The Head Men td-31

by Warren Murphy

  "He said there's somebody demanding tribute," Remo said.

  "That's right. How did he know? How? How?"

  "It's old stuff," said Remo. "Who gets the

  tribute and how much ?"

  "I can't say. The President has to authorize it and this new one, he didn't understand what it was and cancelled the payments. It's happened before, but before we could always get the President to listen. This guy won't even listen. He says he's got a country to worry about."

  "You say it happened before. What before?" Remo asked.

  "Well, before they threatened the President's life. The last President. They got hold of this loonie and gave her a .45 caliber gun and got her close, told her just how to get close, and then, if that wasn't enough, they got hold of a second loonie with a gun that went off and they said the next time, that would be it, so the White House paid off."

  "How long has this been going on?"

  "Since Kennedy's death. That was the end of the good old days." The assistant director's hands quivered and he got the glass up to his lips and most of the liquid in his mouth. He wore white

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  gray shirts with a crust design so the spilled Alka Seltzer and crushed Maalox would not show. "Being in charge of the President's safety is like using a bomb for a pillow. You can't sleep."

  "All right," Remo said. "So the President has cancelled the payments. What happened since then?"

  "We've gotten word that the President is going to be killed."

  "Who sent you that word?"

  "A phone call. Male. Late forties. Maybe Southern. Raspy voice. No trace of who he is."

  "Start the payments up again. That should stop him," Remo said.

  "We've thought of that. But we don't know how to reach the guy. Suppose he's just decided that it's time to kill a President? For whatever reason. Maybe he's tossed his cork. Who knows?"

  "Any reason to think that?" asked Remo.

  "Just one. He told us he was going to kill somebody as a lesson, before killing the President."

  "And that was Walgreen." Remo said.

  "Yeah." The assistant director nodded. "And you know who Walgreen was ?"

  "A businessman," said Remo.

  "Right. And a former Secret Service man. And after he got out of the service, he was called back for a special occasional assignment."

  "Which was?"

  "Delivering the tribute money to prevent the presidential assassination," the assistant director said. "When he got killed, it was more than just an example to us that the assassin could kill. He killed the man who was directly responsible for getting the money to him. That's what scares me. It's like he's telling us I've got enough money

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  now, and this time I don't want money, I want the President's ass." The man grabbed again for the glass of Alka Seltzer.

  Chiun flicked the glass from his quivering hand.

  "Fool. Stop this. Stop this what you do to yourself."

  "I'm not doing it. The job's doing it."

  "You are doing it. And I will prove it," said Chiun. "When there is a death in the family, do you quiver like this ?"

  "I'm not responsible for keeping my family alive."

  "You are, but you do not know it. You suffer from what you do know. You know your job is important and almost impossible. So you worry. You."

  "How the hell can I stop ?"

  "By accepting the simple fact that you cannot guarantee your success, and by thinking of your President as an egg. You will protect him just as well but you wouldn't worry about an egg, would you?"

  The Secret Service man reflected for a moment, and then his body eased its chemical assault upon his stomach and a great relief came upon him. He thought of the President as an egg and suddenly felt an ease which no chemical had been able to bring to him. He felt exorbitantly good by, for the first time in months, not feeling extraordinarily bad.

  Viola Poombs had gotten lost through the conversation between Remo and the assistant director and had stopped taking notes with a borrowed pencil on a borrowed pad. "The President is going to die?" she asked now. She wondered if she

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  could get a book done, predicting it. Maybe something about exactly how it was going to be done. Perhaps some sex. She could pose nude in the centerfold. Perhaps a foldout centerfold of a book. She would need a connection between the nude picture and the very modest and religious President. Well, she would write the book herself. That was connection enough. Authors often had their pictures on book covers. Hers would be in the centerfold. Men didn't need too great an excuse to look at bareass pictures. And she had the ass to bare.

