Target of Opportunity

"Damn!" he said, plunging in.

Inside Marine One, the President and First Lady were buckling up.

"There goes my-I mean your-chance for reelection," the First Lady was saying.

"Evacuate!" shouted Remo.

The President and First Lady looked up, eyes going round, faces stark.

"What?"

"This thing is booby-trapped! Get out now!"

They stared at him in disbelief. Remo reached down toward an empty seat that stank of astringent chemicals and tore the cushions open with steel-hard fingers, exposing heavy plastic sacks filled with an evil red fluid. He slashed one open with the edge of a sharp fingernail, and pungent naphthalene flowed out.

"That stuff will go up like flash paper."

Abruptly the rotors wound up. The craft started to rock and lift.

Remo moved in. His fingers grabbed the safety belts, and they parted like cheesecloth.

"C'mon, Chiun," urged Remo.

The Master of Sinanju moved quickly, pushing the stunned First Family out of their seats.

They got them out of the helicopter just as the wheels lifted off. They had to jump from the steps, which were still in the down position and rising off the grass.

The steps pulled away into the night.

"Remo! What is it?" Smith asked hoarsely.

"Look at those steps. Where's the Welcome Aboard Marine One sign?"

"Damn," said Vince Capezzi. "I should have noticed that." Lifting his MAC-11, he added, "We can't let him get away."

"No," said Smith. "We'll have it tracked. It may lead to the conspirators."

But the fake Manne One didn't make it as far as the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument. It was rattling over Constitution Avenue when it burst apart in a flat whoof of a sound. It hung there for an awful, indecisive moment.

In flames, it cascaded to the ground, after which it burned merrily. The black smoke soon carried in their direction, smelling of naphthalene.

The President of the United States stared at the crackling pile of twisted metal and said, "I don't understand ...."

"That, Mr. President," Harold Smith said grimly, "was the ultimate escalation. The real thing."

Then, past the blinking red light atop the white obelisk of the Washington Monument, a clattering noise resolved itself into a great olive-green-and-white military helicopter.

"That looks like Marine One," Vince Capezzi breathed.

"It is," said Remo. "The real one."

Grim-faced, Harold Smith turned to the President and said, "Mr. President, we have just witnessed conclusive proof that the conspiracy to kill you is a massive one, involving many persons prepared to trade their lives for your own."

"Don't I know it," the President said thickly.

"I have a suggestion."

"Go ahead."

"Order Marine One back. Let out word that you've died."

"What good will that do?"

"It may flush the conspirators out into the open."

"You're asking me to lie to the American people."

"I am asking you to save your own life. This conspiracy is deep, broad and well capitalized. It will stop at nothing to unseat you. We cannot unravel it if we are spending all our energy trying to preserve your life."

The First Lady said, "What does the Committee on Urban Refugee Empowerment have to do with any of this?"

She was ignored.

Smith went on, "This conspiracy has a definite goal in mind. Some thing or some aim that can only be achieved by your death. Let's give them what they want and see who steps from the shadows to claim victory."

"Then we will harvest their heads and display them as a warning to any who would contemplate similar perfidy," cried Chiun.

The First Lady regarded the Master of Sinanju with horrified eyes, so he added, "And insure universal health care for one and all!"

The First Lady grabbed the President's sleeve. "Do what he says," she hissed. "He makes perfect sense."

Remo rolled his eyes skyward.

Finally the President of the United States said, "I'm in your capable hands, Smith."

PEPSI DOBBINS was beside herself.

Hunkering down in an ANC broadcast van parked on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House, she found herself a witness to history with no clue as to what was going on.

She grabbed her walkie-talkie. "Buck. Talk to me. What's happening out there?"

"I got it all on tape," Buck said excitedly.

"What did you get?"

"The Secret Service just shot the shit out of Santa Claus."

"What?"

"But it wasn't really Santa. It was Thrush Limburger in disguise."

"Oh, my God. Did he try to kill the President?"

"That's how it looked."

"The conspiracy thickens."

"That's not all. You remember the old Oriental and the guy with thick wrists from the airport?"

"Yeah."

"They were here. They helped hustle the President off as the shooting started."

"Where did he go? The President, I mean."

"Did you hear that dull thump a moment ago?"

"I did."

"No one's saying, but we think it was Marine One. It blew up."

"I'm shooting toward the Washington Monument right now. I think I was the only guy smart enough to sneak off. Everyone else started taping Thrush Limburger's corpse and asking idiot questions."

"There's no such thing as an idiot question in the pursuit of a story," Pepsie snapped.

"I caught Marine One flying off," Buck said breathlessly. "Then it blew apart and dropped straight down like a flaming sack of potatoes. I'm filming the wreck right now."

"Was the President aboard?"

"He was supposed to be."

"Then he's dead," Pepsie breathed. "He's really dead this time. We've got to go on the air with this."

"They'll never let us. Not after the last time you said he was dead over the air."

"Hold on," Pepsie said. Turning to a technician in the cramped broadcast van, she said, "Can you snoop in on the Secret Service transmission frequency?"

"We're not supposed to."

"That's not what I asked," said Pepsie.

The technician handed Pepsie a set of earphones.

Clapping one earphone to her head, she heard an ominous white noise. There were absolutely no Secret Service transmissions. All was static.

"Buck, what's going on?" Pepsie said into her walkie-talkie.

"White House staffers are booting us off the grounds. They look kinda scared."

"Okay. Meet me at the van."

"You got it."

Grabbing her cellular phone, Pepsie dialed ANC News. "Greg. I'm at the White House. Something big just happened."

"I though you were barred from the ceremony."

