Misfortune Teller td-115 Page 5

  Ordinarily, Smith would have accessed the information from a hidden terminal in his office desk. But Harold Smith was nothing if not adaptable. Circumstances had forced him for the time being to utilize the small laptop setup that he ordinarily used when away from Folcroft.

  As director of CURE, Smith was charged with safeguarding the nation against threats both internal and external. In the most dire circumstances, he was allowed to employ the most powerful force in the U.S. arsenal. But at the moment, there were no dire issues facing either CURE or America. It was for this reason that Smith had allowed the agency's two secret weapons time to retrieve some personal property from Germany.

  The Nibelungen Hoard. Smith still did not quite believe that Remo and Chiun had found the Hoard. If the legends were true, it was a dangerous amount of wealth for anyone to have.

  The same madman whose attack had caused the fluid buildup on Smith's brain could have used the gold to destroy the economy of Germany. Adolf Kluge was dead now, but that would not prevent another from taking up his banner of destruction. This was the reason Smith had insisted Remo and Chiun transport the Hoard to Chiun's native village of Sinanju as quickly as possible. It would be safe there, languishing amid the other treasure for millennia to come.

  The past few months had been very trying. For all of them. But it seemed as if a turning point had at last been reached. And if not that, at least it was a lull. There had been so few of them in the past thirty years that Smith had decided to enjoy this one.

  As he typed at his laptop, the CURE director sighed contentedly.

  Seconds later, a nurse raced into the room dragging an emergency crash cart behind her.

  "Oh," she said, wheeling the cart to a sudden, skidding stop. A look of intense concern crossed her face. "Are you all right, Dr. Smith?"

  "What?" Smith asked, looking up from his computer. "Yes," he said, confused. "Yes, I am fine."

  "I thought I heard you gasping for air," she said, her tone apologetic. "It sounded like an asthmatic attack. Or worse."

  Smith's gray face puckered in slight perplexity. "I made no such sound," he said.

  Dr. Drew raced into the room a moment later. He skidded to a stop next to the nurse. When he saw Smith sitting up calmly in bed, he turned, panting, to the middle-aged woman.

  "Did you call a Code Blue?" he demanded.

  "I'm sorry, Doctor," she apologized. "I thought he was going into respiratory failure."

  "I do not know what it is you heard, Nurse," Smith said. "But I assure you I feel fine."

  Turning away from the doctor and nurse, Smith resumed typing. As his fingers tapped swiftly away at the keyboard, he thought again how calm the world scene was at the moment. As he did so, another pleased sigh escaped his gray lips. It sounded like a dying moose attempting to yodel up a rusted radiator pipe.

  Dr. Drew and the nurse glanced at one another in immediate understanding. Without another word, the nurse rolled the crash cart back out into the hallway, leaving Dr. Drew alone with Smith.

  "How are you feeling today, Dr. Smith?" Drew asked. He was forced to compete with Smith's clattering keyboard for attention. He tried not to show his irritation.

  "As I said, Doctor, I am fine," Smith said. His eyes did not lift from the text on his computer screen.

  To Dr. Lance Drew, it was like battling a television for a teenager's attention.

  Drew made a soft humming noise. "While I'm here..." he said more to himself than to Smith.

  The doctor went over and collected a bloodpressure cuff from a netted holder in the wall. Smith stopped typing long enough with one hand to allow Dr. Drew to slip the cuff up onto his left biceps.

  "It would help if you didn't type," Dr. Drew complained as he adjusted his stethoscope under the inflatable bag.

  It was as if Smith didn't hear him. The constant clattering noise and the slight arm motion would make it difficult. Frowning, Drew watched the indicator needle as much as listened to the uneven heartbeat of his employer.

  Typing furiously at his laptop, Smith had been careful enough to inch the computer to one side in order to keep his work away from Drew's prying eyes. For a moment, the endless staccato drumming of his arthritic fingers against the keyboard paused as he read an AP report the CURE system had flagged.

  There had been a break-in the previous night at the Boston Museum of Rare Arts. Three guards were dead, but no valuable artifacts had been taken.

