“I’ll take it,” said Tony Tollini, trying to get the childproof cap off a bottle of aspirin. After grunting and groaning without success, he simply bit the thing off with a savage jerk of his head.

  He swallowed four pills. Dry.

  “I’m going down to customer service. You’d better come.”

  “Why me? I’m only director of product placement.”

  “I need the moral support. And we’re in this together, like it or not.”

  They walked down the corridor and turned into a more brightly lit corner of IDC world headquarters.

  “I sure miss having seventy-five-watt bulbs in my work area,” Wendy Wilkerson said forlornly.

  “I heard in Atlanta they have to make do with forty-watters.”

  Wendy Wilkerson hugged herself tightly and shivered.

  “It’s a cold cruel world out there.”

  “In here too.”

  They went through the door marked “CUSTOMER SERVICE.”

  Amid a profusion of spaghetti wire and computer equipment in various states of disrepair, lab workers in white smocks and medical-style caps were conducting diagnostic tests.

  “Attention, everybody,” said Tony Tollini, lifting his hand to get their attention. “I have an important announcement.”

  Heads turned. Surgical gauze masks were pulled away from puzzled mouths.

  “I need a volunteer,” said Tony.

  Everyone froze. Fingers in the act of removing surgical caps stopped as if paralyzed. A single gasp could be heard.

  “Our Boston client needs us. Needs us desperately.”

  A man corkscrewed to the floor in a dead faint. A woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses ducked under a workbench and shivered like a toad under a sheltering rock during a hard rain.

  “Please,” Tony said. “This is important. I need help here.”

  “You go, then,” a voice snarled.

  “Who said that?” Tony Tollini demanded, head swiveling angrily. “Who spoke?”

  No one volunteered. The surgical masks completely disguised lip movement.

  “I tell you what,” Tony said suddenly. “We’ll draw straws.”

  “Are you in the pool?” a pinch-faced technician demanded.

  “I’m VP of systems outreach,” Tony Tollini said fiercely. “And I am ordering you all to draw straws.”

  No one had any straws, so Tony Tollini snipped a length of blue wiring into equal lengths and one slightly shorter one.

  He turned to Wendy Wilkerson, saying, “Wendy, you do the honors.”

  Nervously Wendy Wilkerson gathered up the bits of bright blue wire and arranged them in her fist so that they stuck up to equal height. She held out a trembling fist. There were tears in her eyes.

  Timidly the technicians in the room clustered around Tony Tollini and Wendy Wilkerson. No one made a move for the bright blue bits of wire which gleamed copper at their tips.

  “Come, now,” Tony Tollini urged. “Don’t freeze up. IDC men do not shirk before a challenge. Remember, the odds are better for those who draw first.”

  A trembling hand reached out. It withdrew a bit of wire. No one was quite certain if it was long enough, so they held their breath.

  “Let’s go,” Tony urged. “Slackers face shorter odds.”

  Another hand reached out. Another short bit of wiring came to light. The two bits were compared side by side. They matched.

  Whoops of joy came from the two who had drawn the wires. They reverberated throughout the room. The remaining technicians looked sick. One began to retch. Another threw up. A third said, “My God! This is a clean room. He threw up in a clean room.”

  “Enough.” Tony pointed to the man who had spoken. “You, you’re next.”

  Before the next straw-drawer could move, the doors behind them flew apart and a loud, squeaky voice announced, “I seek the one known as Antony Tollini.”

  All eyes turned to the source of that loud voice.

  It was an old man, impossibly ancient, his eyes cold as agates. He was an Asian in native costume.

  Antony Tollini stepped forward and said, “I am Antony Tollini.”

  The tiny man bowed deeply. “And I am Chiun.”

  “Chiun?”

  He lifted an imperious finger. “Chiun the Great.”

  “Great what?”

  “Great computer genius, of course.”

  Tony Tollini’s jaw dropped. “You?”

  “I am pleased that you have heard of my renown.”

