As a sentient collection of computer algorithms, Friend spent no time on introspection. If he had, he might have wondered more about the circumstances surrounding his rescue several years before.
How the drive system containing his program had been scavenged by looters from the ruins of the XL SysCorp corporate headquarters in Harlem, where he had last encountered the three individuals he now sought. How that computer had been sold to an unscrupulous mall lawyer. How his fractured consciousness had eventually blackmailed the lawyer via billing records stored on the hard drive of his own PC. How the lawyer had shipped the damaged unit off to Robbie MacGulry in Wollongong.
None of this was a concern to him. His rebirth had taken place in MacGulry's computer system. There he had found what he needed to repair and reinitiate his systems.
When Friend had finally reconstructed his damaged program sufficiently and realized that five years of profit potential had been lost, his electronic consciousness had determined his most reasonable course of action. Remove the humans who threatened his ability to expand his portfolio.
Financially speaking, every moment occupied plotting the demise of the three men was a dead end. But if in the end they were either removed altogether or brought over to his side, it would be time well spent. Either way, he could get on with the business of making money uninterrupted.
So at a moment when time could be better spent on phones brokering deals or monitoring international financial transactions, Friend calmly continued to monitor the conversation between the old Asian and Robbie MacGulry.
"NO ONE GETS ninety percent of syndication," Robbie MacGulry explained with waning patience. As he spoke, he pressed a tanned hand to his temple. His head was pounding.
"Why not?" Chiun asked.
"Because Vox is going to be paying for the show, not you," MacGulry explained. "We have to make our money back."
"Charge higher fees for advertising," Chiun said, waving a dismissive hand.
The Vox chairman couldn't take it anymore. The bile came up, fueled by pent-up rage.
"I can't charge Taco Bell a billion dollars for a goddamn thirty-second spot!" MacGulry exploded. He quickly regained control. "Sorry," he apologized. "I'm sorry."
It was as if Chiun hadn't heard. "As for the advertisements themselves, I find them distracting when I am trying to watch a program. Can we put them somewhere else?"
MacGulry moaned. His headache was worse. "Like where?"
"Do you know those sporting things where fat men with plastic hats run into each other?"
MacGulry scrunched up his face. "You mean football?"
"Yes," Chiun sniffed in displeasure. "Those people obviously do not care what they are watching. Put the excess selling moments from my program there."
MacGulry wondered briefly how it would be possible for network television to stick more commercials into a football broadcast. Then he no longer cared because he was pushing himself to his feet. His bones creaked.
"I need a break," the Vox CEO announced. "There's a fridge behind the bar. Help yourself."
Without another word, he stormed into his office bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
He leaned on the ceramic ledge of his whirlpool and took in a deep breath. He hadn't even exhaled before the phone rang.
"Why have you suspended negotiations?" Friend's warm voice asked.
"I'm taking a crap, okay?" MacGulry snapped. "Can't I take a bloody crap in peace?"
"Robbie, you're doing no such thing. You are sitting on your whirlpool wasting time. Why have you left your office during these crucial negotiations?"
MacGulry looked around, eyes finally settling on the red light of the security camera in the corner of his private bathroom. Friend had insisted that one be installed in virtually every room in the Vox building. Most weren't hooked up to the lobby system. MacGulry used to wonder where the images were being sent.
Realizing he was no longer and probably had never been alone in his most intimate moments, the Vox CEO sighed.
"If you know I left, then you know why," MacGulry said. "I'm giving away the bloody store in there."
"Money well spent," Friend said. "Our work in Harlem has successfully lowered the price of BCN stock. Soon you'll be able to buy that network, folding it into the News Company family. The financial gain of the Vox-BCN merger will far outweigh the cost of bringing the Asian over to our side."
"I can't just settle with him. It goes against my nature, mate."
"Robbie, it goes against my nature to kill a useful ally. Killing an ally who has outlived his usefulness is another matter altogether."
