The Last Temple td-27 Read online

  Zhava's barely controlled voice rattled into silence. Her eyes drooped and her face grew relaxed. Her speech had been passionate but without any real passion. Passion had been squeezed from her by reality.

  Chiun turned to her. "You are upset. Lie back and sleep now."

  She did so without complaint. Chiun lay his thin, yellow hands across her brow, "Sleep now. Remember, no paradise in the east, nor in the west. Seek the way you have come. It is within you."

  Remo drove along the flat countryside, imagining all the unseen death around him. He drove through high peaks of the North Negev. He drove by moonlike craters in the rocks. He drove past signs saying Hamekesh-Hagodol-The Big Crater. He passed the huge chasm that shone pink, purple, and yellow in the moonlight. Remo's foot pushed down on the accelerator.

  "You drive like you jump," said Chiun. "Badly."

  "She asleep?" asked Remo.

  "I have spent the last ten minutes keeping her awake?"

  Remo drove on for a while, thinking about Zhava's last statement. "I would kill everyone if it would just end." He decided not to let her out of his sight. He turned back to Chiun.

  "Quite a woman," he said, motioning to Zhava's sleeping form.

  "A wise young lady," said Chiun. "I too would be upset if I had killed someone with a gun."

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was not easy. It was never easy, and it took a long time. But the man knew that soon it would be over and like everything else, all good things were worth waiting for. And working for, and planning for, and suffering for, and killing for.

  The thin man of medium height stepped out of the bathroom, naked, after carefully wiping off the toilet and washing his hands. As he walked toward the closet, he dried his hands and his thick wrists. The man stopped before his full-length mirror.

  Not bad, he thought. His whole body looked younger than his years. The face lift had done wonders, raising his cheekbones and smoothing out the cruel lines around his brown eyes and thin mouth. Yes, and exercise had kept his body trim, his legs and arms strong, and his carriage and posture correct. As was befitting the man who used to be Major Horst Vessel of the Nazi S.S.

  The man who used to be Horst Vessel dressed, thinking about all the good old times in the Fatherland. Germany had key, high-ranking positions for the clever, the educated, the subtle. His present position with the Israeli government proved that. Experience and expertise were always admired, even in the ranks of the heathen. Of course, they had no idea of who he really was and what he used to be.

  The man who had been the youngest Nazi officer in a position of power during World War II checked his fully attired appearance.

  The next to last thing he did before leaving the room was to drape the Chai on a chain around his neck. The last thing he did was spit on the Hebrew symbol of life.

  The thin man with the thick wrists drove his jeep just south of Tel Aviv to a small town named Rehovat. There he found a large, flat, gray building and pulled into the parking lot. He got out of his jeep and went inside.

  The man strode down the tiled cellar hallway in disgust. Sweat poured across his proud, straight body. He remembered marching down halls of marble and silk, cool in the German autumn of 1943. He was going to meet, for the first time, the savior of Germany. He was making his first of many visits to the greatest man, the most brilliant tactician, the finest leader the world had ever seen.

  It was for that leader that he now slid his Israeli military boots across the unwaxed tile. His neatly groomed head passed just inches below the dull acoustical tile. The drab cinder blocks that were the walls only made the man who had been Horst Vessel long all the more for the glorious paintings, the lush carpets, and the ornate balustrading that he had gloried in during his youth. They had befitted only the greatest.

  The man who had been Horst Vessel thought that the environment always befitted the race. No wonder the Jews lived in the desert. He stopped thinking about the past as he moved by sets of closed wooden doors. He smiled as he heard young voices coming through the cracks in the wall and underneath the doors. Scum. Laugh while you may.

  The man who had been Horst Vessel thought about the future. Of a world in black decay. Of nations of chaos. Of the ground under his feet replaced with twisted radioactive waste, and he wanted to laugh in happiness.

  He found the room he had been looking for all the way down on the right. The man who had been Horst Vessel opened the door and entered. He stood in a long room filled with lab tables upon which were shelves of chemistry equipment. Each table had a sink on each end and these shelves, which stretched across the table's middle.

