The Israel Bond Omnibus (81 page)

“BO minus twenty-five,
Herr Doktor.”

“You see, Herr Bond, I wanted you to survive the murderous inclinations of Yaynu and Frau Marlene. I knew that they, like the monk, so detested you they would disobey my orders, but I also felt you would luck through in your customary fashion.

“When you became my protector,” he chuckled, “and insisted upon a showdown with Holzknicht, I was prepared for that exigency, too. The ‘Holzknicht’ you sent over the bathhouse with the Black Dragqueen was a robot, the idea for which was suggested by the remarkably lifelike Abraham Lincoln in the Illinois pavilion at the recent New York World’s Fair.”

“Of course. That accounts for the jerkiness of the mouth and hands,
Herr Doktor
.”

“Ja.
I had ordered the Black Dragqueen to merely wound you as well as myself. I wanted to see how you, disarmed and bloodied, would dispose of your tormentors. Incidentally, I feel virtually no pain in these new legs.” The Nazi suddenly jabbed his cigar end into Bond’s cheek, held it there for a second that seemed an eternity. “A small repayment for the knife you hurled into me,
Jude.”

Though nauseated by the stench of his burned flesh, Bond kept his cool. “Why did you keep me alive?”

“Because”—and Holzknicht peeked at his watch—“in less than twenty minutes I want you to witness that which you cannot prevent, the blastoff of a missile tipped with a multi-megaton warhead, and listen to a shortwave radio account of the flash from my colleagues at the Egyptian base in another twenty-five minutes. I want to see your cruelly handsome face dissolve into that of a blubbering infant when you get a mental image of a twenty-mile-high mushroom blotting out the friendly Mediterranean sun, the Knesset Building burning like tinder, the bulk of your population incinerated, your organization and your M.—”

“You bastard!” Bond rose, but the gloating Nazi hammered a fist into his mouth and he fell back on the cot.

“Take him to the Buddha,” Holzknicht said to the TUSH-ys on guard at the tent flap.

I’ve mucked it up good this time,
Bond thought, as four sneering Nazis laid hands on him.
Kopy’s given some shark the sexiest meal of his life; these butchers are cuffing me about as though I were some harmless puppy, and Eretz Israel will be gutted in forty minutes.

“Herr Doktor!”
A technician was racing toward the giant. “The personnel in Cave Delta have seized two more intruders.”

Holzknicht spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Continue the countdown, Von Werner, but be prepared to halt it should conditions warrant. Hellmann,” he said to the excited technician, “have them brought to me for interrogation. They may be friends of Bond.”

The four hurled Bond savagely into the tent, his head banging the tent pole.

A minute passed. Then he heard the sound of female voices protesting to Holzknicht.

“Kopy! Go-Down!” he cried.

“Iz!”

“Mr. Bond!”

They were dragged kicking and screaming into the tent. Holzknicht, coldly furious, said, “Now, Miss Katz, I am in no mood for trifling. What were you doing in that cave? You were seen blown out to sea. And who is this Japanese woman?”

Bond glommed the two sets of fascinating protuberances and a cylinder in his mind began composing a song, “I’d Love To Be Strayin’ Down Mammary Lane,” but the other cylinder screamed:
Neck check! neck check!

His eyes flew back to Kopy’s silver AZK chain.

A thrill sped through him.

The plunger was gone.

A
nakawari
shell! An Ama diving girl familiar with the creatures of her environment would, of course, have used such shells in the past to cut ropes, scrape barnacles from her dory, clean fish, etc.

“Good-bye, Mr. Bond.” Her eyes flooded as Hellmann grasped her arm and dragged her off.

“Iz,” said Kopy, choking on her own tears. “Don’t look back.”

A Luger roared twice.

Hellmann rejoined them, indifferently wiping blotches of claret from the front of his polo shirt.
“Ach,
so much blood for such a slight girl. I fear this shirt has been ruined permanently.” When he saw Bond’s jaw bulge, he kicked him in the leg. “Drive all thoughts of revenge from your mind,
Jude.
This is the end.”

“BO minus two and counting,” said the walkie-talkie in Holzknicht’s hand.

Holzknicht held up his hand for the party to halt some three hundred yards from the Great Herrosukka Buddha. Even its impassive face seemed to hold a malicious grin. “Open Buddha.”

There was a hissing sound and the Buddha began to divide. As the knees spread apart, there was the bird, slim and white, a swastika painted on its nuclear nose.

“With a phallus like that, no wonder you’ve been contemplating your navel,” said an envious Bond to the deity. Now he felt the utter futility of their risible counterattack. Even if Kopy had put the stuff, whatever it was, into the bird, what possible effect could it have on this one-hundred-foot death-dealer?

“... three, two, one, zero. Ignition!”