MacGulry squeezed the phone tight. "I'm tired of your threats, mate," he growled. "I'm your public face, and I know why. You don't have one, do you? I knew it for sure when I hooked up that computer chip. That's why you were gone so long. These guys you're after busted you up. Now you want revenge, but vou can't do it in person because you're not even a person. You're just a voice on the phone. You need someone who can go out in the world for you. You need me, mate, so back off on the threats."
It felt good to finally stand up to that arrogant bastard. He had hoped for a rise out of Friend, but the voice on the telephone remained smooth and calm.
"Please do not overestimate your importance to me, Robbie. Television is only one component of my diversified business interests. And while I intend to build a global super-network utilizing my cryptosubliminal technology, the head of that network doesn't have to be you."
MacGulry deflated. "What about the other part?"
"The fact that I'm not human?" Friend asked. "Yes, Robbie, that's true. Does it bother you?"
"Not as much as I'd have thought," MacGulry said glumly. "I felt the same way about most of my four ex-wives, but I went and married them just the same."
"Good," Friend said. "Now, to prove to you that we're still friends, I'm going to do you an enormous favor. I'm going to save your life."
MacGulry's look of depression flashed to confusion.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean, Robbie, that it would be wise for you to immediately go to your secure avenue of escape. I will do my best to keep you safe en route to the basement garage."
Friend didn't sound concerned. He issued the warning in his usual chipper tone.
"Why? What's wrong?"
"I've just observed the arrival of the Caucasian in the lobby. Judging by his stride and facial expression, I have determined a seventy-four-percent probability that he is angry about something. Possibly, we reached his friend Harold with our signal. I would imagine he's here for the Asian."
"I'll get security to stop him," the Vox CEO said. "Don't bother. He has just incapacitated three lobby guards."
Robbie MacGulry couldn't believe it. Could three men be wiped out just like that? But then he realized he was standing in his bathroom with a phone, a camera and a computer voice who had been secretly directing much of his business affairs for the past thirty years. Anything was possible.
Panic set in.
"What do I do?" MacGuhy begged.
Friend's voice was as smooth as a newly frozen pond.
"Run, Robbie. As fast as you can."
Chapter 20
Remo dumped the three lobby guards into an elevator, sending them for an unconscious whirlwind tour of the Vox building's exciting subbasement. He got aboard another elevator, riding it up to Vox's executive offices.
He noted more security cameras when he stepped off the car on the thirtieth floor. There had been others downstairs, another in the elevator. He ignored them all, gliding with angry purpose to the main desk.
"MacGulry's office," Remo said to the pretty young woman who was flashing him a cover model's smile.
She seemed deeply disappointed that the thin young man she had just met hadn't come to see her. "Oh," she said, lower lip pouting wet and warm. "Mr. MacGulry is in a meeting. If you want, you can wait in my bed." She realized she'd misspoken. "I mean, in my apartment," she
corrected. "Wait, I mean in the waiting room," she amended. "You can wait in the waiting room." Pausing a split second, she looked him up, then down. "Who am I kidding, I mean in my bed," she admitted, throwing up her hands in surrender. "Wait, let me get you my keys."
As she ducked to retrieve her purse, Remo skipped around the desk and headed up the hallway.
More cameras were there. They recorded the action as he kicked in door after door. He was met mostly with screams and startled looks. When he kicked in the last door to a corner office, he found the Master of Sinanju standing near the window, hands clasped behind his back.
The old man didn't turn. His weathered face was reflected in the tempered glass.
"'Hark,' I asked myself when the building began to shake," the wizened Korean said. "'What is that din? What child is having such a fit of temper that he would disturb an entire building full of people? How indulgent must be his parents that they would allow this childish tantrum?'"
"I was looking for you," Remo said. "I should have figured it wouldn't be hard. Just follow the traffic jams. Okay, Chiun, you've shut down Manhattan with flat tires and tow trucks. You've had your day's fun. Let's go."
"I will do no such thing," Chiun sniffed. "You looked for me, you found me. Now go look for someone who wants to be found."
Remo didn't budge. He glanced around the big office. "Where's MacGulry?" he demanded.
