Remo The Adventure Begins Page 13

  “That’s a serious charge, Major.”

  “I understand that.”

  “And you have bucked this out of channels, around your commanding officer?”

  “Correct.”

  “This could get you court-martialed, you know. There are channels. You could make a report.”

  “And have it destroyed by the master of reports. General Watson is the best bureaucratic infighter in Washington. He may not remember who won World War Two or why, or what to do when an enemy is about to turn your flank on a battlefield, but he damned well knows how to wield a mean memo.”

  “That is a further serious charge against your commanding officer. I would call it defamation.”

  “And I would call it accurate.”

  “Nothing you have done today here in my office with these unsubstantiated charges would indicate that General Watson was not absolutely right. It appears from your extremely tense demeanor and wild charges that you do indeed suffer from stress. Now, I will attribute all of this to your malady and let you go on to your rest. I know how hard and tension-filled a job like yours can be.”

  Major Fleming inhaled deeply. The Undersecretary was letting her walk back off the limb. She could say forget everything, go to a hospital for a few weeks, come out with a clean bill of health and resume her career. Or she could do otherwise.

  “No,” she said. “I stand by it all.”

  The Undersecretary nodded, somewhat sadly. This beautiful officer had just all but scuttled her career. He almost wished she was right about Grove Industries and General Watson. Because what she had done just now was say to the United States government, it was either her or them.

  “I will accept a written statement from you on this matter,” said the Undersecretary, “and then I would advise you to proceed to that hospital.”

  He paused and then with a sigh said:

  “I’m sorry. That is all I can do.”

  It was them.

  • • •

  Ordinarily Major Fleming’s report would not go far beyond her own file to provide proof that her commanding officer had made the right decision in dismissing her. It would get a review from a board, and the board would find her “hysterical,” a term more loosely used for women than men.

  But on this particular board was someone who had orders to forward all reports, no matter how unsubstantiated, to a file in one of the many monitor offices in Washington.

  He was not sure exactly what it was. Someone told him once, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was filing this report in a computer-coded manner, one of many computer-coded manners he filed reports in all day long. He didn’t know where the others went for certain, and therefore felt little concern for this report’s destination either.

  The Fleming report, however, had what were called “flags.” A program seeing one of these flags would pick up the report and forward it. The Fleming report had three strong flags.

  One, it concerned the AR-60, for which a flag had been set.

  Two, it concerned Grove Industries, for which another flag had been set.

  And three, it set a flag for anyone reporting malfeasance concerning the above two items.

  Within a microsecond the screen of Harold W. Smith, in that Wall Street cover, was alight with an interruption. He had personally set the flags. As he read the report on Major Fleming, his native New England reserve contained his excitement.

  What Harold W. Smith had discovered was what he had seen in so many branches of the armed forces despite general opinion to the contrary. An officer was ready to go all the way for what she believed. But what excited Harold W. Smith was that now he had the one person to use against Grove, inside the system. If the major were willing to risk her career without good informational support, then she certainly was not going to break under any other pressure and she certainly was not going to be bought off.

  Good for you, Major Fleming, thought Smith. You’re the one real man in that command.

  If Smith were a whistler, he would have whistled that day as he worked. He created orders and counterorders. He created a whole system that had not only cleared Major Fleming of any sign of emotional weakness, but added a merit report, and transferred her neatly away from General Scott Watson, whose name would now be flagged on anything to do with malfeasance.

  And even better yet, Major Fleming would not be alone anymore. She would get all the support she needed even though she would never know where it came from.

  The orders arrived at the hospital before Major Fleming. She was not to be treated at the hospital, but return to Washington to join the staff of the Joint Chiefs. And she was ordered to investigate two projects. The AR-60, and one to do with the Air Force, perhaps the most glamorous defense project in the history of the nation, HARP, America’s roof against the nuclear rain.

  George Grove, because he ate sparingly, rarely felt like vomiting. But this day in the crucial congressional subcommittee hearing in Washington, he wanted to vomit up the salad and mineral water he had eaten for breakfast. Then he wanted to strangle Wilson. And maybe General Scott Watson, as well.

  Walking to the opposite side of the table set before the congressional bench in the closed-door meeting was the major Wilson had promised Watson would get rid of. She arrived with a thick sheaf of notes. Grove forced himself not to look at her, to pay attention to the Air Force officer’s smooth presentation on why America should move forward from HARP I system into HARP II.

  It was winter and the good Jamaica tan hid Grove’s seething red rage.

  “And so,” concluded the Air Force officer’s excellent presentation, “I can only reiterate, Mr. Chairman, that the HARP system is a key element in our defensive shield in space . . ."

  Grove nodded sagely. The chairman, a representative from Chillicothe, Ohio, glanced at his watch. He had heard this presentation many times before. He figured the officer could wind up now in time for everyone to take two good stiff cocktails before dinner.

  “I think everyone in this room,” said the officer, “shares a dream. A dream that one day our nation will be invulnerable to nuclear attack.”

