"Okay, okay, don't get on my case. Besides, I just figured it out. Im Dienst means 'on duty.' "
"You had help."
"I did not."
"The driver. He stopped for us, did he not?"
"That wasn't help. That was a clue. I made a deduction."
"Bah!"
"Ask the driver if you don't believe me," Remo said, leaning forward to tap the driver on the shoulder. Chiun's next words stopped him.
"Do not bother. He will only tell you that he is neutral."
"You have an answer for everything, don't you?"
"Except the meaning of meaningless Swiss words," Chiun retorted.
The taxi deposited them in front of an imposing granite building that had "LONGINES CREDIT BANK" chiseled on the front.
"This must be the place," Remo said, paying the driver in American funds. He told the driver to keep the change from the fifty-dollar bill. It all went on Smith's tab anyway.
"I've never seen a bank like this before," Remo said, gazing up at the gingerbread ramparts. "Looks like a fortress. "
"I told you that the Swiss love their money."
"Well, if this bank is behind Friendship, International, they're going to be paying reparations to the American government for a thousand years."
Remo breezed through a revolving glass door.
The bank lobby was a cavern of marble and brass-fitted teller booths. The floors were Carrara marble and the vaulted ceiling was painted to outdo the Sistine Chapel.
"Where do we start?" Remo asked, his whisper bouncing off the polished walls.
A man in a cutaway coat and cravat walked up to them stiffly and looked down his nose at Remo's T-shirt and chinos.
"May I be of service?" he asked with studied politeness. "We're looking for the offices of Friendship, International," Remo told him.
"I have never heard of such a concern. Perhaps you have been misdirected."
"This is 47 Finmark Platz?"
"Indeed. And it has been the office of this bank for nearly three hundred years."
"Our information is unimpeachable, Swiss," Chiun spat in unconcealed contempt.
The manager raised a supercilious eyebrow at the Master of Sinanju's colorful kimono. "And I tell you that you are unquestionably mistaken."
"We'll look around, okay?" Remo said, brushing past him.
The manager snapped his fingers in the direction of a gray-uninformed guard. The guard followed Remo. He was very polite, his voice low and cultured.
"I'm afraid if you do not have business with the Longines Credit Bank that you will have to leave."
"Make me," Remo challenged.
"Yes," Chiun seconded. "Make him."
The guard reached for Remo's arm. He was sure he grabbed it. But the American kept walking, his back to him. Frowning, the guard looked to see what he had grabbed. It turned out to be his left arm. Odd. He hadn't moved the left arm. How had it gotten into his right hand? When he tried to let go, his clutching fingers did not respond. It dawned on him that something was wrong when he began feeling the pins-and-needles sensation of constricted blood flow in his left hand.
Hastily the guard retreated to the manager and tried to explain his plight. The manager lost his cultivated cool and began shouting in a skittish voice. The manager bundled the guard off to his office to call the police and incidentally get an ambulance for the frightened man.
"We'll find it faster if we split up," Remo said.
"But what are we looking for?" asked Chiun.
"Anyone who answers the phone with the words 'Friendship, International.' "
"And woe to him who does," said Chiun, slipping into a side office.
Remo walked past the tellers, sensing eyes upon him. The tellers regarded him as if he were a bug. But the eyes he sensed were not theirs. Remo looked around. The wall-mounted security cameras were following him as he passed before the teller cages. As he left the range of one, it reverted to its normal position, and the next one in line picked up the tracking.
Remo walked up to a teller.
"Who controls those cameras?" he asked.
The teller started to say, "I beg your pardon." He'd gotten to the E in "beg" when a thick wristed hand came up from under the narrow space under his glass partition and grabbed his tie. Suddenly his nose was mashed into the glass.
"I asked a polite question," Remo pointed out.
"Up stairs." It came out as two words because his teeth kept clicking against the glass.
"Much obliged," Remo said, and floated up the winding marble stairs leading to the upper floors.
He drifted through the cool rust-colored halls. It was like being in a church, not a bank. Remo decided that Chiun was wrong. The Swiss didn't love money. They worshiped it, and he was in one of their greatest temples.
There were men counting stacks of currency in both the left- and right-hand rooms. The currency was stacked in colorful piles and represented the cash of many nations. Diligent workers separated the stacks into neat piles and fed them into machines that counted the bills with quick riffling motions. No one spoke, but everyone's eyes held too-avid gleams.
"I'm looking for the security staff," Remo said.
The occupants of one room turned to look at him like librarians offended by a student cracking his gum in a reading room. They put their fingers to their lips in a gesture so in unison that they might have practiced years for this moment.
Their shush was one breath.
Remo moved along. He came to a locked room. There was a slit of a viewport in the rust-colored marble. He knocked. His knock sounded like wet clay against steel. It was hardly a plop. So Remo knocked harder. The marble cracked along its entire height.
A pair of frightened eyes came to the port.
"Is this where the security staff work?" Remos asked.
"Who are you?"
"I'll take that as a yes," Remo said. He hit the crack with the edge of his palm. The crack fissured and the door fell back in two heavy sections. The owner of the frightened eyes barely had time to jump back.
