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, passed quickly. The cane snapped down to the floor 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 floors of the cavernous corridor.

The sound died in the distance.

Alone in his office, 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 difficult 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.