Identity Crisis td-97

by Warren Murphy

  He looked up. Against the moonlight, four wedge shapes bobbed. DEA Cigarette boats.

  Remo continued on.

  Another beer can blooped into the water and tumbled slowly into his field of vision. That decided Remo.

  Twisting like a porpoise, he redirected his momentum upward, zeroing in on the boat directly above. One hand took hold of the propeller, steadying the boat and himself. With his right index finger, Remo peppered the sleek fiberglass hull with neat round holes.

  The boat began taking on water.

  Remo went on to the next.

  He sank all four DEA boats in as much time as it would take to pop open a six-pack of Coors and returned to the water.

  The hoarse cursing of the DEA stakeout team came through the cold water. The burbling of the boats going down drowned out the the shouting.

  While their feet were kicking in an attempt to tread water, Remo slipped up on them and began nipping at their heels with his hard fingers.

  The frantic cries of "Shark!" cut through the water, and a mad splashing began. The DEA agents must have read somewhere that a shark can be frightened off by splashing.

  Remo tugged at two more sets of heels.

  The DEA responded with a rain of bullets that veered crazily in all directions once they struck water, their force dissipating. Moving fast, Remo batted them back with just enough force to sting but not injure.

  The firing stopped.

  Grinning in the dark silence of the sound, Remo resumed his swim.

  If the DEA wanted to stake out Folcroft, they'd need a whole new team, he thought. These guys were not coming back.

  IT WAS like something out of a nightmare.

  Except that Harold W Smith was rarely visited by night terrors. He lacked the imagination to conjure up fantasies, even in the deepest sleep. It was one of the reasons he had been chosen to head CURE. A man with imagination might see the possiblities in the nearabsolute power the secret office gave one.

  Yet Smith now confronted a nightmare beyond his deepest fears.

  Framed in the square glass window was the mugging face of Uncle Sam Beasley, world-renowned illustrator, animator, and motion-picture studio executive, founder of the most popular and universally known theme parks in the world. And as far as the world knew, dead for nearly thirty years.

  Harold W Smith had thought him dead, too. Until an invasion of Cuba launched from American soil was traced back to Sam Beasley World in Florida, and Remo and Chiun had uncovered the truth: Uncle Sam Beasley, rumored cryogenically frozen since his death in 1965, had been brought back from the dead outfitted with an animatronic heart and artificial limbs to replace those that suffered cell damage during his long icy sleep.

  Seeing the fall of Cuba near, Beasley had mounted a secret invasion force with the intention of toppling the Castro government and turning the lush Caribbean isle into the ultimate theme park-not to mention a tax-free haven from which to run his global entertainment empire.

  It was mad, it was insane, and it had very nearly succeeded. Only the intervention of CURE had stopped the invasion of Cuba by one of America's most famous and beloved corporations-and averted the embarrassing international incident that would have resulted.

  In the end neither Remo nor Chiun, both of whom revered the legendary animator, could bring himself to kill Beasley. Neither could Smith in the final analysis. So he had had the man rendered harmless by the removal of his deadly hydraulic hand and institutionalized in Folcroft, where his cracked claims to be a resurrected Uncle Sam would fall on deaf ears.

  "Look what I found," Beasley said with a satisfied cackle, malting his steel fist whine open and closed. There was blood on it. And a fleck of froth bubbled in the corner of Beasley's grinning mouth.

  Smith shuddered. The man was now a caricature of his folksy former self. And he was loose in Folcroft, with Smith himself trapped in one of his own padded cells.

  If ever there was a nightmare for Harold Smith, this was it.

  "You are not well," Smith said in a calm voice. It was best to speak calmly to the deranged. And Uncle Sam Beasley was definitely deranged.

  "Belay the bedside crap," Beasley snapped "Whose necks did I just snap?"

  "Innocent IRS agents."

  "No such thing. And that'll teach the bastards to nickel-and-dime me into early heart failure."

  Smith changed tactics. "You have no place to go."