"That's why I'm hiding out in the news van. But my camera guy slipped in. Get this, Thrush Limburger just tried to kill the President. But the Secret Service got him first."

"That's what CNN is reporting. Do we have film?"

"Do we ever. But there's more. Marine One lifted off from the South Lawn not two minutes ago and blew up. Isn't that great?"

"CNN didn't report that."

Pepsie burbled excitedly, "I think we have an exclusive."

"Was the President aboard?"

"He was supposed to be," Pepsie said evasively.

"Supposed to be doesn't cut it, Pepsie. You know that."

"Look, we can do a live remote on the crash while the competition is still stuck on the 'cased Santa' angle. This is my big chance."

"This is career suicide if you go out on another limb."

"Trust me on this one. I have film."

"Start feeding the raw tape, and we'll see."

"You won't regret this," said Pepsie, hanging up.

She came out of her seat at the first knock on the van door.

"Hand it here," she said, grabbing the tape out of Buck Featherstone's fingers. She loaded it, hit Rewind, then told the technician, "Start feeding this as soon as it's racked."

Then she clapped the headphones over her ears, telling Buck, "We can't go on the air until we have proof the President's dead."

"From where I stood, it looked like the Secret Service snipers might have been trying to shoot the President."

"Are you sure?"

"No."

"What the hell," said Pepsie. "It'll make a better story that way. We can always air a retraction later. It's all coming together." Pepsie pushed one earphone tighter to her head. "Wait a minute. Something's happening."

A thin voice over the Secret Service frequency said, "Tin Woodman enroute to Crown. Repeat, Tin Woodman enroute to Crown."

"They just said the Tin Woodman is coming here. That's the Vice President. Maybe they're going to swear him in!"

FIVE MINUTES LATER a black Lincoln Continental limousine slithered through the West Gate and stopped before the diplomatic entrance in the South Portico of the White House.

The press continued to pour out of the East Gate, oblivious.

Then the hearses arrived. There were three. They remained in the White House garage less than a dozen minutes and then wound back out in a sedate line.

"Three hearses," Pepsie whispered. "Three bodies."

"The President, the First Lady and maybe Thrush Limburger," said Buck.

"Or the First Daughter." Pepsie dialed ANC again. "Greg. The Vice President just went in. Then three hearses left."

"We're still reviewing film," Greg told her tensely. "The other networks are still sorting out the shooting. They report the President has left for Andrews Air Force Base and Air Force One."

"The hearse traffic has been coming in and out of the West Gate. I think we're the only ones to spot it. We own this story."

"Hang on, Pepsie."

"By my fingernails."

AT THE NORTH PORTICO diplomatic entrance, the Vice President of the United States was greeted by the White House usher.

"What the hell is going on?" he hissed.

"Come this way, sir," the usher said solemnly.

The Vice President allowed himself to be escorted to the Oval Office. He had been dining with his family when word came that his presence was urgently required at the White House.

They were intercepted in the Oval Office reception area by the President's chief of staff. "ANC has just declared the President dead."

For the Vice President of the United States, it was as if an anvil had landed on his head. A million hectic thoughts raced through his reeling brain. His vision actually dimmed. There was a roaring in his ears.

Then the grim face of the President himself poked out of the Oval Office door.

"Don't believe everything you see on TV," he said. "But for the forseeable future, you're confined to the White House."

"What's going on? A coup?"

"We're trying to tree a possum."

"Come again?"

"I'm dead, and you don't know any different. Got that?"

"Yes, Mr. President," said a very confused and only slightly disappointed Vice President of the United States.

BEHIND THE CLOSED DOORS of the Oval Office, the President of the United States faced Harold W. Smith.

"Everything's in place."

"We have only to wait," said Smith.

"I hate deceiving the American people like this."

"Better that they temporarily mourn a living man than bury another dead President for all time."

"You know," said the President, "I ordered the Secret Service to stand down."

"I know."

"Yet they had snipers on every roof overlooking the place."

"The director of the Secret Service no doubt considered it prudent."

"Makes me wonder if those shots weren't meant to hit me. "

"That possibility cannot be discounted at this juncture," said Harold Smith.

Chapter 30

With the announcement by ANC that the President of the United States had died in a helicopter crash, the other networks, predictably, followed suit. Within twenty minutes everyone had declared the Chief Executive dead.

There was no confirmation from the White House, no comment from the other branches of government. No one went into the executive mansion and no one and nothing came out.

For all intents and purposes, the White House became an informational black hole.

National Transportation Safety Bureau teams cordoned off the destroyed helicopter, allowing no cameras within viewing range.

The press held vigil into the late hours of the night, interviewing one another to fill air time.

And the nation held its breath.

IN THE WHITE HOUSE basement, Harold Smith monitored the ongoing news coverage out of the corner of one eye as he wrestled with the problem.

His worn briefcase lay open on the desk before hire, exposing the portable computer that was connected by phone lines to the great mainframes housed in the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium.

Smith had created a flowchart on his screen in an attempt to organize what was now a large and Byzantine sequence of events.

The trouble was the chart refused to flow.

That there was a conspiracy was beyond any shred of doubt.

Someone had set on the President a Lee Harvey Oswald double, perfect down to his fingerprints and body scars, armed with perfect replica Secret Service badge and vintage Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. And had filmed it.

That same someone had tricked an obscure bartender named Bud Coggins into gunning down the Oswald double in such a way that he, too, was killed in an eerie recreation of the original Oswald's murder. Coggins was not part of the conspiracy; that much was certain. Yet even as he was unwittingly covering up for the true conspirators, his VR helmet camera was transmitting pictures of everything he saw and did to the conspirators. That had been determined by an examination of the VR helmet.

