Identity Crisis td-97

by Warren Murphy

"I have the power to toss your scrawny ass in the federal pen at Danbury if you dare set foot off these grounds."

  "Then I remain under house arrest?"

  "You're goddamn right. You're going to run this place under my direct supervision. Let's see how long it takes for Folcroft's true nature to reveal itself."

  "I accept your challenge," said Harold W Smith thinly.

  As they marched him up the stairs, they heard a distant drumming.

  Doom doom doom doom...

  "What's that?" Big Dick Brull demanded.

  "We don't know," said Agent Phelps. "But we've been hearing it off and on since we took over."

  "You. Smith. What's that sound?"

  "I have no idea," said Harold W Smith truthfully, wondering what on earth could be making the noise. It struck his ears as vaguely familiar, but he could not for the life of him place it.

  "YOU HEARD that drumming, too?" Remo asked Chiun after the IRS agents and Harold Smith had finished clumping up the basement steps.

  "Yes."

  "Sound familiar to you?"

  Chiun's eyes became knife-blade creases in the wizened dough of his face. "Yes, but I cannot recall where I have heard this strange sound."

  They continued listening. Soon the sounds faded away as if whatever was beating on the drum-if it was a drum-was going down a very long corridor.

  They stepped from the shadows. "This isn't getting any better for Smith," said Remo.

  "He is equal to that loud cockroach."

  "Maybe one on one, but that little red-faced jerk represents the IRS. And they've definitely got a mad on for Smith."

  Chiun sniffed derisively. "They do not suspect who they are dealing with. Emperor Smith controls mighty armies, spies beyond number and vast wealth greater than that of the pharaohs."

  "None of which he can touch right now. Look, his computers are down for good, he can't reach the President, and the IRS is riding him hard. Let's face it. CURE is finished."

  "It is finished when Smith informs me that it is finished. Until then, we fight on."

  "Fine. You fight on. I have an errand to run."

  "What erand?"

  Remo lifted his T-shirt and tapped a letter tucked into his waistband. "I slipped this out of Smith's office when no one was looking. It's that dippy letter he thought was so important. I gotta mail it."

  "Hold," said Chiun, lifting a long fingernail.

  Remo's eyes flicked to the fingernail and too late back to his waistband. He never felt the letter leave, so expertly did Chiun remove it.

  "You are not the only one who can make things disappear," Chiun said aridly.

  "What manner of address is this-FPO and a number?"

  "Means Fleet Post Office. Guy's probably in the Navy."

  The Master of Sinanju lifted the letter to the weak 25-watt bulbs and frowned unhappily.

  "Bad manners to read someone else's mail," Remo pointed out.

  "It is stupid to mail a letter whose contents one does not know in case it bears tidings that could harm the mailer."

  And the Master of Sinanju blew on the flap once, then slipped a fingernail in. The flap snapped open without tearing. He withdrew the letter. Remo crowded around to read it, too.

  Dear Nephew,

  Congratulations. This is the year you reach your twenty-first birthday. You are now ready to take your place in the world and no longer require or are due any further assistance from me, whether financial or spiritual. Please accept my sincere good wishes on your future, and under no circumstances return to visit the place where you were raised.

  Dutifully, Uncle Harold

  "Nice guy," said Remo. "He just told his nephew to kiss off forever."

  "It is his right," said Chiun.

  "Well," said Remo. "This doesn't concern us. It's family stuff. I'll mail the letter and we can forget it." Chiun handed the letter and envelope back and said with a disdainful sniff, "Whites have no appreciation of family ties."

  Remo took the letter, stared at it and said, "Aren't you going to reseal it?"

  "You are the postman. That is your task." "What are you going to do?"

  "Find Beasley! "

  Frowning, Remo resealed the letter with his tongue. It tasted so bitter he spit his mouth dry. And when he remembered who must have licked the flap in the first place, he spit twice more for good measure.

  Remo slipped from the basement and made his way to the brick wall that enclosed the Folcroft grounds on three sides. He went over the fence in one leap, landed on the other side and went in search of his car.

