He was ready, he thought.
Irving walked over to his rusted old gym locker that he had ripped out of a merchant ship, the U.S.S. Crawlspace, on which he had sailed into the Haifa port fifteen years ago.
He pulled the door open and started to dress while eyeing the pictures he had cut out of the Israeli fashion magazines that lined the inside of the locker. All the pretty young Israeli models had their eyes and crotches blacked out by Markowitz with a thick-line felt-tipped pen.
Irving slid the white shirt on across his wide shoulders, then brought up the beige pants over his tightly muscled legs. While tying his tan tie, he kicked the wall a few more times. Then he slid on his shoulder holster with its heavy, silenced Italian eight-shot pistol. He slipped his beige jacket over that, then trotted upstairs.
"That you, Irving?" a shrill voice called in Hebrew from the kitchen.
"Yeah, Ma," said Irving. He plopped down into the brown stuffed sofa in front of the four heating pipes and pulled his worn tennis shoes out from underneath. He worked them onto his feet, rose, and walked over to the hallway mirror.
"What do you want for lunch?" came the shrill voice from the kitchen.
Irving checked his classic Jewish features to see if they were alright. "Nothing, Ma, I won't be in for lunch." The broken nose, care of Sigfried Gruber back in 1944, during stormtrooper training. Fine.
"No lunch?" said the voice from the kitchen. "You'll starve!"
The curly hair, care of Remington's styling kit, a Super Max drier, and a semi-annual permanent. Good.
"No, Ma, I won't. I'll pick up something."
A weak, sloping chin and brown eyes, care of plastic surgery and contact lenses. Excellent.
"What is it, Irving?" the voice from the kitchen inquired, then answered herself. "I know. You've found a nice girl and you're going out to lunch. Why don't you ever bring your friends home to lunch, Irving?"
Irving moved away from the mirror and gave his mother the finger through the living room wall.
"Ma, it's not a girl. I've just got to do some work."
"Oh," the voice from the kitchen sounded disappointed. "Is it for the nice man who works for the government?"
"Yes, Ma," said Irving Oded Markowitz. "For the nice man who works for the government." He walked through the dining room to the back door.
"Will you be home for dinner?" asked the voice from the kitchen.
"Yes, Ma," said Irving, then left. He walked down the back steps, across the small garden in the Markowitz's tiny backyard, and out the back gate into the alleyway.
As he reached the street, he felt like screaming for joy. Finally, after thirty years, action. Thirty years of training, thirty years of exercise, thirty years of hate, and finally, he, the man who had killed Irving Oded Markowitz with his bare hands, he, the man who had been Helmut Dorfmann, colonel in the Hitler Youth Corps, was finally called on by the Fatherland.
His mouth was wet in anticipation. His orders had been clear. The source had been impeccable. Straight from the top. He had gotten the word. It was only the two of them now. The rest had tried to run or had weakened. Now it was just he and Horst. They would complete the job Hitler had begun.
At first, after the war, nothing had happened. He had drifted from place to place, keeping checks on the growth of the Jewish state and keeping himself in shape. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, he became part of the American Jewish movement. Meetings in Massachusetts, lobbying in Washington, moratoriums in New York. Infiltrating, growing with the ever blossoming Israel, helping it to get enough rope to strangle itself.
Dorfmann had only to follow orders and drop an occasional note to his "parents." But then the word came. Ingratiate and infiltrate. So Dorfmann had become the man he had killed, and the Markowitz's "son," reported missing in action, finally came home to the Holy Land to stay.
Dorfmann had helped at his "father's" watch-shop and gone shopping for his "mother." For long, hateful years, he nurtured their blindness, ate their food, and had only black death in his heart.
But now his time had come. Soon the Markowitzes would be no more. All he had to do was kill two men. Just kill two men and his "father's" cloying face would disappear. His "mother's" sopping attention would vanish, and maybe then his nightmares with Irving's face would cease.
Just two men and he could return to Germany, let his hair grow out, change his face, and read of Israel's destruction.
Just two men. Two American agents. What were their names again? Oh, yes, Remo and Chiun. Regarded as highly dangerous.
Irving Oded Markowitz felt the heat of the heavy automatic against his ribs. He could almost hear the pistol's heartbeat. It hummed, it shone, it buzzed. Soon now, he promised it, soon.
Irving walked along Ben Yehuda feeling the early afternoon heat. He reveled in his sweat, only wishing it to grow hotter and hotter and hotter still until the flesh blackened and the buildings crumbled and the Jews turned on each other like mad dogs. What a joke. A thirty-year joke that would never die.
Irving walked into the Israel Sheraton, whistling, his hands in his pockets. His mind was uncluttered by strategy as he stepped into a waiting elevator and pushed a button for the eighth floor.
He would simply wait until the time was right, break open the door, and shoot them both. No television solutions. No gas through the ventilator shaft, no acid through the shower head.
Just two pieces of lead traveling through pasty bone at just under the speed of sound. Bang, bang. Simple.
Irving Oded Markowitz stepped out of the elevator onto the eighth floor and walked to the door of the suite he was told the Americans would be in. He looked both ways, then listened. He heard a conversation in Hebrew, so someone must be inside.
He hit the door with his right shoulder.
There was a small cracking sound as the door bolt was ripped clean out of the frame, popping across the room and onto a bed.
Irving moved into the suite low and fast, pulling out his sleek, dark blue, Italian pistol. He was two steps in as his mind registered the sitting figure not ten feet away. The thirty years of exercise and muscle development had been waiting for this very moment. Even as Irving's eyes were taking in the pale yellow kimono that nestled around the sitting figure, his hand snapped in front of him. Even as his mind registered the sparse wisps of white hair atop the sitting figure's head, the gun barrel was pointed and Irving's finger tightened twice.
The soft coughs of the silenced revolver were wrapped in the heavy suite's carpeting and curtains. Those sounds died as the color television set across the room crackled and spit sparks. Two spider-web holes were visible in the darkened screen.
A high-pitched Oriental voice said calmly, "You may tell Emperor Smith it is not necessary for him to destroy the previous set upon delivery of a new one. I can take care of that myself."
Irving straightened as the final frustrated sputter died from the TV set. Sitting on the bed, fingering the door bolt, was a small wizened Oriental.
"It was an arithmetic program," the Oriental said. "Tell the emperor that his prompt delivery has been much appreciated and his wisdom is all encompassing. Now, please, my daytime dramas?"
Markowitz snapped his weapon into a clean line with his eye so that the pistol's sights seemed to be holding up the Chinaman's nose. Get hold of yourself, Helmut, he told himself, shooting at figures on a television screen is not good. Remember, technique is the key.
His finger tightened on the trigger once more.
He heard the soft cough and felt the warm kick of the recoil. It was a fine shot. Smooth, clean, technically perfect. What the Chink was doing in the Americans' apartment, and whatever he was asking for, Markowitz would never know. Because the bullet would soon spread his yellow brains all over the wall.