Failing Marks

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 26

Kluge felt the walls of the cramped tunnel rumble all around him as he made his frantic way back out to the staircase. He tore ragged holes in his coat and pants as he crawled recklessly through the pitch-dark wetness.

The support stone had kicked away with surprising ease. The series of key stones had interlocked like some ancient puzzle. As soon as the cornerstone was gone, the others began collapsing in around it. He had dropped his flashlight in his haste.

The walls drummed like thunder all around him as the corridor and rooms collapsed. He only knew he was going in the right direction because it was impossible to get lost in the long burrow.

His claustrophobia had nearly robbed him of all sense. He wanted to scream, wanted to panic. Logically he knew that it would do no good, but logic had nothing to do with the almost paralyzing terror he felt. It was like being trapped in the black epicenter of a massive earthquake.

Scurrying like a rat in a hole, Kluge suddenly slammed against something solid with his head.

Panicked now, he grabbed forward, shoving hard against the object. The stone toppled away. It was the same one he had pulled in place behind him upon entering the tunnel.

He scampered out beneath the stairs-lungs aching, heart pounding.

He was alive!

There was enough weak light filtering down the stairs to illuminate the small pile of gold that still remained. The corridor was gone. Buried behind a wall of rock and earth.

Get the panic under control.

Deep breaths. No! Save it for outside. Outside.

He headed for the stairs, casting one final glance at his end of the collapsed corridor.

The others were dead. The gold was all his. He could collect whatever was left at the bottom of the stairs later.

Exhilarated by his success, Adolf Kluge raced up the staircase to the distant square of light.

THE ICY WATER CRASHED down in an enormous burst of frothy, churning white. The floor flooded in seconds.

"Back!" Chiun commanded.

The skinheads were already running in panic through the waist-deep water toward the rear rooms. "I don't think that'll do any good!" Remo shouted over the roar of the waterfall.

"It will give us time!" Chiun insisted.

Bony arms pumping in furious motion, the Master of Sinanju fought against the lethal, swirling current. Remo followed. Heidi struggled after them.

Heidi had not taken more than a few fumbling steps when she tripped against a shattered chunk of toppled stone. She fell beneath the rapidly rising water. Thrown forward on the waves, she lost all sense of direction. She swam for what she thought was up, bumping against the floor of the flooding cavern. Or was it the wall?

No time to decide. She kicked off, pushing up to the surface. A wave caught her midway, tumbling her sideways. She no longer had any sense of up or down.

Heidi began to panic.

Strong arms suddenly grabbed her by the armpits. She was hauled, spluttering above the water by Remo. It was now as high as their chests.

Remo carried her along with him, taking a few swift strides across the room. The water was at their chins by the time they made it into the second room.

The skinheads were in hysterics. They were clawing at the walls and at one another, trying to climb above the water. Screaming and crying, they pushed up on the shoulders of their confederates. One body floated face down in the water. Another skinhead attempted to ride it like a raft.

Chiun was treading water.

"There's no way out of here!" Remo shouted to him.

"There is one!" Chiun yelled back.

Beyond the door, they could see the river pouring relentlessly through the broken ceiling. It was so steady it was like a single, huge column of water. "It's too dangerous!" Remo shouted.

"I am open to suggestions!"

There was a massive rumble. They watched as a new section of the outer ceiling began to give way. It fell in huge irregular blocks to the rising, churning water.

The water was only a few feet from the ceiling now and rising ever more rapidly.

"Go!" Remo yelled to Chiun over the roar of the river.

The Master of Sinanju nodded sharply. Twisting up, he ducked below the waves. His spindly legs appeared for an instant as he jackknifed underwater. Then he was gone.

They were at the ceiling now. Heidi held her face up to the approaching rock, breathing desperately. "Take a deep breath!" Remo yelled.

She was so disoriented she didn't know where Remo was any longer. The skinheads were screaming as the water swirled up around them. Heidi craned her neck to see Remo.

"What?"

"Do it!"

Heidi did as she was told. The instant she had filled her lungs, Remo grabbed her around the waist. Pulling her close to him, he threw himself into the swirling torrent.

