Warren Murphy: Funny Money

"You have new instructions now. Stop using the alphabet," said Remo. "Now I'm supposed to give Gordons something tomorrow in exchange for those plates."

"It's being pre-processed," said Forsythe.

"What does that mean?" asked Remo. Chiun glided a Pan Am 747 into a TWA 707. Then he skirted the 707 around a hangar and back into the 747, nose into wing.

Forsythe cleared his throat and forced himself to look away from the kimono-clad old arms that were now rearranging the model planes in front of a model passenger terminal.

"What we're using as bait and what Mr. Gordons has asked for is a highly sophisticated piece of software. That's a computer program. It has to be duplicated so it won't be lost."

"It's pretty valuable, huh?"

"Not to anyone but NASA. That's the strange thing about it. This Mr. Gordons wants something that's virtually unnecessary within a few hundred thousand miles of earth."

Forsythe's voice softened. The minor coughing disappeared from the back of the room. Chiun stopped playing with the planes. Forsythe continued.

"What he wants is a computer program for an unmanned vehicle, a highly sophisticated and recent program. We and the Russians, especially the Russians, who have done more unmanned research, were getting signals back from spacecraft, a day or two days after the craft had ceased to exist. That's how long it takes for some signals to return. Naturally that means that control from NASA Houston or the Russian base is impossible in case of a real unforeseen emergency. The point is that these spacecraft just can't think. You can program them to cope with almost anything, but when something comes up that's not in their program, they can't improvise. They have no creative intelligence. A five-year-old human being would overwhelm them. The ability to see an elephant in a hunk of clay, the ability to do what our ancestors did and stick a rock on a piece of wood and invent an axe, even though they had never seen one before, is beyond them. That's what these space vehicles lacked and that's why they perished. And they couldn't call on our human intelligence back here on earth because by the time the signals got here, the whole thing was academic."

Remo felt a nudge from Chiun.

"He thinks human intelligence is all between the ears. What superstitions," said Chiun.

Forsythe rapped the pointer on a runway.

"Would your friend care to share that with the rest of us?" he asked.

"No, he wouldn't," said Remo.

There was a moment's silence, then Remo said, "So the program Gordons wants is one that is of no value to anyone on earth."

"Right," said Forsythe.

"So when you went to make the switch the last time, you gave him a phony program," said Remo.

"Right," said Forsythe.

"Why?" said Remo.

"We don't want just anybody having access to our nation's secrets. It would compromise our national honor."

The only sound in the room was Chiun snickering as he turned back to the model airplanes.

His face red under its thin coating of sweat, Forsythe said, "I'd like to suggest again that you employ snipers."

"No, again," said Remo.

"Then perhaps one man," said Forsythe and a red leather case came onto the mockup. It opened and a fat barrel with a small bore snapped into a metal lock. A hand underneath the light held forth a long thin bullet.

"I can hit an eyelash with this at a hundred yards. One hit is a kill. It's poisoned."

"You hit Mr. Gordons and he still had enough left to tear apart that poor guy you set up," said Remo.

"That was a Treasury agent and he expected to risk his life," said Forsythe, stiffening in a military manner, the pointer snapping up under his arm like a riding crop. Remo gave him a baleful look. The sniper pushed his special bullet farther down the mock-up toward Remo. Into this came Chiun.

"Ratatatatatatat," he said, strafing the main passenger terminal with an American Airlines DC-10 in his left hand. With his right, he brought up the Pan Am 747.

"Zooooom," said Chiun as the 747 climbed like a fighter and chased away the DC-10. "Ratatatatatat," said the Master of Sinanju. "Varooom. Booom. Boooom. Varooooom," and the DC-10 spun crazily over the mockup of O'Hare Airport in the basement of the Treasury Building.

"Balloooooom," said Chiun when the DC-10's nose hit a hanger. He let the model plane drop to the runway.

"Are you through playing with toys?" asked Forsythe.

"In your hands," said Chiun, "and in the hands of your followers, everything is a toy. In my hands, everything is a weapon."

"Very nice," said Forsythe. "I suppose now you two will take these model planes to the meeting with Mr. Gordons tomorrow at O'Hare."

"In my hands or in the hands of this man," Chiun said, motioning to Remo, "everything is a weapon, a greater weapon than that gun with your man. That gun is a toy."

"I've had enough," said Forsythe. "This is ridiculous."

"You're outa your goddam head, dink," said the sniper and his face appeared out of the darkness under the light—cold watery blue eyes behind rimless spectacles.

"Load your toy gun," said Chiun.

"Stop it. This instant," said Forsythe. "This instant. This is an order. Brian, you've got to stop your man from needling my sniper."

"I don't get involved," said Remo.

"Load your toy gun," cackled Chiun and the little DC-10 seemed to float into his right hand and come up to his shoulder. Its nose and cockpit pointed at the sniper. The sniper put the bullet into the chamber. Forsythe stepped back from the table. Hands that were resting on the edges of the mockup on all four sides disappeared as people retreated into the dark. Remo stayed at the table edge between Chiun and the sniper, drumming his fingers in boredom. He hummed what Forsythe in his terror judged to be "Young at Heart."

The sniper loaded the special bullet into the chamber. It clicked with the deep metal sound of fine tooling. He raised the rifle. Remo yawned.

"Fire," said Chiun.

"I can't miss from here," said the sniper. "I could split an eyelash from here."

"Fire," said Chiun.

"For God's sakes. Not in the basement of the Treasury Building," said Forsythe.

"Well," said the sniper, "whatever Dinko wants, Dinko gets. I think I'm gonna give you another eye."

And as his trigger finger squeezed, Chiun's delicate long-fingernailed hand seemed to flutter under the yellow overhead lights and the DC-10 was no longer in his hands. Only Remo saw it move. But everyone saw it land. Its wings were pressed to the sniper's forehead and the nose and cockpit were embedded in his skull. Blood trickled from the back of the fuselage and as the head went forward, it drowned the tail in the warm red of the sniper's life. The sniper's rifle with the fat barrel clattered onto the mockup, its muzzle resting on the passenger terminal.

Chiun brushed it aside. "A toy," he said.

"No," said Forsythe. "You can't kill someone in the basement of the Treasury Building without a written order."

"Don't let him get away with it," Remo told Forsythe. "Make him clean up the body. He's always leaving bodies around."

"He started it," said Chiun. "If I had started it, I would have cleaned up the body."

"You suckered that numby with the bang-bang into this thing because you were getting bored," said Remo.

"I was merely playing with airplanes," said Chiun. "But everyone knows you whites stick together."

"We have a dead man here," said Forsythe.

"Right. And don't let him get away without cleaning up after himself," said Remo.

"If I were white, you wouldn't say that," said Chiun.

"What are we going to do about the killing?" asked Forsythe.

"Mark it to racial bigotry," said Chiun, who had been hearing these words on his daytime television soap operas and now thought it an appropriate time to use them. "You whites not only smell funny and are stupid but you're also bigots. Racists. And you're not even the best race."