  The strangeness of the report was what brought it to the attention of the CURE mainframes. As best as could be determined by a curator, the Greek exhibit of the classical art collection was all that had interested the burglars. And even with the kind of focus the robbers had apparently had, they had ignored the most valuable Greek pottery and Roman glass on display, choosing instead to steal what was being described by the museum as a "common stone artifact."

  It was not a job for CURE. Smith was certainly not going to recall Remo and Chiun from Europe to go looking for a useless museum piece.

  Smith was about to leave the article when his computer suddenly did so for him. The AP story winked out, replaced by another story, this one attributed to Reuters.

  He read the straightforward lines of text quickly, wondering what it was his computers had found so intriguing. It did not take long for him to realize why the Folcroft Four had pulled the story from the Web.

  "What's wrong?" a concerned voice beside Smith asked.

  Smith's eyes shot up from his computer, shocked. Dr. Drew was standing there. Stethoscope earpieces hung down from either side of his head.

  "What?" Smith croaked.

  "Your blood pressure," Drew explained. "Your heart rate just shot through the roof."

  "No," Smith said, swallowing. "No, I am fine." The words were hollow.

  Smith was trying desperately to think. Already his head had begun to ache, bringing back too recent memories of his painful ordeal.

  "Is there something I can do?" Dr. Drew offered helpfully. Detaching his stethoscope, he leaned to one side, trying to get a peek at Smith's computer.

  Smith instantly slapped the thin folding screen down over the keyboard and hard drive, obscuring the text.

  "I'm fine!" Smith snapped. "That will be all."

  Dr. Drew stiffened. For a man used to respect, Smith's rudeness at times was intolerable. With only a cursory nod to his patient and employer, he left the hospital room.

  As soon as the Folcroft doctor had exited the room, Harold Smith shut down his remote computer. He had wasted far too much time in bed. It was time to get to his office.

  Dropping his bare feet to the floor, Smith stepped uncertainly over to the closet in search of his suit.

  Chapter 6

  Fifteen minutes later, Harold Smith was out of his pajamas, dressed in his familiar gray three-piece suit with attendant Dartmouth tie, and sitting in the more comfortable environs of his Spartan Folcroft administrator's office.

  The headache he was experiencing was not as it had been. The pain now was like the ghostly afterimage of the dangerous bout of hydrocephaly. Still, it was enough to remind him of all he had been through.

  Smith held firmly to the edge of his desk with one bony hand while with the other he clamped his blue desk phone to one ear. He waited only a few moments for the scrambled satellite call to be picked up by the North Korean embassy in Berlin.

  "Apprentice Reigning Master of Sinanju, please," he said to the Korean voice that answered. There was no need for secrecy. A sophisticated program ensured that the call could not be traced back to Folcroft.

  It was the word Sinanju that did it. Although the man who answered apparently spoke no English, he dropped the phone the minute it was spoken.

  Moments later, Remo's familiar voice came on the line.

  "What kept you?" he said by way of introduction.

  "Have you lost your mind?" Smith demanded.

  "Cripes, what's the matter, Smitty? Someone squirt an extra quart of alum in your enema this morning?"

/>   "Remo, this is serious," Smith insisted. "I have the news on in my office right now." He glanced at the old battered black-and-white TV set. "They are playing videotape of what can only be you and the Master of Sinanju in a highspeed chase with Berlin police."

  "Edited or unedited?"

  "What?" Smith asked sourly. "Edited, it appears," he said, glancing at the screen. "Why?"

  "'Cause over here we're getting the full treatment. They've rebroadcast the whole chase virtually in its entirety a bunch of times since last night."

  "Remo, you almost sound proud," Smith said, shocked. "You must know that this is outra-" He froze in midword. "My God," he gasped.

  "The gate crash, right?" Remo guessed. "Beautiful piece of driving if I do say so myself."

  On the screen of Smith's portable TV, Remo's rental truck had just burst through the twin gates of the Korean embassy. Guards were flung to either side as the truck flipped over, skidding in a spectacular slide up to the front wall of the brick building. Every inch of the incredible crash had been recorded by a German news helicopter.

