Fool's Gold (14 page)

Still, since he could neither disbelieve nor understand, he chose to ignore, and just to be thankful that those powers, whatever exactly they were, were arrayed on the side of the United States and not against it.

So they had come a long way, Smith and Remo and Chiun and CURE and America itself, and the only thing that had not changed was the water that ran back and forth endlessly in front of Smith's windows.

The telephone rang, its sharp jangle seeming visibly to jolt the quiet waves of air in the darkened room.

That was another thing that didn't change: the telephone. It had started ringing all those years before when Smith had first moved CURE into Folcroft. And it was still ringing.

He lifted the receiver slowly and said, "Hello."

Smith had never before heard the voice, which said, "What kind of deal are you offering?"

"Depends on what you've got," Smith said noncommitally. "Suppose you tell me something about yourself."

"What I've got is one of the great stories of our time. A secret agency for the United States government. An official government assassin and his elderly Oriental trainer. A father-son love theme that runs through it. Their battles against evil to try to make America safe for all its people again."

As the intense voice of Barry Schweid ranted on, Smith's stomach sank. This man, whoever he was, knew everything. CURE had been compromised.

There was silence on the end of the phone and Smith realized he was supposed to say something.

"Sounds interesting," he said. "What'd you say your name was?"

"I don't want to tell you my name," Schweid said. "Out here, they rip off everything. I don't want anybody to know what I'm working on."

Out here? Where? Smith wondered. Who rips off everything? What was this lunatic talking about?

"Like you. Like you got a message into my computer and processor," Schweid said. "I don't know how you did that. Maybe somebody else could do it. Then everybody would have everything I was working on."

His voice seemed to be approaching hysteria and Smith wondered if talking about money might calm him down.

"What kind of deal did you have in mind?" Smith said.

"I wouldn't take less than 250 thou. And ten points."

"Oh, yes, points," Smith said, totally confused. "Have to have points."

"And not net points either. Gross points. Net sucks."

"Well, that should be no problem," Smith said. No, there would be no problem. This madman, whoever he was, was due a visit from Remo. If Smith got his records back. If CURE survived that long. "We should get together and work out the details," Smith said.

"Who do you have to talk to first?" Schweid asked.

"No one. I'm in this alone."

"You're not going to make this one, are you?" Schweid asked. His voice took on a whiny, suspicious sound.

"Why not?" Smith asked. What was this man talking about?

"Nobody makes one on their own. Nobody makes a decision on their own. You've got to talk to your people. I know that. And you've got to kick it around with the creative folks. I know the bars they hang out in. Anybody who says he doesn't have to talk to anybody is lying. You're just in this to jerk me around, aren't you?"

Smith was afraid the man would hang up and he quickly said, "No, no, no. I'm a one-man operation. I make all the money decisions myself. And I handle creative myself." What the hell was he talking about, Smith wondered.

"What have you done?" Barry Schweid asked.

"A lot of things," Smith answered slowly.

"Tell me about some of them," Schweid said.

"I think we ought to swap résumés when we meet. I don't know anything about you either." Smith tried to chuckle. The unaccustomed sound resounded through the dark office like a death rattle. "Why, I don't even know your name. Maybe you're the one who can't make a deal on your own."

"No? No? You think that, huh? Well, this is mine. Totally mine. Those assholes, Bindle and Marmelstein, didn't want it. So that's their loss. I've got the property to sell."

Property? What property? Smith wonder. He wondered. He said, "I don't buy property without seeing it."

"How do I know you won't steal it from me?"

"It's hard to steal property," Smith said. How did you steal property? Did you take it with you and leave a hole in the ground where the property used to be? What was this man talking about? He wished his computers were working. He could have been running this conversation through them and by now the computer would know who this man was and where his phone was located and it would have been able to figure out, by cross-checking against lists of occupational jargon and slang, what he was talking about. But Smith's computer capabilities were down to almost zero, lost in a storm at sea. And this nuthouse lunatic had found them.