The push of water was like a fist shoving against him. Dragging Heidi beside him, Remo kicked hard against the racing current.

The freezing water was murky and filled with swirling plants and mud.

As they passed out into the remnants of the outer room, Remo felt a series of muted booms behind them. The roof of the room they had been in was collapsing. The stones of the ceiling were crashing in slow motion to the new riverbed.

A few scissorlike kicks brought them to the largest waterfall. It was like fighting against the mighty spray of a jet-powered firehose.

Remo pushed them into the center of the driving water.

He had to fight against the force of the inconung river. It was hard enough to do alone; carrying someone else made it all the more difficult.

The roar of the flooding water pounded against his ears as he propelled the two of them forward. His limbs were like leaden weights.

Chiun's fault. He had forced Remo to haul his precious booty for almost twenty hours. The heavy labor had taken its toll on his arms and legs.

Remo's muscles ached as he pushed up through the remnants of ceiling and earth. For an instant, it seemed as if he might be thrown back down through the opening.

He kicked a final time, hard.

They were propelled upward against the tide. A new current caught him, pushing him away from the ragged opening. The legitimate bed of the Danube began to slide rapidly beneath him.

Remo caught the bottom of the river with the tips of his toes and pushed. The force was gauged to bring them at an angle through the racing current of water. Remo and Heidi were propelled up to the surface. In an instant, sunlight exploded all around them.

Heidi pulled in a ragged gulp of air.

Remo gave her little time to fill her lungs. Cutting across the roaring river, he swam swiftly to the shore, dragging her behind him.

In a few seconds, they were pulling themselves up onto the grassy riverbank, drenched and weary. But alive.

The Master of Sinanju was there to greet them. "He has stolen my gold!" Chiun cried. His sopped kimono clung in mud-encrusted sheets to his bony frame.

"Who?" Remo asked, pulling himself to his feet. His clothes dripped icy water.

"The thieving scion of the scoundrel Siegfried and his army of pinheads, of course," Chiun huffed. "Hurry!" He bounced, dripping wet up the weedstrewed bank.

Remo climbed up the embankment and looked out over the meadow. Most of the Nibelungen Hoard was still there, but Kluge's trucks were gone from the nearby access road. There was no sign of the skinheads or defecting border police.

"He only took some of it," Remo offered.

"It was not his right to take one precious ingot!" Chiun said, stomping his feet.

"Fine," Remo said, exhaling tired frustration. "We'll go after him. But you've got to promise me, Chiun. When we find him, we kill him. I've had it up to here with this stupid gold fever of yours."

"We will kill him," Chiun replied icily.

"Good," Remo said.

"For stealing my treasure."

Rolling his eyes, Remo turned to Heidi.

She was panting and drenched behind them. Her blond bangs clung in dripping sheets to her forehead. "Keep an eye on this stuff till we get back?" he asked.

"Only if our fifty/fifty deal still stands," she said.

"Fine with me."

Chiun jumped forward. "I do not trust her."

Heidi began to speak, but Remo interjected. "All that's left is my crummy rental car," he complained. "She's not hauling all of this out in that." He indicated the field and its piles upon piles of gold and jewels with a sweeping motion of his hand.

Chiun was faced with a vexing problem. To part with the bulk of the treasure in pursuit of a small portion, or to sacrifice a small portion to guard the larger mass.

His eyes passed indecisively from the access road to his mounds of precious booty. He finally reached a decision, though it obviously gave him little happiness.

"I warn you," he said threateningly, raising a long fingernail to Heidi.

The old Korean said not another word. He spun on his heel and raced for Remo's borrowed jeep. "Do us both a favor," Remo warned with a knowing nod.

Leaving Heidi alone, dripping, shivering and surrounded by the Nibelungen Hoard, Remo took off through the field after Chiun.

Chapter 27

Adolf Kluge waited alone in the small Berlin warehouse.

He didn't dare leave. Not with the amount of gold piled on the floor.

The few skinheads who remained after he had collapsed the underground storehouse had returned with him to the city. Kluge sent them out to rent more trucks and gather more men.

It was unbelievable. The actual Nibelungen Hoard.

