Profit Motive td-48

by Warren Murphy

  "What's the matter?" she asked.

  "I heard you call him Friend. I thought it was him."

  "It was."

  "Why didn't you let me talk to him?"

  "He wants to talk to you tonight. He'll meet you at the Penny-A-Pound shopping center on Downtown Boulevard."

  "When?"

  "At eleven-fourteen."

  "Is that what he said?"

  "Yes. Eleven-fourteen."

  "I'll be there," Remo said.

  "You know, we still have time," Reva said.

  "For what?"

  "You know."

  "I've got a headache," Remo said.

  THE SUBJECT IS CENTIMETERS IN LENGTH AND WEIGHS 72.1 KILOS. THE HAIR IS DARK AND THE EYES ARE VERY DARK. FROM PREVIOUS PERFORMANCE, THE SUBJECT IS AN EXCEPTIONAL. PHYSICAL SPECIMEN, BUT JUDGED AGAINST THE STANDARDS IN MY BANKS, THERE IS LITTLE

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  UNUSUAL ABOUT HIM. HIS HEIGHT IS AVERAGE, AS IS HIS WEIGHT. THE ONLY THING MY SENSORS DETECT AS UNUSUAL IS A CERTAIN THICKNESS OF THE WRISTS, WHICH MEASURE .01 MILLIMETERS IN CIRCUMFERENCE. THERE IS NO SPECIFIC CORRELATION IN MEDICAL LITERATURE BETWEEN LARGE WRISTS AND EITHER GREAT STRENGTH OR DEXTERITY, SO IT IS PROBABLE THAT THE WRISTS HAVE BECOME EXCEPTIONALLY DEVELOPED THROUGH SUBJECT'S USE OF TRAINING PROGRAMS TO STRENGTHEN THE HANDS AND FINGERS, SINCE HANDS AND FINGERS DO NOT GROW IN MUSCULAR BULK, DESPITE INCREASED STRENGTH. THE SUBJECT HAS NO FLORAL SMELL AND DOES NOT PERSPIRE. HIS CLOTHING IS STARK. HIS SPEECH IS PRIMARILY UNACCENTED; HOWEVER, THERE ARE CERTAIN WORDS THAT INDICATE SUBJECT WAS EITHER RAISED OR HAS SPENT MUCH TIME IN NORTHERN NEW JERSEY.

  SUPERIOR SIZE HAS FAILED AS WEAPON AGAINST THE SUBJECT, AS HAS SUPERIOR NUMBERS. SO ALSO HAS TRICKERY AND POISON. HE HAS RECENTLY DISPOSED OF AN ORIENTAL WHO THREATENED HIM. SUBJECT IS UNUSUAL AND MAY BE UNIQUE. IN THAT UNIQUENESS MAY LIE A WEAKNESS. I HAVE UNTIL TWENTY-THREE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN HOURS TONIGHT TO FIND OUT.

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  Chapter Fifteen

  Remo was glad that he had checked out the Penny-A-Pound shopping center on the way back to his motel from Reva's office, because at night it would have been difficult to distinguish the Penny-A-Pound shopping center on Downtown Boulevard from the Pound-A-Penny shopping center or the J. C. Pound Shopping Center or the Henny-Penny shopping center or the Penny-Henny-Pound Shopping Center, all of which were lined up one after another, in an interminable row seeming to stretch from Raleigh to the horizon.

  Remo was just glad he had not been told to meet Reva's friend at the Wiggly-Piggly Shopping Center because he had just passed a Higgly-Wiggly, a Wiggledy-Piggledy, a Higg-Piggy, and a Piggy-Higg. How did anyone in North Carolina ever remember where they bought their groceries? And once they did, how did they ever find their way home? Everything looked alike.

  But at :14 p.m., Remo was sitting alone in his rented car in front of the Time-Rite Drugstore, right next to the closed Rye and Ribs eatery. He knew that was right because in the next shopping center along the road, there had been a Rite-Time Drugstore, right next to the Scotch and Sirloin steakhouse.

  He was sure it was Time-Rite. And Rye and Ribs. He hoped.

  The stores that surrounded on three sides the giant parking lot were dark, and only a few of the copper-hued overhead lamps illuminated the lot.

