Warren Murphy - Identity Crisis

Smith suddenly fainted. He collapsed onto the floor as if defeated. There was no warning. He had started to sit up when the old Asian simply touched the center of his forehead as if to flick a bead of sweat away. Instead, Smith all but fell apart under the touch.

"Damn," said Koldstad.

The old Asian arose. "Summon a doctor to take him to his bed of rest."

Koldstad narrowed suspicious eyes. "I thought you said you were his doctor."

"You misunderstood. I am his adviser."

"Financial adviser?"

"Adviser. I am called Chiun."

Koldstad whirled on his men, red faced. "Somebody confirm this. Drag that weepy secretary in here."

Mrs. Mikulka was brought in trembling.

"Why are you people doing this?" she asked tearfully. "Dr. Smith is one of the-"

"-lowest forms of life on the planet today," Jack Koldstad said harshly. "A suspected tax evader."

"Suspected! Is that any reason to come into a hospital with drawn guns?"

"Where tax revenue is concerned, Uncle Sam doesn't take prisoners." Koldstad pointed to Chiun. "Do you know this man?"

"Yes, that is Mr. Chiun."

"So you know him?"

"Yes. He is a former patient who often returns to Folcroft."

"Patient?"

"I understand he is completely cured of his delusions."

"What delusions?"

"I don't know exactly. But he has been known to refer to Dr. Smith as 'Emperor.'"

"Emperor of what?"

"Of America, of course," replied the old Asian named Chiun.

All eyes went to him. Koldstad strode up to the tiny Oriental, towering over him. "Did you say America?"

"Yes. Smith secretly rules this land."

"What about the President?"

Chiun shrugged his black silk shoulders. "A mere puppet. Disposable and unimportant."

"And you're his adviser?"

"I stand by his throne and protect him from his enemies."

"Get a real doctor in here!" Koldstad shouted. "Fast. And place this little yellow nut under arrest."

"Catch me if you can," squeaked Chiun.

And in a swirl of skirts, he turned, making for the door.

"Stop him!"

The IRS agents at the door gave it their best. Their best involved dropping into a crouch, hands splayed as if to catch a fumbled football. It looked like a good strategy. But they were playing the wrong kind of ball.

The Master of Sinanju struck them like a black bowling ball. They cartwheeled in midair like tenpins, only to fall clutching one another in the mistaken impression they had grabbed their intended target.

Koldstad stepped over them and looked up and down the corridor. Something reached up and pulled him down by his navy blue necktie. His face struck the floor with so much force he bounced back to a standing position and had to be helped over to a couch.

"Dammit, what kind of madhouse is Smith running here?" Koldstad barked through bloody fingers that clutched his bruised nose.

"This is a sanitarium," Mrs. Mikulka pointed out timidly.

Chapter 5

Remo Williams noticed the circling birds first.

There was something wrong about the birds. He couldn't put his finger on it as he drove up the wooded road to Folcroft Sanitarium, but the birds were wrong. Very wrong.

His senses had been developed to the pinnacle of human achievement and beyond. His eyes could spot a deer tick making its way along its host from a distance of half a mile by the near-imperceptible movement of the deer's guard hairs.

The birds circled Folcroft in high, lazy spirals like condors. Remo thought of condors. Condors were not native to North America, so they couldn't be condors. Vultures, probably. Their wingspreads were too great for hawks, their bodies too small for sea gulls.

As Remo negotiated the winding road, his eyes kept going to the circling birds. They were black against the rising sun, and that made it harder for even his eyes to make out their color and nature.

Vultures, Remo decided. Vultures for sure. But why were they circling Folcroft as if it was dead?

As he got closer, he began to smell blood. The metallic tang hung in the early-morning air. There were other smells-death smells. Sinanju had not taught him to proceed cautiously when he smelled them. He had learned that as a Marine, back in Nam.

Pulling over to the side of the road, Remo got out. There were leaves underfoot. Without having to look down, his feet avoided them perfectly. That he hadn't learned in Vietnam. That was Sinanju, and so deeply ingrained it was second nature.

Remo moved on to the trees, easing from bole to bole until he found an oak tall enough to do him some good. He went up it.

Half the leaves were gone, but there was foliage enough to conceal him provided he didn't move.

From the branches Remo spotted the unguarded gate to Folcroft. There was a sign on one of the brick gate pillars. It read:

NO TRESPASSING

GOVERNMENT PROPERTY

SEIZED BY ORDER OF THE

INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE

The black block letters were printed over the IRS seal.

"Damn, damn, damn," Remo said.

In the early days of his work for CURE, the supersecret agency that didn't exist, there had been a number of standing orders. Paramount among them was what to do if Folcroft was compromised in any way: disappear. Since Remo was CURE's enforcement arm, his very existence was a security secret.

In the old days Remo had taken security seriously. The years had taught him differently. He had been officially dead more than two decades now. Although thanks to the succession of plastic surgeries and the strange effects of his Sinanju training, he looked almost exactly the same now as he did then. For all intents and purposes, Remo hadn't aged. That very fact meant that if any old friend from his past ever came across him, knowing Remo had been executed by the State of New Jersey, he would naturally have leaped to a logical conclusion: Remo was his own son.

Remo had never had a son. Had never been married. But the days when he had to stay away from New Jersey and his past were long over. No one would assume that Remo Williams was above ground. Even if they did, the world wouldn't come to an end. Remo could be in the witness-protection program for all anyone knew. It was all Harold Smith bullshit.

Remo had had enough of Smith's bullshit. That was why he had quit CURE the week before. Technically he was a free agent, but he had agreed to stick around for the duration of Chiun's next contract on one condition: that Smith use CURE's massive computer outreach to help Remo locate his parents, living or dead.

Smith had agreed. Chiun, surprisingly, had gone along with it all. But Remo was serious this time. A year hence he would kiss Harold Smith, CURE and Folcroft Sanitarium goodbye. Forever.

Chiun, he would worry about then.

But as he hung in the crown of the oak, Remo understood that something unexpected had happened, something that promised to cheat him out of the one chance he had to unearth his roots.

CURE was under stress as the result of an effort by an old enemy-a superintelligent artificial-intelligence microchip called Friend-to destroy the organization. Friend, whose programming was dedicated to the mindless making of profit and the unremitting accumulation of wealth, had struck at CURE in a brilliant three-prong attack calculated to render the agency nonfunctional.

It had come at a critical time. Chiun had just negotiated the contract for the coming year. The gold had been shipped to the village of Sinanju on the West Korea Bay by submarine. A renegade North Korean frigate captain had commandeered it, destroying the sub and seizing the gold. Without gold, the contract was void. Without gold, the Master of Sinanju had withdrawn his services, along with Remo's.

At the same time Friend had struck at Remo indirectly. By a subtle manipulation of the data in the CURE computer system, a man's name had bubbled up to catch Smith's attention. A fugitive hit man, long wanted by the authorities. Exactly the kind of hit that Remo routinely handled between higher-priority assignments.