"It is my order."
"Hold the phone," Remo interjected. "You're not going anywhere until you pay off a debt."
"Debt?"
"You promised to help find my parents."
Smith frowned. "That debt is cancelable by death."
"Then don't plan on dying."
"What Remo says is true, Emperor. You owe my adopted son a debt that must be discharged ere you can be granted the boon of oblivion."
"CURE security supercedes personal obligations," Smith snapped.
Remo shook his head. "Not to me. I gave twenty years of my life to the organization. It took my old life and my future from me. It owes me some answers."
Smith fell back on the pillow, his tired eyes closing. "I am sorry, Remo, but I can no longer help you in your search."
"Why not?"
"I erased the CURE data banks the minute the IRS and DEA burst in. Without them, I have no resources."
"We'll buy you a new computer," Remo said.
"With your own gold, of course," Chiun added hastily.
"Why is the DEA in on this, too?" Remo asked.
"Evidently Friend dropped a dime on us before he was destroyed. As you both recall, he had a three-pronged plan of attack to destroy the organization. I was so busy dealing with the simultaneous loss of the submarine with the gold, the failure of the Folcroft computers and Remo's distress over having killed the wrong target that it never occured to me that the IRS's sudden interest in Folcroft was anything other than a routine field audit. No doubt, the DEA investigation was under way without arousing suspicion on my part. Clearly that insidious little artificial intelligence left nothing to chance. We were set up from all angles."
"Remind me to go to that office building down in Harlem and pick through all those computer chips until I find that little creep. I'll crush his circuitry to powder," Remo said, demonstrating by grabbing the bed rails. The steel tubes seemed to melt under the touch of his fingers. They creaked once sharply, and when his hand came away, two fistsized sections of tubing had been squeezed down to the thinness of wire.
"Friend is no longer the problem," Smith said. "The IRS is. Have they found the gold?"
"Not yet."
"It is only a matter of time," Smith said dully.
"Smitty, what do we have to do to get the IRS off your back and set things right?"
"You don't understand, Remo. The IRS is remorseless. Evidently Friend wire transferred the CURE operating fund from the Grand Cayman Trust to the Folcroft bank account. I never suspected it. When he restored the banking system to normalcy under my threat of destruction, he left those funds where he knew the IRS auditor would find them. It was exceedingly clever. Tantamount to a doomsday device. He knew I could never explain away such a vast sum, especially from an offshore bank of such dubious repute."
"I do not understand this mumbo jumbo," Chiun said tartly.
"You don't have to," Remo said quickly. To Smith, he said, "C'mon Smitty. We've been in deeper holes than this."
"Never. The IRS is effective, inexorable, remorseless and a law unto itself. Even if you are not guilty of any wrongdoing, they can ruin an individual or a business. Unlike our judicial system, the burden of proof lies with the accused, not the accuser. In IRS eyes, the twelve million dollars and the gold in the basement constitute unreported income that can never be explained away. Folcroft is compromised, CURE is finished, and my life and career are over. I will not live out my remaining years in a federal penitentiary."
Smith's voice was emanating from his barely moving mouth like the last breath from a corpse. There was no life in it.
"We can set up elsewhere," Remo suggested.
"Where? We have no funds."
"Hey, our credit cards are still good. We can go on the float."
"You do not understand, Remo. The White House may have written us off. For all we know, even if the President knew of our predicament, he might simply let matters play out."
"Want us to ask him?"
"No!" said Smith, his gray eyes snapping open. "CURE was not meant to operate indefinitely. It is just that the end of the line has come with much work unfinished."
Remo folded his lean arms. "I'll say. You can't send your kid to school without risking he ends up in a body bag. Guns are everywhere. Drugs are everywhere. And the police can't be everywhere. It's practically the fall of Rome all over again."
"The problems of this county have grown too great, too deeply woven into the fabric of American society, for CURE to remedy," said Smith.
"Fine. Given. But our problems are solvable. Somehow."
Chiun spoke up. "Remo is correct, O Emperor. We are not defeated. Surely there are ways around these tax terrorists."
Smith closed his eyes again and lay in thought for so long they began to wonder if he had fallen asleep.
"I do not know how we can solve these problems," Smith said at last, his voice tired and tentative. "But I will agree on a course of action to minimize our exposure."
"Shoot."
"First move the gold to a safe place."
"Done."
"Second we must cover our tracks."
"What tracks?"
"The CURE money trail."
"Just say how," said Remo.
"No currency-transfer report concerning the twelve million-dollar wire transfer to the Folcroft bank account was filed with the IRS. That means the people at my bank, the Lippincott Savings Bank, were either negligent or unaware of the transaction. If the president of the bank can be persuaded to testify that this was accomplished without my knowledge or express permission, it may be possible to evade IRS sanctions."
"Count on him being persuaded," Remo said tightly.
"If he so testifies, he may fall under IRS sanctions himself."
"He'll testify."