Line of Succession td-73 Read online

  Chapter 8

  Jalid Kumquatti decided that America was an amazing place. He had driven his brothers of the Hezbollah all the way from New York City to the city of Philadelphia and he was not stopped once. America, whom the rulers of Iran and Libya and other Middle Eastern countries boasted was a cowering paper tiger whose citizens were not safe even within her own borders, had no roadblocks, no security checkpoints, no tanks in the streets, and no impediments to the free movement of foreign agents.

  Although they had passed many police cars and they were obviously foreigners, they were not challenged. Once, outside of Levittown, they blew a tire, and while they were stopped, a state-police car came up behind them, its blue light bar washing their startled faces with illumination.

  Jalid almost panicked when the state trooper stepped from his vehicle, but he relaxed slightly when he saw that the gray-uniformed man carried only a tiny .38 revolver in a belt holster. In Beirut the .38 revolver was carried by women and children as they went to market. It was not a man's weapon. No Lebanese took a .38 pistol as a serious threat.

  Thus Jalid had hissed to his comrades to relax while they waited to see what the man wanted.

  "A little trouble here?" the officer asked politely.

  "We are changing the wheel," Jalid said nervously. "We are on our way soon. You will see."

  "Better hop to it. I don't want to see any of you rearended by a speeder. New to America, are you?"

  "Very," said Jalid, whose English was acceptable. He had learned the language in order to write ransom notes and negotiate with Europeans.

  "Then you may not realize how dangerous an American highway is. Why don't I stay here with my lights on so there's no accident," the trooper suggested with a smile.

  "Sure, sure," said Jalid, and he busied himself with the lug wrench. When he was finished and a new tire was in place, he and his friends jumped into the car and, waving out the rear window at the trooper, left the scene at a decorous pace.

  "He was very nice." said Sayid after a while.

  "America is very nice," said Rafik. "Did you notice that we have traveled nearly fifty kilometers and no one has shot at us? In Beirut, one cannot go for cigarettes without taking one's life in one's hands."

  "America is a land of fools and so are you all," spat Jalid. "Do not forget our mission." But even he was amazed by America, its vastness, it cleanliness. Once, he had heard, Lebanon had been like this. A rich, fertile happy land. Now it was being torn apart by animals, and Jalid was one of them. But he had been born into a land caught up in civil war, he told himself. His earliest memories were of squalor punctuated by distant explosions. The first music he had ever heard was the daily ululations of Lebanese women in mourning. No, his way was the only one possible now.

  But driving through America had shown him what living a normal life must be like, and instead of making him feel guilty for his participation in the dismemberment of Lebanon, he felt a wave of hatred for America, which had so much and deserved it so little. He resolved that he would shoot dead the next police officer who dared to speak to him.

  They sat around in their hotel room, not in the chairs, but perched on the chair backs, their feet dirtying the cushions, as they cleaned and oiled their weapons. They looked like vultures squatting on rocks.

  "The Vice-President will be having lunch at what is called a Lion's Club," Jalid said, reading a newspaper he had slipped off the lobby newsstand when the counter girl wasn't looking.

  "How will we find this place of lions?" asked Sayid.

  "Taxicab. We will go by taxicab, because it will save time and we do not wish to be late. When the driver brings us to this Lion's Club, we will kill him." Jalid dropped the newspaper and considered his men carefully.

  "Sayid, my brother," he said at last, grinning suddenly.

  "Yes?"

  "You will have the great honor this day."

  "I?" Sayid smiled back. It was not a smile of pleasure but the kind that concealed fear.

  "Yes," said Jalid, coming off the chair back. "I have been thinking. There is much money to be had from this work. It would be too bad if we were all killed trying to collect it."

  The others looked at one another. They nodded. Except Sayid. His smile grew broader, but his eyes had a sickly light to them.

