Political Pressure td-135

by Warren Murphy

  "In your miserable American face!" the British woman shrieked.

  The sobbing man snatched her up by the neck while the senator and his escort entered the building unhurriedly. The Secret Service agents stood around acting as if there were nothing out of the ordinary taking place.

  Flicker couldn't believe his luck. "Thank you, God," he breathed, going limp into a leather chair. They had just avoided a catastrophe.

  "I hired him," Kohd said simply, nodding at the video feed. "The bricklayer. Paid him ten grand to disrupt the reporting."

  Flicker nodded. "I see. Good move."

  "No problem." Kohd was calm, unsmiling. He was always calm and unsmiling, one hundred percent of the time. He could have been a Secret Service agent.

  Kohd was darn competent, as well. If tape of Whites- law hobbling bravely into his office had made it onto the networks, the senator would have become a hero. That would make him untouchable; killing a hero only strengthened the hero's cause.

  Whiteslaw had gone from a thorn in the side of Orville Flicker to a poison pill. He was the man who could neuter MAEBE.

  He had to die and he had to die today—before people started liking him for all the wrong reasons.

  "Where's Rubin?"

  "En route," Kohd said.

  "Why wasn't he there to intercept Whiteslaw?"

  "Rush-hour traffic. He'll be there in ten. They'll be staged for an assault within fifteen. Mr. Flicker?" Kohd nodded at one of the monitors, where the senator's ugly face floated over the left shoulder of a female news anchor.

  Flicker unmuted it. The anchor was a blond, benign woman whom Flicker knew from his White House days.

  She had failed to succumb to his charms. When he was President, that bitch would be one of the first to go on the blacklist.

  She started talking about a press conference.

  "...on the steps of the Old Senate Office Building in one hour."

  "Those bastards. They're taunting me."

  "Sir?" Kohd asked. He had just one phone against his head, which was about as much attention as he ever gave anyone.

  "Look at all those Secrets around there. They didn't lift a finger. This whole scene was staged to draw us out. We didn't bite so they'll try it again, in the same damn place, just to make it convenient."

  "Perhaps, sir. Another wrinkle has come to our attention, sir. The pair that escorted the senator inside? They match the descriptions we have from our losses in recent days. Chicago, Colorado, San Fran and today."

  Orville Flicker became very nervous then, and began going back and forth over the video, which he had saved to his hard drive. He had been so worried about the reporters he had not paid much attention to the senator.

  Over and over he replayed the footage of Senator Herbert Whiteslaw being assisted from the ambulance and walking slowly through the media turmoil and into the building. The senator's face was perfectly focused through much of the footage, and yet the faces of the men on either side of him were a blur the entire time.

  "Electronic interference?" Flicker asked.

  Kohd shook his head. "Creating a perfectly localized visual distortion? Never heard of such a thing."

  "But it could be, right?"

  "I'd say you're grasping at straws, but what else could it be?" Kohd clearly believed it was something else.

  Flicker shook his head slightly, his insides growing colder. He was thinking back to the chaos he had witnessed at the Governor Bryant assassination. There were men who moved like flickering light, neutralizing his sniper and every other man in his Midwest cell in just seconds. Flicker was taunted on the radio by someone, and then there had been the glimpse of a brightly colored wraith drifting across the auditorium, searching for him. Could the wraith had been a man in a kimono, of all things?

  Of course it could. Once you accepted the notion of a human being who floated with the speed of a shadow, why not put him in a kimono?

  Even without a visible face it was clear enough on the video feed that one of the men assisting the wounded senator was a man in a long, golden robe with multicolored stitching. The other man was dressed just as unexpectedly, when you considered that he should have been a Secret Service agent. The man was in a T-shirt, of all things, and casual slacks.

  Just minutes ago the worst enemy to his future had been a senator with an old grudge and a new bill. Now it was something new—these two.

  "They are very special agents of some kind," Flicker said. "How come I never knew about them? The President told me almost everything."