Within hours of the events in Boston, the conspiracy had already shifted into a second phase in Washington, D. C. The replica Socks had infiltrated the White House grounds exactly in time to create chaos upon the President's return. And the replica Gila Gingold had struck by the end of day one.

Yet all of these incidents seemed engineered to drive the President from Boston, to the White House and then, in the final phase, trick him into boarding a booby-trapped helicopter and a fiery death.

Why? Why not kill him in Boston and be done with it? What was the point of it all?

The desk phone rang.

"This is the D.C. medical examiner," a voice said.

"Go ahead," said Smith.

"This man I have just autopsied is not Thrush Limburger. I know this because the actual Limburger is on my TV vociferously proclaiming his innocence."

"Does he have a burr hole at the top of his head? The fake, I mean."

"He does."

"What is the likely significance of such procedures?"

"Typically this is an operation used to cure Parkinson's disease by the introduction of fetal brain cells into an affected brain. It is called a brain graft."

"I see. Are there any other applications?"

"Well," the M.E. said slowly, "the only similar operation I have heard about involves transspecies applications-grafting animal brain cells from one species to another. It is purely experimental, but very interesting in that it shows behaviors and inherent instincts can be translocated across species."

"Could animal brain cells be introduced into a human brain?"

"Only an unethical madman would attempt it."

"You have not answered my question," Smith snapped.

"If the rejection problem could be solved, yes."

"Am I correct in assuming that such operations would require sophisticated techniques and state-of-the-art surgical facilities?"

"You are."

"Is there anything else?"

"The man was asthmatic. An inhaler was found on his person containing a cartridge of a common antiinflammatory steroid called Vanceril."

"Are you certain it is Vanceril?"

"That is what the cartridge says."

"Messenger the cartridge to the FBI crime lab and have them compare it to a sample already in their hands. They should match."

"At once."

"Thank you," said Harold Smith, hanging up. The phone rang again instantly.

"FBI. We have no fingerprint match on the Boston shooter."

"Unfortunate."

"But the California driver's license found on the body checks out as authentic. His name really is Alek James Hidell. We're trying to develop this information further."

"Get back to me when you have something solid."

Smith hung up again. He faced his screen frowning.

The conspiracy was frightening in its rough outlines. From the surgical procedure to the clever replica of Marine One, a small fortune had been expended in setting up the President. But for what? And why had everything been filmed?

Remo Williams poked his head in the door.

"How's it coming?"

Smith rubbed his tired eyes. "This conspiracy, whatever it is, required a small fortune to mount and a small army to implement. How could they possibly engineer such an operation without leaks or defections? It makes no sense."

"Speaking of making no sense, ANC says Pepsie Dobbins is about to go on the air and blow the whole thing wide open."

"Pepsie Dobbins..." Smith said strangely. "She broke the story about the Mannlicher rifle, claiming a Secret Service source. I would like to know her source in the service."

"I'd offer to squeeze the truth out of her, but thanks to Chiun we've been made as far as Pepsie is concerned."

"I did no such thing," a squeaky voice said.

The Master of Sinanju floated into the room, looking stern.

"I never mentioned the organization, O Emperor of Discernment."

Smith sighed. "I cannot help but think that the motive lies in the letters RX, which were scratched in the shell casing the Oswald replica fired," he said.

"But why would the conspirators try to claim credit for the ambush?" asked Remo.

"To strike fear into the hearts of their enemies," said Chiun. "It is both obvious and logical."

Smith shook his gray head soberly. "No one in their right mind would dare claim responsibility. The retaliation would be massive. No, the true meaning of the letters RX must be to deflect suspicion away from the actual conspirators."

"Toward what-the medical industry?" asked Remo.

"Toward the opponents of health-care reform," said Smith.

"Like who? Gila Gingold and Thrush Limburger? No way. I don't buy it. Those guys were being framed."

"It is a baffling conundrum," admitted Harold Smith. "If only I could glean some meaning from the letters RX."

UPSTAIRS, in the White House family quarters, the President of the United States sat at a private desk out of sight of the windows and prying camera lenses, doodling the letters RX on a sheet of Presidential stationery.

He tried reversing them, stacking them, but the letters continued to mock him with their cryptic insolvability.

"Wish I could make some sense of all this," he muttered.

"You can start by explaining something to me," the First Lady said angrily. She had just walked in.

The President turned in his chair. "What is it, honey?"

"Don't you 'honey' me. I checked the Federal Staff Directory. There is no Committee on Urban Refugee Empowerment."

"Could we do this another time? I'm trying to solve a mystery."

"You and your mysteries," said the First Lady, looking over the President's shoulder. "What's that?"

"They found it scratched on the bullet casing up in Boston. But nobody can figure out what it's supposed to mean."

"Maybe they're the initials of an old political rival," the First Lady suggested.

"Not likely. All anyone can come up with is that it's the medical symbol for the word prescription. But what does that mean?"

"Maybe it's another synonym for prescription. You know, a logic-chain sort of deal."

"Good thinking." The President began writing. "RX. Prescription. Remedy...."

The First Lady snapped her fingers. "Cure! Cure is another word."

The President of the United States froze in his chair.

Then his press secretary called through the door and said, "ANC has a special report coming on. It looks important."

The First Lady snatched up a remote and pointed it toward a bookcase TV set.

The picture resolved itself into the serious figure of Pepsie Dobbins, standing against a backdrop of the White House.

"I thought the press was ordered to stay off Pennsylvania Avenue," the First Lady complained.

The President started for the nearest window when the First Lady yanked him back. "You want your fool head blown off?"

"This is Pepsie Dobbins," said the image on the screen, "standing before the mausoleumlike nerve center of the nation's government. Not since the dark days of Houston-"

An off-sereen voice went, "Psst. Dallas."