  "What are you talking about? I'm Uncle Sam Beasley, beloved father-figure storyteller. Hell, there isn't a city, town or hamlet in the world where I wouldn't be welcome. France aside, that is."

  "The world knows you're dead."

  "You know I'm not. In fact, with my new ticker, I'm good until the Mouse's centennial."

  "Perhaps. But you are instantly recognizable. If you set foot off these grounds, you will attract attention and have to explain youself."

  "Good point."

  "So you see you must remain here."

  Beasley fingered his frosty mustache with a gnarled finger.

  "So I must, so I must."

  "I am glad you see the true nature of your position," said Smith through the glass.

  "I do, I do. And I appreciate your pointing these things out to me."

  "Return to your room please," said Smith, relaxing.

  A chilly eyebrow crawled up from under the black eye patch in slow surprise. "Don't you want to be let out?"

  "Not at the moment."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't care to discuss it," said Harold Smith.

  "Suit yourself. Ta-ta."

  Harold Smith heard Uncle Sam Beasley clump away on his silver-filigreed artificial leg. He continued listening. The clumping echoed all the way down to the end of the corridor. It stopped. Smith listened for the closing of a steel door. No such sound came. Instead, the ding of the arriving elevator came distinctly.

  "My God!"

  The elevator doors dinged shut again over a throaty chuckling, and Harold Smith knew that Uncle Sam Beasley had been let loose on the world.

  And all because of the stupidity of the Internal Revenue Service.

  Smith began banging on the door and shouting loud, inarticulate words.

  It was a nightmare. And it was about to get worse. Much worse. If only someone would hear him.

  THE MASTER of SINANJU was picking the pocket of a prowling IRS agent when he heard the hoarse shouting from two floors above.

  The IRS agent did not hear this shouting, of course, any more than he felt the delicate finger extract his leather wallet from his back pocket.

  The agent was bent over a water bubbler, refreshing himself. The Master of Sinanju had slipped up on him like a phantom, as he had on two others, each time relieving them off their fat wallets.

  So far, he had collected less than three hundred dollars, but it was at least partial repayment for all the trouble the taxidermists had caused.

  The hoarse shouting caused the Master of Sinanju to retreat before the agent straightened, wiping his mouth of water.

  Chiun took the stairs, floating up them like a wraith. His feet brought him to the door behind which Emperor Smith pounded and shouted like a madman.

  "Never fear, Emperor," Chiun squeaked, straining on tiptoe so his eyes could see through the high square window. "For I have come to succor you"

  Chiun laid fingers on the metal bar.

  Smith cried, "No! Don't let me out!"

  "Why not?"

  "I need an alibi."

  "For what?"

  "For the two dead agents down the hall," said Smith.

  Chiun turned his head. "One moment," he said, floating down the hall. He returned moments later with the wallets of the two dead agents stuffed up the wide sleeves of his kimono.

  "Yes, they are dead. Their necks have been crushed."

  "It was Beasley. He just escaped by the elevator. He must be stopped."

  "Why? He is slaying your enemies for you. And you have a perfect alibi, being a prisoner of these very sa
me enemies."

  "I don't want him to slay the IRS. It will only bring more grief down on our heads."

  Chiun frowned. "I do not understand whites."

  "Please, Master Chiun, stop Beasley. Do it quietly. Kill him if you have to."

  "Slay the brilliant inventor of Mongo Mouse and Screwball Squirrel? My ancestors would rain imprecations down on my head until the end of all time. No, I could never do this."

  Smith squeezed his eyes shut. "Just capture him, please."

  "As you wish, Emperor."

  And the Master of Sinanju padded off to do the bidding of his crazed emperor. Oh, but if only he had lived in the days of the pharaohs. Now, they were rulers. Or the Romans. Czarist Russia would have been acceptable. The barbarian Britons under Henry VIII might have been tolerable.

  Surely Chiun worked for the maddest emperor since Caligula. For who hired the finest assassins in the modern world and asked that they refrain from killing?

  Chapter 27

  Big Dick Brull knew he was on to something now.

  Folcroft was not what it seemed, all right. It was a cover of some kind. But what kind? What could it be?

