"We had no choice," Smith said imperturbably.
"We'll fight," said Remo.
Chiun held up a commanding hand.
"Hold!" he said. "Emperor Smith, am I to understand that you have sold our contract to the Russian bear?"
"Ah, I don't ... If you put it that way, yes."
"The contract of the House of Smith," said Chiun solemnly, "binds my house to do your bidding. To do what you wish, there must be a formal signing over of the contract. Are you prepared to do this?"
"Yes," said Smith.
"Chiun, what are you saying? We can't work for the Russians."
"No," said Chiun. "You cannot work for the Russians. You must stay here and take my place. I must go to Russia and fulfill my last contract. It is my duty."
"I thought you said we were through with Smith."
"We are,"' said Chiun blandly. "Has not Emperor Smith himself just proclaimed it so?"
"That's right. I did," said Smith.
"You keep out of this," Remo snapped.
"But Emperor Smith's contract is still in force. I cannot die with an unfulfilled contract in my name. My ancestors, when I meet them in the Void, would shun me for eternity."
"I can't believe you're saying this, both of you," Remo cried.
Chiun clapped his hands imperiously.
"I grow weary. Leave me, both of you. We will assemble in the square when the Russians arrive. For now, I am an old man and I wish to enjoy in relative peace my final moments in the house of my ancestors."
"Come on, Smitty," Remo growled. And Remo yanked Smith out the door.
"Don't think badly of me, Remo," Smith said when they were outside. "We all understood it might come to this when we joined CURE."
"I didn't join, remember? I was hijacked."
"Uh, yes," said Smith uncomfortably.
"Things were bad enough until you came along," Remo complained. "Couldn't you let him die in peace?"
"You know the position I'm in," said Smith, dropping to his knees. He opened his briefcase. "You once believed in America."
"I still do," Remo said. "But things are different. I've found what I've been looking for here. What are you doing?"
"Taking care of unfinished business," said Smith, booting up the mini-computer. When the screen was illuminated, he keyed in a sequence of numbers and hooked the phone into the modem.
Remo watched as the words "ACCESS CODE REQUIRED" filled the screen.
In the space below, Smith typed the code word "IRMA."
The words "ACCESS DENIED" appeared on the screen.
"You goofed," said Remo. "You must be slipping."
"No," said Smith. "I deliberately used the wrong code. I just erased our secondary computer files on St. Martin."
"You're really going through with it," Remo said. Smith keyed in another number sequence. Again the words "ACCESS CODE REQUIRED" appeared.
This time Smith typed in the name "MAUDE."
"ACCESS DENIED," the screen said.
"Folcroft?" asked Remo.
Smith stood up, locking the briefcase. "I'm afraid so."
"Just like that?"
"Part of the safety system," said Smith. "In these days of tapping into computer records by phone, I had to come up with a fail-safe tamperproof system. CURE records can only be accessed by a code word. Anyone entering the wrong code word-any code word-would automatically throw the system off line. Just now I used the code words designated to erase the files permanently."
"Your wife's name and her nickname," said Remo. "Wasn't that risky? Suppose someone else had used them?"
"That was the idea. It's common to use a wife's name as an access code. Anyone who knew those two names would obviously know about me. That kind of unauthorized knowledge by itself would signal that we were compromised, and file erasure would be just a prelude to disbanding."
"Well, that's that," said Remo.
"Not really," Smith said grimly. "I was supposed to be erased with them."
In Rye, New York, in the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium, the computer banks containing every particle of data belonging to CURE, the government agency that officially did not exist, and now no longer existed unofficially, received the microwaved transmission from Sinanju and initiated the code request sequence.
There was a pause while the access-code request was sent back to Sinanju. The computers hummed softly, awaiting the proper code word. Or the improper one, which would strip their memory banks of all data. File tapes twitched in quarter cycles. Lights blinked. The computers waited.
Then the lights went out.
"Oh my goodness," said Mrs. Mikulka, who was at her desk several floors above.
Then she remembered. The electrical contractor. She took the stairs to the basement because the elevators were inoperable.
She found the contractor examining the backup generator in the dark with a flashlight.
"What happened?" Mrs. Mikulka demanded.
"Sorry about this, lady. I tried switching from the mains to this baby and-boom!-she blew. Completely. This is going to take a few days to fix now."