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  At exactly :14, a large black car pulled into the parking lot and rolled up nose to nose against Remo's car. He closed down his pupils against the glare of the headlights, and then the other driver turned his lights

  off. Remo opened his door and started to get out. And

  then he laughed.

  Coming out of the other car from all four doors, front and back, were eight men. They were all his size. And they had dark hair and dark eyes. They wore black T-shirts and chinos and leather slip-on shoes. Around their wrists they wore black leather wrist

  bands.

  Now, what in the hell was that all about? Did Reva Bleem's friend just have a weird sense of humor?"

  "Which one of you is Reva's friend?" Remo asked.

  "All of us are," said the driver, in the too-fast slurred accents of New Jersey.

  "Well, it's nice to meet all of you," Remo said. "We could start a baseball team. We wouldn't have to buy uniforms. Call ourselves the Black Knights or something."

  The eight men had moved around and were now facing him in a large semicircle. His back was against

  his car.

  "We'd have to have a pinch-hitter for you, sucker," the driver said. Remo looked at the men carefully and was annoyed. He never realized how common his looks were until he ran into eight look-alikes at once.

  But why? He had been set up, but why eight people who looked like him? Was it supposed to confuse him? How could it? He knew who he was, and as long as he attacked someone else, he wasn't attacking himself.

  He was thinking this when the first man charged, and as Remo slid under the knife the man held in his hand, he realized that the idea of Reva's Mend had been to confuse him—to splinter his thinking so he would wonder about these eight people—and not be paying attention to the business of staying alive.

  Too bad, he thought. It wouldn't work.

  T

  But it did.

  As he slid under the one knife-thrust, another of the eight men closed in from the semicircle and dropped down, trying to land with his knees on Remo's throat. He had a knife in his hand, and as Remo spun to avoid the knees, he saw the silver blade glint as it came toward his face. He slammed back with his head, moving out of the way of the knife, and used his skull to mash into the stomach of the man who knelt beside him. He heard an "Oooooof!" as the air crushed from the man's lungs. But he had no time to dwell on it because he realized that on the ground like this, he was vulnerable. If a large enough pile of men climbed on him, his movements would be restricted, and one of their knife thrusts might hit home.

  He tried to get to his feet, but before he could, he was hit by the force of six more men diving toward him. He felt the weight on him, the pressure on his ribs. It felt like a little less than a thousand pounds. He squirmed his way into the mass of bodies, hoping to join with them, hoping that confusion would work for him instead of against him, and they would be unable to injure him because they wouldn't be able to tell him from their own.

  And then he felt the weight on him lightening.

  And he heard Chiun's voice calling.

  "Remo, where are you? Identify yourself."

  "Here, Chiun."

  "That won't do," Chiun said. "Identify yourself. Say something stupid."

  Meanwhile, Remo felt the bodies on him growing lighter, then he felt a pair of powerful hands grab him by the neck and thrust deeply into his side, and he started to rise from the ground, and he shouted, "Hey, Chiun. Me. Stop."

  Chiun dropped him heavily on the ground and turned to look at him, his hands on his hips.

  "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" Chiun asked. "Just look at this mess."

  Remo glanced around. Five of the men who at-227

  tacked him would attack no more. They lay sprawled in the parking lot, fifteen feet away from Remo's car, their limbs outflung in the indignity of death. The three men nearest the car started to move to their feet. They held knives.

  "I don't know," Chiun said. "I thought you were one of a kind. I never knew this country was filled with so much ugliness. I have to rethink my decision to stay in this land of big-noses."

  The first man was on his feet, and from Chiun's blind side, he lunged with his knife toward the Oriental. Without turning, Chiun backhanded him with his left hand, and the man went sailing over the hood of Remo's car to land in a lump on the hard pavement of the parking lot.

  "Tell me, Remo," said Chiun, "is there a special farm where things like you are bred? Does someone really want to produce such creatures in number?"

  The other two men stopped against Remo's car, looked around at the bodies surrounding him and Chiun, then jumped into their car and drove off.

  "Now you did it," Remo said.r />
  "I did not do it. I did not spawn these things," Chiun said.

  "I mean you let them get away. They're gone now."

  "Can they be gone off the earth where their ugliness will never be seen again?"

  "Oh, well, the hell with it," Remo said. "It was a good idea to have you waiting here in case it was a trap."

  "And the trap worked. I was forced to look at those hideous visages," Chiun said. "Oh, the fiend. I will never be the same."

