Warren Murphy: Master's Challenge

"Where is Remo?"

"Serving you through glorifying the name of the House of Sinanju."

"I have to talk to him now."

"I would never be one to say no to an emperor," Chiun said.

"Where are you calling from?" Smith asked.

"I am in Sinanju. This is the only telephone," Chiun answered proudly.

"And where is Remo?"

"He is at work."

"What specifically is he doing that he cannot come to the phcjne now? I've got to have a specific answer, Chiun. Specific."

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Smith listened, nodding every now and then. Chiun talked for 3.5 minutes. The computer had that. The computer also recorded what Chiun had said so Smith could go over it again. The computer could put the old Korean's sing-song English into print and also analyze most probable meanings. When Chiun was finished talking and Smith was finished questioning, he turned to the computer to try to understand what he had heard.

The computer struggled and then quantified. There was a 98.7 percent certainty that Remo was off somewhere at some form of contest and could not be bothered with saving the life of just another American president. There was a 38.6 percent possibility that this contest had something to do with his training.

The computer had understood nothing else.

It was 4 P.M. when Harold W. Smith used the red telephone again. He waited, his face impassive. He did not have Remo, but it was not a time to dwell on what one did not have. One did with what one had, no matter how deficient. He had learned that as a child growing up in the small New Hampshire town. You did not boast. You did not shirk. You did not complain. You made do.

Somehow he remembered Irma while waiting for his president to answer. She was so pretty then. She was the rich girl of the town, and he thought he would die when he had to wear patched trousers to school, because he knew his desk would be near hers. But he went. It was as hard then to wear those trousers to the school as it was now to tell his president about an attempt on his life and that he had no means of protecting the president. He was going to have to tell his president he had failed.

"Hello again," came the friendly voice. "We had a bit of a to-do here. You know a bomb went off right here in the White House. If I hadn't gone to take your phone call, it would have gotten me."

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"There is going to be another attempt on your life at 6 A.M. tomorrow."

"They'd better not succeed. I don't have time to die."

"Sir, not only has your protective shield been penetrated, but your Secret Service somehow doesn't seem able to respond."

"Well, then, I guess it's your job. You can do it. The president before me said that the only regret he had was that he didn't use your people on the Iranian hostage thing. You take care of it and let me get back to work. I work until five."

"Mr. President, that specific enforcement arm that your predecessor spoke of is engaged elsewhere."

"I see," the president's voice said mellowly over the phone. "Well, if it's more important than my life, I accept that. I'll try to work things out here. The Secret Service has been compromised, you say?"

"I'm not sure, sir. It could be some glitch in their communications. Very easily could be that."

"I see. Well, if I have to die, I won't be the first American to do it in the line of duty. But as your president, I would like to know what I'm dying for. I'd like to know what your people are involved in, what's more important to the country than the shock of losing another president in office."

Smith looked at the phone. The two worst fears of his professional life, a long life in service to his country, had just arrived at the earpiece of the special red phone: having to tell the president he had failed and having to give a stupid answer. His mouth tasted of bitter soda water.

"Sir, as near as I can make out, the enforcement arm you speak of is engaged in something that has to . . ."

"Yes?" the president said. "I'm really interested."

"We'll have someone into the White House with you by late tonight, sir. A somewhat older man," Smith said.

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"Oh, the Oriental. Golly, I've heard of him. Over eighty, I was told, but I don't every have to worry about growing old, not once f see him in action. How old is he exactly?"

"The one we'll be sending is in his sixties and is Caucasian. He has what has been described as a lemony face and speaks with a New England accent."

"If you fellows have some age cure, let me know about it," the president said, chuckling.

"No sir, we don't," Smith said. The president was taking with good grace the fact that an old administrator who had not fired a planned shot for more than thirty years was now the only one standing between him and his death.

Harold W. Smith shut down the computer access codes from his office in Folcroft, reducing to only one portable device the ways to reach his computers. The device fit into his briefcase.

Gun, he thought. Now where did I put the gun?

Then he realized his gun wasn't in his office. It was home.

He told his office secretary,, who thought he spent too much time cooped up in his office, that he would be gone for a few days, possibly a few weeks. He authorized her to make any decisions that had to be made and to sign any papers that needed signatures.

A few days, possibly a few weeks. He did not tell her possibly even a bit longer than that. Like forever. If he did not contact his computers within any 168-hour period, automatically the entire network would erase itself and no evidence would be left that the organization ever existed. Remo and Chiun, of course, would be on their own.

Something had gone wrong, but it had been going wrong for many years. It was only when Smith was in his house, holding his old pistol in his hands, that he realized fully what had happened over the years. You didn't see change

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when it was gradual; and sometimes it took many years to see motive.

Remo had been recruited in his special way because he was an American patriot. Now he had become something else. The enforcement arm was off somewhere enforcing something else.

Chiun had trained more than Remo's body; he had trained his soul. The whole organization came down to a window on the world through which everything could be seen, but nothing could be done, and now its strongest enforcement arm was an old gray-haired man searching through an old bureau drawer for a 1938 Smith and Wesson .38 caliber revolver.

Smith found it wrapped in oiled rags. It was clean, but he didn't trust the ammunition. The shoulder holster was curled and brittle.

He remembered the last time he had used the gun. It was on a drop into France. He was with the old OSS that later became the CIA. He was told to shoot a young woman who was a Nazi collaborator and was going to get them all killed. He remembered how she smiled. She knew he was going to shoot her, and she just smiled as if it were some joke. It haunted him. He spent spare moments for almost a year reassuring himself that he had saved countless lives by shooting that smiling woman.

Only years later, when he was running the organization, did he understand what had happened. Ironically, it was Remo who made it come clear, in an afterthought, mentioning how some people-knowing they had lost and sensing they had an amateur in front of them-would laugh or smile as their last striking-out at their killer.

"Chiun tells me some people do that," Remo said.

"Did someone, a target, do that to you recently?" Smith asked.

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"Oh, no," Remo had said. "They do it sometimes to amateurs."

"Oh," Smith had said. Remo had become the professional.

And now the professional was off somewhere while the amateur was going to defend the life of the chief executive officer of his nation.