The Head Men td-31

by Warren Murphy

"No. Nothing is wrong," said the driver.

  "Is that your code for trouble?" Remo asked. "That nothing is wrong?"

  "Nah," said the driver.

  "That is inordinately silly," Remo said. "Here I am sitting in the front seat with you and that police car several blocks back there is going to chase us. Now if there's a fight, look who's right in the middle."

  "What police car?"

  "Back there."

  "Oh, Jesus," said the driver, finally seeing police markings back down the broad street.

  Up ahead, another police cruiser stuck its nose out into the street.

  "I guess we'd better stop and give ourselves up," said the driver.

  "Let's run for it," Remo said. He winked at the driver who felt the wheel move on its own accord, and then that lunatic, the guy who had ripped the roof and climbed in the torn hole, that guy who didn't know how to get into a cab decently, was leaning into him. He was steering. Then the cab was going crazy, throating out full throttle, whip, zip, almost hitting the squad car that was in front. Now it was in back, pursuing the cab, then up onto the sidewalk and taking a phalanx of morning garbage cans like bowling pins.

  The cabdriver glanced into the rearview mirror. Strike. There wasn't a garbage can left standing.

  Sirens screamed. Tires squealed. The driver moaned. He couldn't even budge the wheel from the lunatic. He tried punching. He had been middleweight champion of his high school, so he punched. Right and left and the lunatic had his

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  hands on the wheel and was leaning into him and he missed. The lunatic was anchored to the wheel. But both punches missed. Right and left missed.

  How did the lunatic move his body that way? It was as if the lunatic could move his chest, attached to two arms attached to the steering wheel, faster than the driver could throw punches. Eight and left punches. Punches from the former middleweight champion of Pacifica High.

  Guy was good. Great maybe. Rips out car roofs with his hands. Wasn't that good a roof, maybe. Lunatic could dodge punches while going eighty-five miles an hour. Eighty-five miles an hour?

  The driver moaned. They were going to be killed. At eighty-five miles an hour, you weren't driving in Los Angeles, you were aiming.

  The driver tried to kick the lunatic's foot off the pedal. It didn't kick. The lunatic could hold his foot out with more stability than the car itself. It was like kicking a lamp post.

  "I'll sit back and enjoy it," said the driver. Lunatics, he knew, had abnormal strength.

  "Your cab insured ?"

  "Insurance never covers," said the driver.

  "Sometimes it covers more," said Remo. "I know a lawyer."

  "Look. You want to do me a favor? Leave me alone."

  "All right. Bye," said Remo and kicked open the door to his right and let the cab careen across an empty lot as he floated free and out, the sidewalk moving quickly beneath him, his legs running-which was the key, to keep on moving quickly and not to stop-out onto the street, behind the hotel and in through the alley.

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  He entered through a back kitchen, asking who bought the fresh meat for the hotel. Workers didn't notice salesmen coming into a kitchen area, looking to sell something. For a guest to enter, however, would have attracted attention. The kitchen reeked of eggs bubbling in cow grease called butter.

  At Remo's suite of rooms, a shaken Smith waited at the door, face gaunt, hands knuckle-white over his briefcase, his middle-aged body taut with anger.

  "What in God's name was that downstairs ?"

  "What downstairs?"

  "The police. The chase. I saw from the window. The taxicab you came flying out of."

  "You wanted me to be on time, didn't you ? You said this was important enough for you to come out here personally. That's how important it was. You said you could only stay ten minutes for the meeting, so that there would be no chance of us being seen together. You said this was touchy. What's touchy?"

  "Presidential assassination," said Smith. He took a step toward the door.

  Remo stopped him.

  "So?"

  "I can't be seen here with you. Not even in the same hotel. With the lunatic assassination theories and committees running around, they could easily turn over a rock and find all of us."

  "What's the problem, other than you've lost your sense of reason ?"