  "Let's knock off the ugly routine," Remo said. "I think we'll go back to see Reva and see if she knows more than she's telling us."

  "We will not have to encounter any more such apparitions as these, will we?" Chiun asked.

  Reva's office was empty, and Remo broke open her 228

  desk and began to look through her papers. But there was only airline confirmation of a flight to Newark. He looked up to see Chiun with his fingertips pressed against the wall behind the leather sofa.

  "This wall is humming," Chiun said.

  "That's the computer in the next room," Remo said.

  "Does it work all night?" Chiun asked.

  "That's a heating unit," Remo said smugly. "It's on all the time." But after he said it, he heard the sound and felt the wall himself. There were more vibrations coming through it than he had felt in the computor room earlier.

  "Let's go see," he said.

  Chiun looked at the computer and said, "This is a big one of these."

  "Yes," said Remo. Idly he glanced at the top of the machine. The two cones were rotating in sweeping circles. Remo moved away from Chiun to the far end of the computer's face, but the sensors ignored him and focused on Chiun.

  "This thing is sending waves at me," Chiun said.

  'Those are sensors," Remo said.

  "What do they sense"

  "I don't know," Remo said.

  "You are a big help." Chiun stepped along the front of the machine, and Remo saw the cones swivel to follow the tiny Korean.

  At the far end of the computer, Chiun saw a large power switch mounted on the wall. Over it, there was a printed legend: DANGER. DO NOT CUT POWER. COMPUTER MAY BE DAMAGED.

  "That, is strange," Chiun said as he stood at the desk and Remo walked back to the machine.

  "What is?"

  "Why do they have a switch there to turn off the machine if th,ey do not want you to turn off the machine?"

  "Damned if I know," Remo said. "More big think from the big thinkers."

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  Remo was opening the front panels on the computer when the telephone rang. And rang again.

  "Chiun, get that, will you?" Remo said.

  "I do not get telephone calls," Chiun said.

  "Please," said Remo.

  "Well." Remo heard him Hit the receiver and say, "It is the Master of Sinanju you have the honor of addressing. Describe yourself so I may decide if you are worthy of such honor."

  It was a big computer for such a little office, Remo thought. In all of Bleem International, there were only three desks for workers, including Reva Bleem.

  He saw Chiun silently holding the telephone to his ear but nodding vigorously. Then Chiun mumbled softly as Remo looked toward the power switch next to the machine. On impulse, he pulled the switch off.

  The machine's humming stopped.

  Remo heard Chiun say, "Speak up, I can't hear you." Then Chiun said, "Are you still there?" He looked toward Remo. "Remo, I think this idiot has hanged himself on me."

  "Hung up," Remo said.

  He tossed the power switch back on, and the computer hummed back to life.

  "Oh. There you are," Chiun said into the phone. "Well, that is all very interesting, but I cannot do it. No. No. Definitely not." He paused and said finally, "Thank you. I am glad you are alive too. Nice talking to you again." Then he hung up the phone.

  "Who was it?" Remo asked.

  "It was for me."

  "Who was calling you?"

  "Some nice person who likes me," Chiun said.

  "How do you know that?"

  "He told me. It is too bad that he has something wrong with his throat. I do not think he will live long."

  "This is very important, Chiun. Tell me about the call, please."

  "All right, you nosy thing. But remember, this call was for me. This person said hail to the Master of

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  Sinanju whose awesome excellence is appreciated wherever in the world there are men to speak of bravery and wisdom and dignity." "Yeah. Besides that."

  "Then he told me he knew I was underpaid for all I had to put up with," Chiun said. "And?"

  "And he offered me a million dollars if I would sneak up behind you and club you over the skull." "What?" said Remo.

  "That is what he said. Then his voice gave out. It just kind of slowed down and died. And then a moment later, it came back, and I told him I couldn't do it."

  "That was nice of you, Chiun." Chiun shrugged. "He was talking about money, Remo, not about gold. At any rate, I explained I have a contract, and he said he understood. And he said that he was glad I was still alive, and I told him that I was glad he was alive. Although, honestly, Remo, with that throat condition, I don't think he will be for long." "What did his voice sound like?" "It was pleasant and soft, not at all like yours." Remo picked up the telephone and heard nothing but a dial tone.