  The chairman whispered to the representative on his left about the quality of the winter heating in the Capitol. He noticed the contractor was nodding. He was supposed to. He noticed the other Air Force officers were paying rapt attention, even though they probably had brainstormed every comma in the report. But one strange thing was happening at the testimony table. An Army officer was taking notes, quite seriously.

  And other members of the committee were watching her.

  “What a pair, huh?” whispered another representative.

  “Her and who?” asked the chairman, also in a whisper.

  “Them on her,” answered the other representative.

  “I don’t like the heating in here,” whispered the chairman, who knew the presentation almost as well as the Air Force officer. This whole thing was a foregone conclusion. America was as committed to HARP as it was to electing its national leaders.

  “HARP,” said the Air Force officer, his pointer resting on a chart of America’s space borders, “can bring us closer to that dream in our search for the ultimate weapon of peace. I recommend that we proceed to system level development on HARP II with all possible speed. Thank you.”

  Good, thought the chairman. We are all going to make cocktails tonight. It was over. The other congressmen were gathering their papers when he said:

  “I think we’re all agreed then. If there are no objections—”

  “Mr. Chairman. There is one point I’d like to raise,” said the beautiful major.

  Grove tasted the watercress come up, and swallowed it back down with his anger.

  “We are all aware of the strategic importance of the HARP system to our national defense. But I question the advisability of pouring money into HARP II when we haven’t seen anything of HARP I yet.”

  There was silence in the closed hearing. Two congressmen on their way to the doo
r sat back down at their table. Everyone looked to Grove and the Air Force officers.

  “If I may be permitted to ask Mr. Grove a question,” Major Fleming asked.

  “Yes, yes. Go ahead,” said the chairman. He was down to a single cocktail that night, he knew.

  “Mr. Grove, can you tell us what the delay is in making HARP I operational?”

  Grove exuded competence and just a little bit of annoyance in his answer.

  “Of course, I can tell you,” he said, looking at the congressmen and not at the major. “It’s committees like this that take a sound design, chew it up and spit it back with a lot of new specs attached.”

  George Grove looked directly at one of his good friends when he said this, and his good friend did not let him down.

  “George has a point,” said the congressman, now bouncing the ball into the Air Force court. “You generals can’t blink without coming up with a hundred new design demands.”

  “Which naturally adds to cost overruns. But my question is even more troubling. It is vital and basic. When can we see anything of the HARP I we have paid so much for?”

  George Grove slammed down a file.

  “Mr. Chairman,” he said with properly controlled rage. “My company has one of the finest track records in this town . . . What about the CD-18, Major? Three months ahead of schedule. And under budget. We don’t hear about underbudgets, do we? We don’t hear of bettering a deadline, either. That CD-18 will be ready for testing next week. Next week. Not next month. Next week.”

  “Yes, at Mount Promise, I am aware of that. That is one of General Watson’s programs. I will be there too. If you do know him personally, as I suspect, please do tell him I will be there.”

  Trapped, George Grove fell back on his patriotism. He questioned Major Fleming’s questioning it. He questioned Congress’s questioning it. He questioned anyone questioning it. Finally, the chairman had to say no one was questioning it.

  “I think the question was about HARP I. And it was a good one,” said the chairman of the congressional subcommittee.

  “Damn good,” said another congressman. He was not one of George Grove’s friends.

  Outside the hearing room, Wilson was waiting.

  “How did it go?”

  “Do you remember the major at the party?”

  “Yes. Watson got rid of her.”

  “Yes, out of his stinking little command right to the Joint Chiefs and HARP.”

  “Oh, no,” said Wilson.

  “She is out. Out. Out. Out.”

  “I understand.”

  “I am not talking about a head cold or a transfer.”

  “I understand.”

  “Use the best. I don’t want to see that face again on this earth.”

  “Not a problem, George,” said Wilson.

  “I knew she would be trouble.”

  “No problem,” said Wilson.

  “She was supposed to be no problem, before. And now I see her looking across from me at what was supposed to be an open-and-shut hearing, that now has stayed open.”

  “No problem. I smell the handiwork of our enemies behind the wall I noticed. If you know me, you know I am going to get them,” said Wilson. “So what is the problem?”

  Grove thought a moment, letting the steam subside.

  “I am going to use Stone on her,” said Wilson.

  “Okay. Good then. All right,” said George Grove. He ignored the major as she walked out of the hearing room deep in conversation with one of the congressmen. He would rather see her talking to that one than someone who wasn’t bought.

  11

  Harold W. Smith could not get the answer from even his organization’s computers. No numbers, nor any logic system could answer his question that day. The answer was not there and never had been. He left the office, quite safely since only he had the codes to access anything in it, and went for a walk on the streets of New York shortly before lunch. He went to the Battery and looked out over the waters wondering, on this cold winter day, whether it would all work or not.

  They were so few. The enemy was so many. What could he tell the President? He had already been given a killer arm.

  “Give me another, sir, this one won’t be ready for a decade and if we use him we will lose him.”