"-Not since Dallas has the nation cowered under a dark cloud as it has today. Unofficially the President of the United States is dead. Unofficially we have a new President. But no one in official Washington will speak on the record. In the absence of official facts, it is time the truth came out. Two days ago I broke the exclusive story, still unconfirmed by the Secret Service, that the rifle used to assassinate the President in Boston was identical to the weapon Lee Harvey Oswald slayed-"

"That's slew," an offstage voice hissed.

"-slew President John Fitzsimmons Kennedy."

The offstage voice groaned.

Pepsie took a deep breath and went on.

"ANC News can now report that the mastermind behind this conspiracy is this man."

A floating graphic appeared in one corner of the screen. It showed a bestubbled face under sunglasses and a black baseball cap with the letters CIA stitched across the front in red.

"He calls himself Director X, and in an exclusive interview with me yesterday, this man claimed inside knowledge of the conspiracy. ANC News is prepared to state on the record that this man is the chief conspirator. And despite his clumsy attempts to suggest CIA involvement in the murder of this President, the finger or guilt points in another direction entirely."

Pepsie paused. In a low, dramatic voice, she added, "Director X is no less than the director of the United States Secret Service!"

"Did you hear that?" the First Lady gasped. "She makes sense. Their fingerprints are all over this deal."

But the President of the United States was looking down at the sheet of paper in his trembling hands and a notation in his own handwriting that read-

And he remembered that the President who had founded CURE had himself been assassinated. That he himself had until the other day threatened to shut CURE down forever. And that the man who headed CURE was its director.

IN THE BASEMENT command post of the White House, Harold W. Smith watched with growing interest as Pepsie Dobbins continued her indictment of the Presidential protective service.

"This President was targeted because through his valiant attempts at health-care reform he became a threat to the establishment."

"Wasn't that what that crazy guy who called Thrush Limburger said?" Remo asked. "The establishment was out to nail the President?"

"I told you so," said Chiun.

"Shh," said Smith.

Pepsie went on. "I can now reveal the existence of a shadow government that has manipulated Presidential strings going back an unknown number of administrations. Seeing they could not control the late President, they snuffed him out like a candle."

Harold Smith went pale. Remo turned to Chiun and said, "You really blew it this time."

The Master of Sinanju's mask of a face went stiff.

"This group is known by the code name RX. And it is headed by a shadowy figure known only as Smith."

Harold Smith rose from his seat, seeming to leave his blood in the chair, he went so pale. "I must speak with the President at once," he said, his voice shaking.

"Good luck," said Remo.

After Harold Smith left the room with wooden strides, Remo turned to Chiun and said, "I think we're both out of a job now."

The Master of Sinanju said nothing. He was staring at the screen with eyes so slitted they might have been cut by a sharp blade.

Chapter 31

In the Presidential suite of the Hay Adams Hotel, within sight of the White House, a man lay on the bed watching a TV through dark sunglasses. A blue L.A. Dodgers cap was cocked back off his forehead. Every flat surface in the room was stacked with black plastic videotapes. And in the corner a red-brown capuchin monkey squatted on a parrot stand, staring out the window with inexpressibly sad eyes.

Pepsie Dobbins was saying, "The significance of the initials RX remain murky, but it strongly suggests what some are calling the medical-industrial complex."

The man bolted upright. "That's my story! She stole my story! The bitch stole my story."

He picked up the bedside telephone and said, "Have my Porsche brought around to the front. And hurry." Going to the bathroom, he quickly shaved the two days' growth of beard from his plump face, tossed the Dodgers cap into the trash and replaced it with a black one emblazoned with the letters CIA.

Selecting a pair of insect green mirrored sunglasses from a traveling case, he clapped them over his eyes and walked out of the room, belting an expensive topcoat around his waist.

After the door closed, the capuchin monkey on the parrot stand opened its small mouth and made a long, low mournful sound that sounded amazingly like the moo of a very tiny cow.

TEN MINUTES LATER a blue Porsche pulled up before the Washington Bureau of ANC News.

Presenting himself to the security desk, the man in the topcoat and CIA cap said in a soft voice, "Tell Pepsie Dobbins the Director is here to see her."

"She doing a stand-up at the White House."

"Don't give me that. I know a studio job when I see it."

"Sorry," said the security guard in a firm voice.

"Not as sorry as you're going to be," said the man in the CIA cap, pulling out a silenced .22 pistol and jamming it into the guard's blue paunch.

Between the silencer and the paunch, the three bullets that shattered the guard's spinal column went in with no more sound than straws through pudding.

IN THE WHITE HOUSE, the President of the United States didn't know whom to believe-the frantic voice of the director of the Secret Service coming from the telephone receiver or Harold W. Smith's careful explanations.

"I am not Director X," the Secret Service director was saying. "The service has nothing to do with any of this!"

Harold Smith was insisting, "We are not RX. I absolutely guarantee it."

The President hesitated. The director of the Secret Service was all but screaming. He had no idea whom he was talking to. He had asked for the President and assumed he had been put through to the former Vice President. The President hadn't spoken a single word through the one-sided conversation.

Then Smith said, "I swear this on the memory of the President whom we both revere."

Abruptly the President hung up and faced Smith. "I'm willing to trust you, Smith, because I trust the judgment of that man. So who is behind this?"

"I hesitate to point the finger of guilt where I am not certain of all my facts."

"I want to hear your ideas."

"The mastermind has great financial and logistical resources. He also has unusual access to Secret Service procedures. He was obviously able to eavesdrop on their transmissions so he could insert his own Marine One into the South Lawn ahead of the real one."