  "We do not know what militias these Americans use to guard their leaders," said Jalid, scratching his sparse dark beard thoughtfully. "Probably they are not much if they guard them as sloppily as they guard their rich and fat cities. Perhaps one man is all that is necessary to eliminate this Vice-President. "

  "Alone?" asked Sayid uncomfortably.

  "We will be outside, perhaps to come to your rescue if necessary."

  "But what if you cannot?"

  "It is simple, my brother. We will take hostages, and hold them until you are released."

  "But what if I am killed in the course of my duty to the Hezbollah?" insisted Sayid, his smile fixed on his face like a clown's rigid makeup grin.

  "Then we will send your share of the money to your aged mother. She would like that, would she not?"

  "You will be right outside the building?" asked Sayid after long thought.

  "Absolutely," said Jalid, coming over and clapping Sayid on the back. The smile on Sayid's sweat-shiny face broke like a soap bubble.

  "It is settled, then," called Jalid, throwing up his hands in celebration. "Sayid will be the one who has the honor of striking first. Come, let us order food from the room service before we are on our way. A well-fed warrior is a strong warrior."

  And the others laughed boisterously. All except Sayid, who was suddenly not hungry at all.

  The Vice-President did not feel hungry either.

  He stared down at his plate. Rubber chicken and drykernel corn crowded a foil-wrapped baked potato. The potato was almost obliterated under a mound of sour cream. With a dessert spoon he tasted the sour cream and decided to pass on the rest. He wished just once one of these testimonial dinners would serve something different like mooshu pork or even barbecued ribs, Texas-style: If it wasn't rubber chicken, it was dry roast beef in greasy gravy. If it wasn't a shriveled potato, it was rice pilaf microwaved dry as sunflower seeds.

  The Vice-President nudged the plate away and ordered black coffee, to which he added four heaping teaspoons of sugar to keep his energy level up.

  From the podium, someone was speaking. For a moment he could not remember who it was. It had been like this for over a year now. He had lurched from group breakfasts to luncheons to dinners in smoke-filled halls, listening to a procession of politicians and giving speeches that, even though they were written by the best speech writers available, all sounded exactly like the speech before that, which had sounded like the one before that, and on and on, stretching back into the Vice-President's dim past-which on the campaign trail meant that misty period prior to six weeks ago.

  The Vice-President sipped his coffee and tried to shut out the drone of the speechmaker, whom he recognized vaguely as the governor of the state. Exactly which state would come to him eventually.

  It was all so boring. Except for that speech the other day. Where had that been? Oh, yeah, in New York State. It had been an improvisation in his schedule, that stop. He had ordered it over the objections of his campaign staff, who thought he could at least talk about national health care if he was going to speak in front of an insane asylum, or whatever it was that Folcroft Sanitarium was.

  He did not tell them what Folcroft was. He did not tell them about the letter he had received, postmarked Seoul, South Korea, which explained in detail about a secret American agency known as CURE, operating from the cover of Folcroft Sanitarium.

  He saw in the letter, true or not, an opportunity to make an important speech on covert activities. It was a perfect way of distancing himself from the problems of the current administration.

  The Vice-President did not know whether or not to believe this Tulip who had signed the letter. But on the chance it was
true, he had asked his people to see to it that Harold W. Smith himself introduced him to the audience.

  Smith's refusal and his flustered behavior at the speech were as good as proof that CURE did exist. Why, the guy had actually tossed his cookies during the presentation. What was someone that nervous doing running a covert operation?

  The Vice-President had briefly considered going to the President and getting the true poop, but decided against it. Revealing the truth about CURE in a major speech was also out of the question. He had no proof, and it would look too much like grandstanding just before the election. Better to wait until after the election. If he won, he would blow the whistle on the CURE program. It would be a great start-off for his administration and would once and for all put to bed the public perception that he was just a spear carrier for the current President.

