Infernal Revenue td-96

by Warren Murphy

  And three, something had to be done with Jeremy, who in a dozen years in his corner office hadn't advanced beyond the excruciatingly undemanding trust department.

  So they made him president.

  It was not as rash as it sounded. The chief purpose of buying the Lippincott Savings Bank—as it had been renamed the instant the deal was consummated—was to watch over Lippincott capital.

  Jeremy, being a Lippincott to the bone, could be trusted to do that admirably. And to hang with the rest of the depositors.

  Jeremy Lippincott arrived for work at the gentlemanly hour of 10:00 a.m., strode past the ranks of multicultural tellers hired to project a friendly appearance for the common trade and satisfy federal labor laws that would never have been debated outside cheap barrooms in the halcyon days when the Lippincotts and those like them dominated the fabric of American society. He looked neither right nor left, acknowledging not even the loan officers at their desks—some of these people had foreign accents, for God's sake—and went right to his private office.

  Good morning, Miss Chalmers," he deigned to say to his secretary.

  Miss Chalmers smiled with an utter lack of warmth that reminded Jeremy of his beloved mother and took his mail into the office with him. He closed the door.

  He always closed the door.

  Tossing the mail onto his desk, Jeremy doffed his uncomfortable Brooks Brothers suit, stripping off his school tie as he stepped out of his shoes. The rug felt better when he walked across it in his stocking feet.

  Lowering the shades, he discarded his shirt, dropped his trousers and climbed into his pink bunny suit. Attired for the rigors of the day, Jeremy Lippincott settled behind his officious desk and began to go through his mail.

  It was the usual. He tossed most of it into the waste- paper basket.

  The intercom tweedled.

  "It's Mr. Rawlings. Line one."

  "Put him on," said Jeremy, stabbing the wrong button. He had never learned to work the phones properly and had made his multiline ROLM phone into a single-line phone with a sprinkling of fancy lights and buttons. No matter which button he pressed, Jeremy always got line one.

  "Yes, Rawlings?" he said, giving one long white- silk-lined ear an annoyed puff. It had fallen in front of his eye again. He would have to reprimand the valet. The damn ears were never properly starched.

  "We seem to have had some unusual activity with one of our commercial accounts."

  "Which one?"

  "Folcroft Sanitarium."

  "Horrid name."

  "Overnight their account has mushroomed twelve million dollars and some change."

  "Quite a jump."

  "It seems to have come in by wire transfer, but there are no confirmation slips to be found."

  "Does it matter?"

  "Well, it is unusual. And no one in clerical recalls processing any such transfer."

  "Well, someone must have. Otherwise, the money would not be on deposit, now, would it?" "True, Mr. Lippincott. But it's highly, superlatively, unusually irregular."

  Jeremy Lippincott gave his fuzzy pink head a toss, finally whipping the intractable ear back out of his eye. It flopped back onto his head like a pink ear of com.

  "Should I look into this, Mr. Lippincott?" Rawlings asked.

  "We have over twelve million dollars in a customer's account that should not be there, you say?"

  "Exactly."

  "Do nothing."

  "Sir?"

  "It is probably some sort of computer error." Mr. Lippincott, twelve million dollars popping up

  in our computers overnight is not computer error. It may be wire fraud."

  "If it is fraud, it is this Folcroft entity's crime, wouldn't you say, Rawlings?" Probably."

  "And if they are caught, they will be duly chastised by the proper law-enforcement agencies, correct?" "Correct."

  "And in the meantime, the money is ours to invest and loan out?"

  "Yes..."

  "So invest it."

  "Very well, Mr. Lippincott," Rawlings said dispiritedly.

  Frowning, Jeremy Lippincott hung up the telephone. Rawlings had shown such promise, too. And here the man was, bothering him on a perfectly poufy morning with utter trivia.

  The man would never be a proper banker. He simply couldn't cut the mustard. He decided to pen a reminder to have the man terminated at the earliest opportunity.

  He rummaged about his desk with his pink paws, wondering what color crayon was most appropriate for that sort of memo.