"I've had a lot of property stolen from me. Every time I pitch an idea, I see it under somebody else's name." Barry Schweid paused. "Listen, I don't want to sound tough. I want to make this deal. It's just that I've been burned."

"You won't be burned by me," Smith said. "When can we meet?"

"You say two hundred and fifty thousand is okay and ten points gross?"

"That's right," Smith said agreeably.

"I've got to think about it."

"Why? That's what you asked for. I agreed. What do you have to think about?" Smith asked.

"That's just it. You agreed. Out here, nobody agrees. You at this phone number regularly?"

"Yes."

"I'll get back to you."

The telephone clicked dead in Smith's ear. He replaced the receiver slowly, then dialed a three-digit number that connected him with Folcroft's switchboard. During the day, he had tried to start rebuilding the sanitarium's computer capability. Now he would see if there was anything happening inside the computers.

After a few seconds, the computer terminal on his desk lit up, and slowly spelled out a message.

Unable to find Telephone number.

Call originated in western United States.

Smith stared at the message, then pressed a button clearing the screen.

He took out a pad and pencil and hunched over his desk to try to recreate his entire conversation with the madman. Perhaps he would be able to figure out what it was all about. He allowed himself a sigh. It was going to be another long night.

Chapter Eleven

The long oak table occupied a long narrow room, with high vaulted ceilings and intricate hand-carved wooden moldings, but both room and table were overwhelmed by a giant crest, a full six feet across that occupied the center of one wall behind the head of the table.

In the center of the brilliantly polished ceramic crest, a lion reared on its hind legs. At one side of the lion was a sheaf of wheat and on the other side, a stiletto with a diamond-studded hilt.

A ceramic sash looped across the bottom of the crest. It contained the single word: Wissex.

There were not other paintings in the room, no photographs, no wall decorations, nothing but the crest. Around the table were placed a dozen hard-seated, straight-backed chairs. A single black telephone sat on the table.

Six men were talking softly in the room, but they became silent when the door opened and Neville walked in. He wore a herringbone tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, knickers, high socks and heavy walking shoes. He gave off the scent of out-of-doors and spent shotgun shells as he breezed inside the room and walked to the head of the table.

"Everyone here?" he called out, then sat down, looked around, nodded, and said, "Good. Let's get started."

Wissex waited until the other men were seated, then tapped on the table with the end of a silver pen he kept in his inside jacket pocket. He said riskly, "The monthly meeting of the House of Wissex will come to order. The minutes and the treasurer's report will wait until the next monthly meeting. I'd like to report on the Hamidian operation."

He looked around as if inviting approval and five of the six men at the table nodded. The sixth was Uncle Pimsy. He was trying to screw his monocle into his eye, so that he could see clearly the cigar he was fondling in his hand.

Wissex waited for the old man to speak, but he said nothing. Wissex began his report. "The Hamidian operation is proceeding nicely. We have already squeezed Moombasa for twenty million. Our goal was twenty-five million and I expect to meet that goal."

"But we've incurred losses," one of the directors said. He was a red-faced man in his early thirties whose voice seemed on the verge of cracking. His principal distinguishing characteristic was an adam's apple that bobbed up and down, seemingly out of synchrony with his speech.

"Yes, Bentley," Wissex agreed easily. "We've had losses."

"How many, Neville?" the young man asked.

"Eighteen. Seven in America and ten in the Yucatan. And we just lost our bomber in Bombay."

"Why?" Bentley asked. The other directors nodded, all but Pimsy, who seemed to be trying to sculpt his cigar to fit into a one-in-a-million mouth. He was tearing at the stem of the cigar with a silver knife, grunting under his breath.

Wissex waited until the directors stopped nodding.

"I don't know," he said. "The woman is protected by just two men but somehow they have repelled our subcontractors."

"Where do they go next?" another director asked.

"Spain."

"And then where?"

"There is no other place," Wissex said. "They weren't even supposed to get this far."

