Infernal Revenue td-96 Read online

  "What secret telephone cable?"

  "The one that connects my enemy Harold Smith to the White House."

  "White House! What's the White House have to do with this?"

  "When we attack the banking system, we will arouse the interest of the United States government. The White House will be very interested in what we do."

  "Listen. I don't want the White House after me."

  "You haven't heard the second reason."

  "I'm not sure I want to," Chip admitted.

  "I thought that might be your response."

  The intercom buzzed and a voice asked, "Hey! White guy. We found it. We found the gas leak. What do we do now?"

  "Ask them if they have enough light to see where the gas is coming from," Friend directed.

  "Do you have enough light down there to find the exact spot?" Chip asked.

  "No. We just got it cornered in this one empty room."

  "Tell them to close the door," Friend instructed.

  "Why?"

  "Do it."

  "Close the door," Chip said into the intercom.

  "Just a second."

  A moment later the voice came back and said, "Hey! I shut the door like you said, and the damn light went

  out,"

  Chip started to say something when he heard what sounded like his own voice saying, "Find the light switch,"

  "How? It dark."

  "Flick your Bic."

  "No!" Chip screamed. "Don't! Don't flick any Bics!"

  The boom could be heard fifteen floors below. Chip's eyes went wide. He reached out to steady himself against his desk and fell into it. His head poked out one end and his feet stuck out from the other.

  "What—what happened?" he asked, climbing out of the holographic desk.

  "They obeyed your instructions," explained Friend.

  "But I didn't-"

  "It was your voice."

  "It just sounded like my voice."

  "But you are the only human being in the building."

  "You, you tricked me."

  "No, I implicated you. You lured fourteen urban youths to their deaths with the promise of a job. I have it all on digital tape."

  Chip swallowed, his eyes starting.

  "Now you know the second reason I installed the gas line," said Friend.

  Chip slumped in his chair. "What do you want?"

  "Your continued cooperation in return for your usual cut of the profits, stock options and an ironclad guarantee the sealed room will never be opened."

  "The police will search the building."

  "The room was designed to defy detection. It will not be discovered unless I open it electronically."

  "I don't feel well," Chip said weakly.

  The office door popped open, and his secretary bounced in and in a bright, eager voice asked, "How about a little virtual nookie?"

  Chapter 23

  The fishing boats of Sinanju huddled on the spreading slick of oil over the sunken submarine Harlequin like ducks clustered together for warmth.

  In the largest boat Remo and Chiun were talking.

  "This is some fishing fleet," Remo was complaining.

  "That is why the rent is so cheap," said Chiun.

  "Rent? What rent?"

  "Why, the rent I am charging you for their use."

  "This is a freaking rescue operation."

  '' Payable in gold," said Chiun.

  "I don't have any gold."

  "I will accept a portion of your share of the gold when it is found."

  "Damn it, Chiun. This is no time to play Shylock."

  "Are you reneging on our deal?"

  "We don't have a deal."

  Chiun lifted his voice. "Ahoy, brave sailors of Sinanju. The rescue is hereby canceled. Return your boats to shore, and you to your well-earned beds."

  "All right. All right," Remo said in exasperation. "How much?"

  Chiun's face became a bland mask. "One third of your share."

  "Too much."

  "Very well, one ingot per rescued sailor." "How many ingots in my share?" "That depends." "On what?"

  "On how much gold is recovered."

  "Why do I have the feeling you're gypping me either way?"

  "Because you are an ingrate of uncertain parentage," snapped Chiun.

  "Fine. It's a deal. Now listen. You and I go down, tapping the hull every six feet. Mark any spot where you hear tapping. Then we come back, compare notes and go down to do the rescue. Understood?" "This is agreeable," said Chiun. "Okay," said Remo, standing up. "Let's go." Remo went over the side making hardly a splash. Carefully Chiun turned in his seat, tied his kimono skirts up on a knot and put his bare legs over the side. He eased himself into the water with such grace that faithful Pullyang, at the tiller, hadn't realized he was gone until Pullyang looked and saw nothing.

  Remo took the submarine's bow and worked aft while the Master of Sinanju started at the stern and worked forward to the amidships area. They used their bare hands to make sounds on the steel plates of the hull. The harsh sounds traveled back and forth in the cool, conductive waters.

  Where they heard tapping in return, they used their fingernails, hardened as tempered steel by lifetimes of diet and exercise, to mark each spot. Remo made an R while Chiun, with quick, steel-scoring flashes of his fingernails, carved out the ancient symbol of the House of Sinanju—a trapezoid bisected by a slash.

  When they rendezvoused on the sail forty minutes later, Remo flashed two fingers while Chiun lifted only one. Chiun frowned and went over Remo's end of the sub, seeking more tapping sounds. Remo decided to do the same on the aft end.

  Twenty minutes later, with their oxygen running out, they regrouped again. This time Chiun flashed two fingers and Remo three.

  Chiun made fists and puffed up his cheeks like an annoyed blowfish. Remo pointed upward, and they squatted down on the sub's deck and uncorked like human springs, shooting toward the surface.

  They popped up in the center of the clustered fishing boats. Pullyang spied them and called over, "What news, Gracious Master?"

