The Head Men

"AH and more," said Montrofort, handing her back her wine glass, filled again.

He smiled at her. He really did have a nice smile, Viola thought. Nice teeth. He probably had had a good dentist. A good team of dentists working on his mouth. When one had all the money he could want, all and more, well, he could afford any kind of teeth he wanted. It was good for

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crippled dwarfs to have good teeth. People who liked teeth might be attracted to them. Viola, now, had always had a warm spot in her heart for people with good teeth.

"I love your good teeth," she said, swilling and spilling.

"Thank you, my dear. All my own. Never a cavity in my life."

Maybe he was cheap. If he had all the money he ever wanted, all and more, why didn't he spend some money on his teeth ?

"Why not?" Viola asked. She pushed forward the wine glass for a refill.

"Why not what?"

"Why didn't you spend something on them?"

Montrofort tried to chuckle casually. Maybe she was crazy. "Your job with the Congress must be very interesting," he said. He handed her glass forward.

"How much did this wine cost?" asked Viola.

"Who cares about money?" said Montrofort. "Whatever it cost, it was a small price to bring you pleasure. Who thinks about money?"

"People who are too cheap to have their teeth fixed right," yelled Viola. She slammed her Waterford goblet on the table for emphasis. The stem snapped smartly, an inch up from the base. She held the rest of the wineglass as if it were a dixie cup, her hand around the fat bowl, and slurped down her wine. When she was done, she threw the goblet toward the fireplace. She missed.

"We were talking about your job with the Congress," Montrofort said. He looked around for another glass for Viola, but three had already been broken. The only one left was his. He filled it and handed it over.

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"It's a job," Viola said. "The massage parlor I worked in, now that was interesting."

"You worked in a massage parlor ? How droll."

"Yeah," Viola said, peeking out from around her uplifted wineglass. "Three years. That's where I met... whoops, no names."

"I understand, dear. I certainly do. From a massage parlor to Congress. How interesting."

"Yeah. The money was better in the massage parlor. Until now, anyway. With this book I'm gonna write. More of that wine, okay?"

"Your book should be very interesting." Montrofort upended the bottle over Viola's glass, filling it halfway.

Viola took the glass. "Yeah. About ashash . . . assash ... about killings and like that."

"Oh yes. Assassinations."

"You're going to help me, aren't you?" Viola asked.

"Day and night. Weekdays and weekends. We can go visit the scenes of the great assassinations of history. Just you and me."

"Better bring somebody to wheel you around too. I don't wheel any too good," Viola said.

"Of course, my dear," said Montrof ort.

"I need you to help me with my book, 'cause I don't write too good, and you talk like you could really write and all, and besides you know about things."

"Not only will I help you with the book, but when you make your million I'll help you manage your new-found wealth, if you wish."

"You don't have to do that," Viola said. "I work for Congress. I know all about Swish . . . Swish... Shwiss bank accounts."

"That's like the kindergarten, however, of

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money hiding. To really eliminate all chance of being traced, you must wash your funds through Switzerland and then through more accounts in other friendly nations. African nations are particularly good because they make up their banking regulations to fit the customer and for five dollars you can buy all the treasury secretaries on the continent."

"Right. I see. We'll worry about that later," Viola said.

"Very wise. First the book, then the money," said Montrofort. Viola's head was nodding. Her eyelids drooped. It was the time to make his move.

"Why don't we go into my studio to discuss this further?" he said. "We can allocate responsibilities that each of us should have to insure a good book."

"Right," said Viola. "Lead the way." She yelled as if leading a charge of the cavalry. "Okay, everybody. Roll on out. You get it? Roll on out. Get it?"

"Yes, my dear. Follow me."

Montrofort rolled back from the table and toward a side door leading from the dining room. He opened the sliding door and turned to let Viola through first. She was not with him. She was still at the table, her head on her plate, the plate partially filled with wine from her overturned goblet, sleeping gently.

Montrofort rolled back to her side. She breathed deeply and steadily.

Cautiously he extended an index finger and touched one of Viola's breasts which hung threateningly over the floor.

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"Unnh, uhnnh," Viola mumbled, her eyes still closed. "No feelies. Looksies."

"Please," said Montrofort to the sleeping woman.

"Only brush-touchies. No feelies. My lash word on the shubject. Now don't get fresh and make me have to wheel you into the fireplace."

"No, my dear," said Montrofort. He rolled to the dining room's main door, opened it, and summoned Raymond with an imperial crook of his finger.