  One thing was certain-the DEA had been barking up the wrong elm with that crap about turkey drugs. Folcroft was no drug factory. Money was being laundered, sure. That was the only way to explain the twelve million that had appeared in the Folcroft bank acount. And the gold-assuming it really existed and wasn't some fantasy concocted by his own agents.

  But who stockpiled illegal gold? In all his years with the service, the only people Dick Brull ever heard of stockpiling gold was the Feds.

  The moment the thought crossed his mind, the ROLM phone rang.

  "Brull here."

  "This is Schwoegler down at Martinsburg. We located the backup paper on Harold W Smith, and analyzed his 1040s going back as far as we could."

  "About damn time."

  "They're clean. In fact, they all conform to the DIF, year after year, without exception."

  Brull banged his fist on the desk. "I knew it!"

  "It's very strange, sir."

  "No, it's not. It's very calculated. Tell me this, when did Smith first list director of Folcroft as his occupation on his 1040s?"

  "That was in, um, 1963. Before that he was an analyst with the Company."

  Brull blinked. "What company?"

  "Central Intelligence Agency, sir."

  "The CIA!" Brull roared. "Harold W Smith worked for the CIA?"

  "Yes, sir. He came to Folcroft in April of 1963. Oddly enough, these records indicated Folcroft was some kind of sociological think tank or something in those days."

  "The damn computers! That's what he said they were for."

  "Sir?"

  "Never mind. Express those papers to Folcroft. I want to eyeball them personally." And Brull slammed down the phone.

  He leaned back in the high-backed leather chair that Harold W Smith had occupied for over thirty years according to his tax records, his face screwing up like a gnarled root.

  Smith was ex-CIA. Maybe he was still with the Company. Maybe this wasn't an illegal operation after all. Maybe it was CIA all the way.

  Brull picked up the telephone and called CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He asked to speak with the director of personnel.

  A maze of bureaucratic referrals later, Brull had his man.

  "Dick Brull, IRS CID here. I want a background check on one of your current employees. Harold W Smith."

  "We don't do background checks on Agency employees here. You'll have to take it up at a higher echelon."

  "I'm taking it up with you. This is the Internal Revenue Service calling. We are the ultimate echelon. And no one, not even the damn CIA, better have anything to hide from IRS. Now, his name is Harold W Smith. Do I give his Social Security number to you-or the guy above you who is going to be just thrilled that you bounced me in his direction?"

  "Give me the number," the CIA man said wearily.

  A full five minutes later the answer came back in the form of a return call. "We have no record of a Harold W Smith with that Social Security number on our payroll."

  "How about in the past?"

  "I did a deep computer search. No Harold W Smith ever worked for Central Intelligence."

  "He claimed on his 1040s to have been an analyst out of Langley."

  "His claim is false," the CIA man said flatly.

  "You telling me the truth or is this the usual deniability runaround?"

  "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

  "Yeah. You can hang up, dink," said Big Dick Brull, hanging up.

  Brull leaned back again. Okay, he thought. There were only two scenarios here. Maybe three. Smith was lying. Or Central Intelligence was lying. Maybe both were lying. But somebody was lying.

  That still pointed Dick Brull in one direction-Folcroft Sanitarium was a CIA outpost or was manned by an ex-CIA operative. Guys like that, once they were cut loose, were always running weird spook operations on their own initiative.

  Big Dick Brull looked at the strange red telephone, the superfluous blue telephone that didn't go out on NYNEX lines and the desk with its hidden computer setup.

  Maybe Folcroft was dirty. Maybe it was just off the books. Either way, it didn't matter to the IRS or Dick Brull. If it was a conduit for black budget money, the IRS was going to get its share, deserved or not. That was going to be the price for all those dead IRS and DEA agents. Dick Brull would either bring home the bacon or blow the whistle on Folcroft.

  After all, in the scheme of things, the CIA was hardly forty years old. IRS went back to Abraham Lincoln.

  And CID still had its quarterly quotas to meet.

