Warren Murphy - The End of the Game

"My God, we're going to have to go back to paper," said another.

"What's that? Paper?" another one asked.

"It's flat stuff like dollar bills but it isn't green and you make marks on it."

"With what?"

"I don't know. Things. Pens, pencils. Wedges."

"How do we know who owns what, though?" another asked, and all the vice-presidents looked accusingly at Remo and Pamela.

Pamela sat in front of a large television monitor as names and numbers flashed by her in a lightning-fast parade on their way to computer oblivion.

There was one final message. It lingered on the screen for a moment.

"ALL RECORDS CLEARED. GOOD NIGHT MALIBU."

And then the machine went blank.

The vice-presidents who were still standing groaned.

"I guess we've really done it," Pamela said.

"Would an apology do?" Remo asked. The three bankers who had been able to withstand myocardial infarctions at seeing an entire banking system disappear in a series of green blips all shook their heads numbly.

"We're ruined," one said. "All ruined. Thousands of people out of jobs. Thousands of people bankrupt. Ruined. All ruined."

"I said I'm sorry," Remo said. "What do you want from me?"

In Strategic Air Command headquarters deep within the Rocky Mountains, a safety report reached its ominous conclusion: nuclear war could not be avoided because someone or something had gotten into the command systems for both Russian and American missiles and was-- there was no other way to say it-- "playing around."

The President listened to his cabinet discuss the crisis and remained mute. Then he used the red dialless telephone in his bedroom to reach Dr. Harold W. Smith.

"Where do we stand on this-- this-- this thing with the atomic bombs?" he asked.

"We're on it, sir," said Smith. He looked carefully at his left hand. It was numb and could not move. He was still in a state of shock because only minutes before a publishing house in New York City had telephoned him. They asked him to verify a story about Folcroft Sanitarium being the training place of a secret assassin.

Smith had forced himself to chuckle. "This is an insane asylum," he had said. "It sounds like you've been talking to one of the inmates."

"It sounded crazy. People who had been killing others for thousands of years and then coming to America to work to train a secret assassin. Nice old man though. Was he a patient?"

"Might have been," said Smith. "Did he think he was Napoleon?"

"No. Just a Master Assassin."

"We have nine of those," Smith said. "I've got fourteen Napoleons, if that helps. Would you like me to talk to the man?"

"He's gone. Left his manuscript though. It's real exciting."

"Are you going to publish it?" Smith had asked.

"Don't know," said the editor.

"I'd like to read it," said Smith with all the control he could muster. "Of course, you know we would have to sue if you mentioned our name."

"We thought of that. That's why we phoned."

That was when the left hand went numb. The world was liable to go up in atomic dust and he couldn't reach Remo, who might not have understood the assignment to begin with, and now he couldn't reach Chiun, who might have understood the assignment, but couldn't be bothered with it because he was out trying to peddle his life story.

Chiun's autobiography. And just a few months before, it had been Chiun trying to create a national organization dedicated to "Stamping Out Amateur Assassins."

Either way, CURE would be compromised. The only redeeming thought was that probably no one would be around anymore to care whether one small band of men had tried to save America from slipping away into the darkness of lost civilizations. You couldn't be compromised when there was no one left to know.

Smith looked out over the sound behind his office. Despite the dimming effect of the one-way glass, the world was so incredibly sunny, so alive, so bright. Why did the world have to be so beautiful at this moment? Why did he have to notice it?

Because all he could do was notice. As with everything else. He was sitting atop the most powerful, most sophisticated agency in the history of mankind, served by two assassins who were beyond anything the West had ever produced, and he was helpless. He remembered for a moment about smelling the flowers as you go by. A golfer had told him that once: smell the flowers as you go by.

He hadn't done much of that. Instead, he had dedicated his life to making the flowers safe for others to smell.

Smith massaged his numb hand and arm. He had a pill for that. He had a pill for everything.

His body was going and now the world was going too.

Smith tried one more time to reach Remo or Chiun at all the possible access numbers. All he got was a hotel in New York City and an unanswered ringing telephone in a room.

Smell the flowers. He never liked smelling flowers. He liked succeeding. He liked his country being safe. He liked doing his job. He wouldn't even have flowers in his office. Waste of money. Belonged in a field somewhere. Or a vase.

"Where are you, Chiun?" he muttered. "Where are you, Remo?"

Like a prayer answered, the telephone rang.

"Smitty," Remo said, "I can't make head or tail out of this."

"Out of what? Where are you? Where is Chiun? What's going on?"

Remo simulated a referee's whistle. "Hold it, hold it. Time out. Me first."

"All right," Smith said. "What have you got?"

"We started to get close last night to whoever's messing with the computers and all, and he erased some bank records on me. The last message said 'Good night Malibu.' What do you think that could mean?"

"Malibu as in California?" Smith asked.

"Right. Just 'Good night Malibu.' Any ideas?"

"You think the person behind this might be in Malibu?" Smith asked.

"It's a possibility," Remo said. "I don't know."

"What time was this? What time did it all happen?" Smith asked. "Try to be exact."

"At exactly five-fifty-two A.M." Remo said. "Think you can do anything?"

"I'm going to try."

"Good," Remo said and gave him a New York City telephone number where he could be reached. "Try to get me a lead."

"All right," Smith said. "I'll work on it. Do you know where Chiun is?"

"Probably back at the hotel room. Or in Central Park cleaning up candy wrappers. You never know. Why?"

"Because, Remo-- because-- well, dammit, he's trying to publish his autobiography," Smith said, his voice crackling with intensity.

"Let's hope we're all around to read it," Remo said as he hung up.

sChapter Seven

Reigning Master, Glory of the House of Sinanju, Protector of the Village, Holder of the Wisdom, Vessel of Magnificence, Chiun himself had entered the office of the senior editor of Bingham Publishing, then demanded to be escorted out.

"I said 'senior editor,'" said Chiun, disdaining the small cubicle with the manuscripts piled on chairs and the single plastic couch. There was hardly room to stand, let alone to move.

In the time of the first great Master of Sinanju, Wang the Good, when he served one of the greater dynasties of China, a punishment for a minor official was to move him from his office into a cubicle in which one step in any direction would have him nose-first against a wall. Some Confucian scholars took their own lives rather than be humilated in such an office.

"Mr. Chiun," said a pleasant woman with a southern drawl that could smother a sidewalk. "This is the senior editor's office."

Chiun looked around once more, very slowly, very obviously.

"If this is the senior editor's office, where do the slaves work?"

"Golly, we are the slaves," laughed the woman and called in several other editors to hear the comment made by this absolutely wonderful old gentleman.

Everyone thought it was funny. Everyone thought the absolutely wonderful old gentleman was funny. Everyone thought the book was absolutely wonderful. The editor most of all. She had some wonderful suggestions for this wonderful manuscript. Just wonderful.