  He found it down the road with an IRS seizure sign clipped under a window wiper with a yellow Denver boot immobilizing the right front tire.

  Kneeling, Remo took hold of the gripping mechanism and began wrenching odd pieces away. They snapped under his powerful fingers until the tire was freed. Then he drove off, whistling.

  When he reached town, Remo stood in line for twenty minutes at the Rye post office waiting to mail the letter to Harold Smith's nephew, Winston.

  The mail clerk said, "You'll need an express envelope and an air bill. You can fill them out at the counter over there."

  "I just stood in line twenty freaking minutes," Remo protested.

  "You're supposed to fill out the air bill before you get in line."

  "Where does it say that?"

  "Nowhere. You're supposed to know these things."

  Grumbling, Remo got out of line, dropped the envelope in a cardboard mailer, sealed it and filled out the air bill. After another ten minutes in line, the same clerk took the cardboard mailer, weighed it and said, "Eight seventy-five, please."

  Remo dug into his pockets and found only a crumpled-up five-dollar bill and an old buffalo-head nickel.

  "Take a credit card?" he asked.

  "No."

  "Damn."

  Stepping out, Remo noticed a Western Union office across the street and went in. "You accept major credit cards?" he asked the clerk.

  "Even minor ones."

  "I want to send a telegram."

  The clerk handed over a blank, and Remo was allowed to transfer the text of Harold Smith's letter to the blank without having to get out of line. When he was done, the clerk processed the telegram, ran his credit card through the charge machine and handed the card back with a receipt and a friendly "Thank you."

  "A pleasure doing business with private enterprise," said Remo, stepping out into the light.

  Chapter 23

  They were waiting for Winston Smith at the escape zone. Three members of SEAL Team Six, loaded for bear, hunkered down over two beached Boston whalers.

  A dark hand waved at him. "Hey, Winner!"

  "Fuck you," snarled Smith.

  The gun echoed his sentiments.

  Six gathered around him. "Hey, we heard you nailed the guy."

  "He isn't dead," Smith snapped.

  "Maybe next time they'll give you live ammo. Ha."

  "Fuck you," he said a beat ahead of the gun.

  "Where's the XO?" Smith asked.

  "Back at the sub."

  "You guys were aboard for the ride?"

  Beaming grins pierced the dark. "All the time. We watched the mission unfold from the gun camera. "

  "What gun camera?"

  "The laser, numb-nuts. It wasn't a laser. You shoulda known that. What kind of moron sticks a laser on ordnance already rigged with a night scope?"

  "Fuck."

  "That's another thing. You gotta watch your language. All manner of clean-minded admirals are gonna be watching your footage. Don't want to embarrass them in front of the spooks."

  "Hey, Winston, how do you feel about nailing a target when he's porking his best girl?"

  "Conscience bothering you yet?"

  "Just shut up everybody," Smith barked. "Shut up."

  "Man appears a mite out of sorts," a voice drawled. They returned to the Darter in the whalers.

  The XO was there to greet him as Winston Smith climbed down the sail
into control.

  "Sir I-"

  "Not a word, Smith. Not in front of the crew."

  They were escorted to a tiny debriefing room. The rest of Team Six were made to wait outside.

  "You did a great job," the XO began. "You proved the mission is doable and the BEM gun performs to expectations."

  "Begging your pardon, sir, but performing the mission for real would have proved the identical thing. And much more satisfactoraily, sir."

  "That wasn't in the mission profile. Not this time, anyway."

  "Sir, Six is getting tired of all these dry-fire missions. We're the best the Navy has to offer. We can do the job. Why aren't we sent after the bad guys for real?"

  "This is how the JCS wanted it to go down."

  "Permission to speak frankly, sir?"

  "No. Now take your BEM back to quarters and familiarize yourself with it thoroughly. Next time may be for real."

  Winston Smith saluted and stormed back to his cubicle. He ignored the back slapping of his teammates as they followed him down the cramped sub passageways. He shut the door in their laughing faces.

  "The Navy sucks," he said bitterly in the confines of his cubicle.