The butler stepped forward hurriedly.

"Get her out of here, Raymond," Montrofort said.

"Shall I call her a cab?"

"No. Just put her on the curb," Montrofort said. "I'm going to bed."

A laughing stock, was he? He would see who would be laughing on Saturday. And he knew the answer.

No one in the country but him.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

The sky's black was diluting into a deep gray when Remo came back to the hotel room. Chiun was sitting in the corner of the room on a fiber mat, watching the door.

"How did your wonderful idea work?" he asked as Remo came in through the unlocked door.

"I don't want to talk about it," Remo said.

"The man is an idiot."

"Whatman?"

"What man ? The man you were talking to. The emperor with the funny teeth."

"How did you know I went to see him?"

"Do I know you, Remo? After all these years, don't you think I know what foolishness will strike your fancy?"

"He wouldn't go along. He's going to appear on Saturday."

"That's why he is an idiot. Only an idiot goes blithely rushing forward into danger, whose dimensions he knows not. Really, Remo, I don't know how this country has lasted long enough to have a bicenental celebration."

"Bicentennial," said Remo.

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"Yes. And being run by idiots all that time. Americans always act as if they are protected by God. They drive those awful belching machines at each other. They poison each other with what they call food. There is a smokehouse in Sinanju where we smoke codfish, and it smells better than the air here. Despite that, you have lasted for a bicenental celebration. Maybe God does protect you idiots."

"Then maybe he'll protect the President."

"I hope so. Although how God can tell one of you idiots from another is beyond me. Since you all look alike."

"Actually, what the President said was that he had total faith in the Master of Sinanju. That he knew he was in the finest, strongest hands in the world."

"Hands, no matter how fine or strong, work only if they have something to clutch."

"He said he thought you would protect him."

"Impossible."

"He said nothing could stop you," Remo said.

"Except that which we know nothing of."

"He said if he survived this, he was going to take a commercial on television and tell everybody that the House of Sinanju was responsible for his protection."

Chiun unfolded his arms and let them drop to his sides. "He said that?"

"That's exactly what he said. I remember his exact words. He said, 'If I survive this, I'm going to go on television and say that I owe it all to the bravest, most wonderful, awe-inspiring, magnificent

"Enough. He was clearly talking about me."

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"Right," said Remo. "At last, you're going to get all the credit you deserve."

"I take it back. That man is not an idiot. He is just malicious."

"He just has faith in you, is all," Remo said.

"As soon as I heard him talk funny, I should have known. He cannot be trusted."

"Why are you all bent out of shape? 'Over a compliment?"

"Because if this man of many teeth goes on television and says that we are in charge..."

"I'm glad it's 'we' now," said Remo.

"When he says we are in charge of his protection and then if anything happens to him, what then becomes of the good name of Sinanju? Oh, the perfidy of that man."

"I guess we'll just have to save him," Remo said.

Chiun nodded glumly. "He is from Georgia, isn't he?"

"That's right."

"Stalin was from Georgia."

"That's a different Georgia. That's in Russia," Remo said.

"It doesn't matter. All Georgians are alike, no matter where they are from. Stalin was worthless too. Millions dead and no work for us. I was never so happy as when that man was killed by his own secret police."

"Well, buck up. You're working for a Georgian this time, and you've got plenty of work. You've got to help me save the President."

Chiun nodded. The first rays of sunlight were entering the room, and through the translucent pink curtain, the sun cut jagged lines of light across the angular yellow face.

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Chiun looked toward the light, and with his back turned to Remo, said softly, "A Hole."

"What?"

"Do you remember nothing? The Hole. They are going to attack him and force him into The Hole for the real attack. We have to find out how."

"How do you know they'll do that?"

"Killers come and killers go, but all they have ever known or been or could hope to be, has come from the wisdom of Sinanju. I know they will do that because they seem to be less inept than the usual level of murderers you have in this country. Therefore they emulate Sinanju and that is the way I would do it."

"All right," Remo said. "We'll have to find The Hole."

Across the city, Sylvester Montrofort was wheeling his way down the hallway to his private office in Paldor Services Inc. He pressed a button on the right arm of his wheelchair and the sliding door to his office opened in front of him. There was already a man in the office. He was standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out through the brown-tinted glass at Washington, D.C., below. He was a tall man with hair so black it was almost blue. He was over six feet tall, and his suit was broad at the shoulder and nipped in at a narrow waist, and tailored so well that it was apparent that the suitmaker knew his only function was to wrap something well-fitting around a work of art that nature had already created.