  “Excuse me,” Tony said stiffly, “but I’m familiar with the world’s leading experts in the field, and I’ve never heard of you.”

  “That is because I did not wish you to,” said the old Oriental called Chiun flatly. “But this has changed. I now seek employment in your tribe.”

  “Tribe?”

  “Yes. This is a corporation, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand corporations are very tribal. I, myself, once owned my own corporation.”

  “Would I know the name?”

  “It was called Nostrum, Ink.”

  Tony gasped. “Nostrum! The Wall Street venture capital company? I read about you in Forbes. But I didn’t know you were in information services.”

  “My mighty hand is everywhere,” said Chiun.

  “Are you by any chance...Japanese?” asked Tony Tollini suddenly.

  The face of Chiun wrinkled with distaste, like a prune shriveling in stop-motion.

  “Some have called me so,” he said in a grudging voice.

  “What was that?”

  “It is one rumor,” Chiun said through tiny set teeth.

  “Are you or are you not?” Tony Tollini pressed.

  The answer was a single word, low, tight, and sibilant, like a cobra cursing.

  “Yes.”

  Tony Tollini’s tight features broke out in a pleased smile.

  “You,” he said brightly, “are hired.”

  The old Oriental bowed smartly. “Of course,” he said. “I am Chiun. Believed by some to be Japanese,” he added bitterly.

  “Can you leave right now?”

  “Once we have made arrangements for my salary,” Chiun said quickly.

  “We’ll give you three thousand per week and a three-hundred-dollar-per-diem for expenses,” Tony said instantly.

  “I will require one-half of my niggardly fee in advance,” Chiun said stiffly.

  “Advance? IDC doesn’t do advances. You’ll see your first check in two weeks.”

  “I will see half my fee now or I will seek employment elsewhere,” Chiun said sternly.

  “Let’s take up a collection!” a technician shouted.

  “Yes, let’s!” cried another.

  Wallets were opened and coins extracted from pockets. Like votaries before an implacable idol, the IDC employees laid the money before the sandaled feet of the Great Chiun, the Japanese genius.

  The Master of Sinanju cast a cold eye down at the heaping pile of bills coins, and old cards lying at his feet.

  “This will not suffice,” he said.

  Groans came from the huddled technicians. A solid gold money clip sailed into the pile pinching a lone dollar bill.

  “Take it. It’s my bus fare home.”

  Chiun shook his aged head. “That is better, but you lack twelve dollars to satisfying my modest demands.”

  Tony Tollini nudged Wendy Wilkerson in the ribs.

  “Get it out of petty cash,” he hissed. “Fast. And have a car brought around. I think our problems are solved.”

  “You can’t send him,” Wendy shot back.

  “Why not?”

  “Look at him. He’s such a sweet old man.”

  “He’s also a genius. And it’s either him or one of the staff. Unless you’d like to volunteer?”

  “I’ll be right back,” said Wendy Wilkerson, hurrying from the room. Her heels clicked away like nails being driven into a coffin.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Master of Sinanju rode to the airport in silence, the book called “LANSCII” on his lap. He deigned not to glance over it. Such things were for whites, who understood machines–one of the few things whites were good for.

  At the airport Harold Smith was loitering in a waiting area, craning his neck to see past a baggage X-ray machine, pretending to be searching for an arriving passenger.

  The Master of Sinanju paused and placed the blue notebook on a standing sand-filled ashtray. He moved away.

  Smith moved quickly to the ashtray. He bent to relace one of his gray oxford shoes. When he straightened up, the blue notebook was under one arm.

  He exited the terminal and hurried to his dilapidated station wagon, which was parked nearby.

  · · ·

  The Master of Sinanju endured the flight to the city called Boston despite the hectoring of the galley servant who insisted that he ride in the front of the plane, where everyone knew death sat should the plane fly into the side of a mountain, as frequently happened.

  “I will ride over the wing,” he told her.