  At the table farthest from where he stood was another man with his head in one of those sinks.

  The man who used to be Fritz Barber was throwing up his guts. All that could be seen of him at the moment was his dirty, flecked lab jacket and his two hands dotted with age gripping the sides of the sink.

  The man who had been Horst Vessel clicked his heels loudly in the empty room. The man who had been Fritz Barber continued puking. Lining the tables were surgical instruments: a sharp scalpel, a few rubber gloves, and a metal probe. Beside these operating materials were trays in which seemed to be remnants of a fetal pig.

  "I cannot stand it," said the man who used to be Fritz Barber, as he pulled himself out of the sink and sat heavily on the floor. He was a fat, balding man, whose front was spotted with yesterday's dinner. A few, small, liquid green specks littered his chin.

  "Are we being listened to?" asked the man who had been Horst Vessel in Hebrew.

  "No, no, of course not," said the fat man on the floor whose teacher identification tag read "Dr. Moishe Gavan."

  "Then speak German!" the thin man spat harshly, "and rise when a superior officer enters the room!"

  "Yes, oh, yes," wheezed the fat man, rising awkwardly to his feet and turning green. He was short and had white hair, not at all like the Fritz Barber of thirty years ago. But now he was Dr. Moishe Gavan, a biology teacher at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Now he taught Jews how to take apart fetal pigs and which disease would cause you to smother in your own waste products and how to tell girls from boys. Times had changed.

  "Heil Hitler," the fat man said softly, saluting.

  "Heil Hitler," was the crisp reply. "What is all this?"

  "Dissections," the fat man smiled weakly, "I am not cut out for this kind of work. I was a physicist in the Fatherland. What do I know of earthworms and crayfish, and frogs and…" He began to grow green again.

  "You will do as you are told," the thin man said, coming forward, "I have no time for your minor complaints. Do you have it?"

  The fat man straightened as best he could and nodded. He still just barely reached the thin man's shoulders. "Yes, of course. That is why I am here. I was supposed to clean up my students' work, but…" The fat man became purple.

  "Enough," said the man who had been Horst Vessel. "Bring me the device. I do not have all night."

  "Yes, yes, yes," said the fat man, then shuffled toward his desk across the room. The man who did not have all night stared down at a neatly drawn and quartered fetal pig without emotion. His hand moved behind his back to settle on a scalpel nearby. As he heard the fat man's labored breathing get nearer, he palmed the surgical knife and slipped it up his sleeve.

  The man who was now Dr. Moishe Gavan held a small black box the size of a paperback book in his hands. He carried it as if he were bearing royalty, and his pudgy face was broken up in a proud grin. The fat man held the box up to the taller man.

  "That is it?" asked the taller man.

  "Yes," came the wheezing reply. "That is as small as I could get it, but still, once it is properly attached, it can detonate a nuclear bomb either by radio signal or by the timing device you see on the side there. It overrides all other safety controls. Turn it on. It cannot be turned off."

  The man who had been Horst Vessel took the small device from the teacher's hands slowly.

  "No need to be
so gentle," said the fat man. "It is solid state."

  "I am not gentle," the thin man flared. "I am careful." He looked at the box from all sides. "So this will do it, eh?"

  "Yes," replied the fat man.

  Thirty years of planning. Thirty years of oh-so-careful move and countermove. Thirty years of impersonation and lying. Now it all rushed together inside the man who had been Horst Vessel. Soon he could be Horst Vessel again. Even if only for a few minutes.

  "Good," he said. "You have done well. Our plan can now go ahead without delay."

  "Excuse me," the fat man began, coming up close, "but what shall I do until I receive my signal to go? I understand why the others had to be killed, but I have done my job. Both the others lost their resolve, but I have stayed until the end. I have done my work. I guarantee it. So, must I stay? Must I continue to teach this scum? Can I not go now?"

