“Whoever said that will be the first to save America,” said Rubin Dolomo.
* * *
For the Secret Service, entrusted with protecting the President of the United States, the nightmare began somewhat harmlessly in the main mailroom of the White House. It was nothing great, but anything out of the ordinary had to be investigated. Several clerks now had failed to show up for work.
“As you know,” said the supervisor, “we have five routings for mail. All of it is opened here after being checked for cookies, bombs, anything like that. Personal gifts go to the Courtesy Center, where thank-you notes are composed. If the gifts are worth more than a certain amount, our Courtesy Hostesses send them to the Smithsonian for display. Letters criticizing the President or the First Lady are routed to the Beige Room, where benign responses are written. Threats are sent to you for investigation. Letters that have to be answered by the President's staff of secretaries are sent to another department, and personal letters, ones that seem as though they actually come from people who know him, are handled by another. It was in this last category that we had the problem.”
“You mean the clerks who open the President's personal correspondence?”
“Oh, no. Machines open his letters. It was the clerks who handled them. They'd be working a regular shift and then they would just stare out into space. Just stare, gape, gawk, like they were in a void.”
“So you had no way to differentiate them from any other worker,” said the Secret Service man. “Just a joke.”
“We earn our money here,” said the supervisor, looking wounded.
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Well, they would entertain themselves for a while— play with stamps, trade lunches, that sort of thing, but then they would wander off. And when we phoned them at home, a few of them were gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“They never returned home that day. Or any day thereafter.”
“Give me the names of those who didn't wander off,” said the Secret Service man.
There were two of them. Both of them seemed unaccountably listless. And they were incapable of answering any questions about their jobs or why they left— in fact, they hardly remembered ever working there at all.
Then came the real problems. The President would be making a Midwestern road trip to speak to farmers. As usual, the Secret Service had to sanitize the route, making sure that no bombs were set in roads. All hiding places and potential sniper sites had Secret Service men stationed at them, and all the roads that could be used as avenues of escape along the motorcade route were barricaded.
Halls where the President would speak had to be examined with metal detectors. The local hospitals had to stock his blood type, more than enough for any major operation.
Airplane traffic had to be rerouted because no airplane could overfly the presidential caravan. And then, as though he was going out for a pleasant ride to meet the people of Wisconsin, the President rode through the suburbs of Racine, waving to everyone as though he didn't have a care in the world. And he didn't: The Secret Service did.
It was the usual crowd at the fairground. Ninety-nine percent of the people were there to cheer their President this sunny autumn day. Then there were the hostile sign holders, those who lived for the opportunity to tell the Commander-in-Chief to get out of South America, the Middle East, the Far East, Africa, Europe, and Racine. The television cameras zoomed in on the one percent as the President began to speak.
What looked, to the untrained eye, like randomly placed Secret Service men was in actuality three zones of protection strategically placed in the crowd. The second formed a barrier between the crowd and the President. The third zone was what was called the “body” grid. This group was never more than an arm's length from their charge. These were the men who would crowd around the President at any sign of trouble.
On this day in Racine, a very sweet-looking housewife who was extremely polite got through the second grid. She simply excused herself and squeezed past the agents; and because the metal detectors at the perimeter of the second grid picked up nothing on her body, no one would suspect that the demure lady wanted anything more than a better view. Until she actually reached the podium.
“You cannot shut out the light of the universe. Your negativity will fail,” she shrieked. The cameras moved from the President, who was explaining how the nation was going to feed itself with an alteration in farm policy, to the woman's flailing arms. The body grid pulled closer to the podium. Within seconds the Secret Service wrestled her into an empty room for questioning.
“You can never harm me,” she said, relaxed and smiling sweetly at everyone. But when she began urinating a doctor was called to put her into an ambulance. The woman's identification said she was a housewife, but she could not remember her married name. Nor could she recall where she lived, or how she had gotten to Racine. She didn't care about religious freedom; she only cared about one issue:
When was she going to get ice cream?
Even stranger, the agent who stopped her was found later that night wandering around Racine, thrilled that he had fifty dollars in his pocket. With that money, he was telling everyone, he could see twenty-five movies in a row if he didn't buy candy.
At every stop in the Midwest that week, similar incidents occurred. Once, one of the loonies almost reached the President.
Finally the Secret Service had to tell him, quite sadly, that they could not protect him anymore if he left the White House. Something was coming at him, and they had no idea yet what it was.
The President listened stoically, and then, when they were gone, went himself to his bedroom, where the previous President had pointed out the red phone, the special phone to reach the special people. He had used it often in his presidency and now he would use it again. All he had to do was pick up the receiver and two of the most powerful bodyguards in the world would be put at his disposal.
“Smith here, sir,” came the voice.
“Smith, I have a problem that I am not sure would come under your jurisdiction. Somebody, or something, is attacking me. And my Secret Service says sooner or later they're going to succeed.”
Chapter 7
The Poweressence temple in Miami Beach was an elegant Spanish villa with spacious verandas. But Remo and Chiun met their first Powies several blocks away. They were trying to encourage them to take a character test. Much to Chiun's disgust, Remo accepted for both of them.
Outside the villa on its magnificent black metal gates a crude sign was posted:
“Free Character Test.”
“This I cannot even imagine why you are doing,” said Chiun.
“Some people are attacking the President. They are doing it with a strange phenomenon. And somehow the attackers forget what they've done, how they've done it, and even who they are. But there are too many Poweressence people involved not to investigate them.”
“I'm sorry I asked,” said Chiun. He wore a plain gray traveling kimono because he had been thinking about moving from Miami Beach. He was considering finding a more permanent home in America, which saddened him. If they bought a more permanent home here, that meant they would live here longer, and the longer they worked for Smith, the less chance of ever adding to the glory of Sinanju. Mad Emperor Smith not only insisted that everything be secret but also apparently was never going to seize this country's throne. The horror of it was that these whites were actually telling the truth when they talked about the people selecting a leader, instead of inheriting a traditional and more stable monarch by birth or even the more reasonable hand of the professional assassin, the traditional assassin, the house of assassins that had given the world more leaders than any royal line. This house of assassins that Remo refused to honor by doing something that would enhance its histories. Instead, he continued to serve a country which never taught him anything and an emperor so mad he openly admitted now he did not
