"War and things. This is a modern army. We have people who are specialists for almost every function, no matter how exotic," said General Haupt.
"I don't care," said Kaufmann leaving the office with Remo and Chiun. "They're going to get me. I only said I'd testify because I was told, I was assured, I would be safe." And Kaufmann blurted out his story. He was a CPA who organized the books for a crime family in Detroit. His job was surfacing money, that is, taking the huge excess amounts of illegal cash from gambling, narcotics, prostitution, and making it public in housing developments, banks, and shopping centers.
Remo nodded. All the money in the world was worthless if you couldn't spend it. And to spend money in America you had to show where you got it. You couldn't say you were unemployed and buy a $125,000 house and two $20,000 automobiles. So the mobs consistently surfaced money through a web of banks and businesses and phony investors.
If Kaufmann were the man in charge of this, he was a hell of a find for a witness. His testimony alone could take apart the whole structure of an entire city. No wonder Smitty had called him a "high probable" target. It was Remo's job not so much to stop a hit, which he would do, but to find out from the hit man who had sent him, and then to find out from who sent him who had paid the sender, and keep moving back until he was at the nub of this thing, where he would eliminate it.
In the process, he was to find out how these people worked.
They had killed three already, two current and one past witness in Detroit operations. According to Smitty, not only the identities of these witnesses were supposed to be secret but their whereabouts were supposed to be unknown outside the Justice Department. One by a bomb and two by gunshots. No one was seen around the schoolyard or the other two death scenes, who had not been, in Justice Department parlance, totally "clean."
The two gun deaths had been done with .22 caliber bullets, so long-distance sniping was out. Someone had gotten close without being seen. The Justice Department, and ultimately CURE, did not know who or how. Remo estimated Kaufmann's chances of survival as fifty-fifty-at best.
Feeling very governmental, Remo looked Kaufmann in the eye. "You've got nothing to worry about," he said, putting a reassuring arm around Kaufmann's shoulder.
"Then what about that bombing in the Oklahoma schoolyard? The papers said that guy was named Calder. But I knew him as a bookkeeper. I knew he was talking. He was safe too."
"That was an entirely different situation," lied Remo. He and Chiun walked along pin-neat paths of Fort Bragg, where white-painted stones like piping marked where people should and should not walk. Large, fresh-painted signs pointed arrows toward jumbles of numbers and letters such as "Comsecpac 918-V."
It was as if 20,000 persons had descended on the piny woods of North Carolina for the sole purpose of keeping this area neat-from time to time running around shooting off guns whose shell casings were collected, stacked, bound according to regulations, then shipped out to the Atlantic to be dumped by other men who kept ships just as neat.
A squad of men, rifles at port, jogged by in formation, chanting: "Airborne. Airborne." As Chiun had said of armies: "They are trained to smother their senses in order to perform duties, while Sinanju enhances the senses to perform more fully."
"How Is it different for me and that poor bastard who got blown up?" asked Kaufmann.
"Look around you," said Remo. "Men with guns. Guards at gates. You're in the center of an organized fist, and it's protecting only you."
And Chiun nodded, saying something in Korean.
"What'd he say?" Kaufmann asked.
"He said you are probably the safest man in the world," said Remo, knowing that Chiun had noted that almost any attack could be foiled, except the one you were ignorant of.
"Who is he anyway?"
"A friend."
"How do I know you're not the killer? The mob had to get into the Justice Department somehow to even find that poor bastard in Oklahoma."
"Look, no weapons," Remo said, raising his arms.
"I still don't like it. You know what Polastro must be thinking since I left his payroll?"
"Polastro?" said Remo.
"Salvatore Polastro," said Kaufmann, slapping his forehead. "Oh, this is great. You're supposed to be special protection to me and you don't know who I'm testifying against."
"Good point," said Chiun.
"Thanks," said Remo and once more reassured Kaufmann. The lieutenant in charge pointed out that only families, trusted families, were allowed into what was now called Compound Seven.
Compound Seven had a gate, electronically wired. Compound Seven had constant security with ten-minute two-man patrols round the clock. Compound Seven had total control over entrance and egress. Everyone had to have a pass or to be recognized. Compound Seven had metal security detection, thereby identifying every piece of metal anyone tried to carry into the compound.
"Most secure area outside of a SAC base, sir," the lieutenant told Remo.
"A death trap," Chiun said in Korean.
"What'd he say, what'd he say?" Kaufmann asked.
"He said the most secure area outside of a SAC base," Remo said.
"No, him," said Kaufmann, pointing to Chiun.
"He just commented on the compound. Relax, you have nothing to fear but fear itself."
Chiun cackled and said to Remo in Korean: "What silliness. Would you say that the only trouble with seeing danger is your eyesight? Would you say that the only trouble with hearing a great animal approach you was your ears? Why do you indulge in this silliness? Fear, like any other sense, helps prepare you for danger."
"You don't understand governments, Little Father."
"No, it is that I do understand governments."
"What're you two talking about?" said Kaufmann. "I'm surrounded by beanbags, and I'm going to die."
"General Haupt is the safest post commander in the Armed Forces," said the lieutenant.
"That's like hearing an unbiased endorsement of the Pope from an archbishop," Kaufmann said. "I'm leaving."
Remo followed him to his neat frame house surrounded by the same white-painted rocks that seemed to mark everything at the base. Two MPs, one with .45 caliber pistol at the ready, demanded Remo's identification before they let him follow Kaufmann inside. Another MP sat in the living room. He too demanded the same identification. Upstairs, Kaufmann was throwing clothes into a valise.
"Don't come near me. One yell and those MPs will be all over the place."
"And you want to leave this kind of security?"
"Yep."
"Why?"
"Because if they got that guy in Oklahoma, they're gonna get me."
"Where are you going to run to?"
"Not telling anyone."
"Is there no way I can convince you to stay?"
"No way," said Kaufmann, shoving a shirt and a handful of socks into the valise and compressing the jumble with the valise lid. Snap. "No way."