  "Remo found three bangs and I four."

  "Liar," hissed Remo.

  "Prove it," said Chiun.

  "One of yours doesn't exactly count, you know."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You got the banging that came from the compartment that sailor we rescued already told us about."

  "It is my hope that it is filled with American sailors," Chiun said airily. "For each means one gold ingot of yours that will belong to me."

  "Let's not count our gold until after have a few sailors up and breathing," Remo warned. "Now listen. We have five contacts. The best way to do this is the way they used to escape subs in the old days- through the torpedo tubes."

  "If they could escape that way, would they not have done this already?"

  "No. I mean we rip open the hull at each contact and help these guys shoot to the surface. If you work it real fast, no one will drown."

  "It is a good plan. And I will agree to it only on one condition."

  "What's that?"

  "You will pay me one gold ingot for any who drown through their own stupidity, trying to reach my boats."

  Remo rolled his eyes. "Why not?"

  The Master of Sinanju addressed the fishermen who watched the exchange with uncomprehending eyes, because it had been conducted in English.

  "Hark," he said. "Very soon heads will appear in these befouled waters. It will be your responsibility to assist all who come to the surface into your boats."

  "These guys are going to be scared witless," Remo added in Korean. "So if they put up a fight, just tell them you're South Koreans."

  To a man, the villagers made faces and spat into the water.

  "South Koreans are unclean and lazy," Pullyang protested.

  "They would never believe this lie."

  "You'd be surprised," Remo muttered. "Okay," he added, "tell them you're all CIA."

  "CIA?"

&nb
sp; "Comrades In Arms," said Remo, thinking quickly.

  This seemed to satisfy everyone except Chiun, who glared at Remo. Remo disappeared into the water, with Chiun only a half second behind him.

  They started at the stern where Chiun's first contact had been made, banging on the hull every six feet or so. Remo got a response.

  He then banged out a long series of dots and dashes with his fist, hoping his Morse code was still accurate.

  He got a brief banging back he couldn't understand, and then the Master of Sinanju scored a long line along the hull over the banging. He did this by walking backward in a crouch, repeating the process three times, each time cutting deeper into the hull, causing the frangible steel hull plates to peel away, exposing the heavy pressure hull.

  When he was satisfied, Chiun went to one end and Remo to the other. He nodded and brought a fist down on the scoring.

  The pressure hull ruptured like a sardine can.

  The bubbling was like some submerged giant erupting out of a sea cave. Water poured in. Remo and Chiun worked the long rent in the hull, widening it with their hands.

  Sailors began floating out after the second minute had almost elapsed. Kicking and frantic, they emerged only to have hands grab them and propel them along faster.

  Ten sailors were sent on their way, and then Remo and Chiun went into the flooded compartment. They found no one alive. Surreptitiously, Chiun sent two drowned bodies surging toward the air, hoping Remo would not notice.

  The second contact produced only one sailor. Remo carried him up to the surface personally.

  He went back down to help Chiun with the third contact.

  It went smoothly after that. The hull surrendered to their well-trained hands, which could by touch discover weak points and exploit them with uncanny skill. The thick pressure hull parted along molecular lines, and the edges were bent back by fingers that knew exactly how to manipulate them.

  Each time they were careful to let the water in slowly at first so the survivors were cushioned by a protective womb of seawater before the water rushed in at full force.

  Once, they found a compartment that could only be reached by swimming into the sub's innards and opening a door. This time Chiun helped with the door, which had to be opened with the inrush of water. Remo let himself be carried in, grabbed handfuls of straggling hair and held the scratching, clawing men down as the water finally settled. Then Chiun joined him.

  In the dark it was a nightmare. There were too many to subdue and carry at the same time. And the only way out was through an L-shaped corridor in which bloated corpses floated aimlessly.

  They lost one man who panicked in the confusion. The others were hauled out by their hair and, once free of the sub confines, clawed to the surface under then- own power.

  Remo and Chiun surfaced after that, Chiun holding the dead sailor by the hair.

  "This one has perished, alas," he said plaintively.

  "That's the one that got away," Remo pointed out.

  "He did not get away from me," Chiun clucked.

  "He was already dead. You just pulled him along for the ride because you knew he was worth another gold ingot."

  "I was thinking of his poor mother who now has a son to bury instead of the hollow bitterness of an empty grave."

  Remo looked around. The sailors were huddled in the boats, which were starting to take on water.

  "What about those two?" Pullyang said, pointing to a pair of blue-clad bodies that floated facedown.

  Remo went to them and brought their faces up to the moonlight. They were not only dead, but had been for many hours.

  "Did you haul them out, too?" Remo accused Chiun.

  "Perhaps. In the confusion any miracle is possible."

  Remo lifted his voice and said, in English, "This is an official U.S. rescue. We're going to take you to shore, where you'll be given food and beds before you're repatriated in the morning."

  "Nothing was said about beds," Chiun said in Korean.

  Remo glared at him. "They get beds or you get to search for the gold all by your lonesome."

  Chiun lifted a delicate finger. "If I find it, it will all be mine."

