Political Pressure

32

The senator from California found himself on the sidewalk, finally able to breathe again despite the smoke from the limo.

"My feet hurt."

"I bet they do."

"What happened?"

"They tricked you into opening the doors. If you'd have kept them closed, the grenade wouldn't have hurt anybody."

Senator Herbert Whiteslaw's feet hurt so much he had to see what was wrong with them, despite the vivid scene in front of him. He looked down, was dizzy for a moment and found himself looking at two black things in an inflatable children's swimming pool. The black things were his feet. He was sitting on a plastic chair in front of a small hardware store. The glass storefront had blown inward and left the kiddie pool undamaged.

"Sorry. I didn't have time to get you fully under cover."

"Who are you?" the senator asked the man who, he realized, had just departed, fast.

The man was back in a moment with a Secret Service agent. The agent was burned, as well, more extensively but not seriously, it seemed. The agent rolled his eyes in relief when the man sat him down in the children's pool.

"Who are you?" the senator asked again.

The man was gone again. The senator remembered dark eyes. Not the eyes of a man who saved people, when he thought about it, but cruel eyes. Appearances were deceiving, he decided, and by then the man was back again. The driver in his arms, who was a massive brute of an agent who had chosen the service after his pro wrestling career fizzled, was being carried without effort. His body was limp and his suit was smoldering.

"Is he dead?" the senator asked.

"No, just bonked his head." The ex-wrestler was placed in the pool with his head leaning against the inflated palm tree that emerged from one end.

"Don't let him drown," the man instructed the other agent and the senator. On the next trip he carried another limp figure, burned superficially across his entire back. When he was placed in the kiddie pool the water sloshed out over the top.

"We'll need another pool," the conscious agent observed stupidly.

"No, we won't," said Remo.

"There's more agents," the agent insisted.

"There's not," Remo said. "Not anymore."

He'd done all he could. Remo strolled down to the end of the block, ignoring the senator's questions, to where the white sedan was parked. There were crowds a few hundred feet away, but the rumors of a gas attack were keeping them at a distance for now. Sirens were approaching.

"What do we have here?" Remo asked.

"A nothing," Chiun explained. "A worm or a snail or some other low level of life-form."

Chiun stood alongside the car, which had a dead man in the passenger seat and a wide-eyed paralyzed man at the wheel. The paralyzed man sought mercy from Remo Williams.

"He is the boom dropper," Chiun explained, not looking at the driver.

"And the sidekick?"

"He is the foul talker. You should have heard his language."

"I won't swear, I swear," the driver whined.

"Hope you've got something to tell me," Remo said, "such, as, where's the rest of the guys?"

"Guys?"

"You know. The guys. Your buds. The rest of the gang. We've shut down White Hand cells in Chicago and Colorado and San Fran and those losers in Kansas. There's always a bunch of you."

"There was just the two of us for the D.C. job."

"Bulldookey."

"It isn't bulldookey," the driver cried, rolling his eyes like a beaten dog.

"Little Father, did you hear what he just said?"

"Yes."

"I said bulldookey! Just like you!"

"I'm allowed."

"It's not a swear word!"

"It means 'motherfucker' in Korean," Remo explained.

The driver's head was flopping around in panic and he even made an attempt to shift the car into Drive with his teeth, which toppled him on the steering wheel.

"Company's coming," Remo pointed out as the first squad car came around the corner, siren screaming, and braked fast. The officers jumped out of the vehicle and aimed their weapons at Remo and Chiun.

"Don't shoot. They saved us." It was the senator on the lawn chair. The cops got a good look at the blackened bodies in the kiddie pool and they boggled.

"I shall kill this one and we may be on our way," Chiun announced for the driver's benefit. The driver, now trapped in place staring at the remains of his former partner, started talking.

The cops tried to figure out what to do, until the Secret Service arrived and tried to figure out what to do, but the Service looked more intimidating during their decision-making process. Finally the ambulances began pouring in and the EMTs more or less took over, stabilizing the burn victims. The Walter Reed ambulance took the senator, with two high-ranking Secret Service agents insisting on coming along. The phone call came in as soon as the doors closed.