  Smith was reading a three-year-old Forbes article online when he came across a name that made his gorge rise.

  Smith froze at his laptop PC. The color—what little of it there was—drained from his face in a violent rush, like a keg that had been tapped by knocking the cork off.

  He fought the nervous spasm that made his stomach want to forcibly eject its contents. He tasted acid high in his throat. Smith flung his long frame from his chair, but he didn't make it to the bathroom. Not even close. Smith retained the presence of mind to throw himself at a dented green steel wastebasket and he threw up a quart of acidic water and Bromo-Seltzer into this.

  He spent ten minutes washing the bite of stomach acid from his mouth with metallic-testing tap water before he felt up to returning to his PC.

  Within sight of the White House and the President he served but could not reach, Harold Smith read again the name of the individual who had brought CURE and Harold Smith to the precipice of disaster.

  It was a stunning discovery. Smith had not expected to get even an inkling of a lead to the culprit so quickly, but there it was in Forbes:

  Credit for XL SysCorp's dramatic turnaround, XL watchers concur, falls squarely on the shoulders of a thirty-two-year-old former installer with Intelligence security clearance whose meteoric rise to CEO took less than five years. Insiders call him the Man with the Microchip Mind, a renaissance man who simultaneously runs the business side of XL while inventing the self-testing, self-healing XL BioChip that has brought such rival giants as International Data Corporation and Nishitsu of Osaka to their corporate knees. But Carlton "Chip" Craft exudes the casual style of a man who simply parachuted into success.

  "Chip Craft," Smith croaked. It was unbelievable but it could not be a coincidence. Not after all that had happened.

  Five years before, on orders from the last President, Harold Smith had accepted a supercomputer called the ES Quantum 3000. It was voice activated with a verbal-response capability. Smith had personally gone to meet Craft, then an installer for Excelsior Systems, blindfolded him and taken him secretly to Folcroft, where he'd installed the ES Quantum 3000 in Smith's office.

  The computer had been a quantum leap in Intelligence gathering. At first Smith had reveled in its ability to help him manage the massive CURE workload. But the computer soon manifested a strange malfunction. It was more on the order of a personality change. Its feminine voice had become inexplicably masculine. Ultimately the computer had not worked out. It was too powerful. Smith had found himself so bombarded with information and global computer access that he was nearly paralyzed by the sheer overwhelming magnitude of raw data.

  Smith had arranged for the ES Quantum 3000 to be returned to Excelsior Systems. The highest order of security attended these transfers, and Smith had worn a foolproof disguise.

  "There was no way that Craft could have learned of CURE's existence," Smith told himself aloud. "It is an utter impossibility."

  But the evidence lay before him. Somehow Craft had gone from installer to CEO of the newly renamed XL SysCorp in a mere five years. But where was the missing link in the chain?

  "The ES Quantum 3000!" Smith said suddenly.

  The computer had scanning abilities and a near- human if limited artificial intelligence. Still, it had been powered off before and after the move. It could not have been cognizant of its own movements. And Smith had performed a superwipe of its memory banks designed to purge it of all CURE knowledge. How could it have sinc
e found its way back into the Folcroft system via the telephone lines?

  Coughing the last bitter stomach acid from his burning throat, Harold Smith powered down the PC. It had served its purpose.

  He now knew the name of his hidden opponent. And his foe had no inkling that Smith had uncovered him. It was time to play the next card.

  There was one thing Remo appreciated about the beach at Sinanju.

  No snakes.

  The high ground was infested with snakes. They avoided the muddy beach, so once he and Chiun reached the shore road, they did not have to pause to crush the wedge-shaped skulls of serpents underfoot.

  Behind them villagers harvested the dead reptiles and threw them, still squirming and thrashing, into cooking pots for later consumption.

  Where it was not wet mud, the beach was composed of rocky ledge. The Horns of Welcome thrust up grimly from the rocky sections, giving the beach from out on the water the aspect of an alien, forbidding place.

