Warren Murphy - The Final Crusade

When it didn't come, he raised his head and peered over his bare forearm.

The Master of Sinanju was standing over him, the valise held in both hands.

"Dud?" Remo asked dazedly.

"I would not say that. Others might. I would not. You are slow, even clumsy. But I would not call you a dud."

"I meant the explosives in that bag," Remo said, getting to his feet.

Chiun opened the valise and presented the contents for Remo's inspection.

"I know nothing of these devices. How can one tell if it is a dud?"

Remo looked into the valise. There was an electrical contraption fused with a claylike black of plastic explosives.

"It didn't go off," Remo asked dully.

"Of course not. Why should it?"

"Because I pressed the frigging detonator by accident!" Remo shouted. "I felt the electricity go through the wires. Why did you think I was running around like a maniac, throwing the other charges into the air where they wouldn't hurt anything?"

"I thought it was one of your loud American holidays. You know, like the First of July."

"Fourth of July. And I did it to save our lives."

"How disappointing."

"That I saved our lives?"

"No," said Chiun. "That you did it in such a ridiculous way."

"I suppose you know a better way?"

"Yes. "

"Prove it."

"Instead of throwing the explosives into the air where they could injure innocent birds, you might have pulled the wire from the other end. Like so." And Chiun displayed the opposite end of the detonating wire in one hand.

Remo looked at him uncomprehendingly. "I don't get it," he said.

"It is the electricity that causes the ka-boom?"

"Right. There was no way to stop it. I felt the juice leave the detonator."

"And I stopped it from reaching the ka-boomer."

"You pulled the wire before the juice reached the charges?" Remo said in a dumbfounded voice.

"Was there a better way?" asked Chiun with an innocent face.

Chapter 8

Once outside the FBI building, Harold Smith hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take him to the cheapest hotel in the District of Columbia that was still reasonably presentable. Smith named the hotel. Smith knew the name of every cheap but presentable hotel in every major American city. He prided himself on how much money he saved the taxpayers by his frugal habits.

The ride to the hotel took him within viewing distance of the Lincoln Memorial. With a barely repressed sigh of relief, Smith saw that the memorial was intact. The National Guardsmen were just picking themselves off the ground. Grit and metallic fragments were still drifting down from the boiling ball of smoke that hung over the building.

"Looks like the Guard saved the day," the driver called back.

"Concentrate on your driving, please," said Smith.

"Humph," the driver said, wondering who this stiff was, who didn't care whether or not the Lincoln Memorial was still standing.

Smith tipped the driver exactly thirty-seven cents for a five-dollar ride and registered at the hotel. They gave him a room in the back with a folding bed, and Smith immediately took the room phone off the hook so he would not be disturbed. He expected Remo to check in at any moment, but Remo would be calling on the special phone which Smith carried in his briefcase. In the meanwhile, there was work to do.

Smith set his briefcase on the scarred writing table and opened it. Seating himself like a student about to take a difficult test, he checked the portable phone unit to make sure the dial tone sounded. He replaced the receiver in the modem receptacle. It dialed a number automatically. Then Smith booted up the mini-computer. Working off the mainframe at Folcroft, the mini-computer accessed the true power of CURE-its vast data base. Compiled over the two decades Smith had run CURE, it was the ultimate information-retrieval center for information both important and obscure. What Smith's memory banks did not contain, Smith could access by infiltrating virtually any computer in the nation, from the Social Security files to any home computer that worked off the phone lines.

Smith keyed in a name and then hit the Control button. Instantly a column of text began scrolling. Smith digested the traveling data silently.

A blinking light indicated an incoming call. Smith hit the Pause button and picked up the receiver. "Remo?"

"Who else? We saved the day."

"So I noticed," Smith said. He was still reading. His voice was crisp but preoccupied.

"There's something funny going on, Smitty. I think the hijacking in Honolulu was connected to this Lincoln Memorial thing. Both groups wanted a guy named Dullard."

"Sluggard. Reverend Eldon Sluggard," said Smith. "I'm reading a file on him right now."

"He ran for President last year, didn't he?"

"No, you're thinking of the Reverend Sandy Krinkles."

"Krinkles. Wasn't he the guy whose wife turned out to be-"

"No, that was another man entirely. But never mind that. I got Sluggard's name from the terrorist I interrogated. "

"You broke him, huh?" Remo asked admiringly.

"Yes."

"What'd you use? Bamboo shoots under the fingernails?"

"No," said Smith.

When Smith did not elaborate, Remo said, "Hold on, Chiun is trying to say something. What's that, Little Father? Oh, yeah? Hey, Smitty, guess what? Chiun says his hijackers were asking about Sluggard too. What is this guy? Hostage of the month?"

"Reverend Eldon Sluggard is-or was-one of the most successful television evangelists in history. He's also the only one who so far has not been tainted by the series of scandals that have rocked that field. Why representatives of a foreign power want him so badly that they would virtually invade America is something we must find out. Please come to my hotel at once."

"What's the address?" Remo asked.

Smith gave it and hung up. He went back to work. Inwardly he was pleased that Remo and Chiun had saved the Lincoln Memorial, but the crisis was too pressing to waste valuable time. According to the terrorist Smith had broken, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran wanted Reverend Eldon Sluggard, and wanted him badly enough to risk American retaliation. The crime, according to the terrorist, was making war on Islam, and in addition, sowing corruption on earth. Smith knew that the latter was a catch phrase used by the revolutionary courts to legally execute pro-Western Iranians and stone women judged insufficiently pious.

The terrorist had told Smith all that he knew. But it was meager and filled with generalities. Smith had wasted a full hour of the four-hour session with the man trying to pin him down on specifics. When the man began blubbering, Smith knew he was just a man taking orders, a fanatic without true facts. Still, what Smith had learned was vitally important.

A telltale light flashed in the margin of the computer screen. Smith hit a key. It was the media-monitoring function. The system was alerting him that the name he had tagged for critical analysis, Reverend Eldon Sluggard, was right now holding a press conference that was being carried live by the news services.

Smith left the computer and turned on the room's television.

The overfed face of Reverend Eldon Sluggard, speaking in a Southern-fried Georgia accent, appeared on the screen. Sluggard wiped sweat off his lined brow with a handkerchief.

"Mah own theory, gentlemen," he was saying, "is that the mullahs in Ah-ran have finally shown their true anti-Christian colors. They have declared themselves to be enemies of Christianity. Because of mah vast influence and ministerial work abroad, they have targeted me as the man they must defeat before they can export their religious beliefs to this country."

"Is your TV show beamed into Iran?" he was asked by an unseen reporter.

"No, but Ah speak the word of the Lord, and it knows no national boundary or wavelength."