Identity Crisis

The book’s opening exposition and Smith’s later account attribute CURE’s missing twelve-million-dollar operating fund to Friend’s earlier attack on CURE and the banking system: Smith says he forgot to specify those CURE funds when he coerced Friend to restore the rerouted money, then realizes Friend transferred them to Folcroft as a final revenge. The IRS and DEA arrive at Folcroft together, exchange fire, and leave Greenwood dead; Chiun prevents Smith’s attempted suicide, and Smith is hospitalized. Remo revisits his origins and encounters a woman at his grave who tells him his father is alive. He returns to an IRS-controlled Folcroft as Chiun tries to conceal that clue and guard the Sinanju gold.

A separate Navy SEAL operation sends Winston Smith against Stomique warlord Mahout Feroze Anin with a BEM prototype. After a click the gun reports a perfect kill, but Anin survives, attacks Winston’s perch with a rifle, and Winston flees. Chiun appears as a giant butterfly during a renewed DEA assault and kills Wayne Tardo; elsewhere Remo finds a dead IRS agent and rebukes Chiun for killing him, a separate event from the later Hume killing. IRS agent Jack Koldstad later suffers a partial frontal lobotomy and self-injury, and Dick Brull takes command. Brull finds the vault empty, confines Harold Smith, and extends the seizure to the Smith home while staff are dismissed.

Remo later reveals that he threw the gold into Long Island Sound; one ingot struck and sank a DEA boat. Chiun kills Basil Hume at the Grand Cayman Trust after interpreting Smith’s warning about Hume as an imperial directive; the source does not show an explicit order to murder Hume. Beasley escapes, is recaptured, and escapes again after a mirror figure speaks to him. Purcell’s apparent illusions include the drumming pink mascot and purple pterodactyls. Smith tells Brull Folcroft is a FEMA continuity site and has a transfer to Grand Cayman Trust confirmed by phone; Brull provisionally yields control, but the site’s claimed mission remains Smith’s account, followed by a narrative emphasis on his imagination.

Smith reports that an apparent visit from Maude produced a story about a son born while he was abroad, then says Remo is his son. Maude later denies visiting him, and Smith suggests Purcell may have created the encounter. Smith also says he arranged artificial insemination by nurse Deborah Dean to produce Winston as a potential replacement operative. Winston and Remo resist the claims. A voice-recognition exchange between Winston’s BEM and Remo is treated by Chiun as evidence, while resemblance and Smith’s account remain the characters’ grounds; no independent test settles Winston’s parentage. Remo says Smith’s story may be true or not, gives Winston a chance to leave, and continues searching for his own parents.

He insists the cemetery woman was real, while Chiun thinks she was an illusion. The book leaves Remo’s biological father and Winston’s parentage unresolved, and Beasley remains missing. Brull is threatened with transfer to Folcroft after his hallucinations and is sedated.