Soon you can ask them yourselves.
"The Torah was given through God to Moses. The Torah will never be changed."
Not changed. Destroyed.
"God knows the thoughts of all. God rewards good deeds and punishes evil."
Then God must feel I'm right.
"We shall await the coming of the Messiah."
You do not have long to wait.
"We believe in the Resurrection of the Dead."
You had better.
Tochala Delit felt very good. On this, the last day of the last Jewish temple, he remembered it all. How he had trained a specially selected group of Nazis. Fritz Barber, who had become Moishe Gavan. Helmut Dorfmann, who had become Irving Markowitz. Joseph Brunhein, who became Ephraim Hegez. And Leonard Essendorf who had become Ben Isaac Goldman. He remembered how they had starved themselves to join the ranks at the concentration camp, Treblinka. How they had all circumcised themselves as a sign of faith. How they all became Jewish in the closing days of World War II. How they had all infiltrated the Jewish state with their specialized talents and how they were all united in the fervent dream of destruction.
Tochala Delit listened to the voices from outside, declaring their national anthem, "Hatikva."
"So long as still within our breasts
The Jewish heart beats true.
So long as still toward the East
To Zion looks the Jew.
So long as hopes are not yet lost
Two thousand years we cherished them
To live in freedom in the land
Of Zion and Jerusalem."
But that was not what Horst Vessel heard. Swaying in a near hallucinatory state, he heard:
"So long as it is still within your breasts
The Jewish end is due.
So long as Hitler towers o'er the rest
To destruction is the Jew.
You think your hope is not yet lost
In this, stupid people, you are wrong.
You will die here from your own bombs.
So long, Jewish swine, so long."
Tochala Delit reached under his pale jacket to his inside pocket. As the echoes died away, he pulled out a small rectangular black box with wiring coming from it. It looked like a metal tarantula lying in his palm.
He was ready. The ones who weakened had been destroyed. They had been cast away in a manner befitting their treachery. Ripped into the swastika shape.
But now the dead did not matter. The millions of Jews did not matter. The two Americans did not matter. The tiny black box would send them all into space where the ghost of Hitler awaited.
The Fourth Reich was about to begin. The heavenly Reich.
From outside the abstract pattern of anguished, agonized steel that made up the Yad Vashem doors came trembling voices singing "Ani Ma'amin." Zhava Fifer, Yoel Zabari, and all the others gathered there sang it. It expressed their faith in God even during their darkest moments. It had often been sung by Jews on their way to the Nazi gas chambers and ovens.
Tochala Delit slipped the box back into his Jacket and left the room still glowing with pride.
After all, they were singing his song.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"Is that your idea of a joke?" Remo said in the middle of the Israel Sheraton lobby. "A body in the middle of the living room? Not even a towel dropped anywhere to soak up the blood?"
Chiun sat with his back to Remo, lost in the passing of air across his face.
"I am getting sick and tired of this stuff," Remo said. "You are inconsiderate. As well as petty."
Chiun began to study the intricate pattern of the lobby carpet.
"I won't go away," said Remo, "just because you're impersonating a wall."
Remo stared at the back of Chiun's neck.
"Answer me."
Silence.
"All right, then," Remo said, "I'm going to sit here until you do."
"Good," Chiun said suddenly, "We can wait for my tapes together. What is this that you interrupt my meditative leisures? Are you speaking of your mess upstairs?"
"My mess? My mess? How can you call that up there my mess?"
"No doubt that the mess was looking for you, since I am only of secondary importance. Why should any mess seek out one as petty and inconsiderate as my simple self?"
Remo felt the inevitable grip on him as surely as a hand around his throat. He decided to surrender by silence.
Chiun would not have it. "You know what you have not done?"
"What?"
"You have not sent the Norman Lear, Norman Lear message."
"If I send the letter, you will clean up the mess?" he asked.
"If you send it, I will allow you to clean it up."
