"Exactly."
"Little Father, the Irish terrorists are called the IRA. Irish Republican Army. The IRS is the Internal Revenue Service."
Chiun squeaked, "Those who tax! The taxing ones?"
"Exactly."
"They must not find my gold. Quickly! We must go to guard it."
"What about Smith?" asked Remo.
"I have placed him in the sleep from which only I can awaken him. The fool attempted to end his life with poison."
"Just because the IRS landed on him?"
"No doubt he is guilty of skimming vast sums from his overseers. That can await. The gold must be moved."
"We move that gold, and the IRS will be on us like white on rice-excuse the expression."
"Then we must dispatch these IRS confiscators."
"We can't do that," said Remo.
"Why not? If we kill them all, they will leave us alone."
"You don't know the IRS. They'll keep sending out agents until they get what they want."
"Then we will kill them all!" Chiun proclaimed.
"They'll just keep swearing in more agents. It's a bottomless pit. Forget it, Little Father. We gotta solve this some other way."
"What other way?"
"I don't know, but we can't hang around this stairwell forever. Let's make tracks."
"I would rather make IRS bodies."
But the Master of Sinanju followed Remo down the stairs on cat feet.
On the way down, they heard a steady beating like a drum.
Doom doom doom doom...
"What the hell is that?" Remo wondered aloud.
"I do not know and I do not care," sniffed Chiun.
"Sounds familiar."
"We have more important matters before us than some lunatic beating an animal skin."
Remo stopped abruptly in front of a fire door. "Sounds like it's on the other side."
But when he flung open the door, there was only a deserted corridor. And the drumming had stopped.
Shrugging, Remo started back down. They reached the basement undetected.
Chiun flew to the triple-locked door and saw that it was secure.
"We must guard this with our lives," he said grimly.
"Look, can you hold the fort for an hour or so?" Remo asked, anxious voiced.
Chiun looked up at him suspiciously.
"Better than you, but what is so important that you would leave the one who raised you up from the muck of Christianity and other Western nonsense to defend the gold of his village alone?"
"There was something else my mother said," Remo said.
"What was it?"
"She said I knew my father."
"Then she is not your mother, for she lied to you."
"Her exact words were, 'He is known to you, my son.' She called me 'son.' I gotta find out who she is, Chiun."
And seeing the troubled light in his pupil's dark eyes, the Master of Sinanju said, "I give you one hour. But what do you expect to accomplish in so brief a time?"
"I'm going to get her picture," said Remo in a strange voice.
But before the Master of Sinanju could question his obviously demented pupil further, he slipped out the side door.
Chiun took up a position before the triple-locked door, his face stern, his eyes troubled. Far more troubled than those of his pupil.
For he knew what Remo Williams did not. That he had met his father, unknowing, and must not learn the truth of his parentage. Otherwise, the Master of Sinanju might never be forgiven for concealing this truth.
Chapter 6
Harold W Smith heard the federal magistrate's charges from his hospital bed.
He was awake. They could tell that by his eyes. The attending physician had proved that he was awake even if he could not move his body by getting Smith to blink once for yes and twice for no.
It had been half a day now. A half day since the combined raids by the IRS and the DEA had overwhelmed Folcroft's virtually nonexistent defenses. A half day since the Master of Sinanju had thwarted his attempt to ingest the suicide pill that was Smith's last resort in the event of catastrophic compromise. Once before, he had been forced to take that pill. Chiun had stopped him then, too. Didn't he understand? Once CURE was no more, Smith would have to die.
Perhaps it was the memory of that last wrenching failure that had caused Smith's mouth to go dry as he took the pill into his mouth. Perhaps it was the suspicion that it was the new President's way of shutting down CURE and making certain it stayed shut down that had brought on the raids.
Smith could only surmise these things. Whatever the case, the pill would not go down his dry throat, but had lodged there instead. Chiun had caused it to pop out with his irresistible manipulations, and with that thoughtless act went Smith's final chance to end it all.
Now he lay paralyzed. Again the Master of Sinanju had been very clever. He understood that Smith would find a way-any way-to end his life if he had the strength and mobility to do so.
But as the federal magistrate droned out the charges-the titles and sections and subsections of the Revenue Code-which had come crashing down on his head like a rain of hard brick, Smith began to realize the absurdity of it all.
They thought he was some kind of drug merchant and money launderer. Where could they have gotten so ludicrous an idea?
"These charges include the willful and deliberate failure to report some twelve million dollars in income that were surreptitiously wire transferred to the Folcroft Sanitarium bank account-an account that you, Dr. Smith, have sole control over. No currency-transaction report was generated, and there was no rendering to the IRS of estimated tax payments. How do you plead to these charges? Guilty or not guilty? Blink once for guilty, twice for not."
Smith blinked twice.
"Since you have waived the right to counsel, I hereby place you under house arrest. You are not to leave these premises under any circumstance."
I am completely paralyzed, Smith thought bitterly. What is that man thinking of?
"Pending a federal trial, I have agreed to the petition of the Internal Revenue Service that they take complete operating control of this hospital pending the outcome of said trial. You may of course file a petition with the tax court if you feel this seizure is baseless or excessive."
Smith would have groaned if his throat would let him.
They would search Folcroft for contraband, if they hadn't already done so. They would find the CURE computers. Even with their data banks erased, this would raise unanswerable questions. And there was the gold stored with the computers. It had belonged to Friend. Its recovery by the Master of Sinanju and Remo meant CURE had operating capital for the coming fiscal year. It would be impossible to explain away.
As impossible as the twelve million dollars that now lay on deposit in the Folcroft bank account.
The amount could not be a coincidence, Smith realized.
During Friend's multipronged attempt to neutralize Folcroft so he could blackmail the US. banking system, the relentlessly greedy VLSI chip had infiltrated the computer links that governed the Federal Reserve wire-transfer system. Money began disappearing from bank computers all over the nation, including the CURE operating fund in the Grand Cayman Trust headquartered on Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean.
The money had disappeared. Smith had coerced Friend into returning all the rerouted funds before shutting him down for good. He had forgotten to specify the missing CURE money. It was a serious oversight, committed at the end of a very taxing operation.
Now Smith understood where the missing funds had gone to. Friend had wire transferred them to the Folcroft account. It was a final scorpion sting from an old foe who had refused to die. Folcroft was already being audited by the IRS. Friend's doing once again, Smith now realized.
No doubt Friend had also dropped a dime with the DEA.
Thus, from the oblivion of his electronic grave, Friend had exacted his final revenge upon CURE and Harold W Smith.