"I don't feel like taking any more of these calls," he said. The men near him moved forward. His closest aide was still leaning over his own telephone, his back to the President, talking.
The aide put the telephone down angrily and turned back to the President. He shook his head 'no.'
"Keep on it," the President said.
Before leaving the room, he whispered into the aide's ear. "Nothing to the press. Nothing at all. Not until I get a chance to think this through."
"Yes sir. Are you feelin' all right?"
"I'm fine. I'm fine. I've got to go upstairs now. I've got my own phone call to make."
Sylvester Montrofort hunched forward in the wheelchair behind his desk, ostensibly listening to Remo, but his eyes locked, as if by radar, on a point midway between the two foremost promontories of the Viola Poombs' anatomy.
He had started the meeting with the three strangers by sitting dead level with their eyes. But the overhang of the desk restricted his view of Viola's bosom and belly and legs and surreptitiously, inch by inch, he had raised his chair, until now he towered a foot over the rest of them, staring down at Viola.
She was busy taking notes. Like most people to whom writing is not a natural function, she accomplished it in bursts of enthusiasm, by fits and starts, and each start set off tiny movements in her chest, and gave Montrofort fits.
"This Pruel was one of yours," Remo said. "So what happened to him?"
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"I don't know," said Montrofort, without changing the direction of his glance. "He had just come back from a mission in Africa. He was distraught, don't you know. Like a woodchuck who goes back to his hole and finds it filled with snakes. He wanted to resign. He said he had enough years of killing and worrying about killing."
"What did he have to do with killing?"
"Slow down," Viola said to Remo. She lifted her head to look toward him. "You're going too fast." Her breasts rose. Montrofort agreed. "Yes. Slow down. I've got plenty of time."
Remo shrugged. "What. Did. He. Have. To. Do. With. Killing? Got that?"
"Almost," said Viola.
"He was in the business of security. We provide security for people," Montrofort said. "Heads of state, wealthy men, men that somebody is always out there, planning to pick off like a year-old scab."
"Now you're going too fast," Viola said.
"Sorry, my dear." He paused to let her catch up, and waited till her eyes lifted and met his with a slight nod. "Also, Pruel had been in the Secret Service for many years dealing with presidential security. All our people have. That puts a lot of pressures on them. I guess the pressure finally got to him. You know how it is."
"He knows how it is," said Chiun. "He reacts very badly to pressure himself."
Remo looked disgusted. "And these two men in the car? They worked for you, too."
"Actually, they were on my payroll but they worked for Pruel. They were part of his personal staff. This here has got me as confused as a fly in
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a cup of soup. I don't know why Pruel might have been trying to kill you. What reason? I don't know. And these other two, they must have been trying to help him. Don't ask me why. Maybe they just didn't like your looks. Maybe you frightened them, old buddy."
"Highly unlikely," said Chiun. "Look at him. Who could be frightened of that?"
"Hush," said Remo.
"Slower," said Viola. "I only got up to 'unlikely.' "
"I have it all in here," Montrofort said. He opened his desk drawer and brought out a small tape recorder. "When we're all done, why don't you stay and you can transcribe from the tape."
"Couldn't you just give me the tape?" she said.
"I'm sorry, dear. I can't do that. Company policy. But I'd be glad to help you copy it down if you wished."
"Well, maybe..."
"Sure," said Remo. "That's going to be good for you. And Chiun and I have other things to do."
"If you think it's all right," Viola said.
"Nothing could be righter," Remo said.
At the doorway, Remo stopped and turned to Montrofort who had returned his wheelchair to floor level and was moving around the side of the desk toward Viola.
"One thing, Mr. Montrofort. Did you know Ernest Walgreen ?"
"One of our clients. Another ex-Secret Service man. We lost him. First client we ever lost." While he spoke he was staring at Viola's breasts and moving inexorably nearer and nearer to them. Suddenly he looked up at Remo. "Walgreen
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was Pruel's case, too. Do you think all of this is tied up somehow?"
"Never can tell," Remo said.
Outside the forty-story glass-sided office building, Chiun said, "He lusts, that one."
"I feel kind of sorry for him," Remo said.
"You would."
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CHAPTER NINE
"The President has been warned that he will be killed on Saturday." Smith's voice had sounded as if he were the telephone company's tape-recorded weather report, minus the fire and passion that precipitation probabilities carried with them.
"Where?" asked Remo.
"Outside the Capitol. He is supposed to address some rally of the young Students United against Oppression Overseas."
"Simple," said Remo. "Tell him to stay home."
"I already have. He refuses. He insists upon going to that rally."
"Screw him then," Remo said. "He's not as-smart as I thought he was."
"I'd rather try to protect him," Smith said. "You don't have anything?"
"Don't have anything? I've got everything. I've got too much and none of it goes anywhere."
"Try it on me," Smith said. "Maybe the two of us might see something you overlooked by yourself."
"You're welcome to it," said Remo. "First, Walgreen. After Kennedy was killed, the Secret Service started paying off somebody who
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threatened to kill the next President. Walgreen was out of the service then but they recruited him to act as the bag man. So far, so good. Now this President, he won't pay. So our friendly little assassin kills off Walgreen. Very well, too. He put him in a safe hole and then he blew him away. You staying with me ?"
"I'm with you," said Smith.
"Pay attention. I'm going to ask questions later," Remo said. "Now Walgreen tried to get protection. He went to a security agency called Paldor's. It's filled with old Secret Service hands. They couldn't protect him. Now this Paldor's. Yesterday, three of its guys tried to kill me."
"And me, too," said Chiun from across the room. "Do I count for nothing around here?"
"And Chiun," Remo said. "Now I would have said those guys who tried to kill me were the ones threatening the President, but-when'd you say the threat to him came ?"
"I didn't say, but it was last night."
"Okay. It came after these three were dead. So they didn't have anything to do with it. And I don't know who does. Can't we just buy the bastards off?"
"The President asked about that," Smith said. "They said no."
"Then they're not in it just for the money. They've got something else in mind," Remo said.
"Right. It would seem so."
"Or maybe they're just loonies, and they're not playing with a full deck anymore," Remo suggested.
"That could be too."
"Who threatened the President?" Remo asked.
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"A telephone call. Mid-southern voice. Forties. They traced the call to a rundown apartment in the east side of the city. Rent was paid three months in advance in cash. Nobody ever saw or remembers the tenant. The phone had been hooked up for two months but this was the first call apparently that had been made anywhere. They're trying to find somebody, either in the building or the phone company or somewhere, who might have seen the tenant, but no luck yet. And they've looked for prints, but they haven't found any."
"Tuesday, huh?"
"Yes. Two days to work."
"That's plenty of time," Remo said.