Well, Kluge wouldn't live forever.
But Holz still wished he could do something with the awesome power at his disposal. It was like having unlimited credit and not being able to spend a dime.
There was a knock at his door. After a second's hesitation, his secretary entered. "The custodial staff promises your door will be repaired by five o'clock, Mr. Holz," she said. She carried with her a stack of envelopes and company correspondence. "You were so busy this morning, you didn't have time to look at your mail." She set the pile on his desk and exited the room.
Holz checked his watch. His assistant wouldn't have arrived at the sanitarium by now. Newton and von Breslau would be busy with their work, with the pair from Sinanju standing like statues in the corner of the fourth-floor lab. Even with his compliment from Kluge, he was beginning once more to feel left out. He needed something to do.
Holz shuffled through the mail halfheartedly. One of the daily New York papers was at the bottom of the pile of envelopes.
He glanced at the headline. Nothing of interest.
Besides, there could be nothing more important happening in the world than what was going on in this very building.
He was about to throw the paper in the trash when a minor article caught his attention. It was a sidebar column. A puff piece on United States Secretary of State Helena Eckert. It accompanied a larger story on proposed sanctions against the Middle East country of Lobynia.
He read the column more carefully, an idea evolv-ing even as he scanned down the lines.
He hadn't even gotten halfway through the article when he realized what he would do. It was a brilliant idea. Something that the higher-ups—especially the older ones—would savor for its irony.
In a way, it was fitting.
And most important of all, it was the sort of thing that would advance his career.
He left the newspaper on his desk and hurried downstairs.
To stir up the embers of the past.
18
Running, running...
Smith tried to catch his breath. It came in desperate spurts. The exhaled mist clung to the frigid winter air. The solid earth beneath his feet suddenly gave way.
Stumbling.
Groping for a handhold, he tumbled roughly down a rocky slope to the beach. He fell, sprawled across the hard-packed sand. The black grit was in his mouth. He spit viciously.
Smith pulled himself to his feet. Too late.
The Nazi captain. He saw the face. Menk was running toward him. His gun was drawn. His cruel features looked more haggard from the exertion.
Menk was upon him.
Smith still wore the stolen greatcoat. It was large, far too big for Smith's lean frame. Hopefully it was concealing. His hands were hidden from Menk, his shoulders stooped. He tried for all the world to look like a broken man. Someone who had tried a last-ditch flight for freedom and had failed.
Menk seemed to revel in Smith's sunken de-
meanor. He stood, panting on the beach before Smith. In the background, rumbling in the distance, was the faint drone of American warplanes.
"Your Allies are nearly here, Smith," Menk said.
It was a taunt.
Smith didn't respond. He stood his ground silently.
"You will not be alive to greet them."
The man had sat calmly by for a week, watching as Smith was being tortured. Occasionally he would offer little hints to increase the level of pain. Now, in defeat, he planned to kill Smith. To Menk, the man before him represented the force that had brought his dreams to a humiliating end. He would kill Smith.
But there was one thing that Captain Josef Menk did not realize. He didn't know Smith had a gun.
Menk raised his weapon slowly, for effect. He would make the man before him cower, perhaps beg for his life.
Smith, on the other hand, wasn't one for histri-onics. He pulled his own weapon from beneath the long greatcoat and fired.
The look on Menk's face was one of utter shock.
His own weapon dropped from his hand. There was nothing melodramatic, nothing unique about the death of Josef Menk. He merely fell to his knees and dropped facedown on the sand.
Smith dropped, as well. Not from a wound, but from exhaustion.
The planes were closer now. Usedom would soon fall to the Allies.
While he gathered his last reserves of strength, vague resolutions began to fill his mind. Smith would facilitate the dismantling of the V-2 rocket program.
He would ensure that the German scientists saw the wisdom of using their talents for a better purpose in America.
He left Menk's body for the tide. Slowly he trudged back up to the road. It was over.
So long ago...
Before he had merely been apprehensive. But when Remo didn't call in by noon, Harold W. Smith began to grow more and more distressed.
He couldn't have arrived at PlattDeutsche's Edison complex any later than midmorning. He was, therefore, three hours overdue. Remo had never been the most responsible individual when it came to checking in, but even he would realize the importance of this mission. Perhaps especially him.
They had gotten him. There was simply no other explanation.
And if they had Remo, they had Chiun, as well Smith had racked his brain to come up with an alternate plan throughout the morning. There was something that had been troubling him for some time. On the surface, it was an inconsequential point.
He didn't deal in trifles, so his mind had stored it away. But it was important. His mind wouldn't let him forget.
Why did the Dynamic Interface System signal not work on him?
They had been able to access his hippocampus easily, but their efforts to physically manipulate him had proved futile. Why?
He wasn't fighting it, surely. If Remo and Chiun couldn't ward off the signals, then he shouldn't have had any hope whatsoever.
Yet, he had. Even in his own office—once when Chiun had arrived the previous day, once as he knelt over Remo—he had felt the tingle at the back of his neck. It was the same sensation he had felt at the bank.
Neither time had he fallen victim to the signal.
He had spent several hours that morning transferring information from the PlattDeutsche van out back to the massive CURE database hidden behind the walls of the basement below. The technology was unquestionably brilliant, and in time he was certain he could crack the sophisticated encoding system of Ae programmers.
As he downloaded the information, he had no real Way of gauging how much of Remo or himself was stored in the company's mobile hard drive. An entire lifetime of knowledge relegated to a few kilobits.
He would have liked to have studied the new information more carefully, but he found himself distracted. As he worked, he continually checked his watch, realizing that as the time grew later and later, it was becoming less and less likely that Remo had succeeded.
Once he was finished, he had returned to his office to wait. As he sat ruminating, the same vexing question that had bothered him for two days surfaced once more.
Why wasn't he affected by the interface signal?
Behind his desk, staring out at the waters of Long Island Sound, Smith's mind wandered.
He thought of Usedom again. Of Captain Menk.
What did those events have to do with the present?
Why was he remembering them now?
There were other matters far more pressing. He forced the memories of the island of Usedom and of Captain Menk away.
He thought of the bank. He thought of Lothar Holz.
Holz. Menk.
His brow furrowed.
Yes... Yes, it was possible.
Smith's lemony features grew more intense as he called up an image of Captain Josef Menk in his mind. The face on the beach. The bland look when confronted with mortality.