The treasure piled in this warehouse didn't seem like much compared to the huge amount he knew was waiting for him in that desolate clearing next to the Danube, but he knew as he looked down upon it that he was gazing at a fortune.

He had enough here alone to reestablish IV. The secret neo-Nazi organization would be stronger than it ever had been in the past. With the wealth at his disposal, it might even be time to begin considering the true mission of IV.

A global fascist government. With himself as its leader.

He had never dreamed he would have the operating capital to carry out such a plan. But now... Now it could be a reality. Kluge had come to believe only recently that anything was possible. Stooping, he picked up one of the gold bars. It was still flecked with dark fungus. He scraped the growth away with his thumbnail. Pulling out his handkerchief, he buffed the surface to a high luster. Anything was possible. Anything at all.

Kluge smiled as he held the bar up to examine it in the weak light of the warehouse.

He caught something reflected in its gleaming surface. A pair of dark shapes silhouetted in the door. Men. But the door was closed and bolted from the inside.

Kluge turned around slowly, still holding the gold bar.

"Here's a tip. If you want to keep your hideout a secret, don't trust skinheads," Remo Williams said, stepping into the room.

Chiun took this as a cue. He marched over to Kluge and snatched the heavy gold bar from his hand. He examined it as if it were a baby the IV leader had physically assaulted.

"Thief," the Master of Sinanju announced. Cradling the gold bar delicately, he walked back over to the door.

"He told me he was careful," Kluge gasped. He looked as if he were seeing a pair of ghosts. "I even told him to use a false name when he rented this place. How are you alive?"

Remo ignored the question. "He used a false name, all right," he said. "The same one he used to rent one of those trucks. These baldies aren't the brightest bulbs on the circuit, Dolph."

"The truck?" Kluge asked. He was totally bewildered. He obviously didn't see a connection.

"I don't know how my boss does it," Remo said with a shrug. "Chiun remembered the number on the truck. Smith managed to use his computer to track you. Now we're here."

"Smith," Kluge said. He was coming back to his senses.

"Yeah," Remo said "The guy you knocked on the head. He sends his thanks for that, by the way. I just found out he's going into the hospital today. They're going to have to drain fluid from around his brain because of the crack you gave him. I don't like him, but I respect him. For that, you suffer." Smiling grimly, he advanced on Kluge.

"This is not how the House of Sinanju is supposed to do business," Kluge called quickly over to Chiun.

"Did you not read your contract?" Chiun asked blandly.

"Of course," Kluge said. "We had an ironclad deal."

"You obviously did not read the section written in Korean," Chiun noted.

"I do not understand Korean."

"Do not blame me for your inadequacies," Chiun said simply. He heated the gold bar in his hand with a warm puff of breath, polishing off the condensation with the sleeve of his clean, sea green kimono. "The one thing I don't get," Remo interjected, "is why you sent all those letters."

"Letters?" Kluge asked. "What letters?"

"The E-mail you sent to the bank people, the chancellor, even the freaking border police."

Kluge was shaking his head in bewilderment. "I sent no letters."

"Well, one of your lackeys did. They mentioned Four, the Hoard. Even the fact that you were searching in the Black Forest. You're like a guy who wants to be caught."

Kluge was baffled. He kept trying to think of who would report on them or even know that they had set out to find the Hoard. And why E-mail? They might just as easily have used a phone.

Then it struck him.

"They would not be able to use a phone," he said numbly to himself. He remembered the trucks that had escaped during the firefight with the Border Police. The men in them were not skinheads. They were Numbers. It was her. She wanted a diversion so that she would be able to search on her own. Remo was nearly upon him.

"Wait!" Kluge cried desperately. He was grasping at straws, desperate to avoid what he knew was coming. "That woman. The one you were with."

"Heidi?" Remo asked, stopping.

"Yes. She is not normal," Kluge insisted.

"Given your friends, Cuddles, I don't think you're the best judge of that," said Remo. He strode toward Kluge.

"You do not understand," Kluge begged. "She is a Number. They are the ones who E-mailed. They cannot use a telephone. They must be working with her."

Remo stopped once more. "What are you talking about?"

