"Survive?"
"Due to the special nature of our depositors, we are more concerned with the repercussions of these losses."
"I see," said Smith. "Have any employees failed to report for work today?"
"No. In fact, we have called in the night shift and all those out on holiday to help us straighten out this beastly mess."
"And all returned?"
"Without exception."
"This is not an inside job," said Smith suddenly.
"Why do you say that?"
"Your employees know full well the dangerous types of people who use this institution. A guilty party, knowing the true extent of the looting, would not return voluntarily to face the dire consequences if an irate depositor came looking for his money."
"I hadn't thought of that," the manager admitted. "Very logical. Very logical indeed. Then where is this money?"
"In cyberspace," said Smith.
"What?"
Smith got out of his chair. He was looking at the mainframes and could find no manufacturer's name.
"Tell me," he said at last. "Who services your system?"
"The manufacturer, of course."
"And that is?"
"XL SysCorp. They make the finest mainframes in the world and offer them at competitive prices."
"I see," said Harold Smith, turning to go.
The manager followed him out of the room, tugging at Smith's gray sleeve. "I say, I thought you were here to help." "No. I am here to track down the U.S. government's money."
"But what about us? What about the irate depositors who will not take no for an answer?"
"You have lain down with dogs," Harold Smith said coldly, shaking off the man's trembling hand. "Now you must deal with the fleas."
In the stark white windowless office furnished with a chair that was the finest money could buy and a desk that had no more substance that a moonbeam, Chip Craft blinked.
"Virtual money?" he queried.
"One of the flaws of paper money is that it has no intrinsic value," came the smooth voice of Friend.
"Sure. Money—even coins these days—is really a kind of promissory note issued by the government. If the currency ever becomes worthless, the government will step in and make good."
"With more worthless currency," said Friend. "For the value of the U.S. dollar is no longer backed by gold reserves."
"Is that why you've stashed all that gold in the basement vaults?"
"Yes. For, once my business plan is implemented, all paper money is at risk of being destroyed by hyperinflation, thereby causing my gold reserves to appreciate in value by an astronomical amount."
"We're going to make money worthless?"
"No, we are going to take advantage of the weakness of money in the digital age."
"Yeah?" "Money has been replaced by electrons in 96.8 percent of all business and government transactions. These electrons travel through the telephone lines from computer station to computer station, where they are stored in the form of credits and debits. These transactions are executed with the speed of light via fiber-optic cable, then verified by telephone voice or paper confirmation slips."
"Yeah. It's very secure."
"It is very insecure. Voices can be imitated, and paper itself does not move in these transactions."
"Huh?"
"Facsimile paper has replaced cellulose confirmation slips sent by messenger or mail."
Chip snapped his fingers. "Virtual paper!"
"As easily manipulated as virtual money itself."
"Yeah. I see it now. It's all electrons and digital packets of data. Man, this is big. It's so big I can't think of a good word to encompass the magnitude of it all."
"It is," said Friend, "the biggest cyberscam ever conceived."
Remo Williams never liked visiting Sinanju. He hadn't liked it the first time he'd set eyes on it many years ago. For years he had been forced to listen to Chiun's stories of how Sinanju was the envy of the East, how it was richer and more sumptuous than any modern city. In the ancient days, Chiun had boasted, Luxor and Thebes and Babylon and Alexandria had envied the people of Sinanju, who lived in a true civilization.
In more recent times, when the cruel Japanese invaded Korea, Sinanju had remained untouched. No Japanese oppressor dared set foot upon its sanctified soil. When the Communists came in the aftermath of the Japanese, a tax collector from Pyongyang showed up to collect tribute on behalf of the new premier, Kim II Sung. He was told to put out his hands—and so caught his severed head.
No more tax collectors were sent after that.
When the Korean War was inflicted upon the Korean Peninsula and the East and West struggled mightily all around it, the village went on as it had before, unmolested.
Sinanju was the Pearl of the Orient, the source of the sun source, the village of peaceful living. It was in the twentieth century exactly as it had been in the beginning.
That much, at least, Remo had found to be true.
Sinanju was an apron of mud on the edge of the West Korea Bay. Mud huts and fishing shacks stood about in disorder and disrepair. The better ones were decorated with clam and oyster shells. The lesser homes sagged from too much rain on their thatched roofs.
In the winter it was bitter and cold, and in the summer plum trees grew wild. No crops were planted. And while most of the men claimed to be fishermen, they did not fish. The waters did not exactly teem with edible fish. Instead, the people subsisted off the largess of the Master of Sinanju and his grain-storage huts.
Sinanju had not changed, Remo saw as they approached the end of the broad three-lane superhighway that Pyongyang had had constructed to appease the Master of Sinanju over a past slight. They had traveled for several hours, seeing many bicycles, no cars and only two military trucks. Private ownership of cars was forbidden in North Korea. So, it seemed, was food. Remo spotted many peasants hunkered down by the side of the road, eating roots and tufts of grass yanked from the ground by skeletal fingers.