Warren Murphy - Political Pressure

"You going to get the okay from Smitty before you book the commercial time?" Remo was only half listening as they emerged into the auditorium seating areas close to the stage. He was scanning the crowds, looking for signs of a possible attack.

"He would likely wish me to consult with him first," Chiun admitted.

"Probably."

"But he might attempt to interfere."

"He just might."

They helped themselves to empty seats in the front row of the side section as the house lights dimmed. Even Remo's sharp eyes had trouble negotiating the swarms of human beings among the erratic and polarizing stage lights. "You see anything, Little Father?"

"Yes, there she is," Chiun answered, standing on his seat and gesturing back to the great glass picture window of the private box. Sunny Johns waved back and wiped away tears as she leaned against the glass.

"Down in front!" shouted a man a few rows back. A soda can flew in Chiun's direction, and just as it was about to bounce off his pale, wrinkled skull it seemed to reverse course at a tremendous speed, colliding into its thrower with force enough to rob him of consciousness.

"Not her, Chiun. We're here to watch for the bad guys, remember? Gonna assassinate the corrupt governor and we're supposed to stop it? Ring a bell?"

"Why, again, are we doing this?" Chiun asked, taking his seat and scanning the crowds.

"I forget, exactly."

The music blasting out of the sound system was the same 1970s techno-pop used by the city's pro basketball team, whose five consecutive world championships had led to the firing of the entire coaching staff and the departure of all the talented players. The basketball franchise had now settled comfortably into the traditional role of a Chicago sports team, which meant losing with dogged consistency. The song, dating from the team's glory years, still got the crowd revved up for the arrival of the soon-to-be-ex-Governor Jerome Bryant. To deafening applause, Governor Bryant waddled out of the wings, waving a hand to the crowd.

"Cripes, I expected a leather boy on a Harley to come roaring out after that build-up," Remo said.

"Instead you get a trained walrus," Chiun observed, but his interest in the spectacle was obvious.

Governor Bryant waved and lifted the sides of his mouth in an attempt at a smile until the weight of his sagging jowls made the effort too great to sustain. The applause died down after a long minute; only then were the five groups of chanting protesters heard. The crowd resumed its wild applause to drown them out while the state troopers extracted the protesters.

Bryant began delivering his speech, as dry as stale bread. He decried the state's flawed judicial system. He counted as heroes the criminal investigation students of the university who had uncovered new DNA evidence that overturned the convictions of a convicted murderer who had been sitting on death row for years, all the while protesting his innocence.

Remo could appreciate that. After all, he once sat on death row for a crime he didn't commit. If he had been able to use DNA evidence at the time, maybe he would never have gone to the electric chair. He wondered idly where he would be today.

Right where he was, he realized. The frame-up had been engineered by none other than Dr. Harold W. Smith himself, and if there had been a chance DNA evidence would be used in the trial of Remo Williams, then damning DNA evidence would have been planted at the scene of the crime he was accused of.

Then the governor began talking about the further efforts of the university students—actually, it was the next group to come through the same criminal investigations program at the university. They apparently couldn't locate other cases of wrongful conviction that could be proved with a fresh look at the evidence, but they did find many convictions that might be proved false, if and when new technology was developed to cast doubt on the physical evidence used to gain the convictions.

"That trained walrus you talked about would have been more entertaining," Remo said. "Only this guy could make a wild story like this sound like an accounting lecture."

Remo had to admit this guy seemed like a likely target for anybody out to clean up government. He felt like popping the creep himself. Nevertheless he diligently searched the vast crowds and the stage seeking any sign of an imminent attack. The speech ended, and the governor began calling up the convicted murders and rapists by name. Some had nodded off and had to be nudged awake by the governor's aids. One of the sleepers came awake with fists flying and the aide went down for the count, but the ceremony was otherwise uneventful for the first half hour.

Then the pace picked up considerably.

Remo stood, eyes locked on another skybox across the main floor and almost at the rear of the auditorium. The glass of the picture window reflected the stage lights, and inside the skybox were only the tiniest visible glimmers of an exit light.

"Remo?" Chiun asked, standing up beside him.

"Maybe nothing, but check out that skybox."

Chiun's wispy white eyebrows came together as he concentrated on the glass front. Vision was just one of the highly enhanced senses of the trained Sinanju assassins, and the skybox was not far from where they stood, but the auditorium environment made the glass into a mirror that even Chiun couldn't penetrate easily.

Remo had been scanning the back corner of the vast theater when he thought he saw the silhouette of a man beyond the glass with a rifle. When one of the spotlights changed its angle, the reflection decreased for a moment and the two Masters of Sinanju saw into the shadows.

"Sniper," Remo blurted. "I'll go."

That was the moment that the usher came alongside the front row of their balcony. "You want to take your seats, please?" he complained.

Then one of the two men he had been complaining to was gone, and the usher saw him a second later sprinting across the auditorium. Running on heads.

Remo hardly allowed his feet to brush one head before he was on to the next. A small ripple formed in the audience as the diagonal line of people looked up to see what had swept over them.

Remo moved fast, like a harsh wind, and he knew it wasn't fast enough when he saw the silhouette in the skybox crystallize into a man aiming a heavy rifle. As he bounded off the main floor and maneuvered up the balcony over the backs of chairs, over shoulders, over heads, he saw the muzzle-flash and heard the heavy thump of the weapon being fired. The picture window now had a jagged round opening about the size of a rice bowl. An inch of the gun barrel jutted through the hole and fired again, but that was when the sniper spotted Remo coming at him over the heads of the balcony audience. It spoiled his aim.

Remo was moving fast when he spun and slammed his back into the shatter-proof glass. The window was designed to withstand beer cans and Frisbees and all kinds of objects thrown in the auditorium during ball games and rock concerts, but not this. Remo transformed the solid sheet of glass into hundreds of thousands of tiny shards of crystal that flew inward in a deadly hail.

The sniper briefly understood that he was seeing death come at him, too fast to even squeeze his eyes shut.

Remo grabbed the sniper in an unaffectionate embrace and propelled them both toward the rear of the sky- box, feeling the crystal shrapnel chasing him. He and the sniper went into the door with all the grace of a wrecking ball going into a Vegas hotel, then Remo twisted hard, spinning himself and the sniper out the open door frame. The hailstorm of glass came too fast to avoid completely, but Remo moved so fast that the glass skidded across the flesh of his forearm like the grit of a sandstorm and failed to penetrate. Then he and his burden were clear of it, and the sound was like rushing water for a moment until the glass splinters sprinkled to the floor.