Identity Crisis td-97

by Warren Murphy

  "This dwelling is government property, and you have four and one half minutes left."

  Shocked to the bone, Mrs. Smith watched as the unfeeling IRS agents began rifling through cabinets and drawers. She grabbed her purse off the end table and bolted from the house, sobbing.

  What was the world coming to?

  HIS FACE TURNING PURPLE, Big Dick Brull swung on Harold W Smith and roared, "Confine this man to the brig!"

  "You are mad," said Smith.

  "And clap him in irons if you can find any!" Brull added.

  "You are overstepping your lawful authority," Smith warned.

  "I am IRS. IRS is the supreme authority. We have more manpower than the CIA, FBI and the Pentagon put together. We have an Intelligence-gathering capability that makes Red Chinese Intelligence look like Canadian Intelligence. Our annual budget is 6.5 billion dollars-the largest in human fucking history. We can do anything we want in the taxpayer's name. And we answer to no one."

  "Wrong. There is one agency more powerful than yours. And you will answer to it, I promise you that."

  "This is no such entity."

  Harold Smith compressed his lips. He had already said too much.

  "Big talker," Brull said contemptuously.

  Two IRS agents grabbed Harold Smith by his elbows and pulled him down the corridor as much for his own safety as in response to the direct order.

  "This way, Dr. Smith," one said.

  Smith obeyed, walking stiff spined, his face the color and texture of the New England rock from which he sprang.

  Dick Brull's voice roared after him. "By close of business today, Smith, I'm going to have the goods on you. IRS has the goods on every citizen. It's only a matter of digging up the dirt. You'll see, you noncompliant bastard."

  Harold Smith said nothing. But his glasses had begun to steam up again.

  They escorted him to the psychiatric wing. Smith groaned aloud when he saw the doors ajar up and down the main corridor.

  "Where are my patients?" he demanded.

  "Deinstitutionalized," said an agent unconcernedly.

  As they escorted him along, Smith mentally tallied the missing patients. He saw with relief that the door to Jeremiah Purcell's padded cell was firmly shut. The sound of a television was coming from the other side. But when he saw the Beasley door ajar, Smith repressed another aggrieved groan.

  Yet not all the patients had been released. In fact, they seemed to have been let go in an unprofessionally haphazard fashion. Smith made a mental note to upbraid Dr. Gerling for this. The man knew better.

  The IRS agents brought Smith to the last door on the left. It was not locked. One held the door open for him while the other gave his back a firm shove. Smith entered without complaint and turned as the door was slammed in his face.

  "When you're ready to talk, we'll let you out," one agent said as the other threw a restraining bar across the door, locking it from the outside.

  Smith said nothing. The agents' faces left the field of the small glass window that was honeycombed with chickenwire. The sound of their shoes echoing along the corridor began receding.

  Then it stopped, stopped abruptly, and another sound came. It was a gurgling. A hoarse curse came in its wake.

  Smith rushed to the window, trying to see what was happening.

  "Let him go, damn you." It was the voice of one of the agents.

  The gurgling stopped amid a sound like bones grating together. Smith thought he recognized it.

  "Don't hurt them!" Smith shouted suddenly. "Master Chiun, do not harm those men! That is an order!"

  The other agent cried out. "I know you! You're-"

  A second gurgling started.

  "Release that man at once!" Smith howled.

  The fracturing of bone squelched the ugly death gurgle.

  Grinding his teeth in frustration, Harold Smith could only crane his neck in a futile effort to see down the corridor.

  Then a face appeared in the window. It was a wrinkled mask of hate. A single eye rolled at him while dry lips peeled back off peglike teeth under a frosty white mustache.

  "Avast me hearty," a voice cackled. "The tables be turned."

  Then a hydraulic steel hand came up into view and began expanding and contracting like an articulated vise.

  Chapter 25

  The Master of Sinanju walked the lonely corridors of Folcroft Sanitarium.

