Identity Crisis td-97 Read online

  When the submarine didn't start taking on water, Winston Smith threw the heavy pistol back at his XO and said, "So what?"

  "You don't get it, you dumb SOB, do you?"

  "No, I don't."

  "This baby has a little chip in it. You know, like the one on your stupid shoulder, only ten times smarter. It recognized your voice. You say 'arm one,' and for five minutes, you can fire it all you want. Then it cuts out. If you're caught or disarmed, the gun is useless to the enemy. You can't be shot at with your own weapon. What do you say to that, smart mouth?"

  "If you like talking to your gun, it's wonderful. If you get lonely on night drops, it's reassuring. I don't like either, so take the thing and shove it up the ass of the fool who designed it."

  "Stow the attitude. This weapon is part of the mission. I'm ordering you to carry it."

  "Can I take my H oo?"

  "Absolutely. Not."

  "Fuck."

  "Fuck," echoed the gun.

  "Is it going to repeat everything I say, too?" Winston demanded unhappily.

  The XO frowned. "No. It shouldn't have done that. Give it a whack."

  "You crazy? It's a firearm. You don't whack a loaded firearm."

  "Well, wait until the five-minute firing window closes and then whack it."

  Winston Smith lifted the gun to his forehead and said, "Blowing my brains out makes more sense."

  "Look, I gotta check in with the Pentagon. There's a chronometer somewhere on that thing. It'll tell you when the firing window is closed. You just be ready. And I don't want to see any excess hardware hanging off your sorry ass when I come back"

  The door shut, leaving Winston Smith holding the BEM gun to his forehead.

  "What the hell. If the mission goes sour, I can always make blood pudding with my brains."

  Lowering the gun, he said into it, "You suck."

  "You suck," replied the BEM gun.

  "But you suck worse," Winston Smith said amiably.

  The BEM gun said nothing to that. Smith smiled. He was starting to get the hang of this hunk of steel. It reminded him of his Uncle Harold.

  Chapter 16

  When they returned to the basement, the IRS agents were still where Remo and Chiun had left them.

  "You know," Remo said, "when they wake up, they're going to remember the gold."

  "That is why they should not wake up," Chiun said.

  "Maybe if they wake up on the roof, they wouldn't be so sure about what they saw."

  "It is a good idea. Go ahead. Carry them to the roof."

  "You could pitch in."

  "The gold has been left unguarded long enough. I must remain here."

  Remo lifted an eyebrow. "That mean you're going to help move the gold?"

  "Possibly."

  "Then you help out with these guards."

  "You may take the first."

  "I got the first two," said Remo, hefting two agents under his arms. He ran them up to the top of the stairs and deposited both inside the door where they wouldn't be seen. Chiun brought one, dragging him by the tie and taking pains that his face hit every stair riser on the way up.

  When they had a sloppy pile, Remo slipped across the hall and brought the elevator down. He held the doors open while the Master of Sinanju flung IRS agents like sacks of laundry into the car.

  "One at a time!" Remo urged.

  Three IRS agents came whizzing across the lobby like pillows shot from a repeating cannon.

  Remo scrambled to catch them all. The last one went splat against the rear of the car despite his best efforts. Remo, noticing it was the dead guy, just shrugged.

  "Is that all?" he called across the corridor.

  "Yes."

  Remo ran the cage up to the third floor and jammed the doors open while he tried to figure out the best way of getting them to the roof trap undetected. Their ties seemed of good material, so he grabbed the thick ends in two handfuls and dragged the agents around a corner to the trap.

  They didn't go up the trap ladder as smoothly as they had down the polished corridor linoleum, but nobody lost any teeth in the process, so Remo considered it a successful transfer.

  He happened to look up. The three circling birds were still up there. Remo angled around, shielding his eyes from the sun, but they remained as indistinct as ever. From the roof they looked less like birds than bats. Except bats never grew that big.

  He noticed they cast no shadows on the roof. But the angle of the sun would explain that.

  "The hell with them," he said. "I got more important things to do."

  On his way down to the third floor, Remo heard a voice and went back up again.

