The Head Men td-31

by Warren Murphy

  Montrofort hated the man. He hated him more when the man turned at the sound of the opening

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  door, and smiled at Montrofort with just as many perfect teeth as the dwarf had. The man had a healthy tanned face, masculine but not leathery. His eyes sparked with the kind of vitality that informed the world he saw humor and mirth where no one else could. His hands as he raised them toward Montrofort in a greeting were long and delicate and manicured, and had been known, upon necessary occasions, to drive an icepick through an enemy's temple.

  Benson Dilkes was an assassin and his awesome skills had helped make Paldor the success it was in the international world of protection for money. None of the Paldor salesmen ever knew it, but the reason they were received so warmly in the emerging nations by the presidents-for-life and the emperors-for-life and the rulers-insurmountable-forever was that Dilkes had been in the countries only days before, mounting an assassination attempt that looked like the real thing, but missing by a hair. He prepared the field from which Paldor's salesmen harvested very rich contracts.

  And on those rare occasions when a foreign leader decided he did not need protection, no matter how close the recent assassination attempt had been, Dilkes usually showed him he was wrong. And generally, the ruler's successor was smarter. And hired Paldor.

  "Sylvester, how are you ?" Dilkes said. He came forward to take Montrofort's hands in his. His voice had a raspy Virginia twang.

  Montrofort ignored him and wheeled behind his desk. "Just the same as I was the last time I saw you two days ago," he said curtly.

  Dilkes smiled, his even white teeth a badge of

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  beauty in his bronzed face. "Even two days without seeing you seems like an eternity."

  "Can that bullshit, me bucko. You know that Pruel failed yesterday?"

  "So I read in this morning's papers. Unfortunate. I think, if you'll remember, I volunteered to do the job for you myself."

  "And if you'll remember I told you that I want this to be extra careful. I don't want no shirttails hanging out at all. Your job is that dipshit revolutionary, Harley. How is he doing?"

  Before he answered, Dilkes came around and sprawled in one of the three chairs facing Mon-trofort's desk.

  He bridged his fingers in front of his face. "Just as we expected," he said. "He tired quickly of buying the cameras individually and is now buying them in bulk, showing off his rolls of cash, and generally making himself most memorable for the investigation that will eventually come."

  Montrofort nodded, his eyes riveted to Dilkes' face, cursing the man's handsomeness.

  "I have to tell you, Sylvester, though. I still don't know why you're going through with this. They offered to reinstate the payments."

  "I'm going through with it because I'm tired of being pushed around. I'm not a'baby carriage."

  "Who's pushing you around? Paying tribute is hardly abusive behavior," said Dilkes.

  "Look. They paid. Then they stopped paying. If I let them get away with that, they'll stop paying sometime in the future again. They've got to know that we mean business, business, business. That's it."

  Dilkes shrugged and then nodded. Of course, it had nothing to do with meaning business. It had

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  to do with Sylvester Montrofort being a dwarf cripple and finally deciding to prove that, no matter what his body looked like, he was a man to reckon with. Reason had as much chance of stopping him as argument had of reversing the tide.

  Dilkes pulled a hard plastic casino chip from his right jacket pocket and began rolling it across the tops of his fingers. "Of course, by now the President will have ordered Congress to stay out of the way," he said.

  "More likely, just the leaders. Now if they're able to impose discipline, we'll have our congressmen just inside the Capitol entrance, waiting." Montrofort smiled for the first time that day, and fluttered his hands skyward in an imitation of a bird flying away.

  "The surest trap is the one you set in the path of a man running to avoid a trip," Dilkes said.

  "More of your eastern wisdom?" Montrofort said. His voice sneered.

  "You should read more of it, Sylvester. You won't find it in libraries, but if you know where to look there is a body of literature out there that tells all of us, in this strange business, all we ever need to know."

  "I believe in technology, baby. Give me that ol-ogy every time," said Montrofort. He was feeling better now, and he raised the level of the platform behind his desk so he was six inches higher than Dilkes.

