"All our forces around the world are being put on standby, for a full combat alert. I understand there is now the highest level strategy meetings going on to determine whether or not to publicly blame the United States for these two dead ambassadors."
"What do you think?"
"I think if anything happens to our premier, some hothead in the Kremlin will push the button that will begin World War III. If that happens, you and I will be dead here in Washington, Karbenko."
"Did the President say anything else?"
"He offered us the use of some 'special personnel' he called them, to protect the premier and the ambassador. Of course, I turned him down. I assured him we could protect our people ourselves."
Karbenko thought for a moment.
"What kind of special personnel?" he asked.
"He did not say."
The two men sat silently, staring out over the bridge railing at the greasy waters of the Potomac. It was typical of what was wrong, and right, with America, Karbenko thought. A beautiful natural gem of a river that had been turned into a garbage dump and an oil slick because no
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one had thought to protect it. And now, it was finally being reclaimed by a massive expenditure of time and effort and money. No other civilized country in the world would have let the river get so bad. And no other country in the world, faced with so bad and dying a river, could have been able to mount the effort and the resources to reclaim it. America was a land of violent pendulum swings and much of the national energy was spent correcting excessive movements in one direction or another.
"Do you believe him ?" Karbenko finally asked.
"Do you take me for a fool? Of course not. Who would believe so childish a story?"
"I do," said Karbenko,
The sweating little egg of a man turned toward .the tall raw-boned Soviet spy.
"You aren't serious, Vassily."
"Look at it for a moment. If they just wanted to knock off some of our ambassadors, would they have used people we could trace to the CIA? People who've been drawing CIA money for twenty years? There are mercenaries all over the world that anybody could hire for such jobs. And no one would be the wiser. No. The story is too preposterous not to be true."
Duvicevski popped a cough drop into his mouth.
"You believe the President?" he asked.
"Yes," said Karbenko. He smiled. "Didn't he once say he'd never lie to us ?"
"He didn't mean us," said Duvicevski.
"I know. But I believe him anyway. And I believe Admiral Stantington when he says he knows
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nothing about this Project Omega. He knows nothing about anything. God must really love the Americans."
"There is no god," said Duvicevski.
"Our system makes one believe that. The Americans' survival makes one doubt it. By what else but godly intervention could you explain a country that never learns anything but survives anyway?"
"What do you mean?"
"When those terrorists kidnaped and killed that politician in Europe last year, do you know why the police and secret police couldn't find them?"
"No."
"Because the government had been under so much pressure from the left about civil liberties that it had destroyed all its intelligence files. So when the terrorists struck, no one was able to find them. And in New York City a few years ago, there was a tavern bombed by terrorists. A half-dozen people killed. You know why the bombers were never found ?"
"Why?" asked Duvicevski.
"Because the New York City police had destroyed all their intelligence files on terrorists because keeping them violated people's civil rights. So killers went loose."
"What has that got to do with anything?"
"Maybe nothing," said Karbenko. "Maybe everything. America never learns. There are so many examples of what bad intelligence or no intelligence can do and still this country panders to the so-called civil rights of people who would
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destroy the country itself. Stantington is destroying1 the CIA and the idiot thinks that he is serving America by doing it. That's why I say God must be on America's side. No other country could act so stupidly and survive."
"They are doing our work for us," Duvicevski said.
"No, they're not," said Karbenko. "Time will do our work for us. Given enough time, our system will prevail. All these lunatics like Stantington are doing is creating an unstable world. I know we will conquer a stable world. But an unstable world ... it may one day be ruled by the kangaroos."
Duvicevski pondered this a while before he said, "So you believe the President and Stantington."
"Yes," said Karbenko. "They are telling the truth as they know it. But the whole story is still a fabric of lies."
"What?"
"There is a man alive now who devised this Project Omega. He did it twenty years ago. Now you tell me how this man devised this program twenty years ago and just now, when it goes into effect, the targets just happen to be our current premier and our current ambassadors to London and Rome and Paris? How did he know twenty years ago who would be our premier ? Or our ambassadors? This man knows more than he tells and I do not believe him when he says that he does not know who the assassins are."
"Do you know who this man is?" asked Duvicevski.
"Yes."
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"And what do you plan to do?" the ambassador asked.
"I plan to question him myself."
"And?"
"And find out just what it is the varmint really knows," Karbenko said with a large smile.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
"I'll tell you, Smitty, you're running some operation here," Remo said. "World War III is getting underway all because of you and where are you? Out on a golf course and you leave Ruby around to run things."
The faintest flicker of an unaccustomed smile brightened Smith's face for a millisecond.
"Ruby is a prize," he said. "I don't know how I did this job all these years without a good number two."
"She's a number two all right," Remo said. "She's a shit. She spends all her time yelling at me."
"Not so loud, Remo," Smith said. "She'll hear you."
Remo glanced toward the closed door of the office, dreading the possibility that it might just burst open and Ruby would march in, assailing his eardrums with her earthmover voice.
"Yes, Remo, not so loud," said Chiun. "She might hear you."
Remo whispered. "I liked it better when it was just you," he said to Smith.
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"I didn't think I would ever hear you say that," Smith said.
"Emperor," Chiun said, "Remo has nothing but the highest regard for you. He often tells me this, that he would work for no one but you at these wages."
Smith recognized the start of a pitch for more money and interrupted quickly.
"You're both going to England," he said. "I want you to get in close and protect that Russian ambassador."
"I should think you'd be worrying about the Russian premier instead," Remo said.
"I am, but I can't get permission to send you to Russia," Smith said.
"And you have permission to send us to England?" Remo said.
"Not exactly. But I can get you to England."
"You can get us to Atlantic City, too," Remo said. "Why not send us there? They've got casino gambling now."
"Or Spain," Chiun said. "Spain is nice in the spring. And a Master of Sinanju has not been in Spain since the time of El Cid. I think the Spanish could probably use us well. The Spanish were always good."
"England," Smith said.
Remo looked at Chiun. "Whenever we're supposed to go someplace, you always want to go to Persia for melons," he said. "Why all of a sudden Spain?"
"Because Persia is now Iran and the melons are no longer any good and we tried working for the Persians and they are idiots," Chiun said. "I
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thought you and I might look around in Spain. El Cid was really very good. Until Sinanju went to work for him, he could do nothing right, but then we straightened things out for him and he chased out the Arabs. We made him a star."