Identity crisis, p.18
Identity Crisis, page 18
“We require an assassin who will if necessary do our bidding for the next decade. If not two,” Harold the Grim had said.
“It is too late,” Chiun had countered. “One begins at birth. Remo is fat and sloppy. On the other hand, I am prepared to perform such service if the gold is plentiful.”
“You are very old,” had said the thoughtless and insulting white.
“I have seen but eighty summers and will see another forty before I am considered old by the measure of my ancestors.”
“What we want is much different,” Smith had said. “Please, Master Chiun. Train Remo as best you can.”
And so Remo was trained in the foolish arts that had nothing to do with Sinanju except that they were pilfered from the sun source by Chinese and Japanese thieves who copied the moves but not the soul.
Over time Remo showed promise. Over time he took to the breathing and the grace as if of Korean blood. In time, Chiun had begun to suspect that somewhere in Remo’s mongrel past, Korean blood flowed. Not just the blood of any Korean, but the blood of the heirs to his village traditions, his own ancestors.
It was ridiculous, but to think otherwise was to accept that Sinanju could be taught to anyone–even a white–with satisfactory results. This was impossible, Chiun knew. For even some of the village men had proven incapable of mastering such basics as the fundamentals of correct breathing.
No, Remo was Korean. But the Master of Sinanju did not come to this understanding until many months had passed and he had made Remo throw away his karate gi and started him on the true path to Masterhood.
In this gym of so many memories, Chiun reflected how Remo had become like a son to him, and how he had happily fallen into the role of adopted father. Many happy years had come and gone since those days.
Now, because of one enemy–a mind that was not human but a fragment of the white machines that plagued the very society that worshiped them–all was being sundered.
The organization for which they worked was no more. Emperor Smith was a willing prisoner of his own government, and Remo was determined more than ever to find his past.
This last worried the Master of Sinanju more than any of these other events, significant as they were. This time Remo would not give up. This time he was driven by the spirit of his own mother. This time he would not rest until he knew all.
And if he succeeded, if he should be reunited with the man from whose loins he originally sprang, would there be any room in his new life for the old man whom he called Little Father?
The Master of Sinanju hung his aged head and prayed to his ancestors that Remo’s father be struck down before that would happen.
Then, his heart hardening, he turned silently on his heel and went in search of his emperor.
· · ·
Big Dick Brull sat at the black glass-topped desk making telephone calls.
“His name is Harold W. Smith. Taxpayer ID number 008-16-9314. I want everything the master file has on him and I want it tonight.”
“Fax number?”
Brull looked around the office. There were two phones, a multiline ROLM office phone and a blue AT&T desk model, but no faxphone. Brull blinked. Why would the director of a hospital need two telephones?
“Get back to me personally with the raw data. I don’t see a faxphone anywhere.”
“Yes, Mr. Brull.”
Brull hit the intercom. Agent Phelps poked his head in.
“Sir?”
“Find out where these phone lines go.”
“Yes, sir.”
Twenty minutes later Phelps returned and said, “The ROLM phone line goes out on poles. We don’t find any trace of a terminal for the blue instrument.”
Brull picked up the blue receiver. The dial tone came loud and steady. “It works. It must go somewhere. Find it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Brull got up and started going through file cabinets. There were two kinds, green metal ones that looked old and oak ones that seemed ancient. Except for the futuristic desk, every stick of office furniture looked like a Salvation Army castoff.
The files contained administration and purchasing records. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“You’d think the noncompliant asshole would have computerized his own office,” Brull muttered.
He found the worn briefcase tucked between two of the filing cabinets. It was locked. It looked so worn and frayed at the edges that at first Brull thought it was simply being stored there. But when he picked it up, he found it quite heavy.
Bringing it over to the desk, Brull set it down. The catches were shut. There was a combination lock. Idly Big Dick Brull played with the numbers, but the briefcase refused to surrender to him. He set the thing aside.
It was growing cool, and an offshore breeze was coming through the break in the big picture window.
Brull tried to ignore it, but it grew stronger.
Getting out of the chair, he tried to move it so he was out of the way of the cold. But no matter where he placed the chair, the back of his head was in the draft.
Dick Brull next tried to move the desk. It was too heavy. Three or four men would be needed to relocate it.
It was while testing the desk’s weight that he found the button under the edge of the desktop.
“What have we here?” he muttered, peering under the desk and pressing the button.
Nothing happened. No secret drawer rolled open, and no hidden panel popped.
Pressing it several times brought no response.
Grumbling, Dick Brull sat down just as the telephone rang.
“Brull.”
“This is Schwoegler from Martinsburg.”
“Go.”
“We pulled the tape record, Mr. Brull.”
“What have you got for me?”
“Nothing. The space where the Harold W. Smith record should have been stored magnetically was blank.”
“Blank?”
“It seemed to have been accidentally erased.”
“Get off it. Nobody erases master-file taxpayer records, accidentally or otherwise.”
“We have no record of Harold W. Smith with that Social Security number.”
