Power Play

"You got proof?" Muckley asked.

"Yes."

"Then we'll get that sucker," Muckley said. "That'll get them marching."

"My idea exactly," Bobbin said.

Muckley searched Bobbin's face and said, after a pause, "I don't know anything about you, Mr. Bobbin."

"That's the way I want it."

"What do you get out of this?"

"Does it really matter?" Bobbin asked. "Can't you believe I'm doing it just to stamp out evil."

"That's fine in fund-raising letters," Muckley said. "But what are you really doing it for?"

"Let's just say I'm going to get out of it everything I want."

Muckley shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "You said something about proof that Pruiss is here to do pornography. You got that proof?"

"It'll be here in the morning plane from New York."

"Bring it in, brother, and let's see what we can do."

As he left the building, Will Bobbin thought that it was incredible that such fools could rise to positions of prominence. Muckley's idea of selling the ministry to allow people to buy at discount was a good idea, and probably the only idea the man had ever had or would ever have. And yet it had been enough to make him a national figure. Will Bobbin would play him like an accordion, to keep the wheels rolling until they rolled right over Wesley Pruiss and his solar energy scheme.

In his office, the Reverend Dr. Higbe Muckley looked at the door that swung closed behind Will Bobbin. It was the oil industry. He was sure of it. Who else had a vested interest in driving Wesley Pruiss out of Furlong County? Well, there was no law that prevented the oil industry from doing God's work. Or Higbe Muckley's.

He would wait to see what kind of proof arrived on the morning plane.

Chiun walked across the neat grass of the practice green toward the small stand of trees, beyond which the land sloped down a deep hill, across the eighteenth fairway, and to a forest beyond.

Remo followed him. "You know where they are?" he asked.

Chiun, wordlessly, pointed to two faint sets of parallel lines trailing across the green. Remo recognized them as probably heel marks from two bodies dragged over the grass.

Chiun stopped and looked behind a large tree. Remo saw the bodies of the three bodyguards, neatly piled up.

"Beautiful work," Chiun said.

"I don't know," Remo said stubbornly. "I think weapons take the fun out of it."

"Fun?" said Chiun. "What is this? What I teach you now is fun?"

"You know what I mean," Remo said.

"Yes, I do," Chiun said. "You are right. Weapons weaken the art. But at least if one is to use them, he should use them well. Our assassin uses his knives well. See. Here. Two men, dispatched perfectly with one thrust each. And here..." He pointed to the body of the martial arts expert, "... here two knives were used. One to kill and one to prevent an outcry."

Chiun touched the body with his toe.

"You still think they're red handled knives with horses engraved on the blades?" Remo asked.

Chiun shook his head. "That is not a think. That is a know. And that is what makes this dangerous."

"Well, Pruiss is lucky. He's got us."

"I am not talking about this Pruiss. It is dangerous for you," Chiun said.

"Why me?" asked Remo, but Chiun had already started to walk away.

They went back to the practice green where Pruiss lay in the portable bed, spun around so that the sun shone in his eyes. Rachmed Baya Bam had lifted the covers over Pruiss's legs again and was intoning words to the sun, in a language Remo did not understand. Theodosia looked at him approvingly. She glanced at Remo as he and Chiun returned and she smiled. Remo smiled back. Chiun sniffed.

The thin hissing voice of Rachmed Baya Bam insinuated itself over the clearing as he kneaded the useless legs of Wesley Pruiss.

"What language is that, Chiun?" Remo asked.

"Hindi," Chiun said.

"You understand it?"

"Yes. Even though he speaks it badly."

"What's he saying?" Remo asked.

"He is saying 'Oh, sun. Oh, yes, sun. This is Rachmed, sun. You hear me, sun? I'm talking to you, sun. Where are you, sun? Shine on me, sun. I don't want to sunburn though, sun, so don't shine too hard. How you like it up there, sun? Do you ever get bored, going around in circles, sun?' "

"C'mon, Chiun."

"You asked, I answered. What you do with truth is no concern of mine," Chiun said.

Pruiss cried out and Remo glanced over. Rachmed seemed to be wrestling with the muscles of Pruiss's right thigh.

"I felt it, I felt it," Pruiss said.

Theodosia squealed. "Wesley, I knew it. I knew it."

Baya Bam said in English, "Thank you, sun, oh gracious orb, whose gift is love and whose wisdom is in understanding."

"I think I can move it," Pruiss said. "My right leg. I think I can move it. Look. See if I can move it, Theo. Look."

The woman leaned over. "A little," she said, but her voice was doubting. "Maybe I saw it move a little."

"I know it moved," Pruiss said. "I know it did."

"Thank you, gracious sun," said Baya Bam.

"I think that's enough, Rachmed," said Theodosia. "Wesley needs his pain medicine. Let's get him inside."

Baya Bam nodded. Theodosia came to Remo.

"What did you find?' she asked.

"Bodyguards all dead. Knives," Remo said.

"That man is a fraud," Chiun told Theodosia.

"Thank you," she said coldly. "But he seems to be helping, doesn't he? All dead?"

"Yes," Remo said.

"Do you think we need more help?" she asked.

Remo shook his head. "We'll just wait for the twerp with the knives to surface. He will eventually."

Theodosia saw Rachmed wheeling the bed away.

"I've got to give Wesley his medicine right away," she said.

Remo watched her walk away.

"Frigid, I guess," he said. "But she's really dedicated to that Pruiss."

"She makes sure that she gives him his medicine on time," Chiun said.

"That's what I said," Remo said.

"No, it's not," said Chiun.

Before Flamma had been Flamma, she had been Blow-Blow La Flume. She had been the "special projects editor" for a New York publishing house. Her most special project had been the publisher who hired her and their in-office couplings had been long, complicated, frequent and so messy that when the publisher finally went to jail for child molestation, the couch in his office had been neither kept nor sold. The new publishers had taken it downstairs and burned it at curbside. The smell lingered on the New York street for days afterward. Blow-Blow La Flume was fired with the couch.

Still the whole experience had been a step up from the massage parlor for Blow-Blow, who, after his passing, had invested the publisher with all the virtues imagination could create, even though people who dealt with him on a less personal level had tended to regard him as a particularly virulent form of saprophytic fungus.

It was an easy step from the publisher's office to Gross Magazine, which was just getting off the ground. Blow-Blow's greatest virtue was that she had none — she would do anything. Theodosia had done the first centerfold for Wesley Pruiss, but Flamma did the next three, wearing disguises, so she couldn't be recognized as the same model. It was Pruiss who changed her name to Flamma, which, he said, had a classy ring. He also had her work out the techniques for belly-dancing with sterno burning in her navel. This was not as hard as it seemed, because the problem wasn't heat, it was cold. Sterno burned almost like an evaporation-with-flame, and an evaporating substance chills the surface beneath it. Flamma's navel was so cold at times that she was afraid to go to her belly-dancing lessons for fear that she would crack wide open in a sudden lunge of activity.

Wesley Pruiss was impressed by her experience in publishing and assigned her the task of entertaining distributors, printers and buyers to whom he owed money. She did this generally by letting them buy her a drink and then insisting they go to bed with her right away, because she couldn't live another moment without their bodies.