Warren Murphy: Infernal Revenue

When the keys were snatched from his fingers, he slipped the hunter green necktie from his open collar and took both ends in his bony hands.

While the carjacker turned in his seat to jam the key in the ignition, Harold Smith pounced.

He knew he had less than ten seconds to kill his opponent before the other's youthful strength was brought to bear against him.

The instant Remo's feet left the elevator floor, he understood the danger. The cable had snapped. They were dropping at terminal velocity.

Remo surrendered to the inertia! forces. The elevator was dropping out from under his feet, so he allowed his body to rise. Chiun was doing the same. Their hands grasped the roof hatch, ripped it down and with the seconds running out, they scrambled up to the elevator roof.

They leaped toward opposite walls, fingers taking hold of the enormous steel running guides.

The elevator hit bottom with the violently creaky boom of a Volkswagen Beetle seized by a high-speed car crusher. The shaft reverberated like a struck pipe, and loose pieces of the walls came down and banged off the crushed cage. The broken cable began uncoiling like a heavy, wet rope and when it struck the remains, it crushed it to a metal pancake.

"Let's try plan B," said Remo, looking down from his perch.

They began to climb.

Heavy hands reached back for Harold Smith's thin, wattled neck. Veins and cords began to stand out with Smith's efforts.

It would take more than three minutes of unbroken pressure to garrote the carjacker. But Smith didn't have three minutes. He barely had three seconds.

So he began sawing the tie across the neck of his foe. The tie began to shred and come apart. Smith kept sawing even as his fingers bled.

The hidden saw blade sliced through the Adam's apple and carotid artery of the gurgling carjacker as if they were rotted cloth.

The blood flowed. The man gulped and clawed for his throat, but his eyes in the rearview mirror told Harold Smith that he knew he was already dead.

When his eyes rolled up in his head, Smith released him, panting.

In less than forty seconds the carjacker was an inert shape on the floorboards of the van.

There was no time to waste. Shaking with nervous strain, Smith returned to his console seat to save his country.

The inside of the elevator doors bore black stencil marks identifying the floors for maintenance purposes. Remo and Chiun climbed until they found 13.

Working around the shaft, they got under the doors and pushed them apart. The doors gave little resistance, and they scrambled out into the corridor.

It was all one space. Mainframe computers and support equipment filled the area with a disconnected humming.

They spotted the wreck of the ES Quantum 3000 in the center. Nothing came from it. No sound, no electrical impulses, no sensing waves, no aura of animation.

The shattered glass port told the story.

"Okay," whispered Remo, "you know the drill. We wreck every mainframe but one."

"But which one do we spare?"

"That one," said Remo, pointing to the one nearest the elevator.

And they got to work.

There was nothing methodical about it. Both Masters of Sinanju had days' worth of pent-up frustrations to let out. Flashing hands and feet pummeled the bulky mainframes, shattering panels, popping tape reels and sending the heavy computers skidding and tumbling along the slick flooring like mad bumper cars.

When they were done, Remo smacked his hands free of dust and said, "Okay, now we gotta call Smith."

A warm, generous voice all around them suddenly said, "Do not bother. I will do it for you."

"You fiend!" Chiun hissed.

"The name is Friend."

And a wall panel popped open, revealing an emergency telephone.

Remo went to it, picked up the receiver and said, "Hey, Chiun. Don't do anything rash."

"I will do what I have to," Chiun said, giving the surviving mainframe a warning kick. "Make no more magic against us, machine, or it will go very badly for you."

Remo pressed the number 1 key, holding it down. This was the foolproof contact number by which he could reach Smith from anywhere in the country.

After a moment the voice of Harold Smith came on the line and said, "Remo, what is the situation?"

"We did like you said. We wrecked every computer but one."

"Excellent. You understand your next move?"

"You tell me. I thought you had the next move."

"Er, yes, right. Very well. Exit the building."

"That's it?"

"I will handle the operation from this point on."

Remo pulled the receiver from his ear and looked at

it.

"You're not Smith."

"Of course I am," said the voice from the phone that sounded exactly like Harold Smith.

"Smith wouldn't screw up like that."

"How would Smith screw up?' asked the warm, generous voice of Friend, this time from the telephone receiver.

Remo yanked the phone out and threw it across the room. It struck the far wall with such force it became a colorful appliqu6.

"You're the rat-bastard who tricked me into killing that guy Coe," Remo said through clenched teeth.

"Are you referring to poor Roger Sherman Coe?"

Remo advanced on the lone humming mainframe, his thick wrists rotating with agitation.

"The only thing keeping me from tearing you apart is the fact you have all the banks under your greedy thumb," he warned.

"I have no thumbs, greedy or otherwise. But I do have the banking system under my complete control. Are you saying that as long as this situation remains, I am safe from your reprisals?"

Remo said nothing. Chiun gave the machine another kick.

"Do not goad us, machine. There are more important things than banks."

"Such as gold."

"Yes, gold." "I have gold stored in my basement vaults. I will give it all to you if you tell me Harold Smith's plan to defeat me."

"Stuff it!" snapped Remo.

"How much gold?" wondered Chiun.

"Forget it, Little Father. We do this by the numbers."

"What are the numbers?" asked Friend. "I understand numbers. Let us crunch numbers together so that we can be friends."

"The numbers are there's one phone line out of here and Smith has a lock on it. You can't escape."

"And you can destroy my host mainframe. I understand now. You wish to trade my security in return for which I must unfreeze the assets of the entire United States banking system."

"Something like that."

"After which you will destroy my mainframe anyway."

"Yes," said Chiun.

"Nice move, Chiun," said Remo. "You probably just blew the game plan."

"This is an intelligent machine," Chiun retorted. "It understands that is it doomed."

The mainframe hummed gently for perhaps a dozen seconds. Then the smooth voice of Friend said, "This is a no-win scenario. I do not accept it. Since I will be destroyed at the end game no matter what I do, there is no downside to not taking you with me."

And with a grinding of vast machinery and cracking of floor beams, the entire thirteenth floor caved in at

the center and dropped under their feet in two equal halves.

Caught flat-footed, Remo and Chiun began falling. Down into a vast electronic well as wide as the XL SysCorp building that pulsed with rows of multicolored lights that seemed to go down into the bedrock of Manhattan and farther to the center of the earth.

Remo's first thought as the blackness at the bottom rushed up to meet him was I've been here before.

Chapter 33

Harold Smith heard the crashing sound and jerked out of his seat. The ground shook under the van, setting it to wobbling on its springs.

"My God! What was that?" he croaked, throwing open the van's rear doors.

And he saw it. The moonlight washing the sides of the XL SysCorp building shook like disturbed milk. Glass panels began popping off the sides to dash themselves to pieces on the pavement below.