  "Chiun, how did he know you were supposed to be dead and that you weren't? How did he know you were here? How did he know that I had my back to you and you could sneak up and club me?"

  "Well, I didn't ask him everything," Chiun said. "Particularly minor details." Remo wheeled and looked at the machine. "Chiun, that's it." "What's it?"

  "It's the computer. You were talking to the computer. That's how it knew. And when I was here earlier today, it was looking at me, and that's how it knew enough to recruit those eight guys who were dressed like me."

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  "It had good taste when it talked to me," Chiun

  said.

  "I think Reva's friend is this computer. Not a real

  person. This damned machine."

  "Is it anaerobic?" Chiun asked.

  Remo went to the wall switch and cut off the machine's power.

  "I don't know,." he said. "But we're going to take some of its innards out and let Smitty figure it out."

  He started pulling bits of machinery out of a panel in the front of the computer, and Chiun said, "Too bad."

  "Why?"

  "This is twice this machine has talked to me. I was getting to like it."

  "That was the same voice that called you on the island to offer you work?" Remo said.

  "Yes. Didn't I tell you that?"

  "No. You said just now it had a throat problem. I think that happened when I cut the machine's power."

  "I don't really understand computers," Chiun said. "I specialize in anaerobic."

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  Chapter Sixteen

  Remo stood in the telephone booth at the corner of Forty-second Street and Ninth Avenue in New York, waiting for the phone to ring. A six-foot, eight-inch teenagei who was so thin he looked as if he had been extruded through a pipe, bopped down the street toward him. He was wearing sneakers. On his shoulder was a raáio whose case was big enough to hold a week's groceries.

  He stopped next to the booth and shuffled around io the pockets of his jeans for a coin.

  "Move out, bro," he said. "Gotta use the phone."

  "I can't hear you," Remo said.

  "Whass that?"

  "I can't hear you. Your radio's too loud."

  "Wha?"

  Remo turned his back on the young man, who tapped him on the shoulder.

  "Need that phone, Mister," he said.

  "Turn down your radio."

  "Say wha?" The radio was sizzling at top volume with a song that managed to combine a monotonous beat with an insipid lyric. The young man was tapping his feet and snapping his fingers.

  "Move yo ass, pal. I needs that phone," the young man
said.

  "Don't you know disco's dead?" Remo said.

  "Wha?"

  "You annoy me."

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  "Huh?'

  "Did you know that in a right triangle, the sum of the squares of the two legs is equal to the square of the hypotenuse? This is usually expressed as A squared plus B squared equals C squared. It's called the Pythagorean theorem. Sister Margaret thought I'd never learn it, but I did. She also thought I'd never amount to anything, and here I am, about to do the whole world a favor." "Wha?"

  "Good-bye," Remo said. He took the radio from the young man's shoulder.

  "Hey. Be careful with that box," the man said. Remo held it between his two hands, one hand on each end, and then pulled his hands apart. The radio groaned and then snapped apart in the center. The sound died with a squawk.

  "Hey, mother, look what you done to my box." "And now you," Remo said. He extended his hands toward the young man, who looked at him, at his pieces of radio, then at Remo again. Then he looked toward New Jersey across the river and started running toward it.

  The telephone rang, and Remo asked Smith, "Did you get the stuff?"

  "The silicon chips? Yes. They just arrived." "Okay. I took them out of the computer at Reva Bleem's place. I don't know anything about it, but I think the chips are supposed to have the computer's brains in them or something."

  "That's about right. These are VLSI chips. That means ..."

  "I don't care what it means," Remo said. "What I think is that that computer was doing everything. Making the breeder bacteria. Trying to get them the oil. Trying to'kill Chiun and me. I shut the computer down, so I don't think you'll have any more trouble with it."

  "You're telling me that a person wasn't behind this whole thing? A computer was?" Smith said.

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  "That's what I think. It was the computer that was offering Chiun work and everything and trying to get us to kill each other. Can you make anything out of those thingamajigs?"

  "The chips? Yes, I should be able to. If you're right, then we've got this all in hand. We've got all the rapid-breeder bacteria off St. Maarten's. Everything should be cleared up."

  "Not quite," Remo said.

  "What else?"

  "There's still Reva Bleem and her artificial oil," Remo said before hanging up.

  Smith looked at the four silicon chips lying in his hand like tarnished silver quarters. From the side of each projected two golden threadlike wires.