Suk decided to abandon his plan to cheat the man of his money. Besides, he had been assured that there was much more to be had if he performed but one small service. When Suk returned for the balance, he wouldn't leave the West again. He would live like a king for the rest of his life.
But there was still the matter of the duty he had been hired to perform.
His flight from Berlin connected with another in Moscow. The plane he took from Russia carried him across the remainder of Europe and on into Asia. When he finally landed in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Keijo Suk was exhausted.
But Suk didn't have time to rest.
In Berlin he was the official representative of North Korea's Culture and Art Ministry. Allegedly sent to "promote positive global understanding" with the German people, Keijo Suk had in truth been sent to the West in order to form ties with the former Communists of the former East Germany who were vying for positions of power in the new, united Germany.
As a member of his nation's elite, Suk was allowed the privilege of owning a fine Western automobile. His Ford Taurus was waiting for him at the airport in Pyongyang.
When he drove out into the streets of the North Korean capital, Suk didn't head for his small apartment. He instead turned north, driving out of the city into the featureless, flat expanse that was the Korean countryside.
The official People's Highway was dotted with few cars-fewer still as he drove farther northwest. The traffic he met was largely people on foot or on bicycles.
Eventually the pedestrian traffic ended completely. He found himself on a long multilaned stretch of barren highway that appeared to go nowhere.
But Keijo Suk knew better than that. He knew precisely where this long road ended. He arrived at the rocky shores of the Korean west coast a little after sundown. The highway simply stopped dead, and a small footpath that seemed as old as the stars in the dark black canvas of the night sky angled down off the road. At the other end of the path, Suk spied bright square patches of yellow-the lights of a lonely fishing village.
Leaving his car on the highway, Suk skirted the edge of the village. He had no strong desire to draw unnecessary attention to himself.
A massive garbage heap overflowed onto the ground beyond the highway at the rear of the nearest houses. Though it was cold, rats cavorted freely through the piles of ordure.
Suk had to pull the tails of his dress shirt up around his mouth and nose in order to ward off the stench. The smell was so overpowering, his eyes watered. Unlike the rest of the population of North Korea, the people of this village ate well. The evidence was everywhere he stepped.
Scraping the muck from his shoes, Suk continued past the massive dump.
The village was positioned on the shore of West Korean Bay. Powerful gusts of early-winter wind whistled in off the churning black waters, stabbing frigid knives through layers of clothing. The only article appropriate for the weather was Suk's thick Western winter coat. It did him no good. He shivered madly as he walked stealthily forward.
The backs of the houses were plain wood with no windows. Suk crept past the homes, careful not to alert the occupants. His nervous heart was ringing in his ears.
The village ended in a small rise that led up to a solitary house. This dwelling was far more ornate than the rest. Parts of it seemed to have been constructed at vastly different periods of history. There was evidence of early Roman influence in the foundation, along with the practicality of ancient Greece. The frippery of the Renaissance, as well as that of Victorian architecture, was also present.
To Suk, the home was a garish mishmash of styles.
Checking first to see that he wasn't being followed, he made his anxious way up the path to the big, ugly house.
He found the front door unlocked.
Pushing open the door, Suk slipped inside, relieved to be able to shut out the persistent howling wind.
There was a light switch next to the door, but he dared not use it. Instead, he pulled a powerful flashlight from the pocket of his heavy down jacket.
As he shone the light around the interior of the first room, Keijo Suk's jaw nearly hit the floor. Every spot his flashlight illuminated was filled with gold and jewels. It was more than a king's ransom, more than that of ten kings. In fact, enough treasure was crammed into this one room alone to ransom every ruler in the history of mankind.
Suk had developed a powerful love for material wealth since assuming his post in Berlin. That was his reason for being here. It was difficult for him to break the initial numbing trance this fabulous store of wealth had put him under.
After a few moments of slack jawed gawking, Suk managed to pull himself together. He had a job to do. Stepping around the room, he began to search methodically through the bags of jewels, the golden statues and the gem-encrusted chests of heaping ingots.
IT TOOK HIM two solid hours of searching, but he finally found what he was after.
The lights in the village had winked out one by one. All had gone to bed for the night, never noticing the strange flashes of light that came from the house on the hill.
The object of Suk's search was propped up in a small room adjacent to the first. He had almost skipped searching this tiny chamber when his initial flashlight sweep failed to illuminate a single diamond.
The room looked to be some sort of library. There were huge leather-bound books, as well as a number of rolled parchment scrolls. The books were lined up on shelves while the scrolls were squirreled away in an ornate mahogany wall unit divided into tiny cubbyholes.
The object rested on a separate wall unit along the narrow distant wall. Suk recognized it immediately. It was exactly as the man in Germany had described it.
Suk had to step over a pair of large stone tablets that sat in the center of the floor. He pulled the object of his quest down from the shelf. Unbeknownst to him, Suk left a trail of freshly disturbed dust in its wake.
He picked his way back out into the outer room. Across the room, flushed with triumph, Keijo Suk gave in to the urge to grab a handful of gold coins from an urn near the door. He couldn't help himself.
Like mints in a fancy restaurant, they sat there waiting to be taken.
Opening the door, Suk paused. He reached over and grabbed a few more handfuls of gold coins. Hands shaking, he stuffed the coins into the pockets of his coat. A few fell to the floor. Suk hardly noticed.
Giddy with success, Keijo Suk hurried back out into the frigid Korean night, slamming the door tightly behind him.
In the weak Asian moonlight, the three coins Suk had dropped glowed dully on the living-room floor of the Master of Sinanju.
Chapter 11
The corridors of Folcroft Sanitarium were cloaked in chilly semidarkness as Remo Williams roamed up from the basement rooms in which he and Chiun had been staying since arriving back in the United States.
Ten days had passed since he had lost the elusive head of IV in the mountains of Argentina. Ten days of inactivity, ten days that Adolf Kluge would have used to burrow himself further and further away from the prying eyes of the world.
When he had returned to the top of the mountain, Remo found a computer area in one of the old temple rooms. Someone had hastily sifted through everything and boxed up and carted off whatever was deemed necessary. Everything else had been left.
The computers had been smashed to pieces, their hard drives destroyed.
Virtually.
They had been damaged, but apparently not enough. Smith was able to access a fraction of what was left on one of the hard drives. From this, the CURE director was able to reconstruct the entire structure of IV's finances.
Remo had never seen his employer appear quite as shocked as when Smith successfully broke the IV encoding system and uncovered the vast holdings of the neo-Nazi organization.