“Then go find the original paper returns. Get me every damn one.”
“Mr. Brull, that could take weeks–months.”
“Damn. Then get me his most recent returns.”
“We don’t have those in the master file.”
“Then call the people who do and have them call me. I have no time for this horseshit!” And Brull slammed down the phone.
He began going through drawers. In the bottom drawer he came upon another telephone. It was as red as a fire engine. He grabbed it by receiver and cradle and set it on the desktop.
“I’ll be damned.”
The phone had no dial, no buttons, no nothing. Just a flat red shelf where the dial should be.
“What the hell kind of telephone is this?” he muttered. The phone was disconnected. The plastic cord with its modular jack was held in loops by a knotted string.
“What kind of phone is this?” he repeated.
The main phone rang again. He snapped the receiver to his bulldog face.
“Brull.”
“Ballard from the New York office here, Mr. Brull. I was the Folcroft auditor.”
“Go ahead.”
“We have Harold W. Smith’s last three years’ 1040s here.”
“How do they look to you?”
“Average.”
“Do better than that.”
“Well, they’re absolutely average.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything falls within the statistical average. Deductions. Charitable contributions. Investments.”
“Perfectly?”
“Yes.”
“So perfect it could be designed not to trip a red flag?”
“Well, yes.”
“I knew it. He’s dirty.”
“Sir?”
“Use your head. Nobody’s returns come up perfectly average, year after year. It’s statistically impossible. Smith has been filing stealth returns configured to foil IRS radar.”
“I never heard of stealth returns.”
“That’s why you’re a fucking G-12 and I’m an assistant commissioner. Now, messenger those returns to Folcroft. I want to eyeball them myself.”
“Yes, Mr. Brull.”
Brull hung up and found himself staring at the blank red telephone again. What the hell could it mean? He looked around for a wall jack, found none and shoved the red telephone aside.
That’s when he saw the amber line.
At first it looked like a reflection on the black glass desktop, except it wasn’t a reflection. There was no amber light source in the office. Only the overhead fluorescents.
The vertical amber line floated under the black glass of the desktop like a smoldering wire.
Reaching out to touch the slick surface, Big Dick Brull froze. Ghostly lines of white symbols sprang into life under his hovering fingers. A keyboard. But there were no keys. Only the letters glowing in rows just under the black glass like metal shavings in ice.
Brull touched one experimentally. The letter A. It flashed white-hot under his touch.
Nothing happened. Just the flash. When he withdrew his hands, the keyboard symbols darkened into obscurity.
It was a touch-sensitive keyboard. No question. Capacity type. The keyboard had activated when his hand disturbed the magnetic field surrounding it. And the amber line could only be generated by a hidden computer screen. You got a line just like that if you turned on your monitor without booting up the system.
But who had turned on the screen?
“That damn black button!”
Brull reached under the desk and hit the hidden button. The amber line went away. He hit it again. It returned.
“Folcroft is not what it’s supposed to be,” Big Dick Brull chortled in a low, gleeful voice. Then his face contracted into a muscular knot. “But what the fuck is it?”
Chapter Twenty-six
Remo Williams pulled his sedan off into the woods well short of the Folcroft gate and let it coast, engine off, down to the lapping waters of Long Island Sound.
He got out, opened up the hood and pulled the spark plugs, hiding them in the hollow of a tree.
Let the IRS try and seize it now, he thought as he went down to the water and let it take his body.
Remo swam through the darkness, wide of land and low to the silty ocean floor where no one could possibly spot him. Air bubbles seeped from his parted mouth in ones and twos so tiny that when they reached the surface they would be mistaken for fish exhalations.
Using his inner compass as a guide, Remo veered toward shore again, exactly where his senses told him Folcroft would be.
A beer can floated down from above, and the faint pressure waves riding ahead of it made Remo bob out of the way.
He looked up. Against the moonlight, four wedge shapes bobbed. DEA Cigarette boats.
Remo continued on.
Another beer can blooped into the water and tumbled slowly into his field of vision. That decided Remo.
Twisting like a porpoise, he redirected his momentum upward, zeroing in on the boat directly above. One hand took hold of the propeller, steadying the boat and himself. With his right index finger, Remo peppered the sleek fiberglass hull with neat round holes.
The boat began taking on water.
Remo went on to the next.
He sank all four DEA boats in as much time as it would take to pop open a six-pack of Coors and returned to the water.
The hoarse cursing of the DEA stakeout team came through the cold water. The burbling of the boats going down drowned out the shouting.
While their feet were kicking in an attempt to tread water, Remo slipped up on them and began nipping at their heels with his hard fingers.
The frantic cries of “Shark!” cut through the water, and a mad splashing began. The DEA agents must have read somewhere that a shark can be frightened off by splashing.
Remo tugged at two more sets of heels.
The DEA responded with a rain of bullets that veered crazily in all directions once they struck water, their force dissipating. Moving fast, Remo batted them back with just enough force to sting but not injure.
The firing stopped.
