"I'll take a look," said the copilot, removing his earphones.
When he opened the sealed door, he saw a little Korean in a gray robe.
The little Korean smiled pleasantly.
"You speakee English?" asked the copilot.
"Better than you," retorted Chiun. "I have been waiting patiently for many hours. When are meals served on this flight?"
Chapter 9
In 1949 they had told him there was no hope.
He did not believe them, not even in those early months in the green room. He was in an iron lung then. He was in an iron lung a long time, staring up at the angled mirror in which his seared face stared back as pale and bald as that of a new hatchling.
The doctors had told him there was no hope of his ever leaving that mechanical barrel which kept him breathing in spite of his weakened lungs.
But the face of the brutal Harold Smith stared back at him from the inescapable mirror. His hair grew back, in patches. His eyebrows resprouted. The plastic surgeons-paid for by benefactors from the old days-recarved his melted ears until they were like any normal person's ears, if smaller.
And in time, they pulled him from the iron lung. He had demanded it. At first they refused, insisting that he would die. But he ordered them. In the name of the old days of the Reich that was now never to be, he ordered it. Finally they relented.
And he breathed on his own.
They had not told him he had lost both legs.
"We thought it unnecessary to burden you," the doctor told him. "It is a miracle you are out of that damnable machine at all." His accent was of the old country, of the undivided Germany. He was the only one of the doctors he trusted. The others were good, but they were mongrels, with greasy black hair and skin the color of heavily creamed coffee. They spoke the debased Spanish tongue of Argentina.
"I should have been told." he had railed at them. "Had I known, I would not have allowed myself to survive. Had I known, I would have gone to my grave in peace. What good is my freedom if I cannot walk? I have one good arm. With one arm I could strangle that assassin, Smith. One arm is all I would need. But no legs."
The German doctor had shrugged helplessly.
"You are fortunate to live at all. Be grateful for that." It had taken many years of therapy before he had the strength to sit up in a wheelchair. That was the second step. The third was the year the motorized wheelchair was put on the market. With that, there was no need to be pushed around by nurses. But that wasn't what he wanted.
He wanted to walk. Erect, like a whole man.
The years passed in the hospital outside of Buenos Aires. They gave him a wooden arm with a hook at the end of it. The hook had lasted barely a week. He would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and screaming, trying to beat back the flames. The hook shattered the night-light, tore the bedclothes, and ripped open the cheek of one of the yelling nurses as she tried to hold him to the bed.
They replaced the hook with a black plastic cap. It was as blunt and impotent as the smooth scar tissue of his groin, where the surgeons had, in those early days, removed the dead, gangrenous organ, and inserted a tiny plastic flange to keep the inflamed opening of the urinary tract from sealing over.
It was an indignity that seemed inconsequential compared with the others Harold Smith had visited upon him in one red-lit evening. It did not matter that he was no different from a woman in that respect. He was still a man in his heart. And his heart lusted for a man's vengeance. An Aryan's vengeance.
They told him there was no hope of walking. Ever. When they introduced the first bionic arms in the 1970's, he demanded one. And got it. He was no longer in the green room he had come to loathe, but in a stucco home near Saita that was paid for by donations from those of Germany who still believed and remembered. "If they can do this with arms, they can do it with legs," he had told his doctor at the time.
"They are working on it," the doctor had told him. "I think they will succeed. It will be a boon for those missing one leg, yes. But for those with none . . ." The doctor had just shaken his head sadly.
"There is no hope?" he had asked.
"There is no hope."
And he had believed him. But the face of the hated Harold Smith kept staring back from every mirror, every pane of glass touched by the Argentinian sun, and taunted him. Eternally young, he had taunted him.
By that time he had established contacts throughout the world. There were people, good Germans, who had left the dismembered ruin of their native country and resettled in America. Some had visited him in his stucco home, to reminisce, to speak of the old days and old glories, glories that might still shine.
"Find Smith," he had begged them. "Do not approach him. Do not touch him. Just find him."
They had not found Smith. The old Office of Strategic Services had been disbanded. Smith had been an employee to the end, but there the trail ended. There was speculation that the man might have transferred over to the new intelligence organ of the United States government, the Central Intelligence Agency, but the old CIA records were impossible to access. There was no Harold Smith listed in the newer records.
"Perhaps he is dead," they suggested.
"No," he had spat back. "He lives for me. He lives for the day my hands clutch his throat. He is not dead. I would feel it if that were true. No, he is not dead. And I will find him. Somehow."
It was then that he finally came to America, back to America. It was a changed place, but all the world had changed. Even he had changed.
In America he had found many Harold Smiths. And so he had set out to kill them all.
He had killed several. It had been easy, but oddly disappointing. None was the right one. And there were so many Harold Smiths. He had begun to despair once more.
Until today.
Now the doctor was speaking words that brought him back to the present.
"There is hope."
"Are you certain?"
"If what you tell me is true, there is hope," the doctor said. He was the latest doctor. Young, brilliant, loyal and one of the finest bionics experts in the country. The doctor had created his three-fingered claw that was superior to anything available from the best American medical-supply houses.
"I have heard about this man D'Orr's discovery. If he's solved the titanium problem, then I can see the day when this method could be applied to bionic legs."
"When?"
"Three years. Perhaps less."
"I cannot wait three years," he said.
He was lying on an examing table, a sheet covering his stumps and the obscene nudity between them. Ilsa stood off to one side. He was not ashamed to let her see him like this, lying like a piece of wrinkled meat on the table. She had seen him like this many times. She dressed him, fed him, and bathed him. She helped him when he had to use the bathroom. He had no secrets from Ilsa-except perhaps his desire for her.
He smiled at her, and she gently soothed his brow with a cool damp cloth.
"We're so close to finding him," Ilsa told the doctor.
"I cannot stop now," he told the doctor. "I have begun my search. What can you do for me?"
"Nothing. "
"What do you need? I will obtain it."
"The technology exists," the doctor said. "The trouble is, it exists in two parts. I can give you anything that modern bionic engineering can provide. But you know the problem. Steel is too heavy for the powering mechanisms that would have to be built into each limb. Aluminum is too light. The legs would buckle under the strains you propose. I could give you legs tomorrow, but they would not be equal to the task. If I had D'Orr's nebulizer, it would be possible to create titanium parts that would work. Otherwise, we must wait for the device to come on the commercial market."
"Then we will get D'Orr's secret," he said, and Ilsa squeezed his real hand tightly.