set into the wall on which rested dozens of slender rock-carved torches.
Siegfried must have considered the possibility that the treasure might languish down there for many years. While it would have been traditional to fashion a torch from wood, wood rotted. Stone did not.
Chiun took one of the unlit torches down from the wall. As Kluge shone a flashlight on him, the Master of Sinanju made an unhappy face.
The torch had a wide cup that tapered down into a long handle. It was like an oversize golf tee. Chiun dipped his index finger into the hollow at the top of the rock torch. He removed it, pressing the finger to his tongue.
Angry, Chiun spit the drop of oily substance between Adolf Kluge’s boots.
“Your ancestor’s final theft,” he said to Kluge. Chiun continued forward down the corridor, toying with the top of the torch.
As the Master of Sinanju walked away, Remo took down one of the torches. He smelled the end, nodding.
“What is it?” Kluge asked, confused.
“Old family recipe,” Remo explained. “Lasts for years.”
Far down the corridor, Chiun’s torch flared to life. The narrow walls were instantly illuminated in a brilliant flash of white-hot light. The light from the torch then faded to a steady yellow incandescence.
Remo instructed the men with them to gather up several of the torches. As he and Heidi walked past Kluge, the IV leader could see Remo rubbing his thumb and index finger rapidly together above the bowl of the torch. Somehow the friction he produced caused his own torch to burst aflame.
Remo used his flame to ignite the other torches.
The mass of men moved down the hallway. Adolf Kluge lagged behind.
A feeling of intense claustrophobia had enveloped Kluge. He couldn’t allow it to get the better of him. Not if he hoped to succeed in his plan to kill the others. Steeling himself, Kluge trailed the rest down the hallway.
“Why are there skeletons everywhere we go lately?” Remo griped as he picked his way through a litter of bones.
The hallway had ended in a large chamber. Above them could be heard the muted roar of the Danube. The chamber had been constructed in such a way that—even after all these years—the river had not burst through.
The broken bones of murder victims were spread all around this large room. In spite of the dampness, they cracked like scattered potato chips beneath the heels of the intruders.
“Siegfried would not want his secret made known,” Chiun explained. “Doubtless these are the bodies of those who constructed this place.”
“They are likely the men who moved the gold, as well,” Heidi offered from her spot at Remo’s elbow.
“What did he do if you didn’t help him?” Remo asked.
There was a sconce at the wall just inside the door. Remo put his torch there. It was bright enough to illuminate the entire room, which was roughly the size of a high-school classroom from the time when such rooms held more than five students, one teacher and fifteen teacher’s aides.
There were at least two more rooms leading off of the one they were in. Weird shadows danced along the moist, moss-covered walls.
Beyond the skeletal remains on either side of the chamber were two large piles of slime-coated rock. Lichens and moss sprouted from every conceivable crevice in the huge stone piles. A narrow space ran up between the mass of slippery rock into the next chamber.
Beyond the right pile, a relentless drip reminded them of the nearness of the Danube above their heads. An elaborate sluice system constructed at the sides of the slightly slanted floors carried the dripping water away.
“I guess ol’ Siegfried did it to you again, Chiun,” Remo commented sadly, looking around the fungus and ooze filled room. “I’ve got to hand it to him, though. I almost believed this one.”
The Master of Sinanju wasn’t listening. His eyes held an eager glow as he handed his torch back to Remo. Remo took it, confused.
“What’s with him?” he asked, turning to Heidi.
She wasn’t listening, either. Both Heidi and Kluge broke away from the pack, their faces awed. They moved with nervous reverence after the Master of Sinanju.
When they came up behind him, Chiun was already crouched next to the nearest pile of moss-covered stone. Heidi and Kluge didn’t look at one another. Didn’t blink. Didn’t dare take their wide eyes off the hands of the old Korean.
Chiun snaked a bony hand toward the rock pile.
Remo had no time to voice his disgust before the Master of Sinanju had clasped firmly on to one of the slippery stones atop the main pile. Spiriting it to his chest, Chiun used his free hand to brush away the years of slimy growth that had built up atop the stone.
Remo had just opened his mouth to complain when he spied an odd glimmer in the bright torchlight within the cavern. It came from Chiun’s hand.
And its color was gold.
Stunned, Remo took a step forward.
Both Heidi and Kluge watched in wonder as Chiun’s long fingernails expertly wiped away years of residue that had built up atop the object that all of them now knew was not merely a piece of rock.
It came clean with surprising ease. When he was finished, Chiun held in his hand a single brick of solid gold. He turned to Remo.
“Behold,” Chiun said, with quiet awe. He held a grand arm out toward the mossy piles within the cavern, “the long shame of Master Bal-Mung is lifted. I give to you the Nibelungen Hoard.”
Chapter Twenty-five
The decision was made by the Master of Sinanju to haul the entire Nibelungen Hoard from its ancient resting place in one massive move.