Montrofort hated the man. He hated him more when the man turned at the sound of the opening

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door, and smiled at Montrofort with just as many perfect teeth as the dwarf had. The man had a healthy tanned face, masculine but not leathery. His eyes sparked with the kind of vitality that informed the world he saw humor and mirth where no one else could. His hands as he raised them toward Montrofort in a greeting were long and delicate and manicured, and had been known, upon necessary occasions, to drive an icepick through an enemy's temple.

Benson Dilkes was an assassin and his awesome skills had helped make Paldor the success it was in the international world of protection for money. None of the Paldor salesmen ever knew it, but the reason they were received so warmly in the emerging nations by the presidents-for-life and the emperors-for-life and the rulers-insurmountable-forever was that Dilkes had been in the countries only days before, mounting an assassination attempt that looked like the real thing, but missing by a hair. He prepared the field from which Paldor's salesmen harvested very rich contracts.

And on those rare occasions when a foreign leader decided he did not need protection, no matter how close the recent assassination attempt had been, Dilkes usually showed him he was wrong. And generally, the ruler's successor was smarter. And hired Paldor.

"Sylvester, how are you ?" Dilkes said. He came forward to take Montrofort's hands in his. His voice had a raspy Virginia twang.

Montrofort ignored him and wheeled behind his desk. "Just the same as I was the last time I saw you two days ago," he said curtly.

Dilkes smiled, his even white teeth a badge of

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beauty in his bronzed face. "Even two days without seeing you seems like an eternity."

"Can that bullshit, me bucko. You know that Pruel failed yesterday?"

"So I read in this morning's papers. Unfortunate. I think, if you'll remember, I volunteered to do the job for you myself."

"And if you'll remember I told you that I want this to be extra careful. I don't want no shirttails hanging out at all. Your job is that dipshit revolutionary, Harley. How is he doing?"

Before he answered, Dilkes came around and sprawled in one of the three chairs facing Mon-trofort's desk.

He bridged his fingers in front of his face. "Just as we expected," he said. "He tired quickly of buying the cameras individually and is now buying them in bulk, showing off his rolls of cash, and generally making himself most memorable for the investigation that will eventually come."

Montrofort nodded, his eyes riveted to Dilkes' face, cursing the man's handsomeness.

"I have to tell you, Sylvester, though. I still don't know why you're going through with this. They offered to reinstate the payments."

"I'm going through with it because I'm tired of being pushed around. I'm not a'baby carriage."

"Who's pushing you around? Paying tribute is hardly abusive behavior," said Dilkes.

"Look. They paid. Then they stopped paying. If I let them get away with that, they'll stop paying sometime in the future again. They've got to know that we mean business, business, business. That's it."

Dilkes shrugged and then nodded. Of course, it had nothing to do with meaning business. It had

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to do with Sylvester Montrofort being a dwarf cripple and finally deciding to prove that, no matter what his body looked like, he was a man to reckon with. Reason had as much chance of stopping him as argument had of reversing the tide.

Dilkes pulled a hard plastic casino chip from his right jacket pocket and began rolling it across the tops of his fingers. "Of course, by now the President will have ordered Congress to stay out of the way," he said.

"More likely, just the leaders. Now if they're able to impose discipline, we'll have our congressmen just inside the Capitol entrance, waiting." Montrofort smiled for the first time that day, and fluttered his hands skyward in an imitation of a bird flying away.

"The surest trap is the one you set in the path of a man running to avoid a trip," Dilkes said.

"More of your eastern wisdom?" Montrofort said. His voice sneered.

"You should read more of it, Sylvester. You won't find it in libraries, but if you know where to look there is a body of literature out there that tells all of us, in this strange business, all we ever need to know."

"I believe in technology, baby. Give me that ol-ogy every time," said Montrofort. He was feeling better now, and he raised the level of the platform behind his desk so he was six inches higher than Dilkes.

"And I believe in Sinanju," Dilkes said.

Montrofort remembered something. He squinted at Dilkes.

"What'd you say?"

"I believe in Sinanju."

"And what's Sinanju?"

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"An ancient order of assassins," Dilkes said. "Creators of the martial arts. Invisible in combat. Through the ages of history, they have been involved in every court, in every palace, in every empire. There's an old saying: 'When the House of Sinanju is still, the world is in danger. But when the House of Sinanju moves, the world continues only by sufferance.'"

