Dark Horse td-89

by Warren Murphy

  "If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them," added Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

  A hand went up. A young woman. Her eyes shone with what seemed to be innocence.

  "Yes?"

  "Do you have any more cookies?"

  Enrique Espiritu Esperanza allowed a sad look to come over his wide, cherubic face.

  "I am sad to say, no. We have used up our budget for this rally."

  "Aww . . ." said the bright-eyed young woman.

  A forlorn sigh ran through the audience. There were a few "darns" and "drats," sprinkled with more pungent curses.

  "There would have been more," Esperanza added, "but you understand .... The tax."

  "That damned tax!" a man howled.

  A man jumped to his feet. "Somebody ought to do something!"

  Esperanza raised his smooth brown palms. "This is exactly what I propose. To repeal this detestable tax that deprives the open-minded people of this state of the small comforts of life."

  A shout of encouragement went up. Others chimed in.

  At first, Harmon Cashman thought that the crowd had been salted behind his back. He realized this was unlikely. Maybe it was the cookies. Maybe everyone went wild for Oreos. After all, this was America. What child had not eaten them by the carload? And how many of those had stopped eating them as adults? Sure, Harmon Cashman decided, it was their taste buds getting nostalgic. Using Oreos to create loyalty-it was a masterstroke. Brilliant.

  Then, they began to chant, "Esperanza! Esperanza! Esperanza!"

  And Cashman realized that the migrants had fallen into the same chant. And no one had slipped them any cookies.

  "This guy," Harmon Cashman muttered over the swelling chanting, "must have the greatest pheromones anybody ever saw!"

  In rally after rally, it had been the same. The guy just got up on the podium, sometimes without benefit of a microphone, and no sooner did he start to speak than the crowd was with him.

  For Harmon Cashman, the campaign was like a vacation in Heaven. He hardly had to do a thing. The press got wind of the Esperanza fever, and suddenly they were running a press campaign. Without so much as lifting a telephone.

  At the end of two weeks, the name "Enrique Espiritu Esperanza" had appeared at the bottom of the polls. His speeches were leading the local newscasts. By the middle of the third week, the dark horse nobody had ever heard of was edging up to be in striking distance of the frontrunners, Barry Black and Rona Ripper.

  Their campaign staffers were smart. They simply ignored the upstart. That gave the Esperanza campaign a clear field to sprint even further ahead.

  Besides, what was there to criticize? Oreo cookies and hope?

  "We're in trouble," Harmon Cashman confided to his candidate over a working lunch that very afternoon.

  Enrique Espiritu Esperanza looked at him with his doe-like eyes. "I am shooting up in the polls. How is this terrible?"

  "We were doing great as an underdog. Nobody bothered to attack us. We were running a guerrilla campaign, and if we'd kept it at the pace we were going, by the time the polls had you in a dead heat it would have been a week before the election, and too late for the other campaigns to do anything about you."

  "It is better to win big and win early," said Enrique Esperanza without hesitation.

  Harmon Cashman stock his head. "Not if they score any hits. They're going to dig up all the dirt on you they can."

  "They will find no stain on my honor. Enrique Espiritu Esperanza is as pure as the driven snow."

  "And this appeal to the ethnic vote. It's going to bring the hate-mongers out. You know that?"

  "Let them emerge into the light. One cannot step on a hiding cockroach, and the only way to draw out a cockroach is to turn off the light, wait, and turn it on again. I have turned off the light. Now the cockroaches will come. Let them. Let them."

  They came.

  It was at a Sacramento rally. An indoor rally, this time.

  Esperanza was in the middle of his speech before a packed house, when two men jumped up from either side of the front row and shouting "Down with Esperanza!" opened fire with machine pistols.

  An X formed on the white wall above and behind the unflinching figure of Enrique Espiritu Esperanza. One bullet track made a slashing diagonal from the left. The other showed up as a wavering line of punch holes coming down to the right.

  They should have crossed at a point exactly between Enrique Espiritu Esperanza's black eyes.

