Warren Murphy: Funny Money

He hung up with a satisfied smile on his face. "That's the Carol Arms. He's saving room 226 for you. Nice digs, fellas. Why don't you get some sleep there and we'll talk tonight after you rest. I'll call you. Maybe we'll hear something from Mr. Gordons." He smiled hopefully at Remo. Chiun still stared at Forsythe.

Remo nodded.

Forsythe stood and Remo saw his flowered trousers. Forsythe reached forward a hand to Remo who shook it. He extended his hand toward Chiun but Chiun pretended not to see it, still staring into Forsythe's eyes. The proffered hand hung momentarily in the air, like a yo-yo at the top of its climb, before it dropped quickly to his side.

"Well, we'll talk tonight, fellas," said Forsythe. "It's really been good to see you. I'd been wondering if we would meet again. Kind of hoping we would. After our first meeting."

He sat down again, indicating the audience was over. Remo turned to the door. Chiun took a last look at Forsythe, then followed behind Remo. At the doorway, Remo glanced into a mirror on the wall. Forsythe's hand was already snaking out toward the telephone and he was drumming his fingers impatiently, waiting for them to leave before he picked up the instrument.

In front of the building, Remo said, "Quite the conversationalist, aren't you?"

"I have nothing to say to that man. He dresses funny."

"Didn't anybody every tell you it's not polite to stare? What were you looking at anyway?"

"I was looking at his head."

CHAPTER NINE

The room was a perfect setup. It was in the back of the hotel, near the elevator. The fire escape ran down alongside it to the alley, and the pull-down ladder could be grabbed from the ground by a jumping man. A squad of men could file up it to the platform outside room 226. With the door and the window covered, occupants would have no way to escape.

"It's a setup, Chiun," said Remo, looking around the room, kicking off his Italian loafers, and plopping backward onto the bed.

"Yes," said Chiun. His eyes were on the color television set. He went over and quickly turned the set on. "Do you know I have missed my beautiful stories for almost two weeks?"

"Heavens to Betsy," exclaimed Remo. "You see the way he looked at me?"

"Yes," said Chiun. "Like a dish for his palate."

The set slowly rearranged confusion into an image.

"Why'd you want to see him anyway?" asked Remo.

"We are attacking Mr. Gordons. We cannot be distracted by this baboon in flowered pants coming after your head."

Remo grunted. "I wonder if Forsythe will come after us himself?"

Chiun began turning the channel selector, looking with only faint hope for one of his afternoon soap operas, even though the sun was sinking slowly in the west.

"He will come himself," he said.

"Why are you so sure?"

"Because your Mr. Forsythe is an idiot. Shhhh," said Chiun. He continued turning the dials but found only news programs and a science show for children. He slammed the on-off button of the set with a blow so vicious that it cracked the edge of the television case.

"This is a whole nation of idiots," he said. "Why should Mr. Forsythe be different from either you or the idiots who plan your television shows, those vile poll-takers of Washington. This is the headquarters of your government, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, why is there nothing on television from your government? If they will not have the beautiful stories all the time, why do they not have your government shows on television? The last show they had was very good with the fat man asking questions and the Hawaiian who talked funny. I thought everybody liked that show. Why did they take it off?"

"It wasn't a show," Remo explained. "It was a Senate committee and when their work was done, they stopped."

"That wasn't a show?"

"No."

"That was your government in operation?"

"Yes."

"God help America."

Group Leader Francis Forsythe, on loan from the CIA to the Treasury Department, was not content to wait for God to help America, because, as Chiun had correctly discerned, he was an idiot.

As soon as Chiun and Remo had left his office, he called in the top aides he had brought with him from the CIA "to wrap up this little bogus money thing." He sat, feet up on the desk, smoking a cigarette in a long water-impregnated filter-holder, and waited for the three staff men to assemble.

The last one to enter asked, "What's up, chief?"

"We're going to a beheading," Forsythe said, grinning.

He sat up quickly, stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray, and rubbed his hands together in joyful anticipation of the coming night's activities. For this—overt activity—was what Forsythe knew he did best. It was how he had made his reputation and had begun his climb up through government ranks.

He had been a code officer in Europe during World War II when the Nazis set a trap for the American troops. An intelligence unit had intercepted a German code message. It was shipped by the commanding general to Forsythe who gave it to a clerk to decode. Five minutes later, the general called, demanding a deciphering. Forsythe yanked the message out of the clerk's hands, along with the partial translation, and headed for the general's tent.

He tried to finish the decoding as he walked. When he got to the tent, he told the general that the Germans were planning to capture two towns as part of a spearhead into American-controlled territory. The first town, Forsythe said, had been "hardly hit." That's what the German message said, he told the general

The general rushed units to the first town. When they got there, they found that the Germans were in the second town and the Americans had sealed off their escape route.

The Nazis surrendered. Their commander wanted to know why the Americans hadn't fallen into the trap.

"What trap?" Forsythe asked him through an interpreter.

The Nazi officer explained that their coded message had been meant to be intercepted. "When you got it and it said the first town was hard hit, we expected your troops to come to the second town where we could trap them. Instead you went to the first town and got behind us. Why?"

"Superior planning," said Forsythe, who refused to believe that he had been too big a fool to be fooled.

His work with the code won him a major commendation and a promotion and led to his joining the CIA after the war. There had followed other successes, many of them equally accidental, and now, years later, he was behind a desk in the Treasury Building, trying to save America from a counterfeiting menace, but still yearning for the days when he fought and beat the Nazi menace almost single-handed.

Well, even if there were no more Nazis, there were still enemies. Mr. Gordons was one. And from what little he had been able to see, this anti-organization Remo person was probably another. And if one enemy wanted another enemy's head, well, then who was hurt?

True enough, this Remo had high clearance. But no one need ever know that Forsythe had decided himself to deliver up Remo's head to Mr. Gordons—that is, until Forsythe was sure the act would draw credit instead of blame. For the time being, its justification was the need of the Republic.

Forsythe and his top aides carefully worked out their plans for the night. The Oriental was expendable. If he should get in the way, he would have to die too. But it was Remo's body—or at least a portion thereof—that they needed.

As he spoke, Forsythe's eyes glistened and nervously he ran a hand over his puffy cheeks, cheeks in which flesh had muted the outlines of what once had been high, hard cheekbones.

"Speed is important, but timing is even more important," said Forsythe. "The element of surprise is with us. They'll be sitting ducks. They're not expecting a thing. We'll rendezvous at 11:55 P.M. in the alley."