The Empire Dreams td-113 Read online

  "Yes. Now that it's all over," said Remo.

  "Rather," said Philliston affably. His expression as he sized up Remo bordered on a leer.

  Remo glanced around. "Anyone know where there's a good bulletproof codpiece store around here?" he asked wearily.

  SMTTH HAD BEEN UNABLE to find out anything about IV. And that lack of knowledge frustrated him deeply.

  As the night had worn on, he had become more and more convinced that he was dealing with a sinister shadow organization whose vile tendrils had its origins in the darkest days of the Nazi influence in Europe.

  The clues were there when CURE had first encountered representatives of the group. The truth was, he had spent much of the night cursing himself for not seeing it before.

  As his wife slept beside him, he had worked tirelessly, uplinking his portable computer with the CURE database. All he had to show for a night's worth of work was a sore neck and blank computer screen.

  Nothing.

  There was nothing that suggested the existence of IV. If not for the physical evidence Remo had uncovered, he would have concluded precisely what he had concluded before: there was no larger menace.

  It made him feel a little better to find out that he hadn't missed anything in his original search through neo-Nazi files. But not much.

  Now Smith knew better.

  When morning came, his wife had wanted to go out sight-seeing. Smith first made certain that the government of Great Britain was prepared to defend against a third attack. He learned through his computers that the British military was on high alert. Hoping that this meant a bit more than looking out an RAF window, Smith had sent her off on her own, promising to meet her at noon for lunch.

  He continued working long after she had left. When the bombs had dropped the day before and his line to Remo was severed, Smith and his wife had been forced to spend much of their time in the basement of the hotel. They had come through the attack unscathed. However, the phones still didn't work. It didn't matter. He had learned nothing that would aid Remo and Chiun's investigation.

  At eleven-thirty Smith logged off his computer, storing it in his special briefcase. He closed the lid and carefully set the locks, sliding the case back under his bed.

  He would resume work after lunch.

  Leaving his work behind him, Smith left the hotel in order to meet his wife in Trafalgar Square.

  HELENE MARIE-SIMONE continued to give Sir Guy Philliston the precise sort of look Sir Guy was giving to Remo.

  "Have you any leads on who might be behind this?" she asked, sighing heavily.

  "Not a bally one, I'm afraid," Guy replied, ignoring the lust in her eyes. "Every last man jack of the blighters was killed in the new Battle of Britain. Shame, really. No idea who could have sent these Boche monkeys to the shores of old Albion."

  Remo raised a hand. "Excuse me, but could you please speak English?" he asked.

  "Hear! Hear!" Chiun cheered. He was still watching the tail of the crashed plane.

  "These were obviously German made," Guy said, indicating the plane. "But a lot of them are now in the hands of museums, private collectors. That sort of thing. We're looking into that angle."

  "I saw where one of your papers this morning said they were dropped off by Martians from a UFO and are still fighting the war," Remo said flatly. "Maybe you should look into that."

  "There isn't any need to bring the popular press into this," Philliston said to Remo, as if mentioning the British tabloids were the height of rudeness. Helene sneered condescendingly at Remo. "He is like that," she confided in Sir Guy. "I have found him to be very American."

  "Yes, very American," Philliston agreed. He licked his lips lightly as he eyed Remo's lean frame.

  "Very, very American," Chiun piped in.

  "Don't you start," Remo warned.

  Sir Guy Philliston changed the direction of the conversation. "Has your government any idea where the balance of explosives has gone off to?" he asked Helene.

  "They are investigating a minor explosion in a Paris Metro station," Helene replied. "My government believes the incident to be related to the thefts."

  "Wait a damned minute," Remo interjected. "When did you get this piece of news?"

  "Last night."

  "And you didn't tell me?"

  "Obviously not," she said in a superior tone. She turned and smiled warmly at Sir Guy Philliston, happy to be sharing this information with him first. He had to tear his gaze away from Remo when he realized she was talking to him.

  Remo rolled his eyes. "He's gay as a parade, Helene," he sighed.