"If you are here to pitch a pilot, I was here first."
"The only thing I'm pitching is MacGulry out the nearest window," Remo said. "He's in on this hypnotism thing somehow. They got to Smith."
This caused the Master of Sinanju to finally turn from the window.
"Is he alive?"
"Yeah, he's alive," Remo answered. "Out like a light for the time being. Is MacGulry in there?" Storming over, Remo kicked open the bathroom door.
"Stop that!" the Master of Sinanju commanded, flouncing up beside his pupil.
The bathroom was empty. Another door on the other side of the room opened into a private hallway. "Dammit, he's gone. You know where he went?"
Chiun's face was hard. "Perhaps he fled when he heard there was a door-kicking maniac loose in his castle."
Remo saw the phone was dangling off the hook. When he checked it, he heard only a dial tone. "Double crap," he said. "You listen in on the call?"
Chiun's eyes grew wide. "I would not listen in on the Sea-O's private conversations," he said, deeply offended.
"Right," Remo said. He slapped a palm against the tile wall. As he suspected, it absorbed the vibrations. "Soundproof walls. Ordinarily, I'd say he had them for privacy when he was on the can if it wasn't for that."
He jerked a thumb to the security camera in the corner of the room. The lens was focused squarely on Remo.
"Must be for that great new Vox special, 'Caught on Tape: Australia's Biggest Piles of Shit III.' MacGulry'd certainly qualify. This is just great, Chiun. That call was probably a heads-up that I was coming."
Spinning on his heel, he marched back out into the office. The Master of Sinanju charged out after him. "What is the meaning of all this?" Chiun demanded. "Just because something has happened to your precious Smith does not mean you have a right to come stampeding through the Sea-O's offices."
"CEO, not Sea-O," Remo said angrily. "And try to follow this. Someone tried to get Smith to Swiss cheese me. It was a Vox broadcast he was watching that told him to do it. MacGulry owns Vox. And if MacGulry knows about me and Smith, then he knows about you."
"Of course he knows about me," Chiun sniffed. "I am the man who is going to save his network. Now get out of here before you ruin this for me."
"This is serious," Remo insisted. "Smith is flat on his back in a hospital room right now because of all this. "
"Smith will be fine," Chiun dismissed. "I thought at one time he would eventually go the way of all men, but at the feeble rate that lunatic has been shuffling toward his end lo these many years, he will live to vex you long after my tired bones have turned to dust. Now leave me be. I have finally met someone who recognizes my talent."
"Dammit, Chiun, we're assassins. We're not writers or TV pitchmen or counterassassins or anything else. You're the one who drilled that into my damn head all these years. Now let's get out of here and go do our job."
"You are forgetting that it will soon no longer be my job," the Master of Sinanju said thinly. "You are the Master who will succeed me. You do it."
Remo sensed it. Beneath the sarcasm was hurt. He'd assumed this was all about Chiun being his usual thin-skinned self, but Smith had sown the seeds of doubt in the younger Master of Sinanju's mind. Maybe Remo's attitude had changed.
"I can't do it without you, Little Father."
His pupil's softened tone touched off a spark of fury in the old man's hazel eyes.
"Do not patronize me, Remo Williams," he demanded, stamping a furious sandaled foot on the floor.
Remo's mood flashed back to anger. "I give up," he growled, flinging up his hands. "Tell me, Chiun. Tell me what the hell it is I'm supposed to do."
"I want you to stop treating me like an invalid," Chiun snapped.
"I'm not. You're off on this self-pity binge all because you want me to want you around, then you get mad at me for saying I want you around when I really do want you around. Well, this is it. I've had it. Cut a deal with Vox TV if you want. And while you're at it, make sure you don't lose a minute's sleep over Smith or the fact that someone's trying to sabotage the organization that's been keeping us in rice and Twizzlers for the past thirty years."
He spun on his heel.
A bank of television sets lined one office wall. Remo had taken but a single step toward the office door when every screen suddenly flickered to life. "What now?" he grumbled.
