Destroyer.

The Empire Dreams.

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir.

PROLOGUE.

He watched the old men climb the bitterly cold, windswept beaches, proudly reliving memories of their hazy youth.

And he remembered.

He watched tired soldiers, teary-eyed and long-retired, grow maudlin and weepy in the midst of row-upon-row of whitewashed crosses and ?uttering ?ags.

And his resentment spread.

He watched presidents and prime ministers-too young or cowardly to have partic.i.p.ated in those dark events themselves-laud the sacri?ces of those who had fallen in the con?ict, old now by many decades. And he seethed.

He watched hours upon hours of doc.u.mentaries and news reports retelling the horrors of a struggle that could not possibly be understood by an outsider. And the hatred grew....

Chapter 1.

He had decided long before that he preferred being feared to being liked. It was his experience that people who were liked were not respected. He wanted respect. And fear-when used judiciously-always, always bred respect.

Not that fear did Nils Schatz much good these days.

He was retired. Not by any choice of his own. It had been a forced retirement.

Those who had in?icted this malady of inactivity on him weren't fearful of him. The young ones were like that these days. They knew his past, yet they didn't care. And of all the young ones, Kluge was the worst.

Adolf Kluge was the current head of IV, and it was Kluge whom Nils Schatz was meeting with this morning. Regrettably he couldn't hope to inspire fear in the IV director. But Schatz did hope that the young man would listen to reason.

The air of the village was cold in his throat as he made his way down the tidy cobbled streets. The gleaming bronze tip of his walking stick clicked a relentless, impatient staccato on the perfectly shaped gray stones.

He pa.s.sed between narrow pa.s.sageways designed only for single-lane traf?c. Most people either walked or used bicycles to get around the village.

As he strolled along, several people on bikes pa.s.sed by in either direction. The older ones facing him nodded politely as they slipped by. The impertinent young ones didn't even pay any attention to him. Coming from the other direction, those his age hunkered down over their handlebars and kept their backs to him.

The older ones understood who and what Nils Schatz had been. They still feared him.

But it was no longer enough.

Schatz quickened his pace. His meeting with Kluge was at eight o'clock. He checked his watch. He would be ten minutes early.

The whitewashed buildings smelled of freshly baked bread. They were lined up in perfect cookie-cutter formation along the narrow lane. There were no front yards. The stoops opened out directly onto the street.Schatz could see dumpy elderly housewives moving just inside the immaculate windows that looked out to the lane.

The whole village was supposed to remind everyone in it of a picture-perfect Bavarian town. From the gaily painted shutters and window boxes to the neatly tiled roofs. The spotless streets and orderly shops were meant to give the impression that a chunk of Europe had been transplanted somehow to the mountains of Argentina.

But that was not the case.

What the IV village represented was an admission of failure. Those who lived there had been forced to ?ee the land of their birth and were now deluding themselves into thinking that they had brought some of that land with them.

The sorry fact was, this was not home. And for Nils Schatz, it hadn't been home for more than thirty years.

His breath made fragile puffs of mist in the crisp mountain air. Each puff brought him closer to his last. Soon, there would be no more. It was as if his life were mocking him-?oating out before him in this land of his exile.

The last of the neat little houses broke away into a wide-open ?eld. The cobbled path led into a much older stone road.

A vast shadow cast the ancient roadway in shades of washed-out gray. Through rheumy eyes Schatz followed the shadow to its origin.

Up ahead loomed Estemago de Diablo, the "Belly of the Devil." That was what the locals called it. It was an ancient fortress of mysterious origin. Some thought it was Aztec, while others argued that it was Mayan. No one knew for certain who had built the huge stone edi?ce.

The palace, the ancient roads and the terraced ?elds in the surrounding terrain were all that remained of an empire that had peaked and died more than one thousand years before.

The irony that the IV village had sprung up in what was essentially the ruins of a dead thousand-year empire was not lost on anyone there. For Nils Schatz, it was a lack of respect for the old ways that had brought them here at all.

The huge stone structure squatted on a separate mountain peak from the rest of the village. Schatz crossed the perfectly preserved rock bridge that spanned the chasm between the peaks.