  "The problem is the President of the United States is going to be assassinated. I don't have time to go into how I am sure of it, but you know we have our sources and our calculations."

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  Remo knew. He knew that the organization, for well over a decade now, had been secretly prompting law enforcement agencies to do their jobs properly, leaking information to the press on great frauds and, as a last resort, unleashing Remo himself during a crisis. He also knew that since the advent of the organization, the chaos had grown in the country. The streets were not safe; the police were no better. There was even a very well-paid police commissioner on a national television show complaining how the police were only "a very efficient army of occupation for the poor."

  The one thing that man's police was not was "very efficient." Pregnant women were shoved alive into incinerators in that man's city. His own police rioted. Never before had so many people paid so much money for so little protection.

  Remo had become hardened over the years but that was too hard to swallow. There had been a war against crime and chaos and the first to surrender had been the police. It was as if an army had not only let an invader through, they had demanded from their helpless country a higher tribute for their worthlessness. Then again, maybe the citizens had abandoned the decent policemen first. Whatever it was, the civilization was slipping.

  So another politician's life did not send shivers of respect through Remo as it did through Dr. Harold W. Smith.

  "So the President's going to be killed. So what?" Remo said.

  "Have you seen the Vice President?" Smith said.

  "We've got to save the President," Remo said.

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  "We have to, but not for that reason. This country is so weak we can't afford to lose another President. We're trying to convince the President that his life is in danger and he may need added protection. But he says it's up to God, Remo. Remo, we just can't take another assassination. I can't stay. You brought the police here. When I saw them, I gave Chiun the details. I don't know how you two slip in and out of dragnets and things so easily, but for me this is a dangerous place. Convince the President he's in danger. Goodbye."

  Remo let Smith leave, his body sweating the heavy meat odors, his face persimmonously acid. A lemon bitter pall coated his whole demeanor.

  Smith also left Remo with an awesome problem. For Smith, a westerner, did not understand what words meant when he spoke to Chiun, a Master of Sinanju, the age-old house that had provided assassins throughout history.

  Remo knew he was in trouble when he saw the delighted smile on the face of Chiun, a delicate uprising half moon on a yellow parchment face, wisps of white beard and hair like a touch of silver cotton candy. He stood in a regal pose, his gold and crimson kimono made by ancient hands, flowing with the grace of an emperor's gown.

  "At last, a proper use of a Master of Sinanju," said Chiun, his eighty-year-old voice as high as dry brakes in a desert. "Lo, these many years we have been degraded by working against the criminals and all manner of lowlife in your country but now, in his wisdom, your Emperor Smith has come to his senses."

  "Jesus, no," said Remo. "Don't tell me." The large lacquered steamer trunks were already

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  packed in Chiun's room, sealed with wax, lest any be opened without Chiun's knowledge.

  "First, Smith was wise enough to at last put the true master in charge," Chiun said.

  "You're not in charge, Little Father," said Remo.

  "No back talk," said Chiun. "You are not even standing in a respectful bow."

  "C'mon, get off it. What did Smith really say?"

 
"He said, looking out at that disgusting, disgraceful scene in the street, how you, while learning the greatness of Sinanju in one respect, had become insane in the other."

  "And what did you say?"

  "I said we had done wonders considering we had a white man to work with."

  "And what did he say?"

  "He said he felt sorry for someone as kind and understanding as your teacher who had endured your shoddiness of breathing and blood control."

  "He did not say that."

  "Your breathing has gotten so irregular even a white meat-eater can hear the crude rasps."

  "I've corrected that and the only thing someone like Smitty knows about breathing is that it's bad when it stops forever. He knows no more about breathing than you do about computers."

  "I know computers have to be plugged into sockets. I know that," said Chiun. "I know when I hear slander from an ingrate against the very House that found him as dirt and through labor and discipline and with the expenditure of awesome knowledge, transformed a sluggish half-dead body into a large part of what he could be."

