The Empire Dreams

In a six-paragraph narrative Prologue, an unnamed observer watches leaders commemorate a distant conflict and resents their praise of a war they did not experience. At an Argentine IV village, retired Nils Schatz presses director Adolf Kluge to approve a proposal; Kluge rejects it. Schatz then steals IV funds and kills Banque de Richelieu manager Monsieur d’Ailerons. A theft of old ordnance leads to a depot explosion. A separate bomb explodes at the U.S. Embassy in Paris; Remo suspects an accident, and DGSE agent Helene Marie-Simone investigates with CURE’s Remo and Chiun. Meanwhile, Harold and Maude Smith travel to Europe. IV’s vintage aircraft begin bombing London.

RAF Colonel E. C. T. Bexton repeatedly dismisses warnings; Remo and Chiun follow the aircraft operation to Guernsey, where Remo and Helene fight pilots. Helene is captured at an ordnance-filled hangar. Remo and Chiun free her, but a camera-triggered mustard-gas trap kills Herre/Hans Michtler and badly burns Remo; his body clears the toxin. London suffers repeated air attacks and an IV ground invasion. Remo catches a falling unexploded shell and throws it into a Heinkel’s open bomb bay, destroying the plane; he later finds Smith fighting ground troops. Smith and Maude survive the attacks. IV prepares concealed bombs and mustard-gas caches across Paris. Schatz captures the unnamed French President, demonstrates the destruction of the Paris Opera House, and coerces him into signing a surrender ceding control of Paris.

Remo and Chiun enter occupied Paris; Smith and Maude escape a hotel search after his booby-trapped briefcase kills one soldier and wounds two, whom Smith then kills. Remo and Chiun cross a roadblock and learn Schatz is at the Elysée. Schatz detains Kluge and beats Field Marshal Fritz Dunlitz to death. Smith joins Remo and Chiun after a patrol attacks him. At the palace, Remo finds Helene dead in the garden; the narrative does not identify her killer. Kluge shoots two guards during the palace crisis; Smith accesses Schatz’s bomb map and identifies the Eiffel Tower as its primary target. At the tower, Schatz prepares a timed blast and awaits one hundred randomly chosen French civilians for execution in retaliation for a skinhead’s death; none arrive.

Remo and Chiun kill the remaining guards and pursue Schatz. Remo throws Schatz’s cane into the ordnance, triggering an explosion that kills Schatz. The Eiffel Tower remains intact, though a nearby gift shop and trees catch fire. French forces begin removing the remaining ordnance. Remo helps Smith recover and escorts him from the palace. In the embedded Epilogue, Kluge says he destroyed the hard drive containing IV financial information and travels under an assumed name from Antwerp toward Argentina. He also says he knocked Smith unconscious; Smith’s later fate is unknown to Kluge. IV’s wider structure remains untraced.