  "Maybe the President doesn't know about them himself."

  "They've got presidential backing now. You've got to throw a hell of a lot of weight around to get the Service to fall in line. Only the President's got that kind of muscle. Unless—they're Secrets themselves."

  "Considering the duty they're pulling, that makes sense," Kohd stated. "A clandestine branch specifically for protecting the politicians in high-risk security situations. But their purview must include investigative duties. And assassination."

  "Yes," Flicker said, staring at the blur of a face on a bizarre, short body in its colorful robe. The hands of the man were in focus, and they were wrinkled with age.

  "Assassination is illegal," Kohd added. He was feeling uncomfortable. Flicker didn't notice. Kohd was uncomfortable because of the look he was seeing on his boss's face—a sort of excitement. Kohd added, "If they are what we think, these men represent an officially sanctioned but blatantly unconstitutional federal entity."

  "Almost certainly with presidential knowledge and backing," Flicker said, smiling like a teenaged boy watching his girlfriend get naked. "They're my ace in the hole."

  "Sir?" Kohd wasn't following and wasn't sure he wanted to.

  "Call the airport. We're going to D.C."

  35

  Harold Smith lifted the red phone. "Yes, sir?"

  "Smith, I just got a call from my old press manager, Orville Flicker," said the President of the United States.

  "Really?"

  "He's on his way to D.C."

  "I see."

  "He'd like to meet with me. He made some veiled threats."

  "Such as?"

  "He said he knows about my assassins, Smith. Says he'd like to talk it over before he goes public."

  "I see."

  "Excuse me, are you listening? If that little twerp exposes CURE, I'm finished! My administration will experience the fastest impeachment of all time!"

  "It's under control, Mr. President. We know what evidence he has, and it's useless."

  "But he knows something, Smith," the President insisted. "He might use it He knows how to get attention."

  "He knows nothing, Mr. President," Dr. Smith assured him. "Mr. Flicker is only making an educated guess, and he will not use it. After tonight, I believe, he will have no credibility left."

  Smith, without a second thought, hung up on the President and replayed the videotape on his screen. Mark Howard had just finished working with a digital video stream they had intercepted feeding into the Flicker residence in Dallas.

  Mark's changes were expertly done. Smith couldn't see the editing.

  Still, there was much about this exercise that made him feel grim, and angry.

  36

  "I dig your threads, man," Remo said with genuine pleasure.

  "Fah!" Chiun snapped.

  "But it's the shades what make the suit."

  "Leave me be, idiot!"

  The senator was looking from one to the other, unable to come to terms with this pair of, well, whatever they were. They had squabbled like siblings ever since the old one was informed he needed to dress like an agent from the Service.

  "Never! Not for all the gold under Fort Knox!"

  The young one, Remo, finally convinced the old one to wear a dark suit jacket and dark glasses over his robe, which was obviously a traditional Asian garment of some kind.

  "How will I see the projectiles with my vision obscured?" the old man demanded.r />
  "You can take them off as soon as we get to the podium," Remo told him. "Nobody will be looking at you then, anyway."

  The senator had his doubts about that. The old man, whose name he couldn't quite get his tongue around, was an unusual sight, and the jacket didn't disguise much of his unusualness. Everything else aside, he was a head shorter than any Service agent in history.

  "We're ten minutes late—we ready or not?" demanded the senator's executive assistant, who served as his press secretary.

  "I'm ready," Remo declared, folding his hands in front of him in a standard Service pose. "You ready, Little Father?"

  The Asian made the sound of a striking cobra.

  "He's ready," Remo told the assistant.

  "I was asking the senator!"

  "Oh. You ready, Senator?"

  "Yes," he said to Remo, caught himself and said "Yes," to his assistant. She went to announce him, muttering.

  "You must fire that woman," the Asian man instructed Whiteslaw. "She called us names."

  "She'd divorce me if I fired her."

