“I don’t follow—”
“Whiteslaw was just here, Howard. In the Oval Office. And you wouldn’t believe what that SOB’s got cooking.”
Smith came through the door, dark splotches under his eyes. The CURE director had been sleeping in an unused room of the hospital, unwilling to make the drive home in case something developed overnight. He had responded in amazingly quick time to the buzzer that was tied into the President’s red phone.
Smith took the phone and jabbed at the speaker button. “I’m here, Mr. President.”
“Whiteslaw was just here, Smith. He’s got the goods on your enforcement boys.”
Smith’s brow furrowed. “Have Remo and Chiun called in?”
Mark shook his head.
“That lowlife Whiteslaw has photos of the boys, taken today. Showed them to me on the Internet. Said he’ll distribute them around the world, along with all the other evidence he’s got on CURE. He’s threatening to expose the shebang. Says he’s got a whole package just ready to transmit to the media. We’ll look like idiots if we bring up the treason charges after he goes public like that.”
Smith’s gray complexion became deathly pale. “Photographs are only circumstantial evidence,” he pointed out. “Whiteslaw has nothing more except conjecture and assumption.”
“He’s got video, too. Smith. Real HDTV stuff. It’s short, but it gets the point across.”
“Video from where?” Smith demanded.
“I have no idea. Looks like some sort of old factory. Swear to God I thought I was looking at some sort of Jackie Chan versus The Matrix kind of movie, but there’s your boys, as clear as crystal. I recognized them right off the bat. He emailed me the damn video if you want to see it yourself.”
Mark Howard was already on it, bringing the most powerful CURE network software into play. In seconds he had opened the White House servers and culled the contents of every mail account that might conceivably reach the President. He found the video, snatched it up and erased every electronic copy he could locate. He overwrote the erased video hundreds of times, just in case.
“Got it,” he announced.
“You boys are fast on your feet,” the President said. “Listen, Smith, I know a movie could be made with special effects, and everything could be just flights of fancy, too. That’s how we’ll spin it for the press if we have to. But coming from a U.S. senator, and one who’s been the target of an assassination attempt recently, that packs a whole wallop of credibility with the public.”
“What are his demands, Mr. President?”
“Hold on to your hats, Smith. He wants me to drop out of the election. That’s not all. He’s going after his own party candidate, too. He’s going to the party leadership to show them what he’s got and let them know that the last President was in the know, too. You get it. Smith? He’s trying to extort himself right into the White House.”
“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, Mr. President.”
“Wait up, Smith, I’m not done. Before you go sending your boys after Whiteslaw, you better know about the other ace he had up his sleeve. The man’s in contact with the underground folks.”
“The albinos?”
“And their leader. Get this—the cavemen have a king. He sent me a letter of introduction. He wants to start diplomatic relations! And you know who it is? It’s that kooky German guy!”
“Fastbinder,” Smith said.
“King Fastbinder. You believe it?” asked the President of the United States of America. “Sounds like the name of a bad guy in a Rankin-Bass Christmas special. So what am I supposed to do. Smith?”
“I’m not sure if there’s anything that can be done,” Smith said morosely. “If Fastbinder and his son truly have a media blitz prepared for distribution, there’s not much chance we’ll be able to stop it. That essentially means an end to CURE. What is more disturbing is the potential for mass casualties. The underground dwellers have inflicted an unexpectedly high number of deaths in the past twenty-four hours.”
“Like a war. The good people and CURE aren’t the only victims. My administration will go down in flames, don’t forget.”
“I’m not forgetting, Mr. President, but the problem is bigger than a single administration. If Fastbinder distributes his evidence, and if the public swallows the story, it will seriously scandalize several recent administrations. Both political parties could suffer a loss of credibility and the election may become another free-for-all.”
“Worse than the last one?”
“Much worse. There would be no candidate getting enough of the popular vote to quality to receive the votes of the electoral college in some states. If the disruption is substantial, the members of the electoral college could change their votes.”
“Dammit, Smith, I’m already going to go down in history as the President who lost the popular vote. You know what that means? Every history book from now until forever’s gonna have my name with a big asterisk next to it. ‘Won the election but lost the popular vote.’ So next term, you’re telling me, even if I do win the thing, it might be even worse? Like, elected by the House or whoever does the electioning if the electoral college can’t make a decision?”
“That’s about right—”
“You know how much respect that’s gonna buy me?”
“Mr. President, I have much work to do if I am to attempt to salvage this situation,” Smith said.
“Keep me posted, for once?”
Harold W. Smith hung up the phone.
Mark Howard shook his head. “What a mess. No word from Remo and Chiun.”
“Once again, we face a crisis and our enforcement arm is incommunicado,” Smith said sourly.
“I’m worried about them, to be honest You should see this video.” Smith stood and moved behind the temporary desk, where Mark Howard was working for the time being as he healed from his recent injuries.
Mark played the video he had taken from the White House mail servers, and Smith was startled at first by the incredible definition of the image. “It’s a military video standard,” Mark explained, pointing to a serial number in the lower left-hand corner. “They use it for filming and analyzing missile impacts. Fastbinder must have taken some million-dollar video cameras at some point. It’s been reformatted but the image is still crystal clear.”
“What are we looking at?” Smith asked.
“The roof of the museum. This is the opening frame. Keep your eyes peeled.” Mark clicked the window’s play button and the video screen became a riot of activity that was over in just five seconds.
“Now, watch it at one-fifth speed,” Mark said, and played it again, slow.
Smith was now able to make more sense of the images. There was a burst of fire and dust, and before the time marker reached one second the camera had dropped through the roof and stopped cold in its mounts, showing Remo and Chiun inside the desert warehouse that had recently been the workshop of Jacob Fastbinder and his son, the enigmatic Jack Fast. The images had the clarity of a studio portrait, but the Masters of Sinanju appeared stricken. Remo looked like a man who had been unexpectedly shot through in the chest, but who stood there, unable to come to terms with his shock and horror as he felt his heart come to an abrupt halt.
But it was Chiun who took Smith’s attention, because the Master Emeritus was transformed into something ordinary by the force that was striking them. It was as if the proton discharge—surely that was what was hitting them in this moment of video—had made Chiun into any other elderly man, with sagging jowls, hurting eyes and a body as crooked as a jagged tree branch.
As the video advanced, both the Masters collapsed hard, then seemed to regain consciousness in a matter of seconds, just as everything else in the room began to shudder and fly across the room and cascade down upon them. Smith was amazed that both men found the strength of will to react so quickly. Remo snapped at the debris and cleared the air of massive scraps that could have crushed him or gashed him in two.