Warren Murphy: Funny Money

"You are not my buddy and I am not yours. You tried to damage me by making me fall from the plane. You are not my friend."

"But I am, I am, I am your friend." The pilot kept screaming this as he was dragged from his seat, along the aisleway to the open door. "You can't fly this craft," he shouted. "You'll crash," he called as he went through the open door and plummeted, un-moneylike, decisively, straight for the ground. The plane took a slight dip forward and Mr. Gordons went back and sat in the pilot's seat. Why was piloting supposed to be difficult? It was all very easy and mechanical. He made it seem that way as he took the plane back to Kennedy Airport. He knew nothing, however, of flight patterns so he ignored the chattering radio and just landed without clearance on the main east-west runway and taxied toward one of the terminals. He was barely missed by a landing Jumbo Jet which whooshed by him with a rush of air that almost made his own plane unmanageable. Mr. Gordons heard the radio squawk: "What the christ is going on in that DC-4? Herman, I'll have your goddamn license for this."

Mr. Gordons realized he had done something wrong and the authorities would be after him. He watched the first men moving toward the parked plane. They were policemen of some kind, wearing blue uniforms, peaked caps, and badges. He committed it to his mind so his fabricators would work more accurately. He looked over his shoulder. The passenger seats in the plane, the few that were left after the plane had been emptied for cargo carrying, were of a rough blue nubby material.

When the three policemen boarded his plane, they found no one there. They searched the plane carefully, even looking under the passenger seats whose fabric was ripped and torn. Later they were joined by more men, these in suits, and they never seemed to notice that the three uniformed police officers had become four uniformed police officers. And minutes later, Mr. Gordons, having restructured his uniform into a blue business suit, was walking through the main entrance of the terminal.

He would have to write another letter, demanding now not only the head of high probability Remo but the head of high probability Chiun, He might not survive in America if the two of them lived. He must devise a threat powerful enough so that the government would obey him. It would take all his creativity.

It was good. It would take his computers away from the nagging question of what had happened to his friendship. Perhaps some people were just destined not to have friends.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"It didn't work, Chiun," said Remo holding a copy of the late afternoon paper.

Emblazoned across the front page was a giant end-of-the-world typeface headline:

MONEY COMES TO HARLEM

The story told how the streets had been blanketed with money during the night. It was accompanied by a photograph of some of the bills. When their photographer had gotten to Harlem all the money was off the streets, but he had stopped in a liquor store and there was able to photograph many bills. Two bank managers in the area were shown samples of the money and certified it as genuine.

The newspaper implied that there was some insidious plot behind throwing a billion dollars—that was their inspired guess—onto Harlem's streets, some kind of trick by the power structure to keep the struggling blacks in their place.

That the newspaper had the story at all was a tribute to the skills and persistence of some of the editorial staff.

Two hours after they learned that "something was up" in Harlem, they finally found out about the money. During those two hours, the staff had been working on a blockbuster story telling how Harlem had gone on strike, no one was reporting for work, and while there had been no announcements, the action was obviously well-organized and clearly a massive protest by the black community against bias, discrimination, and all forms of tokenistic, non-Jewish liberalism. When the money explanation was found, the editor took all the work that had been done on the "general strike" and put it in his top desk drawer. Plenty of time to use that another day.

The Treasury Department, asked about the money, would say only that it was investigating.

"We attack," said Chiun.

"But I thought this was going to work," needled Remo. "I thought he was going to think it was my head."

"He probably opened it and when he saw something inside the skull realized it could not be yours. We attack."

They spoke in a cab and moments later were aboard a plane to Dr. Carlton's laboratories in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The next day, Dr. Harold W. Smith at Folcroft Sanitarium had two disturbing items on his desk.

The first was an immaculately typed letter that looked like printing. It had come from Mr. Gordons to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where it had been routed directly to the director's desk, and routed by him to the President's office, and had finally wound up on this most top secret desk of all. It said simply that unless Mr. Gordons was given the heads of Chiun and Remo, he would buy an entire Strategic Air Command group, by paying a million dollars to each of its members, and would use the equipment to blow up a number of American cities.

The second item was a newspaper clipping. It reported that Dr. Vanessa Carlton, head of the famous Wilkins Laboratory for space components and equipment, had announced that her staff had developed an entirely new creativity program. It would allow spacecraft computers to think originally for the first time in their history.

"Our earlier effort at a creativity program compares to this one as an imbecile compares to a genius," Dr. Carlton said. "With this program in operation, a spacecraft will be able to react brilliantly to any kind of unforeseen occurrence in space."

Dr. Carlton also announced that the equipment would be installed aboard a laboratory rocket and launched into space in two days.

Remo and Chiun had not reported in. They were alive. Smith knew that because Mr. Gordons had gone ahead with his threat and had dumped a billion dollars onto Harlem. But they had probably tangled with Mr. Gordons somehow. Why else would Mr. Gordons now raise his demand to include Chiun's head as well as Remo's?

Smith spun in his office seat and looked through the one-way glass toward the waters of Long Island Sound, lapping gently at the shoreline of Rye, New York. He had sat in that seat for more than ten years. Ten years with CURE. For Remo and Chiun, it had been the same. They were, along with Smith, indispensable parts of the operation.

A slight scowl crossed his pinched, sour-looking face and he raised his right hand to stroke his neatly shaved jaw. Indispensable? Remo and Chiun indispensable? Although alone in his office, he shook his head. There was no one who was indispensable. Not Remo, not Chiun, not Dr. Smith himself. Only America and its safety and its security was indispensable. Not even the President himself, the only other man who knew about CURE, was indispensable. Presidents came and Presidents went. The only thing indispensable was the nation itself.

But this latest note from Mr. Gordons had shaken him. It was Smith's responsibility to let the President know what his options were and this was a new President. Who knew what his response might be? Suppose he said simply, pay Mr. Gordons his price. That would be wrong, because blackmail always led to more blackmail and there was never an end to it. They should all fight. They should.

But years in government service had taught Dr. Smith that there was often a void between "should" and "did." And if the President said to sacrifice Remo and Chiun, then Smith would have no alternative but to try to find a way to deliver their heads to Mr. Gordons.

So much for loyalty and duty. But what of friendship? Did it count for nothing? Smith looked at the waves gently rolling up on the rocky shoreline, and made his decision. Before he would hand up Remo and Chiun, he would go after Mr. Gordons himself. It had, he insisted to himself, nothing to do with friendship. It was just the right administrative thing to do. But he could not explain to himself why this administrative decision—not to hand up Remo and Chiun without a fight—filled him with pleasure when other administrative decisions never had before.