  Except the percussive stuttering sounds went suddenly quiet.

  On the podium, Enrique Esperanza stood blinking, as if unable to comprehend that he had come as close to having his head blown off as the bullet capacity of a Tec-9 machine pistol clip.

  In the front row, the gunmen were fumbling empty clips out and attempting to get fresh ones out of their coat pockets.

  "Get them!" Cashman shouted.

  The hall turned into a sea of panic.

  On the podium, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza called for calm.

  Belatedly, Harmon Cashman lunged for his candidate, threw him to the floor.

  "Stay down!" he hissed, surprised at his own personal courage.

  "I am not afraid," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, his voice as calm as a sultry breeze. "Those asesinos cannot harm Esperanza. Esperanza is hope."

  It sounded corny, but coming from the lips of his candidate, it brought proud tears to Harmon Cashman's eyes.

  The police got the crowd under control. The gunmen had escaped in the confusion. After the situation had stabilized, and people had been questioned, the weapons were found taped to the undersides of a pair of folding chairs.

  "They are very clever, these men," Enrique Esperanza said, when he was shown the weapons. "Without these incriminating tools, they were able to blend with the crowd and simply walk out the doors unchallenged."

  "They'll be back," Harmon Cashman said, when the police were through with their questions and had left. "Guys like them never give up."

  "I am not afraid," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, who sounded as if he meant it. "I am Esperanza."

  Chapter 7

  Harold W. Smith received the report of the attempt on the life of gubernatorial candidate Enrique Espiritu Esperanza the same way most of America did. Through the media.

  Smith was driving home when the bulletin broke over the radio. Smith had been listening to a classical music program on National Public Radio. Smith liked National Public Radio-when they broadcast music. The minute someone who was not an announcer spoke for more than ninety seconds, he either turned off the radio or switched stations.

  The bulletin was brief:

  "UPI is reporting that an attempt was made on the life of the Hispanic dark horse candidate for governor of California, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, within the last hour," the metallic announcer's voice said. "Details are sketchy at this time, but initial reports are that Esperanza was unhurt. The unidentified assailants are believed to have escaped in the confusion."

  In the darkness of his battered station wagon, Harold W. Smith voiced a question:

  "Who is Enrique Espiritu Esperanza?"

  There was no followup, so the question went unanswered.

  Smith pulled over to the side of the road and turned on the dome light. A well-worn briefcase, its edges peeling and thus unlikely to be stolen by a casual thief, sat on the seat beside him. Smith threw the safety latches, so the briefcase would not detonate a gram of plastique embedded in the lock, and opened it.

  Revealed was a minicomputer with a cellular telephone handset attached.

  Smith brought the system up and dialed into the Folcroft mainframes. He had not been following the California race for two weeks now. Once the uproar over the deaths of the governor and lieutenant governor had subsided, and there had been no activity that seemed suspicious, Smith had concluded that whatever had been General Nogeira's motives in assassinating the officials, the plan had died with him.

  The President of the United Sta
tes had agreed, and pending the National Transportation Safety Board crash report, they decided to let the matter rest.

  And now this.

  Smith had been completely unaware of the existence of a candidate by the name of Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

  Smith punched up the name. The liquid-crystal display began emitting a brief file. Smith's gray eyes absorbed the data with interest.

  He learned that Esperanza was an independent candidate for the governorship. A Napa Valley wine-grower by profession, he had become wealthy and had entered the race as a dark horse. He was barely a blip in the polls, which were dominated by Barry Black, Junior and Rona Ripper.

  His message was not so radical that someone was likely to attempt to do him in, Harold Smith concluded. Yet obviously someone had tried.

  Smith called up Remo's current contact number. Normally, it was something he would simply have committed to memory, but Smith's memory was not as sharp as it once had been, and lately Remo had been changing residences so often that it was harder to keep track of his whereabouts.

  As Smith hit the autodial key, he thought wistfully that there had been advantages to having Remo reside here in Rye, near Folcroft. But recent events had forced Remo and Chiun back into the nomadic lifestyle they had once practiced. It was a situation not to anyone's liking.