  "Little"Father," said Remo to the man who had indeed transformed him, although in often very

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  annoying ways, "Smith could not possibly understand anything about breathing, any more than you could understand anything about the democratic process."

  "I know you lie to yourself a lot. You tell yourself you have friends you choose but you really have emperors like everyone else."

  "What did Smitty say?"

  "He said your breathing was a disgrace."

  "What were the specific words?"

  "He heard the noise and looked out the window and said, 'what a disgrace.' "

  "That was 'cause the cops were following me. And he didn't want commotion. He wasn't talking about my breathing."

  "Do not be a fool," Chiun said. "You lumbered out of that vehicle, breathing like a stuck hippo, as if you had to concentrate to keep your nostrils open. Smith sees this and then you think that he is concerned not about your breathing but about the police who are no danger to anyone, especially someone who will give them coins?"

  "Yes. Especially since I worked out that breathing thing."

  "You went high?" Chiun asked.

  "How else?"

  "I thought you looked almost adequate down there," said Chiun. And then with a modicum of joy, he outlined the instructions that Smith had hurriedly given to him.

  He and Remo would enter the presidential palace.

  "The White House," Remo said.

  "Correct," said Chiun. "Emperor Smith wants us to let this other man who thinks he is the em-

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  peror know where the real power is. That he who has Sinanju as his sword is emperor in any land, and that any man may call himself emperor but only one is. That is what Smith wants."

  "I don't understand," Remo said.

  "We call it the leaf. It is an old thing but I let Emperor Smith think he had thought of it, although for generations the House has done this thing hundreds of times. It is quite common."

  "What is 'the leaf?" Remo asked. "I never heard of it before."

  "When you look at a forest in the springtime from a distance, you see green. And you say the green is the forest because that is what you see. But this is not true. And when you get closer you see the green is made up of leaves and you say, aha, the leaves are the forest. But this is not true. You must be really close before you realize that the leaves are but little things made by trees and that the trees are the real forest.

  "Thus, the real power in a land is often not he whom the people think is emperor, but someone far wiser, such as he who has grasped the House of Sinanju to his heart.

  "And then it is the duty of the real emperor's assassin to show the false emperor who the real emperor is, show the leaf that it is only a part of the tree. It is a common thing. We have done it many times."

  And by the "we" Chiun meant the House of Sinanju, the Masters who had rented themselves out to kings and pharaohs and emperors throughout the ages to support the poor village of Sinanju on the coast of the West Korea Bay. Years before, Chiun, the last Master, had taken

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  the job of training Remo, and every year the secret organization CURE sent tribute to Chiun's North Korean village.

  "And we are supposed to do what specifically?" Remo asked.

  "Put fear into the President's heart. Expose his vulnerability. Make him cower and plead for the mercy of Emperor Smith. It is good to be working among proper folk again."

  "You must have gotten something wrong, Little Father," said Remo. "I don't think Smith wants that done to the President."

  "Perhaps," Chiun said, "we will take the President at night and bring him to a pit of hyenas and hold him over it until he swears eternal loyalty to Smith."

  "I'm pretty sure that's not what Smith wants. You see, Smith serves the country; he doesn't rule it."

  "They all say that but they really want to rule. Perhaps, instead of the hyenas, we can cripple the President's finest general. Who is America's finest general?"

  "We don't have fine generals anymore, Little Father. We have accountants who know how to spend money."

  "Who is the most fearsome fighter in the land?"

  "We don't have any."

  "No matter. It is time that America saw what a true assassin is like instead of all the amateurs that have plagued this land."

  "Little Father, I am sure Smitty doesn't want the President harmed," Remo said.

  "Quiet. I am in charge now. I am not just a

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  teacher anymore. Perhaps we can remove the President's ears as a lesson."

  "Little Father, let me explain a few things. Hopefully," Remo said. With little hope.

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  CHAPTER THREE

  The President was hearing from some "good ole boys" how "this here White House, it got more protection than a twenty-year-old coonhound with bad breath and a kerosene ass."

