"Hey, I don't tell you how to do your job," Remo remarked, defensively. He walked past Smith. They encountered no more resistance between the spot where the bodies lay and the palace.
"Hang back, Smitty."
Remo approached the door first. The Master of Sinanju came up from behind, standing protectively next to the CURE director.
They could see Remo pause on one side of the staircase that led into the palace. He tipped his head oddly, looking over the side railing into a small landscaped garden beyond.
Abandoning the stairs, Remo slipped over the railing and disappeared from sight.
"What butterfly does he chase now?"
Perturbed, Chiun led Smith to the base of the stairway. They skirted it, going around the far side. The smell of death hit them immediately.
Smith saw dozens of bodies lying in a tangled bunch amid the roses and rhododendrons. They were French soldiers. The men who until yesterday had successfully guarded the palace.
Remo crouched at the edge of the pile of corpses. He was looking down at a particularly mangled body. The face was unrecognizable. It had been smashed repeatedly with a fierce glee that was clearly unnecessary. The first few blows had done the job. Most of these wounds had been inflicted after death.
When he stepped around Remo, Smith was surprised to see that it was the body of a woman. Remo looked up, face hard.
"You knew her?" Smith asked.
"I borrowed her phone a couple of times," Remo said tightly.
Smith understood immediately. "We must stop him before he kills again," he said softly.
Remo glanced back at the corpse. Nodding, he got to his feet. They left the body of Helene Marie-Simone in the small garden and continued inside.
ADOLF KLUGE SPOKE in German. Lest any of the French officials present understood the language, he pitched his voice low.
"You realize now that this operation is doomed to failure," he whispered.
The old radio operator glanced at the pair of skinhead guards near the door. Swallowing, he looked back at Kluge.
"We did not know it would come to this, Herr Kluge," he admitted sadly. "He promised glory."
"The time for glory has passed, old friend," Kluge said. "The best we can hope for now is simply to survive."
He could see that he almost had the man on his side. Schatz had left ten minutes before. Kluge had been working hard to get the old Nazi radio operator to see the futility of this insane campaign.
"I did it all for the fatherland," the old man said. His bloodshot eyes were moist.
"I'm sure you think that," Kluge replied. "But I assure you that you have done more harm here than good. Please help me to undo some of that damage. While there is still time."
The old man cast a glance at the pair of skinhead guards who were standing over near the dais. Each of them held a Gewehr assault rifle. Proud of their rather limited role in the neo-Nazi occupation, they stood at attention. They stared blankly ahead. Kluge suspected they were on some sort of drug.
The old radioman had made up his mind. Turning away from the soldiers, he unclipped the single silver snapper on his hip holster. He was about to reach for the gun in order to turn it over to Adolf Kluge when he was distracted by the sound of gunfire down the corridor.
The soldiers at the stage immediately grew alert, spinning toward the open door.
Kluge would never have a better chance.
He ripped the gun from the old Nazi's holster, twisting the man around and using him as a human shield. To the French it looked as if his long secret conversation with the radioman had caused the old soldier to drop his guard.
"Get down!" Kluge yelled in French to the diplomats seated on the floor.
As the men and women flung themselves to the carpeted aisle, fingers interlocked above their heads, Adolf Kluge opened fire on the pair of Nazis at the front of the stage.
He took two shots at the nearest skinhead. The first bullet caught the man in the rear of his left shoulder. He tried to turn on his attacker, but only made it halfway around when the second bullet caught him with a violent thwack in the temple. He toppled over, bouncing first off the stage and then crumpling to the floor.
The second skinhead managed to get off a couple of shots from his rifle.
Kluge felt a few rounds pound against the body of the old man. The Nazi groaned no louder than if he had just awakened from a nightmare. He grew limp in Kluge's arm.
Another shot.
A single bullet ripped through Kluge's bicep. Lip curling in pain and anger, he flung the body of the dead Nazi to the floor, at the same time tossing the gun from his injured arm to his good left hand. He caught the weapon and squeezed the trigger once.
The bullet snapped into the chest of the skinhead. The force of impact was so great, the man swirled around toward the stage, flinging his gun to the floor. He sprawled across the stage, arms thrown wide. He didn't move again.
Ignoring his bleeding arm, Kluge turned on the gathered diplomats, including the president of France.
"Stay there," Kluge instructed.
The politicians weren't about to move. They looked on in fear as Kluge moved swiftly across the auditorium. On the way he gathered up one of the discarded rifles.
Kluge propped his back against the wall inside the open door. He took a deep breath. Thus steadied, he jerked his body around, sticking the muzzle of the gun experimentally into the hallway.
Instantly a hand that extended into a thick wrist reached into the room from the corridor.
"I'll take that," Remo said, coming into view.
He pulled the rifle from Kluge's hands, taking it in his own. Holding the barrel in one hand and the stock in the other, Remo brought the middle of the gun down across one knee. The rifle snapped obediently in two neat halves. Remo tossed them away. "All clear," Remo called behind him.
As Remo ambled into the room, Smith came in from the corridor in the company of Chiun. Smith immediately spied the computer that Schatz had had moved up on the stage after the death of Fritz. Leaving the others, he hurried up the steps, sliding in before the screen.
On the floor Kluge suppressed his surprise at seeing for the first time the man he knew to be the Master of Sinanju. When he saw Adolf Kluge, Chiun's eyes narrowed.
"You do this?" Remo asked, nodding to the bodies lying around the room.
"I did what was necessary," Kluge said. With difficulty he pulled his attention away from Chiun. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his bleeding arm.
"You're English," Remo said, noting Kluge's accent.
The head of IV nodded in response. "And you are American presumably," Kluge said.
"That's the first thing about me everyone seems to notice lately."