  The purpose of having one was to use him. McCleary was limited. True, underneath the casual beer-drinking wisecracker was a patriot who had taken the same vow Smith had taken, one never before asked of any American servicemen or agents. It was an oath Remo did not know about yet, and with luck Smith would never have to tell him.

  Smith looked out at the Statue of Liberty under repair. The salt water did not clear his head or make his decision any easier. Was it because of the garbage washing up against the city shore, or was it the fact that he really didn’t have an answer yet about Remo?

  McCleary had already seen the young man dodge a bullet. He already could trail McCleary, an experienced agent, without McCleary knowing he was behind him.

  So why was Smith so troubled about using Remo?

  He breathed deeply, and smelled the coffee grounds and rotting orange skins. He turned away from America’s major eastern harbor. The answer was not out in the water. It was in him.

  He and McCleary had volunteered. He and McCleary had taken the terrible vow because of their love of country.

  Remo had been given a psychological test and then kidnapped.

  Harold W. Smith did not trust Remo. It was that simple.

  He walked back to his office on nearby Wall Street. He had faced what was bothering him, and the rest was easy. He had been delaying Remo’s use because he felt Remo, when put to the ultimate challenge of laying his life on the line, might not come through.

  Harold W. Smith, the very dry man of numbers, did not trust psychological tests. He trusted men. He trusted McCleary. He trusted himself. Remo so far was just a probability, a probability who was going to have to be trusted sometime. If he should fly the coop, back off, or fail in some other way, better that it happened now than two years from now. Better have Chiun finish the contract and go home to North Korea where no one in America would hear from him again.

  The way he told it to McCleary later that day was:

  “Well, let’s see what we have.”

  McCleary would never know the struggle that had gone on within Smith before he was able to say those words.

  “I was wondering what was holding you up,” said McCleary. “I would like to see that myself—see what he does when the feces hit the air conditioning. I feel like he’s mine, you know. I named him. Mine.”

  “That’s what we are going to find out tomorrow,” said Smith. “Just who our Remo does belong to.”

  Chiun had brought Remo back to the Coney Island beach. The running was correct now. Westerners might call it perfect, but that perfection was a strange western concept. It was a way of judging.

  Chiun was not here to judge. He was here to give Remo correctness. Perhaps that was the key to those lingering problems in Remo. He thought in wrong ways. How Chiun wished at that moment that he could have gotten to Remo before the rest of his race did. Then Remo might not be turning around after each exercise to ask how he did.

  It was such a strange thing, thought Chiun.

  Remo would do something and then ask how he did. When told there was one thing or another that was wrong, he would answer:

  “Yeah, but it’s still pretty good. I don’t know of anyone else but you or me who could do that.”

  And that response was a puzzlement. He wanted approval for performing incorrectly. Granted, there were many things he did just as instructed. But when you started complimenting, where would it end?

  Such as not allowing the gun to be successful against you. Remo was happy now that he could dodge three bullets in a row. But he should have six at least, which he did not.

  The delay in his progress began as soon as Remo had succeeded with two or three bullets. His mind started judging then, sayi
ng he was good. He needed not to think. He needed not to judge. What a bad influence that McCleary had been, telling him how amazed he was at Remo’s feat.

  McCleary could well get him killed with talk like that.

  Chiun watched Remo move across the slick wet sand.

  Correct. Not the slightest indentation of a toeprint.

  “All right, do it with the water,” said Chiun, and Remo was laughing.

  “You want me to walk on water? I knew you would ask that someday,” said Remo.

  He was laughing. The laughter was infectious. His growing skill was infectious. The light of the star Chiun had seen months before, when first he examined the first clumsy movements, shone brightly now.

  Yet, Chiun was Master of Sinanju, and his first loyalty was to the village of Sinanju. He could not let himself feel too deeply for this one. The devious Emperor Smith had provided the gold. Remo belonged to Smith, not to Chiun. On the other hand, what had Smith taught Remo?

  Remo was still laughing at his own jest, referring to a miracle performed by a god in a western religion. Knowing whites so well, Chiun could appreciate these little asides.

  “Sand,” said Chiun, and nodded to the next exercise.

  “I don’t know if I am ready,” said Remo.

  “Then you are not ready.”

  “Well, why don’t you say that about heights when I think I am not ready?”

  “Because your fear of heights you had naturally as a child. It will always be there. It has to be overcome. The exercise through the sand is something else. It is next in a natural progression of skills.”

  “I think I’m ready,” said Remo.

  He wore shorts and a light T-shirt and no shoes. His breath made clouds in the air. Chiun wore a light gray morning kimono. Remo understood now how Chiun could not be cold on a cold winter day. The human body could warm itself. It was just that most people had to run around to raise their temperature to counteract the loss of heat through the skin on cold days. But when one became one with himself, and gained control of the mind and the will through breathing, one merely raised one’s temperature as needed. That was Sinanju and it seemed so easy that Remo wondered how there could have been a time he could not do this.