“Fast hit them with everything, all at once,” Mark guessed. “The proton charge took them off guard so he could get a few good seconds of video, and he retransmitted it in real time.”
“Go back to the first frame,” Smith said. The still image of a rocky, sandy rooftop came back, with various discarded junk around it. Smith tapped the far right-hand corner. “Enlarge this corner.”
The image enlarged but the details were still sharp. They began getting fuzzy when the image enlarged to sixteen times normal, but that was enough.
“What is that thing?” Mark asked. They were seeing what looked like a circular stepped device that was mounted on a framework of aluminum rails. “It’s gotta be more than two yards around.”
“Electromagnet,” Smith decided. “These aluminum shafts are arms of a positioning device. I’m betting there are some big generators, big electric motors and a very powerful proton field generator. At the moment the camera breaks through, the proton device channels all the electricity it can generate into the motors.”
“Yeah,” Mark agreed. “They’d have to move as fast as hell. Wouldn’t matter if they were burned out fast. Their useful life’s gotta be less than a minute. Dr. Smith, when the second proton charge happened, Remo and Chiun wouldn’t have been able to defend themselves.”
Smith found himself thinking of the two Chiuns— the frail, crippled old man and the powerful Sinanju Master who swept steel slabs out of his way. Would he ever see the Sinanju Master again?
Dr. Harold Smith couldn’t divest himself of the image of the crippled, weak Chiun. Years ago, when the two men met for the first time, Chiun was already elderly. Now both of them qualified as senior citizens. Smith had caught up and surpassed Chiun.
It occurred to him why he was so bothered by the image of Chiun he had seen in the video. For just a couple of seconds, Chiun had become the old man that Smith was—arthritic and frail.
As the hours of the long night passed, he found himself distracted more by the idea that if it had been him in that room, he would have succumbed instantly under the meteor shower of scrap metal. If Chiun had been weakened to such a state during the barrage, even for a second, he would have been pummeled into oblivion.
“Hey, Smitty.”
Smith started violently out of his reverie to find Remo, standing at his desk, disheveled but unhurt. Chiun stood nearby, hands in his sleeves and just as composed as he ever was. He was still wearing the kimono from the video, but it looked unblemished.
“Remo! Chiun!” Mark Howard exclaimed as he rolled through the doors in his wheelchair.
“Mark,” Remo said. “Harold.” He tipped an invisible hat to Dr. Smith. “What’s everybody all excited about?”
“Remo, why didn’t you report in?” Smith asked, his shock becoming a slow-boiling anger.
“Why should I? You said come right back, remember? Quick jaunt to New Mexico, back in time for breakfast? Well, it’s not quite 7:00 a.m.” Remo looked at the invisible watch on his freakishly thick wrist, gave an exaggerated nod and showed the wrist to Smith. “See? Besides, there was nothing you could have done anything about.”
“That’s not exactly true, is it?” Smith asked sourly.
“I insisted that we call before boarding the aircraft,” Chiun sang out.
“You did not,” Remo said.
“My wisdom was spurned, Emperor.”
“What’s going on, Smitty?”
Smith found himself physically fighting to. contain an outburst. It seemed he was always fighting it now— the urge to lay into Remo for his long list of indiscretions and lack of professional behavior. But now was not the time. Right now CURE needed to work as a team. In fact, CURE needed to fight for its survival.
“We’re in crisis. You, both of you, figure into it,” Smith said. “Show them the video, please, Mark.”
Smith munched antacids while Remo and Chiun watched the New Mexican video. Smith expected Chiun to be livid at this invasion of his privacy, and Remo would likely make some remarks about having movie-star qualities—but they let an uncomfortable silence hang in the air when the video was done.
“We’ve been worried,” Mark said. “We didn’t know if there was a second proton discharge and what had happened if there was.”
“What else? What’s the President got in mind?” Remo looked to Smith, who was clearly fatigued and allowed Mark Howard to bring them up to speed on the reappearance of Senator Herbert Whiteslaw.
“Wait, I don’t get it. He wants the President to withdraw from the race? What good will it do Whiteslaw?”
“The President’s party will have to field an alternative candidate, but they’ll be sure losers if the President retires under the shadow of some unspecified scandal,” Mark said. “If Whiteslaw convinces his own party to withdraw its candidate for supposed health reasons and run Whiteslaw, the heroic recent assassination-attempt survivor, they’ll have a strong chance of winning the election.”