  "My advisers tell me I don't have enough protection," said the President softly. He worked at a table stacked with reports. He could read as fast as some men could think and liked to work four uninterrupted hours at a stretch. During those times he could ingest a week's information and still there would be more. He had discovered early in his presidency that a man without priorities in that office was a man who swamped helpless immediately. You and your staff culled what you absolutely had to do and then added what you should do and then cut that in half to make a work week only two weeks' full.

  In that manner did men age in this office. No one ever left the presidency of the United States young.

  "Y'all gotta remember, sir, these boys up heah in Washington, they sure 'nough know how to worry."

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  "They say I'm a dead man unless I listen to them. They say we've had serious threats."

  "Shoot. These boys'll sell you the smoke from a horse's nostrils. Everybody heah looking to protect you from something. For a lot of money."

  "You don't think I'm in danger? A man was killed in Sun Valley, just as an example to me, they said."

  "Sure you in danger, sir. Everybody's always in danger."

  "I've told the Secret Service people who guard me that I think I've got enough protection and I don't want to be bothered anymore. There are other things more pressing. But I wonder sometimes. It's not just my life. This country can't take another presidential assassination. The air is already so poisoned with rumors and doubts and stories about conspiracies and plots and counterplots."

  "To say nothin' of us losing our first President since James K. Polk. There was a long while there we didn't have nobody from the South. Long while. Don' worry. We ain' gonna lose you."

  The President smiled graciously. His old friend from back home who had been a state trooper showed him what his own Secret Service had shown him, how the White House itself was impregnable and that the only time anyone ever really got through the gates was when the President was on a
trip somewhere.

  "You already got the best heah. Cain't do no better, sir," said the old friend from Georgia. "Why, cain't even get a gnat through these people. They got guards guarding guards guarding guards and more radar and stuff like that than any place on earth."

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  "I don't know," said the President. He knew without saying that too many people had come too close to too many Presidents recently. Lunatics had gotten a loaded revolver to within a handshake of the previous President. Someone had even gotten off a shot. A man had crashed a truck through the White House gate just the year before and a woman with a stick of dynamite on her body had been apprehended within the White House.

  They were psychotics, the Secret Service told him. They could never do more than get close. And professionals wouldn't even get as far as those psychotics who were willing to risk their lives.

  Perhaps, the President had said.

  But the old friend from Georgia saw something a cabinet member might miss. It was that slight nod of the head while appearing to agree.

  "You got somethin' up your sleeve, don't you?" said the friend.

  "Maybe. Let's say I hope. I can't tell you."

  "Well, if it's a defense secret, you don't have to. I been using up your time too much already. Like the ninth puppy on an eight-tit bitch."

  "No. I'm glad you came. I'm glad for these moments. A man gets to think of himself as too big and too important when he doesn't keep in touch with people who knew him before the rest of the world did."

  "Good luck on your ace in the hole," said the friend, a big half-moon grin from ear to ear. They shook hands goodbye.

  "I'm not a gambler," said the President. He worked two more hours, until fifteen minutes before midnight, then went to the private rooms of

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  what was, in effect, America's presidential palace. He could not forget what his friend had said, that even the guards had guards, but also he could not shake that clinging, gnawing hunch that the leader of the most powerful nation on earth might be vulnerable. To anyone.

  His wife was asleep as he entered the bedroom. Quietly he went to the bureau by the immense bathroom. In the bottom drawer was the red telephone that he had used only once before.

  It was not an instrument to his liking because he knew that for more than twenty years now, American Presidents had allowed and relied on an illegal organization, one that was supposed to do its job and disappear when the nation was through its crisis. And now the organization, and the crisis, seemed permanent. He did not order it to shut down when he discovered that much of the uncovered criminal activity would have grown completely out of bounds if it had not been for the secret organization CURE. At least twice it had saved the nation.