"What do you mean?" Real interest showed in Faith Davenport's expression this time.
"I could show you, say, after you're finished eating," Remo suggested.
"Show me now," Faith insisted. "If it gets cold, I can nuke it in the microwave."
Remo shrugged and got up. "Give me your wrist," he said, putting out his hand.
Faith lifted her hand. Remo took it in one of his own. With the other, he found her wrist pulse with the tip of his forefinger.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to show you the power of my forefinger."
And Remo began tapping. Faith frowned in perplexity. But as the tapping finger found a rhythm, her features smoothed. Her eyes got dreamier, and she licked her lips at the corners. Her mouth grew redder and delectable once more.
"What . . . what are you doing?" she asked nervously. But she didn't attempt to pull her wrist away.
"When I'm done," Remo promised her, "you'll never look at a forefinger without getting incredibly aroused."
"Honestly?"
"After I'm done, a forefinger will represent power. You can visualize it and get instant results."
"I love instant results," Faith said, beginning to squirm in her seat. Her breathing picked up. Her eyes squinched shut. She moaned. It was a tortured but pleased moan. It told Remo that she was ready for him.
He stopped tapping.
"No! Don't stop!" she cried. "Not now."
Grinning, Remo resumed his tapping. And Faith resumed her tormented squirming. Her eyes closed completely now. Her free hand clutched the table edge.
In the years since Remo had learned Sinanju-learned it fully-he had found that the techniques through which he could master the physical universe could also tap into female sexuality. Unfortunately, the full power of Sinanju was too much for most women. Remo had to hold back. Right now, he was just giving Faith a taste. When he was through, she would, as Remo had promised, never be able to look at a male forefinger without becoming violently aroused. What he didn't tell her was that it would be his own finger that would never fail to arouse her.
Then it happened. Faith Davenport began to shiver uncontrollably.
"Oh," she cried. "No!" she cried. "Oh, no," she added. "No No No. Yes Yes Yes!" And when her shivering subsided, her smile was dreamily goofy.
She began to slide off the chair and under the table. Remo pulled her back by her flutter-pulsed wrist.
"How was that?" he asked, grinning.
Faith Davenport didn't reply. She didn't hear the question. She had orgasmed into blissful unconsciousness, a frequent but not always inevitable side effect of Remo's technique.
"Damn!" Remo said bitterly. "I thought I had that passing-out stuff under control."
Sighing, Remo lifted her up in his arms and carried her into an immaculate white bedroom. He set her on the shiny brass bed and wondered what she would say if she woke up with him lying patiently beside her.
Then he got a sudden whiff of Scotch on her breath and had to suppress the gag reflex.
Remo decided the effort wouldn't be worth it.
He left the apartment, his face dejected. He could bring a woman to orgasm simply by touching her wrists. But keeping her conscious after foreplay was something he had yet to learn.
Down in the lobby, the guard smirked. "That was quick."
"Quicker than you think," Remo returned darkly, and stepped out into the cold night. As he stood on a street corner trying to remember where he had parked his car, a matronly woman in a floor-length mink coat offered him a dollar from her purse.
"Here, you poor homeless thing," she said. "It must be terrible to be without decent clothes on a cold night like this."
Remo stuffed the dollar back into the surprised woman's purse. "Keep it, lady," he snarled. "I happen to be a Wall Street tycoon. And I've got a fur that makes yours look sick. "
The matron walked off in a huff.
Chapter 14
Harold W. Smith arrived at his Folcroft office at six o'clock on the Sunday evening following Dark Friday. He laid his well-worn briefcase beside the desk and, settling into his cracked leather chair, pressed a concealed stud under the desk edge. Up from the left corner of the desktop a nondescript computer terminal rose like a glass-orbed Cyclops.
Smith logged on. He scanned domestic-news digests that were automatically culled from satellite newsfeeds and processed for him by the huge CURE mainframes concealed behind a false wall in the Folcroft basement. The country was awash in speculation about the coming trading day. Already the Israeli stock market-the only one in the world that operated on Sunday-was trading. It was down ten percentage points-significant, but not telling.