He did not re?ect on the remarkable engineering accomplishment the bridge represented. It was just something for him to tap his highly polished cane impatiently upon as he crossed into the bowels of the ma.s.sive fortress.

There were four guards within the gigantic old archway. All were blond haired and blue eyed with muscular physiques. They also were each indistinguishable from one another. They stared, mute, at Schatz as he pa.s.sed.

The guards were not simply being polite. The men were incapable of speech. They had been genetically engineered by the late n.a.z.i scientist, Dr. Erich von Breslau. Some DNA glitch had robbed them of the ability to speak. In an earlier time, they would have been rightly executed as imperfect. In IV they were kept as soldiers.

So unlike the old days, Schatz thought, not with sadness but with bitterness.

His face creased in severe lines, he found his way down the vaulted stone corridor to the of?ce of Adolf Kluge.

KLUGE READ THE PROPOSAL without a hint of expression.

He scanned each line with patient eyes, occasionally wetting his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. It was a habit he had developed years before in school. He didn't even realize he was doing it.

When he was ?nished, he tapped the sheaf of papers into a tidy bunch. He set them neatly aside. "Interesting," the head of IV mused, looking up. Nils Schatz sat in a too comfortable chair on the other side of Adolf Kluge's desk. He had waited impatiently for half an hour as Kluge carefully read the proposal-a proposal he should have read weeks before.

"How soon can we begin?" Schatz pressed.

Kluge raised an eyebrow. "This isn't the regular way we do things around here, Nils," he said. "There are committees that sort through this kind of thing." He indicated the stack of papers with a wave of his hand.

"Committees," Schatz spit angrily. "Everything in this infernal village is governed by committees. No one wants to do anything anymore. We just ?ll out forms and pa.s.s them up to others, who throw them away. We must start this, Adolf. Soon." His eyes were fearsome with just a hint of desperation. His balled ?st shook with pent-up rage.

Kluge sighed. He drummed his ?ngers delicately on his desktop as he looked over at the picture that hung from the mahogany- paneled wall of his large of?ce. The eyes of Adolf Hitler-Kluge's namesake-glared arrogantly from beneath a sheet of gleaming gla.s.s.

"How old are you, Nils?" Kluge asked gently.

Schatz stiffened. "I fail to see the relevance of that question."

"I think it may be relevant, my old friend."

"I am not old," Schatz insisted, seething. He stopped short of saying that neither was he Kluge's friend.

Kluge nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose it may be a matter of perspective. You appear to be in very good physical condition."

"I exercise daily."

"Nonetheless," Kluge pressed, "you must notice that there aren't many like you left. You are one of the few people left in the village from the old school."

"Again, I fail to see the relevance."

The leader of IV smiled wanly. "This proposal of yours is from another era," Kluge said, pressing his palm to the stack of papers.

"IV simply does not have the physical resources it once had to mount a campaign this ... ambitious. Perhaps your efforts would be better spent here at the village. I understand you have a garden."

"Do not dare patronize me, Kluge," Schatz growled. "I am not some mental defective."

In days gone by, his tone would have sent men scurrying like frightened mice-desperate to apologize. Not anymore. Adolf Kluge merely looked at Schatz with the patience the young reserved for old men with foolish dreams of glory.

"I am not patronizing you, Herr Schatz," Kluge replied slowly. "I am merely telling you the ?nancial realities of IV's current situation. You know of the events surrounding the failure of Platt-Deutsche?"

"I know that the company failed. While you were in charge here," Schatz added icily.

Kluge almost laughed at him at that point. Almost laughed! The impertinent toad had the nerve to snicker. Nils Schatz resisted the urge to leap across the desk and throttle the much younger man. "Yes, I was the one who left Lothar Holz in charge during the company's brush with the men from Sinanju. Had I known the threat they posed, I would have taken different measures. Or instructed Holz to back away. Slowly."

"Instead you pressed ahead. Holz died along with Dr. von Breslau. And the company failed as a result of the lawsuits generated by the computer-to-brain uplink system they had developed. All of this could have been construed by some to stem from a lack of leadership here at IV."

"You made that clear at the time."