"You blame rogue Secret Service agents?"

"At every incident they were in the thick of it."

"How does Pepsie Dobbins know so much?"

"I suspect she knows very little. She surmises much. We can sort that problem out later."

A knocking came at the door, and then Remo's voice called out, "Smitty. I just had a flash."

Harold Smith hurried to the door and urged, "Not now!"

"Listen a minute. Pepsie's talking about a Director X, right?"

"Yes."

"That's what they call Uncle Sam Beasley. The Director."

"Are you saying Uncle Sam Beasley is behind the conspiracy?"

"You got a better theory?"

"For God's sake, why? What would his motive be."

Remo shrugged. "Who knows. Maybe he thinks the new health-care premiums will drive his theme parks out of business."

Smith rubbed his sharp chin thoughtfully. "It is conceivable," he muttered. "He does have the funds, manpower and technology to accomplish everything we've thus far seen in this plot." Smith stole a look over his shoulder at the waiting figure of the President. "But I cannot tell the President that. For one thing, we allowed Beasley to escape from Folcroft detention. For another, he would scarcely believe that a famous animator considered dead for thirty years is trying to kill him."

"Why don't Chiun and I try to shake some leads out of Pepsie Dobbins? What do we have to lose? We're practically out on the street as it is."

"Whatever you do, don't let yourself be filmed," warned Smith, who then closed the door and straightened his tie and his crestfallen face before turning to the President of the United States.

"Mr. President," he began in an uncomfortable voice. "We may have to revise our working theories."

The President looked skeptical in the extreme.

OUTSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE, Remo and Chiun looked up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.

"I don't see Pepsie," said Remo.

"Nor do I," said Chiun, face gathering into a troubled web.

Remo spotted an ANC microwave van parked on Jackson Place beside Lafayette Park and ran to it. The rear door was unlocked. Yanking it open, he asked the technician at the controls, "Where's Pepsie Dobbins?"

"Back at the studio."

"But she's broadcasting live from the White House lawn."

"What can I say? She's an amazing reporter."

"I get it," said Remo. "Come on, Little Father, let's snag a cab. Pepsie's up to her old tricks again."

INSIDE ANC QUARTERS, Pepsie Dobbins was winding up her live report from the White House.

". . . Stay with ANC News for more on this breaking story. This is Pepsie Dobbins, live from the White House."

The red light winked off, and Pepsie removed her IFP earpiece, carefully unpinning a lapel mike from her green Carolyn Roem dress.

"How'd I do?" she asked.

"Well," said Buck Featherstone, "except for getting Dallas and Houston mixed up, not to mention screwing up Kennedy's middle name, I'd say you did fine."

"No one pays any attention to facts. Just hair and delivery."

"You'd better hope they don't pay attention to backdrops, either," said Buck as they exited the bluescreen studio.

"What are you talking about?"

"Because the White House slide they threw up behind you is a little out of date."

"What do you mean?"

"No Christmas tree on the lawn."

Pepsie made a face. "I don't think anyone will notice."

"You didn't see that tree," Buck said, following Pepsie through the cramped cable-strewn corridors of the ANC Washington news bureau.

"I wouldn't have to electronically enhance my reports if the White House hadn't blocked off Pennsylvania Avenue," Pepsie said in a peevish voice.

A man in a black CIA baseball cap and mirror sunglasses stepped out of the men's room and said, "You know too much, Pepsie Dobbins."

Pepsie whirled. She saw the cap and the sunglasses before she noticed the gun. Buck Featherstone stepped between them, and she heard the dull gunshot reports.

Buck dropped at her feet, his mouth bubbling blood like a dying drinking fountain.

His eyes were wide and full of disbelief. "But-you're my hero," he bubbled.

"Tough," said the man in the CIA cap, lifting his silenced .22 and taking aim at the notch between Pepsie Dobbins's stunned blue eyes.

The pistol went click-click-click, and Pepsie assumed she was shot. Her legs gave way, corkscrewing her to the floor.

She was grabbed up, thrown across a soft fleshy shoulder and carried out of the building. No one stopped them. No one dared.

"We record the news, we don't participate," a man said, hastily squeezing out of the way of the man with the silenced pistol.

Pepsie was dumped into the trunk of a blue car, and by the time her brain unblocked, the car was roaring from the curb and she found herself inhaling carbonmonoxide fumes coming from a faulty exhaust connection.

"I MYSELF HOLD that it was a joint Cuban Intelligence-Sicilian mafia hit," said the cab driver as he wrestled with the traffic at Dupont Circle.

"Mind paying attention to your driving?" Remo said from the back of the taxi.

"I can drive and talk fine. Like I was saying-"

A single ivory fingernail flicked out to depress a spot over the driver's neck vertebrae, and the driver continued moving his mouth, but nothing came out.

"Thank you, Little Father," said Remo.

A metallic blue Porsche came squealing around a corner and the cab driver evaded it by the width of a paint job. Remo caught a fleeting glimpse of the driver. His eyes had gone to the white letters CIA on the black baseball cap, so the face beneath made only a fleeting impression.

"You know," Remo told Chiun, "that guy looked familiar."

"Yes?"

"If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was Hardy Bricker."

"Who is Hardy Bricker?"

"You know, the paranoid film director. The one that made that movie a few years ago about the Kennedy assassination that claimed a government conspiracy of about twenty-two thousand people was behind it all."

"I did not see that movie," Chiun sniffed.

"It was called CIA."

Then Remo looked very, very strange. "Uh-oh," he said.

The Master of Sinanju saw the guilty look in his pupil's face and said, "What is it, Remo? Speak!"

"We may have to rethink the Sam Beasley angle on this," Remo said thickly.

