"Well, whatever you do, do it quick, because going from the bottom up has gotten us squat so far." There was a sudden familiar whine in the background. At first Remo thought the planes were returning to Guernsey. It took him a moment to realize the noise was coming from the other end of the line. "Smitty, am I hearing what I think I'm hearing?"
Remo heard a rustling sound. Smith had gone to the window of the hotel, drawing back the drapes. "It is starting again," the CURE director said flatly.
The first dull explosions from the aerial bombs began filtering over the line.
"Find cover," Remo said quickly.
Whatever Smith might have said next was lost forever. The connection to England was abruptly severed. Remo stared at the dead phone in his hand for a few long seconds.
"London is under attack," Remo said, turning to Helene.
"What?" she asked, shocked.
"I thought you told them they were coming," he pressed.
"I did," she insisted.
Remo glanced up at the camera. It was still directed to the spot on the floor from which the mustard gas had emanated.
"I guess we made the same mistake England always makes. We put faith in British Intelligence." Without turning in her direction, he handed the phone out to her. She accepted it. As a precaution, in case Remo's contact hadn't reached DGSE, she began punching in her direct line back to her Paris headquarters.
As Helene dialed, Remo walked over to the corner of the hangar. Avoiding a stack of shells, he drew an empty crate to a spot directly beneath the camera. He climbed atop the crate. For the first time since reentering the hangar he put his face in the camera's purview.
He stared coldly into the lens.
"I am going to kill you," Remo said. He exaggerated each word so that whoever might be on the other end would have no difficulty understanding him.
This accomplished, he held his hands out on either side of the camera. He brought them together with a sharp clap. The camera sprang apart in a million shards of plastic and metal.
Chapter 16
I am going to kill you.
The camera had no audio capability, but that didn't matter. The words were plain enough.
Nils Schatz didn't even think to rap his cane on the floor as he watched Remo lift his hands up out of view of the camera. A moment later the extreme close-up of the young Sinanju master exploded in a spray of white-and-gray static.
As the snow-filled screen hissed mockingly at him, Schatz woodenly switched off the television monitor. He stared at it for what seemed like hours.
A feeling of unease that he had not felt in many years had crept from the murkiest depths of his black soul.
It was Germany. April 1945.
Schatz was a young man then. He had been a colonel in the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo, under the notorious Adolf Eichmann. It was while he was working for the Gestapo's subsection four of the second section-which dealt with religion, and in particular the perceived Jewish threat to the glorious reich-that he had caught the attention of none other than Schutzstaffeln head Heinrich Himmler.
The leader of the SS was impressed by Schatz's unparalleled talent for brutally savage interrogation. Since the Gestapo had become part of the SS, no one protested when Himmler stole Schatz away to become his personal assistant.
Schatz was taken to the seat of Axis power. Eventually Himmler had grown to rely on his young colonel. So much so that he one day brought him along to an important meeting in the chancellery in Berlin.
Schatz had never expected the fuhrer to be at the gathering. He had thought it would be a collection of SS officials, as had been the case in many of the other meetings he had attended since joining the upper echelon of the secret state-police force.
His shock when Hitler entered the room was obvious-even humorous-to all gathered. Schatz was like a star-struck American teenager who had just run into Veronica Lake on a Hollywood sidewalk.
Hitler had laughed off the attention. The rest did, as well. The meeting was allowed to continue. Schatz made a good show of getting himself under control. But the truth was he never got over that first thrill of seeing Germany's supreme warlord face-to-face.
It was not only Hitler.
That the man was charismatic was an understatement. He held a fascination for the German people that was misunderstood and forever mischaracterized by the outside world. They were like helpless moths drawn to an open flame.
But the fuhrer was only part of the equation. It was what he represented that was even more important. Hitler had a vision for the future of Germany that had captured the hearts and the souls of millions of Germans.
The Third Reich. A thousand-year Teutonic empire.
Nils Schatz believed not only in Hitler-he believed passionately in the idea of the reich.
His wholehearted belief in the Third Reich remained strong up until one fateful morning only a few days before its spectacular collapse.
Things were already bleak when news was brought into the SS from a captain who was supposed to be stationed in Italy. For some reason the man had seen fit to abandon his post. He had traveled all the way back to Germany during some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
Schatz had intercepted the captain on his way to deliver a message to Heinrich Himmler. When pressed by Schatz, the man said simply that he brought word to those highest up in the modern Hun empire.
"Hun? That is insulting to your people," Schatz had sneered, his mien utterly disdainful.
"That is what the Master of Sinanju called us," the captain had responded.
"Who?" Nils Schatz had asked. With Berlin tumbling down around his ears, he had neither the time nor the inclination to deal with fools.
"The Master of Sinanju," the captain repeated, as if the name alone explained the man.
"Yes," said Schatz slowly. "And what is this message?"
"The Master wishes for me to tell the funny little man with the funny little mustache that death is on its way."
Nils Schatz grew pale. Not with fear-he had no idea at that time who this Master of Sinanju was and therefore had no reason to fear. No, the thing that drained the blood from the face of Nils Schatz was pure, unbridled rage.
While Allied bombs dropped on Berlin, Schatz had personally dragged the man down to an interrogation cell. For the captain's insolence in the manner in which he characterized the chancellor of Germany, Schatz delivered the beating of a lifetime. He asked repeatedly who this Master of Sinanju was and how he had managed to turn an officer of the SS so completely.
Schatz questioned the man for four hours. He used every method of torture he could think of yet the man stubbornly refused to break. It was as if he had already experienced a pain so great that nothing Schatz could do to him could even come close to matching whatever force had sent him fleeing back to Germany.
Finally Schatz had given up. He signed the execution order personally and had returned, sweating from his labors, to his office. It was only in a later meeting with Himmler that he mentioned the captain and his strange message.
He never forgot the look that crossed the SS head's taciturn face when he mentioned the Master of Sinanju.
"When did you receive this message?" Himmler demanded.
"I am not sure," Schatz admitted. "Perhaps, nine, perhaps ten o'clock this morning."
"And what time is it now? Quickly, quickly!"
"Six o'clock, sir," Schatz had answered. Himmler's normally bland face grew wild.
"We must see the chancellor," he hissed. He hurried from the conference room where they had been meeting. Confused, Schatz followed.
The streets were littered with debris. Bombs whistled endlessly around their speeding staff car as Schatz and Himmler raced to the fuhrer's bunker beneath the bombed-out chancellery building.