  "And I believe in Sinanju," Dilkes said.

  Montrofort remembered something. He squinted at Dilkes.

  "What'd you say?"

  "I believe in Sinanju."

  "And what's Sinanju?"

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  "An ancient order of assassins," Dilkes said. "Creators of the martial arts. Invisible in combat. Through the ages of history, they have been involved in every court, in every palace, in every empire. There's an old saying: 'When the House of Sinanju is still, the world is in danger. But when the House of Sinanju moves, the world continues only by sufferance.'"

  "These are Koreans, aren't they?" asked Montrofort. He smiled slightly as he watched the cool, impeccable, unflappable Dilkes continue to roll the casino chip across the back of his fingers.

  "Were Koreans. The last anyone heard is that there is only one Master left in the House. An aged, frail man who if he still lives must be retired. None know of him till this day. What's wrong, Sylvester? You looked as if you've swallowed a frog."

  "Not know of him may be accurate," said Montrofort slowly. "But not till this day. Bather, yesterday. That Master's name is Chiun, he is eighty years old if he is a minute, and yesterday he was sitting on that very chair you now occupy."

  The casino chip dropped to the carpeted floor. Dilkes jumped to his feet as if he had just been told his chair had been wired to the Smoke Rise generating station.

  "He was here?"

  "Yes. He was here."

  "What did he do ? What did he say?"

  "He said that America was decadent because it did not love assassins. He said that American television was decadent because it had destroyed its only pure art form. He said that white and black and most yellows were decadent because they

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  were inferior races. And he told me that he wished he had met me when I was young, because he could have prevented me from being this way but now it was too late to do anything. That's what he said."

  "But why? Why was he here?" "Very simple. He is defending the President of the United States against assassin or assassins unknown." Montrofort smiled. Dilkes didn't.

  "I'll tell you another thing, too, Dilkes. He was one of the guys Pruel was supposed to blow away yesterday."

  "You tried to kill the Master of Sinanju?" said Dilkes.

  "Yep. And I think I'll try again." "Now you know why Pruel failed." Dilkes paused and looked behind him as if fearing something or someone had come in the door. "Sylvester, you and I have been friends and partners for a long time." "That's right."

  "It ends now. You can count me out." "Why? All this over an eighty-year-old Korean?"

  "I may be the greatest assassin in the western world..."

  "You are," Montrofort interrupted. "But compared to the Master of Sinanju I am a kazoo player."

  "He is very old," said Montrofort. He was enjoying this. It was pleasant to watch the cool Dilkes panic. There were actually beads of sweat on the forehead of the big man. "Very old," Montrofort repeated.

  "And I want to be. I am going back to Africa." "When?" said Montrofort.

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  "An hour ago. Do what you're going to do yourself. Goodbye, Sylvester."

  Dilkes did not wait for an answer. He stepped on the pressure-sensitive pad in front of the door and it slid open. It shut behind him just as the inkwell thrown by Montrofort hit the door. "Coward. Emotional cripple. Coward. Fraidy-cat," Montrofort screamed at the door, his voice as l
oud as it could be, knowing it would carry through the door, and Dilkes would hear him.

  "You're a pussycat, not a man!" he screamed. "A coward! A lily-livered baby!" yelled Montrofort.

  And he smiled all the while.

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  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "This is it," said Remo, waving his hand toward the cast-iron dome high overhead inside the main entrance to the Capitol.

  "This is where the Constitution is kept?" Chiun asked.

  "I don't know. I guess so."

  "I want to see it," Chiun said.

  "Why?"

  "Do not patronize me, Remo," said Chiun. "For years, I have known what we do. How we work outside the Constitution so everybody else can live inside the Constitution. I would see this Constitution so I may know for myself what it is we are doing and if it is worthwhile."

  "It pays the gold tribute every year to your village."

