"What competitor?" Smith demanded.
"As I explained, Emperor, I refer to this organization, MAEBE." Chiun's polite patience was waning. "These upstarts are doing what we do, are they not, flushing out the human waste in the governmental plumbing? Unlike us, they have elaborate plans to publicize their achievements and grow rich on the currency of public accolades. We must beat them to the punchball. You must come out of the closet, reveal yourself to the world, advertise your great successes. You will become magnificent in the eyes of the people, and this popularity will enable you to effortlessly take the Eagle Throne at last!"
Smith was simply staring at the speakerphone, and Mark Howard could see the man trying to organize the long list of responses he might have made to Chiun's sales pitch.
"Master Chiun," Dr. Smith began.
"Yes."
Mark Howard got to his feet. Smith looked at him. Howard paced the office fast.
"Master Chiun, I will consider your proposal," Smith said. "Say nothing to this marketing agent until I have issued my decree."
It was just the right response, noncommittal but enough to cut off the conversation, then and there.
"Proceed with the current assignment and report in when completed. I shall ponder the options."
"Yes, Emperor!" Chiun replied, clearly delighted.
Smith cut the line.
"What is it?" he asked Howard.
"Public relations. That's the angle we need. We have to beat them at their own game."
"Pardon me?"
"The whole MAEBE strategy is to take the high ground, while the White Hand wipes out corruption, right?" Howard asked. "But Chiun is right—it's all just a marketing campaign. They're creating an image for themselves. Let's ruin that image."
Smith frowned. "MAEBE politicians are riding on the public controversy created by White Hand activities without actually taking responsibility for them. I don't know that we have evidence enough to convince the public of MAEBE's culpability. What if we released our proof and the public didn't buy it, Mark? There would be a backlash, and MAEBE would come out ahead."
Mark nodded. "I agree. MAEBE has been too careful to keep its political and terrorist arms separate. But
I'm not talking about the White Hand at all. I'm suggesting we target the politicians."
"You want CURE to run negative campaign ads?" Smith asked incredulously.
"I want us to do what we always do—dig up dirt. Only we dig it up on the MAEBE candidates. They can't be as clean as they claim. If we find a closet skeleton that needs some extra dirt, we can massage it, make it look worse than it is."
"Lie?"
"Why not?"
"We'd be taking the low ground."
"Compared to letting Remo and Chiun kill them off one by one and risk making martyrs out of them?"
Smith nodded shortly. "You're right. Let's do it. Start putting together some press releases and incriminating evidence."
Howard grinned. "I'm on it."
Smith didn't smile. "I hope you're not going to charge me what Chiun is paying his PR agent in Chicago, just for a retainer." Smith tapped the screen. Mark leaned in to see the amount that Chiun had advanced on one of his alias credit cards, which were covered by the CURE operating budget.
"Criminy," Howard said. "I don't make that in a year."
He left for his own office.
34
"What is this place?" Chiun demanded as the ambulance rolled to a stop.
"The Old S.O.B.," the ambulance driver said, then caught herself as the child-sized Korean became as stern as a gathering thunderstorm. "That's what they call the building," she explained hastily. "The Old S.O.B."
Chiun did not know whether to believe her. He lowered the window, and the nearest of the ridiculous army of Secret Service agents tried not to respond to him.
"Please do not say you are attempting to look like mere pedestrians," Chiun announced stridently, so that he could be heard by everyone within fifty paces. "You are all quite inept at passing yourselves off as anything other than Secret Service agents."
The nearby agent was in a panic of indecision. The orders had been odd enough—offer protection for the arriving senator but under no circumstances interfere with him or any who accompanied him.
The agent decided anything was better than allowing the old man to continue blowing their cover. "Yes, sir, how can I assist you?" He spoke out of the side of his mouth, sidling up to the ambulance as if he were merely another pedestrian in a trench coat, wing tips, sunglasses and a radio earpiece.
"What is this building called?"
"It's the Russell Building," the agent answered, confused.
"I see," the old man said, his voice as brittle as ice.
"Wait!" the woman at the wheel called. "Tell him the nickname!"
Now the agent was more confused.
"Most everybody just calls it the Old Senate Office Building," said Senator Whiteslaw himself as he and a thin man emerged from the rear of the ambulance, which seemed to have opened in virtual silence. "They call it the Old S.O.B. for short."
"I see," the Asian man repeated, and stepped out of the ambulance cab with a last, cold glare at the driver.
Remo was holding the senator by the shoulder. Whiteslaw was getting his first close-up look at the small Asian figure who had accompanied his strange new bodyguard, Remo. The Asian looked as if he predated the Wright brothers, but he didn't show any sign of infirmity.
The old Asian proved his fitness by putting his scrawny, ancient arms around Whiteslaw's middle and lifting him, apparently without effort. Between the young assassin, and the old one—yes, Whiteslaw was convinced this one was an assassin as well—they had him almost completely off his feet and perfectly balanced. Whiteslaw went through the motions of walking; the truth was that if he put any more weight on the soles of his feet he would scream in pain. His soles had taken the brunt of the blast and ignited the leather of his shoes. Only Remo's quick action had snuffed them out.
The attack had put the media on alert. They had never dreamed the senator would put in a show at his office, but there were production crews working the steps anyway, getting reaction from other senators and their staff and trying to get more facts behind the blossoming rumors.
When the news crews saw the victim of the attack himself arriving back at work less than an hour after the attack, obviously wounded, his feet covered in hastily applied bandage wads and perched on the shoulders of two oddly dressed assistants, there were cries of journalistic ecstasy.
Two camera crews stampeded toward the senator, the correspondents and cameramen pushing and shoving one another until both crews ended up in a brawl in the gutter. They were closely followed by two more crews who were just as ambitious but marginally less self-destructive.
"Start rolling now," screeched a waif of a woman in a brilliant orange jacket three sizes too large. Her camera operator started up the camera while he was running, and he stumbled on a sidewalk crack. The waif wailed. The cameraman fumbled the heavy unit and saved himself from collapse by steering into one of the thirty or so pedestrians who just happened to all be wearing trench coats, sunglasses and radio earpieces. The pedestrian pretended the brutal collision hadn't happened and hobbled away whistling, apparently admiring the architecture, while the cameraman started taping.
The correspondent composed herself, then spoke in a deadly serious cockney accent. "This is Sandra Chattersworthy at the Old Senate Building—"
"This is Derek Mueller in Washington D.C.," boomed the correspondent from a competing crew, drowning out the tiny woman. "Here on the steps of the Old Senate Office Building a brave man, Senator Herbert Whiteslaw—"
That was as far as he got before the small woman ran up and screeched at his chest, directly into his handheld microphone. The cameraman ripped off his headset and nearly lost his equipment as he danced with his hands to his ears.