Warren Murphy - Waste Not, Want Not

"Hello, American friend who frightens me," said Vlad Korkusku, slapping on an insincere smile. "I'm not your friend. And if you're the one trying to kill us, you're going to get the Chernobyl of wedgies."

"Kill you? No, no. Am not killing you," Vlad Korkusku insisted. "Hotel worker said I could find you here. I have come with message from Agent Bulganin. She is in needing of your assistance."

"Soon as I get a thanks for the first twenty times I helped her in the last two days, I'll consider it. Until then, Mother Russia can take a flying leap."

The SVR agent was standing in his way. Remo picked up the big man with the ease of a grandmother rearranging the wicker furniture. He set Korkusku to one side.

"Is important," Korkusku pleaded. "I was away from embassy for a time. Only just found message she left. She did not give full details for sake of security. Just said that there was great danger and to find you if I could, and to reassemble my squad if I could not. She took only one SVR agent with her to presidential palace. I have to be coming to Novgorod to round up rest."

"Yeah?" Remo scowled. He turned to his teacher. "Say, Chiun, maybe they don't care about us at all. Maybe they followed this schmuck."

"They are not watching him-they are watching us," the old Korean pointed out.

Korkusku was confused. "Who is watching who?"

"The killers who have us surrounded," Remo said, peeved. "Do you mind?"

Startled, Vlad Korkusku reached under his jacket. He found an empty holster. He looked pleadingly at Remo.

"No, I am not telling you where I hid your guns," Remo said impatiently. "If you've got the urge to kill and maim, use a Russian cookbook. Besides, they don't want you. Now beat it. I've had it with cleaning up bodies."

Korkusku didn't seem to know what to do. With great reluctance-and all the while studying the growing shadows-he left Remo and Chiun to get in their car.

The SVR man got no more than a few feet when there came a sharp pop. His black shoes skidded on pavement. There was a gasp that seemed strangled in his throat.

Korkusku spun back to Remo and Chiun, a look of panicked bafflement on his sagging face. One hand was clutched to his chest. Blood gurgled between his fingers.

"Crap," Remo said. "Never a minute's peace." This time when the men opened fire on him, Remo didn't head in the opposite direction. With an angry frown he headed straight for the gunman in the bushes.

The man took careful aim at Remo and fired. When he missed-and continued missing-he grew more and more panicked. With one bullet left and realizing now that there was no chance of hitting the stranger he had been sent to kill, the man sprang abruptly to his feet.

"Brother, the rapture is upon us!" he cried.

And, placing the barrel of his gun against his own temple, he pulled the trigger.

The man on the dock followed suit. By the time Remo reached them, the gunmen were two twitching corpses.

Remo checked for ID. Like the men in their hotel room, they had none. He returned to his teacher's side.

"You were right, Little Father," Remo said. "That guy wasn't Mayanan. He sounded like he was from the Midwest."

There was a gurgle from the ground. He went over to where Vlad Korkusku was gasping for breath on the pavement.

When Remo saw the condition of the SVR man's wound, he frowned morosely. "Too bad."

"I am going to die?" the Russian pleaded.

"Worse for me. You're gonna make it." He shook his head. "Life. Always it's gotta make more work for Remo."

Scooping the Russian agent off the ground, he dumped him like a sack of Ukrainian beets in the back of his rented car.

Chapter 28

The President of the United States leaned in close to hear the whispered words of his chief of staff.

As he listened, he tried not to chew the inside of his cheek. His wife had been on him to stop this old habit, which the Washington press corps had dubbed a smirk.

The press held the smirk up as proof positive that this President was an unserious frat boy who had somehow stumbled into his role as national leader. Which was strange, really, because the same press that dubbed this President unserious for a smirk found very serious his immediate predecessor, a man who had devoted so much time and energy to exposing himself to women during his time in office that once-after one exhausting, zipper-free summer vacation on Cape Cod-naval doctors at Bethesda had had to apply sunburn ointment to his very raw, tenderest of presidential areas. But that was then and this was now and this grown-up President who had learned from his mommy as a very little boy how to keep his belt buckled and his pants up at his waist was regularly eviscerated by the Washington press for his unserious smirk.

"I'm not sure who he was," the chief of staff was saying. He kept his voice pitched low. "But he had clearance. He wanted to talk directly to you."

"Let me guess," the President said, exhaling unhappily. "General Smith, right?"

"No," the chief of staff said, a hint of surprise in his voice. "Undersecretary Smith, actually. With the Treasury Department. You know him?"

"Just by reputation," the President replied.

"Oh. Well, I don't know who he is, and neither do any of the Secret Service here. He's in their database as a Treasury employee, but when I had them check out his office they said it was a storage closet."

"He doesn't have a regular office there," the President said, vaguely uncomfortable. "He's more of a floater."

"Oh." The chief of staff seemed to expect a more complete answer, but when he saw one was not forthcoming he forged ahead. "Well, it's just lucky the treasury secretary was with us to confirm this wasn't one of his regular staff. Otherwise they might have dragged you out of here."

"I'm not going anywhere," the President said firmly.

The chief of staff nodded. "I knew that," he said. "I just thought you should know. He sounded so serious. Like it really was life and death. But as long as you seem to know, I suppose everything's okay. Excuse me, sir."

The chief of staff hurried over to confer with the chief executive's press secretary.

As soon as he left the president's side, yet another group of men came up to shake the President's hand. The President politely obliged.

He couldn't begin to guess how many hands he had shaken since arriving in Mayana earlier that afternoon. Hundreds since that first handshake at the airport with Executive President Blythe Curry-Hume. There would be hundreds-perhaps thousands-more before this Globe Summit was over.

As he shook the hands of a delegation from a country that regularly denounced the United States at the UN, he considered his chief of staff's message.

The President wasn't surprised his chief of staff would be concerned. The man who had called had access to his private number and knew all the special codes. And the President himself might actually have been concerned. That was, if he had not been expecting the call.

So far the President had had members of his staff bring warnings to him from General Smith, Special Agent Smith, Field Director Smith and now Undersecretary Smith.

The President had to hand it to Dr. Harold W. Smith. The director of CURE was tenacious.

Smith had expressed reservations about the President's plan to attend the Globe Summit right from the start. His concern had only grown more acute these past few days. With the capture of the Russian submarine, the older man had relaxed some of his concerns. But now, not one day later, he had doubtless found yet another reason for the President to cut short his visit.

The President was not about to leave. Yes, there was potential danger in coming to South America. But the greatest threat had obviously been the rogue submarine off Mayana's coast, and that had been dealt with. According to intelligence, the Russian government was telling the truth. It was not behind the sub attacks. The Globe Summit was as safe-and as dangerous-as everywhere else in the world. The President of the United States couldn't alter his schedule based on undefined risk or he would spend his entire tenure in office hiding in a bombproof cave under the Rockies.