  “But, sir, your ticket says first class,” the stewardess pointed out. “You are entitled to our best service.”

  “And the best service you can render me is to allow me to sit over the wing so that if it should fall off, I will know this.”

  “I’ve never heard of a wing actually dropping off in flight.”

  “Then it is bound to happen,” Chiun snapped, “for every other calamity imaginable has already befallen these pitiful metal birds you whites command.”

  At that example of invincible logic, the stewardess relented, and a coach passenger was delighted to discover upon boarding that the flight was overbooked, but instead of being bumped, he would be permitted to sit in first class.

  The wing did not fall off, although the Master of Sinanju did notice that it wobbled alarmingly upon takeoff.

  He spent the flight confiding to an elderly woman that he was the victim of a foul slander.

  “What slander?” the woman gasped.

  “That I am Japanese,” Chiun admitted in a pained voice.

  “You poor dear Chinaman. How awful.”

  After that the Master of Sinanju pointedly refused to listen to the details of the ignorant woman’s hysterectomy, going so far as to insert his fingers into his ears by way of hint.

  · · ·

  At the Boston airport there was a Roman servant awaiting him.

  “You the Jap computer guy?” he asked.

  “I am Chiun. I am not called the Jap.”

  “Name’s Bruno. The boss is waitin’, and boy is he steamed.”

  “I am very interested in meeting this steamed boss of yours,” said Chiun, walking beside the servant. “Is he also a Roman?”

  “The boss is Italian, like me. Proud of it, too.”

  “Pride is very Roman. It is good to be proud of your heritage,” Chiun sniffed. “Even if you have sunk into mediocrity.”

  “Is that an insult?”

  “And ignorance,” added Chiun, whose ancestors had worked for the Roman emperors when the sons of Rome had not been debased by the pagan cult called Christianity. If only the lions had been more plentiful….

  · · ·

  The corner of Boston called the North End made the Master of Sinanju think of parts of the outer world he had visited when he was very young, in the beginning part of this century. It did not make him feel nostalgic, however. Nothing in the modern world was to be admired. Although the Ottoman Empire had its good points.

  He was taken to the side door of an ugly brick structure, where the cracked glass face of a computer stared back like the shattered eye of a Cyclops. Three swarthy Romans stood around it like glowering votaries.

  “This is the troublesome machine?” asked Chiun.

  “What does it look like?” said Bruno. He laughed. “This here’s the Jap,” he told the security guards.

  His voice dripping disdain, the Master of Sinanju said, “I will proceed to fix this. But first I must know what has befallen it.”

  Bruno shrugged. “It’s simple. It broke.”

  “Explain.”

  “First the boss was having trouble with it. It wasn’t doin’ what he told it to. So he gave it a good whack.”

  “And?”

  “It went blooie.”

  Chiun nodded safely. “Ah, blooie. Yes, I have seen blooie before. A common scourge of machines. It is possible to fix this.”

  “Then the last guy IDC sent, when he couldn’t fix the disk, broke the whole machine. His name was Remo, too. Can you imagine a guy named Remo doin’ that?”

  “I cannot imagine one named Remo not doing that,” said Chiun, advancing upon the machine.

  His hazel eyes narrowed at the strange oracle the whites called a computer. Emperor Smith had explained certain things about these machines to him. His eyes went to the black panel which concealed the all-important hard discus.

  He inserted two long fingernails into a vent and pulled sharply.

  The black panel popped off, exposing naked machinery.

  “Ah-hah!” cried Chiun. “Behold! No wonder this machine stubbornly refused to do its master’s bidding.”

  Bruno crouched to see better. “Yeah? What is it?”

  Chiun reached in and extracted a thick-edged black disk.

  “This,” he said. “It is the wrong record for this brand of machine.”

  “It is?” Bruno asked, dumbfounded.

  “This is designed for a seventy-eight-rpm computer. You have the thirty-three-and-one-third kind.”

