But nothing prepared him for the agonizing pain of having his hand torn clean off. He hadn't seen the tripwire Blade laid until it was too late to steer his bike away. Then came the explosion, and his bike was rolling over him.
They called him "The Abolisher." Zigesfeld found the nickname too melodramatic. Just plain old Zigesfeld was fine with him. Not that he ever said anything in protest. In fact, he never said much of anything, period. Zigesfeld's world outlook was very simple. He did as Ilsa told him and he killed people. No need for a fancy nickname or any words.
In fact no words had been spoken at all between them when she'd ordered him to kill the French finance minister having tea with Steranko. A nod was all it took and then he was swinging the bronze tea tray that caved the man's skull in.
In the years since he had come to work for Augustus Steranko, Zigesfeld had found himself in the rather dubious position of Steranko's top henchman. To the outside world, he was simply a quiet butler, the head of the castle's servants. In reality, Zigesfeld served as an enforcer and bodyguard. In both functions, he worked directly under Ilsa Grunt, Steranko's assistant and a skilled assassin in her own right.
Ilsa, the small woman whom he regarded like the mother he never had. It was she who had taken him in when he was only a teenage escapee from the mental institution, and who had convinced Steranko to take him on after he displayed his natural fighting prowess against Steranko's guards. Although Steranko would never admit it, he had no control over Zigesfeld whatsoever. Zigesfeld did as Steranko told him only because Ilsa said he should. It seemed logical enough. He didn't much like Steranko. He considered the man loud and annoying. But whatever Ilsa thought was best, so when she told him to do what Steranko said, until she commanded otherwise, Zigesfeld had nodded and obeyed.
The French finance minister's body had just hit the floor, and Zigesfeld was busy collecting teacups from the table when the alarm sounded.
"He was followed!" Ilsa said of the dead finance minister.
She and Steranko ran from the dining room. Zigesfeld frowned and pulled off the white gloves he wore. He didn't need to be told what to do. The minute he left the dining room he went to the armory. He took off his suit jacket and without bothering to remove anything else, pulled on a heavy coat emblazoned with Steranko's gaudy scorpion emblem on the breast, and a pair of enormous goggles perched on his forehead.
Then, rushing outside, he jumped onto his personal offroad vehicle, a six-wheeled Polaris Big Boss with twin Sterling SMG's mounted on the front. He roared out of the motorpool, past Steranko's parked limousine and his own black Saab, and mounted a hill overlooking the snowy forest that covered most of the castle grounds.
There they were. Two of Steranko's guards on more conventional Honda four-wheelers. They were chasing after a man in a white parka. Zigesfeld knew this could be only one man: Blade, the British agent who had spent the past several years giving all of them much grief.
This, he understood. Zigesfeld could grasp little of whatever it was Steranko was cooking up. He understood the basic reason for the now-dead finance minister's meeting with him this morning, namely, that Steranko wanted France's gold, although all throughout tea all Zigesfeld could think of was how much he had wanted to kill the pompous Frenchman. He cared not for the intricacies of his employer's political aspirations. But setting out to kill an intruder, this he could grasp easily, and relish.
As Zigesfeld watched, one of the guards charged at Blade, who lept aside, allowing his attacker to slam headlong into a tree stump with a gigantic explosion. Zigesfeld grinned, both at the foolish guard's misfortune, and at the prospect of finally taking care of Blade once and for all, and pulled the goggles down over his eyes.
To his own credit, he caught Blade by surprise. The agent was trying to evade the remaining guard and so was very nearly cut down by Zigesfeld's machine gun fire as his Polaris roared down the slope towards him. But the nimble Englishman took cover amongst some trees. Zigesfeld signaled to the guard to swing around and cut Blade off, then charged headlong into the thicket, guns blazing...