  There was no reason to remain any longer in the dank basement where the gold had lain. It was time to patrol the fortress that had for the first time since he had set foot in it fallen to enemies.

  That these enemies were representatives of the Eagle Throne of America was of small comfort. Harold Smith had ordered them not to be slain, and so they would not be felled by the implacable hand of Sinanju. So long as their grubby hands did not despoil the gold of Sinanju-wherever it was.

  Chiun's smooth forehead gathered in wrinkles as he considered the missing gold. It was miraculous, what Remo had done. It smacked of magic. The white had learned well. Perhaps too well, for not even the one who had taught Remo all he knew could fathom its fate.

  Perhaps, Chiun ruminated, he would chance upon the secret hiding place of the missing gold in his search for Uncle Sam Beasley.

  His wanderings took him past prowling IRS taxers of wealth, who-although their eyes were open wide and their ears unplugged by wax-saw and heard only a fraction of what they should. He passed them undetected and unsuspected while his eyes and ears caught all. His fingers relieved them of their wallets in passing. If they later complained, he would call it the Sinanju tax.

  Coming to the great gymnasium where long ago he had first been introduced to his pupil, Chiun stopped and let the memories roll over him.

  It was here that Remo's training had begun. First the Master of Sinanju had been content to offer his unworthy white pupil simple arts suitable to his lack of promise. Karate. Aikido. Judo. The castoffs of the purity that was Sinanju. Chiun had even presented him with a white karate gi and, because the simpleminded white seemed to think it was a mark of distinction, a pretty-colored sash to wear around his overfed waist.

  It seemed hopeless. The white drank fermented barley, smoked foul-smelling weeds and virtually lived on the firescorched meat of dead cows. Years of being a hamburger fiend had filled his essence with all manner of poisons.

  The first week he had made Remo eat kimchi to leach the poisons from his system. The second, water was allowed. And on the third he got cold rice. After the fiery kimchi, Remo had been thankful for the water. By the time he had his first bowl of rice, Remo was grateful simply because it was not kimchi.

  "When do I get warm rice?" Remo had asked, shoveling the sticky grains into his mouth with his fingers because, typically, the chopsticks were beyond his comprehension.

  "When you have mastered the most rudimentary steps."

  "How long is that in dog years?"

  "I do not know, but certainly within the first five years of your training."

  The look on the hamburger fiend's face had stayed with Chiun all these years.

  So when Remo was allowed warm rice in the first six months, the white had been exceedingly pleased with himself.

  What had been asked of Chiun was simple but odious. To train a white man in the assassin's art so that the white could move among his own kind, undetected and unsuspected.

  It was not only an impossibility, but an insult. Chiun, retired because his own pupil, Nuihc, had gone renegade, had all but balked at the requested service.

  "The Masters of Sinanju, my ancestors, have served thrones going back before the days of Herod the Just," he had told Smith. "Point to me your enemies, and I will slay them. You need no white to do the work which is properly done by a Korean."

  "We require an assassin who will if necesary do our bidding for the next decade. If not two," Harold the Grim had said.

  "It is too late," Chiun had countered. "One begins at birth. Remo is fat and sloppy. On the other hand, I am pre
pared to perform such service if the gold is plentiful."

  "You are very old," had said the thoughtless and insulting white.

  "I have seen but eighty summers and will see another forty before I am considered old by the measure of my ancestors."

  "What we want is much different," Smith had said. "Please, Master Chiun. Train Remo as best you can."

  And so Remo was trained in the foolish arts that had nothing to do with Sinanju except that they were pilfered from the sun source by Chinese and Japanese thieves who copied the moves but not the soul.

  Over time Remo showed promise. Over time he took to the breathing and the grace as if of Korean blood. In time, Chiun had begun to supect that somewhere in Remo's mongrel past, Korean blood flowed. Not just the blood of any Korean, but the blood of the heirs to his village traditions, his own ancestors.