  When Viola Poombs asked the question, the Secret Service man thought of his President being assassinated and he dove for the bottle. But a long delicate fingernail somehow miraculously stopped his progress.

  "Think of egg. All your worry does not help. Only hurts. Think of egg," said Chiun.

  The man did. He imagined an egg being broken by a sniper's bullet, cracked splat everywhere by a .45 caliber bullet. An exploding egg. A burning egg. A fried egg. An egg sandwich. Who cared about eggs? He felt better. He felt tremendous.

  "Kind sir, how can I thank you?"

  "Stop spreading lying slander about the House of Sinanju."

  "House of Sinanju? Why I didn't say anything about that. And it's just a legend anyway."

  "It is no legend. They are the wisest, kindest, most venerable assassins ever to grace this meager planet. Stop calling others 'possibly the best there is.' You insult the best when you call others the best. Know you this, trembling young man, the House of Sinanju can tame and humble these upstarts. Best? Hah, would you compare a

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  sewer with all the oceans of the world? Then do not compare murderous knaves with the House of Sinanju.''

  "Who are you, sir?" asked the assistant director, tears of gratitude in his eyes.

  "An unbiased observer," said Chiun. "One who has an interest in truth."

  Outside the office, Chiun looked grave. A few paces from Viola Poombs, where she could not hear, he confided in Remo:

  "We are in trouble. We must leave. Doom is near."

  Remo hadn't noticed anyone making a move. He looked around.

  "Remo, we cannot afford to allow the House of Sinanju to become associated with this pending disaster. What will the world think if your President is hacked to bits or exploded or shot in the head and the House of Sinanju was not only not the one which achieved it, but had instead been hired to protect him? It is bad, Remo. Countries come and go, but the reputation of Sinanju is important."

  "Chiun, there are maybe fifty people in the entire world who have heard of Sinanju and forty-seven of them live there."

  "Your President is going to die and embarrass us. That is what your President is going to do to us. If it were not against my ethics, I would kill him myself from the anger I feel. How dare he get himself carelessly killed to disgrace our name? It is true what they say about new countries being bad countries."

  "What's this doom? What makes you so sure that he is going to die ?"

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  "Did you not hear? Did you not listen? For years, your country was paying tribute for its fear. Tribute to others when the House of Sinanju was in their midst. Nevertheless, people do not pay tribute for nothing."

  "They do it all the time," Remo said. "Ask a real estate broker. They sell one part house, three parts lying."

  "But not governments with so many policemen and military men wishing to show their leaders how effective they are. This does not happen unless his protectors know in their hearts that they cannot save him. Every payment is a disgrace to them. This is so, Remo. Yet they have recommended paying off this murderer because they know he is capable of doing what he has threatened. For years they paid him. And then he killed the man who was the messenger of the money. This Walgroon."

  "Walgreen," Remo said.

  "Whatever. These killers killed him. They did not do that bec
ause they want more tribute. They did that because they are going to kill your President and they want his protectors to know that they cannot protect him."

  Viola Poombs bounced over, her cleavage preceding her like ship's bells in fog.

  "Everything all right ?" she asked.

  Remo did not answer. Chiun smiled.

  "In your account of how this President died, you should note most of all he refused to avail himself of the House of Sinanju," Chiun said.

  "Ignore him," Remo said. "This President is using the House of Sinanju. And the House of Sinanju will save him. I guarantee it. So get this down for the ages. The Master, of Sinanju

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  promises that no harm will befall the President. Be sure to write that down. It's important."

  "Until this moment, Remo, I had not realized how cruel you were," Chiun said.

  "I just want to give you some incentive, Little Father, for hanging around and protecting the Man."

  "You are an evil person," Chiun said.

  "Right," agreed Remo. "Did you get that, Viola?"

  "Almost. How do you spell guarantee? And do you have a pencil I could borrow?"

