Warren Murphy: The Head Men

"They don't seem to have any trouble," said Smith.

"Just walk through? All the guards. All the surveillance. I can't believe it."

The President cradled the red receiver between his sweater shoulder and cheek. He held the base in front of him like a young girl gripping a communion bouquet. He always rolled his eyes back up into his head when he spoke privately. The receiver handle suddenly slipped from his cheek as if it were a tooth yanked from a novocaine-numbed jaw. The President felt the yank as the receiver slipped away. His head jerked. His cheek touched his shoulder. Assuming the receiver had fallen, he instinctively reached for it. He felt warm flesh. The flesh pushed his hand back as if he were meeting a wall.

There was a man wearing a dark tee shirt, gray slacks, and loafers standing in the presidential bathroom with the President's red telephone. And talking into it.

"Hey, Smitty. We have some confusion here. Yeah. Everything is fouled up as usual. Excuse me, Mr. President, business."

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"Should I wait outside?" the President asked drily.

"No, you can stay. It's your business. Yeah, Smitty, he's standing right here. What do you want with him anyway? He's all right. He just looks a little dazed. Well, Chiun says you want this guy's face stuffed in it or something. Oh, oh. All right. Here. He wants to talk to you."

The President took the telephone. "Yes," he said. "No," he said. "My god, I didn't even hear him. It was like he came from nowhere. My god. I never knew there were people who could ... yes, of course, Dr. Smith. Thank you all." He put his hand over the receiver and spoke to the intruder:

"Is there a Mr. Chiun outside there?"

"Hey, Little Father," Remo said. "It's Smitty. For you." Remo took the phone. The President saw a long-fingernailed hand reach into the bathroom, a golden kimono sleeve dropping from it like water over a cliff. The hand was parchment yellow. The fingernails were the longest he had ever seen on a person.

The phone disappeared outside the door.

"Yes, glorious emperor Smith. According to thy will. Forever and eternal. Rule in the glory of thy throne." The voice was squeaky. Then came the angry jabbering of an Oriental language as the phone was returned to the hook.

An aged Oriental followed the arm and telephone into the bathroom. He was smaller than the President's twelve-year-old daughter and undoubtedly lighter. He was angry. The wisps of beard trembled. He jabbered at Remo for what must have been three minutes.

"What did he say?" asked the President.

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"Who ? Smitty or Chiun ?"

"This must be Chiun then. How do you do, Mr. Chiun."

The Master of Sinanju looked at the President of the most powerful nation in the world. He saw the hand stretched out in friendship, he saw the smile on the man's face. He turned away, folding his hands into his kimono.

"Did I say something ?" asked the President.

"No," said Remo. "He's mad about something."

"Does he know that I am President of the United States?"

"Oh yeah, he knows that. He's just disappointed, is all."

"Over what?"

"Never mind. You wouldn't understand. It's his way of thinking and I don't think you'd grasp it."

"Try me," said the President, more ordering than requesting.

"You wouldn't understand."

"I am conversant with the Japanese."

"Oh, my god," said Remo. "Don't call him Japanese. He's Korean. Would you want to be called French?"

"That depends on where I am."

"Or German? Or English? You're American. Well, he's Korean."

"The best kind," said Chiun with cold hauteur. "From the nicest part and the nicest village in the nicest part. Sinanju, glory of the world, center of the earth, upon which all planets look for reverence."

"Sinanju? Sinanju?" asked the President. He had worked on submarines in his Navy days, and in the submarine service the small village on the

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west Korean bay had been discussed. American submarines had been going there for some reason for the last twenty years. Stories about delivering gold to a spy system or something, but every submariner had heard the tales of how every year one American submarine had to make the trip into enemy waters.

"Glory to that name," said Chiun.

"Oh, of course. Glory to it. Somehow that and submarines seem to be connected."

"Tribute," said Remo. "America pays tribute to Sinanju." ,

"For what?" asked the President.

"For him to train me," Remo said.

"In what?"

"Well... things," Remo said. And the President heard the Oriental emit another stream of invective in Korean.

"What did he say?" the President asked.

"He said all the training was never really well used. It's what he's mad about."

"What?"

"Well, Sinanju is the great House of assassins. They sort of rented themselves out to kings and the like through the ages."

Chiun poked a long fingernail into the space between Remo and the President.

"So that children will not have to drown in the cold waters with empty bellies. We save children," said Chiun angrily.

Remo shrugged toward the President. "He means that, oh, maybe twenty-eight hundred years ago, way before Christ, the village had to get rid of its babies because they couldn't afford to feed them. It was a poor village."

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"Because of the soil," said Chiun. "Because of the degenerates who ruled. Because of foreign armies."

"Anyway," Remo said, "until the Masters of Sinanju began renting themselves out around the world for tribute, the village starved. They saved the village from starving, but they like to say they are saving the babies from death."

"There are a lot of Masters?" asked the President.

"No. There's Chiun now, and there's me. But we are all part of the tradition of Sinanju so that when we talk about the Masters, it's as if they're all alive. You think of time as line and you're in the middle and the past is behind you on the line and the future is ahead of you. But we look at the time like a big plate, so anytime is just another part of the round plate."

"And they are teachers?" the President asked.

"No. Chiun is the first who has taught an outsider."

"Well, what do they do ?"

"The House of Sinanju is assassins," said Remo.

"He was mad because he was told not to kill me, right?" the President said.

"Well, actually, yes. You see, you're the first President he's ever had and we haven't been doing any heads of state. It's like if you were President of the United States and then suddenly you get hired to be President of a grocery store. It's a step down, see? You don't see."

"He was going to kill me," said the President. His face blanched.

"I told you you wouldn't understand," said Remo.

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"I understand my life is in danger. Who let you in?"

"There's no 'let' involved," Remo said.

"Your incompetence," said Chiun.

"Hey, Prez. Let me show you how open everything is around here. You're dead meat. I mean, you're a bun on a plate. We could pepper you like scrambled eggs." Remo smiled. "Protection? You don't have any. Come on, Smitty says we're supposed to save your duff. We'll show you."

In later days, the President would ask questions of doctors, of top CIA brass, trying to learn if certain things could be illusions.

"Let's say, for example," the President would say, "let's say someone asked you to breathe heavily. Could that be the beginning of hypnotizing you into an illusion ?"

And he would be remembering what had happened following the conversation on the red phone in the presidential bathroom. He was asked to breathe deeply because he was too nervous and his breathing, while it could not be controlled, could approach regularity. And the three of them walked out and he had felt two hands on his waist and even the frail Oriental was lifting him with no effort. He smelled a faint perfume wafting up from the kimono and then it was like no smell at all, so subtle that it was free of scent.