"Do?" asked Remo. "He did what will get you killed almost always, sweetie. He didn't think. His second biggest crime was not moving quickly enough with that gun. Stupid and slow are the two crimes in this world that are always punished."
Chiun pressed a reassuring hand on Viola Poombs' trembling arm.
"Miss Poombs, that man died because he offended our honor," said Chiun. He watched her face. It still looked as if someone had jammed two electrodes into her ears. She was terrified. She inched away from the body in the corner and her neck was very stiff as though if she did not keep it that way, she might look to her left where that was. Where it was. That thing. And Viola didn't want to look to her right either, because that was where the Oriental was who thought there was nothing wrong with any of this.
"Miss Poombs, he offended your honor violently. He has been killed in honor of the great artist who will write the story of Sinanju."
''I want to get out of here," cried Viola. "I want to go back to Poopsie. To hell with money for books on assassins."
"We killed him because he had bad thoughts in his head about the way the world should be run," said Chiun, trying something he thought would appeal to the white mind.
"Viola," said Remo coldly, "shut up. He's dead because he tried to kill me. This car was the connection to that man who killed the woman and
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child. Those deaths were ordered from this car. So were our deaths. They made a mistake. They weren't successful. They died because they failed to kill us. That's why they're dead."
"I like politics better. Nobody ever got hurt by taking off their clothes for an American congressman."
"Viola," said Remo, "you're in this thing. When it's over, you can leave."
Chiun tried to calm Miss Poombs but when the body fell forward, she buried her head in her hands and sobbed.
Remo talked to the driver. There were a few friendly questions. They were answered with great sincerity. And with no information. The driver had been hired that afternoon from Megargel's Rent-A-Car. And he was scared. Shitless. As he proved.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
The first three times the President had sat in the White House, with television cameras peering in, to take telephone calls from the American public, the ratings had been pretty good. But the fourth and fifth times had been disasters. They had been outdrawn in New York by a rerun of The Monte-fuseos and in Las Vegas by the 914th showing of-Howard Hughes' favorite movie.
A network executive explained it to a presidential aide. "Face up to it. In viewer interest, this phone bit ranks somewhere between watching grass grow and watching paint dry. Say about equal to watching water evaporate. So we're not going to televise any more of these things. Sorry you feel that way, old buddy. So's yours."
The presidential aide explained this to the President. "Jus" don't seem like no point in goin' on with it," he said.
"We'll do it," the President had said, without looking up from the foot-high stack of papers on his desk. Bureaucrats always seemed to complain about the massive amounts of paperwork connected with their jobs. But paperwork was information, and information sustained the presidency.
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The country could survive a wrong, even a stupid, decision; it was harder to survive an ignorant, uninformed decision, because the latter all too often became administration policy. This was the first President who loved paperwork, because he was the first since Thomas Jefferson to understand the scientific method and the need for data,
"But sir?"
The President carefully put his yellow Number Two Excellent Pencil into a silver cup on his desk and looked at his aide.
"First, I take these phone calls to stay in touch with America, not for TV coverage. If I want the television people to get interested in me, all I've got to do is put on a tutu and practice ballet dancing on the west lawn. Just tape the program and maybe someday we'll find some use for it." He looked at the aide with a blank expression that did not contain a question, a request for confirmation, but only a demand for silence.
The aide nodded and smiled. "Good politics, sir."
The President picked up his pencil again and began to jot numbers into the margin of a report on overseas food distribution. "Good government," he said.
The aide looked crestfallen and chagrined as he walked to the door. He heard the President's voice and turned.
"And good politics," the President added with a large warm smile. After the aide left, the President allowed himself a sigh. The toughest part of any leader's job was always the personal relationships. Even men who had been with him for years still took disagreement for disapproval, still felt that if the President did not do what
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they thought he should do, it somehow made' them less worthy.
He thought that if he didn't have to spend so much time and energy stroking his staff, stroking the Congress, even stroking his own family, why . . . why he could read even more papers. He smiled grimly and went back to his work.
So it was that four nights later, he sat at a desk in another part of the building, punching buttons in the base of a telephone and talking to Americans who had called the White House to talk to their leader and had survived the screening of three separate White House staffers.
"A Mister Mandell, sir. One Two. With a question on energy."
The President punched the second button on the base of the telephone.
"Hello, Mister Mandell. This is the President. You wanted to talk about energy?"
"Yes. You're going to run out of it."
"Well, yes, sir, we all face that danger unless we reduce our ..."
"No, Mr. President. Not we, you. You're going to run out of energy. On Saturday."
The death threat, if that's what it was, made him think. There was something in the voice that said this was no crank. The voice lacked zealous intensity, the high pitch that hate callers always had. This voice was matter of fact, laconic. It sounded like a control tower operator or a police radio car dispatcher.
The President made a note. "Fortyish. Touch of twang. Maybe Virginia."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"Remember Sun Valley, Utah? Your turn comes Saturday. You're going to die and I'm go
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ing to tell you where. On the steps of the Capitol. I warned you this would happen if you didn't pay."
The President waved his hand to one of his staffers to get off their own calls and pick this one up. He hoped they had enough cross-checking procedures on calls to trace where this call had come from.
"What do you mean, sir, by Sun Valley?" the President said.
"You know very well what I mean. That man thought he was protected too, and we killed him just to show he wasn't. We thought the lesson wouldn't be lost on you. But instead you brought in extra personnel. They can't help you, though. You're going to die."
"Suppose we offer to pay what you want?" the President asked. He caught the eye of his aide who was already talking into another telephone, putting the federal crime fighting apparatus in motion to go wherever that phone call was being made from and to collect the telephone caller.
"It's too late for that now, Mr. President," the phone caller said. "You're going to die. And I won't be at this location long enough for your people to get to me, so don't waste your time or mine. You might however leave a note for your successor. Tell him we do not like being ignored and when we call him-next Sunday after he's President-he had better not turn us down. Goodbye, Mr. President. Until Saturday."
The telephone clicked dead in the President's ear.
He replaced the telephone on the receiver and stood up behind his desk. He wore a light blue
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cardigan sweater with the sleeves pushed up past his ample farmer's wrists.