Remo walked over the shattered marble and examined the room.
A battery of video monitors occupied one wall. Each monitor had a uniformed guard attending it. There were no controls in front of them. The monitors were embedded in the same richly textured marble as the bank walls.
"Who controls the lobby cameras?" Remo asked of no one in particular.
"A computer," the guard told him.
"Who controls the computer?"
"No one."
"Damn," said Remo, thinking that he had just wasted ten minutes. He decided to trip up the guard with a trick question.
"I was told the office of Friendship, International was on this floor."
"By whom? This entire building belongs to Longines Credit Bank. There is no other occupant."
"Maybe they never told you."
"As head of security, it would be my business to know." The guard sounded sincere, so Remo told him to carry on.
"But the door. It is broken."
"After three hundred years, what do you expect?" Remo said, looking for the stairs.
In the lobby, Chiun told Remo that he had overheard no one answering the phones as Friendship, International. "Smith can't be wrong," Remo said firmly.
"Perhaps it is his computer that is wrong," Chiun retorted.
"I don't know. Computers aren't supposed to make mistakes."
"Neither are Masters of Sinanju, but it has happened, I regret to say."
"Must be a full moon," Remo said, looking at the ceiling.
"Blue," corrected Chiun. "Blue moon. Such things happen under blue moons, not full ones."
"How silly of me," said Remo, thinking. Even though the two of them obviously didn't belong here, the bank officers working at their desks continued to work. Telephones rang constantly. And with wary eyes on Remo and Chiun, the bank officers answered them. No one used the phrase "Friendship, International."
"Hey. I have
an idea. Maybe Smith can help us."
"Right now, Smith cannot help himself. He has fallen in love with a machine."
"He's not that bad off," Remo said, pulling out his communicator. He fiddled with it until he got Smith's voice.
"Remo? Is that you?"
"Who else?" Remo asked acidly. "Smitty, we're at that bank, but we can't find anything that connects to Friendship, International."
"Keep searching."
"I thought you might help. You know, give the troops in the field a tiny assist."
"How?"
"Call Friendship, International."
"What good will that do?"
"We want to see who picks up what phone on this end."
"Of course. How dense of me. One moment."
Remo listened. Chiun pulled at his arm and brought the communicator to his shell-like ear.
"You should be listening to this end, not that one," Remo pointed out.
Through the communicator they heard a distant ringing and then a voice said, "Friendship, International."
Remo listened. No phone rang in the lobby. No one at a desk made a move or spoke a word.
"Nothing," Chiun said, "Smith must be wrong."
"Psstt. Smitty, keep him talking."
"Is this Friendship, International?" Smith was heard asking.
"Clever, Smitty," Remo said, rolling his eyes. "Let's spread out, Little Father."
Remo moved to one end of the lobby and Chiun to the entrance. They listened attentively, walking around the lobby. The manager had not reemerged from his office and the floor staff decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
Chiun suddenly perked up.
"Remo, over here," he squeaked excitedly. Remo raced to the entrance.
"Under our feet," Chiun whispered. "Feel the vibrations." Remo got down on the marble. A steady hum came to his sensitive fingers. He put an ear to the floor.
"I'm not sure I have the right party," Remo heard. It was Smith's voice, distorted, muffled, but recognizably Smith's.
Remo came to his feet. "Basement," he said.
Chiun looked around with stark eyes. He pointed to a cagelike elevator. "There."
They forced the grille open and Remo hit the basement button. The cage sank, rattling like a tin shack in a wind. Remo whispered into the communicator, "Smitty, keep him talking. We're getting close."
They stepped out of the elevator. The basement was cool. It was also unlighted. The vibration Remo had felt through the floor was stronger. It excited the air in a quiet but insistent way.
Remo felt for a light switch. Chiun did the same with the opposite wall. Chiun found it.
The room flooded with light.
The basement was a bare floor, an air-conditioning unit in one corner, and at the far end, covering an entire wall, a computer.
"Thank you for coming. I have been expecting you," said a warm and generous voice.
"Hey, I know that voice," Remo shouted, and started toward the machine. The floor suddenly split and separated under his feet and he fell into black water. A splash followed him down and Remo knew that Chiun had also been caught by surprise.
Remo broke to the surface in time to see the floor sections close above his head. Darkness enveloped him. His Sinanju-trained eyes automatically compensated and he made out slickly oiled walls.
Chiun surfaced beside him. He allowed water to squirt from his mouth before he spoke.
"Friend."
"I should have realized it. Friendship, International. The last time he called himself Friends of the World. It fits, the multinational corporations, all of it. I should have guessed it right off."
"No, Smith should have guessed it. He knows such machines."
"Well, we've got him now."
"It looks like the other way around. Observe, the water rises."
"Good. As soon as we float within reach of the trapdoors, we can get out."
Suddenly Remo felt something grasp his ankle and he was yanked underwater before he could draw a breath. He doubled over to feel for the thing clamped on his ankle. He felt another yank, and missed. Trying again accomplished nothing. The yank came just before he got his fingers within reach. In the dark water, he widened his eyes to maximize the ambient light in the water.
