"Should I look into this, Mr. Lippincott?" Rawlings asked.
"We have over twelve million dollars in a customer's account that should not be there, you say?"
"Exactly."
"Do nothing."
"Sir?"
"It is probably some sort of computer error." Mr. Lippincott, twelve million dollars popping up
in our computers overnight is not computer error. It may be wire fraud."
"If it is fraud, it is this Folcroft entity's crime, wouldn't you say, Rawlings?" Probably."
"And if they are caught, they will be duly chastised by the proper law-enforcement agencies, correct?" "Correct."
"And in the meantime, the money is ours to invest and loan out?"
"Yes..."
"So invest it."
"Very well, Mr. Lippincott," Rawlings said dispiritedly.
Frowning, Jeremy Lippincott hung up the telephone. Rawlings had shown such promise, too. And here the man was, bothering him on a perfectly poufy morning with utter trivia.
The man would never be a proper banker. He simply couldn't cut the mustard. He decided to pen a reminder to have the man terminated at the earliest opportunity.
He rummaged about his desk with his pink paws, wondering what color crayon was most appropriate for that sort of memo.
Smith was reading a three-year-old Forbes article online when he came across a name that made his gorge rise.
Smith froze at his laptop PC. The color—what little of it there was—drained from his face in a violent rush, like a keg that had been tapped by knocking the cork off.
He fought the nervous spasm that made his stomach want to forcibly eject its contents. He tasted acid high in his throat. Smith flung his long frame from his chair, but he didn't make it to the bathroom. Not even close. Smith retained the presence of mind to throw himself at a dented green steel wastebasket and he threw up a quart of acidic water and Bromo-Seltzer into this.
He spent ten minutes washing the bite of stomach acid from his mouth with metallic-testing tap water before he felt up to returning to his PC.
Within sight of the White House and the President he served but could not reach, Harold Smith read again the name of the individual who had brought CURE and Harold Smith to the precipice of disaster.
It was a stunning discovery. Smith had not expected to get even an inkling of a lead to the culprit so quickly, but there it was in Forbes:
Credit for XL SysCorp's dramatic turnaround, XL watchers concur, falls squarely on the shoulders of a thirty-two-year-old former installer with Intelligence security clearance whose meteoric rise to CEO took less than five years. Insiders call him the Man with the Microchip Mind, a renaissance man who simultaneously runs the business side of XL while inventing the self-testing, self-healing XL BioChip that has brought such rival giants as International Data Corporation and Nishitsu of Osaka to their corporate knees. But Carlton "Chip" Craft exudes the casual style of a man who simply parachuted into success.
"Chip Craft," Smith croaked. It was unbelievable but it could not be a coincidence. Not after all that had happened.
Five years before, on orders from the last President, Harold Smith had accepted a supercomputer called the ES Quantum 3000. It was voice activated with a verbal-response capability. Smith had personally gone to meet Craft, then an installer for Excelsior Systems, blindfolded him and taken him secretly to Folcroft, where he'd installed the ES Quantum 3000 in Smith's office.
The computer had been a quantum leap in Intelligence gathering. At first Smith had reveled in its ability to help him manage the massive CURE workload. But the computer soon manifested a strange malfunction. It was more on the order of a personality change. Its feminine voice had become inexplicably masculine. Ultimately the computer had not worked out. It was too powerful. Smith had found himself so bombarded with information and global computer access that he was nearly paralyzed by the sheer overwhelming magnitude of raw data.
Smith had arranged for the ES Quantum 3000 to be returned to Excelsior Systems. The highest order of security attended these transfers, and Smith had worn a foolproof disguise.
"There was no way that Craft could have learned of CURE's existence," Smith told himself aloud. "It is an utter impossibility."
But the evidence lay before him. Somehow Craft had gone from installer to CEO of the newly renamed XL SysCorp in a mere five years. But where was the missing link in the chain?
"The ES Quantum 3000!" Smith said suddenly.
The computer had scanning abilities and a near- human if limited artificial intelligence. Still, it had been powered off before and after the move. It could not have been cognizant of its own movements. And Smith had performed a superwipe of its memory banks designed to purge it of all CURE knowledge. How could it have since found its way back into the Folcroft system via the telephone lines?
Coughing the last bitter stomach acid from his burning throat, Harold Smith powered down the PC. It had served its purpose.
He now knew the name of his hidden opponent. And his foe had no inkling that Smith had uncovered him. It was time to play the next card.
There was one thing Remo appreciated about the beach at Sinanju.
No snakes.
The high ground was infested with snakes. They avoided the muddy beach, so once he and Chiun reached the shore road, they did not have to pause to crush the wedge-shaped skulls of serpents underfoot.
Behind them villagers harvested the dead reptiles and threw them, still squirming and thrashing, into cooking pots for later consumption.
Where it was not wet mud, the beach was composed of rocky ledge. The Horns of Welcome thrust up grimly from the rocky sections, giving the beach from out on the water the aspect of an alien, forbidding place.
The Horns of Welcome had been erected by Master Yong to frighten off passing fishing boats and as a signal to those emissaries who came to hire the House of Sinanju that they had come to the correct fishing village, outward appearances notwithstanding. - Remo climbed onto one of the rocky ledges in the shadow of the southern horn and looked out over the bitterly cold water.
He saw no rainbows. It was too dark for sun reflections, and the moon was hours yet from rising.
At his feet he saw the deposit of black gunk clinging to the lip of a granite stone, gently moving in the lapping water.
"Check it out, Little Father," Remo said, pointing to the edge.
The Master of Sinanju came up and squatted down. A curved fingernail scraped the rock, and the rock complained. The nail was whole and still sharp when Chiun straightened. A blob of some thick, viscous substance clung to it.
"Oil," he said unhappily.
Remo was looking out over the darkling water. "The submarine got pretty close. Maybe that thunder the villagers heard meant a sea battle."
"It was the thunder of the heavens announcing my return," Chiun said stubbornly.
The wind freshened and brought the scent of the water full to their nostrils. It carried with it the pungent stink of oil.
"Smells like a big spill," Remo muttered.
"I will sue," said Chiun, voice deepening with anger.