"I do not know," Smith said with a frown. "However, I believe he was speaking rather frantically in Korean."
"Korean?" Remo said. Though his hearing was acute enough to have heard the speaker, he hadn't been interested enough to focus.
"They repeated 'Sinanju' several times. Is it possible that it is someone from Chiun's village?"
"I don't know," Remo admitted. His face registered intrigue.
He watched Chiun carefully. The Master of Sinanju's expression was unreadable. He tried to listen, but Chiun had pressed the receiver tightly against his shell-like ear. It was impossible for Remo to eavesdrop.
Smith cleared his throat. "Remo, I am not comfortable with the prospect that someone from Sinanju might have this number. There are security considerations."
Smith's admonishments were drowned out by the crashing of the handset onto the cradle of the phone. At the same time, a pained howl rose up from the very soul of the Master of Sinanju. It was a cry of both pain and rage.
Remo and Smith both wore wary expressions as they looked over at the elderly Korean.
"Oh, the dastards!" Chiun hissed. He was panting so hard Smith thought he might be having a heart attack.
"What is it?" Remo asked, concerned.
"Thieves! Scoundrels! Oh, the perfidy!" Chiun drummed his fist against his bony chest. He wheeled on Remo. "We must be off at once!" he cried.
"Off?" Remo said. "Off where?"
"To Korea, of course," Chiun snapped. "That this could happen after lo these many years. What is this world the gods have thrust down around one as trusting as I?"
"Chiun," Remo interjected, "I don't know what that was all about, but I am not going to Korea." Chiun wheeled. An accusing nail stabbed the air between them.
"Betrayal?" Chiun cried in shock. "From my own son?"
"How can I betray you? Dammit, I don't even know what the hell you're upset about."
"The treasure," Chiun explained, seething. His hazel eyes were furious. "The vast stores of priceless tribute to generations of greatness that is the House of Sinanju have been swept from the floors of my home like driftwood in a ferocious monsoon." He gripped fistfuls of brocade kimono fabric. "I have been robbed, Remo!" he wailed.
Remo let the tension drain from his shoulders. "Is that all?" he said, relieved.
When he saw the sense of relief in his pupil's face, Chiun snapped back into outrage mode. "How dare you be calm?!" he accused. A bony finger quivered at Remo. "The man you call father has been grossly violated. Thieves have pillaged my most prized possessions."
"That's too bad," Remo said. "Really. It's just that I thought there was something really wrong."
"'Really'?" Chiun cried. "'Really'?" His voice grew increasingly frenzied as he repeated the word. Although it was long after midnight, Smith was concerned Chiun's screams would be overheard. He shot a cautious look at his closed office door.
"Please, Master Chiun," Smith begged.
The Master of Sinanju spun on him, his long robes twirling madly. "Stay out of this, white," Chiun menaced.
"Look," Remo said, attempting to be the voice of reason, "the treasure was stolen before. We got it back then, and I'm sure we'll get it back now. We can go to Sinanju as soon as we've cleared up this Four business."
"No," Chiun insisted, tugging at his tufts of wispy hair in frustration. "It must be now. Every day we dally allows the trail to grow ever colder."
Remo was determined. He was about to insist that they stay put when Smith broke into their conversation.
"If I may interject," the CURE director said. Chiun twirled on him, eyes pinpricks of white-hot rage.
"I said mind your own business," he snapped.
"I only wanted to say that I have had little luck finding this Kluge. And, frankly, your presence here is drawing undue attention."
"You see," Chiun insisted, shifting gears so fast Remo swore he heard grinding. Though he spoke to Remo, he stabbed a bony finger at Smith. "The wisdom of a true emperor. Even Smith wishes us to go."
"If something comes up, I will contact you in Sinanju," Smith offered reasonably. "You still have a phone, correct?"
"The only one in the village," Chiun replied.
"Then it is settled," Smith said. Inwardly he was greatly relieved. He wasn't comfortable when Remo and Chiun stayed at Folcroft for extended periods of time.
"Don't I get any say in this?" Remo asked.
"No," said Smith and Chiun in unison.
Remo threw up his hands in defeat. "Fine," he said, exhaling loudly. "We'll go to Sinanju."
Whirling, Chiun raised a defiant hand as he marched over to the door. He flung it open grandly. "And woe to he who would pilfer the treasure of the most awesome house of assassins in the history of creation." He stormed outside.
"Yadda, yadda, yadda," Remo grumbled to Smith. His face held the look of a man totally devoid of enthusiasm.
Hands in his pockets, Remo followed Chiun reluctantly from the office.
Chapter 12
Adolf Kluge was born in La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
In spite of the fact that it was the country's national language, Kluge hadn't heard a word of Spanish spoken until he was nearly seven years old. By that time, he already knew that he was different from the people around him.
No. Not just different. Adolf Kluge was better. Even before he could walk, the parents of young Adolf had taught their precious blue-eyed offspring that he was superior to all others. This-he would come to realize later in life-included them.
His proud Nazi parents had fled their homeland during the persecution that came in the wake of the Second World War. Wounded in the early days of the Polish incursion, his father had sat out the war as nothing more than an SS bureaucrat. If the brutality of the Nazi secret police force had never come to light, he might have been able to resume his anonymous life after the war. Unfortunately for the senior Kluge, his name turned up in several key files concerning the torture and deaths of dozens of suspected Allied spies. He had been forced to flee to South America in order to escape prosecution.
The Nazis of Argentina were a close-knit group. They lived together, socialized only with their peers, married one another and raised their children in the old way. And, most of all, they kept the Nazi dream of global domination alive long after the world thought a stake had been driven through its evil heart.
Kluge was born in the early 1950s into a community fueled by bitter hatreds and a festering, impotent rage at the treatment it received from the outside world.
As the community of Nazi exiles grew, so did its members' desire for a place to call home. Germany was out of the question. None of them could ever go back. Not under the climate that dominated so much of world opinion.
It was more than ten full years after the fall of Berlin that IV village was established. As a boy, Kluge remembered driving up with his parents to see the homes under construction. To the little child who had seen his parents' beloved homeland only in old photographs, it was as if they had somehow magically driven across the Atlantic and into the mountains of Bavaria. The funds looted by Hitler's regime and held by Swiss bankers had been used to re-create a small scrap of Germany for that nation's most pitiful outcasts.
Adolf Kluge would never forget how his father had stopped their car in the shade of the old stone fortress. As his mother stared in silence at the homes beyond the large open field, his father wept openly at the sight of the picturesque little houses.