Warren Murphy: Fool's Gold

There were many strange things on the computer and Schweid hadn't ordered any of them. He called the computer supplier.

"There was a storm over the Atlantic the other day. Fouled up receptions from all the satellite stations," said the supplier.

"So if I got some information, it wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but it might just be information I wasn't supposed to have gotten," Schweid said.

"Yeah, I guess so. It was all scrambled, all over the atmosphere."

When Barry confronted Hank Bindle and Bruce Marmelstein, the producers, and told them he knew about their cocaine connection, they promised that Barry would never again sell a script in the business, that this was an outrage, that he had sunk lower than anyone else in Hollywood had ever sunk before. Bruce Marmelstein's indignation was such that Hank Bindle fell into tears, realizing the depth of hurt in his partner.

Both of them were in tears when Bruce finished talking about freedom of information meaning free-

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dom for all mankind. That done, Bruce asked Barry Schweid what he wanted them to give him to keep quiet.

"I want to do Hamlet.'"

"Hamlet" said Bruce. He handled the business affairs of the company. He had a wide Valium smile. "What's Hamlet?"

"It's old stuff. It's British, I think," said Hank Bindle. He was the creative arm of the production team. He dressed in sneakers and tennis shirts and looked like Bo Peep but those who knew him had the sense that he was more like the contents of a sewage system. But without the richness.

"James Bond, you're talking," said Bruce.

"No," said Barry. "It's a great play. It's by Shakespeare, I think."

"Naaaah. No box office," said Marmelstein.

"Let's see how much coke you fellows moved last year," said Barry.

"Okay. Hamlet. But with tits. We got to have tits," said Marmelstein.

"There were no tits in Hamlet," Barry said.

"All men? Gay?" said Hank Bindle.

"No," said the writer. "There was Ophelia."

"We'll have Ophelia with the biggest set of tits since Genghis Khan," said Bruce.

"Genghis Khan was a man," Barry Schweid said.

"With a name like Genghis? A man?" said Bruce, shocked. He looked at Hank Bindle. "I think so," Bindle said. As the creative arm, he was supposed to be able to read newspapers and everything, even ones without pictures.

"Was this Genghis Khan gay?" asked Marmei-stein.

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"No," Schweid said. "He was a great Mongol conqueror."

"I never heard of a mongrel with a name like Khan," said Marmelstein. "He was probably gay."

When Remo arrived at the condominium, set above the blue waters of Miami Beach, he brought a duck and some rice for the following day's dinner.

A wisp of a man with delicate strands of white beard and white locks coming down over his ears sat on the veranda. He wore a kimono and did not turn to answer when Remo called his name.

"Little Father," Remo said again. "Is everything all right?"

Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, said nothing.

Remo did not know if Chiun was being quiet or if he was just ignoring Remo. There was no way that he had not heard him. Chiun could hear an elevator start on the next block.

"I got the duck," Remo said.

"Yes, of course, the duck," Chiun said. Right. It was ignoring that he was doing.

"Is something wrong?" Remo asked.

"What should be wrong? I'm used to this."

"Used to what, Little Father?"

"I said I was used to it."

Chiun looked out to the sea, his long fingernails folded into each other.

Remo thought, / will not ask. He wants me to ask. Remo started the slow boiling of the rice. He looked back at Chiun and surrendered.

"All right. What are you used to?" he asked.

"I am so used to it I hardly notice."

"You notice enough to ignore me," Remo said.

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"Some things one cannot shut out, no matter how hard he tries."

"What?"

"Did you enjoy St. Maarten?" Chiun asked.

"You didn't want to go. I had to take seventeen brothers all at once by myself. I could have used you. Fortunately, they bunched up so there wasn't any problem. But you know seventeen is seventeen."

"Has it come to this?" Chiun asked woefully.

"What?"

"You're trying to use guilt on your teacher. On the trainer who has given you the awesome power of Sinanju. And now guilt? Guilt for what? For giving you what no white man has ever had? Giving from my own blood and breathing. And then you come here after being gone for a month and you try to make me feel guilty?"

"What did I do?" Remo asked.

"Nothing," said Chiun and turned to the window in silence.

In Miami Beach the next day, the telephone rang. The call was for Remo. Smith would be coming into Miami. Apparently there was something even more important than CURE's lost files.

Had Remo or Chiun, in their travels, ever heard of a mountain of gold?

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The knife went into the throat perfectly, slicing across the jugular and cutting the windpipe, rendering the soldier helpless.

Neville Lord Wissex stepped back so that Generalissimo Moombasa Garcia y Benitez could see his soldier die, could see how well the knife fighter worked.

"We take a regular Gurkha soldier and give him further training, as you can see," said Lord Wissex. He wore a pinstriped business suit with vest and gray leather gloves.

The generalissimo watched. He could have sworn his soldier would have killed the knife fighter, for the soldier had the very effective street club that all the generalissimo's soldiers carried when they helped protect the liberated people of modern Hamidia.

Hamidia was bounded by three Latin-American countries that would have had the most repressive regimes in South America if it were not for Generalissimo Moombasa's.

Two things, however, saved Moombasa from

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protests by the worid. From without and within. One, his soldiers with clubs would kill protesters very often and very thoroughly. That took care of protest from within. Second, he had wisely put a hammer and sickle on his flag, called his country the "People's Democratic Republic of Hamidia" and went about talking socialism as piles of people, who were foolish enough to whisper unkind things about him, went up in flames. Moombasa called them "my bonfires." The world outside Hamidia ignored the bonfires and concentrated only on the hammer and sickle. No protests from there either.

Once, when he got tired of burning people, he tried to take over Uruguay, Paraguay, and Venezuela. He did this by killing bathers, schoolchildren, bus drivers, airplane passengers, people in restaurants, and any other unprotected citizens with his soldiers, who were generally too cowardly to fight other soldiers.

Attacks on civilians were not considered atrocities because Moombasa called them "battles in the war of liberation." Promptly, three quarters of the newspapers in Great Britain and half its universities opened their minds to his far-reaching philosophies.

At first he had said, "I don't got no philosophy. I kill people."

But it was then that he and Neville Lord Wissex became fast and true friends. He called Lord Wissex "my good friend Neville."

Of course, half the other people he had called his good friends were now charred remnants buried on the outskirts of Liberation City, his capital. The other half killed for him.

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Wissex had said to him: "We'll get you a philosophy and then you can kill anyone you want in any way you want and you will be respected in the world community. Nothing you can do will be condemned except by people you can call names yourself."

"What kind of philosophy?" Moombasa had asked. He thought it might have something to do with not eating meat.

"Marxism. Just say you are the people and anyone against you is against the people and therefore you are defending the people as you kill anyone you want. But you must always blame everything that goes wrong on the United States of America. And sometimes Great Britain."