  "My honor and sense of personal worth are beyond price. You would not understand this, Remo, being both American and white, but some are like that. I am one of them. We value our honor beyond any amount of riches."

  "Since when?" asked Remo. "You'd work as an enforcer for a Chinese laundry if the price was right." He was looking past Chiun at a group of

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  men standing off in a corner of the huge entrance hall.

  "Oh, no. Oh, no," Chiun said. "And why are you looking at those fat men who drink too much?"

  "I thought I recognized them," Remo said. "Politicians I think they are. Maybe congressmen."

  "Them I would speak to," Chiun said. He walked away from Remo.

  The Speaker of the House was the first to see the little yellow man approaching.

  "Mum, men," he said and turned, smiling, toward Chiun, who approached, unsmiling, like a teacher on his way to confront an amphitheater of parents whose children had been left back.

  "Are you a congressman?"

  "That's right, sir. Can I help you ?"

  "A long time ago I was very angry with you because you put on the Gatewater show of all you fat men talking and you took off my television shows. But now the "shows are no good anymore, anyway, because they are decadent, so I don't care that they are off. Where is the Constitution?"

  "The Constitution?"

  "Yes. You have heard of it. It is the document I am supposed to be working to protect, so that all of you can be happy as clams, while I do nothing but work, work, work on your behalf. The Constitution."

  The Speaker of the House shrugged. "Damned if I know, sir. Neil? Tom? You know where the Constitution is?"

  "Library of Congress, I think," said Neil. He had a thin pinched face that was unhealthily red-blotched. Thinning gray hair swirled around his head in windblown swoops.

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  "Maybe the national archives," said the congressman named Tom. He had a face that was strong and open, an invitation to trust. It looked as if it had been carved from a healthy potato.

  "You gentlemen work here ?" Chiun said.

  "We are congressmen, sir. Glad to meet you," said Neil extending his hand.

  Chiun ignored the hand. "And you work for the Constitution and you don't know where it's kept?"

  "I work for my constituents," said Neil.

  "I work for my family," said Tom.

  "I work for my country," said the speaker.

  "I used to work for Colgate, though," said Neil brightly.

  "That's nothing," said Tom. "I used to deliver newspapers on cold winter mornings."

  "Lunatics," said Chiun. "All lunatics." He walked back to Remo. "Let us leave this asylum."

  "You said we've got to find The Hole where the President is vulnerable. He'll be talking on the front steps. Now where's The Hole?"

  Chiun was not listening. "This is a strange building," he said.

  "Why?"

  "It is very clean."

  "It costs enough. It ought to be clean," Remo said.

  "No, it is cleaner than that. There has never been a castle that was not infested. But this one is not."

  "How can you tell that? There could be little buggies everywhere, just peeking out at you, waiting for night time so they can come out and dance."

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  "Dance on your own face," said Chiun. "There are none here and that is very unusual in a castle."

  "This isn't a castle, Chiun. It isn't a palace. This is a democracy. Maybe cockroaches are monarchists."

  "This country is run by one man?" Chiun asked.

  "Kind of."

  "And he has a secret organization that we are part of?"

  "Right."

  "And we kill his enemies whenever we can?"

  Remo shrugged at the onrushing inevitable.

  "Then this country is like any other," Chiun said. "Except here they take longer to do things. The difference between this place and an absolute monarchy is that the absolute monarchy is more efficient."

  "If they were so efficient, why couldn't they do anything about the cockroaches in the castles?" asked Remo.

  "Remo, sometimes you are terribly stupid."

  "Hah. Why?"

  "Listen to your nasal honking. 'Hah.' You would think I never taught you to speak, to listen to you."

  "Don't correct my speech. Tell me about cockroaches."

  "Cockroaches are always with us. They abound. In the pyramids, in the storied temples of Solomon, in the castles of the French Louis, they abound."

  "And we don't have them here?"

  "Of course, there are none here. Do you hear them?"

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  "No," Remo admitted.