  Helene became indignant. "You say that because you find your masculinity threatened in the presence of a true man." Her words were flung out as a challenge.

  "Whatever," Remo replied indifferently. His tone made her even angrier.

  "Well," Philliston said, clapping his hands together earnestly, "here we are. World War II renewed. The British and French along with their American cousins fighting the bally Jerry hordes."

  "Yes, except if this was really a replay, you'd be begging for our help and she'd be surrendering to anything with a spike on its helmet."

  As he spoke, Remo stared up at the pale blue London sky. Something wasn't right.

  "I cannot imagine what it must be like to be American," Helene spit disdainfully.

  "It's having drugstores with more than a hundred different kinds of deodorants," Remo said absently. "Do you hear that, Little Father?" he asked Chiun.

  The Master of Sinanju had stopped watching the picture-taking crowds around the downed plane. He was staring up into the sky in the same direction as Remo.

  "They are close," he said, nodding gravely. "This crowd should be dispersed at once."

  Remo spun on Philliston. "You've got to clear this street," he said, voice suddenly taut with urgency.

  "Clear it?" Sir Guy laughed. "Why, in heaven's name?"

  "There's another German squadron heading this way. At least thirty planes."

  "Thirty?" Philliston scoffed, stepping forward.

  "Thirty-seven," the Master of Sinanju announced.

  "I am sorry, my good boy, but nothing can get through the net we have established. The RAF has the shores of Old Blighty locked down tighter than the Queen Mum's bum."

  "In that case I'd say it's about time to check the royal knickers," Remo suggested.

  The first of the planes came into view, a mere speck against the distant clouds.

  Helene stepped forward, mouth open in shock. The head of Source moved in beside her, eyes trained on the sky.

  "Impossible," Philliston said, eyes wide.

  "Get them out of here!" Remo snapped.

  The tone jarred Philliston from his initial shock. He obediently charged over to a uniformed bobby who was posing for photographs beside the crippled plane.

  "Have they gotten the phones working yet?" Remo asked, spinning to Helene. He was hoping that Smith might have some rapid way of contacting the RAF.

  She fiddled with her cellular phone, stabbing out the number for London information. The line was dead.

  "Not yet," she said, shaking her head.

  By this time the planes were large enough to be seen for what they were. Some in the crowd began screaming and running for the Underground. Many more simply stood their ground, snapping endless pictures, as if they were participating in some sort of overblown amusement-park ride.

  The air-raid sirens around London began sounding their relentless blare. The first dull thuds of distant impacting bombs reverberated through the pavement beneath their feet.

  Sir Guy Philliston had convinced the bobbies that they should begin herding people to the Underground entrances. Those with cameras moved reluctantly.

  "I vote we join them until this thing blows over, Little Father," Remo suggested.

  "Agreed," said Chiun.

  They had gone no more than a few paces toward the nearest Underground station when a familiar sound began emanating upward from the st
airway. It was the pop-pop-pop of automatic-weapons fire.

  There was a collective scream of panic from the mob. People began rolling back out of the staircase, stampeding directly toward Remo, Chiun and Helene.

  Remo and Chiun easily avoided the crush of people. Helene wasn't so lucky. Though she tried to resist, she found herself helplessly swept along with the crowd as it surged back out into the blinding sunlight of Trafalgar Square.

  By now the German warplanes were high above the square. They began dropping whistling bombs on the teeming throng in the square far below. Sections of pavement exploded upward, mixed with limp, bloodied bodies. A hail of shattered stones pebbled the ground for half a mile around.

  At the Underground port, the sound of machinegun fire had grown louder.

  On the sidewalk Remo glanced from the black rectangular opening of the Underground to the carnage in the square.

  "I'll take the square," he announced grimly.

  The Master of Sinanju nodded his agreement. "Have a care, my son."

  As Remo ran into the thick of the bombing run, Chiun flew to the mouth of the subway station from which the gunfire had come.

  FIVE MINUTES EARLIER Harold W. Smith was meeting his wife at a bus stop a few doors down from a small restaurant on Bond Street around the corner from Trafalgar Square.