  They emerged from the front doors of the Old S.O.B. The media was everywhere. The public cheered the elected official who had been attacked so heroically.

  The senator was still being supported by the men as he walked, and they transported him with minimal fuss and without effort, as far as he could tell. They were scanning the crowd, and the sunglasses were lifted off their eyes the moment that all three of them came to stop at the oversized podium.

  Whiteslaw was sweating under thick armor, but his head was entirely exposed. He still didn't quite understand how he was supposed to be protected in the event of a head shot from a sniper. He hoped he wasn't going to regret this....

  Before the senator even opened his mouth the first shot was fired. Whiteslaw's first indication was when his vision was obscured. Somebody had put a big piece of metal in front of his face and before he could think it over there was a heavy metallic crunch, followed a second later by the sound of the shot.

  Somebody had just fired a sniper rifle, right at his head, and the one called Remo had shielded him with a piece of armor plating that looked as if it had been literally ripped from under the body panels of one of the Service's armored cars. There were pieces of the electronic door latch dangling from it.

  Next thing the senator knew, he was stuffed into the podium's hollow and the inch-thick steel door was slammed in his face. He was in darkness.

  Rubin swore. Of all the dumb luck. They had to have guessed the sniper would fire the moment the Senator was in place, which meant they knew that the intent was to keep Whiteslaw from appearing on the media. Well, so far the news had nothing more than a few shots of him walking to the microphone, but the man was still alive, and conveniently trapped by his own bodyguards inside the armored shell of the podium.

  General Rubin smirked at the foolishness of that act. The podium would be Senator Whiteslaw's coffin.

  "Move in," he snapped into his radio and saw his four men push through the crowds of onlookers. Their attack came only heartbeats after the failed sniper bullet, and the Service was too slow. In fact, the Service seemed to be keeping to the fringes.

  The pair in the middle were the ones who mattered, anyway. Rubin didn't know who they were, but according to his boss their deaths were just as important as that of the senator. Thanks to the new hardware his men was using, their deaths were a sure thing. No more machine guns. They had sawed-off combat shotguns, with a wide, deadly spread.

  Rubin's men shoved their way into the open and targeted the podium pair, but for some reason there were no sounds of gunfire. Where were the shotgun blasts?

  General Rubin of the White Hand had an unobscured view of the action. What he saw was the pair from the podium moving among his men like darting birds, snatching shotguns like worms. The shotguns clattered on the walkway and, like worms, they were now curved and bent. Useless.

  The gunners were going for their backup weapons, but were demolished before they freed any of them. Rubin saw the light, impossibly swift strokes and didn't trust his own eyes. It was too swift, like flashes of sunlight The collapse of his four men was slow by comparison, and their precise wounds left Rubin with no doubts that they were dead.

  How had this all gone so wrong so fast? Who were these two?

  Whoever they were, they had no real cover. They wouldn't escape a sniper.

  "Morton, take them out," Rubin said into his radio.

  At that moment the pair turned and looked right at him, as if they had heard his voice.

  "I'll get that guy." Remo spotted the man who was coordinating the attack. He was ensconced in a portable electronic sound booth, where the media had been required to stage its retransmitting equipment. Equipment trucks had not been allowed anywhere near the press conference.

  Remo stepped around an incoming .357 sniper round that would have disemboweled him. The bullet chopped a hole in the pavement and sent concrete shards raining against the armored podium that protected the senator from California.

  "The long-range boomer must be eradicated first," Chiun declared. "Draw his fire."

  Chiun vanished as the next sniper shot passed through the spot where his body had been, continuing into the building facade.

  Missed one old S.O.B. and tagged another, Remo thought as he retreated, maneuvering away from the screaming crowds who had the good sense to panic and flee. The Secret Service agents were also taking cover in flocks. Orders were shouted. Agents started moving out. They could not have been less relevant to the goings-on.

