Remo leaned against a bolted metal door and felt vibrations emanating from its other side. Part of the sulphur machinery, he thought.
"Since this is still the outskirts of the plant," he said, "I guess we can figure the nuclear area is closer to the middle. A couple of miles in that direction." Remo pointed west.
Chiun turned and looked in that direction for a moment, then put his hand through the metal door Remo was leaning against, as simply as if it were paper.
"When vibrations speak to you, listen," Chiun said.
Remo looked through the ragged gap in the door and saw a sign with big red Hebrew letters at the end of a long concrete reinforced hallway.
"Don't tell me what it says," said Remo.
"Danger. Radioactivity. No unauthorized personnel beyond this point," said Chiun.
"I knew it all the time," Remo said, reaching through the hole and unlocking the door.
The two moved down to the end of the hallway where an impressive-looking door attached to the danger sign blocked their way.
"Hmmm," said Remo, looking it up and down and sliding his hands over several security devices. "Looks like a special key lock and a combination lock. This looks like a time-clock mechanism and a special reinforced lock guard."
Chiun walked to the other side of the door and ripped the hinges out of the concrete wall with two rhythmic taps of his hands, taps that looked slow and gentle.
"Formidable," he said as he opened the two-foot-thick obstruction from the other side.
"Showoff," said Remo as he stared down a maze-like corridor filled with sensory equipment, pressure-sensitive panels, sliding cast-iron partitions, warning lights, video-tape cameras, and more infrared devices. All inoperative.
"Delish must have switched them all off," said Remo.
Remo and Chiun moved through the hallway until they reached a last closed metal panel. Remo put his ear against it.
"I hear something," he said.
"That is good," replied Chiun. "It means you are not deaf."
"No, it means that Delish is probably in there," Remo moved back a step and was preparing to rend the door apart when it slid open.
Remo looked at Chiun, who looked back, and then they moved through the opening onto a long stairway that wound around a large circular room of dull blue metal. It gave the impression of being the insides of an upright bullet. The entire area was filled with the latest technical equipment that America could provide.
Standing in the middle of the room was Tochala Delit, tall and proud in a full S.S. uniform that he had worn under his street clothes. It was all there, from the wide red and black Nazi armband to the green, red, blue, and silver medals that gleamed on his chest.
"Who does your suits?" Remo asked.
Delit did not answer. Instead, he looked to his side where a twelve-foot-long cylinder lay. It was rounded at one end and finned at the other. The sides were rounded and smooth except for a flat, rectangular shape that stuck halfway up the tube. The rectangular thing was ticking.
Tochala Delit looked up and his eyes were shining. "You are too late," he said.
Yoel Zabari could not convince the first guard to stand aside.
"How do I know you are Mr. Zabari?" asked the guard. "You have never visited us before, and Mr. Delit left instructions to allow no one else in. Not even the prime minister."
"I'm not the prime minister," shouted Zabari, "and Tochala Delit is a traitor. You know me, damn it, you have seen pictures of me. How could anyone fake this?" he stabbed at the right side of his face.
"Well, I do not know…" began the guard.
"You do not know?" yelled Zabari incredulously.
That settled it for the guard. The Zeher Lahurban was probably just testing them again. Mr. Delit had said no one. No one it would be.
"I'm sorry, sir, you will have to wait for authorization."
"Damn it, that will be too late. There will not be anything to authorize if you do not let me through. And now."
Zhava Fifer saw her boss's rage mount as she sat behind the wheel of the jeep.
The guard understood that their loyalty had to be tested, but this was going a bit far.
"Sir…" he began. Suddenly Zabari smashed him across the neck with the side of his hand.
"Drive," he said savagely as the guard spun to the ground, unconscious. "Drive, damn it!"
Zhava ground the jeep into gear and rammed forward as Zabari pulled her dashboard automatic up.
The second perimeter guard was clicking the safety off his weapon when Zabari shot him through the leg. Zhava drove fast and straight as the second guard fell backward, spouting blood, and Zabari sprayed the entrance to the third perimeter guard shack, trying to keep the man from reaching it safely.
"Hit him," Zabari said.
"What?" cried Zhava.
"Hit him," Zabari repeated. "Try not to kill him, but hit him."
Zabari kept firing away as Zhava swerved the car and sideswiped the running guard. His body flew off the ground and somersaulted three times across the sand before finally landing in a dusty stillness.
Zabari's face was stretched tightly across his skull, and Zhava felt like crying. They tore across the plant to the nuclear area. Less than ten seconds had passed.
Remo stepped off the stairway and moved into the room that housed the atomic bomb.
"I sent away the technicians," Delit said, "and have silenced the protective devices. No alarm can be raised. The bomb cannot be neutralized. It is now only a matter of time."
Remo saw on the side of the thin rectangular bump on the bomb an electronic counter that kept tract of the passing seconds.
One hundred and eighty, one hundred and seventy-nine, one hundred and seventy-eight…
"Time, Herr Williams," said Delit. "That is all that is left. After thirty years, we are down to this. Just minutes before the bomb explodes."
Chum joined Remo beside the bomb. One hundred and sixty, one hundred and fifty-nine, one hundred and fifty-eight…
"It is useless to tinker with time, gentlemen. If the device is tampered with, even by myself, it will explode. And I doubt that even you, who have eluded my people for so long, could survive that."
"We'll see," said Remo. "You killed Hegez and Goldman?"
"Yes," said Delit.
"You sent those Palestinians and Markowitz after us?"
"Dorfmann? Yes."
"And you slaughtered Gavan?"
"Yes, yes, yes, I did all that. Please, Herr Williams," said the man who had been Horst Vessel, "do with me as you like. I am merely a servant of the master race."
"You do not look Korean," said Chiun, who still stood staring at the bomb and its ticking detonation device. One hundred and forty-six, one hundred and forty-five, one hundred and forty-four…
Delit went on as if there had been no interruption. "Germany, gentlemen. The glorious Third Reich. And now I, single-handedly, am creating the Fourth Reich."
Remo moved in. "That's your problem, pal. Don't you know that three Reichs don't correct a wrong?"
Remo's hand moved in a deceptively lazy pattern.
"Kill me, Herr Williams," invited Delit. "I do not care. Now or later. It makes no difference."
One hundred and thirty-two, one hundred and thirty-one, one hundred and thirty…
"Toe!"
Both Delit and Remo looked toward the source of that awful voice. It seemed to shake the room with its terrible pain. The ripped, broken voice came from the very bottom of Yoel Zabari's soul. He stood in the doorway of the room with Zhava Fifer.
"Toe," he cried again. "How could you do this? After what we have been through together? After all of it? Has it not touched you at all?"
Tochala Delit smiled sadly. "You Jews," he said, "you never learn. Yoel, I am only doing what the world wants me to do. Even now with your faith, you hold back the world. It wants no part of you. You have heard it through its newspapers and its United Nations votes. I have heard it. The world whispers in my ear, 'Throw your Gods away, Jews, we do not need them. We do not want them.' "