Political Pressure

30

"I took the deal," Remo reported.

"Did you honor it?" Mark Howard asked hesitantly.

"Course. He'll live."

"Meaning?"

"Accident. He'll be a deaf-and-dumb quadriplegic. But he'll live. Better than he gave the senator and his assistant and some poor cop who happened to be in the neighborhood." A moment later Remo added, "Hello?"

"I'm still here," Mark said, feeling slightly queasy. He was no stranger to violence, but still, the ease with which the CURE enforcement arm did its job could be disturbing. "Give me the list of targets he provided before his accident."

There was rustle of the phone and a female voice in the background said something in a stilted voice like a badly acted hussy from a 1950s movie. "Sorry. Stewardess," Remo said. "Here's the list."

Mark Howard tapped out the names provided by Remo, and was disconcerted at the lack of activity on the screen. The Folcroft Four, the mainframes in the basement that handled the vast data-crunching activities for CURE, should have automatically sought out all available information on the names. It was a function they performed as a matter of course for any intelligence entered by Howard or Smith. Full profiles of the first names should have been assembling in background windows even as Howard was finishing entering the last of them.

Then he realized that the names were some of the names he had expected to see on the list, but so badly mangled, mispronounced and transposed that the ID routine wasn't matching them to their actual names. Howard sighed and rekeyed the names he recognized. Gerhard Slippers became Gerald Cypress, the mayor of one of the wealthiest coastal cities between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Lizette Gambino became Elizabeth Gamby, a high-profile judge in the Federal Circuit Court, based in Sacramento. Some of the others fell in place, but a couple of the names would take research to decipher. "Remo, I wish you would be more careful when gathering intelligence," Mark Howard said.

"Hi, Smitty."

"That was me talking. Mark."

"Are you the one with circulation or without? I can't keep you two straight anymore."

"This Dick Lard. Is there any chance the name was actually Richard Ladd?" Howard asked.

"Uh, maybe," Remo said uncertainly.

"Yes," said the high-pitched voice of Master Chiun in the background. Howard could never quite get used to the fact that whatever he said on the phone to either of them would be heard by the other if he was within a city block.

"Maybe I'll have Master Chiun begin reporting on your intelligence gathering," Howard sniped.

"I am not a clerk!" Chiun snapped.

"Hey, he's the one who makes me take down all my notes in Hangul characters anyway," Remo said. "I'm supposed to be learning better writing skills and English doesn't count."

"It would be extremely helpful if you would use English on those rare occasions that you gather information in the field," Howard said irritably.

"All right, Smitty, don't have a cow. Oh, sorry. It's Smitty the Poorer I'm talking to, isn't it?"

The toughest part of his job, Mark Howard decided for the umpteenth time, was staying on the mission track when dealing with Remo. And Chiun, for that matter. If he ever left CURE, he would be prepared to teach eight-graders.

The name Humbert Coleslaw, the last one on the list, clicked in Mark's head. "Herbert Whiteslaw."

"Remo Williams, actually."

"I'll call you back."

Mark Howard clicked off the connection to the aircraft phone and began frantically calling up everything he had on Senator Herbert Whiteslaw, D-CA.

A senator from California was important enough a character, but Whiteslaw seemed an unlikely target for MAEBE. He wasn't up for reelection. There was no MAEBE candidate vying for his post. If MAEBE murdered him, the governor of the state would appoint a successor to fill his term and it wasn't too likely the successor would be from MAEBE.

But something was bothering Mark Howard about the name. It wasn't some psychic radio waves from space aliens, either. Some connection was there, something he couldn't quite get.

Then he got it.

"That was the greatest moment of my life!" Ed Kriidelfisk cried happily. "Those people loved us!"

"They did," Orville Flicker agreed, in the best of spirits. "We're going to make it, Ed. We're going to the top."

"Yes, sir! Nothing is going to stop us now. Man, what a great day!"

"It's only going to get better."

They sipped their champagne and rode in silence, basking in the glow of the press event. Buoyed by spiraling popularity, the MAEBE nomination for President had been greeted with wild applause. Even Ed Kriidelfisk, when he was introduced as man running for vice president alongside Flicker, was given a warm ovation, even if nobody knew who he was.

