Failing Marks td-114 Read online

  He began scrolling down a list of German names. Some were marked with asterisks. Many more were not.

  The delineated names were members of neo-Nazi groups who were now deceased. The dates of their deaths were clearly marked beside their names. All of the dates had been entered since September. Smith knew this for a fact. After all, he had entered the dates himself.

  His lemony features grew more pinched as he scanned the list of dead. There were a great many of them. More than he would have liked. And not one of them had been any help whatsoever.

  It was slow, slow going.

  So far, they had limited the hunt to Germany. Smith dreaded the prospect of expanding the search parameters further. There was so much to sift through in this one country alone that he couldn't begin to figure out how he would approach searching through the files of fascist sympathizers around the world.

  As he worked, a dull ache began to grow at the back of his head. Smith did his best to ignore the pain, as he had for the past few months. His work was too important to be sidetracked by a minor headache.

  Of course, Smith was not concerned with his work as director of Folcroft. Mrs. Mikulka was able to handle nearly all of the day-to-day operations of the facility herself.

  The work that Smith found so important was that which was conducted without the knowledge of any of his underlings. This included his search through neo-Nazi files. Indeed, Folcroft could be consumed in flame and burn to the ground and Smith's true work would continue.

  For in truth, Folcroft Sanitarium was only a front. Beyond the high brick walls and the attendant dignified stone lions that guarded the somber iron gates, within the ivy-covered walls of Folcroft itself, beat the heart of an organization so secret its existence was known to only a tiny handful of people.

  The organization was CURE, a group sanctioned by the highest level of America's elected government and whose operational parameters granted it virtually unlimited discretion in dealing with the nation's enemies. Smith was CURE's director.

  It was a thankless posting for a rigid bureaucrat whose devotion to patriotism was as rock solid as the granite hills of his native Vermont. It was this patriotic bent that had nearly gotten him killed.

  Although the press would never know the truth, CURE had been responsible for the defeat of the neo-Nazi force that had taken control of Paris in August. On vacation with his wife at the time, Smith had gotten personally involved in the mission. As a result, he had suffered various scrapes and bruises, as well as a rather severe concussion.

  He hated to admit it, but the emotionless Smith had been stirred to passion by a level of revulsion he hadn't felt since his youth, when he had helped topple Germany's Nazi regime. This past summer when he had been thrown in among a crowd of jackbooted neo-Nazis, it was as if the years had been stripped away. Smith had reacted as he would have in his youth.

  But he was no longer a young man.

  The reckless fury he had directed at the army of young skinheads in August was now channeled to an activity more suited to a man of his advanced years. With the aid of CURE's basement mainframes he was attempting to locate the shadow organization behind the Paris coup.

  Smith typed furiously for nearly an hour. When he was finished, he had found nothing. He knew that the group he was looking for was called IV, but there was nothing his computer could turn up that might help him zero in on the organization.

  He was only succeeding in covering old ground. So that was that. The answers he sought were obviously not in Germany. Smith steeled himself for what he knew he must do. He had been dreading the thought of it, but there were no other options left.

  He would have to expand his search.

  Wearily Smith began typing the preliminary commands into his computer. He was distracted from his work by the jangle of a telephone. One hand remained poised above the keyboard as he retrieved the blue contact phone from its cradle. He tucked the receiver between shoulder and ear.

  "Report," Smith said pointedly, returning to his work.

  "I think I've got something, Smitty," Remo's voice announced over the international line.

  "What is it?"

  There was a strange gurgling noise over the line. It stopped abruptly. The instant it did so, a voice that was unfamiliar to Smith wheezed out a foreign-sounding name.

  "Kempten Olmutz-something-with-a-hyphen." The man struggled for breath.

  Smith had been accessing police records in the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland. He quickly switched over to his German neo-Nazi file. He began scanning the list of names.

  Remo's voice came back on the line. As soon as it did, the bizarre gurgling noise resumed.

  "Did you get that, Smitty?" he asked.

  "Yes," Smith said tightly. He was having no luck with the known neo-Nazis on file. There were several Kemptens, but none with a last name remotely like the one the voice had given him. "Are you still in Berlin?" Smith asked Remo.

