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"I have been in war, Captain. I know what bodies look like."
"I'm sure you do," the German said, "but we are not talking of dead soldiers, killed hi battle. We are talking about young people who came to Munich to compete in games and were greeted with death. To such as you and I, violence is a way of life. But these were children. That is why I am here. I volunteered because I feel I have something to atone for."
"Why you? You were not on the security team at Munich," the Russian said.
"It was my country in which this atrocity occurred," Bechenbauer said. Sorkofsky was confused by the man but could not doubt his sincerity. How strange that the man could be so sensitive in one way and in another, he had no sensitivity at all. Unless alley cats were to be considered sensitive.
"I understand," he said. "Perhaps you will rest at your hotel and in the morning, we can review our plans."
"That is kind of you, Colonel." With a smile, Bechenbauer added, "Perhaps I may even find some young lady who will show me your Russian nightlife."
The man was incorrigible, Sorkofsky decided, but before he could say anything, the small German had left his office.
Bechenbauer was curious too about Colonel Sorkofsky and he asked Miss Kamirov about him after they had made love for the second time that night.
"Your colonel intrigues me, Ilya."
"Oh?" she asked, blinking her large brown eyes at him. They were in bed in his hotel room, where they had ended up after cruising several of Moscow's dull nightclubs. Ilya was taller than Bechenbauer and more than twenty years younger, but she made no attempt to hide her attraction to him. Most women
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were attracted to him, and she had been surprised at the ferocity with which he made love. He was better and more adept than any young man she had ever encountered and she had encountered her share, for she enjoyed sex.
"Why does he intrigue you?" she asked.
"He seems such a rigid moralist. Is he always like that?"
"So far as I know. I am told he was devoted to his late wife. Now his life is his two daughters."
"He has never made a pass at you?" Bechenbauer asked.
"Never. I tried to get him to but he never seemed to notice. Finally I gave up."
Bechenbauer nodded. So Sorkofsky was for real. For some reason, he felt pleased. He might never like the Russian but he could respect him as an honest man.
Rolling over atop Ilya, he began to think the time he spent in Russia might not be so hard to take after all.
Sorkofsky had tucked his girls in after telling them a bedtime story, and then gone to his den, where he smoked his only pipe of the day and drank his only vodka. He kept it in the small freezer section of his den's refrigerator, which helped to thicken the liquid into a velvety soft relaxant.
He thought of Bechenbauer as he sipped. He had originally been wary of the man, suspecting that he might be an undercover American spy in Russia to coordinate the efforts of all the American spies. But he had rejected that idea now. His life with Communist conspiracy theory had taught him one thing: generally the simplest explanation is the accurate one. Bechenbauer was a German security officer, no more, no less. And from his file, a very good one.
The doorbell interrupted his muse. A military
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messenger was on his doorstep. He seemed surprised to see the Rhinoceros in pajamas and bathrobe.
"Sorry to disturb you, Colonel, but Lieutenant Protchik thought you should see this tonight."
Protchik was one of Sorkofsky's aides, an ambitious young soldier who did everything he could to keep on the colonel's good side. Sorkofsky detested him.
He took the envelope and thanked the corporal. He waited until he was back in his study before he opened the envelope and read the contents.
It was another note from the S.A.A.E. The note had just been received by the president of the United States, Protchik advised him in a cover memo.
The note to the president read:
"Everything is in place. As a lesson to the imperialist cowards of America who flee their friends at the first sign of trouble, let it be known that not one American athlete will return from Moscow alive. All will die."
The note was postmarked Salisbury, Rhodesia. The first note, Sorkofsky knew, had been sent from Pretoria, South Africa.
Sorkofsky read the note several times, then telephoned Bechenbauer's hotel.
A woman answered the insistent ringing in the German officer's room.
"Let me speak to Captain Bechenbauer," Sorkofsky ordered stiffly.
The woman seemed confused and stuttered a moment, then Bechenbauer came onto the line.
"Yes, Colonel."
"Something has come up. Can you be in my office at 6 A.M.?"
"Of course, Colonel."
Sorkofsky hesitated. He thought he should say something to the German about his deplorable morals.
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"Will that be all, Colonel?" Bechenbauer asked.
Angrily, Sorkofsky snapped, "Yes. Until tomorrow. But for God's sake, man, try to get some sleep."
He slammed down the telephone and walked upstairs to his bedroom. Something was bothering him. He shouldn't have acted so brusquely with Bechenbauer. What was it?
The woman. Her voice had sounded familiar and had seemed flustered when she heard Sorkofsky. Did she recognize his voice? She must have. How had Bechenbauer known it was him on the telephone when he had not identified himself?
Was it-? No. Not his secretary. He told himself he must stop conjuring up ghosts. He had enough real problems to deal with.
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CHAPTER TEN
Remo had seen it in the Caribbean, and he expected it in South America and Africa, but he hadn't expected it when he and Chiun stepped off the Russian Aeroflot liner at Moscow's Airport. Beggars.
"Choon gum, mister?" asked a young boy with a blond head so square that it looked as if he had been raised in a Kleenex box. When Remo shook his head, the boy did not even acknowledge it, but instead just moved farther down along the line of American athletes who had arrived on the plane, asking in his few words of English, "Choon gum, candy?"
Remo and Chiun followed the line into the main airport terminal. A young man about Remo's size with thin sandy hair and the face of a mob scene extra sidled up to him.
"You got jeans?" he asked. "Hundred dollars American if you got jeans."
"I don't wear jeans," Remo said.
"Whatchoocall whatchoowear? Chinos? Fifty dollars American for chinos?" the young Russian said.
"No," said Remo. "I'm wearing them myself."
"How about a robe?" Chiun said to the man. "Like mine." Almost reverently, he touched the blue brocaded robe he wore. "Maybe a little thinner. Just what you need for your summers. Fifty dollars. I brought extras."
"No wear robe," the man said. "Need jeans, chi-
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nos. Got buyer for jeans, chinos. You got jeans, chinos, mister?"
"Be gone, primitive," Chiun said. He turned his back on the man and spoke to Remo.
"These people have nothing to wear?" he asked.
"Sure. If they all want to wear khaki pants," Remo said. "American clothes are what they want."
"What kind of country is this?" Chiun said.
"Just a vision of a glorious new tomorrow of brotherhood and freedom," said Remo, reading from a brochure that Russian travel guides were shoving into the hands of all the athletes.
"This is stupid. It was never like this under Ivan the Wonderful," Chiun said.
"Welcome to Russia," said Remo. "You have seen the future and the only thing that works in it is you and me."
The Russians had decided that security checks would be made at the Olympic village, not at the airport, and the athletic contingent was herded through the terminal toward waiting buses. As they moved in lime, Remo noticed a long queue of people standing alongside one of the far walls.