  "Oh, Harold," Maude Smith called. She smiled as he walked up the busy sidewalk toward her. Mrs. Smith actually seemed surprised to see her husband. "I wasn't sure you'd make it."

  "Did we not agree we would meet at twelve?" Smith asked. He took the heavy paper bundles she held in her hands.

  "Yes, but with your work and all..." She shrugged her round shoulders. It wasn't an admonishment. Maude Smith would never complain that his work kept him away from her. She was merely stating an obvious truth about their life together. Nonetheless, Smith felt a twinge of too familiar guilt.

  "Shall we have some lunch?" he said quickly, indicating the restaurant door with a bony elbow. The straps of the bags weighed heavily against his hands.

  "Of course," Maude chimed. She talked excitedly as they walked. "I got some souvenirs today not too expensive, I know. But since it's our last day in London I thought we should get something for Vickie. And Gert has been such a good friend."

  Smith bit his tongue. He had no objection to buying a gift for their only daughter, but the prospect of wasting perfectly good money on a nosy neighbor was utterly distasteful to him.

  Maude seemed to sense his mild displeasure. It was no secret to her that Harold didn't like Gert Higgins. But the fact that he didn't object to buying the woman a gift spoke volumes about her husband's patience. And-though he didn't like to show it-his love.

  She was beaming when they reached the door to the restaurant. Maude opened it, Smith balanced the door with his elbow in order to allow her to pass.

  He was about to step inside the hallway after her when he heard a familiar noise. Very distant. Smith paused, half in, half out of the restaurant. It could not be. Not a third time.

  He cocked an ear.

  "Harold?" His wife had come back out to him. Boom... boom ...boom...

  It was like the footsteps of some remorseless movie monster, a celluloid beast come to devour them all.

  "Maude, please step outside," Smith said calmly.

  "What is it?"

  "Please hurry," he pressed, a welling urgency in his tone.

  Mrs. Smith obliged. At Smith's urging the two of them quickly made their way back up the sidewalk. There was shouting coming from Trafalgar Square by the time they reached the Piccadilly entrance to London's Underground. Air-raid sirens sounded. Fingers and cameras were aimed at the squadron of incoming fighters.

  Smith didn't dawdle. In another minute the crowd would become a mob. As it was, the first clusters of spectators were just beginning to herd themselves toward the safety of the subway as Smith and his wife climbed hurriedly down the stairs.

  The stairway ended at a concrete landing that banked right into another staircase. This one was an illuminated tube with a metal railing running up either side.

  Smith hurried down through the second enclosed staircase to the train platform below the city. He steered his wife to a spot near one of the largest support columns.

  Already behind them the throngs of panicked people from the street were flooding down the stairs. Subway passengers soon got the message. They stopped heading for the exits, staying instead on the platform with the recent street arrivals. Anxious chatter rippled through the crowd.

  The station began to quickly fill up.

  "They said in the paper that this was over." Maude Smith's voice trembled.

  "It is a mistake to trust the London press," Smith replied thinly. He was thinking of how wrong he had been for trusting the RAF.

  The bombs hadn't yet begun to strike the streets above them. However, the crowd sensed it was only a matter of time. The smell of fear and sweat from hundreds of anxious people filled the long platform area.

  Smith heard a sudden sharp series of noises.

  It wasn't the German bombs. The sound hadn't come from outside. It was far too close.

  It almost sounded like...

  Again. The noise was more insistent. Screams followed.

  The rattle of machine-gun fire grew worse. The crowd began to swell toward them. Pressing. Frantic. Behind the pillar Smith and his wife were safe. For now.

  "What's happening?" Mrs. Smith begged. Smith did not respond.

  The sound of weapons fire ebbed momentarily. During the lull Smith took a chance to peer around the side of the column. He was just in time to see dozens of armed young men dressed in chillingly familiar uniforms. They were stomping up the staircase to the street.