In another hour or so, at eight o'clock, the Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong stock markets would open. They would give the first warning of a replay of the Friday financial air pocket and a foretaste-if it was to be-of another Black Monday.
Smith paged through the digests carefully. Already there was a flurry of rumors about planned mergers and acquisitions, now that stock prices had dropped so sharply. There would be a lot of bargain hunting available to investors brave enough to take the chance. And excellent opportunities for the few surviving corporate raiders who could muster financing.
He looked for any news concerning the elusive Crown Acquisitions, Limited. There was nothing. Whoever they were, they eschewed publicity.
Smith was deep in thought when the phone rang in the outer reception area. Smith dismissed it as a wrong number, but it kept ringing. He picked up his desk phone and answered, sharp-voiced.
A businesslike woman's voice said, "Mr. Winthrop, of Winthrop and Weymouth, to speak with Mr. Smith."
"It is Dr. Smith," Smith said, "and please inform Mr. Winthrop that he should confine his calls to business hours. Good-bye." Smith hung up.
As the news reports scrolled past his eyes, throwing specks of green light onto his rimless eyeglasses, Smith shuffled through his papers for a memo from his secretary regarding Winthrop. He had been so engrossed in CURE matters that he had not glanced at his messages.
Finally he found it. One eye on the computer, he looked it over. The memo was brief: "Mr. Winthrop, of Winthrop and Weymouth, called." No message. It was personal.
Smith couldn't imagine what Winthrop wanted, so he put it out of his mind.
Finally trading began in Asia. The market started down in heavy trading. Then it rose ten points in twenty minutes. Smith's bloodless face suffused with relief-then there came a precipitous twenty-five-point drop.
From there, it was a roller coaster-with Dr. Harold W. Smith following every rise and dip as if his life depended upon it.
It did not, but the future well-being of his country did depend on what was happening in the Far Eastern markets.
In the darkness of his office, a phrase occurred to Harold W. Smith-a line of poetry from his schooldays, which in the heat of the moment were twisted in a rare display of creativity on the part of the unimaginative bureaucrat.
"And ignorant armies trade by night," Smith muttered.
Smith was still at his desk at six A.M. when his secretary came in. The Far Eastern markets had long since closed. The trading had shifted to Europe. It was volatile, there was no doubt about it. Even the blue-chips were softening. The global market was taking a beating, but it was holding together. But anything could happen when the tidal wave of uncertainty hit Wall Street.
During a lull in the trading, Smith went to a closet and took out a gray three-piece suit identical to the one he had worn through the night. He changed in his private rest room, shocked by the emaciated appearance of his limbs as he stood in his underwear before a full length mirror. It still surprised him that he had gotten so old so quickly. The responsibilities he bore on his shoulders as head of CURE were staggering. He had been at them for nearly three decades now. He wondered how much longer he could stay at his post-and what would happen when at last his health failed, as it nearly had only a few months before.
Smit
h brushed the dark thought from his mind as he shaved with the old-fashioned straight razor that his father had presented to him on his sixteenth birthday. It seemed like a thousand years ago. As he scraped the stubble from his chin, he was reminded again by his reflection how much he was his father's son. The face that stared back at him from the mirror was almost his father's own. Not as full, but the eyes were the same, as was the spare yet crisp white hair.
It was like looking at a family ghost. A ghost whose familiar eyes followed his every move and whose facial expressions mimicked his own. Sometimes Smith hated the taunting familiarity of the face in the mirror. Other times it took him back to childhood, like a long-misplaced photograph.
Smith wiped his face clean of Barbasol and put on a fresh white shirt. He knotted his striped Dartmouth tie expertly in a quick half-Windsor, only because it was faster than the much-preferred full Windsor.
Then, putting on his vest and coat, he returned to his desk, refreshed and ready for the Big Board's opening bell.
The moment he sat down, his knees began to shake. He was prepared to remain at his lonely post long after the closing bell, when the cycle would begin all over again in Tokyo, with no respite until Saturday, a full six days away.