  Two hours later someone knocked on the door and said, "Got a sea gram for you, Smith."

  "Shove it up the ass of somebody who cares."

  "It'll be out here if you want it."

  Winston Smith rolled over in his bunk and, when sleep would not come, he got up and fetched the sea gram.

  He unfolded it and read the text.

  Dear Nephew,

  Congratulations. This is the year you reach your twenty-first birthday. You are now ready to take your place in the world and no longer require or are due any further assistance from me, whether financial or spiritual. Please accept my sincere good wishes on your future, and under no circumstances return to visit the place where you were raised.

  Dutifully, Uncle Harold

  Winston Smith's eyes grew wide, then shocked, then hot.

  His fingers shook and the cable trembled between them.

  "Fuck," he said softly. "Fuck fuck fuck."

  This time the gun said nothing. There was nothing to say. He was all alone in the world now.

  As he lay back in his bed and stared at nothing, Winston Smith wondered why he had been abandoned by his only living relative.

  Chapter 24

  On the ride up to the third floor, Big Dick Brull began barking out orders.

  "I want a lid clamped down on this place. No press, no outsiders coming in, no personal leave. We're all staying here until someone cracks, and it won't be me."

  "I would like to call my wife," said Harold Smith without a trace of the concern he felt.

  "Don't bother."

  "She must expect me home by now."

  "If she didn't miss you yesterday, she won't miss you today."

  "I protest this treatment."

  "Protest all you want, deadbeat. There isn't fuck-all you can do about it." Brull paused. "Unless you'd like to confess to tax fraud here and now."

  "I am guilty of no tax fraud."

  "Suit yourself. I'm denying you calling privileges-"

  The elevator doors hummed apart, and Harold Smith exited, the lenses of his rimless glasses starting to fog up. No one noticed this as they strode down the corridor in a tight knot, the feet of the IRS agents tattooing in unison.

  "By the way," Big Dick Brull added, "we've invoked the one-hundred percent rule in your case."

  Smith halted, turned. "I beg your pardon?"

  "We're seizing your personal assets, as well as your place of business. That means your car, your house and everything in it. The operation should be getting under way-" he looked at his watch "-right about now."

  "You cannot do this."

  "I can overrule it if you have something to say to me."

  Smith compressed his lips until they all but disappeared. His glasses were completely fogged up now. Still, Smith's cold gray eyes seemed to bore through the condensation like hateful agates.

  Big Dick Brull happened to notice the Timex on Smith's thin wrist and said, "Nice watch you have there."

  "Thank you," Smith said thinly.

  "Looks expensive, too."

  "It is not. Merely of excellent quality."

  Brull put out his hand saying, "Hand it over."

  "You cannot be serious."

  "I said, 'Hand it over.' The tie and clasp, too."

  "This is a school tie."

  "When I said we're seizing your possessions, I meant it. Don't stop with the watch and tie. Take off your coat and shoes."

  "This is outrageous. I am a lawful taxpayer."

  "No, you are what we like to call the 'screwee.' I am the 'screwer.' Is that your wedding ring?"

  "Of course it is."

  "Gold?"

  Smith said nothing.

  Big Dick Brull smiled grimly and said, "Fork it over."

  Harold Smith was trembling now. He looked like a man in the autumn of life, gray with age, thin from the spare appetite of his years. His eyes disappeared behind the steam coming from every pore to cloud up his lenses. He made no move to doff his coat, watch or wedding ring.

  "You will take my wedding ring over my dead body," he said in a voice as thin as his lank frame.

  What Big Dick Brull would have said to that was never known. A drumbeat sounded somewhere close.

  Doom doom doom doom...

  "There it goes again," Agent Phelps moaned.

  "Who's making that?" Brull demanded of Smith.

  "If I knew, I would put a stop to it this instant."

  The sound seemed to come from around the corner, so Dick Brull said, "Follow me."

  They followed the drumming by sound and not sight. Nothing up and down the corridor seemed to be the source of the sound.

