Funny Money td-18 Read online

  "I have thought of that too," said Chiun. "And because of that the true attack will come by my hand."

  "Negative, negative, negative, negative, negative," shrieked Mr. Gordons. "Nobody is that creative. I am creative. Nobody can deceive me."

  "I deceive you," said Chiun.

  "And I destroy you," Mr. Gordons shouted, and made the fatal mistake he was programmed never to make. He attacked first. His left knife blade swung before him. His eyes watched the blade in Chiun's right hand and, then darted to Chiun's open left hand, then back, again and again. And when he was almost upon Chiun, Chiun moved his open left hand away from his body and when Mr. Gordons's eye turned to follow it, Chiun hurled the knife blade forward from his right hand. It hit between Mr. Gordons's eyes and buried itself four inches deep. There was a shower of sparks as the metal cut through circuits inside Mr. Gordons's head and he screamed, "My eyes, my eyes, I cannot see."

  And Chiun was over his fallen body, and he withdrew the knife from between Mr. Gordons's eyes, and then plunged it again into his chest. It sizzled and sparks flew as it cut even more wires and Mr. Gordons thrashed about spastically on the floor of the rocket chute, and Chiun looked up to the window where the three persons watched, and motioned for them to press the launch button.

  Remo shook his head but Smith reached out and hit the red button marked "launch." The rocket tube was immediately filled with a roar like thunder. Flames belched from the bottom of the rocket, red, orange, yellow, and blue flames that poured down onto the stone floor of the tube and rebounded upward in droplets of fire. And under their blast lay Mr. Gordons and as they watched, they could see the clothing burn off him, then the pink plastic flesh melt, and then the mass of wire, tubes, transistors, and metallic linkages begin to glow red and flash into flame.

  Chiun was not to be seen, but then with a blast of heat that seemed to come from the gates of hell itself, the control room door opened and Chiun leaped through, pushing the door shut behind him. He moved quickly to the window, arriving just in time to see the rocket quiver on its launch pad, then slowly lift itself up a few inches. It hovered there, motionless, and then began rising, lifting off with ever-increasing speed, its powerful thrusters screaming in the narrow confines of the launching tube, its flames brightening the shadowed area underneath itself, and then the shaft was sunlighted as the rocket cleared the tube and moved skyward.

  At the bottom the tube lay a small pile of electronic rubble, still simmering and smoking.

  Remo looked toward Chiun.

  "You were right," Chiun said. "He moved funny."

  With a sob, Dr. Carlton turned from the control panel and ran from the room.

  "How's your leg?" Smith asked Remo who sat on the control panel.

  "It's coming back. The muscles were just stunned, I guess."

  "Good, because there are still some things we have to do."

  "Like what?"

  "Like find Mr. Gordons's printing operation, and destroy his plates and paper supplies. We're in just as big trouble if someone else finds them."

  Remo nodded. He turned to speak to Chiun.

  But Chiun was not there.

  Mr. Seagrams had just handed Dr. Carlton a martini when Chiun entered her office.

  "You are a beautiful lady," he said.

  She did not answer, instead staring at his cold hazel eyes, her drink frozen in her hand.

  "You are also intelligent," he said. "You know why I am here, do you not?"

  She gulped and nodded.

  "Never again must Remo and I face such a challenge. Mr. Gordons came from your brain. No more such creatures must come from your brain."

  She looked at his eyes again, tossed back her head and drained the martini in one swallow, then lowered her head for the blow.

  Chiun's hand raised and came down just as Remo limped into the room.

  "Chiun," he called. "Don't…"

  But it was too late. The blow had already struck.

  Remo ran forward to Dr. Carlton's side. "Dammit, Chiun, there are still things to do."

  He knelt alongside Vanessa Carlton. "The printing plant, Vanessa," said Remo. "The plates, the paper, the press… where does Gordons keep them?"

  She looked at Remo and a faint smile crossed her face. "Remo," she gasped. "He is… the…"

  Vanessa Carlton died.

  Remo lowered her gently to the floor and stood up. "Dammit, Chiun, we've got to find out where he kept his money plant."

  "I do not care for money. I get paid in gold."

  With a swirl of his robes, Chiun turned and walked from the room, Remo following after him.

