Funny Money

Secret Service official James Castellano is assigned to inspect an exchange after two counterfeit $50 bills with matching serial numbers expose a superb counterfeiter. His contact, Mr. Gordons, has already entered a first exchange with a NASA program in which he gets the better of the government; when Castellano scratches the plates, Gordons dismembers him, survives the special poison dart, and escapes. Remo and Chiun review the film, and Smith sends them to Chicago to recover four printing plates and stop the counterfeiter. At O’Hare, Gordons defeats Remo’s attack and takes the NASA creative-intelligence program. Chiun ends the House of Sinanju’s contract with CURE, and the two travel to St. Thomas to recover.

Gordons recruits Moe Alstein, Marine Sergeant Pitulski, and Robert Jellicoe to attack them. The hired men’s attacks fail; Chiun kills Alstein, Remo and Chiun survive Pitulski’s fire, and Remo kills Jellicoe underwater. Gordons observes and explains that Remo and Chiun’s existence threatens his survival. At the Wilkins Laboratory in Cheyenne, Dr. Vanessa Carlton explains that Gordons was a self-preserving robot with the ability to assimilate and fabricate materials; it escaped and made its own human-shaped body after hearing that the laboratory could close. It has the early, inconsistent creativity program, which Carlton calls no better than a five-year-old’s. Gordons demands Remo’s head to stop him from releasing a billion dollars of counterfeit bills; CIA official Francis Forsythe decides to comply and attempts to capture Remo at a hotel.

Chiun kills Forsythe, alters his head to resemble Remo, and delivers the decoy in a pillowcase at Dulles. Gordons discovers the deception and retaliates by dropping one billion dollars over Harlem, then threatens to buy a Strategic Air Command group and attack U.S. cities unless both Remo and Chiun are surrendered. Smith prepares to confront Gordons, while Chiun uses its need for new creativity to draw it to Carlton’s laboratory with a false rocket-test announcement. In the rocket shaft, Remo damages Gordons and Chiun defeats it with a blade; Smith launches the rocket, and Gordons’s body burns to rubble. Chiun then kills Carlton, preventing Remo from questioning her about the counterfeit operation.

An envelope from “Mr. G.” leads Remo to a closed bank in Billings, where he finds a working press and counterfeit money. Gordons speaks from the press and says he can rebuild from any surviving part. It traps Remo in the vault, but Remo escapes, burns the paper supply, and takes the newly printed bills. He gives the money to a bearded hobo who asks why Remo brought only a million; the book ends without identifying the man or confirming Gordons’s final fate.