"Don't lie to me, you smug tight-ass!" he screamed.
"As you can plainly see, there was no gold in this vault."
"Say that again, I dare you."
"I said," insisted Harold Smith in a brittle but restrained tone of voice, "there is no gold in this vault. Not today, not yesterday, not ever. Folcroft is a private hospital. And I deeply resent the implication that it is a center for illegal activity."
The IRS agents watched with stunned expressions as Harold Smith stood his ground. A glint of admiration came into their eyes. They had never seen anyone stand up to their boss and hold his own. Most people were reduced to a heap of quivering jelly under the hard radiation of Big Dick Brull's personality.
"You're a damn liar." Not taking his eyes off Smith's stiff face, Brull spoke out of the side of his mouth. "How much gold would you say?"
"Easily a couple million dollars," Phelps said.
"Fine. Excellent. Assuming two million, stored here for a minimum of five years, no taxes reported or paid on it, we have 1.4 million dollars in taxes due, including interest and penalties."
"Your math is off," said Smith. "It would be 1.3 million."
"Then you admit to the gold?"
"No. And you have to produce gold in order to levy taxes on it."
"I'll have sworn depositions from these fine, upstanding IRS agents that they saw the gold."
"They also saw a giant butterfly dismember three DEA agents," Smith retorted.
"We won't mention that part," Brull said quickly.
"But I will be sure to bring it up in tax court," said Smith.
Big Dick Brull's ankles began to tremble with the strain of holding his bantam body off the concrete. He heightened the fury of his glare to its maximum intensity. Harold Smith met it with a cool confidence that would have chilled a polar bear to the bone.
It was a standoff, pure and simple. Gradually Big Dick Brull lowered himself back to his normal height.
"Explain these computers."
"Folcroft used to be a sociological research center. The computers are left over from those days."
"Bullshit! Those are IDC mainframes. You don't mothball expensive equipment like that! You use it or you sell it."
"You have your answer."
"No, I don't have my fucking answer. I don't have anything near an answer. You're dirty, Smith. This place is dirty." Brull shook a blunt finger into Smith's unflinching face. "I don't know what kind of dirt, but I'm going to find it, sweep it up and make you eat it. That's a promise."
"Good luck," said Smith without emotion.
"You know what I can do to you?"
"You have already done it," Smith said bitterly. "You barged in to my place of work, disrupted my staff, threatened some, fired others and you are preparing to deinstitutionalize patients you know nothing about."
"Folcroft belongs to the service. And your ass belongs to the service. Until we get to the bottom of this, you're confined to this building under administrative detention."
"I don't believe you have the legal authority to do that."
"I have the power to toss your scrawny ass in the federal pen at Danbury if you dare set foot off these grounds."
"Then I remain under house arrest?"
"You're goddamn right. You're going to run this place under my direct supervision. Let's see how long it takes for Folcroft's true nature to reveal itself."
"I accept your challenge," said Harold W Smith thinly.
As they marched him up the stairs, they heard a distant drumming.
Doom doom doom doom...
"What's that?" Big Dick Brull demanded.
"We don't know," said Agent Phelps. "But we've been hearing it off and on since we took over."
"You. Smith. What's that sound?"
"I have no idea," said Harold W Smith truthfully, wondering what on earth could be making the noise. It struck his ears as vaguely familiar, but he could not for the life of him place it.
"YOU HEARD that drumming, too?" Remo asked Chiun after the IRS agents and Harold Smith had finished clumping up the basement steps.
"Yes."
"Sound familiar to you?"
Chiun's eyes became knife-blade creases in the wizened dough of his face. "Yes, but I cannot recall where I have heard this strange sound."
They continued listening. Soon the sounds faded away as if whatever was beating on the drum-if it was a drum-was going down a very long corridor.
They stepped from the shadows. "This isn't getting any better for Smith," said Remo.
"He is equal to that loud cockroach."
"Maybe one on one, but that little red-faced jerk represents the IRS. And they've definitely got a mad on for Smith."
Chiun sniffed derisively. "They do not suspect who they are dealing with. Emperor Smith controls mighty armies, spies beyond number and vast wealth greater than that of the pharaohs."
"None of which he can touch right now. Look, his computers are down for good, he can't reach the President, and the IRS is riding him hard. Let's face it. CURE is finished."
"It is finished when Smith informs me that it is finished. Until then, we fight on."
"Fine. You fight on. I have an errand to run."
"What erand?"
Remo lifted his T-shirt and tapped a letter tucked into his waistband. "I slipped this out of Smith's office when no one was looking. It's that dippy letter he thought was so important. I gotta mail it."
"Hold," said Chiun, lifting a long fingernail.
Remo's eyes flicked to the fingernail and too late back to his waistband. He never felt the letter leave, so expertly did Chiun remove it.
"You are not the only one who can make things disappear," Chiun said aridly.
"What manner of address is this-FPO and a number?"
"Means Fleet Post Office. Guy's probably in the Navy."
The Master of Sinanju lifted the letter to the weak 25-watt bulbs and frowned unhappily.
"Bad manners to read someone else's mail," Remo pointed out.
"It is stupid to mail a letter whose contents one does not know in case it bears tidings that could harm the mailer."
And the Master of Sinanju blew on the flap once, then slipped a fingernail in. The flap snapped open without tearing. He withdrew the letter. Remo crowded around to read it, too.
Dear Nephew,
Congratulations. This is the year you reach your twenty-first birthday. You are now ready to take your place in the world and no longer require or are due any further assistance from me, whether financial or spiritual. Please accept my sincere good wishes on your future, and under no circumstances return to visit the place where you were raised.
Dutifully, Uncle Harold
"Nice guy," said Remo. "He just told his nephew to kiss off forever."
"It is his right," said Chiun.
"Well," said Remo. "This doesn't concern us. It's family stuff. I'll mail the letter and we can forget it." Chiun handed the letter and envelope back and said with a disdainful sniff, "Whites have no appreciation of family ties."
Remo took the letter, stared at it and said, "Aren't you going to reseal it?"
"You are the postman. That is your task." "What are you going to do?"
"Find Beasley! "
Frowning, Remo resealed the letter with his tongue. It tasted so bitter he spit his mouth dry. And when he remembered who must have licked the flap in the first place, he spit twice more for good measure.
Remo slipped from the basement and made his way to the brick wall that enclosed the Folcroft grounds on three sides. He went over the fence in one leap, landed on the other side and went in search of his car.
He found it down the road with an IRS seizure sign clipped under a window wiper with a yellow Denver boot immobilizing the right front tire.