122752.fb2 Failing Marks - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 44

Failing Marks - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 44

"That is a lot of gold," she said breathlessly. They continued on for a few miles more before the Master of Sinanju ordered Kluge to halt.

The lead car slowed to a stop. Behind it, the trucks of the expedition stopped, as well. Their engines idled briefly before growing silent.

Chiun, Kluge and Heidi climbed from the rental car. The surviving Numbers from the IV village along with the handful of skinheads got down from their trucks.

"Tell your pinhead army to remain where they are," the Master of Sinanju commanded.

Kluge did as he was told.

The skinheads and the rest stayed back by the trucks. They were stretching their arms high in the air and twisting their spines, trying to relieve some of the muscle strain the long ride had inflicted on them. Only the identical blond-haired men seemed interested in what was going on up by the lead car. They stayed back where they were told, sullenly staring at Kluge and Heidi.

"I find those genetic freaks unnerving," Kluge complained as he tore his eyes away from the unflinching gaze of the Numbers.

Heidi, who had been eyeing the Aryan men with a look bordering on sympathy, shot a nasty glare at Kluge. Whatever her dark thoughts, she kept them to herself.

"Why have we stopped?" she asked, turning to Chiun.

"It is no secret to any of us," he said. "We all know that we are close now to the Sinanju Hoard."

"The Nibelungen Hoard," Kluge corrected flatly.

"Do not quibble, thief," Chiun cautioned. He marched over to a nearby copse of trees.

The Master of Sinanju used the sharpened edge of one long fingernail to sheer a slender branch from a small tree. With a flurry of fingers, he stripped any small sticks or nubbins from the black bark. Coming back over to Heidi and Kluge, Chiun used the heel of his sandal to kick up a sandbox-size area of dirt in the frozen mud at the shoulder of the road. With the thin end of the three-foot-long stick, he drew out a perfect square, cutting it into four large sections. He began sketching in one of the quarters.

"I act now in good faith," Chiun said as he drew. "Behold, the segment of the map discovered by my ancestor Bal-Mung beneath the body of the slain Nibelung king."

Heidi was the only one there seeing the Sinanju section of the map for the first time. As Kluge looked on, bored, she appeared to be studying every detail of the map as Chiun formed it in the powdery earth.

"There!" Chiun said, finishing with a flourish. He had sketched in a portion of a long river. "I give you the Sinanju legacy of a long-dead king."

There was a pause from those assembled, as if they were uncertain how to respond to such histrionics. The mood was broken by a dull, lifeless clapping of hands. Heidi and Chiun looked at Kluge.

"I am sorry," he said, sarcastically. He stopped his flat applause. "Is not that what we were meant to do?" His smile was all condescension. "That is not as impressive as you would like it to seem," Kluge said, nodding to the etching in the dirt. "After all, I have already seen it."

Chiun was indignant. "Only due to your act of thievery, Hun," he sniffed.

Heidi didn't wish for this posturing to go any further. She injected herself between Chiun and Kluge. "I will go next," she offered.

Heidi took the stick from Chiun and quickly began filling in one of the three empty squares. Some of the lines met up with those of the Master of Sinanju. Chiun watched with interest while she worked. When she finished, she handed the stick over to Kluge.

"Here," she said.

Holding the stick lightly in his hand, Kluge looked down upon the half of the map that was sketched out in the cold dirt of the Black Forest.

"Very nice," he said, nodding. He indicated a corner of Heidi's section with the end of the stick. "That portion was not visible in my photograph."

"What do you mean?" Heidi asked blandly.

"This is not your family portion of the map," he explained. "It is the Hagan piece, which I kept for years on my mantel at the Four village. Presumably you stole it when you stormed the fortress." He smiled.

"Enough, brigand ancestor of a deceitful king!" Chiun snapped. His eyes were fire.