  The Horns of Welcome had been erected by Master Yong to frighten off passing fishing boats and as a signal to those emissaries who came to hire the House of Sinanju that they had come to the correct fishing village, outward appearances notwithstanding. - Remo climbed onto one of the rocky ledges in the shadow of the southern horn and looked out over the bitterly cold water.

  He saw no rainbows. It was too dark for sun reflections, and the moon was hours yet from rising.

  At his feet he saw the deposit of black gunk clinging to the lip of a granite stone, gently moving in the lapping water.

  "Check it out, Little Father," Remo said, pointing to the edge.

  The Master of Sinanju came up and squatted down. A curved fingernail scraped the rock, and the rock complained. The nail was whole and still sharp when Chiun straightened. A blob of some thick, viscous substance clung to it.

  "Oil," he said unhappily.

  Remo was looking out over the darkling water. "The submarine got pretty close. Maybe that thunder the villagers heard meant a sea battle."

  "It was the thunder of the heavens announcing my return," Chiun said stubbornly.

  The wind freshened and brought the scent of the water full to their nostrils. It carried with it the pungent stink of oil.

  "Smells like a big spill," Remo muttered.

  "I will sue," said Chiun, voice deepening with anger.

  "Sue who?"

  "The oil company, of course. The despoilers."

  "That's not how it works. Oil companies are only responsible if they spill oil before they sell it. After that, it's not their problem."

  "Then who do I sue?"

  "Depends on who sunk the sub," said Remo, stepping out of his shoes. "If the North Koreans did, you can sue them. If it was an accident, you're out of luck."

  "Why is that and why are you taking off your shoes?" Chiun demanded indignantly.

  "If it was an accident, it was an act of God. You can't sue God."

  "Then I will sue the Vatican," proclaimed Chiun.

  "And I don't want oil on my shoes while I look for that sub."

  Without another word, Remo moved off the ledge of rock.

  His bare feet skidded briefly on the suck water, then he was moving forward. The water supported him. Not because it possessed any miraculously bouyant properties or because Remo was weightless, but because he was moving horizontally faster than the molecules of the water could separate under his feet.

  Remo was running out to sea, running with deceptively slow and controlled motions that belied his actual speed.

  Face tightening, the Master of Sinanju stepped out of his black sandals and followed.

  He caught up, running with his short legs churning and his pipestem arms pumping. His kimono sleeves flapped so much he looked like an ungainly white sea gull skimming across the West Korea Bay.

  "The main slick seems to be this way," Remo said through well-spaced breaths.

  Chiun said nothing in reply. To run across water without falling in was one of the most difficult feats of the discipline of Sinanju and it depended as much on the breathing rhythms as on the motions of his arms and legs. He was not going to risk losing his momentum and falling in. Not in front of his show-off pupil.

  The stink of fuel oil grew more offensive to their nostrils when they reached an area five miles out, where the oiliness of the water made running more challenging. The naked bottoms of their feet grew slick and unpleasant.

  Suddenly they were out of the oil and into clear water.

  Remo indicated they double back with a quick toss of his head, and together they described a wide arc- reversing was too risky—and started back toward the heart of the spreading oil slick.

  "Right about here," said Remo, and suddenly stopped.

  Remo dropped under the surface so fast the oil had no time to coat his clothes and bare skin.

  The Master of Sinanju followed suit.

  The water was cold and vise-like. They oriented themselves, increasing breathing rhythms so their heartbeats rose in tempo, forcing the blood to circulate more quickly, raising their body temperature to ward off the heart-freezing cold.

  Eyes adjusting to the weak ambient light, Remo and Chiun found themselves in a world of slow shadows and strong carrying currents.

  The West Korea Bay is at its rockiest off Sinanju, and they headed down to the seafloor, looking for un- rocklike shapes.

  Stones, ranging in size from a clenched fist to small buildings, and encrusted with barnacles, loomed before them. They moved among these like human dolphins, feet propelling them along with economical kicks that created spurts of motion enabling them to ride the currents.

  The rocks felt cold and slick to the touch—but not oil slick. They moved on.

