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  To his surprise, Smith found it under the lip of the desktop, not very far from the spot where the old stud had been. It was a recessed button, the size of a nickel and slightly rounded. Smith depressed it.

  Instantly the section of the desk directly before him illuminated. He saw the familiar sign-on screen of the CURE computer system, the scrolling of disk checking programs and finally the main-drive prompt.

  The letters, while as perfectly readable as if on a sheet of paper lying on the desk, were a warm amber, Smith was disappointed to see. He preferred cool, detached green.

  Directly below the screen, the desktop remained black. Smith brought his hands to it. Instantly the orderly letters and numbers and control keys of a keyboard shone white and distinct. It was capacitor-style keyboard. His hands entering the field changed its capacitance, illuminating the keys. Removing them caused the letters to instantly go dark.

  Smith touched a key experimentally.

  The key flashed white at his touch. It was the letter W. The W appeared on the screen in warm amber. Smith brought all ten fingers to the touch-sensitive keyboard and tried logging on.

  It was strange at first. There was no sound, no reassuring give-and-take of the keys. In fact, no keys in the physical sense. But the response was perfect-silent, efficient, accurate.

  Smith ran his virus-check program and got an instant "Clear" message.

  Then, his face grim, he settled down to work. There was a lot to do, and the ticking of his Timex-virtually the only sound in his state-of-the-art computerized office-continually reminded him that there was not a lot of time to do it in.

  Chapter 13

  Carlton "Chip" Craft tooled his brand-new metallic gold Idioci coupe-the car for the pleasure-seeking id facet of the personality according to the TV ads-past the world headquarters of XL SysCorp in the Harlem section of Manhattan where a group of raggedy picketers stopped marching in monotonous circles long enough shake their fists at him as he turned smartly and approached the garage door.

  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 p
rimary 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.

  "We regret to inform our customers that the Grand Cayman Trust is temporarily on holiday. For information on your account status, please write Box 4, Georgetown, Grand Cayman Island. Thank you for your continued patronage."

  "Impossible," Smith croaked.

  He logged onto the CURE terminal and brought up a wire-services monitoring program and typed the bank's name. The program executed with blinding speed. An amber block of text materialized on the desktop so fast it smacked of magic.

  According to UPI, the Grand Cayman Trust had abruptly shut its doors two hours into today's business. The bank board was being tight-lipped about the circumstances and were granting no interviews. There were no further details.

  Woodenly Smith returned to the waiting FEMA account clerk.

  DISREGARD INSTRUCTIONS, he typed, in his shock misspelling a word and neglecting to correct it before transmitting.

  Grimly Smith shut down his system. He was stymied. He had no backup bank, and there was no efficient way to set up a new account. Unable to draw funds, trust in his computer system or communicate with the President, he was as helpless as he felt. Which was very helpless indeed.

  His Timex continued ticking as he turned in his cracked leather executive chair to stare out the picture window overlooking Long Island Sound.

  The last of Hurricane Elvis had vanished. The sky was blue, and the sound was an expanse of cracklefinished sapphire on which returning sailboats were tacking against a steady breeze. It was an utterly calm day in the history of the United States. But a storm was growing. A storm greater than Hurricane Elvis.

  Harold Smith, unimaginative as he was, began to sense it. He did not know what shape the storm would take or what it was; he only knew that it was gathering force somewhere out there.

  And Smith was almost helpless to deal with it. Almost. For he still had his brain.

  Somehow he must find a way to bring Remo and Chiun into play without the benefit of his usually bottomless resources.

  As the day lengthened, Smith watched the patterns of sunlight dance on the sound and set the cold, objective clarity of the greatest thinking machine ever devised-the human mind-to work on a solution.

  Chapter 14

  The Master of Sinanju paced the floor of his meditation tower like a fussy hen.

  It was the end of the third hour, and his emperor had not called back.

  Emperor Smith, whose name was inscribed in the Book of Sinanju as Mad Harold, had always been predictable. It was his one virtue. Predictability.

  No matter how far the Master of Sinanju had pushed and tested his patience, Smith's need of Sinanju always overcame his resistance.

  In twenty years Chiun had come very far from the days in which he would each year ceremoniously accept from Smith a sack of gold roughly equivalent to thirty-two American dollars in return for training Remo in the art of Sinanju. It was double the traditional price of ordinary service because it had involved not actually protecting the Eagle Throne, which was worthy service, but training a sub-Korean to do so, which was not.

