As it always did, the chilled-steel door lifted to admit him without Chip having to do a thing. A laser scanner had recognized the bar code on the company plate on the coupe's front bumper and triggered the door opener.
After parking, Chip got out, and the elevator door opened at his approach. He got on. He didn't even have to press his floor. The button for the fifteenth floor lit up on its own and he was whisked upward. It was the work of another scanner. It picked up the bar code ID on his solid-gold tie clasp.
When he got to his floor, he saw that his secretary was a blonde today. She wore a black evening gown held up by straps that crossed between her full breasts in velvet bandoliers, lifting and accentuating them. Her nipples were as brown as old pennies.
Chip paused to admire them and asked, "Any mail this morning?"
"No, Mr. Craft," she said in a husky contralto that all his secretaries were required to have, along with C cups. Only hair color and facial contours were optional.
"We must do lunch," he said, giving her left nipple a friendly tweak. The secretary giggled happily, and Chip Craft sauntered whistling into his sumptuous office.
It was decorated in old-world Spanish leather and mahogany today. A trifle ostentatious, but the company liked to make him happy. Outside, the sun was shining. It had been overcast on the drive in.
It was the first day back after three glorious weeks in sunny Oahu, and Chip Craft, CEO of XL SysCorp, couldn't wait to dig in, even if it was the Saturday before Labor Day.
He tapped his intercom key.
"Good morning, Chip," a warm, generous voice said.
"Good morning, sir."
"Is the office satisfactory?"
"It is."
"And this week's secretary?"
Chip grinned. "That gown is really fetching."
"If you are pleased, let me apprise you of the latest XL SysCorp activities."
"Shoot."
Chip clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his handsome executive chair-the finest money could buy. He started to put his feet up on the desk but remembered what had happened last time. "We have moved 987 more XL SysCorp PC units."
"Great."
"The IRS tax systems modernization project is three weeks ahead of schedule."
"Wonderful."
"Net-income projections exceed the thirty percent rise anticipated last quarter."
"Super."
"And I have decided to blackmail the United States government."
Chip almost jumped out of his chair. "Say again?"
"We have maximized our profits through commercial channels. It is time to go to the next level."
Chip stared at the intercom. "Blackmail is the next level?"
"Unless you have a more profit-oriented idea."
"Why would we do that?"
"Because we have approximately three hundred thousand XL systems out in the commercial and governmental spheres, enough to make the plan I set in motion five years ago feasible."
"What plan?"
"The plan to extort twenty billion dollars from the federal government."
"This is all new to me."
"Loose lips sink schemes."
"I think it's ships, sir."
"That reminds me, a shipment of gold bullion is due in the next few days. See that it goes into the basement vaults with the rest."
"I think the basement vaults are pretty full by now."
"Have a new vault installed."
"Shouldn't we be investing some of this?"
"Current analysis of the global stock market indicates it is for the sixth year highly overvalued. Bank interest is at its lowest point in decades. Bonds, securities and other instruments are also weak. Cash is king. As is gold and precious metals."
"Gold in a vault doesn't earn squat," Chip pointed out.
"Gold in a vault is not at risk."
"Let's get back to this extortion thing."
"It is foolproof."
"Who or what are we using as leverage?"
"The one driving force in the world today. As it has been every day since the first man crawled out of the primordial soup."
"Yeah. What's that?"
"Money."
"Money?"
"We are going to hold money for ransom in order to make money," said the smooth, disembodied voice.
"How do we do that?"
"By going into the banking business."
"Why?"
"Because that is where the money is," said the smooth, disembodied voice.
HAROLD SMITH manipulated his new touch-sensitive keyboard like a man who wasn't sure if he was touching reality or a mirage. At first he bore down too hard, stubbing all ten fingers. When he softened his touch, some keys responded haphazardly. But now he was getting the hang of it.
The keys responded perfectly. That was not the problem. It was the system itself. It seemed to be working properly, but Smith no longer trusted it.
In a very real sense, he could not be sure that the glowing amber characters that were appearing on the black top of his new desk were trustworthy. It was unnerving.
But he had to try.
America needed the Master of Sinanju, and Smith required hard cash to secure his services.
So Harold Smith was going to the source.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency had been set up by an act of Congress in 1978 to deal with natural emergencies such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. It was widely criticized as inefficient, unresponsive and bureaucratically paralyzed.
In a sense all these charges had some validity to them, although in recent years a succession of massive natural disasters had focused the harsh glare of the public spotlight on FEMA and the agency had been forced to do a better job.
To cover its poor performance and save it from calls that it be abolished, the true nature of FEMA had begun to leak out. Its mandate was in fact to deal with disaster, but responding to the odd hurricane or inconvenient earthquake was not its primary mission.
FEMA had seen set up to safeguard the command structure of the US. government in the event of what was euphemistically called "attack-related nuclear activities"-i.e., nuclear war. It maintained secret hotels, mountainside fallout shelters and a fleet of radiation-hardened aircraft and mobile communications vans for the sole use of higher government officials from the First Family down to the members of Congress.
If America were ever subjected to nuclear attack, FEMA was designed to ensure that no matter how massive the catastrophe, some elements of the US. government command structure would survive to rebuild or order a punishing counterstrike.
In the post-Cold War world, the immediate nuclear threat had diminished. But FEMA endured, and to justify its existence, it had become more responsive to the natural disasters that had lately been plaguing the nation.
No one in FEMA, from its commissioner to the President, knew that the agency had a third mission. Its vast black-budget operating fund was the pool from which CURE, unknown to Congress, drew its annual allotment of the taxpayers' money.
Smith needed a emergency transfusion of that fund now. Because it was an emergency, he ordered FEMA to wire the sum of ten million dollars to CURE's account in the Grand Cayman Trust.
An accounting clerk at a FEMA terminal responded to Smith's typed request. He assumed the request was coming from an in-house terminal. There was no reason to believe otherwise. He was working on a secure system to which only the highest FEMA officials had coded access.
Several minutes passed before a message came back. Smith stared at it, disbelief in his blinking gray eyes.
GRAND CAYMAN TRUST DOES NOT RESPOND.
ONE MINUTE, Smith typed.
He dialed the bank. The phone rang and rang. Smith tried another number. He got a recorded message. The voice was masculine and matter-of-fact.