"The blond-haired men," Kluge explained hastily. "The identical mutes? They are called Numbers. They were part of a wrong-headed genetic experiment."

"And Heidi is one of them?" Remo asked. He sounded doubtful.

"Somehow," Kluge admitted. "The rest of them were freaks by design. They were created to be fiercely loyal to Four. I don't know if she has that as part of her genetic programming or not. But if she does, and it has somehow mutated, she could pose a far greater threat than my organization ever did."

"What do you mean?" Remo asked.

"It was a program designed to create the perfect Aryan man. There were not supposed to be any women. I don't know how she even came to be." He shook his head, as if he were speaking to a complete moron. "Do you not understand? She should not exist. And she should never have opposed me in my search for the Hoard."

"Does this affect my treasure?" Chiun asked from across the room. He was clearly anxious to leave.

"What?" Kluge said. "No. No, of course not." Chiun promptly walked out the door.

Remo advanced on Kluge.

"I can help you," the IV head offered desperately. "With her. With the Hoard. I have men coming."

Remo shook his head. "I'd rather go this one alone," he replied. "Thanks just the same."

And because Remo had seen so much killing in the past few weeks and was so bone-tired, he simply reached out and crushed Adolf Kluge's skull.

Afterward, as he looked down on the crumpled body of the dead IV leader, Remo had no feeling of satisfaction.

Hauling Kluge up off the floor, he carried the corpse over to the concrete wall of the warehouse where a series of pegs jutted from the wall. He hung Kluge from these, arms spread across the pegs, legs dangling.

Finding a half-empty bucket of red paint in a store room, Remo painted a large swastika on the bare wall next to Kluge. He enclosed it in a circle, cutting a single red line across the symbol of hate it contained. It was the international sign for "No."

Beside it, he painted a simple legend in English. A few brief words: IV Ends Here.

Remo left the warehouse to find Chiun.

THE MASTER OF SINANJU insisted that they first had to store the gold Kluge had stolen somewhere. Only when this was done were they allowed to return to the Danube. They weren't able to go back until early the next morning.

When they came to the end of the access road, Remo felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Beside him in the jeep, Chiun let out a pained wail. He was out of the jeep before Remo had even slowed down.

"No, no, no!" Chiun cried, running across the empty field.

Heidi was nowhere to be seen.

The only signs that anything heavy had been stored in the meadow were the large indentations in the earth and the huge patches of crushed grass. The treasure itself was gone.

Remo checked down the dank staircase. The area down below had begun to fill with slowly seeping water, but the level was low enough for Remo to see that what little gold had remained down there was gone, as well.

He came up and shrugged.

"Sorry, Chiun," Remo said helplessly.

The Master of Sinanju didn't appear to even hear him.

He just kept repeating the same word over and over as he wandered aimlessly around the field. "No, no, no, no, no..."

After a half hour of this, Chiun got hold of himself. Afterward Remo-feeling intensely guilty-helped Chiun search the clearing for hours for even a single ruby or diamond. They found nothing.

Not a scrap of the Nibelungen Hoard remained.

Chapter 28

One week later, Remo was on the phone in the kitchen of his home back in the United States. "The fluid buildup was causing severe pressure on my brain," the lemony voice of Harold W. Smith said over the phone. "The doctors assure me that with it drained, my recovery will be complete."

"That's great, Smitty," Remo said. "What about those headaches you were having?"

"They were a symptom of the pressure that was building up. I have not had one since the operation." Remo heard a relentless tapping in the background.

"What is that noise?" he asked, annoyed.

"My laptop computer," Smith explained. "My ill health may require a certain amount of bed rest, but it does not mean I have to be completely indolent while I am here."

Remo tried to picture Harold W. Smith-head swathed in bandages-banging away at a laptop computer in the bed of his hospital room. Oddly it was a mental image that didn't stretch Remo's imagination.

"As long as you're working anyway," Remo said, "is there any sign of Chiun's money?"

"No," Smith admitted. "And I find it more than a little alarming that one person could control that much raw wealth. You said her name was Heidi Stolpe?"

"That's what she told me."