...and noticed, too late, a beeping something strung between two trees. A trap. He attempted to swerve away but was clotheslined by the wire, setting off the explosives mounted to either tree. Both trees were totally annihilated, filling the air with burnt wood chips. Zigesfeld felt wind in his hair. His Polaris was flying through the air, upside-down. He let go of the handlebars and felt, landing hard in the snow. The upside-down bike landed next to him, and rolled over on top of him, before righting itself in front of the stricken henchman, right on top of his outstretched right arm.
Zigesfeld gasped and then the riderless ATV continued driving, sucking his hand up between the back wheels with a crunch. Zigesfeld screamed and was dragged behind the vehicle, legs kicking frantically. The thing pulled him along for several yards before, finally, with a sound not unlike celery being broken in half, Zigesfeld's arm wrenched free. The Polaris continued without him, banged harmlessly into a tree and stopped.
He lay there in shock, barely hearing the approach of the remaining guard's Honda. The man stopped alongside him and jumped off, kneeling to assist him in standing. As he did so, Zigesfeld noticed for the first time that his right hand was missing; his forearm ended in a ragged, bloody stump where his wrist ought to be.
"Are you all right?" the guard asked him.
As usual, he didn't reply. He shoved the guard off and headed towards the castle, stumbled, fell. The guard caught up to him and, finally, Zigesfeld grudgingly accepted the man's help. They limped up the hill together. There was no sign of Blade.
~*~
Zigesfeld learned of Blade's fate when they finally got back to the castle. The guard helped him into Steranko's study, where the window had been smashed in. During their trek his companion had done his best to bandage his wrist and staunch the bleeding, although the cloth was soaked through entirely by this point.
Broken glass littered the floor and the curtains blew in the wind. Blade, minus his parka, lay face down at the feet of Ilsa Grunt, unmoving. Ilsa was in the process of coiling up her whip. She looked down at the corpse of England's "best" agent with disdain, then, upon hearing them come in, her stony expression turned to concern.
"Zigesfeld!" she cried, and ran to him. She helped the guard sit him down in an armchair. "What happened to you?"
"He crashed his bike," the guard explained, panting. "His hand was caught in the wheels."
Zigesfeld was whimpering and crying like a kicked dog, clutching his wounded arm, blood oozing from the stump. Ilsa softly petted his hair, attempting to sooth him and reassure him. He was grateful.
Nearby, Steranko was working at his desk, as if nothing untoward had happened, as if there weren't two corpses in his castle and an intruder hadn't killed one of his men and injured a second. He looked up, absently, at the three of them, and frowned.
"Oh, for God's sake, Grunt," he said, "get him out of here, he's bleeding all over the rug."
Ilsa shot Steranko a fierce glare, but said nothing. To Zigesfeld, she said, "Come on, we'll get you to the emergency room." To the guard, she said, "Help me with him." The guard nodded and together they assisted Zigesfeld in walking out.
"And send someone in here to clean this mess up!" Steranko yelled after them. He frowned and threw a pen across the room which hit Blade's corpse in the head.
~*~
A trip to the emergency room had stopped the bleeding, and the doctors had repaired Zigesfeld's ruined forearm as much as they could, but even if they could reattach his severed hand, it was pulverized beyond recognition in the wheels of his ATV. He sulked all throughout the limo ride back to the castle later that evening, his arm in a sling. Ilsa sat beside him in the backseat and occasionally patted his shoulder reassuringly.
Once back at the castle, the two of them went into the study. Blade's body was gone, and some repairmen were busy fixing the broken window, but there was no sign of Steranko.
"Where is Augustus?" Ilsa asked.
"In the foundry," one of the repairmen replied.
Ilsa nodded. By "the foundry," the man meant the formerly disused wine cellar. It was an absolutely cavernous, multi-level room that once had held the wine stores of Steranko's ancestors. Never much of a drinker, Steranko had never used the cellar for anything until recently when he had the room converted into a makeshift foundry. Where once were thousands of racks of bottles were tons of equipment and electronics. The centerpiece of the room was now a gigantic smelting cauldron filled with molten gold. Workers in hardhats scurried about like ants, and Steranko surveyed everything from his position on one of the upper levels, where he had a writing desk and some books.