Grinning in the dark silence of the sound, Remo resumed his swim.
If the DEA wanted to stake out Folcroft, they’d need a whole new team, he thought. These guys were not coming back.
· · ·
It was like something out of a nightmare.
Except that Harold W. Smith was rarely visited by night terrors. He lacked the imagination to conjure up fantasies, even in the deepest sleep. It was one of the reasons he had been chosen to head CURE. A man with imagination might see the possibilities in the near-absolute power the secret office gave one.
Yet Smith now confronted a nightmare beyond his deepest fears.
Framed in the square glass window was the mugging face of Uncle Sam Beasley, world-renowned illustrator, animator, and motion-picture studio executive, founder of the most popular and universally known theme parks in the world. And as far as the world knew, dead for nearly thirty years.
Harold W. Smith had thought him dead, too. Until an invasion of Cuba launched from American soil was traced back to Sam Beasley World in Florida, and Remo and Chiun had uncovered the truth: Uncle Sam Beasley, rumored cryogenically frozen since his death in 1965, had been brought back from the dead outfitted with an animatronic heart and artificial limbs to replace those that suffered cell damage during his long icy sleep.
Seeing the fall of Cuba near, Beasley had mounted a secret invasion force with the intention of toppling the Castro government and turning the lush Caribbean isle into the ultimate theme park–not to mention a tax-free haven from which to run his global entertainment empire.
It was mad, it was insane, and it had very nearly succeeded. Only the intervention of CURE had stopped the invasion of Cuba by one of America’s most famous and beloved corporations–and averted the embarrassing international incident that would have resulted.
In the end neither Remo nor Chiun, both of whom revered the legendary animator, could bring himself to kill Beasley. Neither could Smith in the final analysis. So he had had the man rendered harmless by the removal of his deadly hydraulic hand and institutionalized in Folcroft, where his cracked claims to be a resurrected Uncle Sam would fall on deaf ears.
“Look what I found,” Beasley said with a satisfied cackle, making his steel fist whine open and closed. There was blood on it. And a fleck of froth bubbled in the corner of Beasley’s grinning mouth.
Smith shuddered. The man was now a caricature of his folksy former self. And he was loose in Folcroft, with Smith himself trapped in one of his own padded cells.
If ever there was a nightmare for Harold Smith, this was it.
“You are not well,” Smith said in a calm voice. It was best to speak calmly to the deranged. And Uncle Sam Beasley was definitely deranged.
“Belay the bedside crap,” Beasley snapped “Whose necks did I just snap?”
“Innocent IRS agents.”
“No such thing. And that’ll teach the bastards to nickel-and-dime me into early heart failure.”
Smith changed tactics. “You have no place to go.”
“What are you talking about? I’m Uncle Sam Beasley, beloved father-figure storyteller. Hell, there isn’t a city, town or hamlet in the world where I wouldn’t be welcome. France aside, that is.”
“The world knows you’re dead.”
“You know I’m not. In fact, with my new ticker, I’m good until the Mouse’s centennial.”
“Perhaps. But you are instantly recognizable. If you set foot off these grounds, you will attract attention and have to explain yourself.”
“Good point.”
“So you see you must remain here.”
Beasley fingered his frosty mustache with a gnarled finger.
“So I must, so I must.”
“I am glad you see the true nature of your position,” said Smith through the glass.
“I do, I do. And I appreciate your pointing these things out to me.”
“Return to your room please,” said Smith, relaxing.
A chilly eyebrow crawled up from under the black eye patch in slow surprise. “Don’t you want to be let out?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t care to discuss it,” said Harold Smith.
“Suit yourself. Ta-ta.”
Harold Smith heard Uncle Sam Beasley clump away on his silver-filigreed artificial leg. He continued listening. The clumping echoed all the way down to the end of the corridor. It stopped. Smith listened for the closing of a steel door. No such sound came. Instead, the ding of the arriving elevator came distinctly.
“My God!”
The elevator doors dinged shut again over a throaty chuckling, and Harold Smith knew that Uncle Sam Beasley had been let loose on the world.
And all because of the stupidity of the Internal Revenue Service.
Smith began banging on the door and shouting loud, inarticulate words.
It was a nightmare. And it was about to get worse. Much worse. If only someone would hear him.
· · ·
The Master of Sinanju was picking the pocket of a prowling IRS agent when he heard the hoarse shouting from two floors above.
The IRS agent did not hear this shouting, of course, any more than he felt the delicate finger extract his leather wallet from his back pocket.
The agent was bent over a water bubbler, refreshing himself. The Master of Sinanju had slipped up on him like a phantom, as he had on two others, each time relieving them off their fat wallets.
So far, he had collected less than three hundred dollars, but it was at least partial repayment for all the trouble the taxidermists had caused.
The hoarse shouting caused the Master of Sinanju to retreat before the agent straightened, wiping his mouth of water.
Chiun took the stairs, floating up them like a wraith. His feet brought him to the door behind which Emperor Smith pounded and shouted like a madman.