"Well, we just have to get rid of those bodyguards," another director said. He was a bristly man in his forties with a battalion-grade rust mustache. "Just can't have people running around killing our field hands. Not good form, don't you know?"

"No. No. True." Voices grunted around the table.

"We will get rid of them," Wissex said coldly.

"Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

The sound came from Uncle Pimsy at the end of the table. He had the cigar in his mouth now, still unlit, but the monocle had dropped again from his eye and he was trying to screw it back in.

He took a deep breath and began to speak again.

"Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." It was a terminal rattle, but the men around the table waited for him to go on. They were used to his way of starting to talk.

Finally, Pimsy pulled the cigar from his mouth and said, "Can't get rid of those two. Can't. Don't you understand?" He voice was gravelly and the words came out sounding as if his lips had been frozen with novocaine and were unable to form letters correctly. Spittle flew from his mouth with the words and the directors nearest him leaned away.

Wissex said, "That's nonsense, Uncle Pimsy, and you know it."

"Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh," came the rattle again. "Tell them the truth, Neville. We're all going to die."

"Oh, come," said Neville. He looked around the table, smiling patronizingly. "Uncle Pimsy has the idea that these assassins are somehow indestructible. From the Orient. He wants us to pay them a tribute, if you can believe that."

The other directors looked first at Wissex, then at Pimsy. The old man had lighted his cigar. It filled the room with smoke as if it were a tubular tear-gas canister.

"Never liked the idea of stealing money from Moombooger," Pimsy said. "Go back to the good old days. Honest men doing honest work. You're ruining this house, Neville."

"By bringing in twenty million dollars?" he asked.

"By making us battle the House of Sinanju," Pimsy said.

"Times change," Wissex said quickly.

"Sinanju never changes," Pimsy said. "Ehhhhhhhhh."

"What is Sinanju?" asked the director named Bentley.

"Another old house of assassins," Neville said. "Far as I can tell, it's been out of business for years. But Uncle's worried about it. Seems we met up once some hundreds of years ago and had some trouble with them. Uncle wants us to give the money back and strike our tents and go open cheese and tea shops." Anybody else want to do that besides Pimsy?"

He looked around the table. The directors were shaking their heads.

Pimsy groaned again. His monocle fell from his eye. He slumped back in his seat, as if exhausted from the effort of speaking. He puffed hard on his cigar and the smelly smoke hung in the air, a tangible fog.

"You're too clever by half, Neville. But you're going to kill all these people before you're done," Pimsy said.

"Shouldn't you go play with your poodle?" Neville snapped.

"Get rid of those bodyguards," Bentley said. "That should satisfy everybody."

"You're right," said Wissex "We concur. We will finish them off immediately. We will send our second best."

"Why second best?" asked Bentley.

"Because I have an appointment to ride to hounds this weekend. But no more foreign mongrels on this job. We will send Spencer."

"Spencer," one of the men hissed.

"Yes," said Wissex. "Commander Spencer."

There were murmurs of agreement around the table, and Wissex stood, signaling that the meeting was at an end. The others rose, still grinning and nodding to themselves.

"Oh, yes, Spencer," one of them said.

Uncle Pimsy alone remained in his seat, his chin sunk down onto what used to be his chest before his chest went south into his stomach cavity.

He was shaking his head.

"We're all going to die," he said.

Mrs. Cholmondley Montague was on her hands and knees in the garden, plucking weeds from among her flowers, when she heard the sound. It sounded as if hell had sprung a leak, a whining, screeching sound, and she closed her eyes for a moment, praying that it was an illusion and there wasn't really any such sound; but the sound continued and got louder and louder.

It had long since been arranged among the neighbors that the first to hear the sound would alert all the others, for their mutual protection, so Mrs. Montague dropped her garden tools and ran inside the house.

She looked at the telephone, her British sense of duty pulling her toward it. But self-preservation came first and so she closed and locked her front door and windows before she picked up the phone.