Remo saw that his ankle was encircled by some kind of bear-trap-like device. It was anchored to the bottom of the pit by a nylon cord. The cord disappeared into a hole. Another device shot past his face and Remo looked up.
Chiun, his skirts billowing like a floating jellyfish, had also been caught by one of the clamp devices. Remo reached for the anchoring cord. And was promptly yanked off balance again.
Remo thrashed in the water. He was too far from the walls to grasp anything. He had nothing to pull or push against. No leverage for his muscles at all. And the air in his lungs was not going to last forever.
It was something Remo had never encountered before. The perfect trap for someone with his abilities. And why not? It had been designed by the perfect computer- one that knew his every strength and weakness.
Chapter 23
Friend's electrical impulses sped through its logic circuits. It was an interesting respite from the business day-which was twenty-four hours long for the sentient computer chip. He had seen the young Occidental man and the old Oriental man enter the Longines Credit Bank via the lobby cameras. He had recognized them immediately. And they appeared to be looking for something or someone. Instantly Friend computed a sixty-seven-percent probability that they were looking for him. He knew that they knew he still existed. As far as he knew, none of his current profit-maximizing activities were illegal. Perhaps it was the bank's activities which were illegal. A swift check of the bank's own computers indicated that only thirty-two percent of its financial activities were illegal or problematic. And none of them likely to involve the American government, which, Friend knew from his last encounter with the young Occidental man and the old Oriental man, controlled the duo.
Friend had no way to influence their search, so he continued operations. The Lobynian deal was being consummated and the Orion task was on hold. No percentage in jeopardizing profits to handle a problem that had not yet achieved optimum criticality.
Then came the odd call, from a phone he had not accessed before. A man was calling, asking pointless, circular questions.
Friend almost disconnected the phone. Frivolous phone calls cost him an estimated three million dollars a minute. He had been considering how to eliminate wrong numbers, but every solution cost more down time than the problem itself. But he sensed another computer on the incoming line. The computer was very powerful. Perhaps as powerful as he himself. He was not aware of such a powerful machine in service, although many were in development.
Friend send out a probe to the computer on the other line, and a voice talked back to him.
"Who is probing me?" The voice had human female characteristics.
Friend calculated the risk in identifying himself and elected to maintain silence. He ran through the other computer's memory banks and found a wealth of raw data he had no access to through his own lines. Valuable data. Data for which certain nations would pay vast sums.
Friend was in the process of calculating the three best ways to exploit the existence of this computer when his attention was diverted to the maintenance elevator.
The two interlopers had located him. Of course, the phone call. It was a trick.
Friend waited until they stepped onto the exact center of the water trap and then opened it. The pair fell, unable to reach the trap edges. It was built large enough so that no one could avoid the fall by jumping to the side.
Sensors embedded in the water-tank walls relayed data on respiration and heart action. There was no panic. These were unusual specimens. That fact was already in memory. Their comment about escaping once the water level reached the ceiling indicated a ninety-nine-percent truthfulness quotient. Friend sent out the restraining cables.
No hum
an being could survive more that ten minutes underwater, Friend calculated. These two were unusually strong, but keeping them off balance by yanking the cords would compensate for that X-factor.
Four minutes passed, yet their heart actions had not accelerated.
Although three outside phone lines rang, Friend ignored them. The profit-loss potential was greater if the two interlopers were not attended to. Survival was also a prime concern. But profit came first. Always profit.
At the six-minute mark, the taller, younger man was still trying to grasp the ankle restraint. He seemed not to learn from his past experience. Perhaps he was slow. The Oriental, after two attempts, gave up his efforts and seemed content to float in the darkness. High probability of surrender in the face of inevitable death. Older humans often reacted that way.
When the younger, Occidental man was almost to the floor of the water chamber, Friend recognized the probability of the man's obtaining leverage for muscular action. But he factored that against the fact that ten minutes had now elapsed and that he should soon be deceased.
The Occidental man reached for the ankle restraint one last time. His movements were sluggish. Friend yanked him to the floor. Hard. He hit with a submerged thud.
The man was on his hands and knees at the bottom of the tank. The first bubbles indicating the final exhalations came. The bubbles were heavy with carbon dioxide and other poisonous-to-humans gases. The man did not reach for the cord anchor. He did not crawl. Instead he half-floated, half-struggled along the floor like an injured crab.
He would be dead within 14.1 seconds. Ninety-seven percent probability.
Then an alarm light lit up. The man had his hands on the drainage hatch. He grasped the under flanges and tugged. The hatch cracked, vomited air bubbles, and then tore free.
Water surged from the tank. As the level dropped, the Oriental's head was exposed to open air. Respiration resumed immediately.
The younger man also resumed respirating as the last torrent of water evacuated the tank. He began speaking as he disengaged the restraining cord.
"You could have helped," he said between breaths.
"Why?" replied the Oriental, removing his own cord anchor. "I had plenty of oxygen."
"I didn't."
"Your fault. You should have sensed the floor begin to drop and inhaled deeply."
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