Then the cab came to a screeching halt in front of the ANC News Washington bureau. The rear doors popped on either side, and Remo and Chiun came flying out.

They found a security guard lying dead in the entry and mass confusion farther back. And amid the confusion a man lay dying.

Three cameramen with Minicams on their shoulders were carefully recording his last painful minutes while a reporter held a microphone to the man's bloodied lips.

"What's it like to die senselessly?" the reporter asked.

The reporter came close to finding out when Remo lifted him off his knees by his neck and flung him into the men's room. Remo held the door open while the Master of Sinanju sent the three cameramen scurrying past, impelled by fingernails that found sensitive nerves in their bodies.

Remo smacked the lock, and there was no exiting the men's room short of a blowtorch.

Kneeling beside the dying man, he told Chiun, "This is the guy who was with Pepsie at the airport. Speak up, fella, what happened here?"

"Pepsie . . . kidnapped," the man said in a bubbling tone. "Bricker . . . my hero..." Then his head rolled to one side, and the blood flowed out of his mouth like red Karo syrup from a bottle.

Remo stood up. "That was Hardy Bricker. We gotta find him."

Chiun eyed his pupil suspiciously. "What is Hardy Bricker to you, Remo?"

"I'll explain later. Let's borrow a car. How many blue Porsches can there be running around Washington, D.C.?"

The police were arriving as they exited the building. Since they left their prowl cars unlocked, Remo availed himself of one.

Pulling away, Remo picked up the dash mike and pat out an all-points for a metallic blue Porsche.

After a minute the dispatcher came back with "Suspect Porsche seen crossing Memorial Bridge to Arlington."

"License plate?" asked Remo.

"Charlie Ida Adam. Repeat, Charlie Ida Adam."

"That's not the one," Remo told dispatch. "Keep looking."

Accelerating toward Memorial Bridge, he told Chiun, "We've got him all to ourselves."

Chapter 32

When the trunk door opened, Pepsie Dobbins poked her sassy shag out into the sunlight and gulped cool, reviving oxygen like a beached grouper.

A hand grabbed her by the hair, hauled her across several yards of well-tended grass to a circular terrace overlooking Memorial Bridge and the Potomac River. The Lincoln Memorial lay at the other end of the bridge. She was thrown to the ground. Pepsie looked up. Before her, set on a fieldstone platform, a gas flame burned orange and pure. On a marble tablet set in the slab was carved a name:

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY 1917-1963

The familiar soft voice said, "I told you that what is past is prologue."

Pepsie tried to struggle to her feet, but a foot pressing against the small of her back kept her down.

"Who . . . what . . . ?" she said dazedly.

"When . . . where . . . how?" said the soft voice. "Maybe this will answer your questions." And a ream of paper bound in a black laminated folder landed by her hand. Through a rectangular window cut in the cover, the top sheet showed white. On it was typewritten:

CURE

A Film by Hardy Bricker

Pepsie Dobbins looked over her shoulder and saw the man in the black CIA baseball cap. He had shaved his puffy checks. He removed his sunglasses. The name and face immediately connected. "You're Hardy Bricker! "

Bricker smiled thinly. "I told you the script had been written, and now you're part of the picture. Why did you have to spill my story line all over the place?"

"Story line?"

"Damn it! I needed you to supply me tape. Now CURE is going to have to silence you, too."

"What's CURE?"

"The real name for the black assassin operation I have been calling RX."

"Why not call it CURE?"

"Because someone might steal the title. Besides, I didn't want Smith to send his thick wristed assassin after me during shooting."

"You mean shooting shooting? Or filming shooting?"

"I mean both," said Hardy Bricker. "Since you know about Smith you must also know about CURE and the assassin with the thick wrists."

"I never heard of CURE. I got all my information from a little Asian man who called himself Chiun. I met him on the plane."

Bricker looked thoughtful. "The thick wristed man spoke about a house of assassins in Asia. Before he silenced me."

"Huh?"

Hardy Bricker took a deep breath. "I was lecturing at Harvard when he approached me. He told me that I had stumbled upon the truth. There was a secret shadow government that enforced its will through assassination and black operations. It was called CURE, he said. It was headed by a man named Smith, he said. I had been right all along. My film CIA was closer to the truth than even I dreamed. And then he did something to me. I lost my mind, I mean my memory. I wandered the streets of Cambridge for over a year, living out of garbage cans and the coins people dropped into my paper cup until a film student recognized me and called my agent. A brain operation unblocked my memory. I remembered that I was Hardy Bricker. But I also remembered what the man with the thick wrists had done to me. And I vowed to expose him and the evil, racist, fascist infraorganization that controlled him."

"By killing the President?"

Hardy Bricker shrugged carelessly. "I had been away from the Hollywood scene for over a year. People forget. I needed a hit. Besides, I didn't kill anybody personally."

"But he's the President of the United States!"

"The bastard sold out the film industry during those GATT talks a year ago," Bricker snarled. "All of Hollywood felt betrayed."

"GATT?" said Pepsie.

"General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. The French were holding out for concessions that protected their shitty little artsy-fartsy film industry against big-budget US. films. The President swore up and down he wouldn't cave in. But he did. A world leader who can't stand up for his own nation's chief entertainment industry doesn't deserve to live. That's what I say."

"So who killed the President?"

Hardy Bricker threw up his arm in agitation. "Who! Who? Who? Don't you get it? The shooters don't even know. That's the beauty of this. Nobody knows the big picture. Everybody has their role, but nobody on the inside knows what's going on. Even the people in the fucking loop are out of the loop. I have crafts people who think they're building prop replicas for one picture I have in development. I have a talent agency recruiting the doubles. I have a quack Mexican doctor putting the animal brain centers into the doubles."