Towering steam cumuli roiled out of the earth. The reverberation was deafening. Then the bird lifted off, slowly at first, but it gathered speed and soon was a pencil propelled by a dagger of flame.

Then it was out of sight.

“Auf Wiedersehen,
Eretz Israel!” screamed Dr. Ernst Holzknicht, jumping up and down like a schoolboy. “TUSH has avenged
Der Führer!”

Bond, whose face had been battered by rocks, branches and insects blown about in a dust storm whipped up by the lifting bird, knelt in a prayerful attitude.

Holzknicht laughed. “All the litany from the
Sh’ma Israel
to
Adon Olam
will not help now,
Jude.
The bird is on its way.”

Bond
was
praying. But with his tongue tip he was also easing the
nakawari
shell out of the pouch in his right cheek, wincing again and again as the edge scored the sensual inner lining and his lower gum. He got the dull side between his teeth, craned his neck and began to work the sharp one against the saranoflex straps.

It was a long, laborious business. His mouth bled profusely, his head ached and as his jaw bumped his blackish hands, spears of pain ran up his arms.

Now some of the Nazis were coming back from the tent with chairs, a table, a two-way shortwave radio and some refreshments.

“Continue praying, Herr Bond,” Holzknicht said. “It is good for the soul. If you like I shall teach you some hymns to Himmler. They would be far more appropriate at the moment.”

Bond did not answer and the Nazi laughed again. “Miss Katz, join me in a stein of good Bavarian beer.”

“With pleasure,
Herr Doktor,”
Kopy said gaily, walking toward the table in a sensual undulation that caused the other nine Nazis to gulp.

“You do not seem distressed at the day’s developments,” Holzknicht remarked, pouring the beer.

“Herr Doktor,
I am a scientist also,” said Kopy. “Political subdivisions mean nothing to me, nor do shopworn religions. My interest is in science, pure and simple. I have nothing but the greatest admiration for you and your colleagues. To think, you built a missile under Japan’s nose!”

That’s it, baby. Give me time, time! One strap is severed, but there are four more to go,
Bond messaged her.

“Yet you are in love with this God-intoxicated broken vessel of a hero of your own heritage,” Holzknicht said keenly.

“Was. And only for his once attractive body, which is not so any more. I admit I tried to save him by stealing in through the caves, but that was before I noticed so many fine German bodies.”

A “Hear! hear!” erupted from the assemblage, who began to pound the table.

“Would you prove that, Miss Katz, by yielding to me before this wrecked Hebrew, so that he can see your exquisite pleasure?” Hellmann asked, squeezing his thighs together in his excitation.

“A charming proposal,” said Kopy. “Herr Hellmann, you
are
a saucy rascal! Indeed I shall take you on. All of you. But should we not first experience the orgiastic moment of the missile’s explosion. In a few minutes or so it will be crisping the sands of Egypt—”

Bond’s head bobbed. Three more straps came apart.

“Egypt?” Holzknicht smiled humorlessly. “A joke, Miss Katz, and a poor one.”

Kopy Katz stood up tall and proud.
“Herr Doktor...”

Sit down, darling!
Bond telepathed the Xeroxite.
You’re overplaying your hand! For God’s sake, sit down and button your adorable raspberry-float lips!

The last strap was half severed. His eyes looked about for a weapon. There—there was something, jagged and bleached, near a
yoni
bush which had been set afire by the heat from the bird. It looked like one of the memorial bones that had been piled near the Buddha’s base. It was!

Holzknicht, fiddling with the radio, said, “Go on, Miss Katz.”

“You filthy, cold-blooded, murdering kraut!” The mask of levity fell off. “No, your boys didn’t find anything on me in Cave Delta. I’d expected a trip-wire warning system, told Go-Down to kick one of them to set up a diversion, and while they were grabbing her I tossed a tiny quantity of a certain liquid into an open hatch on one of your tanks. Shall I give you the scientific formula,
Herr Doktor?”
She rattled off a long string of chemical terms totally incomprehensible to Bond, now crawling toward the burning bush.

Dr. Ernst Holzknicht’s golden curls turned ash white. The pasty face began to drip soggy flesh.

“Gott in Himmler!”
he screamed. He brought up his Luger, which seemed like a toy in the steam-shovel hand, and shot Kopy Katz in the head at pointblank range.

“Holzknicht, you bastard!”

Israel Bond, his makeshift bludgeon in his hand, sprang onto the table, sending Nazis flying head over heels.

“Die, Holzknicht, die!”

He swung the bleached object down, an incredible electric power surging through his right arm.

The TUSH leader’s head exploded in saucer-sized fragments. Claret-soaked curls of golden fleece flew in every direction.

Thwack!
Hellmann’s hurried Luger shot thumped into Bond’s left shoulder, but it was the bite of a mosquito.

Then Hellmann’s skull was sundered by a blow from Bond, and Von Werner’s, and another Nazi’s, and another Nazi’s....