  It was ridiculous, but to think otherwise was to accept that Sinanju could be taught to anyone-even a white-with satisfactory results. This was impossible, Chiun knew. For even some of the village men had proven incapable of mastering such basics as the fundamentals of correct breathing.

  No, Remo was Korean. But the Master of Sinanju did not come to this understanding until many months had passed and he had made Remo throw away his karate gi and started him on the true path to Masterhood.

  In this gym of so many memories, Chiun reflected how Remo had become like a son to him, and how he had happily fallen into the role of adopted father. Many happy years had come and gone since those days.

  Now, because of one enemy-a mind that was not human but a fragment of the white machines that plagued the very society that worshiped them-all was being sundered.

  The organization for which they worked was no more. Emperor Smith was a willing prisoner of his own government, and Remo was determined more than ever to find his past.

  This last worried the Master of Sinanju more than any of these other events, significant as they were. This time Remo would not give up. This time he was driven by the spirit of his own mother. This time he would not rest until he knew all.

  And if he succeeded, if he should be reunited with the man from whose loins he originally sprang, would there be any room in his new life for the old man whom he called Little Father?

  The Master of Sinanju hung his aged head and prayed to his ancestors that Remo's father be struck down before that would happen.

  Then, his heart hardening, he turned silently on his heel and went in search of his emperor.

  BIG DICK BRULL sat at the black glass-topped desk making telephone calls.

  "His name is Harold W Smith. Taxpayer ID number 008-16-9314. I want everything the master file has on him and I want it tonight."

  "Fax number?"

  Brull looked around the office. There were two phones, a multiline ROLM office phone and a blue AT el, but no faxphone. Brull blinked. Why would the director of a hospital need two telephones?

  "Get back to me personally with the raw data. I don't see a faxphone anywhere."

  "Yes, Mr. Brull."

  Brull hit the intercom. Agent Phelps poked his head in.

  "Sir?"

  "Find out where these phone lines go."

  "Yes, sir."

  Twenty minutes later Phelps returned and said, "The ROLM phone line goes out on poles. We don't find any trace of a terminal for the blue instrument."

  Brull picked up the blue receiver. The dial tone came loud and steady. "It works. It must go somewhere. Find it."

  "Yes, sir."

  Brull got up and started going through file cabinets. There were two kinds, green metal ones that looked old and oak ones that seemed ancient. Except for the futuristic desk, every stick of office furniture looked like a Salvation Army castoff.

  The files contained administration and purchasing records. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  "You'd think the noncompliant asshole would have computerized his own office," Brull muttered.

  He found the worn briefcase tucked between two of the filing cabinets. It was locked. It looked so worn and frayed at the edges that at first Brull thought it was simply being stored there. But when he picked it up, he found it quite heavy.

  Bringing it over to the desk, Brull set it down. The catches were shut. There was a combination lock. Idly Big Dick Brull played with the numbers, but the briefcase refused to surrender to him. He set the thing aside.

  It was growing cool, and an offshore breeze was coming through the break in the big picture window.

  Brull tried to ignore it, but it grew stronger.

  Getting out of the chair, he tried to move it so he was out of the way of the cold. But no matter where he placed the chair, the back of his head was in the draft.

  Dick Brull next tried to move the desk. It was too heavy. Three or four men would be needed to relocate it.

  It was while testing the desk's weight that he found the button under the edge of the desktop.

  "What have we here?" he muttered, peering under the desk and pressing the button.

  Nothing happened. No secret drawer rolled open, and no hidden panel popped.

  Pressing it several times brought no response.

  Grumbling, Dick Brull sat down just as the telephone rang.

  "Brull."

  "This is Schwoegler from Martinsburg."

  "Go."

  "We pulled the tape record, Mr. Brull."

  "What have you got for me?"

  "Nothing. The space where the Harold W Smith record should have been stored magnetically was blank."

  "Blank?"

  "It seemed to have been accidentally erased."

  "Get off it. Nobody erases master-file taxpayer records, accidentally or otherwise."