"These are Koreans, aren't they?" asked Montrofort. He smiled slightly as he watched the cool, impeccable, unflappable Dilkes continue to roll the casino chip across the back of his fingers.

"Were Koreans. The last anyone heard is that there is only one Master left in the House. An aged, frail man who if he still lives must be retired. None know of him till this day. What's wrong, Sylvester? You looked as if you've swallowed a frog."

"Not know of him may be accurate," said Montrofort slowly. "But not till this day. Bather, yesterday. That Master's name is Chiun, he is eighty years old if he is a minute, and yesterday he was sitting on that very chair you now occupy."

The casino chip dropped to the carpeted floor. Dilkes jumped to his feet as if he had just been told his chair had been wired to the Smoke Rise generating station.

"He was here?"

"Yes. He was here."

"What did he do ? What did he say?"

"He said that America was decadent because it did not love assassins. He said that American television was decadent because it had destroyed its only pure art form. He said that white and black and most yellows were decadent because they

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were inferior races. And he told me that he wished he had met me when I was young, because he could have prevented me from being this way but now it was too late to do anything. That's what he said."

"But why? Why was he here?" "Very simple. He is defending the President of the United States against assassin or assassins unknown." Montrofort smiled. Dilkes didn't.

"I'll tell you another thing, too, Dilkes. He was one of the guys Pruel was supposed to blow away yesterday."

"You tried to kill the Master of Sinanju?" said Dilkes.

"Yep. And I think I'll try again." "Now you know why Pruel failed." Dilkes paused and looked behind him as if fearing something or someone had come in the door. "Sylvester, you and I have been friends and partners for a long time." "That's right."

"It ends now. You can count me out." "Why? All this over an eighty-year-old Korean?"

"I may be the greatest assassin in the western world..."

"You are," Montrofort interrupted. "But compared to the Master of Sinanju I am a kazoo player."

"He is very old," said Montrofort. He was enjoying this. It was pleasant to watch the cool Dilkes panic. There were actually beads of sweat on the forehead of the big man. "Very old," Montrofort repeated.

"And I want to be. I am going back to Africa." "When?" said Montrofort.

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"An hour ago. Do what you're going to do yourself. Goodbye, Sylvester."

Dilkes did not wait for an answer. He stepped on the pressure-sensitive pad in front of the door and it slid open. It shut behind him just as the inkwell thrown by Montrofort hit the door. "Coward. Emotional cripple. Coward. Fraidy-cat," Montrofort screamed at the door, his voice as loud as it could be, knowing it would carry through the door, and Dilkes would hear him.

"You're a pussycat, not a man!" he screamed. "A coward! A lily-livered baby!" yelled Montrofort.

And he smiled all the while.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"This is it," said Remo, waving his hand toward the cast-iron dome high overhead inside the main entrance to the Capitol.

"This is where the Constitution is kept?" Chiun asked.

"I don't know. I guess so."

"I want to see it," Chiun said.

"Why?"

"Do not patronize me, Remo," said Chiun. "For years, I have known what we do. How we work outside the Constitution so everybody else can live inside the Constitution. I would see this Constitution so I may know for myself what it is we are doing and if it is worthwhile."

"It pays the gold tribute every year to your village."

"My honor and sense of personal worth are beyond price. You would not understand this, Remo, being both American and white, but some are like that. I am one of them. We value our honor beyond any amount of riches."

"Since when?" asked Remo. "You'd work as an enforcer for a Chinese laundry if the price was right." He was looking past Chiun at a group of

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men standing off in a corner of the huge entrance hall.

"Oh, no. Oh, no," Chiun said. "And why are you looking at those fat men who drink too much?"

"I thought I recognized them," Remo said. "Politicians I think they are. Maybe congressmen."

"Them I would speak to," Chiun said. He walked away from Remo.

The Speaker of the House was the first to see the little yellow man approaching.

"Mum, men," he said and turned, smiling, toward Chiun, who approached, unsmiling, like a teacher on his way to confront an amphitheater of parents whose children had been left back.

"Are you a congressman?"

"That's right, sir. Can I help you ?"

"A long time ago I was very angry with you because you put on the Gatewater show of all you fat men talking and you took off my television shows. But now the "shows are no good anymore, anyway, because they are decadent, so I don't care that they are off. Where is the Constitution?"

