Free Fool's Gold by Warren Murphy Page B

Pimsy.
    "You're serious, aren't you? You know, this isn't the Britannia-rules-the-waves sort of heroics."
    "If that pattern is what I think it is, heroics or anything else won't do any of us any good."
    "Would you mind telling me what you suspect?" Neville asked.
    "Do you remember that your late father and I had one stipulation before you took over?"
    "Yes. That we not take any contracts in the Orient. No clients in the East," said Wissex.
    "Do you know why?"
    "Frankly," Lord Wissex said, "I thought it rather peculiar but I had to make that promise so you wouldn't stop me."
    "We had you make that promise because our fathers had us make that promise because their fathers had them make that promise because their fathers had them make that very same promise."
    "What are you talking about?"
    "I am talking, lad, about why you must find out the pattern of that kimono."
    "You won't tell me beforehand?"
    "Find it," ordered the old man, and he turned and limped his way down the battlements, with the poodle following behind wagging her scented tail.
     
    "What a lovely kimono," said the British gentleman to the trio on the beach in front of the St. Maarten village of Grand Case. Grand Case was a walk up the road to the new headquarters front, the offices of Analogue Networking Inc. Smith had devised a plan whereby a request for the lost information would be beamed over the satellite during a weather disturbance similar to the one in which it had originally been lost. The hope was that it would reach the same terminus it had reached before. If it reached anyone. If all the records even existed anymore.
    The request for return of the records had been carefully written by Smith, so as not to sound desperate. Instead, it hinted at a sizable reward. Nothing so big as to alarm, but enough to get interest from someone out there who might just be wondering what was all this nonsense about two decades of undercover work and its detailed portraits of how crime worked, with its names and numbers and tools and secrets to see a nation through its desperate years of trial.
    So Remo and Chiun had returned to St. Maarten with Terri from the Yucatan, along with a battered golden plaque that they had found in an underground cave near the wiped-out village. Terri had to translate the plaque and its battered condition made that a detective's riddle, and so Remo, while waiting, would keep an eye on the transmission from Analogue Networking Inc. If something happened with CURE's records, Chiun would continue with Terri, and Remo would be off to retrieve the program.
    Terri wore a scanty bathing suit while she pored over the rubbing of the Hamidian plaque they had found. Each time she thought she had the key to it, she had another question and it all still puzzled her.
    She looked up from the rubbing as the cultured voice intruded on her thoughts.
    "I say, that is an interesting pattern on the kimono you are wearing, sir."
    Remo looked at the man. He was carrying a small concealed weapon under his left armpit.
    Chiun stared at the horizon, that clean line separating the Caribbean blue from the pastel sky.
    "I say, that is a most interesting design. May I photograph it?"
    "Why do you ask?" said Remo. "You could just stand up the beach over there and photograph us. Why do you ask?"
    "I just thought you might mind."
    "We do. Thank you. Don't photograph," said Remo.
    "Oh," said the gentleman. He wore a dark suit with vest and regimental tie. He carried an umbrella.
    "I say, what is that?" he said, looking at the rubbing Terri was analyzing.
    "It is an ancient Hamidian inscription," she said.
    "Yes, yes. I seem to have seen that somewhere. Some time," he said.
    "Where?"
    "The Yucatan Peninsula, I believe it was. I don't imagine you've been there."
    "Why, yes, I have," said Terri. He was so polite.
    "Why, yes, I have," said Remo, imitating in sing-song Terri's voice. "Surprise."
    Terri shot him a dirty look.
    "What does it say?" the British gentleman asked