  The phone rang once. The receiver was lifted, and a squeaky voice said, "Speak."

  "Master Chiun. It is I."

  "Hail Emperor Smith, the Infallible," Chiun said in an excessively loud voice. "Your wisdom exceeds that of the pharaohs. Sinanju lives to serve you well-despite certain embarrassments that have occurred of late."

  Smith cleared his throat. "If you are referring to the Nogeira incident, once again, I do not hold it against you."

  "As you should not. It was Remo's blunder."

  "Nor do I hold it against Remo," Smith added quickly. "It was just one of those things."

  Chiun's voice grew conspiratorial. "The true perpetrators. You have their names at last? I will attend to them myself, so as to atone for my pupil's blunder."

  "No," Smith admitted. "Washington gave up on that angle weeks ago. The perpetrators have melted into the shadows. It is possible they never left the country at all, which would explain why they have not been intercepted at the usual international points of departure."

  "Obviously they are cunning beyond words," Chiun mused. "Otherwise they would not be hiding within your very borders after their brazen, cowardly attack."

  "Er, yes," said Smith uncomfortably. "That is all in the past now. I have an important assignment."

  "Your generosity knows no bounds."

  "Excuse me?" said Smith, for a moment wondering if it was once again contract-renewal time. Chiun tended to speak of America's generosity only on those annual occasions.

  "Your faith in Sinanju must be great indeed to give Remo a second chance," Chiun went on. "It is not misplaced. Whoever must be dispatched, Sinanju vows his hours are numbered."

  "I don't want you to, ah, dispatch anyone. There is a gubernatorial candidate who is in peril."

  "I will let you speak with Remo," Chiun said, his tone noticeably cooling.

  The sound of a hand covering the mouthpiece came to Smith's ear. Still, Chiun's squeaky voice could be heard, although muffled.

  "It is Smith," Chiun said.

  "What does he want?" Remo's voice, very distant and not at all happy.

  "I am not certain. He has lapsed into that patois of his that is not English. I think he wants you to take out the garbage."

  "Garbage?"

  "Gubernatorial," Chiun said. "Is that not the same as 'garbage'?"

  "No," Remo said.

  "Whatever it means, it is beneath my dignity as Reigning Master to deal with it. Since you have yet to atone for your recent misdeeds, I give Smith to you."

  The sound of the hand coming off the microphone was like a suction cup popping free of window glass. Remo's voice, clear and filled with acid, came again.

  "Thanks a bunch, Little Father." Into the telephone, he said, "What's going on, Smitty?"

  "One of the candidates for governor of California has survived an assassination attempt tonight."

  "Ripper or Black?"

  "Neither. Esperanza."

  "I never heard of Esperanza."

  "Nor had I," Smith admitted frankly. "He is barely registering in the polls, yet someone is trying to kill him. I want you and Chiun to look into it."

  "Any suspects?"

  "None. There is an outside chance that this attempt might be some repercussion from the Nogeira scheme, perhaps some sleeper hit team that has activated in spite of the death of its mastermind, Nogeira."

  "I still have a hard time believing that toad-faced ogre could have caused that plane crash from jail," Remo muttered.

  "The FAA investigation continues," Smith replied crisply. "We may know something soon. In the meantime, I want you to look into this event."

  "How?"

  "Join the Esperanza campaign, to start."

  "Hold the phone, but isn't he the victim?"

  "I want you and Chiun in place if there's another attempt. If one comes, you know what to do."

  "And if there isn't?" Remo wondered.

  "By that time," said Harold Smith, bathed in the pale radiance of his station wagon dome light, "I hope to have developed some concrete leads for you to follow."

  "Great," Remo said dryly. "And here I was just getting settled in sunny Seattle."

  "I am not aware that Seattle is particularly sunny."

  "Funny," Remo said acidly. "Neither am I. It hasn't stopped raining since we hit town."

  "I will expect progress reports every twelve hours," Smith said thinly.