"There is no one of that name anywhere in the world that fits the description you gave me," Smith said. "The castle in the Harz Mountains is virtually abandoned. The family who owned it died out in the 1960s. Nearby villagers will occasionally ferry tourists up there for sight-seeing expeditions, but it is otherwise empty. You are certain you found nothing on your subsequent search?"

"Chiun and I went through the place with a fine tooth comb for days. Heidi wasn't there, and neither was the loot."

"I don't know what to say," Smith told him. "I will do my best, but you must tell Chiun that I think it unlikely he will see the Nibelungen Hoard again."

At that moment, Remo heard the front door open hastily and slam shut. The Master of Sinanju's ninety-pound body sounded like a herd of stampeding elephants coming down the hallway to the kitchen.

"I've got to go, Smitty," Remo said hastily. He hung up the phone just as Chiun burst excitedly into the kitchen.

"Oh, joy of joys! Oh, happy day!" Chiun announced. His face beamed pure bliss. It was a marked change from his sulking behavior of the past week.

"What is it?" Remo asked, happy at anything that could change the Master of Sinanju's mood.

"Only this," Chiun said, his voice elated. He raised high a piece of mail.

Chiun had kept a mysterious mail drop for years. Today was the day of the month he had its contents transferred to their current residence. He received a bizarre assortment of mail there, which he generally shielded from Remo. This letter, however, he waved like a trophy above his bald head.

Remo had to snatch the letter from Chiun's hand. As he scanned it, he saw that it was written in a language he didn't understand.

"Care to fill me in?" he asked. Chiun snatched the note back.

"It is from the enchanting Valkyrie," he said, "The delightful daughter of Gunther of the Nibelungenlied. "

"Heidi?" Remo asked. He tried to grab the letter again, but Chiun spirited it out of his reach.

"She tells how she has secreted half of the Hoard in something called a storage facility in Bonn." Chiun reached into the folds of his kimono. He held aloft a single shiny silver key. "Behold, the passkey to the wondrous unit number 18. Therein we will find both gold and keys to chambers 19 through 22. We need only find a way to transport the Hoard out of Germany."

"If that doesn't cause Smith to throw an embolism, I don't know what will," Remo said dryly. Chiun didn't even hear Remo. He was practically singing. "Apparently my gold has taken up many spaces at this repository. The dear girl has even paid expenses on this place of storage from out of her own sweet pocket." Chiun sighed wistfully. "Do you think, Remo, that at my age it is possible to find true love?"

Remo was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed in disgust. "Don't ask me," he said sourly. "Check your bank book."

EPILOGUE

Heidi waited three months before returning to the castle of her ancestors. She made certain first that Remo and Chiun had moved their half of the gold from Bonn.

The last thing she wanted was a confrontation with either Master of Sinanju. Kluge had made that mistake. It was his mismanagement of IV that had brought the organization crashing down around his ears.

Heidi had chosen a secret location beneath the ancient chapel to hide her half of the Hoard. Beneath the shifted stone altar, two huge oaken doors that otherwise meshed with the hardwood floor had been flung open.

She watched as the few remaining Numbers carried her portion of the Hoard down into the treasure chamber hidden deep beneath the Harz Mountain castle. There were only thirty of the blond-haired men left. Thirty of her brothers.

Numbers. The term was so dehumanizing. Not fitting for the men who were supposed to be the future masters of the world. She would have to come up with something else to call them.

When they were finished hiding the treasure, one of the Numbers came over to her. It was the same man who had followed Remo from Berlin months ago. The one who had been on his way to report to Kluge when he was spotted by Heidi. He had instantly recognized her as the genetic superior to them all. He had been the one to tell her where the IV village was located. It wasn't a betrayal of Kluge. She was superior to the dead IV leader. The Number recognized that.

Everything after their chance meeting had been easy. Including the massive undertaking of moving the entire Nibelungen Hoard.

As the man stood, stone-faced, before her, Heidi smiled. She nodded her pleasure at his work. "Seal it off," she said, indicating the chamber. The men across the room flung down the massive wooden doors. They landed with a crash, upsetting a huge plume of dust. It rose up into the dim light that filtered in through the stained glass of the castle room.

"From now on, Four will move cautiously," Heidi said with a smile. "And swiftly."