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.