Kluge considered only for a second. With an outward dispassion that belied his inner fear of the wrath of the Master of Sinanju, he squatted down next to the nearest empty grid. He hastily sketched out his family portion of the map.

When he was finished, Kluge-still on his haunches-handed the stick up to Heidi.

"It is your turn. Again." He smiled tightly. Heidi didn't hesitate. She pulled the stick away from Kluge. In the final quarter of the larger square, she drew for them the last piece of the Siegfried map.

Chiun examined the section she had drawn, making certain that its lines matched the ones in the piece they had retrieved from Heidi's ancestral home. They did.

In the dirt before them, staring back at them from across the ages, was the entire map to the Nibelungen Hoard. Incomplete for more than fifteen hundred years, its assembled pieces now gave them clear directions to the great treasure.

"I have maps of the area," Kluge said, excitedly, pushing himself to a standing position. "We can use them to find the location."

The IV leader began striding to the car, but Chiun stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"That will not be necessary," the Master of Sinanju said. "My ancestor compiled many maps in his years of feckless wandering in these woods." Chiun nodded to the map they had all drawn. His voice was filled with a grand solemnity. "This place is known to me."

REMO WAS PEEVED. He made this clear to Colonel Heine.

"I don't know why I'm even going," he complained. "I mean, it's got nothing to do with me."

"Perhaps-" Heine began meekly.

Remo interrupted. "It's just another dippy million-year-old legend he's somehow gotten me dragged into," he griped as he steered the border police jeep down the long forest road. "I tell him I'll help him find his block of wood and his gold coins. Fine. Everything should be hunky-dory afterwards, right? Wrong. No sooner do we find them, along with the guy we've been looking for for the last three months, than he goes running off with the bastard on some half-assed treasure hunt. And he gets mad at me." Remo's voice approached a level of incredulity that left Colonel Heine nodding in nervous, sympathetic confusion.

"I have found only recently that loyalties are not what they should be," Heine said through clenched teeth. He was holding on to the seat with both hands as Remo's foot stayed clamped heavily to the accelerator. The forest whizzed by.

"Tell me about it," Remo continued. "You've got a heck of a bunch back there," he commented, nodding to the trailing line of trucks. "If I were you, I'd sleep with one eye open and a frigging howitzer under my pillow."

"There is a danger that they might join the enemy," Heine admitted. "If that happens and we fail, the army will be called in. Although I would not trust that the army will not join them, as well." Remo shook his head. He wondered again whether or not he should let Chiun go this one alone. After all, the Master of Sinanju had only the neo-Nazis, the border police and possibly the German army to contend with. It'd serve him right to work up a sweat over this one.

They came tearing around a corner near a pile of toppled boulders. A fork suddenly appeared in the road ahead of them. Remo barely lifted one foot off the gas pedal as the other one was stomping down on the brake.

The jeep spun out on the shoulder, completing two full circles on the dusty road. At the nadir of the first screeching circle, Colonel Heine saw the rapidly approaching shape of the nearest trailing truck. It, too, had slammed on its brakes. Plumes of dust poured up from beneath its locked wheels.

Heine closed his eyes and waited for the truck to plow into them. As he did so, he was vaguely aware of the driver's-side door opening and closing. He felt the jeep grow lighter.

When a few tense seconds had passed without the sound of a crushing impact, Heine opened one eye. The jeep was rocking to a gentle stop near an oldfashioned wooden signpost. Colorful characters and black German words marked the three destinations beyond them.

Remo was crouching at the fork.

With a sigh of relief, Heine opened his second eye. He climbed out of the jeep on wobbly legs, walking up to join Remo. Looking back once, he saw the troop truck had stopped a hair away from the parked jeep.

"They took the left fork," Remo said. He nodded as if to some obvious marks in the road. Heine saw nothing but a few grooves in the sandy shoulder.

"Can you get some helicopters in here?" Remo asked, standing. "With a few eyes in the sky, we could get this thing over with in less than an hour."