  Smith had assented with reluctance. Feigned reluctance. Chiun had discovered this one year when Remo was being particularly obtuse and Chiun had gone to Smith demanding quadruple tribute, knowing that the penurious Smith would refuse and Chiun would be free of the recalcitrant pale piece of pig's ear, Remo. Smith had assented with the same feigned reluctance, and Chiun had unhappily found himself stuck in the barbarian West for another bitter year.

  But he kept in mind how Smith had, in the end, paid the outrageous price. And so the next year Chiun had asked quadruple the tribute.

  Smith had assented with identical feigned reluctance.

  Twenty years of quadrupling, quintupling and sextupling the gold, as well as adding an assortment of precious gems, rare metals, silks and other riches, had brought the price into the fabulous realm of five million dollars.

  Only once had Smith balked. And the Master of Sinanju had been forced to give up his long-held hope of occupying the much-coveted realm of Disneyland as its sole owner.

  So when Harold Smith had carelessly misplaced a submarine and with it Chiun's gold, the Master of Sinanju had not hesitated to demand its immediate replacement, knowing that Smith had both the resources and an urgent need for Sinanju's services.

  Hanging up in the middle of the negotiation had been Chiun's way of hastening the process. It had worked many times in the past. Why should it not work once more?

  But three hours had passed, and no call, not a word. It was unlike Smith, who was undoubtedly under great pressure to find the submarine that had been lost.

  And so Chiun paced, his anxious eyes going often to the ugly plastic telephone that stubbornly refused to ring.

  At the end of the third hour, the Master of Sinanju could stand it no more. He stopped his furious pacing, and one yellow claw drifted out for the mute telephone. He caught himself. It would be unseemly for him to call his emperor. Emperors called their assassins in their hour of need, and not vice versa. No ancestor of Chiun had ever prostrated himself before a throne to ask if the owner desired an enemy dispatched. Court jesters sought work. Concubines sought work. Sometimes headsmen sought heads to be lopped off.

  Not Sinanju. Emperors sent emissaries to the village rightfully called the Pearl of the Orient, and the Masters of Sinanju would make the arduous journey to the troubled thrones and, agreements struck, the work was done.

  No, Chiun would not call Mad Harold, the unpredictable.

  He resumed his pacing. But ten minutes of pacing proved just as aggravating as waiting.

  The Master of Sinanju flung himself down the steps to the lower floors of his castle. "Remo. Remo. There is no word from Smith!"

  "Big deal," came Remo's voice.

  Chiun hurried to the room from which the voice came.

  He found Remo seated on a reed mat before a television set. There was one in almost every room in Castle Sinanju, thanks to the Home Shopping Channel and a Gold Card provided by Smith.

  "What news of the submarine?" he demanded. "The President just gave a press conference."

  "What did the gluttonous one say
?"

  "Not much. There's a sub missing, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. The North Koreans are swearing up and down they had nothing to do with any of it. And the Navy's trying to pin blame on some admiral no one can find named Smith."

  Chiun clenched his fists. "It must be found."

  "They've got subs out looking."

  "Remo, these are your people who are missing. Your fellow sailors."

  "I was a Marine."

  "Is not a sailor a Marine?"

  "Not exactly."

  "You cannot stand by and let them perish."

  "I don't work for Smith anymore," Remo said flatly. He changed the channel.

  "Strike a bargain. Make him find your long-lost forebears with his oracle, in return for succoring the poor, hapless sailors."

  "What happened to 'they aren't important'?"

  "They are not," Chiun snapped. "To me. To you, they matter. To Smith, they matter. If the sailors are found, the gold will be found."

  "Not unless they stole it," Remo pointed out.

  "The traitorous thieves!" shrieked Chiun, lifting shaking fists to the ceiling. "If you find their fingerprints or teeth marks on my gold, Remo, make them suffer terribly for what they are putting me through."

  "No deal."

  The phone rang, and Chiun's eyes locked on the insistent instrument. "Quickly, answer it."

  "Why don't you answer it?" said Remo, not taking his eyes away from the TV set, where a pixieish woman was talking to a hand puppet.

  "I do not wish to appear anxious," said Chiun anxiously.

  "No problem," said Remo, rising. "I'll just handle it the way I did before."

  Chiun flashed to the phone, an ivory wraith. He scooped up the receiver and said, "Hail, Smith. Your loyal assassin awaits glad tidings."

  "Master Chiun, I am unable to replace the gold." Chiun froze. His eyes narrowed. He sucked in his breath through his teeth. Then he allowed in a reserved tone, "A cash surety might be permissible under the present emergency. No checks."

  "Er, I am afraid I cannot offer you that, either."

  "Why not?"

  "CURE appears to be bankrupt."

  "Bankrupt?"

  "Yes. We have no money."