Every available man, with the exclusion of Chiun himself, formed a line into the farthest rooms within the underground catacombs. Piece by piece, the lumps of gold were passed forward. There were also crates brimming over with fabulous jewels. Although the wooden boxes had originally been preserved in the same manner as the block carving map, given the soggy conditions of the tunnels in which they had been stored, they had not held up as well. However, most were strong enough to survive being passed down the line of waiting men.
When the back room was clear, the line leapfrogged out into the next room, passing the gold farther out into the corridor. From the corridor, they moved to the stairs, and from the stairs, outside.
In this manner, the rear room was cleared out in just under five hours.
When they were only halfway through the first room and he realized just how monumental an undertaking this was going to be, Remo had Heidi help him to contact Colonel Heine on the radio.
When Heine had informed him earlier of the location of Kluge’s trucks, Remo had warned the colonel to hold his men back while he and Chiun dealt with the neo-Nazi situation. Having seen with his own eyes the way Remo had walked through the heaviest firefight of his career, Heine was loath to upset the American.
Remo now told the colonel that the situation was under control. Heine spluttered for a moment until Remo reminded him of the pain he caused the colonel’s hand. The colonel promptly agreed to abandon the Black Forest.
They worked for twelve hours straight. Kluge and his Border Police defectors had only three trucks on hand. They weren’t enough to put so much as a dent in the huge pile of gold and jewels stacked around the windswept clearing.
Dawn was breaking on their second day of backbreaking labor. The skinheads still hauled treasure up from below. They were weary from their many hours of ceaseless effort.
Remo was just coming back from getting a drink at the river. Chiun danced happily up beside him.
“It is a magnificent sight, is it not?” the Master of Sinanju proclaimed as he viewed the massive stack of moss-encrusted treasure.
“Metal and rocks,” Remo said with a bland shrug. He wiped at the grime on his forehead.
Chiun waggled a playfully admonishing finger at him.
“Do not sulk, Remo. It does not suit you.”
Chiun flapped over to inspect a crate of flawless diamonds that hadn’t seen the warming rays of the morning sun in fifteen centuries.
“Funny. I think it suits me just fine,” Remo grumbled. He trudged back over to the mouth of the cavern.
. . .
As the winter sun broke over the damp riverside meadow, Adolf Kluge was as far away from its warming rays as he could have imagined. Filthy and sweating profusely, he was crawling on his belly in a narrow shaft that ran parallel to the long corridor at the bottom of the old stone stairs.
The dull yellow glow of his flashlight shone brightly off the slippery walls of the man-made tunnel. The air was thick with the smell of overgrown moss. For Kluge, it was like crawling through a massive, fungus-filled laboratory petri dish. The years of mossy growth felt like one giant sponge. As he squished ahead on all fours, his pants and jacket grew sopped at the front.
The feeling of claustrophobia Kluge had experienced in the corridor outside was magnified a hundredfold in this cramped interior.
As he made his way along the cave, he pulled in deep, measured breaths. He had heard that this was supposed to have a calming effect. Kluge found that it did not.
It should only be a few feet up ahead. Everything else had been the way the map had described. There was no reason to think that it wouldn’t be here, as well.
It was the Siegfried map that held the key. The Nibelungen king might have planned for the Hoard to be uncovered in a far distant future, but the future he had envisioned would have been measured in a few short decades. His fifth-century mind could not have considered that the cave would lie undiscovered until the twentieth century.
Siegfried had imagined all along that this storehouse of treasure would be divided in his lifetime. But if it happened that the gold was uncovered at a time when he was aged and his mind was failing him, he wanted to be sure that he of all the interested parties would still hold a winning hand. That was why his section of the block carving was the only one to show a detailed route to the ancient booby trap.
The narrow tunnel opened into a long vertical shaft. Kluge found that he was able to stand upright.
He shone his flashlight up the slick walls of the cramped enclosure. The ceiling was invisible behind a gnarled ganglia of dangling roots. To Kluge it was rather like being trapped at the bottom of a capped well.
Kluge turned the flashlight to his feet. He found what he was looking for immediately. It was a chiseled chunk of stone about three feet long. It appeared to be holding up another much longer support beam. This long stone brace rose up to the ceiling, disappearing amid an interlocking series of carved rocks.
Siegfried had anticipated that he might be infirm when at last he used this shaft, so it would have been designed to dislodge easily. But that was many years ago. There was no telling whether or not Kluge would be able to budge it.
The IV leader sat down at the mouth of the tunnel through which he had just crawled. The moisture from the cave seeped in uncomfortably at the seat of his trousers.
Twisting unhappily, he braced one foot up against the slimy side of the propped stone.
Kluge reached into the pocket of his filthy jacket, pulling out a walkie-talkie he had packed along with the rest of the provisions and turned it on.
The muted sounds of low voices and shuffling feet came through the tiny speaker.