It was going to be a long six days, Harold Smith realized. God had created the earth in six days. He wondered it if would take even that long for modern civilization to unravel.
And then it was ten o'clock. Smith engaged the Quotron window, his heart high and anxious in his throat.
The Master of Sinanju entered the trading room of Nostrum, Ink with a satisfied expression on his wrinkled countenance. All was well with the world once more, now that he had evaded the hostile takeover of Nostrum.
But the very instant he entered the room, his tiny nose wrinkled at a foul but familiar smell. It was fear-the raw mingling of leaking sweat and openmouthed breathing.
"What is wrong, my loyal minions?" he asked in shock.
A trader looked up with the hurt expression of a seal that had been hit by a paddle.
"We're bombed here!" he cried, his voice sick.
"Bombed!" Chiun demanded. "Where? I see no damage."
Remo stuck his head out of Chiun's office.
"It's just an expression," he said.
Another trader clutched his phone and moaned. "It's a massacre!" he wailed.
"Where?" Chiun asked, coming to his side. The trader cradled the receiver between his chin and shoulder. "It's all up and down the street. The blood is flowing."
"This is terrible," Chiun squeaked. "Is America at war?"
"It's just an expression, Chiun," Remo called again.
Chiun looked back to Remo. "What are you saying, Remo? My loyal minions would never lie to me. You heard them. People are being bombed. There is blood flowing in the street. It is a calamity. Such things are never good for business."
"This is business," Remo said wearily. "The market is crashing. This is how these people talk."
"Is this true?" Chiun demanded.
"The Dow's dropped seventy points in the last half-hour," the trader said in anguish. "It's a rout."
"Never surrender!" Chiun cried. "No matter who the foe, Nostrum will prevail. I promise you that." "Will you come in here, Chiun?" Remo called sharply.
The Master of Sinanju called out, "Take heart. I am with you now," and floated into his office.
"The market's melting down," Remo told him tightly. "And forget that double-talk. It's just business jargon."
"But it is war talk."
"That's how these people see business," Remo explained. "As war. They call it competition. And listen, this is serious. Nostrum stock is dropping too. Everything's dropping. "
"I have no fear," Chiun retorted, "for I have gold."
"Gold is dropping too."
Chiun started. "What is this? Gold is dropping?" He looked around frantically. "Where is Faith? I must have her by my side. She will advise me what to do."
Remo tripped the floor intercom with a toe. He hastily shoved both hands in his pockets when Faith stepped into the room moments later. Her blue eyes sought Remo's half-hidden wrists and expressed heartrending disappointment.
"Gold is dropping," Chiun squeaked. "What do I do?"
"Buy," she said quickly. "Now is the time to pick up bargains."
"But these stocks are becoming more worthless by the hour. "
"That's this hour. In another hour they could double in price. I would go long."
"Go along with whom?" Chiun asked.
"Not 'along,' " Faith said. "Go long on the stocks. Hold on to your positions in anticipation of long-term growth. And buy more."
"With what?"
"Gold. Gold is dropping. If gold keeps dropping, it'll be worth less than most blue-chip stocks.
Chiun turned to Remo. "Is she mad? Sell gold for paper?"
"Faith's been playing the market for years," he pointed out. "You should see her apartment. I have."
Chiun stuck his head out the office door. "Buy! Buy everything!" he cried. "Nostrum, Ink is paying gold for stock. Let the word go out. Strictly cash-and-carry."
With a wild shout of "Let's go for it!" the traders got on their phones and began trading.
Within ten minutes the messengers began arriving, followed by armored-car drivers and even feverish individual brokers. They crowded the Nostrum trading room and corridors, fighting one another to hand over folded stock certificates in return for gold ingots. They hurried off; carrying them in sacks and stuffed into suit pockets.
As Remo and Faith struggled to keep order, Faith brushed up against Remo. Her tongue tickled his right earlobe.
"Last night was wonderful," she whispered breathily.