  To the west they saw the tendril of oil. It was snaking up toward the surface like a lazy strand of seaweed seeking sunlight.

  They swam toward it, staying close to the sea floor.

  Topping a tumulus of submerged stone, they came upon the great sail of the submarine. One of the diving planes drooped in defeat. The hull's smooth lines were warped and dented, as if gargantuan fingers had plucked it from the surface and after careless manhandling dropped it to the unforgiving ocean floor less than one hundred feet down.

  Remo gave a sudden froglike kick, and his entire body arrowed toward the low-lying cigar of steel. Chiun paddled after him.

  The oil was coming out of a rent in the aft hull. There were other holes, jagged and violent, at widely spaced intervals along the sides and deck.

  Remo circled the damaged sail and spotted the hull number, 671-A.

  He pointed to the white letters and flashed an okay sign. It was the Harlequin.

  Chiun signed back, making a G for gold, crooking one finger into a question mark and pointing at the sub. The question mark came again.

  Remo thrashed around, spotted the weapons shipping hatch in one side and pointed toward a hull rip a few yards in front of it.

  Chiun nodded and went in search of his gold. Remo picked another hole and entered it, easing himself in with his hands. He noticed that the jagged hull tears were pointing outward.

  Inside, debris floated by—sailor's hats, sneakers and the odd paperback book. Crabs had already taken up residence in the dark crannies of the doomed sub.

  Remo felt his way around the empty compartment. The flood-control doors had been sealed. There were no bodies. He went to one of the doors and tried tapping on it. The door drummed under his imperative fist. No answer. He went to another and did the same thing. The ringing of his fist on steel was like a watery bell tolling.

  There seemed to be no survivors.

  Flashing out of the hole, Remo swam toward the rip near the great weapons shipping hatch.

  The Master of Sinanju swam out to meet him. He was clutching something in one hand.

  When Remo joined him, he saw what it was—a splintered piece of fresh wood. He recognized it as a piece of a crate. No flimsy orange crate, it was made of hard timber, and there were de
ep indentations where heavy steel strapping had dug in tight.

  Remo had seen the heavy reinforced crates used to ship U.S. gold to Sinanju before. And the angry look on Chiun's face told the rest. The gold was gone.

  Remo pointed up, and they rose, releasing carbon dioxide bubbles one at a time and with no sense of urgency. If necessary, they could hold their breaths for an hour or longer. Remo's head broke the surface first. Then Chiun's. He spat out a stream of water before speaking.

  "They have stolen my gold!" he said sharply.

  "Who did?"

  "The mutinous crew, obviously. They sank their own vessel in order to cover up their perfidy."

  "Doubt it," Remo said.

  "Why do you say that, Fair One with Korean Eyes?"

  "Cut it out. Look, these holes look like they were made by shaped demo charges set inside the boat. But those hull dents could only be made by depth charges. The sub was scuttled, all right. But I don't think the crew did it. They'd need a boat to drop depth charges on their own sub."

  "Why not? The gold was more money than they would ever see in their miserable lives. They would go to any lengths to evade discovery."

  "Don't forget they radioed that a Korean frigate had overhauled them."

  "A dead herring."

  "That's 'red herring,' and I think we should check out the Korean angle before we tar the memories of dead U.S. sailors."

  "I saw bodies," Chiun said pointedly.

  "Yeah?"

  "A man who wore the stars of a captain."

  "The sub commander."

  "He had been shot. This suggests mutiny."

  "I want to see."

  "And I want to show you," said Chiun. "Come." And the Master of Sinanju disappeared under the flat malodorous water.

  Trailing tendrils of clinging oil, Remo and Chiun kicked down toward the submarine. Remo beat Chiun through the aft most hole.

  Inside was a large flooded section. Remo had traveled on enough subs to figure out his way around the corridors, but it was strange and eerie to be swimming down them. He found his way to the main storage area.

  There were lights here. Evidently somewhere in the ship batteries still produced juice. The protected lights glowed feebly.