All I had to do in the future was hand over one of these certificates to a Zorich Banking Corporation correspondent bank in any country and I would be given half a million U. S. dollars, plus the interest up to that date on the certificate. They were actually each a bank IOU for half a million dollars. They have a fancy name: they are called "bank demand debentures." It means simply a bank's IOU.

They were better than the gold. They were more valuable, because of interest, than the gold. And even more important to me, I could hide them much more easily.

It was a good deal for the bank as well. They now owned my gold and could make money with it at far more than 10 percent. They actually didn't have to pay for it right then. And it got around the fact that U. S. dollars, in banks, usually ride as figures in ledgers, not bills in a cash box. Had I demanded that many actual bank notes, I would have almost scraped Zurich clean and I would have needed a truck instead of this small attache case which was now fastened firmly to my wrist.

There had been two more stops after the bank.

The first had been at the Zurich agency for an Amsterdam precious-and-semiprecious-stone firm. It was run by the cousin of the head of the Zorich Banking Corporation Gold Department.

"I want," I had said, "a big sackful of junk stones."

He had not minded at all being dragged out of bed at three in the morning for a sale of just junk stones. He even called the janitor and asked him where he kept the trash bins.

For a thousand U. S. dollars I got the prettiest bag of discarded baubles you ever saw. It was the first time I learned that emeralds can be so worthless they are sold by the pound, that diamonds can be so synthetic they can't even be used in costume jewelry and that paste rubies can be so bad you can't even put them in stage regalia. But they glittered.

They were vital to my plans.

He poured them into a fancy sack with a rival company's name on it, I paid him and he went happily back to bed and I went to my last stop, the airport.

The charter jet people didn't the least mind getting a pilot and co-pilot up out of bed and the hangar crew didn't the least mind getting a hopped-up Grumman Gulfstream on the line for immediate launch.

And here I was, streaking for Istanbul with the vital certificates chained to my wrist and the bag of junk stones under my feet, looking down at the Alps, where I had not been dumped, so rosy in the glow of dawn.

A telephone was at my elbow in the jet. I picked it up. I got the taxi driver in Afyon right away. My Gods, but things were going smooth. Not even a foul-up in Turkish phone connections.

"Meet me at the airport in Istanbul," I said.

"What flight?" he said.

"My flight," I said. "You think I'd stoop to travel by commercial jet? My own flight, Ahmed. I own the whole (bleeped) world!"

It was an eager and walking-on-air-type Gris who stepped out of the jet at Yesilkoy Airport, Istanbul.

Immigration stamped me into Turkey without noticing Sultan Bey had not left.

Customs took one look at the wrist cuff and chain, ignored the guns, and sped me on through into the country. They knew me, anyway.

And there amidst the colorful airport throng was Deplor from the planet Modon, alias Ahmed, the taxi driver.

"Jeez!" he said in gangster English, "you look like you et fifty canaries, boss."

"At one gulp," I said. "Lead on, lead on, for we have lots to do. There are going to be some changes made!"

A lot of people didn't know it yet, but this was just the start of fatal days for them. I had plans!

We battered our way out of the crowded airport and then battered our way along the seventeen miles which led to the city. The minarets which made a masonry forest all along the Golden Horn had never looked so good. Roaring along, we soon sped through the breach made in the city wall to accommodate the car traffic and began our tortuous course through narrow, noisy streets. Ignoring the protests of how close we came to pointed-toed slippers, giving vendors' carts the necessary bumps and sounding our horn continuously to clear the way, at length we drew up before our first destination: the Piastre Bankasi.

I trod like a conqueror across the tile floor. I pushed the lowly clerk aside who would have inquired my business. I stalked into the office of Mudur Zengin, czar of the biggest bank chain in Turkey.

Fat and immaculate and manicured, dressed in a pinstripe Western suit of charcoal gray, he looked up from his mother-of-pearl inlaid desk to see who it was tracking up his priceless Persian carpet.

He wasn't used to having people with crossed bandoliers and a shotgun coming in for business conferences. Maybe it was that he was short-sighted-his glasses had fallen off-and seeing the bearskin coat thrown over the shoulders, mistook me for a bear.

"Allah!" he said.

I advanced. I unsnapped the case and opened it. I riffled 515 engraved certificates under his nose.

"O Allah, I was going to say. Sit down!"

He found his pince-nez glasses, polished them and

put them on. He evidently didn't need glasses to see money. He only needed them to see people. He peered at me. "Aha," he said. "You must be Sultan Bey. You do business, I believe, with our Afyon branch. The Zorich Banking Corporation said you were coming but we did not expect you so soon. Now, what can we do for you?"

"A safe-deposit box," I said, "that nobody can get into but me. Nobody."

Buzzers buzzed and guards paraded. We were shortly in the safe-deposit department.

"Two combinations," said Mudur Zengin. "The latest thing. One is yours and one is ours. Only you can ap­pear. No one else can sign the card. Your photograph appears on it and the guards will look at you for sight recognition."

I was shortly in a private cubicle with the box. I laid the precious certificates in it. I laid the gold-sale original receipt on top. I then took out five certificates, each a half a million dollars. It hurt to do so but I did it. There were still 510 of them left in the box.

I rejoined Mudur Zengin. He was polishing his hands. I ended that by pushing a certificate into them. "I want this in cash," I said.

He stared at it. "Cash?"

He suddenly pushed me into his office. He sat me down in the most comfortable chair. He would not hear a word until a clerk brought in kahve on a silver tray. It was like Switzerland all over again except that there it had been chocolate.

Having ascertained if my kahve was sweet enough, if it was just the right temperature, if I was warm enough and if the cushions were soft, he got down to business. "You had better tell me your banking problems, Sultan Bey. I was a friend of your father's, the great revolutionary hero." That was the traditional lie because I doubt if he had ever met the original Voltar surveyor. "I consider your problems as though they were my own. So speak."

I told him I owed the credit companies and had to go see them and pay them off and try to cancel their cards.

He was snapping his fingers toward the door. A clerk appeared with a tweed overcoat and a homburg hat.

"You need," said Mudur Zengin, "professional guidance. Credit companies are a bit tricky. I would never forgive myself if you went wrong."

We went out and got into the taxi and then we began our rounds. First was American Oppress.

"Cancel your card?" screamed the manager. "Never! Suppose you cancelled ours and left just one other in force! It would be discriminatory. We would sue you for an attempt to ruin our reputation! Sultan Bey, as a leading citizen with unlimited credit, you have a socio-economic responsibility to support the institutions of the world!"

The American Oppress manager was raving so that his staff was peeking in, keeping clubs handy in case we upset him further.