Warren Murphy: Prophet Of Doom

"Wha—?" The cameraman looked around. The police were occupied with crowd control. The senator had climbed out of the car and was waving to the crowd. Graciously he helped his wife and daughter from the limo.

The wife was an attractive, sixtyish woman. Her hair color was right out of a bottle and her hair seemed lacquered so tightly into place that if one follicle broke free the entire cliff would explode in a spray of hairpins and dried Lady Clairol flakes. She smiled at the crowd with perfect capped teeth.

The senator was tall and gawky. His hairline had long ago scurried to the back of his head, and his awkward height had given him a slight hunch. Good humor danced in his beady eyes.

Their combined effort, however, was far greater than the sum of both their parts. The daughter, Lori Cole, was beautiful. Fifteen years old and already a heartbreaker. Her wave to the crowd was almost regal.

No sense thinking it, the cameraman thought. Fif-teen'll get you twenty, and besides she was said to be even more conservative than her old man. And anyway, he had a job to do.

A job!

He had forgotten about the old man.

The Asian still stood rooted before him, seemingly as immobile as an ancient, slender elm.

The arrival footage was completely ruined. Maybe he could make up for it with coverage of the speech itself.

The thick black cable that connected his mountain

of remote equipment to the WONK news van snaked directly beneath the robes of the tiny Asian.

The cameraman glanced around. The cops were still busy with the senator. No one was looking his way.

He grabbed the cable in both hands and yanked.

Later, when he awoke in the hospital, the camera­man was assured that he need never worry about ad­equate lighting again. The small battery-operated light meter that he usually affixed to his camera had some­how found itself embedded between his ribs. The far end had been lodged in his heart in such a way that any attempt to remove it would prove fatal.

One of the doctors suggested that until the batteries ran down, he might have a hard time sleeping, but he'd have no trouble reading in bed.

Lester's childhood story had gone on way too long, and appeared to have no point whatsoever-at least none that Remo could discern. Remo was ready to sever Lester's spinal column and go off in search of Ranch Ragnarok by himself, when the large man's at­tention drifted to somewhere across Remo's right shoulder.

"Lordy, Lou, will you look at that," said Lester.

Remo glanced over his shoulder and saw a long black stretch limousine turn onto Thermopolis's main drag.

He looked back at Lester. "So what?" he said.

"So we don't get too many of them stretch jobbies in Thermopolis," whispered Lester. "It must be Sen­ator Cole himself."

The limousine drew to a stop in front of Remo and Lester. For one horror-filled moment Lester thought

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that it was indeed Jackson Cole, come to confront him about the bogus childhood story he had been boring people with for the past forty years. But when the tinted rear window powered silently down, a familiar head that didn't belong to Jackson Cole jutted into view.

Remo recognized the giant ears and nose, as well as the close-cropped stubble of steely gray hair. The forehead seemed to go on forever, and the spindly neck vanished below the edge of the car window. On TV, Moss Monroe looked like Mr. Potato Head, but in real life he looked like Mr. Potato Head on steroids, thought Remo.

Lester was beside himself with shock. "Dang!" he gasped. "Moss Monroe in the flesh!"

"Could you boys just tell me where I could find that Ragnarok Ranch I keep hearin' so gol-darned much about?" a familiar nasal twang asked. His sharp Adam's apple bobbed enthusiastically.

"Um, it's..." Lester began, "you, well, you follow this road to the edge of town and then take a right— no, a left. A left to a blinking amber light. Then just follow the road through the woods." He looked to Remo for agreement.

"How the hell should I know?" Remo returned sharply.

Lester shrugged feebly.

"Well, that's just wonderful, that's just great," came the excited drawl of Moss Monroe from the back of the limo. "I'm much obliged, son. I'm more grateful than a live turkey on the day after Thanksgivin'."

The darkened window rolled back up, and the limo sped off.

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Remo pointed after it. "You'd tell him, but you wouldn't tell me?" he said, peeved.

"Hey, I still remember the '92 campaign," Lester explained nervously. "If he asked for directions to the inside of a lion cage I would have driven him there myself."

Chiun was waiting in the car when Remo returned.

"Things have just gotten more complicated," Remo informed him as he slipped back in behind the wheel.

"I saw the funny little man with the big ears," Chiun said. "Was his friend with him?"

Remo raised an eyebrow. "What friend?"

"The one who did not know his name or where he was. You remember, Remo, he starred in the television program where the president of vice won an argument, but was declared the loser, the next president of vice lost, but was declared the winner and the old man with the hearing aid did not listen to the questions at all."

After the most recent presidential race, which had practically put the nation to sleep, the previous contest seemed like ancient history.

"General Stocking?" Remo said finally. He remembered the geriatric general Moss Monroe had dragged out of mothballs to be his running mate, thus proving to the vast majority of American voters that he was about as serious a presidential contender as Pat Paulsen. "No, Stocking wasn't with him."

Chiun considered. "It is a shame that program was canceled," he said pensively. "It was very funny."

Remo nodded. "At least America would have had a good laugh while it was being mugged," he agreed,

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starting the engine. "Find out anything, Little Father?"

"Do you know those little lights on the sides of television cameras?"

Remo arched an eyebrow. "Yeah?" he said lead-

ingly.

"They are detachable."

And by the look of serenity on the Master of Sin-anju's face, Remo knew enough not to ask.

Chapter Seven

Moss Monroe had become a multibillionaire by accepting a huge number of lucrative business contracts from the federal government, before making himself a household name by publicly railing against the same government policies that had launched him from the ham-and-beans income-tax bracket to the stratosphere of the caviar and private Learjets.

Of course, Moss didn't start complaining until the last of the government checks had cleared.

Monroe first exploded onto the political scene as a guest on the "Barry Duke Live" cable-TV program. On that show Moss Monroe fielded phone calls from average Americans as if he were just another John Q. Public. And when those typical citizens asked what could be done to fix what ailed their country, Monroe was blunt: absolutely nothing could be done. America was finished. He said this, however, with a down-home folksiness that made him sound like a cross between Will Rogers and Jed Clampett, and won over people who couldn't tell down-home from dumbed-down.

From the beginning, people were so captivated by the way Moss Monroe spoke, no one paid much attention to what he was actually saying.

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His legislative agenda had the intellectual complexity of a Road Runner cartoon, and his entire political philosophy—though discussed with a reverence that made one think it had been carved of Mount Sinai granite—had been written by a five-hundred-dollar-per-hour PR agent.

The pithiest of these "Mossy Musings" were laminated on a set of giant glossy placards that Monroe carted around wherever he went to sell himself. Because that was exactly what his entire game was: selling Moss Monroe, political savior.