The room was long and narrow. The two side-by-side beds dominating the room almost touched. A small writing desk half-blocked the bathroom door.
"Where's the rest of the room?" Remo wanted to know, tossing the Royal Sceptre onto one bed.
"Ask Smith."
"Smith recommended this place, I take it," Remo said, throwing himself onto the bed beside the Sceptre.
"Hush, Remo," Chiun admonished, his eyes transfixed by the TV screen.
"What are you watching? It sounds like a beer commercial."
"Do not be ridiculous. And I am beginning to change my mind about the British."
"So am I."
"Like the Americans, they do produce one thing that is good. And it is their British daytime dramas."
"This is a soap opera?" Remo cocked an ear. "Sounds more Australian than English."
Chiun shrugged. "What is the difference?"
"You tell me. Anything on the news about our little escapade?"
"I do not know. I have been watching this program."
"How are we going to know if we're getting results?"
"We will know. Now, be quiet. I am enjoying this."
"You are? I thought you got tired of American soap operas years ago."
"These are different. They do not corrupt the stories with sex."
"Wonderful," Remo said, leaning back. "Wake me up when it's over."
"It is over now," Chiun said, standing.
Remo looked around for the remote control. But all he found were a broken radio and a digital clock that displayed military time.
Giving up, he got up to change the channel by hand. He flipped by a high-school quiz show, a documentary entitled The History of Bamboo, and an Untouchables rerun.
"If this is typical British TV fare," Remo said, "I'm not very impressed by it. Half of it's American reruns and the rest is like our public TV."
Chiun said nothing. He was examining the Royal Sceptre.
"You think they'll actually expose themselves just to get that thing back?" Remo asked, settling back onto the bed.
"Perhaps. In any event, I expect to hear from them soon. "
"How's that?"
"I left a ransom note with the guard at Whitehall."
Remo shot up again. "What!"
"They should be arriving soon."
"Who exactly are 'they'?" Remo asked worriedly.
"I do not know. Perhaps boobies. Possibly soldiers."
Remo sat bolt upright. "Coming here?"
"Oh, do not worry, Remo. They do not know the room number. Just the hotel name."
Remo rushed to the door, saying, "I'd better lock it."
"The lock is broken," Chiun said casually.
"Damn. That's right. So we just sit here is that it?"
"You have a better plan?"
"I don't have any plan at all."
"Then sit quietly. I wish to meditate."
Remo returned to the bed. "I don't know why I let you get me into these situations."
"It is because you trust me implicitly."
"Really? I always thought it was because I'm gullible."
Chiun beamed. "That too."
Chapter 23
In the predawn darkness of his Folcroft office, Dr. Harold W. Smith felt his gorge begin to rise.
The glowing terminal was nauseatingly green. But its unpleasant color was not what made his stomach bubble and roil like a chemical experiment gone awry.
With one hand Smith reached into his right-hand desk drawer. He fumbled his fingers around the necks of several bottles.
With nervous hands he opened one and popped two pills into his mouth, dry. He coughed them down, his eyes never wavering from the screen. They tasted bitter going down. Aspirin. Smith had wanted Alka-Seltzer. He found the other bottle by feel and shook out a tablet, with the consequence that a dozen tablets rattled over the desktop and onto the floor.
Smith brought one to his mouth and began chewing it like a candy wafer. It was only six steps to his water dispenser, but Smith refused to leave his seat.
As he chewed the tablet to bits, swallowing the bland chemical grit, Smith began to admit to himself that he might have committed a tactical error.
He should have sent Remo and Chiun after P. M. Looncraft.
Smith's reasoning was that Looncraft was an agent of the British government-or possibly one of its ministries or departments. A rogue operation, perhaps. As Smith saw it, getting to the top was more important than getting Looncraft.
A mistake. Events were moving more swiftly than Smith had suspected.
The Global News Network was carrying stories of the softness in the treasury-bond market. P. M. Looncraft's own reporters were quoting his cautious but leading statement that Looncraft had heard of the rumors, but could not say any more except that if true, it was a troubling development, not only for Wall Street but also for the U. S. economy.
It was the dead of night in Rye, New York. But in Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong, trading was heavy. Key stocks were being dumped across the board as investor uncertainty over the future of the American economy fueled a skittishness that had not completely abated since Dark Friday. What had begun as a nervous profit-taking exercise was fast becoming a panic sell-off.
The dollar was down against the yen. Even Nostrum-currently the darling of investors-was taking a beating. And if Nostrum fell, like Global Communications before it, it would take the rest of the market with it.
As the latest Reuters stock quotations marched across the top of Harold Smith's screen, he pounded the desk with an angry fist.
"I should have sent them after Looncraft," he said again, his voice bitter.
Now it was too late. Looncraft was fueling the panic. It was deliberate. There could be no doubt about it. His acquisition of Global Communications had been the key to it all. It had kicked off the first panic, weakening the market. But it had obviously been a goal unto itself. First, as a propaganda organ, and now, like the use of plants in Reuters, a way of fanning the flames further.
As the Far East traded at a frantic pace, Smith desperately worked to figure out where this was going, all thoughts of attempting a computer trace of Looneraft's superior gone from his mind. Looncraft, Dymstar d was hours from opening, its computer inoperative.
Smith went back to the files he'd siphoned from it and tried to make the pieces come together into a plausible scheme.
Somehow, some way, Looncraft's superiors intended to gain control of the United States and remake it into a bizarre extrapolation of what it might have become had there never been an American Revolution.
But how? Smith wondered. The Cornwallis Guard numbered fewer than three thousand men nationwide. The Scientologists had more manpower than that. It obviously had been set up as a death squad or enforcement arm, but its numbers were pitifully small for an occupying army.
There were U. S. military officers in the Loyalist group, including three generals. But three generals weren't enough to take over all four branches of the military.
Smith had to assume the Vice-President was part of the plot. There could be no doubt what was meant by the term "loyalists."
But who were these conscripts? The President was one of them. Was it possible that somehow the Vice-President, working through the President, was going to hand over the country?
Smith shook his head even as the thought occurred. No, that could not be. The checks and balances built into the American democratic system made that impossible. There were not enough members of Congress on either list. Congress would revolt, and the military would stand by the Constitution. Of that, Smith had no doubt.
No, it was not a coup. Or at least a coup was not going to trigger the master plan.
Smith went to the Crown file. There was no record of Crown Acquisitions, Limited, ever having acquired any U.S. firm. Technically Crown was a separate entity from Looncraft, Dymstar d. Looncraft's apparent control of it had less to do with LD h this plot.