"I'm glad it was for someone," Remo complained, shoving a frantic stockbroker so hard his horn-rimmed glasses broke in two.
The phone rang and P. M. Looncraft's secretary informed him that it was the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Looncraft took the call. The market was down another dozen points in the last nineteen seconds. At this rate, the bargains would be enormous, just as he had hoped.
"Yes?" he said.
"We've suspended trading twice today."
"The circuit breakers are working admirably."
"Except every time trading resumes, so does the panic," the chairman said grimly. "I'm polling all NYSE board members. We should consider suspending trading for the remainder of the day. Give the institutions time to regroup."
" I think that would be premature," Looncraft said, smiling tightly to himself. If the chairman was panicked, then it would be a rout. His avid eyes slid to his Telerate screen.
P. M. Looncraft blinked. The market shot up two points. Then ten. Then twenty. It was like a thermometer on an August day in Panama.
"Wait a minute," the chairman said, cupping his hand over the phone.
When his voice returned, it was jubilant. "The market's regrouping. There's a buying frenzy going on."
"Capital," P. M. Looncraft said in a shaky voice. His cheeks squeezed tight. His mouth became a puckered pink rip in his long face.
"Apparently Nostrum, Ink is offering gold for blue-chip stocks," the chairman said excitedly. "Others are upticking."
"Why is that?" Looncraft asked, making no attempt to keep the peevishness from his tone.
"Haven't you heard? Everyone is saying Nostrum is run by a wizard. They're calling him the King of Wall Street."
"What?" Looncraft shouted. "But I am the King of Wall Street. Forbes says so."
"Don't shout at me, P. M. That's the rumor on the street. Everyone knows that this Chiun person is a financial genius. Right now, where he goes, others follow. It's a herd reaction. And thank God for that. He may have saved the market."
"Excuse me," Looncraft said huffily. "I have trading of my own to attend to."
"Good luck."
"Luck is not a factor." Looncraft stabbed his intercom.
"Send Johnson in," he barked, forgettin
g not to mention the man by name.
When Ronald Johnson entered, nervously fingering his gold tie, Looncraft looked up at him with a face like a stormcloud.
"I am prepared to go forward with my offer for Nostrum, Ink," he said angrily. "Set it up."
"Yes, sir. And what about the Global acquisition?"
"It goes forward. Full-bore. I will handle the details myself. "
In his office at Folcroft Sanitarium, an ashen-faced Harold W. Smith watched the Quotron numbers rise. He brought up a news digest and learned that the market was responding to the confidence shown by the mysterious financial wizard of Nostrum, Ink. Smith blinked. "Inc." was misspelled. He had never seen his computer misspell a word before. But that imponderable was lost in the torrent of buy orders reflected on the electronic ticker tape.
It was 10:45. In London, the Financial Times Stock Exchange was winding down on a modest up note. It was the same in other European markets as they neared the end of their trading day.
Harold Smith removed his glasses. He knew the psychology of the market. There was no guarantee it would hold at these high prices, but a climb of 265 points in an hour was an encouraging sign.
If it continued, perhaps the crisis had passed.
At four o'clock, the closing bell sounded and Wall Street, up a stunning six hundred points, breathed a collective sigh of relief.
"Rich!" Chiun cried, standing among the exhausted heap of floor traders who lay sprawled in their deskless cubicles. "We are all rich beyond our wildest dreams."
"On paper," Remo put in.
Chiun's outspread arms froze. His uptilted head snapped around. He fixed Remo with his steel eyes.
"What do you mean, on paper?" he demanded.
"You're rich only if you sell your stock."
"Then sell!" Chiun cried. "Sell everything!"
"Can't do that," Remo said firmly, shaking his head. "The market's closed." Faith was by his side, her arms wrapped around his bare forearms. She was trying to tug one of his hands out of his pocket, but Remo refused to budge.
Chiun turned on Faith. "What is this?"
"He's right, Chief," Faith said, giving up Remo's hand for the moment. "You have to sell the stock to realize its value. But that would be a mistake. Hold on to it. The price will go up more. The market is bullish."
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