"Spacey," answered the more senior agent, then he nodded to his partner. "HSCC with the CO."

"Okay"

For the HSCC—High Security Conference Call— the two agents dialed their phones into a security system that took them through the highest level of electronic screening and encryption. When it was all done their commanding agent was back on the line.

"Agent Spacey, Agent Nor?"

"Yes, sir."

"The next voice you hear will be the President's. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

The next voice they heard was the President's, and the President gave a very strange set of instructions.

It would have been a big joke except for two things. One, Secret Service agents never, ever joked. Two, the encryption of the phone call was reserved for the highest-security concerns.

They looked at each other. This was a waste of effort since Secret Service agents never, ever showed emotion and, if they accidentally one day showed a twinge of emotion in the call of duty, the sunglasses were there to mask it.

Then Spacey and Nor looked around the interior of the ambulance. It was a big ambulance, but still crowded with the senator, the EMT and the two agents. The President had said there was someone else there. Well, he was the President, but it seemed unlikely that there would be a fifth person present without their knowing.

"Here I am," said the fifth man, who now stood at Spacey's elbow.

Spacey and Nor were so surprised that their expressions betrayed it. Spacey's eyebrow twitched. Nor blinked three times very fast.

"Whoa, guys, don't get all freaked out on me now," said the fifth man. "I don't think the commander in chief is done commanding."

Spacey and Nor put the phones back to their ears and, exercising their extensive training, managed to regain their emotionless demeanor.

"Yes, sir. Sir? Yes, sir."

The senator opened his eyes when the agent tapped his shoulder. "For you, Senator Whiteslaw," Spacey explained. "It's the President."

Whiteslaw took Spacey's cell phone. Nor handed his to the fifth man, whom the senator was surprised to see, and was more surprised to recognize.

"Yes, Mr. President," he answered, distracted by the dark-eyed, dark-haired man.

"Wait a moment, Senator," the President said.

"Here," Spacey called to the driver, and the ambulance pulled to the curb. Spacey and Nor opened the rear doors, which finally alerted the EMT to the strange goings-on and dragged his attention away from the electronic displays that were constantly taking the senator's vitals. The EMT saw sunlight streaming in.

"What in blazes are you doing?"

"Going to get drunk and forget the whole thing," Spacey reported in a monotone.

"As ordered," Nor tacked on

"You're coming with us," Spacey added.

"You were ordered to get drunk?" the EMT demanded.

"As were you."

"Bye," said Remo Williams as the EMT was manhandled out of the ambulance.

"Bennigans? This is where you Secrets go when you wanna get schnockered?" the EMT cried. "That explains a lot!"

The doors slammed and the ambulance started moving again. Senator Whiteslaw got on the mobile phone.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

Remo was supposed to be in on the call, but he and mobile phones were sworn enemies. This phone had a little TV screen that showed an animated scene of autumn leaves—he wouldn't begin to know how to make the thing work. He gingerly put the phone through the slot in the wall-mounted container labeled Danger Of Biological Contamination.

The senator was getting flustered. "You must be joking, Mr. President."

Remo had his opinions about the current man in the White House, but he didn't think of the guy as a joker. When he thought of joking presidents he thought of that Democrat two-termer from the 1990s. Now that guy came up with some real knee-slappers.

"Of course, Mr. President," the senator said. "Yes. Of course."

The senator hung up, and his gaze turned to the dark- eyed man. "Your name is Remo, and I guess you saved my life only to put it in jeopardy again."

"Nothing personal, Senator."

"Think you can keep me from dying twice in one day?"

"I'll do my best."

"How good is that?"

Remo shrugged.

But Whiteslaw already knew, because he had seen Remo in action, and it was something he would never, ever forget. Another interesting factoid, a guess but almost a certainty, was that saving lives was not what Remo was trained for. Quite the contrary.

Which made the man whose name was Remo a very interesting person indeed.