  He had to blink back his amazement. The men were dressed in the black-on-black uniforms of Germany's World War II SS. Their black boots clicked on the concrete stairs as they ran out of sight.

  A moment later there was firing from the stairwell. Three bloodied bodies dropped into sight on the platform.

  Smith wheeled on his wife.

  "Stay here," he instructed, his face severe.

  He started to go, but was stopped by a timid voice. "Harold, I'm scared."

  Smith stopped dead.

  He looked down at his wife. A plump woman on the far side of middle age. There was alarm on her gentle features.

  Smith touched her softly on the cheek. "Everything will be fine, dear," he promised. Maude blinked back tears. She nodded once, bravely.

  The crowd had massed on the far end of the platform. There was no one between him and the stairs. Leaving his wife huddled behind a pillar with her bags of souvenir statuettes of Big Ben and London, England T-shirts, Harold W. Smith ran to the bloodstained subway staircase after the fleeing band of neo-Nazis.

  THE SMALL IV ARMY accomplished a feat that the Third Reich had never been able to achieve during the six long years of the war in Europe. They had placed an invasion force on the streets of London. Neo-Nazi ground troops swelled up from the Underground stations, firing as they ran. Others joined them on the street, exiting from buildings and cars. Bodies fell to the pavement as soldiers raced to find shelter in enclosures along the mob scene that was Trafalgar Square. A whistling bomb landed amid a group of three soldiers, tearing a mailbox-sized hole in the pavement and flinging the invaders through the smoke-clogged air.

  The Master of Sinanju flew through the worst of the battle, a wraith in fiery red. Even as armed soldiers swarmed the square from hidden positions all around, Chiun ran into the mouth of the nearest subway station.

  There was still shooting going on belowground. He would stop as many as he could before they were able to join their murderous fellows above.

  The old Korean found himself in a steeply angled passageway. It veered off at a sharp bend far below. Footsteps clicked urgently against unseen concrete stairs.

  Chiun raced down a half-dozen steps before flinging himself in the air toward the landing below. The insta
nt he was airborne, a crowd of black-suited men ran into view from the lower staircase. The soldiers didn't have time to be shocked. Chiun sailed in at an angle parallel to the stairs.

  The heels of his sandaled feet caught the pair of men in the lead squarely in their chests. They flew backward from the pressure, slamming solidly against the wall of the stairwell. Their spines cracked audibly, bodies folding in half.

  Some of the other men began firing. Flying lead pinged loudly in the cramped space. Bullets chipped holes in the sealed concrete walls around them.

  Chiun swirled through the volley of projectiles, arriving at the far end unharmed.

  His fists shot out in rapid-fire lunges, slamming against gun muzzles in the impossibly brief fraction of time between rounds. The weapons rocketed back with a force far greater than that of any launched bullet. The brittle crack of a dozen sternums collided into one single, horrific symphony of sound.

  The men in the first line of storm troopers suddenly found their machine guns protruding from their chests. Blood spurted from around gun stocks as the men dropped to the staircase. They rolled downward, upending the next batch of soldiers who were even now racing up for the confrontation above.

  Chiun leaped over the bodies, dropping into the middle of the next advancing throng.

  His hands flashed forward.

  The foreheads of a dozen men shattered under the force of unseen fists.

  Chiun's elbows lashed back.

  And the throats of another ten imploded, fonts of blood erupting from shocked mouths.

  The Master of Sinanju became a blur of arms and legs. A twisting, hellish dervish. Knees cracked beneath heels; bodies dropped and were finished by lightning-fast toe kicks to the temple.

  Some at the back tried to get off a few feeble shots. The nightmare blur in the bloodred kimono had already sliced through their lines with the power of a buzz saw and the speed of a lashing cobra. They were dead before the sounds of their weapons echoed up the stairwell.

  It was over before it began.

  Leaving the bodies to breathe their last, Chiun raced into the Underground, searching for any other modern-day SS troops that might be in hiding.

  There were many wounded English civilians, but no more soldiers. He was about to head back upstairs when he caught sight of a familiar figure crouching beside a nearby pillar.