Instead, his gaze moved to the clear glass at the middle of the nearest window. He stared out the slightly frosted panes at the nearby peaks of the Andes.

The air was thinner here in the mountains of Argentina, but his body seemed to have gotten used to it over the years.

It was a shame he had to leave. This had been his home for much of his life. The home of IV, the community of renegade Nazis that Adolf Kluge led.

An ultrasecret organization founded by the ragged losers of the Second World War, IV was to represent a rebirth of the fascist dream-the Fourth Reich, a Teutonic dynasty spanning generations.

That had been the ideal at its founding, and in his early, idealistic days as IV's third leader, it had always been the ultimate plan of Adolf Kluge. However, Kluge was nothing if not pragmatic. As he grew older, he realized that it would be impossible in the modern world to achieve the original goal of the secret Nazi organization.

With the abandonment of his youthful dreams and the approach of middle age, his concerns became more realistic. IV had a great deal of wealth at its disposal, riches looted from some of the finest families in Europe. During his tenure, Kluge began an aggressive covert campaign to involve IV in the financial markets of the world.

At nearly every turn, he met with rousing success. Kluge, it turned out, was a financial wizard. When it came to investments, he had the Midas touch. In the years of his stewardship, IV's business portfolio burgeoned. The money he made was used to meet the expenses of the village in which the founders of the organization-now retired or deceased-had come to live.

The building in which Kluge sat was an ancient structure, possibly Aztec, that had been constructed on a mountain peak that neighbored the IV village. A stone bridge connected the office stronghold with the main village. It was in this great old building that Kluge had made the first tentative steps toward the ruination of IV.