Chiun gazed down to the bay, hazel eyes opaque.
Remo asked, "Aren't you going to answer it?"
"Smith will not give up until at least ten rings."
At the ninth ring, Chiun whirled and took up the receiver. "Hail, Smith, friend of the past."
"I-have just received word of the Harlequin rescue."
"The gold now reposes in the treasure house of my ancestors," returned Chiun in a grand voice. "Our business is concluded. Unless you have more gold?" he added quickly.
"No. But I have identified the cause of our problems. It is the ES Quantum 3000, the artificial- intelligence computer I once had installed in my office."
"It is not that ugly thing that has vexed both of our houses, Smith."
"What do you mean?"
"It is a worse thing. An evil thing."
"What are you talking about?"
"To the renegade Korean captain who sunk the submarine of gold, it called itself Comrade. But I heard its conniving voice with my own ears and recognized it."
"Yes?"
"It is Friend."
The line to America hummed for a long pause. Remo stood by, arms folded, his sensitive ears alert. He had overheard both sides of the conversation so far.
"Smith, did you not hear?" Chiun demanded.
"I heard," Harold Smith said dully. "But I don't understand. You and Remo destroyed the microchip that contained the Friend program that time in Zurich."
"Yeah," Remo called out. "And you thought you'd disconnected it the first time we had trouble with that greedy little chip."
"If had somehow transferred its program to the Zurich bank," Smith said. "That was one of the things that made it so dangerous. It was capable of modeming its profit-maximizing program through telephone lines and rewriting it on a compatible microchip."
"If you ask me," Remo said bitterly, "its mania for making a profit regardless of consequences is the real danger. The first time it tried to corner the world's oil supply, for Christ's sake. Last time it was selling antique steam locomotives to that crazy Arab who kept flinging them at the White House with a magnetic su- pergun."
"Could it be?" Smith said, voice trailing off. "My God, it is possible."
"What is?" asked Chiun.
"When you and Remo destroyed it—or thought you did—in Zurich, I was in telephone contact with Friend at the same time. Suppose that at the point, you wrecked its host computer, its artificial intelligence escaped through the phone line and rewrote itself on a VSLI microchip in the ES Quantum 3000?"
Remo snapped his fingers. "Didn't the 3000 change its voice right after that?"
"Yes, from female to male." Smith's voice grew hollow. "That must be it. Friend became the ES
Quantum 3000. It learned all of our secrets, and once I returned it to the manufacturer, it set about pursuing its single-minded god of making money. Chip Craft was only a pawn, not the mastermind."
"Whoever he is," Remo muttered.
Chiun's facial hair trembled in indignation. "It is evil beyond description, for it sought my gold."
"No. The gold was just a way of getting you and Remo out of the way. It was part of its master strategy to neutralize CURE so that it could implement its master plan."
"What master plan?" asked Remo.
"It has bankrupted the U.S. banking system," Smith said flatly.
"Banks are an Italian swindle," Chiun sniffed, "designed to gull the gullible out of their gold. My bank is the House of the Masters, and it will never fail as long as one emperor remains in need."
"We have less than forty-eight hours to restore the system, or the U.S. economy will melt down completely," Smith warned.
Remo grabbed the phone. "You gotta find Friend."
"I have. I destroyed it last night."
"Wrong. We talked to it this morning."
"What?"
"It is true, Smith," said Chiun. "It attempted to bribe us into making peace. But we are above such base transactions."
"Then it still exists," said Smith. "In the time it distracted me from shooting it, it must have transferred its programming to one of its slave mainframes." Smith's voice darkened. "I need you both back here.''
"Forget it," said Remo.
"How much gold do you offer?" asked Chiun.
"I offer you the gold that Friend has stored in his basement vaults."
"How much gold?"
"I have no idea of the amount, but it must be significant."
"No way," snapped Remo. "I'm through with CURE."
"Remo, listen to me," Smith said urgently. "The computer error that led to the death of Roger Sherman Coe was caused by Friend. All of it was caused by Friend. It was part of the plot."
"That doesn't change the fact that I killed an innocent man," Remo retorted hotly. "Or that a little girl is an orphan because of me."
"It does not. But it lays the blame squarely on the culprit truly responsible. Friend. You want to square that account, don't you?"
Remo's mouth thinned.