  "This is beyond belief," the CURE director announced. His stomach ached. If his head reeled any more, it would tangle in the phone cord. At this moment, strangulation would be a blessed relief.

  "I thought so, too," Remo said proudly. "It was touch and go for a little while there, but we came out of it okay. Except Chiun is a little ticked at me. But he'll get over it."

  "No, I will not!" the squeaky voice of the Master of Sinanju yelled from the background.

  "Remo," Smith said, trying to infuse his voice with a reasonable tone. It was not easy. "I do not know what to say. You have recklessly and deliberately compromised yourself. According to what I have read, this footage is playing the world over. The German authorities are screaming for your heads."

  "Can't do it," Remo said. "Extraterritoriality. As official representatives of the North Korean government we are exempt from the laws of our host nation. That would be Germany. Legally, they can't touch us."

  "You are not Korean diplomats," Smith explained slowly.

  "I am Korean," Chiun called. "And am quite diplomatic."

  "Tell Master Chiun that-semantics notwithstanding-he is absolutely, unequivocally not a representative of the North Korean government," Smith deadpanned.

  "You're not a diplomat, Little Father," Remo called.

  "Do not 'Little Father' me, flipper of trucks," Chiun snapped back.

  "He says he's not talking to me," Remo explained to Smith. "Of course, as usual, that only lasts until he can come up with the next insult."

  "Nitwit," Chiun called.

  "See?" Remo said.

  "This is insane," Smith said, aghast at Remo's flippant attitude. "How can you not realize the seriousness of this situation? My God, Remo, they filmed you."

  "Videotaped, actually," Remo said. "And while we're at it-no, they didn't."

  "I can see you!" Smith snapped. The image of the battered truck was replaced by a vapid news anchor.

  "You see a truck, Smitty," Remo explained patiently. "You didn't see either of our faces. You know how Chiun and I can avoid being shot by cameras."

  "That is irrelevant," Smith said. "You are found out. According to reports, the Berlin police have the embassy surrounded. The German government has gotten involved in the situation. North Korea is stonewalling for now, but that will not last. The two of you are sitting in the middle of a growing storm of international scrutiny."

  "Not for long," Remo said confidently. "We're getting out tonight."

  "How?" Smith asked, instantly wary.

  "Don't you worry your pretty little head," Remo said soothingly. "Just rest assured that those police barricades won't stop us. We should be fine on this end as long as we don't get turned in first."

  "Is there a danger of that?"

  "Unlikely. The ambassador is scared to death of us. He knows all about Sinanju, so he doesn't want to cross us. The guy who worries me is his aide. I think he's with the secret police or something."

  Smith closed his eyes as he considered the predicament. "I told you I was not comfortable with your going to the North Korean government for help," he said.

  "You're the one who told us we were on our own."

  "And I stand by that. CURE's facilities are not at your disposal when you wish to smuggle the Nibelungen Hoard out of Germany," Smith said, restating his earlier position.

  "Which is why Chiun turned to North Korea," Remo said. "It's easier this way, Smitty. That dipshit Kim Jong Il pees his pants whenever he hears Chiun's name. He couldn't wait to loan us his personal jet. Diplomatic pouch. No searches. Zip, bang, boom into Pyongyang Airport. Every trip has been flawless. We were home free until today."

  Eyes still closed, Smith pinched the bridge of his nose. "How much treasure is left?" he asked wearily.

  "Not much," Remo said. "Luckily, we were on our last run. A couple of boxes. Maybe twenty, twenty-five in all. About as big as orange crates."

  "You can get them out undetected?"

  "Bet on it," Remo said.

  "I would prefer not to," Smith said dryly. He exhaled a loud, painful puff of stale air. "Do what you have to as quickly as you possibly can. I want you both off of German soil and back here at the absolute earliest. Is that clear?"

  "Not a problem," Remo said amiably. "Consider us already gone. By the way, you don't sound too chipper. How are you feeling, Smitty?"

  Smith did not even bother to reply. With an exhausted stretch of his tired arm, he dropped the blue receiver back into the old-fashioned cradle.