  "I do not know what to do," a voice was saying. "These IRS have ordered me to begin deinstitutionalizing patients. How can I do this? It is not humane."

  Another voice said, "Dr. Smith will have a fit if he ever wakes up."

  "This I know. But my hands are tied."

  "Who is the first?"

  "The deluded patient who calls himself Beasley. I cannot find any certification papers on him, so I dare not keep him, dangerous as he is. And there is no record of next of kin, and thus I do not know who to release him to."

  "It is very strange that the paperwork is not in order. Dr. Smith is quite fastidious about such things."

  The voices passed around a corner and faded away.

  Remo came down, saw the elevator had been sent back to the first floor and made for a fire door.

  A drumming sound penetrated from the other side. He hesitated. It continued, a doleful noise like a tireless but bored child beating a toy drum.

  Doom doom doom doom...

  Remo hit the door with his hand, and the sound retreated down the stairs. He flashed down to the next landing, but there was nothing there.

  The sound continued somewhere down the concrete stairwell. This time Remo went over the rail, hands flat to his sides, and landed on the first floor.

  The sound was suddenly above him now. Reversing, he took the steps five at a time, and while the sound was unhurried, what was making it was not. It beat him back to the third-floor landing.

  He thought he saw something that looked like a pink powder puff melt into the shut fire door. Remo blinked. The blotch of pink was gone. He went to the door and looked through the vertical slit window above the latch. The corridor was empty except for a passing physician.

  "Ah, the hell with whatever you are, too," said Remo.

  Returning to the basement, he told the Master of Sinanju, "Bad news, Little Father."

  "What?"

  "The IRS has told the staff to begin releasing patients."

  "The wicked Dutchman, too!"

  "He's still there. But they're about to let Beasley go."

  "This must not happen."

  "Yeah, the only way to head this off is to put Smith back behind his desk. But I don't think we can trust him.

  "We have no choice." The Master of Sinanju looked from Remo to the gold and back again. His face tightened like a spiderweb. "I will attend to Smith. You fetch a vehicle suitable for conveying the gold of Sinanju away from this place."

  "Gotcha," said Remo. He slipped out the side door.

  Chapter 17

  When Jack Koldstad awoke, he thought he was dead. It was a reasonable conclusion to jump to under the circumstances. He lay out under the open sun, a trio of shadowy vultures circling over him on lazy wings, and he could taste blood in his mouth. His front teeth wobbled when he touched them with his tongue.

  He tried to remember how he had gotten here. The last thing he could recall was the monarch butterfly. It was huge. Bigger than the birds circling overhead. It was the fiercest, most venomous-looking butterfly Jack Koldstad could ever remember seeing. Even as the memory returned, its hideous shriek reverberated in his skull.

  "Oh, God," Koldstad groaned.

  A voice said, "He's awake."

  "Who is it? Who's there?" Koldstad demanded.

  "It's me, Mr. Koldstad. Agent
Phelps."

  "Phelps! You're here, too. What happened?"

  A head came into view somewhere between the circling birds and Koldstad's recumbent head. It was Phelps. His broad face was very concerned. "Don't you recall, sir? We were in the basement. We had just broken down that big door."

  "Yes, I remember seeing gold."

  "You saw it, too?"

  "Of course. What's wrong? How did we get here? And where is here? All I see is sky."

  "The hospital roof. We all woke up looking at the sky."

  "The last thing I remember was the basement."

  "What else do you remember?" Phelps asked solicitously.

  Koldstad winced. "The black-and-orange... thing."

  "Sir?"

  "It was a giant. I'd never seen one that big."

  "Seen what, sir?"

  "Don't you remember?"

  "We've just swapped impressions, sir. And for most of us, the lights went out when that janitor, Remo, turned on us."

  "I remember him, too."

  "Did he get you, too, sir?'

  "No, it was the other... thing."

  "Thing?"

  "It clawed my face."

  "We've sent for a doctor, sir. Your face is pretty badly lacerated. Did you see what did it?"

  "Yes."

  "So you can describe it for us?"

  "It was a butterfly."

