"She was trying to tell me how to find my father. She said if she could stand up where she lay, she could see mountains and a stream called Laughing Brook."
"Your mother is dead, Remo."
"I know," Remo said softly.
"But your father is not."
"She thought it was important for me to find him."
"Then it is. But first we have work to do."
"Without Smith, I don't have a prayer of finding anyone. What the hell's going on?"
"I do not know. I awoke to rudeness and boom sticks booming, and then the barley drinkers were swarming over Folcroft."
"Barley drinkers?"
"The lesser English."
"Lesser?"
"The Irish terrorists. Those who break knees and mothers' hearts with their cruelty."
"You mean the IRS?"
"Exactly."
"Little Father, the Irish terrorists are called the IRA. Irish Republican Army. The IRS is the Internal Revenue Service."
Chiun squeaked, "Those who tax! The taxing ones?"
"Exactly."
"They must not find my gold. Quickly! We must go to guard it."
"What about Smith?" asked Remo.
"I have placed him in the sleep from which only I can awaken him. The fool attempted to end his life with poison."
"Just because the IRS landed on him?"
"No doubt he is guilty of skimming vast sums from his overseers. That can await. The gold must be moved."
"We move that gold, and the IRS will be on us like white on rice-excuse the expression."
"Then we must dispatch these IRS confiscators."
"We can't do that," said Remo.
"Why not? If we kill them all, they will leave us alone."
"You don't know the IRS. They'll keep sending out agents until they get what they want."
"Then we will kill them all!" Chiun proclaimed.
"They'll just keep swearing in more agents. It's a bottomless pit. Forget it, Little Father. We gotta solve this some other way."
"What other way?"
"I don't know, but we can't hang around this stairwell forever. Let's make tracks."
"I would rather make IRS bodies."
But the Master of Sinanju followed Remo down the stairs on cat feet.
On the way down, they heard a steady beating like a drum.
Doom doom doom doom...
"What the hell is that?" Remo wondered aloud.
"I do not know and I do not care," sniffed Chiun.
"Sounds familiar."
"We have more important matters before us than some lunatic beating an animal skin."
Remo stopped abruptly in front of a fire door. "Sounds like it's on the other side."
But when he flung open the door, there was only a deserted corridor. And the drumming had stopped.
Shrugging, Remo started back down. They reached the basement undetected.
Chiun flew to the triple-locked door and saw that it was secure.
"We must guard this with our lives," he said grimly.
"Look, can you hold the fort for an hour or so?" Remo asked, anxious voiced.
Chiun looked up at him suspiciously.
"Better than you, but what is so important that you would leave the one who raised you up from the muck of Christianity and other Western nonsense to defend the gold of his village alone?"
"There was something else my mother said," Remo said.
"What was it?"