Warren Murphy: Chinese Puzzle

"Well?" said the young man. His shock of sandy hair was combed dry. His suit was light gray and neat. He stood with a slight stoop from a recurring back injury.

"Well what, Mr. President?"

"What do you think of the people asking you questions about yourself?"

"They did their job, sir."

"But how would you evaluate them?"

"I wouldn't. Not for you, Mr. President."

"Why not?"

"Because that's not my function, sir. I'm sure you have people expert at such things."

"I am the President of the United States. Is your answer still no?"

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Thank you. Good day. By the way, you've just lost your job. What is your answer now?"

"Good day, Mr. President."

"Dr. Smith, what would you say if I told you I could have you killed?"

"I would pray for our nation."

"But you would not tell me what I asked?"

"No."

"All right. You win. Name your job."

"Forget it, Mr. President."

"You may leave," said the young, handsome man. "You have one week to reconsider."

A week later, he found himself back in the same office, refusing again to give the President the evaluation he had asked for. Finally the President spoke.

"Enough games, Dr. Smith. I have very bad news for you." His voice was no longer insinuating. It was honest, and it was frightened.

"I'm going to be killed," Smith suggested.

"Maybe you will wish you were. First, let me shake your hand and offer you my deepest respects."

Dr. Smith did not take his hand.

"No," said the President. "I guess you wouldn't. Dr. Smith, this nation will have a dictatorship within a decade. There is no question about it. Machiaelli noted that in chaos exists the seeds of dictatorship. We are entering chaos.

"Under the constitution, we cannot control organized crime. We cannot control revolutionaries. There are so many things we cannot control... not under the constitution. Dr. Smith, I love this country and believe in it. I think we are going through trying times, but that they will pass. But I also think our government needs the help of some outside force to survive as a democracy."

The President had looked up. "You, Dr. Smith, will head that outside force. Your assignment will be to work outside the constitution to preserve the process of this government. Where there is corruption, end it. Where there is crime, stop it. Use any means you wish, short of taking human life. Help me protect our nation, Dr. Smith." The President's voice was anguished.

Smith had waited a long time before responding. Then he said: "It is dangerous, sir. Suppose I sought power to control the nation?"

"I did not exactly pick you up off the street."

"I see. I assume, sir, you have some sort of program worked out to dismantle this project if necessary?"

"Do you want to know about it?"

"If I take this assignment, no."

"I didn't think so." He passed a portfolio to Dr. Smith. "Your budgetary procedures, operating instructions, everything I could think of are in these notes. There are many details. Cover stories for you and your family. Acquisition of property. Hiring of staff. It will be difficult, Dr. Smith, since no one is aware of it but we two."

The President added: "I will tell my successor and he will tell his successor, and should you die, Dr. Smith, your organization will automatically dissolve."

"What if you should die, sir?"

"My heart is fine and I have no intention of assassination."

"What if you should be assassinated without it being your intention?"

The President smiled.

"Then it will be up to you to tell the next President."

So on a cold day, one November, Dr. Smith informed the new President of the United States of his organization.

And this time, all that President had said, was "Shoot. You mean if Ah want you to rub someone out, anyone, Ah can just say so?"

"No."

"Good. Cause for sure, Ah would have sent all you people out behind the barn to play in the daisies."

And that President had told this President, showing him the phone through which the headquarters of the secret organization, CURE, could be reached. And he had warned him that the only things a President could do was to dissolve the organization or ask for something within its mission. He could not order a mission.

And now another President was asking.

But for the light on the desk, it was dark and now the President queried, because the man before him had hesitated.

"Well?" he asked.

"I wish your people within the government could do the job."

"I wish they could too. But they have failed."

"I must seriously consider dismantling the organization," Smith said.

The President sighed. "It is very hard to be President sometimes. Please, Dr. Smith."

The President leaned into the sharp light on his desk and held his forefinger and thumb a pencil width apart. "We're this close to peace, Dr. Smith. This close."

Smith could see the tired courage in the President's face, the steel discipline pushing the man toward his goal of peace.

"I will do what you ask, Mr. President, although it will be difficult. Exposing that person as a bodyguard or even an investigator might lead to someone who knew him while he was living, recognizing his voice."

"While he was living?" the President said.

Smith ignored the unspoken question. He stood up and the President stood with him. "Good luck, Mr. President." He took the offered hand, as he had failed, and since regretted many times, to take the hand of another President years before. As he turned to walk out the door, he said: "I will assign that person."

CHAPTER FOUR

Remo was at peak. He could see the old Korean looking for the slightest wrinkle on the toilet paper and finding none, looking up in surprise. He had been training Remo for almost a solid year now since a miscalculation had kept Remo at peak for three straight months.

Remo did not wait for a compliment which would not come. In seven years of intermittent training, compliments had been rare. Remo got dressed by peeling off the ninja suit and putting on jockey shorts, white tee shirt, and covering them with slacks and a green sports shirt. He slipped into sandals, then brushed his short hair. He had gotten used to his face in the last seven years, the high cheekbones, the straighter nose, that hairline that receded just a little more. He had almost forgotten the face he used to have, back before he had been framed for a murder he did not commit and escorted to an electric chair that did not quite work, although everyone else but his new employers had thought it worked.

"Good enough," said Chiun and Remo blinked. A compliment? From Chiun? He had been acting strangely since August but a compliment for doing something right after failing so many times was incredibly strange.

"Good enough?" Remo asked.

"For a white man whose government is stupid enough to recognize China, yes."

"Please, Chiun, not that again," Remo said in exasperation. It was not that Chiun resented America recognizing Red China, he resented anyone recognizing any China. And that had caused the incidents.

Remo could not cry, but he felt moistness making demands on his eyes.

"Even for a Korean, little father?" He knew Chiun liked the title. When Remo had used it in those first days when the burns were still on his forehead and wrists and ankles where the electrodes had been placed, Chiun had rebuked him. Perhaps it had been the joking tone of voice; perhaps it was that Chiun had not believed he would live. In was back in those early days when Reno discovered the first people who also believed that, as a Newark policeman, he had not shot that pusher in an alley.

He knew he hadn't. And that was when the whole crazy life began. With the monk in to give him last rites, with a little pill on the end of his cross, asking him if he wanted to save his soul or his ass. And the pill in his mouth, and the last walk to the chair, and biting into the pill, and passing out, thinking that this was the way all condemned men were brought to the chair, by lying to them that they would be saved.