"And if I do not send it?" Remo asked.
"Then you will need something else to occupy your time. Cleaning will keep your mind from mischief."
Remo threw his hands into the air in disgust. Then the ringing voice of Schlomo Artov burst into his ear.
"Aha," it cried. "At it again, eh? I warned you about abusing your father, young man. What is the matter with you?"
"Yes," Chiun echoed. "What is the matter with you?"
"Keep out of this," Remo growled to Artov.
"I heard the whole thing," Artov said. "Imagine, yelling at your father." He turned to Chiun. "Mr. Lear, you have my sympathy."
"Mr. Who?" said Chiun.
"And you, Norman," Artov told Remo. "For shame."
"Who is this lunatic?" Chiun asked Remo.
"Ignore him," Remo said. "He's just another man about to have an asthma attack."
"Nonsense," said Artov. "I never felt better in my… agha-woosh." Artov suddenly got the worst asthma attack in his aghawoosh. He leaned over in breathless pain and allowed Remo to escort him back to his desk. Remo assured him that he would be feeling better soon, then took his protective hand from deep inside the bones of Schlomo's right shoulder. He sat the poor reservations man down, and soon Artov did feel better even though his full speaking voice would not return for two weeks.
Remo walked back to Chiun.
"Why don't we just mosey upstairs," Remo said pleasantly through clenched teeth, "where we can talk without disturbing anyone else."
"I like it here. I am waiting for my daytime dramas," said Chiun.
"Smith might be trying to call," said Remo.
"Let him. I have dealt with enough lunatics in one day."
"I will never mail that letter," Remo said,
"Very will," begrudged Chiun. "I suppose I must supervise your cleaning. I can never trust you to do anything right yourself."
Remo stopped off at the gift shop to buy some luggage and string before they arrived back at their bloody suite. As Remo was cramming Irving Oded Markowitz in, the phone rang.
"Janitorial service," Remo said. "You kill 'em, I clean 'em."
The silence on the other end was like a look into a black cave.
"It's incredible, Smitty," said Remo. "Even your silence is sour."
"If I had never seen you," said Harold W. Smith, "I would not believe you could exist."
"What have you got, Smitty? I'm pretty busy." Remo cracked the right knee of the corpse to fit him into the bag.
"Maybe nothing, maybe everything," said Smith, "The men who… er, greeted you on arrival came through the concentration camp Treblinka during World War II."
"So?"
"The murdered industrialist, Hegez, and Goldman, were also in Treblinka."
"Oh?"
"And Dr. Moishe Gavan."
"All of them? Same place? Are you sure?" Remo asked.
"Yes," said Smith. He sat in Rye, New York, looking at the sole outlet to a network of computer systems whose size, range, and scope made the IBM warehouse look like an erector set. This small outlet on his desk enabled him to tap the resources of millions of people, thousands of businesses, schools, libraries, and churches, hundreds of nooks and a good many crannies.
But it was up to Smith to take the reams of fossilized information and see what it meant in terms of the nation and the world. Usually his desk was covered with a fair amount of this information, but now the only thing there was a typewritten, four-page list he had discovered because a woman's sister, who belonged to the American Jewish Committee, which combats anti-Semitism, and E'nai Brith, a fraternal order, had a daughter who met a man through B'nai Akiba, a religious youth organization, whom she married, and they had a son who was counseled as he grew older by the U.S. Jewish Board of Guardians, which specializes in child guidance, which led to the boy joining the YMHA, the Young Men's Hebrew Association, which provides cultural activities to Jewish youth, where his first endeavor was to contribute a report on oppression in World War II, complete with concentration-camp lists, which so impressed his counselor that he sent it to the United Synagogue, a union of American temples, which entered it into their bank of computerized microfilm, where it happened to cross Smith's desk and the head of CURE saw a connection. A slim, impossible connection. The kind CURE specialized in. "I'm very sure," said Smith. "Why?"