  The man who had been Horst Vessel looked down, but he did not see the man who had been Fritz Barber. This was not Fritz Barber. Fritz had been clever, he had not been a whiner. He had not been a complainer. He had not been a coward, a runner. This fat man was no German. This man was Moishe Gavan. This man is a Jew.

  The thin man smiled. "If you left now, it would create suspicion. Do not worry, old friend, once the final phase of our plan is put into action, you will receive the prearranged signal. Now I must go and prepare for that magnificent moment."

  "I understand," mumbled the fat man.

  The man who had been Horst Vessel snapped to attention and thrust out his arm in the Nazi salute. "Heil Hitler," he said.

  The fat man tried to keep his eyes away from the dissections that lined the table as well as from the thin man's own gaze. He returned the salute. As Gavan's mouth opened to echo "Heil Hitler," the man who had been Horst Vessel slid the scalpel into his uprisen hand and brought it down across the fat man's chest.

  The teacher's words stuck in his throat, blocking out any alarm he might have raised, and his eyes popped wide. His arm lowered to about eye level, his legs shook twice, and then he fell forward, blood already spreading across his front.

  The man who had been Horst Vessel got down on one knee, then sank the blood-slick scalpel deep into the back of the fat man's neck. The teacher's body jerked one last time. The thin man rose.

  The man who had been Fritz Barber had shown an ugly weakening tendency even back then, thought the thin man. I should have recognized it sooner. But no more trouble now. Soon, it will happen. Soon, Hitler's ghost will be satisfied. Soon, the Jews will be dead. All of them.

  And if some Arabs had to die as well, then it would be so. It had to be. His purpose was too great to try to avoid destruction of others than the Jews.

  The man who had been the youngest ranking officer in the S.S. began to slip on a pair of rubber gloves.

  Before I can put the last part of the plan into action, he thought, I must get rid of the American agents.

  The thin man then went to find a surgical saw among the laboratory equipment.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Zhava awoke to the most God-awful racket she had heard since a jet crashed next to her kibbutz when she was a child.

  She shot up in the still moving jeep and cried, "What is it? Did we hit a sheep? Have you run over a turkey?"

  Chiun turned to Remo. "What is it? Has your terrible driving, that is matched only by your terrible jumping ability, destroyed another living creature?"

  "No, Little Father. She's talking about you."

  Chiun turned to Zhava. "What was it that you heard, young lady?" he asked gently.

  "A terrible high-pitched squealing. It sent shivers up my spine. Ooooh, it was awful."

  "There, you see," declared Chiun. "It could not have been me, for I was singing a lovely Korean song that lulled you in your sleep, Tell the truth, now, were you not lulled?"

  "Chiun," said Remo, "she is talking about your singing. I thought every Army patrol and wolf pack within twenty miles would be on us any minute."

  "What do you know of lull?" asked Chiun. "Just drive, litterbug."

  "Drive?" said Zhava. "Was I asleep? Oh, dear, where are we?"

  "Be not afraid," said Chiun. "We are in the land of Herod the Wonderful, Israel, on the planet earth,"

  ''But where?" she insisted.

  "The map says we have just entered Latrun," Remo said.

  "Good," Zhava said. "I was afraid we had missed it. Watch for a turn-off toward Rehovat. I forgot to tell you that we managed to trace the men who tried to kill you. They worked at the Weizmann Institute of Science."

  When the trio arrived, they managed to find the Palestinians' rooms without asking. The rooms themselves were unimpressive, unpopulated, and uncluttered by clues. Each was a small, square, cinder-block cell containing a wooden table, a portable wooden closet, a wooden chair, and a wooden canvas-covered cot.

  "My people have already gone over the rooms carefully," said Zhava, "but they could find nothing that would lead us to a superior or higher-up."

  Chiun had wandered out into the hall as Remo paced up and down the last room, finally stopping by the wooden desk. There he fingered a college textbook.

  "Did these guys work here or go to classes?"

  "Both, actually," Zhava replied. "Their custodial work limited their class time, but they did manage to sit in on several classes. Why?"

  "Nothing, really. A biology textbook just wasn't my idea of an Arab best-seller, that's all. I guess that's what this book is."