  In the corner of the room silently stood the pleasure android, Mr. Smirnoff. He watched as the two men left—the one who had given her such pleasure—then turned his head to look at Dr. Carlton's creamy white legs, exposed up to her hips, as she lay on the floor. Slowly, he began to walk toward her prone body, unzipping his trousers as he went

  That night, in Vanessa Carlton's living quarters, Remo found an envelope addressed to her. In the left corner over the imprinted legend "First Ranchers Trust Company, Billings, Montana," he saw the typewritten notation: "From Mr. G."

  "That's it," he told Smith. "Someplace in this bank."

  "Go there," said Smith. "I am returning to Folcroft."

  Remo and Chiun walked through the rocket control room minutes later as they were leaving the laboratory. They looked through the plastic window down into the rocket shaft. Remo grunted with satisfaction, but Chiun was silent. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? Did the pile of rubble there seem smaller than it had nine hours earlier?

  Chiun waited at the Billings Airport while Remo took a cab into town. The cabdriver told him that the First Ranchers Trust Company had gone out of business ten years earlier. "A lot of eastern hippies began moving here and the ranchers moved out. The bank closed its doors."

  "Well, take me there anyway," said Remo.

  It was midnight when the driver let him out in front of the old yellow brick building on the fringes of the town's business district. The windows had been covered over with wood, and metal plates covered the front door.

  Remo waited until the cabdriver turned the corner, made sure no one was watching, then forced up the edge of one of the metal plates to expose the door lock. He slammed his hand against it, and the door quivered, then opened. Remo stepped inside the pitch blackness of the bank and closed the door behind him.

  He was not alone.

  He realized it. He felt it through his feet rather than his ears; there were vibrations in the bank. Something was moving. Someone already had found Mr. Gordons's operation. Or maybe he had had a partner? God, not another one, he hoped.

  Remo moved through the blackness of the bank, following the vibrations. They took him down a back stairway to an underground level. In front of him stood a closed vault door. He moved toward it and paused. Behind it, he could hear vibrations, machinery working.

  He waited, then pulled open the vault door. The vault was small and brightly lit from an overhead bulb. In the center of the floor stood a printing press; its motor was running and in front of it on the floor was a large pile of hundred-dollar bills.

  But there was no one to be seen. Remo stepped inside the door, and checked on both sides. No one. The vault was empty.

  He went to the far wall. Perhaps there was a secret panel. He didn't know anything about banks. Maybe vaults had secret panels behind which bankers stashed the real stuff, mortgages and bonds they had stolen from widows and orphans.

  He ran his hands over the wall, looking for seams in the concrete. But there were none. Puzzled, he stood there momentarily. Then he heard a voice behind him.

  "You have damaged me, Remo." It was Mr. Gordons's voice. But it couldn't… Remo wheeled. The printing press was moving itself through the door. There was no one or nothing else in the room.

  The vault door closed. From outside, he heard Mr. Gordons's voice.

  "You have damaged me but I wi
ll repair myself. Then I will come for you and the yellow man. Like your House of Sinanju from whom I learned in combat, I will not allow you or your maker to survive."

  Remo ran to the door and pushed but it was tightly sealed. "How did you survive?" he yelled.

  "I am an assimilator," came Gordons's voice faintly from outside. "So long as one piece of me remains, it can rebuild the rest from whatever materials are near."

  "But why did you turn yourself into a press?" called Remo.

  "Dr. Carlton told me once, if you have money you will survive. I must survive, so I must make money. Goodbye, high probability Remo."

  Remo put his ear to the door. He could hear a faint squeaking outside, as if machinery was being dragged along the floor. Then there was silence.

  It took Remo two hours to remove the hinges of the vault door and to free himself. Before leaving, he set fire to the fresh rag content paper that stood clean, almost oily white, in the corner. The newly-minted hundred-dollar bills he stuffed into his shirt.

  There was no one to be seen outside on the night-emptied streets of Billings.

  He walked toward the few lights in the heart of town.

  Sitting on the sidewalk in front of a newspaper office, he saw a bearded hobo wearing an old Marine shirt and a straw hat.

  Remo took all the money from his shirt and dumped it at the hobo's feet. "Here," he said, "have a million dollars. I used to be a newspaperman myself."

  "Only a million?" said the hobo.

  "You know how it is," Remo said. "Money's tight just now."

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