"With me, there are no secrets," he said. This time it was Schatz who resisted the urge to smile. "That may be true," Kluge said, "but as a result of that misadventure, IV lost a very lucrative company. We still have other a.s.sets, obviously, but in the current market we need to take a step back and recognize our long-term ?duciary responsibilities. Take you, for instance. There are not many left of your generation, but there are many more only a decade or two younger than you. I need to think of their future well- being. It is not as if they can go out and ?nd work elsewhere. IV is responsible for their retirement expenses. You need to understand, Nils, that these are not the old days."Schatz's eyes were hooded. When he spoke, the words were lifeless.

"You are more concerned with walkers and bedpans than you are with ful?lling the mission of this village?" he asked ?atly.

"I am sorry, Nils, but I see our mission from an entirely different perspective. If I am able to care for these people in their in?rmity, then I see that as a ful?llment of our original charter. Of course, there are other concerns. But the events at PlattDeutsche America are only a few months old. I will address the interests of our founders as soon as IV is ?nancially able."

That was it. The meeting was over.

Schatz stood. When he spoke, his tone was ice. Every word dripped menace.

"You may remove me from the rolls of those for whom you feel responsible to care."

His eyes chips of ?inty rage, he wheeled around, heading for the door. He collected his metal-tipped walking stick from its resting spot against the heavy wooden frame.

"Nils, be reasonable," Kluge begged patiently. He stood, as well. "You must see this from my perspective. Your goals are too high. This plan of yours would never have worked."

It was too much to bear. Schatz spun back around, eyes mad. He aimed the blunt end of his cane at Kluge.

"Silence! You shame me! You shame him!" He stabbed his cane wildly toward the portrait on the wall. "You shame the people who built this haven! You are a disgrace, Adolf Kluge. To everything the movement represents. A disgrace and a coward."

The cane quivered in the air. It was not merely for effect. For a moment Kluge actually thought the old man might attack him.

Whatever thought Schatz might have had, pa.s.sed quickly. The cane snapped down to the ?oor with an authoritative crack.

Spinning on his heel, Nils Schatz marched from the room, slamming the huge oaken door behind him. As the noise rumbled off through the old fortress, Kluge could hear the old man's cane tap-tap-tapping along the echoey stone ?oors of the cavernous corridor.

The sound died in the distance.

Alone in his of?ce, Kluge sat back down, frowning deeply.

He drew the stack of papers detailing Schatz's proposal across his desk.

The words on the cover sheet were in German. Kluge was surprised at the dif?cult time he had reading his native tongue these days. Most of the business he conducted for the village was in English. He read the words again. Carefully.

"Der Geist der stets verneint. " "The spirit that never dies." Kluge smiled wanly.

"My poor old Nils," he mused. "Pity you don't realize your day died more than half a century ago." Gathering up the sheets of paper, Adolf Kluge dropped them in the trash barrel next to his tidy desk.

Chapter 2.

His name was Remo and he liked nuns.

It was a drastic change from the earliest opinion he could remember having. There was a time in his youth when he had hated nuns.

More often than not, he had feared them.

But that was a long time ago. Back when Remo Williams was a ward at Saint Theresa's Orphanage in Newark, New Jersey, the nuns told him when to go to bed, when to get up, when to go to school and, most important of all, when to go to church. Hate and fear went hand-in-hand during those years.

Now, on this cool summer night, as he walked the darkened streets of Nashua, New Hampshire, Remo was surprised at how completely his att.i.tude had changed. The respect he felt for the women who had raised him was not grudging but absolute. But even though Remo's opinion of these "brides of Christ" had evolved over the years, he knew with sickening certainty that there were some who did not share his enlightened att.i.tude. He was after one in particular.

Curved street lamps gathered swarms of ?itting ?ies and moths around their dull amber glow. What little weak light that managed to carry down to the sidewalk on which he strolled illuminated the funereal lines that traced Remo's cruel features. He was deep in thought.

Remo was a man of indeterminate age. Most who saw him placed him somewhere in his thirties. His short hair and deepset eyes were as dark as the night through which he pa.s.sed like a vengeful shadow. His T-shirt and chinos were black.

Remo was here this night because of a simple news report. One like so many others that had interrupted regular television programs of late.