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.