  Remo dodged more rounds, trying to look lucky instead of deliberate, but the man who was coordinating the attack knew something was going on. Remo was trapped where he was. He had to keep the sniper's attention until Chiun neutralized him, but he wouldn't want to lose the one doing the supervising.

  The man in the equipment booth bolted, knocking a pair of cowering equipment operators into their equipment. Dammit, where was Chiun?

  Remo's gaze shifted back to the nearby rooftop where the sniper crouched. A rainbow of gold swept across the roof and pounced on the gunman's position, then Chiun stood and waved. The gunner was history. The crowd could now panic in peace, without risk of taking sniper rounds.

  Remo ran fast, vaulting over a concrete barricade and glimpsing the fleeing man, but the electronics booth blew apart before he touched down. He felt it coming and rolled, exhaling, absorbing the blast as it rolled overhead, then springing to his feet again. A glance showed him four or five bodies in the booth, but the real goal of the explosive was to ensure no further transmissions came from this place.

  Remo Williams was sick and tired of it all. Perception and promotion and how leaders were marketed to the gullible masses. What sort of a sick bunch of idiots allowed their nation to roll on the rails of advertising in lieu of common sense? What had they come to when it was okay to blow up a handful of people to keep the wrong fucking commercial off the fucking television?

  "You!"

  He had his victim by the arm before the man even knew it, and Remo stopped. The man kept running and almost tore his own arm out by the socket.

  "Let go of me!" General Rubin cried.

  "I hate television," Remo told him.

  "What?"

  "Commercials and propaganda and promotions and sound bites and all that crap. I hate it!"

  "Fine! Let go of me!"

  Remo removed the 9 mm handgun from his victim's hand and squeezed the muzzle closed before dropping it. "I don't care if it's the nightly news. I don't care if it's the Exciting Tomatoes. It's all the same bullshit."

  The man found his combat knife, finally, and tried to cut off the wrist of the hand, like an iron vise, that held him. Remo took the knife away, snapped it, dropped it. "Magazines, too. Billboards. Whatever. It's all crap and so are you."

  "I'm not in marketing!" Rubin promised.

  "Sure, you are. You just killed five innocent men, just to keep the competitor's commercial from
going on the boob tube. You know what that makes you?"

  "I'm just a soldier. Okay, I'm a murderer! Arrest me!"

  "You're worse than a murderer," Remo told him, a

  savage grimace on his face, a deadly cold in his eyes. "You are an advertising executive."

  "I'm not!"

  "Do you know what I do to advertising executives?" "I don't know and I don't want to know!" "But I want to show you."

  Remo showed General Rubin exactly what he did to advertising executives.

  37

  "Hi, Smitty. Where's this guy Orville Flicker at right now?"

  "Why do you ask?" Smith asked.

  "I'm going to go kill him."

  "We can't kill him. It will make him a martyr. We need to put an end to this movement entirely."

  "You said that before. Now he's gone and wiped out a bunch more innocent people. Just some dopey techies standing around fiddling with their electronics. How many more people have got to get killed before it's enough?"

  "Remo, Flicker may be just the tip of the iceberg. What if there are five more men capable of organizing the White Hand?"

  "I'll kill them, too."

  "Eventually, but first you'll have strengthened MAEBE by turning Flicker into a saint. The White Hand's activities will be further legitimized."

  "Then what, Smitty? What do we do?"

  "We're fighting back."

  "Yeah, and a lot of good it's doing."

  "Not you and Chiun," Smith said calmly. "Mark and I are playing the MAEBE game."

  Remo frowned at Chiun, who was standing outside the phone booth watching the dirty wisps of smoke drifting up from the blast site in front of the Old Senate Office Building, three miles away from where they stood. Chiun shrugged in answer to the unasked question.

  "We don't get it," Remo said.

  "We're countermarketing," Smith said. "We're creating negative publicity for MAEBE. We're tarnishing their halos."

  "You gonna save lives using press releases? I don't think so."