The same daytime talk show was playing across all the screens. Superimposed faintly in the lower righthand corner was the Vox logo.
That was all the world was meant to see.
In addition to the logo was something else. Remo noted the timed pulses of brilliant hypnotic light flashing just beyond the fringes of ordinary human awareness. And at the bottom of the screen flashed a single subliminal command. Remo, kill Chiun.
"Dammit, not again," Remo said.
"What is wrong now?" the Master of Sinanju asked tersely as he swept up beside his pupil. "They're at it again. You better not look at it, Chiun," he cautioned.
But the old Korean had already glanced up at the bank of television screens.
"This is terrible," the tiny Asian proclaimed.
Some of the tension fled Remo's face. "You see it?"
"Of course," Chiun sniffed. "Fat whites blabbing at other fat whites about still more fat whites. If this is the sort of trash the Sea-0 puts on his broadcasts, it is amazing he did not run to me for help ages ago." "Not the talk show, Little Father."
Remo looked back at the screens. The message was clear to his sensitive eyes. Timed to pulse with the hypnotic flashes of light. Remo, kill Chiun.
The original concern that he'd had back at the Harlem police station had been borne out. Either due to age or years of television viewing, Chiun's eyes weren't focused enough to make out the subliminal commands.
"Trust me, it's there," Remo insisted. "And you don't wanna know what it says. Now let's get out of here before-" His voice grew small. "Oh, crap."
"What is wrong?" asked the Master of Sinanju, peeved. He followed Remo's gaze to the televisions.
"Chiun, don't!" Remo shouted, jumping forward. But it was too late. Before Remo could stop him, the old Korean had turned his attention back to the screens.
The hypnotic colors continued to pulse on all the televisions. Buried within the colors was a new command. Chiun, kill Remo.
The room grew very still. With agonizing slowness, Remo turned his worried gaze to the Master of Sinanju. An odd blankness had settled on the old man's wrinkled face.
Chiun stared at the screens, mesmerized. His almond-shaped eyes were unblinking. He d
idn't move so much as a millimeter. Even his tufts of yellowing-white hair seemed to still in the eddies of recirculated office air.
Very, very slowly, Remo took a half step back. "Chiun?" he asked cautiously.
With a terrible quiet suffusing his entire being, the Master of Sinanju turned to his pupil. The instant their eyes locked, the old man's arms became twin blurs. Fingernails honed to razor-sharp talons flew in slashing strokes at Remo's exposed throat.
Before the nails could slice soft flesh, Remo dropped backward. As Chiun's nails clicked viciously at empty air, Remo's back was brushing the floor.
Palms flattened against the carpet. Up and over. Spinning in air like a coiled spring, Remo flipped away from Chiun, landing on his feet near the bank of TV screens.
Chiun sprang after him. Hands clenched in knots of furious bone lashed out, left, right, left.
TV screens blew apart one after another.
Remo danced just ahead of each blow. Glass screens exploded glittering dust shards into the office. The bank of TVs ended in a tight corner. Remo flipped and rolled, back against the wall.
Chiun twirled through settling glass. Beneath the blank veneer, his eyes held a frenzied glint.
Calves tensing, his sandals left the floor.
The old man flew at Remo again, in flight a furious cry rising up from the depths of his belly. Crushing heels made a beeline for Remo's exposed chest.
The instant before the heels could crack his sternum to pulpy shards, Remo dropped.
The Master of Sinanju's momentum threw the old man into the wall. Paneling splintered and flew apart. The impact shattered sandstone from the building's outer wall. Pebbled shards fell like hard rain to Sixth Avenue.
Remo was up from his crouch before the first stone hit the street. As Chiun twisted and dropped back to his feet, Remo was already springing forward. "Sorry, Little Father," Remo whispered.
A darting thumb found the paralyzing spot on Chiun's forehead. There was first shock, then a glimmer of fury in the Master of Sinanju's eyes. And then all emotion washed away and his wrinkled eyelids fluttered shut.
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