"Excuse me?"

Bricker calmed down. "It's a French technique actually. Discovered back in the eighties. You drill a hole in someone's skull, introduce cells taken from other animals that control certain instinctive behaviors into the brain, and they lie dormant until the alien cells are activated by inhaled steroids. They did it with animals at first. Quails that crow like roosters, because they think they are roosters. Dogs that quack. Lions that think they can fly. Those ones don't live very long. I have a pet monkey that moos like a cow. They're called chimeras. It's the latest fad pet on the coast. I just adapted the idea to people. My Gila Gingold thought he was an alligator. The Thrush Limburger double thought he was a rogue elephant. He wasn't, but between his three-hundred-pound body and the adrenaline kick from steroids, he might as well have been."

"This is insane. You assassinated the President just so you could make a movie?"

Hardy Bricker looked injured. "Actually it's a docudrama. I had everything taped by crews who were pretending to be news crews. All that tape you supplied will be a big help. Once it's cut together, over my narration, my version of events is the one that will go down in the history books. The President will go down as a martyr for health care. If it all holds together, who knows, universal health coverage should become law by the time I'm giving my next Academy Award speech."

A voice from nearby said, "Not where you're going, pal."

Pepsie looked up.

From behind a hedge stepped a man in a black T-shirt and chinos. He had very thick wrists and the deadest eyes in the world. And they were looking at Hardy Bricker with cold rage.

Bricker whipped his .22 target pistol from his topcoat. He lined it up and said, "That's far enough."

But the man kept advancing.

Bricker fired five consecutive shots, and every one seemed to miss. The man with the dead eyes kept on coming.

Bricker aimed very carefully and, since the man was in no particular hurry, only fired when the length of a human body separated them.

This time Pepsie saw the man sidestep the buffet. He simply stepped out of its path and back into place like a ballet dancer performing a minor exercise. The edges of his body blurred, indicating incredible speed, but otherwise it seemed to execute the maneuver with casual nonchalance.

The next shot Hardy Bricker squeezed off made the sound of a hammer falling on an empty chamber.

The thick wristed man reached up and relieved Hardy Bricker of his pistol. Finger skin came away with the weapon.

Bricker started backing away.

From behind Pepsie, the tiny figure she knew as Chiun stepped up and impaled the back of Bricker's back with a single deadly fingernail.

Bricker screeched as if a red-hot needle had penetrated his plump body. "You're not going to kill me," he blubbered. "You can't. I'm a major, major player in the film industry."

"I should have wasted you the first time," said the thick wristed man bitterly. "My mistake."

Hardy Bricker's eyes squeezed out tears like tiny sponges. "I don't want to die."

"Tough."

"'This isn't in the script."

"Screw the script. This is real life. And for you, it's about to come to an sudden end."

"Look," Bricker pleaded, folding his hands together, "I can put you in my movie. You'll be famous."

"I'm already in the movie."

"We can be in the movie together. I promise you won't end up on the cutting-room floor. You have my word as a child of the sixties."

"Remo, I weary of this man's prattle," said Chiun.

"Just a sec," said Remo. "Bricker, who else knows about CURE?"

"Just her. You're going to have to kill her, too."

"Not true," Pepsie shrilled. "I only know about RX, and I don't really know about that."

"We'll get to you later," said Remo. "I got an idea-you're going to confess your crimes to the world."

"Never. It'll spoil the film and wreck the health-care."

Little Father, see if there's a video camera in that car.

A moment later the Master of Sinanju returned carrying a video camera.

Remo lifted it to his shoulder and started taping Hardy Bricker.

"Start confessing. Just leave out the stuff about CURE and Smith and us."

"I refuse."

The Master of Sinanju stepped up, and all the resolve drained out of Hardy Bricker's quaking body. He began confessing. He spoke in exhaustive detail, adding things he had not told before.

Remo stopped him at one point and asked, "Who was the Oswald double?"

"A has-been actor," Bricker mumbled. "He'd built a career out of playing Lee Harvey Oswald in a string of made-for-TV movies back in the seventies. When he got too old for the part, he lost it. Started believing he was Oswald. Changed his name to Alek James Hidell. He was an extra in CIA. He was the only one I didn't have to drill a hole in his skull before I sent him after the President. Let me tell you, when he read the script, he couldn't wait to take a shot at the President."

"He was willing to kill the President to be in your movie?" Reno said incredulously.

"Docudrama. And he knew he was shooting a Secret Service decoy. If we killed the President before the credits, we'd have no movie. He was the only one besides me who knew what was going on. That's the beauty of it. We had a conspiracy involving literally thousands of people, just like I theorized in CIA, and it all held together."

"Until now. He know he was going to be killed by a Ruby double?"

"That was a later revision. I never got around to showing him that draft."

"Keep confessing," Remo said.

When Hardy Bricker was through, he was on his knees sobbing before the eternal flame of the President whose memory he had invoked and defiled.

Remo said, "Now it's time for you to commit suicide."

"The gun is empty," Bricker sobbed. "You can't make me shoot myself with an empty gun."

"Good thinking. Besides, if I did that, it would go on the books as a simple suicide. I don't want a simple suicide. I want something for the conspiracy buffs to chew on for the next two hundred years. Maybe that way they'll stop messing with history."

A thick wristed hand reached down and made one of Hardy Bricker's limp hands into a fist. Remo brought the fist up to the right side of Bricker's throbbing temple. He pulled the index finger out, setting the tip against Bricker's head.

"Shouldn't you at least be filming this?" Bricker asked.

"Why?"

"It's the end of the movie."

"Only for you, pal."