  Chiun held the shiny black hard disk up to the light triumphantly.

  “Do they work that way?” asked Bruno doubtfully.

  “It is a professional secret,” said Chiun conspiratorially. “I am only revealing this to you because you have been abused by Remo the Terrible.”

  “What do we do?” asked Bruno, straightening up.

  “I must secure the proper record.”

  “You don’t have one with you?”

  “Alas, no. I was misinformed by my employer as to the true nature of the problem. I must return to Idiocy right away.”

  “You mean IDC.”

  “I mean what I mean. For I am Chiun, world’s greatest repairer of computers such as this.”

  “I’d better check with the boss.”

  The Master of Sinanju nodded. “I must treat with your master. So this is good.”

  Bruno went to a door and knocked once.

  “What?” a raspy voice growled.

  “The Jap figured out what’s wrong with the box.”

  “Is it fuggin’ fixed?”

  “No. He’s gotta take a part back. Says we got a seventy-eight when we shoulda had a thirty-three and a third. Like on a record player.”

  “That don’t mean nothin’ to me.”

  “It’s like records. You know.”

  The door opened.

  “Is that right?” asked Carmine Imbruglia, for the first time hearing something about computers that made sense.

  “You the Jap?” he demanded, staring at the Master of Sinanju.

  “I am Chiun,” said Chiun frostily. He raised the hard discus. “And this is the source of all your vexing problems.” Chiun looked more closely at the one known as the boss. “You are a moneylender?” he asked.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “You remind me of a moneylender. Such as lived in Roman days.”

  “You need a loan? I can front you a few bucks. Six for five.”

  “No, I need only a conveyance from whence I came.”

  “What’s that in American?” asked Carmine suspiciously.

  “I must return to my employer, who will replace this faulty record.”

  “That ain’t the hard disk, is it?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good, because I ain’t lettin’ the hard disk outta my sight,” said Carmine firmly. “I told them that before. It stays here.”

  “You are very wise,” said Chiun blandly.

  “Just to be safe, I want you to show me the hard disk, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m from Brooklyn, right? I don’t know nothing from computers. You show me and I’ll let you go get the right record.”

  “Very well,” said the Master of Sinanju. He peered into the open aperture, saying, “It is that silver object there.”

  Don Carmine Imbruglia blinked into the aperture like a gorilla into a hole in a tree.

  “That little silver dingus?” he asked, surprise in his raspy voice.

  “The very same.”

  Don Carmine squinted his piggish eyes. His brutish face scrunched up like a fist.

  “So that’s what it looks like. All this trouble over that little thing. It looks like a little washer. Who knew?”

  “It is the way with these machines,” said Chiun firmly.

  Carmine straightened.

  “Okay, you done good. About time, too. Bruno, you take this little Jap genius back to the airport. Give him anything he wants. Then you stay there until he gets back. You understand?”

  “Got it, boss.”

  “When this is over,” said Don Carmine to the Master of Sinanju, “I wanna talk to you about maybe doin’ a little work for me on the side. Savvy?”

  “On what side?” asked Chiun curiously.

  “On my side.”

  The Master of Sinanju bowed.

  “When I return,” he said, “we will have much to discuss, you and I.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The supersecret organization, CURE, ran by computer.

  In the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium, behind a sealed wall, a bank of mainframes hummed like a grandmother doing her knitting.

  For the three decades Dr. Harold W. Smith had overseen the organization, those data banks had grown and grown, absorbing and retaining vast files on every American, every business entity, and every conceivable fact that might be of use to Dr. Smith in his tireless effort to hold in check the forces that threatened to rend America apart.

  Smith loved his computers. Although he had seen action during World War II as an OSS operative and later in the CIA, in his declining years Smith preferred the quiet order of his office and its simple terminal that could access virtually any computer on the continent.

  Today he had his system up and running, its tentacles reaching out through the phone lines to the mainframe at IDC world headquarters, only a few miles away from Rye, New York.