He heard Remo and Heidi. But not Chiun.
When Remo had opted not to come along initially, Kluge thought he would have to abandon his plan. Not anymore. But it would still work only if both Masters of Sinanju were beyond the main corridor.
Feeling the chilly wetness of the cramped tunnel, Adolf Kluge sat patiently. And waited.
. . .
“That’s the last of it,” Remo said as he walked back into the first of the three chambers that had held the Nibelungen Hoard. The final batch of gold had been moved down the corridor and was waiting in a pile at the bottom of the stone staircase.
“I am just double-checking,” Heidi said.
She had brought in one of the unlit stone torches from the hallway shelf. Heidi was using the handle end to push beneath the piles of smelly moss that had been left behind.
Now that there was no longer any treasure stored beneath them, the brownish green lumps of slime looked like deflated weed balloons. Although it didn’t seem as if a scrap of the Hoard remained, Heidi was meticulous in her search.
Remo heard echoing laughter from inside the two adjacent rooms. Heidi had enlisted some of Kluge’s men to help her in rummaging through the mildewy chambers.
“I wonder how much loot those felons have pocketed,” Remo commented, nodding to the skinheads.
“I am certain Chiun will not allow them to take anything that is not theirs,” Heidi commented absently.
“You got that right,” Remo snorted. “I’m still wondering how he plans on hauling all of this junk out of the country.”
“Half,” Heidi said.
Remo smiled. “You still think you’re getting a piece of the action?” he asked innocently.
Heidi stopped digging beneath the moss. She turned to Remo, her face unhappy. “We have a contract,” she said.
“Are you sure he didn’t write it in disappearing ink?”
She shook her head firmly. “Masters of Sinanju are not known for duplicity.”
“That’s ’cause no one lives to tell the tales,” Remo said. He seemed genuinely surprised at her. “Do you mean to tell me that it honestly never occurred to you that Chiun might have considered your contract null and void the minute you and Kluge ditched him?”
“I barely escaped with my life,” Heidi insisted.
“And Kluge?”
“We were never working together. At least, not after the gunfight. That man is a monster. His kind still thinks that they are some kind of master race. And he is the worst offender of all. He is an intellectual midget who fancies himself a giant. He is superior to nothing. Least of all to me.” She thrust her chin forward angrily.
Remo was baffled by the passion in her voice. “Where the hell did that come from?” he asked.
Her embarrassment at her outburst was almost instantaneous. “I did not—” She paused, collecting herself. “I have a deal with the House of Sinanju,” she said, firmly, coming back to her original point. “I expect the House to honor it.”
Chiun came through the door at that moment. The radiant joy that beamed from every crevice in his wrinkled face was not diminished by the darkness in the dank underground.
“Have you finished?” he lilted.
“Not quite,” Heidi replied. She redoubled her efforts searching through the slimy growth.
“Carry on,” Chiun said. He waved a delighted hand as he skipped over to the other side of the room. Searching with his feet, he began kicking through the debris.
“Have you given any thought to how you’re going to move all this garbage?” Remo complained to Chiun.
“I believe I have that taken care of,” Heidi offered.
Surprised, Remo turned to her. “Oh?” he asked.
Chiun interrupted her before she could respond.
“What is this?” the Master of Sinanju asked. He had just unearthed something from beneath a brackish green lump. Picking the object up, he displayed it to Heidi and Remo. Although strips of moss still clung to its surface, the device was visible enough. And it had clearly not been down there for fifteen hundred years.
“It looks like a walkie-talkie,” Remo said, puzzled.
As he reached for the small instrument, Remo suddenly became aware of a low rumble above and around them. He had grown used to the sound of the rushing water directly over their heads. This was an entirely different noise.
Heidi got to her feet, curious. Remo glanced over at her, hoping that she might shed some light on what they were hearing. But she was clearly as puzzled as he was.
All at once, the room began to shake. As if from some unseen cue, a gigantic slab of rock fell with impossible slowness from above the door, tumbling to the floor with a room-shaking, thunderous crash.
Chiun dropped the walkie-talkie.
“Run, Remo!” the Master of Sinanju shouted.
His warning came too late.
As they raced for the exit, the wall before them began to buckle. It collapsed inward at the midpoint, scattering massive stones like toppled blocks. An avalanche of stone and muddy earth rained down from above, sealing the corridor.
They didn’t have time to consider their options. Without the support of the far wall, the ceiling began to bulge downward with horrifying slowness. It creaked as the resettling earth pushed in on it.
At a frantic run, the skinheads from the inner room joined them. They looked up in fear at the groaning roof.
“Is there another way out of here?” Remo asked warily.
Heidi’s eyes were wide. “No,” she said softly.
And with that, the ceiling collapsed in a shower of dirt and crashing boulders. Like a deluge from some bygone era of biblical vengeance, the full fury of the Danube River exploded in all around them.
Chapter Twenty-six