  Big Dick Brull got out of his chair. It was time to rub Harold Smith's nose in the very disagreeable political reality.

  HAROLD SMITH HEARD the unmistakable hard heels sound coming down the corridor.

  When Big Dick Brull's black brush cut appeared in the square window, Smith was prepared. But not for Brull's first words.

  "The bull is off the nickel."

  "I beg your pardon?" said Smith.

  Brull hoisted himself up on his feet so his grinning face, like a boiled apple peeling, showed. "I know what Folcroft Sanitarium really is."

  "You do," Smith said in a blank voice, his heart racing.

  "Damn right I do."

  "Then you know everything."

  "I know enough. You're running a covert installation for the CIA here. I found your trick computer terminal and funny phones. So much for that thin story of yours about those basement mainframes."

  "You are very clever," said Smith, his voice cool as brook water.

  "What I'm not clear on is exactly what kind of operation this is. Domestic Intelligence gathering. Illegal radiation experiments. Safehouse. What?"

  "I have no comment on that."

  "That damn drumming is part of it, isn't it?"

  "No comment."

  "The gold that disappeared faster than reasonably possible. Those stupid vultures circling the building day and night. That killer butterfly. The bank account. They all hook up together."

  "I know nothing whatever of these things," said Smith, wondering himself what Brull meant by circling birds.

  "Don't bullshit me, Smith! I haven't forgotten how you threatened me with a government agency bigger that IRS. Hah! Like I'm scared. Those CIA spooks suck at the service's teats the same as anyone."

  Smith said nothing.

  Brull snapped his fingers. "I know! You're doing genetic experiments here. Breeding mutants. Am I right?"

  "No comment."

  Brull's face came close to the glass. Smith met his icy black eyes with his own cool gray stare.

  "Whatever it is, you're not off the hook until you square accounts with IRS."

  "I fail to follow."

  "This damn place is off the books. Way off the books. I understand that. I'm not stupid. I know how things work. You're moving big blocks of cash if not gold to su
pport it. All of it tax free."

  Smith said nothing.

  "Technically tax free. But if you want the lid to stay on Folcroft, you're going to have to kick through thirty percent to IRS coffers."

  "Are you talking about a bribe?"

  "Don't use that word with me!" Brull exploded. "I take nothing. But IRS takes thirty percent. In return, Folcroft goes back to you, just like we left it."

  Harold Smith's glasses began to steam again.

  "It is a shambles," he said, bitter voiced. "There are two dead IRS agents just down the hall. How are you going to explain them away?"

  Brull looked. "I don't see anything."

  "They are around the corner."

  Brull left. He came back, his face the color of a sheet.

  "Jesus, what killed them?"

  "I did not see. I was locked in here. But I heard them being strangled."

  Brull wiped his suddenly moist brow with a handkerchief. "Their necks are squeezed to the diameter of fucking pencils," he said.

  "A dangerous lunatic was deinstitutionalized on IRS orders. He is obviously running amok."

  "I can cover up a few more dead agents. Hell, they should be proud to have gone out in defense of the Revenue Code."

  "They did no such thing," Smith said hotly. "And you know it!"

  Brull waved a finger in Smith's face. "You think about what I said while I look into this, Smith. This could only get uglier if the truth behind Folcroft becomes public. Whoever it is you report to would chew your ass to rags if your cover is blown. You digest that while I have this floor policed of bodies."

  Big Dick Brull turned smartly and, heels clicking, strode away.

  In the solitude of his cell, Harold Smith said, "You bastard. I have the power to crush you like a bug."

  But even as he said this, he knew he could not have Brull slain and solve the essential problem the IRS agent represented. That would only bring in more agents and increase their exposure. Containing the situation was the only way, but if there was a way to engineer it, Smith lacked the imagination to initiate an ironclad coverup.

  It was hopeless. Utterly hopeless.

  Once again Harold Smith began to wish for his coffin-shaped poison pill. Barring a miracle, it was the only way out. His failures had cost America CURE, its last bulwark against lawlessness, and his wife the comfort and security of a safe home and good husband in her declining years.