Warren Murphy: The Head Men

And by the "we" Chiun meant the House of Sinanju, the Masters who had rented themselves out to kings and pharaohs and emperors throughout the ages to support the poor village of Sinanju on the coast of the West Korea Bay. Years before, Chiun, the last Master, had taken

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the job of training Remo, and every year the secret organization CURE sent tribute to Chiun's North Korean village.

"And we are supposed to do what specifically?" Remo asked.

"Put fear into the President's heart. Expose his vulnerability. Make him cower and plead for the mercy of Emperor Smith. It is good to be working among proper folk again."

"You must have gotten something wrong, Little Father," said Remo. "I don't think Smith wants that done to the President."

"Perhaps," Chiun said, "we will take the President at night and bring him to a pit of hyenas and hold him over it until he swears eternal loyalty to Smith."

"I'm pretty sure that's not what Smith wants. You see, Smith serves the country; he doesn't rule it."

"They all say that but they really want to rule. Perhaps, instead of the hyenas, we can cripple the President's finest general. Who is America's finest general?"

"We don't have fine generals anymore, Little Father. We have accountants who know how to spend money."

"Who is the most fearsome fighter in the land?"

"We don't have any."

"No matter. It is time that America saw what a true assassin is like instead of all the amateurs that have plagued this land."

"Little Father, I am sure Smitty doesn't want the President harmed," Remo said.

"Quiet. I am in charge now. I am not just a

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teacher anymore. Perhaps we can remove the President's ears as a lesson."

"Little Father, let me explain a few things. Hopefully," Remo said. With little hope.

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CHAPTER THREE

The President was hearing from some "good ole boys" how "this here White House, it got more protection than a twenty-year-old coonhound with bad breath and a kerosene ass."

"My advisers tell me I don't have enough protection," said the President softly. He worked at a table stacked with reports. He could read as fast as some men could think and liked to work four uninterrupted hours at a stretch. During those times he could ingest a week's information and still there would be more. He had discovered early in his presidency that a man without priorities in that office was a man who swamped helpless immediately. You and your staff culled what you absolutely had to do and then added what you should do and then cut that in half to make a work week only two weeks' full.

In that manner did men age in this office. No one ever left the presidency of the United States young.

"Y'all gotta remember, sir, these boys up heah in Washington, they sure 'nough know how to worry."

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"They say I'm a dead man unless I listen to them. They say we've had serious threats."

"Shoot. These boys'll sell you the smoke from a horse's nostrils. Everybody heah looking to protect you from something. For a lot of money."

"You don't think I'm in danger? A man was killed in Sun Valley, just as an example to me, they said."

"Sure you in danger, sir. Everybody's always in danger."

"I've told the Secret Service people who guard me that I think I've got enough protection and I don't want to be bothered anymore. There are other things more pressing. But I wonder sometimes. It's not just my life. This country can't take another presidential assassination. The air is already so poisoned with rumors and doubts and stories about conspiracies and plots and counterplots."

"To say nothin' of us losing our first President since James K. Polk. There was a long while there we didn't have nobody from the South. Long while. Don' worry. We ain' gonna lose you."

The President smiled graciously. His old friend from back home who had been a state trooper showed him what his own Secret Service had shown him, how the White House itself was impregnable and that the only time anyone ever really got through the gates was when the President was on a trip somewhere.

"You already got the best heah. Cain't do no better, sir," said the old friend from Georgia. "Why, cain't even get a gnat through these people. They got guards guarding guards guarding guards and more radar and stuff like that than any place on earth."

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"I don't know," said the President. He knew without saying that too many people had come too close to too many Presidents recently. Lunatics had gotten a loaded revolver to within a handshake of the previous President. Someone had even gotten off a shot. A man had crashed a truck through the White House gate just the year before and a woman with a stick of dynamite on her body had been apprehended within the White House.

They were psychotics, the Secret Service told him. They could never do more than get close. And professionals wouldn't even get as far as those psychotics who were willing to risk their lives.

Perhaps, the President had said.

But the old friend from Georgia saw something a cabinet member might miss. It was that slight nod of the head while appearing to agree.

"You got somethin' up your sleeve, don't you?" said the friend.

"Maybe. Let's say I hope. I can't tell you."

"Well, if it's a defense secret, you don't have to. I been using up your time too much already. Like the ninth puppy on an eight-tit bitch."

"No. I'm glad you came. I'm glad for these moments. A man gets to think of himself as too big and too important when he doesn't keep in touch with people who knew him before the rest of the world did."

"Good luck on your ace in the hole," said the friend, a big half-moon grin from ear to ear. They shook hands goodbye.

"I'm not a gambler," said the President. He worked two more hours, until fifteen minutes before midnight, then went to the private rooms of

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what was, in effect, America's presidential palace. He could not forget what his friend had said, that even the guards had guards, but also he could not shake that clinging, gnawing hunch that the leader of the most powerful nation on earth might be vulnerable. To anyone.

His wife was asleep as he entered the bedroom. Quietly he went to the bureau by the immense bathroom. In the bottom drawer was the red telephone that he had used only once before.

It was not an instrument to his liking because he knew that for more than twenty years now, American Presidents had allowed and relied on an illegal organization, one that was supposed to do its job and disappear when the nation was through its crisis. And now the organization, and the crisis, seemed permanent. He did not order it to shut down when he discovered that much of the uncovered criminal activity would have grown completely out of bounds if it had not been for the secret organization CURE. At least twice it had saved the nation.

But it was as illegal as hell.

The President carried the red phone by its long cord into the bathroom and lifted the receiver. The telephone had no dial.

"Yes," came the voice. It was Dr. Harold W. Smith.

"Are you going to do that demonstration?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Should be tonight. A day to get where you are and then ten minutes to get through whatever you've got in the way of protection," Smith said.

"Ten minutes?" the President said disbelievingly.

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"If they walk."

"Don't they have to reconnoiter? Figure out a plan?"

"No, sir. You see, the Oriental is a teacher and his House has been doing this for quite a few centuries. The Secret Service might think they have something new, but the Oriental and the white man have handled things like that before, and the Oriental's ancestors for thousands of years. Their skill is their memory."

"What about electronics? Electronics haven't been around for centuries," the President said.