  "Well?"

  "You mean you can hear cockroaches?" Remo asked.

  "I refuse to believe that a Master of Sinanju has been reduced to this," Chiun said. "Standing here in the hallowed halls of your watchamacall-it..."

  "Capitol. The Congress building." ,

  "Yes. That. That I am standing here in these hallowed halls talking about cockroaches to someone no better than a cockroach himself. My ancestors will judge me harshly for having let Sinanju be dragged down into the mud like this."

  "If I'm a cockroach, and we're co-equal partners, what does that make you?"

  "A trainer of cockroaches. Oh, woe is Sinanju."

  Osgood Harley scratched himself awake, trying to dig his stubby bitten fingernails into his pale white belly. The flesh was wrinkled from the tight waistband of the jeans he had slept in. He would pay dearly for having drunk two bottles of wine and passing out in his clothes, because sleeping in his clothes made his groin sweat, and an unpowdered sweaty groin gave him jock itch, the most persistent and incurable of all mankind's diseases.

  There hadn't been jock itch in the old days. And there hadn't been drinking alone in a shabby walkup.

  There had been action. Committees to protest this or that, and coalitions to promote this or that, and there had been television coverage, and newspaper interviews, and there had been a lot of money, and chicks. Oh, had there been chicks, and

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  he had slept his way from bed to bed from Los Angeles to New York, from Boston to Selma.

  And then the revolutionary fervor had vanished. The Vietnam war had pumped billions of dollars into America's economy. Almost everybody was working and every paycheck was fat and the money drifted down from the workers to their children, giving them the freedom to spend their time protesting-even against the war which made the protests possible. But as the war dried up, the economy dried up, and would-be revolutionaries found out it wasn't so much fun when there wasn't a check in the mailbox from Daddy, and so they cut their hair and swapped their sandals for shoes and went to college to study accounting or law, and with luck, wound up with a Wall Street firm and a steady paycheck.

  The "leaders" of the revolution got caught in the switches. Suddenly, the money to support their free-living style had dried up. Some of them adjusted quickly. They peddled drugs; they joined religious movements; used to the fast buck, they went wherever they could find th
e fast buck.

  Osgood Harley didn't, because unlike the majority of others, he really believed in a revolution, really wanted the overthrow of capitalist society. And so when the tall man with the black hair and the manicured nails and the beautiful even teeth had looked him up and offered him five thousand dollars if he would participate in a plan to embarrass the new American President, Harley gobbled at the chance.

  Of course, it could have been better. Harley could have worked in public-with mimeographed press releases, and headquarters, and picketers, and sign-carriers-the way he had always

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  worked in the past. But this time, he was told firmly "no." Any publicity and Harley could forget the five thousand dollars. With forty-nine cents in his pocket and a hole in the bottom of his Adidas sneakers, Harley found the choice easy. He would be as silent as smoke.

  Even if the instructions about buying 200 cameras in 200 stores were stupid.

  Harley had just stopped scratching when the doorbell rang. The young man standing in the hall wore a peaked cap with Jensen's Delivery Service embroidered across the front. In his arms he held a large cardboard carton.

  "Mr. Harley?"

  "One and the same."

  "I've got some cameras here for you."

  "Thirty-six to be exact. Come on in." He held the door back and let the younger man enter.

  "Want them any special place?"

  "Not there. Over there near the closet. That's where I've got the rest of them."

  "Rest of them? You've got more?"

  "Sure. Doesn't everybody?" Harley said casually.

  "You must be opening a store," the youth said as he carefully set the box on the floor.

  "Naah. Actually I'm a secret agent for the CIA and this is my newest mission." He grinned the kind of grin designed to impart the feeling that there was more truth than humor in what he had just said. The young man looked at his face with a reciprocal smile, but with narrowed eyes, as if memorizing Harley's face in case they asked questions later.

  "There you go," he said.

  "Good. Thanks. You saved me a lot of trouble."

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