"Considering the duty they're pulling, that makes sense," Kohd stated. "A clandestine branch specifically for protecting the politicians in high-risk security situations. But their purview must include investigative duties. And assassination."
"Yes," Flicker said, staring at the blur of a face on a bizarre, short body in its colorful robe. The hands of the man were in focus, and they were wrinkled with age.
"Assassination is illegal," Kohd added. He was feeling uncomfortable. Flicker didn't notice. Kohd was uncomfortable because of the look he was seeing on his boss's face—a sort of excitement. Kohd added, "If they are what we think, these men represent an officially sanctioned but blatantly unconstitutional federal entity."
"Almost certainly with presidential knowledge and backing," Flicker said, smiling like a teenaged boy watching his girlfriend get naked. "They're my ace in the hole."
"Sir?" Kohd wasn't following and wasn't sure he wanted to.
"Call the airport. We're going to D.C."
35
Harold Smith lifted the red phone. "Yes, sir?"
"Smith, I just got a call from my old press manager, Orville Flicker," said the President of the United States.
"Really?"
"He's on his way to D.C."
"I see."
"He'd like to meet with me. He made some veiled threats."
"Such as?"
"He said he knows about my assassins, Smith. Says he'd like to talk it over before he goes public."
"I see."
"Excuse me, are you listening? If that little twerp exposes CURE, I'm finished! My administration will experience the fastest impeachment of all time!"
"It's under control, Mr. President. We know what evidence he has, and it's useless."
"But he knows something, Smith," the President insisted. "He might use it He knows how to get attention."
"He knows nothing, Mr. President," Dr. Smith assured him. "Mr. Flicker is only making an educated guess, and he will not use it. After tonight, I believe, he will have no credibility left."
Smith, without a second thought, hung up on the President and replayed the videotape on his screen. Mark Howard had just finished working with a digital video stream they had intercepted feeding into the Flicker residence in Dallas.
Mark's changes were expertly done. Smith couldn't see the editing.
Still, there was much about this exercise that made him feel grim, and angry.
36
"I dig your threads, man," Remo said with genuine pleasure.
"Fah!" Chiun snapped.
"But it's the shades what make the suit."
"Leave me be, idiot!"
The senator was looking from one to the other, unable to come to terms with this pair of, well, whatever they were. They had squabbled like siblings ever since the old one was informed he needed to dress like an agent from the Service.
"Never! Not for all the gold under Fort Knox!"
The young one, Remo, finally convinced the old one to wear a dark suit jacket and dark glasses over his robe, which was obviously a traditional Asian garment of some kind.
"How will I see the projectiles with my vision obscured?" the old man demanded.
"You can take them off as soon as we get to the podium," Remo told him. "Nobody will be looking at you then, anyway."
The senator had his doubts about that. The old man, whose name he couldn't quite get his tongue around, was an unusual sight, and the jacket didn't disguise much of his unusualness. Everything else aside, he was a head shorter than any Service agent in history.
"We're ten minutes late—we ready or not?" demanded the senator's executive assistant, who served as his press secretary.
"I'm ready," Remo declared, folding his hands in front of him in a standard Service pose. "You ready, Little Father?"
The Asian made the sound of a striking cobra.
"He's ready," Remo told the assistant.
"I was asking the senator!"
"Oh. You ready, Senator?"
"Yes," he said to Remo, caught himself and said "Yes," to his assistant. She went to announce him, muttering.
"You must fire that woman," the Asian man instructed Whiteslaw. "She called us names."
"She'd divorce me if I fired her."
They emerged from the front doors of the Old S.O.B. The media was everywhere. The public cheered the elected official who had been attacked so heroically.
The senator was still being supported by the men as he walked, and they transported him with minimal fuss and without effort, as far as he could tell. They were scanning the crowd, and the sunglasses were lifted off their eyes the moment that all three of them came to stop at the oversized podium.
Whiteslaw was sweating under thick armor, but his head was entirely exposed. He still didn't quite understand how he was supposed to be protected in the event of a head shot from a sniper. He hoped he wasn't going to regret this....
Before the senator even opened his mouth the first shot was fired. Whiteslaw's first indication was when his vision was obscured. Somebody had put a big piece of metal in front of his face and before he could think it over there was a heavy metallic crunch, followed a second later by the sound of the shot.
Somebody had just fired a sniper rifle, right at his head, and the one called Remo had shielded him with a piece of armor plating that looked as if it had been literally ripped from under the body panels of one of the Service's armored cars. There were pieces of the electronic door latch dangling from it.
Next thing the senator knew, he was stuffed into the podium's hollow and the inch-thick steel door was slammed in his face. He was in darkness.
Rubin swore. Of all the dumb luck. They had to have guessed the sniper would fire the moment the Senator was in place, which meant they knew that the intent was to keep Whiteslaw from appearing on the media. Well, so far the news had nothing more than a few shots of him walking to the microphone, but the man was still alive, and conveniently trapped by his own bodyguards inside the armored shell of the podium.
General Rubin smirked at the foolishness of that act. The podium would be Senator Whiteslaw's coffin.
"Move in," he snapped into his radio and saw his four men push through the crowds of onlookers. Their attack came only heartbeats after the failed sniper bullet, and the Service was too slow. In fact, the Service seemed to be keeping to the fringes.
The pair in the middle were the ones who mattered, anyway. Rubin didn't know who they were, but according to his boss their deaths were just as important as that of the senator. Thanks to the new hardware his men was using, their deaths were a sure thing. No more machine guns. They had sawed-off combat shotguns, with a wide, deadly spread.
Rubin's men shoved their way into the open and targeted the podium pair, but for some reason there were no sounds of gunfire. Where were the shotgun blasts?
General Rubin of the White Hand had an unobscured view of the action. What he saw was the pair from the podium moving among his men like darting birds, snatching shotguns like worms. The shotguns clattered on the walkway and, like worms, they were now curved and bent. Useless.
The gunners were going for their backup weapons, but were demolished before they freed any of them. Rubin saw the light, impossibly swift strokes and didn't trust his own eyes. It was too swift, like flashes of sunlight The collapse of his four men was slow by comparison, and their precise wounds left Rubin with no doubts that they were dead.
How had this all gone so wrong so fast? Who were these two?
Whoever they were, they had no real cover. They wouldn't escape a sniper.
"Morton, take them out," Rubin said into his radio.
At that moment the pair turned and looked right at him, as if they had heard his voice.
"I'll get that guy." Remo spotted the man who was coordinating the attack. He was ensconced in a portable electronic sound booth, where the media had been required to stage its retransmitting equipment. Equipment trucks had not been allowed anywhere near the press conference.