  "It probably is already, but whichever way you slice it, these guys go back to the States."

  "They will have beds once I am satisfied they speak the truth about what happened to their vessel."

  The boats barely made it to shore. Remo and Chiun had to get out and push each one along in turn, finally beaching them between the Horns of Welcome.

  The surviving crew of the USS Harlequin stumbled onto the mud flat, coughing and looking like men who had come back from hell to the world of the living. In a way, they had.

  "I counted forty-seven," said Remo.

  "A good number."

  "That's less than half of the crew. The others must have drowned."

  "Or escaped with the gold. We must question these men.''

  "It can wait till morning," Remo said wearily. He went among the men, saying, "Catch your breath. We'll have you bedded down in no time."

  "Damn North Koreans," a man muttered.

  "There's your answer," Remo told Chiun.

  "That man is obviously delirious," Chiun replied in Korean.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Because Kim II Sung would never defile the gold of Sinanju." .

  "Maybe so. But what about Kim Jong II?"

  "That whelp! He is no son of his father if his hands are on this perfidy."

  As they got the men up on their feet and started up the shore road, a woman came down to meet them. She prostrated herself in a full bow and said, "O Gracious Master, there are tanks at the edge of the village, despoiling the pure air of the village you are sworn to protect with the harsh smoke of their engines."

  Chiun hiked up his soaked shirts in indignation. "Tanks? Whose tanks?"

  "The tanks of Kim H Sung."

  "Tell then they are not welcome."

  "They have ordered me to tell you that Kim Jong II himself has sent word from Pyongyang, demanding to speak with you."

  "News travels fast," said Remo.

  "Perhaps it carries with it the truth of these events," said Chiun, wringing out his kimono skirts and starting up the shell-strewn road.

  Chapter 24

  When Kim Jong II was ten years old, his father took him aside and revealed to him his glorious destiny.

  "You are a child now," Kim II Sung had said, "and I am the Great Leader of Korea. But one day you will surpass me."

  "How do you know this, Father?"

  "I know this because the day before you were born on the holy mountain Paekdu, an old man dwelling there came upon a swallow that spoke to him in a human voice, saying, 'On the sixteenth of April, a mighty general will be born who will one day rule the whole world.' And the day you were born, a bright star appeared over the exact spot you came into the world, flowers bloomed in the snow, birds sang in joy and a double rainbow ruled the sky."

  Hearing these words, Kim Jong II had run to his mother and repeated everything he was told.

  "You were born in Russia, in a refugee camp," his mother had said. "And it rained all day."

  "But father said—"

  "You father is drunk on the pungency of his own escaping intestinal gas."

  Young Kim Jong II's eyes had widened in his round face. "Then I will not grow up to be a mighty general lording over the world?"

  "I do not know what you will grow up to be, but right now you are a short fat piece of poop extruded by your father, who is a great unfaithful turd."

  Stunned, Kim Jong II had run back to his father and told him what his mother had said.

  That night his mother had disappeared and was never seen again. When he asked, Kim Jong II was told that his mother was a traitor to the party and the state and had been beheaded for her many failures, not the least of which was her inability to please the Great leader in bed.

  Thus did Kim Jong II learn about truth and power.

/>   The years came and went, and Kim Jong I! grew to adulthood.

  Every year on his birthday he would go to his father and ask plaintively, "Is it time yet for me to begin my glorious conquest of the world?"

  "Next year," his father would say. Always it was next year.

  And so the years passed in a bored blur of soft women and hard liquor.

  To occupy his son, Kim II Sung put Kim Jong II in charge of the passport ministry and later, various Intelligence ministries. But it was not enough to appease the young man.

  One year he stood before his father, now deep into his elder years and said, "I have a new ambition in life, Father."

  Kim II Sung's eyes grew veiled in surprise. "Yes?"

  "I wish to direct movies."

  "Movies?"

  "Operas especially. These are the things that interest me most."

  "But what about your glorious destiny?" asked Kim II Sung.

  "A general and a director are not much unalike. If I learn to direct, the lessons of generalship will surely follow."

  This made perfect sense to Kim II Sung, who had subsumed his dreams for his son to his own enjoyment of power.

  But there were those who criticized the elder Kim for indulging the future Dear Leader of Korea so shamefully. And others who feared the establishment of a un- Communist dynasty above the Thirty-eighth Parallel.

  So Kim Jong II was also installed as supreme commander of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Armed Forces, heir apparent to the blood lineage of the juche tradition, and director of some of the finest operas ever captured on cinema in North Korean history—which naturally meant human history, as well.

  It was a good, productive existence with many actresses to bed and cases of smuggled Hennessy Scotch to imbibe. Until the day his father had fallen gravely ill.

  It all changed then. At first Kim Jong II thought it a good thing, succeeding his father. But the nation had fallen into hunger and privation. The military would have toppled him on the first day, but were preoccupied with putting down insurrections in the countryside.

  Besides, if Kim n Sung were to come out of his coma and discover his beloved son dead, heads would roll into the next century.

  As he approached his fifty-second year on earth, the younger Kirn sat consolidating his power from an office that took up one entire floor of the Great People's Palace in Pyongyang.