Miller obeyed, stuffing more eggs into his still-sputtering mouth.
"The fact is,. Jay, I want to ask you for a favor."
"Me?" A crumb of scrambled egg flew from Mil-
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ler's lips, hitting the senator square iri the eye. The young man leaped up immediately, knocking over an orange juice glass and causing the table to shake precariously.
"Sit.down, damn it," the senator roared, holding the sides of the table to steady it. With his napkin, he removed the offending particle, then threw the napkin onto the table with a loud slap. "Cretinous fool," he muttered before composing his face into a mask of cordiality. "That is, everything all right, Jay?"
Miller nodded. His teeth were chattering.
"What I called you in to discuss is a matter of extreme national importance, Jay, so I'd like your word that what passes between us will go no further."
"Oh, you have my absolute word on that, Ozzie, sir."
"Good. Til get right to the point, Jay. It's the army records."
Jay Miller felt his palms begin to sweat. He was in charge of filing the records for the army in the Pentagon. "Is something wrong, sir?"
"Ozzie," the senator corrected, smiling. "Yes. Something is definitely wrong." He gave Jay's trembling hand a fatherly squeeze. "Don't worry, son. It's not your fault. The red tepe in the Pentagon is—well, you know how it is." The senator chuckled and exchanged with Miller a between-us-insiders smile. "The point is, there's a whole army base in Texas thafs been operating since 1979 that there aren't any records for. No construction payment records, no files on operating expenses, no personnel records, salary documentation, nothing." He laughed jovially. "Now, isn't that something?"
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Jay Miller blanched. "But—but that can't be," he stammered. "If it's been operating since 1979, then surely—"
"There are no records," Senator Nooner said slowly, enunciating every word so that the idiot sitting across from him would be sure to understand.
"No, sir. There are no records," agreed Jay Miller.
"You're a smart boy, son. I think someone as bright as you is a real asset to our country. I think that a person with your brains ought to have a better job than Assistant to the Chief Clerk of Records. Don't you, Jay?"
"I—I don't know, sir."
"Call me Ozzie."
"I guess I'd like another job, sir—Ozzie. I never really thought about it."
"A job such as, say, Secretary of the Treasury?"
"Abba—abbaba," said Jay Miller.
"I'm a powerful man, son. I could arrange it."
"Abbaba—baba—"
"Excellent. I'll set the wheels in motion today. Of course, you'll have to straighten out the army files before you leave. Create new dossiers on Fort Va-dassar—that's the new base—transfer the personnel files, details like that."
"Sure," Miller said, his face flushed with anticipation. "Once I get the okay, I think I can have everything in order in six weeks, Ozzie."
"You have the okay, as of now. And you've got one hour."
"One hour? But I don't even have the information to file."
Nooner smiled grandly. "That's a detail Tve already taken care of, son. They don't call me the
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People's Senator for nothing." He handed Miller a stack öf official forms and a lengthy list of names. "Just put these in the Vadassar file bank, and transfer the personnel dossiers for the soldiers on the list from whatever camp they're in—mistakenly—to the Vadassar files. That clear?"
The young man took the papers uncertainly. "I guess so. But one hour—"
"Secretary of the Treasury," Nooner said.
"One hour it is, Ozzie,"
"Good. Come back when you're through." Nooner rose to shake the young man's hand and waited for the door to close behind Jay Miller before picking up the telephone. He dialed the number of the Washington Post.
"This is Senator Osgood Nooner," he said. "I've just received some shocking news from an extremely reliable source about the massacres at the army bases yesterday. The word is that the Pentagon itself is responsible. The leadership at one base, Fort Vadassar, knows the story and is sufficiently outraged by its moral implications to inform the press about it in an open conference at twelve noon today."
He repeated the message, along with directions to Fort Vadassar, to the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Herald, ABC, CBS, and NBC. It took him just under one hour. Then he lit a cigar and waited for the return of Jay Miller, the man who thought an assistant clerk of records could become Secretary of the Treasury by rearranging a few files.
The young man returned exactly on time, his smile indicating he had completed the job.
"Very fine work, son," Nooner said, opening the
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desk drawer where he kept some personal effects. "Did anyone in the Pentagon's file offices try to stop you?"
"Oh, no, Ozzie," the young man said. "No one was even there at this hour, and the guards all know I run those files." He flushed with pride. "I really appreciate this opportunity, sir. I never thought I'd get a chance to work with Senator Osgood Nooner."
"I always like to give a smart fellow like you a helping hand, son," the senator said as he slipped a handkerchief over the barrel of the new, unloaded .45 automatic in the desk drawer and tossed it toward the young man. Before Miller could recognize what the flying object was, he reached out and caught it. And at the precise moment when Miller began smearing his fingerprints over the empty weapon, Senator Osgood Nooner tucked the handkerchief into his coat pocket and screamed, "Help! There's a killer in here!"
Within seconds the Marine guard stationed outside Nooner's door was in the office, his weapon drawn.
"Shoot! " Nooner yelled.
Jay Miller looked, bewildered, from the gun in his hand to the senator who had promised him a cabinet position only an hour before. And he understood, during the infinitesimal moment between the time when the guard's pistol fired and the searing, burning pain in his back obliterated every working part of his organism, that Senator Osgood "Ozzie" Nooner had spoken the truth. ¦
There was indeed a killer present.
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Eight
Remo vaulted the wire fence surrounding Fort Bor-goyne, then waited while Chiun ripped the links apart and stepped through the opening. They walked to the center of the camp and slipped unnoticed into a group of new recruits stepping off the arrival bus at the parade grounds.
Remo remembered the frightened recruits of his early army days, but this was a totally different kind of crew, obviously used to standing in lines, apparently in prison mess halls, and to milling around aimlessly, presumably while employed in federal job programs.
"This is your army?" Chiun said.
"It's supposed to be."
"God, save the Republic," Chiun said. "Where is the marching? Where are the banners? The cymbals?"
"This is the American army," Remo said. "Most of these guys will have to reenlist to have enough time to tell left foot from right foot."
He looked with Chiun toward an onrushing sergeant whose face suggested that his father had been a bull terrier.
"I am Sergeant Hayes, and this is the United
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States Army," the sergeant boomed. "You came here to work, and work you will. Do all your orders read Fort Borgoyne?"
Only a few voices squeaked an answer. "Yes." The other enlistees seemingly did not care what their orders read, just so long as it was not Sing Sing.
"Yes what?" the sergeant yelled at the top of his lungs, although he stood no more than two feet from the ragged line of recruits.
"Yes, sir," a few answered in unison.
"What?"