"Not quite. I say they will do as I bid."
"What is your price? As I say, I have many assassins."
"All of them in Dapoli. They have been thrown out of London and Paris and the United States for their very public activities against Lobynian nationals living abroad. But let us not haggle like rug merchants. I am willing to negotiate after the fact. Simply choose two targets, and I will have them eliminated."
"Hold the line, please," said Colonel Intifadah. Then he ordered his secretary to put through a call to the Kremlin. After several minutes a trembling voice told him that the Kremlin would not accept his call.
"The hell with them!" he shouted. Then he said, "No, leave this message: 'I, Colonel Hannibal Intifadah, as a gesture of solidarity, promise to liquidate one of Russia's greatest enemies.' "
Colonel Intifadah returned to the other line thinking: I will show those Soviet dogs. Instead of giving them the full benefit of my new assassins, I will also pick an enemy of my own for liquidation.
"Friend," he said, "it is agreed. Here are the persons I wish liquidated..."
An insistent beeping came from the terminal, indicating an incoming signal. Smith picked up his telephone and punched the communicator line. Surprisingly, the line was clear.
"Yes, Remo?" Smith said.
"Smitty, we got him."
"Have you interrogated him?"
"No can do."
"He's not dead? We need him."
"He was never alive, not really. It was our old friend Friend."
"Say again."
"He called himself Friend, remember? The computer chip that could talk."
"Yes, of course. Friendship, International. I should have guessed."
"My words exactly. He was inside this computer in the Zurich bank basement. The bank officials tell me it was supplied by their security agency, called InterFriend. Friend probably has systems all over the world where he can hide in a pinch. But we got him. We pulled out all the works that looked like they might be something. We're bringing them back with us."
"Good. No ... wait," Smith suddenly said.
He looked at his screen. Spurts of data zipped before his widening eyes.
"Remo. Forget about coming back. Friend was only a conduit. I've just received new intelligence on the recipients of the locomotives."
"Who?"
"It's a joint Swedish Navy-British Intelligence plot."
"What?"
"The data intercepts are right before me. Write this down."
Smith rattled off two names and addresses. "Got that?"
"Yeah, but what do we do with them?"
"Find them and interrogate them. We need to uncover the launch site."
"What about these computer parts?"
"Ship them to me. I'll analyze them on this end. They may tell us nothing, but at worst we've neutralized an important worldwide mischief-maker."
"Right, Smitty. Will do."
The connection went dead and Smith replaced the receiver.
Friend. Imagine that. The little sentient computer chip that had been designed to do one thing: make a profit. Intelligent, amoral, inexhaustible, it had been a terrific problem once before. Now they had him. Or it.
Smith returned to his terminal. New data was coming in. Hard, raw data on the latest Soviet advances in satellite technology. It was incredible. It would take hours to absorb, but with Remo and Chiun on the job, Smith knew it would be time he could well afford.
He paged through the on-screen text, scribbling notes to himself.
In Zurich, Remo asked, "Anyone have a box I can put this junk in?"
The employees of the Longines Credit Bank looked at him with fear-stricken eyes. No one spoke. A few of them hid behind desks.
"I told you to go easy on the gendarmes-or whatever the Swiss call their police," Remo scolded.
"I did nothing," Chiun retorted.
"To you, it's nothing. To me, it's nothing. To them, it looks like a massacre."
"I killed none of them. They will live."
"You threw them all through a plate-glass window at high speed. They looked dead."
"If I wanted them dead, I would have extinguished them like candles, not made a show of their folly."
"They probably wouldn't have fired on us. We're unarmed. Hey, you! Manager," Remo called. The manager had opened his office a crack. He had retreated there after Chiun, coming up in the elevator, had walked into the armed ambush and made short work of four of Zurich's best police agents.
"I need a box."
The door slammed shut.
"If you don't come out, I'm sending my friend with the long, sharp fingernails in after you," Remo warned.
The manager minced out. His face dripped greasy sweat. "I ... I am at your service," he groveled.
"You could have said that before. And you could have told me that Friendship, International handled your security work. It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble." The manager said nothing.