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  CHAPTER SIX

  Les Pruel of Paldor Security watched the blade come down on the glistening sweaty neck of the boy. The boy was about twelve and had a clubbed foot, and two guards in resplendent uniforms had pushed him down to his knees while the President for Life of the Peoples' Democratic Republic of Umbassa talked on about security and what sort of guarantees could Mr. Pruel give that his excellency would not succumb to the fate of so many African leaders.

  "I can't, your highness. No one can. But I can give you the best protection that technology and our experience can offer. We at Paldor appreciate your problems and we have never lost a client yet."

  "Never ?" asked the President for Life.

  The blade came down with a swish and then the thunk of a cantaloupe being macheted in half. The neck had gone first, then the throat, which was why most executioners put the victim's head facing down, so that the blade would hit bone first at the strongest part of its stroke. The boy's head rolled.

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  Well, thought Pruel, his wretched life is over at least. To live in this kingdom is to live too long.

  Maybe he had lived too long. He had been mightily depressed since Paldor had lost Ernest Walgreen. Ernie had been with the Secret Service also. That house in Sun Valley had been safe. He was sure of it. And yet he could not stem the nagging torturous thought that he had led the former agent to his death. He had put him in that house as surely as if he had put him on top of a bomb.

  It was a stupid move. You led people to safe exits and hideaways, not to bombs. He had brooded about this for weeks in the Paldor offices until the chairman of Paldor, the only member of the top-ranking staff who had never been with the Secret Service, called him in and said:

  "Pruel. We got two kinds of people. Those who sell Paldor and those who don't work here anymore. Now I'm not having a mope around here anymore because no business needs a mope. We need sell. That's S-E-L-L, sell, and by toozit's dustwhumpher I mean sell."

  Which was how Sylvester Montrofort talked. And when Mr. Montrofort talked, people listened. He had taken the dispirited band of Secret Service men after Kennedy's death and put them all on salary, which he paid himself, and talked to them and nursed them along until they all were wealthy businessmen. He had given them pride again. Motivation again. He had convinced them they had something worth selling and they should now get a good price for it. And they did. Les Pruel couldn't remember when he'd looked on the right side of a menu at the prices. Now he only looked at what might please him.

  "Difference between rich and poor ain't in the

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  head, Pruel," Mr. Montrofort had once said. "It's in the hard honest dollars. That's the difference. Don't let anybody anytime tell you you're poor 'cause you think poor. You're poor 'cause you don't have two clinking nickels to rub together. That's poor. Rich is folding money, lots of it, and enough for whatever you want. Poor's not getting what you want. Eich is. That's the difference. All this stuff about what you think isn't worth the fuzz on a ten-year-old tennis ball. Shoot, if thinking was all that made you rich, damned hypnotists would be the richest ditwallers in the whole world. And they ain't. I ought to know. I know about that stuff."

  Nobody ever really argued with Sylvester Montrofort. He had no legs and his back humped up in some spinal deformity, yet he could convey such enthusiasm that he could convince you that you and he could be a relay team in the Olympics.

  So in the depression that set in after they lost Ernie Walgreen, Mr. Montrofort not only did not share the sadness but said it was time when good salesmen showed their stuff. Anyone could sell an oil well to a gas company, he said. But try selling a dry hole. Now, that's a salesman.

  Les Pruel couldn't break the slump so Mr. Montrofort had shipped him off to Umbassa.

  "Sell the gadgets. They love gadgets. Shiny gadgets," Mr. Montrofort had said.

  "They can't use them."

  "Shoot. If they want 'em, sell 'em. You can't sell training anymore. They know they got people who can't even use their thumbs. Sell gadgets. Radar."

  "Radar is only good for airplanes."

  "Tell him some other jungle bunny is going to

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  bomb him. I'll sell a couple of planes to his neighbor. Go ahead."

  And he was in Umbassa. And the President for Life of The Peoples' Democratic Republic of Umbassa wanted radar. Lots of radar. The radar with the shiny buttons. So he could shoot down airplanes in the sky all over the world.