  Silence greeted Jack Koldstad's admission. Other heads came into view. Koldstad's eyes tried to focus on their faces, but the overhead sun threw them all into shadow. But they blocked out those damn tireless vultures, so that was a good thing.

  "A butterfly. Did you say butterfly?"

  "A giant of a butterfly. With monarch markings and a face."

  "You mean a butterfly face?"

  "No, it was the face of that damn phantom Chinaman."

  Silence greeted that admission, too.

  "Do you think you can stand, sir?"

  Koldstad lifted a wavering arm. "Help me up."

  Hands reached down to grasp Jack Koldstad's hands and elbows and shoulders. He felt no pain as he was hauled to his feet. No pain at all. Oh, there was some stiffness about his face, but no bones complained. And he could see fine.

  He saw a man lying on the gravel roof, his skin, hair and clothes a powdery gray.

  "Who's that?"

  "Agent Reems, Mr. Koldstad. He was with us when we woke up. I'm afraid he's dead, sir."

  "What about Skinner?"

  "Here, sir."

  A man stepped into view. He was the same powdery gray mummy color as Reems. But he was alive. His sheepish smile broke through the gray like a whalebone corset emerging from the ashes of a banked fire.

  "Skinner. What happened to you?"

  "I don't know, sir. I woke up with the rest of you. But a skinny guy with thick wrists ambushed me and threw me into the coal furnace with Reems."

  "Was his name Remo?"

  "He didn't say."

  Phelps spoke up. "It must have been that janitor, sir. It's the only explanation."

  "Okay," Koldstad said. "We don't know how we got here. That's fine. We know what we saw and who we saw."

  Phelps nodded. "The janitor."

  "And the Chinaman who attacked me," Koldstad snapped.

  "I thought you said it was a butterfly, Mr. Koldstad."

  "It was either a Chinaman dressed as a butterfly or a butterfly wearing a Chinaman's mask. Either way we're going to audit his ass to the conclusion of life on earth and back again to the dawn of time. Now, let's get off this stupid roof."

  Jack Koldstad led the way, or tried to. He started to turn in place and kept on turning. Around and around he went, like a slow top. He couldn't seem to stop. The expression on his long face reflected that like a mirror.

  The other agents watched in growing confusion. Then concern. Then horror as Jack Koldstad seemed unable to orient himself toward the open roof trap that was plainly in sight.

  Finally an agent reached out both hands to steady his superior.

  "Thanks," Koldstad said shakily. "I must be more dizzy than I thought."

  He started for the roof trap and stepped over it. He kept on going. Right to the edge of the roof. The tips of his shoes bumped the low parapet. Koldstad didn't seem to understand why he couldn't keep going forward.

  The agents were right behind him. It was a good thing. They saw that Jack Koldstad was about to step off the roof to his death.

  A half-dozen hands plucked at his coat and sleeves and piloted him back the way he came.

  "Sir, are you all right?" Phelps asked.

  "Let go! Let me go! I can make it. I'm just woozy, that's all."

  Just to be sure, the agents held his elbows as others stood by the trap to assist him down.

  Jack Koldstad got on the ladder all right. Relief came over the IRS agents' faces. He was climbing down fine. A man started after him. Then another.

  When they reached the bottom of the ladder, they found Jack Koldstad on his knees, still clutching the sides of the ladder. He might have been praying. Except he was banging his knees in alternation on the floor.

  "Sir, what is it?" asked Phelps in a nervous voice.

  "I'm okay. I'm just climbing down. Can't you see? Damn, this is a long ladder."

  "Sir, you're on the floor."

  Other agents dropped onto the floor as Jack Koldstad looked down and saw that his feet were no longer on the rungs but folded under him.

  He looked down, then up, then blank. Then very, very worried.

  "What's happening to me?" he asked in a tiny, frightened voice.

  "PARTIAL frontal lobotomy," pronounced Dr. Aldace Gerling.

  "Yes," agreed Dr. Donald Bex, one of the resident physicians.

  "Unquestionably," concurred Dr. Murray Simon.