Ilsa and Zigesfeld found him standing at the railing looking down into the foundry, addressing the chief of the workers.
"Have you melted down the last batch of Germany's gold?" he asked.
"Yes sir," replied the chief workman.
"Good," Steranko said, ignoring them for the moment. "Begin converting them into coins. And make sure the cauldron is ready for the next batch. I have a feeling that Mr. Lefevre's replacement is going to sign over France's gold very soon."
The chief nodded and then Steranko turned and sat at his desk. Finally he looked up and noticed the two of them standing there, Ilsa with her hands on her hips, looking annoyed, and Zigesfeld, his arm still slung, looking morose.
"Well?" he said.
"Well, what are we going to do?" Ilsa said.
"The usual method," Steranko replied absently, turning to write something in an account book. "Put the bodies in a car and--"
"Not that!" Ilsa snapped.
"Then what?" Steranko snarled. He sounded very annoyed.
"Zigesfeld's hand of course!"
Now Steranko turned back and finally seemed to notice that his henchman was missing his hand, and he blinked. Zigesfeld shuffled his feet nervously. The longer he dwelled on the loss of his hand, the more he realized being one-handed was going to severely impede him in both his duties as Steranko's butler and his top assassin. Fear, which he normally did not feel, was beginning to not in his stomach. The fear that Steranko might now consider him not worth keeping around.
But what Steranko said was, "What did you have in mind?"
"I want to talk to the metallurgists," Ilsa said. "I've been thinking that if they could make my...astounding necklace then perhaps they could fashion a suitable prosthetic for Zigesfeld."
Steranko nodded. "They're busy, though," he said.
"The workers can finish minting your precious coins, Augustus," Ilsa snapped. "But I believe you can spare your scientists for a few moments. France's gold isn't going to arrive for some time, anyway."
"Fine," Steranko growled.
A few minutes later, they were standing in an antechamber just off the foundry floor, speaking with Dr. Geist, Steranko's chief metallurgist. The cluttered stone room served as a sort of laboratory and workshop for the lab-coated scientists Steranko kept in his employ. Geist was nodding intently as Ilsa explained what she wanted from him and his team.
"As it so happens, a fully functioning prosthetic is something we've been working on and attempting to patent these last couple of years," Geist said. "But we got sidetracked by Mr. Steranko's, uh...personal project."
Steranko glowered at this. Smiling nervously, Geist went over and retrieved a metal lockbox and brought it over, placing it on the worktable. Unlocking it, he lifted the lid, revealed the metallic, skeletal framework of a jointed metal hand.
"We got as far as designing its actual look before we shelved the project," Geist said. "We never got as far as cybernetics." He looked at the blank stares of all three and chuckled. "Uh, what I mean is, we hadn't quite worked out a means of connecting the hand to nerves and tendons and things of that nature."
"Well, you're going to find a way, is that understood?" Ilsa said.
"For that I'll require a very skilled cybernetics expert," Geist said.
~*~
Three days later, Zigesfeld, shirtless, was sitting in the laboratory alongside one of the worktables, arm stretched out on the table, held in place with some straps, watching as Dr. Geist and the cybernetics expert Steranko had flown in, a Dr. Kitaj of India, put the finishing touches on what Zigesfeld had come to regard as the "stump cuff," since it was a metal band that went over his severed wrist with sockets and wires.
Some surgery had been involved, as Dr. Kitaj had been forced to weld the framework of the cuff to Zigesfeld's bones and also connect various wires and tubes to his muscles. It was amazing how quickly they had gotten it done.