  "You can expect them," Remo returned. "But getting them is another thing. You have to make progress to report on it."

  "We shall see," said Smith, hanging up.

  Closing up his briefcase, Harold Smith shut off the dome light and resumed his drive home. He was in his third week without medication of any sort and, while he did not feel like a new man-his burdens precluded such a renewal of spirit-it was good not to have his stomach churning with excess acid, and his brain throbbing with persistent headaches.

  He wondered how long it would last. In this job, he thought ruefully, probably not very long.

  Chapter 8

  The first thing Remo did upon disembarking at LAX airport was to buy a newspaper from a vending machine.

  "You have no time to read the comic strips," Chiun sniffed as they walked toward the cab stand. He wore a royal blue kimono.

  "I'm not," Remo said, tossing the business and entertainment sections into a trash can. "I want to read up on Esperanza."

  "Esperanza," said Chiun thoughtfully. "It is a worthy name."

  "It is?"

  "In the Spanish tongue, it means hope."

  "I guess he knows it too. Because it says here he's holding a 'Rally for Hope' tonight. Maybe we should catch it."

  "I would prefer to catch this man today," Chiun retorted.

  "What's the rush?"

  "The air smells bad. I would not linger in this so-called 'City of Angels.' "

  The Master of Sinanju said this as the automatic glass doors slid apart and they were hit by a wave of dry heat and smog.

  Remo, feeling his lungs begin to rebel, said, "This is worse than Mexico City."

  "Nothing is worse than that foul place," Chiun sniffed, his hazel eyes looking to the brownish layer of clouds.

  The first cab in line, they discovered, was not air-conditioned.

  "No thanks," Remo said. "We'll take the next guy."

  "You gotta take me," the cabby said. "It's the rules."

  "Whose?"

  "The Drivers' Association."

  "We don't belong," Remo pointed out in a reasonable voice.

  "Then you don't ride."

  The Master of Sinanju took this in without a change of expression. He drifted up to the rear tire, pretending
to scrutinize the low-lying smog.

  One sandaled foot bumped the rear tire.

  The rubber popped a rip, and air hissed through the ragged eruption.

  The cab settled at its southern corner.

  "It is okay, Remo!" Chiun said loudly. "We will ride with this man!"

  "We will?" Remo blurted.

  "He is desperately in need of our business." Chiun pointed. "Look. His wheels are in a sad state."

  The driver came out and looked at his tire.

  "A flat?"

  "It is too bad," clucked Chiun, "but we will wait for you to repair it." He beamed. Remo looked at him doubtfully.

  The cabby shook his head. "Can't. The rules say you take the next one in line."

  "Then my son and I will take the next conveyance in line with sorrow in our hearts," the Master of Sinanju said magnanimously.

  "Yeah, yeah," the driver grumbled, popping his trunk and removing a tire iron and jack.

  The second cab-this one air-conditioned-took them out into traffic. They got all of sixty yards out before they hit a traffic jam. It didn't last long. It was just that they encountered so many on the way into the city.

  As they drew cool, filtered air into their lungs, Chiun folded his kimono skirts delicately and said, "Remo, tell me of this assignment."

  Remo shrugged. "What's to tell? Someone killed the governor and lieutenant governor. Now there's a special election to replace them."

  Chiun nodded. "Typically debased," he said.

  "What is?"

  "The American approach to democracy. Not that the Roman brand was any good. It lasted but four centuries."

  "A mere tick of the Korean clock," Remo said, smiling.

  Chiun's button nose wrinkled up. "Koreans did not have clocks until the West introduced them as a form of slavery. "

  "Slavery?"

  "When one is watching clocks, one is not attending to one's proper business."

  "I won't argue with that," Remo allowed, looking out the window. They were approaching the city. He saw business signs in an amazing variety of languages, including the modern Korean script called hangul.

  "In Roman times," Chiun went on, "the governors were appointed by the emperor."

  "Well, we elect ours."

  "The Romans voted for their consuls. That was in their early primitive period, before they came to embrace the sweet serenity of rule by emperor."