Political Pressure

6

Dr. Harold W. Smith stared at the computer monitor under the surface of his desk. It was a brand-new flat screen, recommended by his assistant, Mark Howard. Mark helped him remove the old, heavy unit. The new screen that was bolted in its place looked like a toy to Smith. It was only an inch thick and weighed just a few pounds. Still, Smith never allowed himself to become outdated in his computer technology. The success of CURE depended in part on state-of-the-art technology.

Sure enough, the nineteen-inch flat panel provided a brilliant image with high resolution. When they had turned it on that morning for the first time, Smith had gazed into it and experienced a strange lack of tension in his eyes. He realized that he had been squinting into his old monitor for so long it had become an unnoticed habit.

"This enables digital video feeds," Mark explained as his fingers rattled on Smith's keyboard and brought up four windows, each showing a digital television channel, now a part of the standard media feed being channeled into the CURE computer systems.

"And this allows you to adjust the screen resolution at a touch," Mark added, maneuvering the mouse to an on-screen button and clicking it once. The screen images magnified. They looked huge, but the width of the display meant Smith was seeing as much information now as he had seen on his old, smaller monitor.

"I use this all the time when my eyes get tired," Mark explained, vacating the seat so Smith could test out the new display.

Smith appreciated the comment, but he knew why Mark was showing him this feature first of all. His eyes were tiring more easily as he got older. Smith was not a young man.

"So?" Mark asked. "How do you like it?"

"Like what?" Smith asked without tearing his eyes away. "Oh. Yes, fine, but we've got trouble, Mark."

Mark looked over Dr. Smith's shoulder. One of the news network's digital satellite feeds was displayed in the top right window. The network was interrupting its regular program for a breaking news story. Dr. Smith brought the volume up so they could hear the anchor inform them of "Reports of gunfire in Chicago at the auditorium where Governor Bryant..."

"I'm on it," Mark Howard announced, leaving for his own office. After working together for a short time, Howard and Dr. Smith had developed an efficient two-pronged approach that allowed them to scour the global networks and their own information sources for valuable intelligence at the first sign of a crisis.

This crisis was still evolving. Between the two of them they learned just one meaningful bit of data, soon verified by the media: the controversial governor was dead.

Minutes later all the networks were showing video footage of the gunshot in almost constant rotation and sometimes in slow motion, and the brain bits were clearly visible flying into the rows of seated convicts.

The two phones rang at almost exactly the same instant. Harold W. Smith grabbed them both and said into the red one, "Hold please, Mr. President."

Before the leader of the free world could respond with "Hell, no," Smith had lowered the red receiver to the desk and spoke into the blue one. "Remo, what went wrong there?"

"Well," Remo said, "first they elected this really bad man to be their governor, then a few years later somebody shot him."

"Remo, I have the President on the other line and I would appreciate a straight answer," Smith said icily.

"What could be straighter, Smitty?" Remo demanded. "You want the important facts, you just got them."

"Did you question them?" Smith demanded.

"They're all dead."

"You killed them? All of them?" Smith's voice rose slightly.

"Whoa, there, Smitty, I didn't kill them all."

"Did Chiun?"

"I most certainly did not!" squeaked a distant voice through the phone. "I spared several of the worthless cretins so that we might interrogate them fully, just as you requested, Emperor," Chiun insisted, getting closer to the phone.

"Give that back!" Smith heard Remo say.

"It was Remo who allowed the unslain men to boom themselves," Chiun accused loudly into the receiver.

"Give me that."

"Ingrate!"

Smith's hand gripped the receiver so hard it turned from gray to white. "Would you both stop bickering like children and give me a report, please."

There was silence, as cold as the deep freeze of a miserable winter. Finally Remo came on the line saying, "Now you've done it."

"Did you learn anything, Remo?" Smith asked.

"N-0 spells no, how many times do I—"

Smith put the blue phone down and spoke into the red one. "I'm sorry, Mr. President, I was just getting a report from Chicago."

"Dammit, Smith, what went wrong?"

"I do not know yet, sir."

"All they had to do was protect one man. I thought your guys were supposed to have wonderful, strange abilities, but they can't protect one public official?"

"Mr. President," Smith said deliberately, "if my men had been instructed to protect the life of the governor instead of watch from the sidelines, then the governor would be alive right now. As I told you this morning, this event was foolhardy and by its very nature impossible to secure."

"I tried to talk him out of it," the President said. "That fool wouldn't hear of it."

"We also discussed increasing the security level at the auditorium," Smith reminded him.

"Bryant wouldn't go for that, either," the President said. "My boys said it would have taken days to set up and you know his term was ending Monday. That old bastard wouldn't let anything get in the way of his farewell extravaganza." The President sighed. "Guess he went out with a bang like he wanted."

"Yes, sir," Smith said. "I'll update you when I learn more." He disconnected the line.

"Remo, you still there?" Smith asked into the blue phone, but he heard only the distant sounds of a public place somewhere in Chicago. An intercom in the background said something about a cheeseburger with ketchup and extra-extra pickles.

Smith hung up and stared at the crystal-clear, ultraslow-motion video replay of the governor's exploding head.