And while everyone watched with furrowing brows, including the owner of the finger, Remo gave Hardy Bricker's wrist a sharp inward push.

The index finger plunged into Bricker's soft brain all the way up to third joint.

Bricker's right eye bugged out of its socket. His entire body shook. But he didn't attempt to extract his finger from his brain. He couldn't. Neither was working anymore.

They left Hardy Bricker kneeling at the eternal flame, where he would be later found-the first human being in recorded history to commit suicide by ramming his index finger into his own skull, a mystery for the ages, never to be solved.

AS THEY WALKED THROUGH Arlington National Cemetery, Chiun asked, "Was all that cretin said true, Remo?"

"Yeah," Remo said glumly. "I heard Bricker was in town and I was sick of all those movies of his where he blamed every bad thing that ever happened in the world on American government conspiracies. I figured if I put him out to pasture, that would be the end of his propaganda campaign. I never told Smitty."

"Emperor Smith will be displeased," Chiun said gravely. "Even more displeased than he is over my slip of the tongue where this unimportant woman is concerned."

"Look, I need Smith to help find my parents. He can't know about this."

"Nor will he."

Remo looked relieved.

"Provided certain persons show certain other persons proper gratitude according to the season," added Chiun.

Remo sighed. "Just name your price."

"I will," Chiun said thinly, regarding Pepsie with narrow eyes. "Once we are through with unimportant details."

Remo and Chiun loaded Pepsie Dobbins into the borrowed police car, and she asked, "What happens to me?"

"The same thing that happened to Bricker the first time," said Remo.

"What happened to him the first time?" asked Pepsie.

A long-nailed hand the color of old ivory drifted up to Pepsie Dobbins's shoulder and squeezed once. She instantly forgot the question. Then her mind went dark.

Just before the coming of darkness, a squeaky voice said, "This time I will do it and no one will undo it."

WHEN PEPSIE WOKE UP, she was sleeping in the back seat of a police car parked outside of the ANC Washington news bureau and, head in a fog, she stumbled into the building.

Her news director found her wandering the halls and said, "'There you are. Where have you been?"

"Oh, hi, Greg. I think I've been in a daze."

"That's the understatement of the turn of the century," Greg said bitterly. "Better sit down." Pepsie sat. The bare floor was not as comfortable as she'd hoped.

"Do you want the good news first or the bad?"

"What's the good?"

"The President's not dead."

Pepsie made a confused face. "Isn't that the bad news?"

"No."

"Okaaaay. So what's the bad?"

"CNN is showing a tape found at Kennedy's grave where they found that wacko film director Hardy Bricker, dead with his finger in his brain."

"Huh?"

"He committed suicide, though no one can figure out how. He was behind everything."

"It's bad that we lost the story, isn't it?" Pepsie said dimly.

"It's worse that we declared the President dead twice in forty-eight hours. I've been fired. And the only reason I haven't left the building is that I had something to do first."

"What's that?"

"Firing you."

"Oh," said Pepsie Dobbins, who still didn't get it all, but one day would.

Chapter 33

In the White House basement command post, Harold Smith watched the confession of Academy Award-winning Hollywood director Hardy Bricker on CNN. It was being shown for the fourth time.

"Incredible," he said. "It was all a film. No wonder the President was not killed outright the first time. There wouldn't be a story otherwise."

Smith turned in his chair to face Remo and Chiun. "You did an excellent job," he said. "From identifying Bricker as the mastermind to dealing with the Pepsie Dobbins problem."

"Actually Chiun deserves most of the credit," said Remo.

"I taught him everything he knows," added Chiun blandly.

"And CURE is off the hook now that Bricker confessed that RX did in fact symbolize the medical community he was trying to frame, along with Congressman Gingold and Thrush Limburger, among others."

"Another mission successfully completed, and another President saved," Remo said brightly. "All in the line of duty."

"The Secret Service has confiscated the tapes found in Bricker's hotel room," said Smith.

"That ties up that loose end," Remo said, grinning fixedly.

"There is only one thing," said Smith.

Remo and Chiun looked blank.

"The script. They could find no trace of it."

"Oh, that," said Remo. "Bricker had it on him."

"Where is it now?"

Remo hesitated. "I gave it to Chiun."

Smith directed his gaze at the Master of Sinanju. "Master Chiun?"

"Pah, I threw it away."

"Why? It was evidence."

"It was the most inept script I ever read," said the Master of Sinanju. "I was not even mentioned."

Harold Smith looked blank. They stared at one another, all equally blank of face until Smith cleared his throat and said, "Now that the threat to the President is suppressed, it is time we left the White House the way we came in."

"Like thieves in the night?" asked Chiun.

"Security," said Smith, rising to go. "And we have much to do, starting with locating Uncle Sam Beasley, who is still at large."

"No," said Remo. "Starting with finding my parents."

"I will do my best," Smith said.

They followed Harold Smith to the basement boiler room and the secret tunnel to the Treasury Building at a careful distance.

"Remember," Remo whispered to Chiun. "You promise never to tell Smith that I was the one who set Bricker off."

"You will bear that burden to the end of your days!'

"Okay, I'll bear it. But mum's the word."

"And you in return will cook every meal for the next three thousand years."

"You said two thousand," Remo hissed.

"I am including your afterlife in the Christian place of atonement. I will visit you there often when we are both dead."

"I'm sure I'll appreciate the company," Remo said dryly.

"Just remember to steam the rice, not boil it like a lazy white."

"For the next two thousand years or in the afterlife?"

"Both."

As they entered the tunnel under the White House, Remo laughed softly and guiltily.

"Merry Feast of the Pig, Little Father," Remo said warmly.

"The same to you, counterschmuck."