  Les Pruel had to explain that radar didn't shoot down planes. It just showed you where they were so they could not sneak up on you and kill you while you slept in your palace, surrounded by your faithful field marshals and generals and supreme generals and commanders for eternity. That's what radar was for.

  The President for Life wanted the kind of radar that shot down planes all over the world.

  There was no such thing, said Pruel.

  "The Russians will sell it to me," said the President for Life.

  "Oh," said Pruel. "You mean the destabilizer. That's the one where you can never be killed by a bomb dropped from above. But it has its problems."

  "What problems?" asked the President.

  "It is used to save only one person. The entire network can save only one person in a country. Do you have such a person, who must be saved, even though the whole country should perish?" asked Pruel.

  They did have such a person.

  It was the President for Life, of course. And Pruel set up the phony system next to the planes that Umbassa pilots could not fly. It was $440 worth of old hifi and television equipment, polished to a glistening shine. There was an old Zenith radio grid. Paldor craftsmen cut out the

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  form of a bomb from sheet metal. They put a tiny battery under it and a bulb in it. The bulb was red. It blinked.

  The President for Life was supposed to keep the tiny protective device in his pocket all the time and he would never be hit by a bomb. It cost $2,300,000. Less than even one of the cheap Russian planes.

  The President for Life promptly told an American reporter how he had, through technological ingenuity, purchased an air defense system cheaper than a single plane. But it was a military secret and he would not tell the reporter what it was, only that he could never be hit by a bomb. He kept his hand in his pocket all through the interview.

  In gratitude, the President of Life gave Leg Pruel a sword. But he would not think of giving it to him unblooded, for that was an insult. So he ordered the sword and someone brought the boy who dragged his foot and Les Pruel watched the head roll and he knew then that he was not going to work for Paldor anymore. He had become one of Sylvester Montrofort's salesmen and he didn't like it in himself. He didn't like the product, if and when a real product existed. He didn't like the customers. He didn't like himself.
<
br />   "You look unhappy," said the President for Life. "You do not understand. It is a fine sword. We have many young boys and that one was useless. We are moving in giant steps to technology and therefore they become even more useless."

  "They, who?" asked Pruel. He thought of Ernie Walgreen.

  "The children who will grow up to join workers' brigades. We sell them if yoa want to buy

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  them, although in your country, you cannot do that with your capitalist laws."

  Les Pruel forced a smile and thanked the President for Life and declined an offer to try the sword himself. It was wrapped in velvet by facile black hands. Pruel didn't want to look at eyes anymore. He watched the hands.

  "Paldor wishes his excellency, President for Life, a long and safe life."

  "Better than Russian radar," said the President for Life, patting his pocket. "Now we do not have to shoot down planes because they can do us no harm. Let them drop atomic bombs. We are safe. Safe from the world. Safe from the crazed hateful Zionist hordes who wish to enslave the world."

  "Yes. An honored client of Paldor," said Pruel. "Do you have something that could make me safe from bullets?"

  "No," said Pruel, for he knew the President for Life would try it out on another young boy.

  "I would test this wonderful device but it might get lost in someone else's pocket. Two million dollars is too much to entrust to anyone but me, yes ?"

  By evening, Les Pruel was on an Air Umbassa jet. It was made by McDonnell Douglas, flown by French pilots, serviced by West German mechanics. Umbassa's three female college graduates were the stewardesses. Thy could read instructions with only a little help.

  As part of Umbassa's drive for education, they were all pronounced doctors and, after they slept with the President for Life, given Ph.D. degrees. Two of them could count to ten with their fists closed, although one did confess that when she

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  was going as high as ten, it helped to visualize her fingers.

  Les Pruel did not want coffee, tea, or milk. He didn't want a drink.

  "Is there anything you do want?" asked the stewardess.

  "I want to like myself again." said Pruel.

  And with wisdom that was almost shocking in its clarity, she said, "Then you must stop liking someone else better."