Flicker had made sure that everybody knew who Kriidelfisk was before the press conference was over, listing Kriidelfisk's long list of achievements and emphasizing his dedication to the cause of what was right and good. Kriidelfisk came across as a living saint.

"Where we headed?" Kriidelfisk asked as Kohd, Flicker's emotionless assistant, steered the long limousine off the highway and onto a side road.

"Into the pages of history." Flicker smiled and toasted Kriidelfisk, who wasn't sure what that meant and didn't really care. He'd go wherever Flicker wanted to take him.

When the car stopped in the middle of nowhere and the guns commenced firing, Ed Kriidelfisk had only a moment to realize that he had chosen the wrong set of coattails to ride upon.

"That's what you get, you blackmailing bastard," Flicker told Ed just before the cops arrived. Ed was beyond hearing.

Kohd held a sliver of glass and examined Flicker's face. "Where would you like it?"

Flicker traced a line across his jaw, where the scar wouldn't be visible all the time, wouldn't be repulsive, but where it could be brought into view with a proud lift of his head.

Kohd nodded and inserted the glass.

Dr. Harold W. Smith was taking a walk.

Every fiber in his being told him it was somehow wrong to be doing this thing, but his assistant, and his secretary, had ganged up on him, berated him, browbeat him and nagged him. Worse, they had pummeled him with logic.

"You need exercise," Mark Howard said.

"A walk at lunchtime does me a world of good," Mrs. Mikulka chimed in.

"You'll work better," Howard insisted.

Smith tried to downplay the advantages, but Howard fired back with encyclopedic research showing the link between exercise and improved mental performance.

"The last thing I have time to do in the middle of a crisis is go play eighteen holes," Smith had declared, hoping that would be the end of it and knowing it would not.

"Who said anything about playing golf?" Mark said. "You just need to walk."

"We have lovely grounds," Mrs. Mikulka said with a smile.

Smith wanted to reply that he had, in fact, seen the grounds of Folcroft a time or two in his several decades as director of the sanitarium. He had only one argument left to make, and, with the same gentle smile, Mrs. Mikulka shot that one down, too, before he even uttered it. "Besides, there's nothing that can happen that Mark can't handle while you're out."

Skillfully done, Smith thought. His secretary had challenged Smith to deny Mark's competency, which he could not do.

So Dr. Smith went for a walk, and he went the next day, and every day for a week.

His walks were enjoyable, he found. His legs felt a little stretched and sore and that was enjoyable, too. The fresh air felt good. He returned to the office reinvigorated.

But this day he returned to the office and found Mark

Howard waiting for him with a serious concern etched on his young face, and Smith knew the walks were a huge mistake. Not one, but two events occurred while he was gone, both requiring his attention.

"You should have paged me, Mark," he insisted.

Mark shook his head. "That would not have accomplished anything."

"I could have been at work on this sooner."

"Ten minutes sooner. And I was already at work on it. The Orville Flicker thing is still breaking. He says gunmen attacked the car not long after the press conference, drove them off the main highway and tried to gun them down. Ed Kriidelfisk was killed, Flicker was slightly injured."

"Kriidelfisk was the VP nominee," Smith considered aloud.

"But they must have been gunning for Flicker."

"Why?"

Howard stalled. "I am not sure. Lots of people have reasons."

Smith wasn't satisfied, but switched to the more immediate concern. "Where are Remo and Chiun headed?"

"They were en route to La Guardia. I'm having the plane land in D.C."

Smith looked at him.

"That is what you would have done," Mark explained.

Smith realized that it was. More alarming, however, was the realization that, in fact, CURE could get along

without him for twenty minutes each afternoon. Not just get along, Mark Howard could actually function, make decisions, make progress without Smith. The concept had been dawning on him slowly in recent months, but it hit him now with extra force, and he wasn't quite sure how he felt about it.

He neatly tucked the thought into the endless file drawers in his mind and began going over the machinations Mark Howard had put in place to deviate the New York-bound flight to a landing in Washington, D.C.