  One thing puzzled him, however. Just this morning the Democratic nominee had made a speech very similar to his own. He had made it before an American Medical Association conference, and although the Vice-President had not watched the speech, a transcript of it was shown to him and he noted that Michael Princippi had very specifically used the word "cure" several times during his speech.

  His advisers had assured him that the Democratic nominee was merely copycatting his own speech, but the Vice-President was not so sure. He wondered if the Prince had also received a letter from Tulip.

  And not for the first time he wondered who this Tulip person was. With a name like that, he sounded like a pansy. But these days you could never tell.

  Someone nudged him and the Vice-President snapped out of his reverie.

  "You're on, Mr. Vice-President. He's introducing you."

  "Oh, right, of course," said the Vice-President, rising from his seat. He unbuttoned his coat on the way to the podium and carefully rebuttoned it as he said a quick thankyou into the microphone. His personal-style manager had told him that he dangled his arms like a scarecrow when he walked and that gave an image of a man with time on his hands, so ever since then he made it a point to button or unbutton his coat whenever he left or arrived someplace-even if it was merely walking from a table to a podium.

  The audience applauded enthusiastically. He could hear them but he could not see them. They were an ocean of dim faces overwhelmed by the baleful eyes of the TV spotlights. He would not have known if his own wife was in the audience.

  "I haven't had a welcome like this since the Iowa caucuses," said the Vice-President, who believed in working a well-received line to death.

  The audience laughed and clapped boisterously. The Vice-President smiled into the exploding flashbulbs. He did not see the commotion at the door.

  He heard the string of pop-pop-pops but they were not much louder than the flashbulbs.

  The next thing he knew, the Secret Service men were all over him. Two agents pushed him to the floor, smothering him with their bodies. Others, placed in the audience with campaign supporters, reached for the handles of their briefcases with lightning motions. The cases fell apart, exposing stubby automatic weapons.

  The firing was brief and sporadic.

  Before the screaming subsided, the Vice-President was lifted to his feet and pushed out the back door like a drunk being thrown out of a motorcycle bar. They hustled him to his waiting limousine and the car left the area, its oil pan scraping sparks off the irregular pavement.

  When he found his composure again, the Vice-President wanted to know just one thing.

  "What the hell happened back there?"

  "Assassin," clipped one of the agents. "But we got him, sir. Don't worry."

  "If you got him, why'd you have to push me out of the Rotary Club like that?"

  "It was a Lion's Club, sir."

  "That's not the point. This is going to look terrible on the seven-o'clock news."

  "Your dead body would have looked worse. Sir."

  The Vice-President sat back in the leather cushions, feeling the starch go out of his legs.

  He grabbed the receiver of the car phone and asked the mobile operator to connect him with the White House. "When you think we're safe, park this thing and stand outside. What I have to say to the President is for his ears only," the Vice-President said in a husky voice. Nobody shot at presidential candidates. Not without a reason. And the Vice-President thought he knew what that reason was.

  Chapter 9

  Dr. Harold W. Smith knew why the President was calling. He knew it before the dialless red telephone began ringing. Before the first ring, his computer terminal had beeped twice, indicating that urgent CURE-related data were being processed.

  The computer had flashed on the screen a digest summary of decoded Secret Service message traffic, the gist of which was that the Vice-President had just escaped a near-assassination.

  "Yes, Mr. President?" Smith said into the phone.

  "Smith, I have to ask this question of you."

  "Sir?"

  "The Vice-President was nearly killed not fifteen minutes ago. They failed, whoever they were."

  "Yes, I know. The first report just reached me. My understanding is that the situation is secure."

  "Is it?" asked the President grimly.

  "Sir?"

  "Relative to our conversation the other day, you didn't order the Vice-President terminated, did you?"

  Harold Smith came out of his chair in surprise, his lemony features gathering in horror. The red telephone fell off the desk and Smith had to catch it in his hands before the cord tore from the receiver and disconnected the line.