Now all that was left was to actually attach the completed hand. It was bulky-looking, with large joints in the knuckles and fingers, but the two scientists considered it a masterpiece of their cooperation: Kitaj's mechanical expertise combined with Geist's flair for metalworking. Although Zigesfeld understood that the actual hand was made of some kind of titanium alloy, Geist had gone as far as to give all of its exposed metal parts a thin coating of gold.
Ilsa stood nearby, watching intently as Kitaj hefted the hand with some effort and brought it over to the table where a goggled Geist stood with a small soddering torch. Working together the pair positioned the hand's large wrist-joint directly in front of the cuff. Zigesfeld tilted his head curiously as Geist handed Kitaj the soddering iron and the Indian scientist began using it to connect and combine the necessary wires. Then it was simple matter of "plugging" the hand in, which was done with an audible clicking sound.
"Well?" Ilsa said expectantly.
Geist removed his goggles, sweaty, and said, "I think it's done. Dr. Kitaj, would you do the honors?"
Kitaj nodded and unbuckled the straps holding Zigesfeld's arm to the table, then Zigesfeld stood up and lifted the arm. He frowned. The bulky golden hand was heavy, but with some minor effort he was able to raise his forearm. He tried to flex the fingers but they merely twitched. His frown deepened and he concentrated, and the thick metal fingers curled inward, then outward. He smiled, clenching and unclenching his new hand experimentally.
"Amazing," Ilsa said.
"And it's strong as hell," Geist said. He ought to know, He'd designed the hydraulics. "Here," he said, hefting a fist-sized chunk of stone, a discarded piece of masonry. He placed it into the hand. "Make a fist around that."
Zigesfeld blinked, and then looked at the rock. He curled the metal fingers around the stone, heard it crack, then he clenched and the thing just broke apart into pebble-sized chunks and crumbled to the floor, leaving nothing but dust in the metal hand's fist.
His eyes went wide as saucers. He'd always prided himself on his exceptional physical strength. Despite his relatively slim build, Zigesfeld had always been a very strong young man. But he never dreamed he could crush stones into dust with his hand! A wide grin formed on his features, and, turning, he swung the fist down, towards the worktable. It broke in half, spilling delicate instruments everywhere. Zigesfeld laughed.
He whirled, seemingly, to the two scientists. Geist and Kitaj both recoiled, but Zigesfeld ignored them. Instead he charged at the far wall, balled up his metal fist, and swung it at the wall with everything he could muster. The hand slammed into the wall with such force that the room shook slightly and an enormous crack formed in the stone from floor to ceiling. He hopped up and down excitedly.
A hand touched his arm. He spun, raising the mechanical hand to strike whoever it was, but stopped upon seeing it was Ilsa. She smiled and took the large metallic hand in hers and stroked it. Zigesfeld felt nothing but he smiled his crooked and affectionate smile nonetheless.
"Now, now," she said sternly, "you must'nt ruin any more of Dr. Geist's things, Zigesfeld. I'm certain you'll find more constructive ways to impliment your new toy later."
Zigesfeld nodded, and thoughts of crushing a victim's skull came unbidden, but not unwelcome, into his mind.
Releasing his hand, Ilsa said, "Now, then, I have to go to the United States. Would you like to drive me to the airport?"
After a moment, Zigesfeld nodded eagerly. Ten minutes later, Zigesfeld, dressed in his usual attire of a black business suit and matching tie, was marching out to his parked Saab 900 Turbo. In his flesh and blood hand, Zigesfeld held a black leather glove. Even he knew that walking around with a shining gold mechanical hand would draw too much attention.
With some effort, he pulled the glove over the metal hand. It was a snug fit and the large joints bulged the leather at odd angles, but overall it did the trick. He flexed the fingers and the glove held. He smiled. He was certainly going to enjoy putting this new hand to use. Just let that Agent Corben he'd heard Ilsa and Steranko discussing come near him, and he'd punch his smug American face in. Opening the driver's side door, he slid behind the wheel of the Saab and waited for Ilsa.
The End