  "But how?" IRS Special Agent Philip Phelps asked, looking down at the Folcroft hospital bed where Jack Koldstad lay sedated.

  "You can see the marks here and here," said Dr. Bex, indicating the natural indentations on either side of Koldstad's squeezed-in temples. "A very thin instrument was employed to sever the frontal lobes with absolute precision."

  Agent Phelps saw no wounds. Only the rustlike patches of dried blood on either side of Koldstad's temples.

  "Who could do that?"

  "A brain surgeon," said Dr. Bex.

  "Yes, one with consummate skill," added Dr. Simon.

  "He claimed it was a butterfly," Phelps said, dull voiced.

  Three pair of concerned eyebrows quirked upward. "Yes?"

  "A butterfly. One with the face of that Chinaman named Chiun."

  "Korean. Chiun is a Korean," said Dr. Gerling

  "You know him?"

  "I know of him. He suffers from Pseudologica Fantastica."

  "What's that?"

  "A severe character disorder whose chief manifestation is the telling of improbably outrageous stories. He comes around from time to time. A former patient, as I understand it. And very friendly with Dr. Smith."

  "Well, when we find him, he's going to do federal time. Assaulting a Treasury agent is very serious."

  "I do not believe Mr. Chiun could be capable of such violence," said Dr. Gerling.

  "Or such skill," added Dr. Bex.

  "Who's on staff with that kind of surgical expertise?" Phelps demanded.

  "Why, no one. We do not do brain surgery at Folcroft. "

  Frowning, Phelps indicated Koldstad with his square jaw. "Will he get better?"

  "No," answered Dr. Gerling. "But he will not get any worse, I do not think."

  "He couldn't seem to control himself. He almost walked off the roof. And when he tried to climb down the ladder, he couldn't stop himself."

  "A partial frontal lobotomy often produces such behaviors," said Dr. Gerling. "You see, his impulse-control centers have been damaged, resulting in a condition we refer to as disinhibition. This simply means that he will act upon any impulse that comes to mind without regard for the consequences. When his brain recovers f
rom the trauma, he will have to be retrained, but he will have limitations. He may also repeat physical or mental actions. He may be unable to stop impulsive behaviors once begun. If asked to add a column of figures, he may add them ad infinitum, until someone forcibly restrains him. This is called perseveration."

  "That means his career is over."

  "Not necessarily, but probably. And he claimed a butterfly did this to him, you say?"

  "That's what he said. But no one else saw the butterfly."

  "Has this man demonstrated delusions prior to this incident?" Dr. Simon asked.

  "Not that I know."

  The doctors crowded around, faces growing very interested now. "Can you tell us if you observed any other abnormal behavior prior to this attack?" asked Dr. Simon.

  "No."

  "And yourself? You said you were attacked, as well. By whom?"

  "It was the basement janitor. He took us all barehanded. I never saw hands move that fast. Bruce Lee's ghost couldn't have touched him."

  Dr. Bex furrowed his brow. "Basement janitor?"

  "His name was Remo."

  The doctors exchanged puzzled glances. "I know of no basement janitor by that or any other name," Dr. Gerling said ponderously. "And you say he defeated eight armed men with only his bare hands?"

  "He was faster than light. We never got off a shot."

  The doctors crowded closer. They had surrounded him now.

  Agent Phelps didn't like the way they were looking at him, so he backed out of the hospital room saying, "I have to report this to Special Agent Koldstad's superior. If you'll excuse me..."

  The Folcroft doctors followed him out into the green antiseptic-scented corridor.

  "If you would like to talk more about these things you claim to have seen, we will be happy to listen."

  Walking backward, Phelps retreated to the elevator. "Yeah, right. Thanks. Appreciate the offer. Bye."

  "If not you, one of your fellows."

  "I'll tell them. Thanks again."

  AGENT PHELPS broke the bad news to the others.

  "You all know what this means?" he finished in a grave voice. They had gathered together in Dr. Smith's drafty office.

  "Yeah. Big Dick is coming."

  "Big Dick for sure."

  "Yep, this is a Big Dick situation, without a doubt."