Koldstad then put the call he dreaded in to his superior.
"What's the latest?" Dick Brull demanded.
"I'm sorry to report little progress, Mr. Brull. "
"What do you mean by little?"
"We've uncovered no contraband, no illegal activity, no money laundering and no unauthorized operations such as plastic surgeries, abortions or other legal or quasi-legal sources of unreported income. The pharmaceutical department checks out. Their records are impeccable. No turkey drugs are flowing through this place in the guise of prescription drugs. No indication of a secret designer-drug factory, either."
"Well, the DEA must have had some good Intelligence. Otherwise, they wouldn't have seized the place, would they?"
"I know, Mr. Brull. But Folcroft checks out clean."
Brull's crushed-stone voice began to grind more harshly. "This is not satisfactory, Koldstad. Not satisfactory at all. The service seized this hospital at great cost to its morale and personnel."
"I know, sir."
"The service has a sacred mandate to seize people and businesses wherever justified. We have an excellent record in that respect. Over ninety percent of our seizures hold up in court, lawful or otherwise. The DEA can't say that. If our numbers ever go down, Congress could take away IRS power to do jeopardy seizures. If they start chipping away at the service's special powers, next thing you know they'll be hammering us on withholding rights. We have a great thing going here. And you don't want to screw it up like some candy-ass trainee."
"What do I do? Just say it, I'll do it."
"Until we have chapter and verse on Folcroft, it's your campground. You stay there. You run it. You pare its operating costs to the bone. Fire whoever you have to, deinstitutionalize whoever you have to. Get to the bottom of that place, and then we'll sell it off brick by brick to satisfy its debt to Uncle Sam. You got that?"
"Yes, Mr. Brull."
Right then and there, Jack Koldstad knew his career with the IRS's CID was dead on the water unless he turned Folcroft Sanitarium into the most lucrative jeopardy seizure in the past twenty years.
He began calling in his troops, issuing marching orders.
"We're invoking the hundred percent rule here. That means Harold Smith's personal assets are forfeit. Seize his car and house and throw out into the street anyone you find living there."
"Yes, sir."
"Get the staff down to manageable levels. Every person we can cut from the payroll means more payroll for the service."
"Right away, Mr. Koldstad."
"I'll have our people in Martinsburg run a deep background check on Harold Smith. The master file will have his tax records going back to day one."
"I never heard of a filer who didn't fudge a return somewhere along the line."
"That's the beauty of the voluntary compliance system. The odds are long the taxpayer will hand us the pole we shove up his noncompliant ass, and the lubricant to boot."
"Understood, sir."
All morning long they came and went. One agent came in as the last was leaving. His face was pale. "Skinner is missing, sir."
Koldstad's small eyes got smaller. "I thought it was Reems who was missing."
"He still is, sir. Now Skinner has gone AWOL, too."
"No one goes AWOL from the service. There's no place to go AWOL to-unless you want to forfeit your citizenship. Where did you last see him?"
"I think he was sent to look into the basement."
"I thought the basement had been checked."
"That was Reems's job. It doesn't look like he completed it."
"Let me get this straight. Reems goes into the basement and doesn't come back?"
"That was yesterday, sir."
"And today Skinner goes in and isn't heard from?"
"That seems to be the size of it."
Jack Koldstad brightened. "Looks like the basement is where we hit the jackpot. Assemble the troops. We're going into that basement."
"Of course armed. The IRS doesn't walk into situations where it doesn't have the upper hand going in. And if that damn Chinaman is hiding down there, he's going to pay for assaulting an IRS special agent. And I don't mean in interest and penalties."
REMO HEARD THEM coming from two floors up.
Even surrounded by the soundproof concrete foundation of Folcroft Sanitarium, it was impossible not to know that the IRS was closing in force and armed to the teeth.
They pounded down the stairs in the lead-footed tread typical of armed men. They jacked rounds into chambers and communicated by walkie-talkies.
A smaller contingent was circling around to the freight entrance, feet crunching grit.
That gave Remo plenty of time to step up to the two prone IRS agents, tuck one under each arm and stash them in the coal furnace. It was cold, fortunately. Not that it would matter to the first agent to have made the mistake of venturing into the Folcroft basement. But the guy who was still alive was probably relieved to be folded up and stuffed into the bed of cool brown ash, considering the other possibility. Even if a day-old dead guy was set on top of him.
"Try not to inhale too much," Remo whispered as he shut and dogged the fire door.
Remo looked around quickly. Chiun's sleeping mat and spare kimonos were out of sight. Remo had hammered the corrugated door shut with his bare hands, but a crack still showed. He had patched the rip from inside and locked the adjoining door.
The basement looked as ordinary as possible now.
So Remo went to the toolshed and pulled out a longhandled push broom.
When the IRS pounded down the inner steps, flashlights blazing, they found him coolly sweeping the dusty concrete floor, the happy-go-lucky strains of "Whistle While You Work" coming from between his pursed lips.
"Who they hell are you?" demanded a man with a long jaw and painfully pinched temples.
"Name's Remo. I'm the basement janitor."
"How the hell did you get in here?'