  Suddenly Chiun appeared in the doorway, in each of his hands a book.

  "What are you doing?" Remo asked.

  "Working," was the reply. "What are you doing?"

  "Uh, nothing," said Remo.

  "Exactly," said Chiun, dropping the two books to the floor. "While you two were comparing hamburgers you have eaten, I have done your work. Now, see."

  Remo looked at the books on the floor. "Really neat, Little Father. They're very nice, but I don't think the institute will let you have them. Why not try the cafeteria? They might let you take something from there."

  "You are blind," said Chiun. "You are but looking. I told you to see."

  "Wait a moment,'' said Zhava, getting to her knees. "Did these books come from the other two rooms?"

  "Exactly," said Chiun. "Are you sure you have no relatives in Korea?"

  Remo looked around the room in confusion. "Somebody tell me what's going on?"

  Zhava went to the desk. "Look, Remo," she said, picking up the biology book lying there. "It is the same as the others. See?"

  "You, too, huh? Okay, I see already. So what?"

  "It is a connection. All three Palestinians sat in on the same class each week with the same teacher."

  "A second cousin perhaps?" Chiun said to Zhava. "A little training and you could go far."

  Remo shot Chiun a nasty look, then kneeled down and flipped open a book. On the inside cover were some scrawled words in Hebrew.

  "Here," he said. "What does it say?"

  "Biology," Zhava read. "Room B-27. Teacher, Doctor Moishe Gavan."

  Remo snapped the book shut and dropped it on the floor with the others.

  "Well, let's just go visit Doctor Gavan."

  The three moved down the Weizmann Institute hallway toward Room B-27, which was located in the cellar all the way down on the right.

  For early morning, the area was abuzz with activity. Many people rushed by the group, most of them older than Remo expected and wearing uniforms. Most of the younger ones were sickly looking, their expressions ranging from grim to green.

  "Did we come during a fire drill or something?" Remo asked Zhava.

  "Those are not firemen," she whispered. "They are police."

  Remo saw a large crowd outside Room B-27, accompanied by a huge stink. He recognized it easily. It followed him everywhere. The stench of death. "Stay here," he instructed Chiun and Zhava. "I'll see what's going on."

  "It smells here of pork," said Chiun. "I am going to wait in the vehicle.
Tell Remo that," he finished, motioning Zhava on.

  Remo had moved through the crowd of teachers and students and was now standing shoulder to shoulder with a burly policeman. The policeman turned toward him and said something impolitely in guttural Hebrew. Remo replied in Korean something about the cop's mother and camel's feet. The policeman said something else, and Remo was about to reply in a more universal language when Zhava appeared by his side, waving a card in front of the policeman's nose and speaking in soothing tones. The policeman lifted his arm and the two moved through.

  Zhava and Remo stopped just inside the door of Room B-27 because if they had moved any further, they would have gotten their feet all red.

  Completely covering the tile floor was a carpet of blood. In the very center of the room was a gory swastika pieced together from the chubby limbs of what was once a man. All around him were trays of dissected fetal pigs.

  "Some people just can't leave their work at the office," Remo said.

  Zhava left the room.

  Remo looked closer until he saw a small identification card pinned to the upper right hand section of the flesh swastika. It read, "Dr. Moihe Gavan." A guttural voice said something in Hebrew behind him.

  Remo turned around to face the policeman and saw Zhava standing behind him. "He wants to know if you are finished," she said.

  "Sure," said Remo, "let's go."

  They started through the crowd again, Zhava and the Israeli cop leading the way and talking. Remo tapped her on the shoulder.

  "Ask him if there is a phone I can use. I've got to report."

  "So do I," said Zhava.

  "We'll flip for it," said Remo.

  Zhava asked, and they were shown to the front office and assured that the line was not tapped. Many important governmental experiments were being tried here, so the security was tight.

  Remo won the toss and called Smith. Since it was still very early morning, and there were not many people using the phone at that hour, the overseas connection was made in record time and Remo had to wait only fifteen minutes.