  "Uh-huh."

  Smith accessed the Berlin phone directory. He scrolled rapidly down to the Os. Still nothing. "This man is in Berlin, presumably," Smith commented.

  "I don't think so," Remo said. His voice grew more faint as he addressed someone nearby. "Where'd you say he was?" he asked.

  The low gurgle had continued until now. It stopped. "Juterbog," the strange voice rasped. The gurgle resumed.

  "Jitterbug," Remo said to Smith.

  Frowning, Smith accessed the proper phone book. He found the name immediately.

  "Kempten Olmutz-Hohenzollerkirchen," he said.

  "Wow. He must have to print that on both sides of his business card," Remo mused.

  "Confirm this before you proceed," Smith pressed.

  "Okeydoke," Remo said. The gurgling grew very loud now. It was the sound of someone being strangled. "Say that name again, Smitty?" Remo called from somewhere beyond the gurgle.

  Smith repeated the name. There was a choked "yes" on the other end of the line.

  "He's our man," Remo said, coming back on the phone.

  "I will see what I can uncover about him," Smith said. "You and Chiun proceed to Juterbog."

  Remo sighed. As he did so, the strangling grew louder. Frantic. "We'll go there, but I bet I end up doing most of the work."

  "Why? Is something wrong with Master Chiun?"

  "I don't know," Remo griped. "He hasn't been much of a help lately." The gurgling sound reached a fevered pitch and then stopped suddenly. There was a heavy thump, audible even over the satelliteto-fiber-optic-cable telephone feed. "Are you still keeping a kill record?" Remo asked.

  Smith winced at the term. "Yes," he admitted. "Add Gus Holloway," Remo said, then hung up the phone.

  Smith found that his headache had gotten worse during his phone conversation with Remo. He removed an aspirin bottle from one of his desk drawers and took out two pills. He swallowed them without water.

  Smith's throat-dry as dust-had a difficult time accepting the two aspirins. He finally felt them drop from a point beneath his protruding Adam's apple. They plopped into his acid-churned stomach.

  Medicated, Smith returned to his computer. Calling up his list of neo-Nazis, he located the name of Gus Holloway. Beside his name, Smith wearily recorded the day's date.

  Chapter 4

  The old man had been a fixture in the musty corner of the ratty Juterbog beer hall for as far back as anyone there could remember. He sat in the same chair, in the same back booth wearing the same reeking clothes every single night of the week. His yellowed eyes rarely strayed from the door.

  A smoldering cigarette hung in perpetuity from between his brown-smeared chapped lips. The blackened stumps of teeth that remained attached to his mucky gums were held in place seemingly by damp ash alone.

  He smoked in deep drags, blowing great hazy clouds at the smoke-yellowed ceiling. There his relentless exhalations would join the massive fog created by the assembled drinkers in the Schweinebraten Bier Hall.

  Kempten 0lmutz-Hohenzollerkirchen stared at the
door as the young men around him reported the latest news.

  There were three of them, all dressed in skintight black leather with a multitude of zippers. Their heads were shaved smooth, and their noses and ears were adorned with a variety of safety pins, chains and earrings.

  "That fat American was found dead this morning," an earnest skinhead named Hirn whispered. The pin and chain in his flat nose wiggled enthusiastically as he spoke.

  "How?" asked another.

  "Strangled with his own armband."

  Hirn tapped his biceps. Beneath his long-sleeved black shirt was a Nazi band similar to the one that had been found wrapped around the bloated neck of Gustav Reichschtadt. Hirn and his companions were forced to hide their armbands when they ventured out in public.

  Aged Kempten pulled his cigarette from his mouth. Bits of skin on his lip tore away, stuck to the unfiltered end. Kempten didn't seem to notice the bleeding.

  "Where was this latest attack?" he inquired, voice thick with phlegm.

  "Berlin."

  Kempten nodded. "Did anyone see his killer?" The ball of brown goo that he coughed up and spit to the floor of the beer hall was as large as a small mouse.

