old.
"It's about the Lippincotts," the President's voice said. "It says there's a plot to kill them all and it has something to do with animals."
"Animals, sir? What has it to do with animals?"
"The damned letter doesn't say."
"Does it say who is behind this so-called plot?"
"No, it doesn't say that either."
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"What does it say?"
"It says that the writer is a New York City private detective."
"Name," asked Smith as he reached down and tapped a button under his desk. A panel in the center of the desk moved and a computer console rose silently. Smith was ready to tap the name into it, even while the President spoke, to get the giant computer banks of CURE, the largest computer banks in the world, on the trail of the private detective.
"There is no name," the President said.
Smith sighed. "I see. What does it say?"
"It says the writer is a New York City detective. He knows that there is a plot to kill the Lippincotts. It has something to do with animals and he doesn't know what. But he is going to find out. It says that when the Lippincotts aren't killed then I'll know he was telling the truth and he'll be in touch with me about giving him a medal."
"That doesn't make much sense," Smith said.
"No, it doesn't," the President agreed. "But that incident with Lern Lippincott . . . well, it made me wonder."
Smith nodded. Far out on the sound, he saw a sailboat whipped along by the wind and wondered who would be out sailing on a cold wintry day like this one.
"It seems clear," he said, "that you should turn the letter over to the Lippincott family. They have the resources to protect themselves."
"I know that. But the fact is, Dr. Smith, that we can't afford the possibility of this letter being right."
"Why not?"
"Because I asked the Lippincott family to work
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out a number of overseas proposals. They look like simple business deals but the idea was to use the Lippincott resources and work through companies in Japan to open up major new trading markets in Red China."
"And you think some foreign power might be trying to prevent that?" asked Smith.
"It's a possibility," the President said.
"I wish I had known this before," Smith said. "We could have taken steps to protect Lern Lippincott when he went to Tokyo."
"I know, I know," the President said. "But I didn't envision any trouble. I thought it would just move smoothly along like any other business deal."
Smith resisted the impulse to lecture the President on all the international efforts being made by the Communist bloc in boardrooms and bank offices around the world to try to undermine the United States' economy. No one in his right mind, except the most feather-brained kind of dreamer, should have expected a major attempt to bolster the dollar to go unnoticed and fail to draw a response from the people in the world who would rejoice at the dollar's destruction. But all the politicians Smith had known lived in a perpetual world where -hope always triumphed over reason, good wishes over historical lessons. So he said nothing.
"I think your people should get on this," the President said.
"Yes, sir. I'll need the letter."
"You'll be using those two, I suppose?
"I imagine so," Smith said. "Even though they are not designed to function as bodyguards."
"Tell them to be circumspect," the President said.
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"All the killings . . ."
Smith remembered how Remo and Chiun had saved this President's Ufe from an assassination attempt; how they had headed off World War III when a member of the President's inner circle of friends had unwittingly unleashed a murder attempt on the Russian premier. His New England heart could characterize the President's statement as nothing more than ingratitude.
He tried to keep the edge out of his voice when he said: "If you'd rather I didn't use them . . . I'm sure they can find other things to do."
"No, no," the President said quickly. "Just tell them to keep the deaths down."
"One does not tell them what to do or how to do it," Smith said coldly. "One gives them an assignment, and then stands out of the way. Should I assign them, yes or no?"
"Yes," the President said. "Whatever you say." "No, sir," said Smith. "It's what you say." The letter from the President was in Smith's hands in ninety minutes. When Smith read it, he marvelled that someone could have used up three pages of legal sized yellow paper and written such a little amount of information. There was no name and address of the writer, and there was a brief mention of a plot to kill all the Lippincott family and that it had something to do with trained animals. The rest of the letter complained about Italian jockeys, policemen on the take, and the high cost of Fleischmann's Rye whiskey.
If a Lippincott had not died by willingly diving headfirst out a Tokyo window, the letter would have been consigned immediately to a trash basket.
Smith pressed a button on the right hand side of
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his telephone receiver and a moment later a woman entered his office.
She was a tall black woman with skin the color of whipped coffee mocha. She wore a pair of leather trousers and a tan tweed blazer with matching leather patches on the elbows. A moderate Afro crowned her head. She was not truly beautiful but her eyes twinkled with intelligence and when she smiled, as she did now at Smith, it was more than a social gesture, it was an act of warmth.
Her name was Ruby Jackson Gonzalez and she served as Smith's administrative assistant. She had been a CIA agent, but on two separate occasions she had been drawn into the orbit of Remo and Chiun. In the process she had figured out enough about CURE to make her a candidate for killing or hiring. She carefully eliminated the first possibility by blackmailing Smith with a well-planned threat of exposure and so he was forced to hire her. She was organized, earthy, and smart and she had another virtue as well. When she wanted to, her voice could rise in pitch high enough and loud enough to crack granite, and she used her voice as a weapon to keep Remo in line. He would do anything Smith wanted just as long as Ruby didn't yell at him.
Chiun also had a special feeling for Ruby. He thought if that if she and Remo had a baby, it wouldn't be yellow, which was a proper color, but it would be tan, which was close enough, and Chiun could take it young and train it properly to be a Master of Sinanju, something he bitterly complained he could not do with Remo because he got to him too late. Chiun had offered many gold pieces to Ruby if she would just do this little thing for him. Ruby said
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there were some things she was not prepared to do for money. Remo said that was merely a bargaining ploy to get Chiun to raise his price.
Ruby was convinced that if she wanted Remo, she'd have him. Anytime, anywhere. Remo, for his part, was sure that all it would take would be a snap of the ringers and Ruby would be his slave for life.