Warren Murphy: Identity Crisis

Still, it was a sound, and it carried.

A man entered the room, gun in hand. His eyes swept the room and came to rest upon the figure of the Master of Sinanju floating on the other side of the window glass.

Bringing a weapon from under his coat, he identified himself.

"IRS!"

Tapping the circle, Chiun reached in in time to catch the circle of glass before it fell. He flicked his wrist. The disc of glass sailed across the room and through the open door, neatly separating the man standing there from his head.

Chiun entered through the circular opening and padded past the invader who lay quivering in two parts, an expression of wonderment on his upturned face. Chiun erased the expression with the heel of his sandal. It erased his face, as well.

"Barley drinkers," Chiun hissed.

Moving down the corridor, his ears captured sounds.

"Get a doctor," a man yelled. "He's choking!"

"Anybody know the Heimlich Maneuver? Get him to cough it up!"

The shouting was coming from the direction of Smith's office.

Chiun picked up his pace. His feet seemed to but brush the floor, but they propelled him along like a gazelle. His pipestem arms churning in his swishing kimono sleeves, and his pumping legs made his silken skirts swirl in agitation.

No one heard his approach; no one sensed his growing shadow.

They would not be aware of him until his hands were at their vitals--and the moment in which they would recognize their doom would be as brief as a spark.

FROM THE MOMENT he stepped into Folcroft Sanitarium, it only got worse for Jack Koldstad.

The lobby guard was standing in front of his desk, his hands in the air, his revolver at his feet. His arms trembled.

"These premises are hereby seized by order of the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service," Koldstad barked.

"Okay by me," the guard said, his voice quavering. "Dr. Smith said to do whatever you fellas say."

An agent stiffened. "Did you hear that? He knew we were coming!"

"Where is Smith?" Koldstad barked.

"Second floor. Right off the elevator. Can't miss it."

Koldstad turned to his aide. "Hand this flunky off to DEA. It'll give them something to do besides scratching themselves while we secure the building."

Koldstad led his men up the stairs. An elevator could be stopped by cutting the power. It had happened to him twice before he learned to take the stairs even if it was fifty flights up.

There was an ample-bosomed woman about fifty years old trembling behind a second-floor reception desk. Her hands were caught up around her throat.

Koldstad flashed his ID in her jowly face. "IRS. Where's Harold W Smith?"

"Dr. Smith is... is in his office."

They went in, guns drawn. Koldstad took point.

They found Harold Smith behind his desk, clutching his throat and lunging for something behind him.

"Freeze! IRS!"

His face turning purple, Harold Smith ignored the order.

"Dammit, I said 'Freeze!'"

Someone shouted in Koldstad's ear. "He's going for a gun!"

Koldstad fired a warning shot past Smith's gray head. It struck the plate-glass window behind him, bringing it down in large, dangerous shards.

A flat triangle of glass struck Smith on the head. He went down.

Koldstad rushed to his side, knocked the glass away and turned him over.

Smith's face was a strange color-purple gray. The gray was giving way to the purple hue.

"He's going into cardiac arrest!" an agent said.

Koldstad saw the crumpled paper cup in Smith's hand and noticed the water dispenser. "Dammit, he's choking. Get him some water!"

While an agent struggled with the water dispenser, Jack Koldstad fought to pry Harold Smith's strong jaws open. Smith set his teeth, and his jaw muscles hardened to stone.

"Stop fighting me, dammit! I'm trying to save you!"

Smith clenched his teeth all the more. He was coughing violently, and the cough had nowhere to go except out his nose. Expelled air mixed with hot mucus spattered Koldstad across the face.

"Dammit, Smith. I'm trying to help you!"

His eyes rolling up in his head, Smith clawed Koldstad's face with blunt fingernails.

"Give me a hand here!" Koldstad shouted.

Two agents dropped to their knees in the cramped space behind Smith's desk and fought to hold the elderly man down.

"What's wrong with this guy? He doesn't want to be saved."

"Maybe he swallowed poison," an agent suggested.

"Where's that doctor, dammit? Who knows the Heimlich maneuver? We can't have another casualty. It'll be our pensions."

Then a voice like a brass gong filled the room.

"Hold!"

All heads turned toward the sound. Koldstad's head came around. And he couldn't believe his eyes.

A tiny Asian man stood in the room. He was hardly more than five feet tall, looked older than God and wore a kimono that belonged on a geisha. The door was blocked by two armed IRS agents. Yet he had gotten past them. The twin dumbfounded expressions roosting on the guard's faces told that tale.

"Who the hell are you?" Koldstad said hotly.

"I am Chiun, personal physician to that man you are manhandling. Stand aside, barley drinkers, for only I can help him."

"Barley-"

"Make haste if you wish to spare his life."

Koldstad hesitated. Smith let go with another violent suppressed cough, and the hot mucus that splattered across the front of Koldstad's coat decided him.

"Give that man room to work."

The agents withdrew as the tiny Asian knelt.

"O Smith, speak the words I wish to hear."

Smith opened his mouth.

"Kkk-"

"I do not understand you, Smith."

"He's trying to say something, but there's something caught in his throat," Koldstad said.

And as Koldstad watched, the tiny Asian used two delicate-looking fingers to pry apart Harold Smith's jaws. Koldstad had tried the same thing, and his strength hadn't been near enough.

But the old guy acted as if he were picking apart the petals of a rose. Smith's jaws parted. He hacked.

Keeping the jaws apart with one hand, the tiny Asian reached into his mouth to get at the obstructing object lodged deep within.

"You'll need to Heimlich him to get it out, whatever it is."

"Silence! I need silence to save this man."

Then the old guy began massaging Smith's angular Adam's apple with a caressing thumb.

Smith heaved out a violent hack, and something seemed to pop up from his mouth. It was white, and Koldstad tried to track it with his eyes. He lost it as it sailed past the old doctor's shoulder. Koldstad blinked. It seemed to disappear in midair. He approached, face quizzical. He hadn't heard the sound of the white object falling to the floor. The floor was polished pine. There should have been a click.

While Koldstad was searching the floor, Harold Smith subsided.

"Speak, Smith."

"Kikk-"

"Swallow. It will ease your throat." "Here's some water," said Koldstad, handing over a cup filled with water. Smith swallowed. There were tears in his eyes. The first word he got out was "Kill..."

Koldstad asked, "What did he say?"

"I do not know."

". . . me. . ." added Smith.

"Hush, Smith. You are distraught. You require rest."

"Kill me," said Harold Smith. "Please." His gray eyes were locked with those of the old Asian. They pleaded.

"Did he just ask you to kill him?"

"He has been under great strain of late. We must get him to his bed to rest."

"Not before I finish official business," Koldstad said, looming over the stricken man. "Harold Smith, I am seizing this hospital for willful failure to pay income taxes, concealing income from the Internal Revenue Service, violating the Money Laundering Control Act of 1983 by illegally importing into this country income in amounts exceeding ten thousand dollars and failing to pay the lawful taxes thereon."