"Better read it, Commodore," his assistant told Dotty.
Dotty looked up, annoyed at the tone of fiat in his assistant's voice, but picked up the note. It was handprinted in block letters. It read:
"In protest at the harassment of athletes from South Africa and Rhodesia around the world, the United States Olympic Team will be destroyed. This is no idle threat."
The note was signed "S.A.A.E." and under that was printed "Southern Africans for Athletic Equality."
"Shall we take it seriously?" the assistant asked.
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"How the hell should I know?" Dotty said. "I can't be bothered with this stuff. There's a swimmer in Sierra Leone and I know he's stealing commercial money. We have to protect our amateurs from him."
The aide wanted to say that he doubted the Sierra Leone's swimmer's graft would pollute the Olympic swimming pools, but contented himself instead with pointing out that perhaps American athletes should be protected against this threat from the S.A.A.E.
"Have you ever heard of this group before?" Dotty asked.
"No, Commodore."
"Neither have I. Dammit, why do people have to do things like this?"
His assistant didn't answer and finally Dotty said, "Forward it to the FBI by special messenger."
"The president too?" the assistant asked.
"Of course," Dotty said. "The White House too. Let them worry about it. I've got important things on my mind. Go ahead. Send them off."
When Ms assistant left the room, Commodore R. Watson Dotty, who had been awarded his military title by a yacht club in landlocked Plainfield, New Jersey, slammed his fist down on the desk.
Let it be a crank.
"Be nice if it was a crank," the director of the FBI said.
"We can't take that chance though, can we, sir?" asked the director of Special Operations.
"I should say not. And I guess we'll have to alert the White House."
"They already know, sir," the director of Special Operations said. "A copy was sent there as well as to us."
The FBI chief shook his head. "Did he send one to anyone else? The UN or the CIA or the Washington Post? God, doesn't the fool at the committee
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know we're here to handle these things? If we thought the president should be notified, we'd notify him."
"You've got one out of three, sir," the assistant said.
"What are you talking about?"
"The UN and the CIA didn't get copies but the Post did. So did the New York Times and all the TV networks. Seems the SA.A.E. made enough copies to go around."
"Bloody nice of them, wasn't it?" the director said. He was of the opinion that when he said things like that, he sounded like Sir Laurence Olivier. He'd always wished that during the war he had served in Great Britain so he could have had an excuse to affect an English accent. "Bloody nice indeed," he repeated.
Wonderful, the president thought. Wonderful. To inflation, unemployment, the oil crisis, and our overseas alliances falling apart, I can add the slaughter of the U.S. Olympic team. Reelection? I'll be lucky I don't get lynched.
"Mr. President?" one of his staff said and he looked up in surprise from the note. He had forgotten they were standing there.
"The press wants a statement of some kind."
"It's a crank," the president said. "It has to be." It better be, he thought to himself. / just don't need this.
"I don't think that's the right tack to take with the press, though," his top assistant said.
"All right. How about this? We guarantee- absolutely guarantee-that nothing will happen to any of our athletes in Moscow. Try that. Absolutely guarantee. Make me sound like that football player in panty hose. You know what I mean. That might be good."
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"Okay," the aide said. "We can do that."
"But check it with my wife first," the president said. "She might have some other ideas."
"She usually does," the press secretary muttered under his breath as he left the office.
His remaining aide said, "Shouldn't we do something about security?"
The president fixed him with his best I-was-just-coming-to-that glare and the man quieted down.
"I want the Russians notified that we have to be involved in the security arrangements. Our team's been threatened. They have to let us in."
"All right, sir."
"The FBI's working on this?"
"Yes."
"Okay, go do what I told you."
When the room was empty, the president brooded and thought about the no-dial telephone upstairs in the dresser in his bedroom.
The telephone connected directly to the secret organization CURE and its director, Dr. Harold W. Smith. The president's predecessor in office had explained it all to him. Smith had been tapped some years back to run the CURE operation. The idea was to work outside the Constitution to put the squash on crooks who were hiding behind the Constitution. But over the years, CURE'S operations had expanded and now it was ready to go anywhere, to do anything. Every president, he was sure, had felt the same way coming into his office: he would never use CURE.
And just as he had, every one of them had wound up using it.
Not that it was easy. The president could not give CURE orders. He could only suggest missions. Dr. Smith was the final boss. There was only one order a president could give that would instantly be obeyed: disband. No president had ever done it because every
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president had found that America needed CURE and Dr. Smith and the enforcement arm, Remo, and the little old Oriental who did the strange things.
The President of the United States went up to his bedroom and removed the receiver of the phone and waited for Smith to answer at the other end.
Why was the phone always so cold? he wondered.
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CHAPTER FOUR
Dr. Harold W. Smith did not like to meet in public places. That was his position. Remo's position was that if Smith wanted to meet with him and Chum, he would have to meet where Remo told him to.
And so, because he knew that Remo was quite capable of disappearing for three months without even a word, Dr. Smith found himself hi a cable car high above the pedestrian walkways of the Bronx Zoo, trying to explain the latest problem to his two assassins.
"Really, Remo. The Bronx Zoo?" Smith complained.
"I like zoos," Remo said. "I haven't been to a zoo in a long time."
Chiun leaned close to Smith. "He is hoping to find some relatives, Emperor," he whispered loudly in Smith's ear.
"I heard that," Remo snarled.
Chiun looked up with an expression of bland innocence.
"And stop calling him emperor," Remo said.
Chiun seemed surprised. For thousands of years the Masters of Sinanju had contracted out their services to emperors, czars and kings of the world, and he thought it only fitting to refer to Smith as Emperor Smith. He said to Smith, "Ignore him. He is testy because everybody in the monkey house looks
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exactly like him and he can't pick one relative from the next."
Smith pointed at the only other occupant of the cable car, a man asleep at the far end, sprawled across the seats. Remo and Chiun could tell he was stone drunk, because for them the fumes of his inebriation hung like thick fog in the car.
"He's out of it," Remo said. "Don't worry about it. So I'm supposed to babysit the entire Olympic team?"
"Foolish child," Chiun said quickly. "The emperor would not ask you to perform such an impossible task. This assignment seems most reasonable."
Remo looked at him suspiciously. He knew that Chiun generally thought that Smith was a lunatic because Smith resisted all Chiun's offers to eliminate the president of the United States and make Smith ruler-for-life.
And then Remo understood.
"Don't let him soft-soap you, Smitty. He wants to get over to Moscow for the Olympics so he can win a gold medal and go on television and get rich doing endorsements."