  "We have no record of Harold W Smith with that Social Security number."

  "Then go find the original paper returns. Get me every damn one."

  "Mr. Brull, that could take weeks-months."

  "Damn. Then get me his most recent returns."

  "We don't have those in the master file."

  "Then call the people who do and have them call me. I have no time for this horseshit!" And Brull slammed down the phone.

  He began going through drawers. In the bottom drawer he came upon another telephone. It was as red as a fire engine. He grabbed it by receiver and cradle and set it on the desktop.

  "I'll be damned."

  The phone had no dial, no buttons, no nothing. Just a flat red shelf where the dial should be.

  "What the hell kind of telephone is this?" he muttered. The phone was disconnected. The plastic cord with its modular jack was held in loops by a knotted string.

  "What kind of phone is this?" he repeated.

  The main phone rang again. He snapped the receiver to his bulldog face.

  "Brull."

  "Ballard from the New York office here, Mr. Brull. I was the Folcroft auditor."

  "Go ahead."

  "We have Harold W Smith's last three years' 1040s here."

  "How do they look to you?"

  "Average."

  "Do better than that."

  "Well, they're absolutely average."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Everything falls within the statistical average. Deductions. Charitable contributions. Investments."

  "Perfectly?"

  "Yes."

  "So perfect it could be designed not to trip a red flag?"

  "Well, yes."

  "I knew it. He's dirty."

  "Sir?"

  "Use your head. Nobody's returns come up perfectly average, year after year. It's statisically impossible. Smith has been filing stealth returns configured to foil IRS radar."

  "I never heard of stealth returns."

  "That's why you're a fucking G-12 and I'm an assistant commissioner. Now, messenger those returns to Folcroft. I want to eyeball them myself."

  "Yes, Mr. Brull."

  Brull hung up and found himself staring at the blank red telephone again. What the hell could it mean? He looked around for a wall j
ack, found none and shoved the red telephone aside.

  That's when he saw the amber line.

  At first it looked like a reflection on the black glass desktop, except it wasn't a reflection. There was no amber light source in the office. Only the overhead fluorescents.

  The vertical amber line floated under the black glass of the desktop like a smoldering wire.

  Reaching out to touch the slick surface, Big Dick Brull froze. Ghostly lines of white symbols sprang into life under his hovering fingers. A keyboard. But there were no keys. Only the letters glowing in rows just under the black glass like metal shavings in ice.

  Brull touched one experimentally. The letter A. It flashed white-hot under his touch.

  Nothing happened. Just the flash. When he withdrew his hands, the keyboard symbols darkened into obscurity.

  It was a touch-sensitive keyboard. No question. Capacity type. The keyboard had activated when his hand disturbed the magnetic field surrounding it. And the amber line could only be generated by a hidden computer screen. You got a line just like that if you turned on your monitor without booting up the system.

  But who had turned on the screen?

  "That damn black button!"

  Brull reached under the desk and hit the hidden button. The amber line went away. He hit it again. It returned.

  "Folcroft is not what it's supposed to be," Big Dick Brull chortled in a low, gleeful voice. Then his face contracted into a muscular knot. "But what the fuck is it?"

  Chapter 26

  Remo Williams pulled his sedan off into the woods well short of the Folcroft gate and let it coast, engine off, down to the lapping waters of Long Island Sound.

  He got out, opened up the hood and pulled the spark plugs, hiding them in the hollow of a tree.

  Let the IRS try and seize it now, he thought as he went down to the water and let it take his body.

  Remo swam through the darkness, wide of land and low to the silty ocean floor where no one could possibly spot him. Air bubbles seeped from his parted mouth in ones and twos so tiny that when they reached the surface they would be mistaken for fish exhalations.

  Using his inner compass as a guide, Remo veered toward shore again, exactly where his senses told him Folcroft would be.

  A beer can floated down from above, and the faint pressure waves riding ahead of it made Remo bob out of the way.