  The drumbeat led them to a hospital-room door. Two agents pulled out Delta Elite pistols and rammed rounds into the chambers. They took up positions on either side of the door. At a nod from Brull, one flipped open the door while the other went in, pistol held before him in a two-handed grip. The other swept in right behind him.

  "Freeze!" they shouted a beat apart.

  "Oh, God," one said.

  The other began retching.

  Dick Brull shouted, "What is it? Did you corner it?"

  A voice wavered, "Mr. Brull, you'd better see this yourself."

  Brull hesitated. So Harold Smith broke free and barged into the room. Brull mustered up his courage and followed a pace behind him.

  A low, strangled sound came from Harold W Smith.

  Behind him Big Dick Brull bounced on his heels trying to see over Smith's tall, lanky frame. "What is it? I can't see. Stand aside so I can see."

  Harold Smith obliged.

  Big Dick Brull got a good look at the room. His eyes were drawn to the quivering steel Delta Elites in the two IRS agents' hands. They were pointing to a hospital bed. On the bed lay IRS Special Agent Jack Koldstad.

  Koldstad was scratching himself. It looked as if he had been scratching himself for over an hour. The tips of his fingers were bloodied, and the side of his face that itched was a raw wound. It leaked blood like a sponge. Nevertheless, he kept scratching at the itch that his fingernails must have long ago conquered.

  "What's wrong with him?" Brull croaked.

  "Disinhibition combined with perseveration," said Harold Smith. "I recognize the symptoms."

  "Make him stop, dammit! Somebody make him stop. It's making me sick just to look at him."

  Harold Smith moved in and took Jack Koldstad's restlessly scratching right hand by the wrist. He had to use both hands because that was the only way to get the man to stop scratching his face. When the fingers came away, they could see what looked like a pulsing blister in the bloody rawness of the cheek. It moved, questing like a red slug. After a moment they realized they were looking at Jack Koldstad's tongue, visible through the wound he had excavated in his own face.

  Big Dic
k Brull plunged out of the hospital room holding his hand to his mouth. A spray of watery vomit came out from between his fingers, and the chunks of his lunch began bouncing off his polished shoes.

  When the doctor came, Big Dick Brull demanded in a hot voice, "Why wasn't this man under constant watch?"

  "Because someone fired half the orderlies," he was told.

  "What moron did that?" Brull roared.

  From his hospital bed, Jack Koldstad lifted a weak hand.

  The doctor quickly strapped it down along with the other so the patient wouldn't injure himself further.

  MRS. HAROLD W SMITH wondered if she should call Folcroft Sanitarium.

  Normally she would not have hesitated. Normally she called dutifully if her increasingly absentminded husband failed to call her. Usually Harold was very good about calling if he was going to be late. Sometimes he slept over at work. Lately he'd fallen into that habit quite a bit. She had begun to wonder if Harold had taken an unprofessional interest in his secretary.

  As a consequence, Mrs. Smith, who answered to Maude but was affectionately called Irma by her husband, had begun to feel neglected.

  So when her Harold-he was never Harry or Halonce again forgot to call her, she decided to let him get around to it in his own good time.

  But it was a day later, and there had been no call. This was too much. Not that it hadn't happened before. It had. But Mrs. Smith was starting to feel taken for granted. And another carefully prepared meat loaf was congealing in the refrigerator, untasted.

  Mrs. Smith was pacing the living room eyeing the beige AT ephone, wondering if she should call Harold or hold her ground until he remembered to call her, when a very loud knock came at the door.

  Mrs. Smith went to answer it. The door was no sooner unlatched than several white-shouldered men in neat suits and drab ties began pouring in.

  "Mrs. Harold W. Smith?" one demanded in a gruff voice.

  "Yes. What is it?"

  "Internal Revenue agents. We are seizing this property in settlement of outstanding federal taxes." He handed over an official-looking document.

  Mrs. Smith tried to reason with the men. "I'm afraid you have the wrong house. My Harold has always paid his taxes."

  "You have five minutes to gather up any belongings you can carry in two hands and go."

  "Go? Go where?"

  "Anywhere. This is a free country."

  "But this is my home."