  Chapter 7

  Whenever Dan Bergdorf slept, he had nightmares. The dream pattern was always the same. He was in the middle of some grand disaster movie from the 1970s. Not the actual film itself, but the making of the film. Dan would be on a plane with Burt Lancaster, directing an epic crash. Cameras would roll, Dan would call "Action" and all at once the dummy bomb from props would somehow wind up being real. The explosion would rip through the fuselage, and the plane would make a screaming beeline for the ground thirty thousand feet below. Unlike in the movies, all aboard perished.

  Sometimes he was putting out skyscraper fires with Steve McQueen. Other times he was crawling through greasy passageways of a capsized luxury liner with Gene Hackman. Always, the phony disaster would wind up being all too real. At the terrifying moment his dream alter ego perished in whatever the latest calamity might be, Dan would scream himself awake.

  Sweating, panting, disoriented, Dan would realize as he came back to his senses that it had all been a bad dream.

  And as the horror of reality sank in, he would realize that his sleeping nightmares were nowhere near as bad as his waking one.

  Unlike in his dreams, Dan did not work in motion pictures. He was an executive producer of special projects for a small television station in Passaic, New Jersey.

  WAST-TV Channel 8 had tried to make a name for itself in the syndication market a few years before. Right out of the box, they had a major hit that the station's top brass was certain would propel them into the vanguard of television's burgeoning new frontier.

  New York radio shock jock Harold Stein had branched out into low-budget TV. The marriage between the raunchy radio-show host and Channel 8 seemed to be one made in heaven. Or perhaps somewhere farther south. In any event, The Harold Stein Show was a syndicated sensation. In some markets, it even beat out the tired Saturday Night Live in the ratings.

  As executive producer for the Stein show, Dan and Channel 8 had ridden the crest of a wave that would surely take them all on to bigger and better things.

  Or so they thought.

  After only two seasons working on the hourlong show, Stein called it quits, citing his intense displeasure with the cheapness of the program as his primary reason. Channel 8's stock and reputation instantly took a nosedive.

  After a few years of desperate scrambling-in a twist right out of Charles Dickens-the failing station was bought up by a mysterious benefact
or. An immediate infusion of cash from this unknown source instantly brought Channel 8 back into the black. Prospects brightened. Some new staff were even hired. For the first time since the Stein debacle, Dan Bergdorf had allowed himself to get his hopes up. That lasted until the day he was brought into the general manager's office to meet the new owner.

  All hope for a future in legitimate television and films vanished the moment he learned who his new employer was.

  Dan instantly recognized Man Hyung Sun. It was the night of that very first meeting that the dreams had started.

  His nightmares had only gotten worse over the years. By the time Sun showed himself as the owner of Channel 8, it was already too late for Dan. He was branded a Loonie by every station in the country.

  The flurry of resumes he sent out was ignored. Phone calls to supposed friends who had made it in the industry were not returned. Dan became an outcast. With no other prospects in life, he was forced to remain at Channel 8.

  AT WAST, Dan was put in charge of special projects. That was the Channel 8 term for infomercials.

  These program-length commercials usually involved cellulite cream, "magic" abdominal exercises or real-estate scams. Apparently, the glut already on the market was not enough to prevent Channel 8 from making a tidy little profit on these syndicated half-hour ads. It seemed that people could not get enough of them.

  Dan, of course, was not one of those people.

  "What kind of asshole is up at 3:00 a.m. watching 'Professor Brilliant's Amazing Patented Exfoliation Sensation'?" he demanded of his secretary one day after seeing the New York ratings for the infomercial.

  "Have you seen it?" she asked. "It's pretty funny."

  "I don't have to watch it, honey," Dan deadpanned. "I was there when they shot that disaster. First, it ain't that funny. Plus, Professor Brilliant's wig looks like a dead poodle. Plus, the sets are cheesier than a Wisconsin dairy farm. Plus, get me a cup of coffee now or you're fired."

  His attitude at work was at least that bad every day since the Loonie takeover. Worse on days after one of his celebrity-filled disaster nightmares.