  Hirn nodded and glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the room. "It was him," Hirn said in a hushed voice. Shivering, he took a pull from the large beer stein which sat on the table before him. No one seated in that cramped booth needed to ask who "him" was. They all knew the stories of the unstoppable killer who was carving a bloody path through the neo-Nazi underground.

  Kempten made a mental note. He had been reporting each of these incidents as he heard them. He would have to make another phone call tonight.

  "Have there been any others since then?" Kempten asked.

  "Today?" Hirn said. "No, none today. The American was the only one. I heard the killer was seen chasing him at nine o'clock this morning."

  "That dumpling would not be very hard to catch," one of the other young men joked.

  The group around the table joined in an uncomfortable chuckle. All except Kempten.

  The old man made a sudden supreme effort to clear decades of mucous buildup from his smoke-ravaged throat. An awful, ragged wet rumble poured up from deep within his withered chest. Whatever this maneuver managed to dislodge was swallowed back down an instant later in a slippery-sounding gulp. Kempten nodded across the crowded room to the door.

  "My eyes are not so good," he said to the disgusted group of young men. "Who is that who just came in?"

  Hirn looked back across the hall to the distant entrance. Through the haze of smoke he saw a thin young man framed in the doorway. The new arrival was scanning the room with a pair of eyes buried so deep within their sockets they lent him the appearance of an angry skull.

  Hirn turned back quickly, his heart beating madly. He glanced at his two younger companions. They had seen the stranger, as well. All three skinheads were looking anxiously at one another.

  "It's him," Hirn whispered anxiously.

  Old Kempten was still straining to see the door. "Who is it?" Kempten repeated. "Is it Rolph?" He squinted at the figure that was even now scanning the many faces around the crowded room. Try as he might, Kempten couldn't see who the strange outsider was.

  AS SOON AS HE STEPPED through the door of the Schweinebraten Bier Hall, Remo's body automatically doubled the number of times he ordinarily blinked per minute. The air in the cramped bar was thick and grimy and his eyes were forced to work harder than usual just to cleanse themselves of the accumulation of smoke and attendant airborne particulates.

  He had assumed that he would be bothered most by the stench of fermented grains, but he had forgotten the European love affair with carcinogens. If they weren't mining them, building shanties on them or being irradiated by them, they were damned well determined to smoke them.

  Fortunately Chiun had declined to join him on this expedition to Juterbog, preferring the solace of their Berlin hotel. The Master of Sinanju would have been impossible to deal with in a place like this. As it was, Remo's body was having a hard enough time filtering out the airborne toxins.

  He would have to get in and out fast.

  Keeping his breathing shallow, Remo began making his determined way across the room.

  "HE IS COMING this way!" Hirn whispered urgently.

  "Who?" Kempten demanded. The others still hadn't told him the reason for their sudden concern.

  "Holloway's murderer," Hirn explained. It was all the warning he planned to give Kempten. As neo-Nazi sympathizers, they were all in danger. Hirn included.

  Hirn jumped to his feet, joined by his two skinhead companions. Without another word to Kempten, they hurried off through the crowd. They circled over near the bar, cutting a wide swath around the intruder.

  The killer was nowhere near them. He was walking through the cluster of tables in the center of the main floor. Although the room was thick with stretched-out legs and bent elbows, the man moved through the tangle without so much as a single sidestep. It was as if he had no more substance than the smoke-filled air around him.

  "He doesn't see us," one of the young men said, braver now that the shadowy door loomed closer.

  The chain in his nose tinkled softly as he nodded dully.

  "Shut up," Hirn hissed.

  As he spoke, he watched in horror as the killer's dead eyes turned their focus on him. It was as if he had somehow been able to single out the skinheads' hushed voices in the clamor of beer-fueled shouting. Hirn's stomach twisted into frozen knots.

  "Hurry up," he whispered urgently to the others. They had seen the change in the stranger, as well. The trio hurried to the exit.

  They were two yards away from the door when a terrifyingly familiar face appeared as if summoned by magic from out of the smoke before them.

  "What put the goose in your step?" Remo asked, eyesleaden.

