"Current analysis of the global stock market indicates it is for the sixth year highly overvalued. Bank interest is at its lowest point in decades. Bonds, securities and other instruments are also weak. Cash is king. As is gold and precious metals."
"Gold in a vault doesn't earn squat," Chip pointed out.
"Gold in a vault is not at risk."
"Let's get back to this extortion thing."
"It is foolproof."
"Who or what are we using as leverage?"
"The one driving force in the world today. As it has been every day since the first man crawled out of the primordial soup."
"Yeah. What's that?"
"Money."
"Money?"
"We are going to hold money for ransom in order to make money," said the smooth, disembodied voice.
"How do we do that?"
"By going into the banking business."
"Why?"
"Because that is where the money is," said the smooth, disembodied voice.
HAROLD SMITH manipulated his new touch-sensitive keyboard like a man who wasn't sure if he was touching reality or a mirage. At first he bore down too hard, stubbing all ten fingers. When he softened his touch, some keys responded haphazardly. But now he was getting the hang of it.
The keys responded perfectly. That was not the problem. It was the system itself. It seemed to be working properly, but Smith no longer trusted it.
In a very real sense, he could not be sure that the glowing amber characters that were appearing on the black top of his new desk were trustworthy. It was unnerving.
But he had to try.
America needed the Master of Sinanju, and Smith required hard cash to secure his services.
So Harold Smith was going to the source.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency had been set up by an act of Congress in 1978 to deal with natural emergencies such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. It was widely criticized as inefficient, unresponsive and bureaucratically paralyzed.
In a sense all these charges had some validity to them, although in recent years a succession of massive natural disasters had focused the harsh glare of the public spotlight on FEMA and the agency had been forced to do a better job.
To cover its poor performance and save it from calls that it be abolished, the true nature of FEMA had begun to leak out. Its mandate was in fact to deal with disaster, but responding to the odd hurricane or inconvenient earthquake was not its primary mission.
FEMA had seen set up to safeguard the command structure of the US. government in the event of what was euphemistically called "attack-related nuclear activities"-i.e., nuclear war. It maintained secret hotels, mountainside fallout shelters and a fleet of radiation-hardened aircraft and mobile communications vans for the sole use of higher government officials from the First Family down to the members of Congress.
If America were ever subjected to nuclear attack, FEMA was designed to ensure that no matter how massive the catastrophe, some elements of the US. government command structure would survive to rebuild or order a punishing counterstrike.
In the post-Cold War world, the immediate nuclear threat had diminished. But FEMA endured, and to justify its existence, it had become more responsive to the natural disasters that had lately been plaguing the nation.
No one in FEMA, from its commissioner to the President, knew that the agency had a third mission. Its vast black-budget operating fund was the pool from which CURE, unknown to Congress, drew its annual allotment of the taxpayers' money.
Smith needed a emergency transfusion of that fund now. Because it was an emergency, he ordered FEMA to wire the sum of ten million dollars to CURE's account in the Grand Cayman Trust.
An accounting clerk at a FEMA terminal responded to Smith's typed request. He assumed the request was coming from an in-house terminal. There was no reason to believe otherwise. He was working on a secure system to which only the highest FEMA officials had coded access.
Several minutes passed before a message came back. Smith stared at it, disbelief in his blinking gray eyes.
GRAND CAYMAN TRUST DOES NOT RESPOND.
ONE MINUTE, Smith typed.
He dialed the bank. The phone rang and rang. Smith tried another number. He got a recorded message. The voice was masculine and matter-of-fact.
"We regret to inform our customers that the Grand Cayman Trust is temporarily on holiday. For information on your account status, please write Box 4, Georgetown, Grand Cayman Island. Thank you for your continued patronage."
"Impossible," Smith croaked.
He logged onto the CURE terminal and brought up a wire-services monitoring program and typed the bank's name. The program executed with blinding speed. An amber block of text materialized on the desktop so fast it smacked of magic.
According to UPI, the Grand Cayman Trust had abruptly shut its doors two hours into today's business. The bank board was being tight-lipped about the circumstances and were granting no interviews. There were no further details.
Woodenly Smith returned to the waiting FEMA account clerk.
DISREGARD INSTRUCTIONS, he typed, in his shock misspelling a word and neglecting to correct it before transmitting.
Grimly Smith shut down his system. He was stymied. He had no backup bank, and there was no efficient way to set up a new account. Unable to draw funds, trust in his computer system or communicate with the President, he was as helpless as he felt. Which was very helpless indeed.
His Timex continued ticking as he turned in his cracked leather executive chair to stare out the picture window overlooking Long Island Sound.
The last of Hurricane Elvis had vanished. The sky was blue, and the sound was an expanse of cracklefinished sapphire on which returning sailboats were tacking against a steady breeze. It was an utterly calm day in the history of the United States. But a storm was growing. A storm greater than Hurricane Elvis.
Harold Smith, unimaginative as he was, began to sense it. He did not know what shape the storm would take or what it was; he only knew that it was gathering force somewhere out there.
And Smith was almost helpless to deal with it. Almost. For he still had his brain.
Somehow he must find a way to bring Remo and Chiun into play without the benefit of his usually bottomless resources.
As the day lengthened, Smith watched the patterns of sunlight dance on the sound and set the cold, objective clarity of the greatest thinking machine ever devised-the human mind-to work on a solution.
Chapter 14
The Master of Sinanju paced the floor of his meditation tower like a fussy hen.