  "Mr. President, I can assure you that terminating the Vice-President is not something this office would undertake except under the most extreme circumstance. If then."

  "You have terminated people who had stumbled across your operation before."

  "For the good of America. If CURE were to become known, it would be the same as admitting that the Constitution doesn't work. That America doesn't work. Yes, I have issued some distasteful orders in the past, but always within my operating parameters."

  "The Vice-President's discovery of your operation isn't a threat? He has as much as given you notice that you will be shut down when he's elected."

  "That's his privilege-if he is elected," Smith said stiffly. He was still on his feet.

  "But if he's not, he becomes a target?"

  "We've never faced that problem before," said Harold Smith slowly. "But I think, under the circumstances, we would trust him as we do the former presidents with whom we've worked before."

  "Why don't you tell me about that, while we're on the subject? I'm about to become one of those former presidents, so I might as well know now what to expect. "

  "Well, Mr. President, it's very simple. As long as a former chief executive keeps his own counsel, we do not interfere with him."

  "Hasn't it occurred to you, Smith, that this leak might have come from a previous administration?"

  "Yes, sir. But I think that possibility is a slim one."

  "But you don't discount it?"

  "Actually, I do."

  "You sound rather sure of yourself," said the President suspiciously. "What do you do, spy on them for the rest of their lives?"

  "No, Mr. President. But beyond that I cannot say. Security reasons."

  "Very well, let's stay with the Vice-President for the moment. Is there any chance that your special person had anything to do with this?"

  Smith started to say, "No sir," but stopped in midsyllable. He remembered his recent conversation with the Master of Sinanju.

  "Just a moment, Mr. President," said Smith, and he capped his hand over the receiver because the red telephone did not have a hold button. Into his intercom he said, "Mrs. Mikulka, would you have someone check on the Alzheimer's patient in room fifty-five, Mr. Chiun. See if he is in his room or elsewhere on the premises."

  When the answer came back, Smith breathed a sigh of relief. Mr. Chiun was in his room. He returned to the President.

  "Sorry, Mr. President. Another import
ant call. To answer your question, our special person does not operate unsanctioned. And he does not use weapons. My information is that the would-be assassin in Philadelphia used an automatic weapon."

  "I see your point. But this still leaves us in a bad way. The Vice-President just phoned. He wanted to know if I had ordered him terminated because of that speech he gave the other day. The fellow is so scared he thinks his commander in chief wants him out of the picture."

  "I'm sure that's just a nervous reaction. People who narrowly escape death often act irrationally for a brief time afterward. "

  "I had to tell him I didn't know what he was talking about, which, of course, only made him more suspicious. Smith, I can't have the Vice-President thinking he's a target of his own government."

  "Why don't I put my special person on it?" Smith offered. "If there's another attempt on the Vice-President's life, we'll be there to stop it."

  "Maybe that will prove to him we're on the side of the angels. Okay, Smith. Go to it. Keep a low profile. If we can pull this off, we might be able to get the Vice-President to see the light."

  "Yes, Mr. President. Thank you, sir," said Smith, hanging up.

  Smith had no sooner settled into his chair then his secretary informed him that the head gardener wanted to see him.

  "Who? Oh, send him in," said Smith, suddenly realizing whom she meant.

  Remo Williams walked in, clutching a newspaper. "Smitty, I think you have a problem," Remo said worriedly.

  "Whatever it is, it can wait. I have an assignment for Chiun."

  "I was reading the paper," continued Remo. "Where is it now?" He rummaged through the newspaper, dropping sections all over the floor. "Here it is," said Remo, folding one page and laying it on Smith's desk.

  "I thought you never read the papers," said Smith.

  "I was catching up on the funnies," explained Remo. "I came across this little item."

  Smith followed Remo's pointing finger.

  "I'm surprised your computers didn't alert you to this one, Smitty," Remo said.

  Smith read the headline: "PRINCIPPI PROMISES END TO COVERT OPERATIONS."