  "Excuse us, sir," Hirn begged, swallowing nervously. Over Remo's shoulder, the door remained enticingly out of reach.

  "Hmm. Polite for Germans," Remo mused, nodding. "I guess you three must be all putsched out. I'm looking for someone. Kempten Oatmeal-Hasenpfeffer, or something like that. His landlord said I'd find him here."

  Three index fingers decorated with black nail polish stabbed in unison to the rear booth.

  "Back there," Hirn insisted anxiously. "Very old. Yellow eyes. Bad teeth. You cannot miss him."

  "Thanks," Remo said. "I don't intend to. By the way, bad teeth hardly narrows the field in this country." He began gliding past them.

  There was a collective sigh of relief from the three skinheads.

  "That is all?" one of them whispered, relieved. Hirn could have killed him.

  Remo stopped abruptly.

  "Actually, this is your lucky day," Remo said, turning back to the trio. "I was told to cut back on my killing."

  There was a look of nervous relief on the faces of two of the skinheads. Hirn remained stone-faced. "But that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to vent a little righteous indignation."

  Remo's hand shot forward three times. Each skinhead was aware of a blur of movement beneath his eyes and of a sudden, wrenching sensation at the center of his face.

  The pain followed at once.

  All three skinheads grabbed at noses that were suddenly gushing blood. Loose, frayed flaps of skin hung wet beneath their fingers.

  As they watched in agony, Remo dropped three identical nose chains to the nearby bar.

  "Hang Hitler," Remo announced with a sharp click of his heels and a crisp Nazi salute. Smiling, he headed back across the hall. Toward old Kempten.

  THOUGH HIS EYES WERE no longer perfect, they didn't need to be. Kempten Olmutz-Hohenzoller-kirchen clearly saw his three companions point him out to the vile Nazi killer.

  The old man had hoped to hunker down behind his cigarettes and beer until the intruder left the bar. He saw now that this was no longer possible.

  Climbing uncertainly to his feet, he began hobbling quickly to the rear of the b
eer hall. He was vaguely aware of a door back there. At least there had been one about fifty years ago. He hoped it was still there.

  As he walked, Kempten leaned against the side wall for support. He was an emaciated figure in out-of-date clothing. A few patrons glared angrily at him as he stepped steadily over feet and handbags in search of a door that might or might not be there.

  He was surprised when he stumbled upon the ancient fire exit a moment later. His discolored eyes squinted suspiciously as he reached for the long metal bar.

  Kempten rattled the handle. The door stubbornly refused to budge. He leaned his bony shoulder against the painted door and pushed with all his might. Still nothing.

  He couldn't allow his exertions to get the better of him. Every moment brought the assassin closer to him.

  Kempten leaned back and shoved once more against the door. It sprang abruptly open. The old man found himself flying out into a garbage-filled alley. He landed in a heap atop a pile of fetid, rain-soaked plastic bags.

  Hurrying, Kempten used the grimy alley wall to pull himself to his feet. As he moved, his dry tongue stabbed around the filterless end of his imported cigarette.

  Coughing madly, he turned away from the garbage heap ...and came face-to-face with the very man he was avoiding. The horrid spasm that racked his lungs froze in his throat.

  Eyes flat, Remo allowed the rusted beer hall door to swing quietly shut behind him. The raucous shouts from within grew muffled, replaced with the sounds of distant traffic. Car horns honked angry complaints somewhere away from the alley.

  Remo spoke but one word. "Four."

  Still leaning against the alley wall, Kempten made an unpleasant face. Taking a deep drag on his cigarette, he blew a cloud of defiant smoke in Remo's face.

  He was smiling contemptuously, showing off his row of jack-o'-lantern teeth, when it occurred to him that Remo was no longer standing before him. The smoke cloud had missed its target. Kempten frowned.

  He was still frowning when Remo reappeared beside him.

  "Didn't you catch the Surgeon General's warning on these?" he whispered with quiet menace.

  Remo reached out and yanked the cigarette from Kempten's mouth. Somehow, half of Kempten's lower lip came with it. As the old Nazi screamed in pain, Remo stomped both lip and butt beneath the toe of his Italian loafer.