"The Constitution?"

"Yes. You have heard of it. It is the document I am supposed to be working to protect, so that all of you can be happy as clams, while I do nothing but work, work, work on your behalf. The Constitution."

The Speaker of the House shrugged. "Damned if I know, sir. Neil? Tom? You know where the Constitution is?"

"Library of Congress, I think," said Neil. He had a thin pinched face that was unhealthily red-blotched. Thinning gray hair swirled around his head in windblown swoops.

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"Maybe the national archives," said the congressman named Tom. He had a face that was strong and open, an invitation to trust. It looked as if it had been carved from a healthy potato.

"You gentlemen work here ?" Chiun said.

"We are congressmen, sir. Glad to meet you," said Neil extending his hand.

Chiun ignored the hand. "And you work for the Constitution and you don't know where it's kept?"

"I work for my constituents," said Neil.

"I work for my family," said Tom.

"I work for my country," said the speaker.

"I used to work for Colgate, though," said Neil brightly.

"That's nothing," said Tom. "I used to deliver newspapers on cold winter mornings."

"Lunatics," said Chiun. "All lunatics." He walked back to Remo. "Let us leave this asylum."

"You said we've got to find The Hole where the President is vulnerable. He'll be talking on the front steps. Now where's The Hole?"

Chiun was not listening. "This is a strange building," he said.

"Why?"

"It is very clean."

"It costs enough. It ought to be clean," Remo said.

"No, it is cleaner than that. There has never been a castle that was not infested. But this one is not."

"How can you tell that? There could be little buggies everywhere, just peeking out at you, waiting for night time so they can come out and dance."

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"Dance on your own face," said Chiun. "There are none here and that is very unusual in a castle."

"This isn't a castle, Chiun. It isn't a palace. This is a democracy. Maybe cockroaches are monarchists."

"This country is run by one man?" Chiun asked.

"Kind of."

"And he has a secret organization that we are part of?"

"Right."

"And we kill his enemies whenever we can?"

Remo shrugged at the onrushing inevitable.

"Then this country is like any other," Chiun said. "Except here they take longer to do things. The difference between this place and an absolute monarchy is that the absolute monarchy is more efficient."

"If they were so efficient, why couldn't they do anything about the cockroaches in the castles?" asked Remo.

"Remo, sometimes you are terribly stupid."

"Hah. Why?"

"Listen to your nasal honking. 'Hah.' You would think I never taught you to speak, to listen to you."

"Don't correct my speech. Tell me about cockroaches."

"Cockroaches are always with us. They abound. In the pyramids, in the storied temples of Solomon, in the castles of the French Louis, they abound."

"And we don't have them here?"

"Of course, there are none here. Do you hear them?"

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"No," Remo admitted.

"Well?"

"You mean you can hear cockroaches?" Remo asked.

"I refuse to believe that a Master of Sinanju has been reduced to this," Chiun said. "Standing here in the hallowed halls of your watchamacall-it..."

"Capitol. The Congress building." ,

"Yes. That. That I am standing here in these hallowed halls talking about cockroaches to someone no better than a cockroach himself. My ancestors will judge me harshly for having let Sinanju be dragged down into the mud like this."

"If I'm a cockroach, and we're co-equal partners, what does that make you?"

"A trainer of cockroaches. Oh, woe is Sinanju."

Osgood Harley scratched himself awake, trying to dig his stubby bitten fingernails into his pale white belly. The flesh was wrinkled from the tight waistband of the jeans he had slept in. He would pay dearly for having drunk two bottles of wine and passing out in his clothes, because sleeping in his clothes made his groin sweat, and an unpowdered sweaty groin gave him jock itch, the most persistent and incurable of all mankind's diseases.

There hadn't been jock itch in the old days. And there hadn't been drinking alone in a shabby walkup.

There had been action. Committees to protest this or that, and coalitions to promote this or that, and there had been television coverage, and newspaper interviews, and there had been a lot of money, and chicks. Oh, had there been chicks, and

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he had slept his way from bed to bed from Los Angeles to New York, from Boston to Selma.

And then the revolutionary fervor had vanished. The Vietnam war had pumped billions of dollars into America's economy. Almost everybody was working and every paycheck was fat and the money drifted down from the workers to their children, giving them the freedom to spend their time protesting-even against the war which made the protests possible. But as the war dried up, the economy dried up, and would-be revolutionaries found out it wasn't so much fun when there wasn't a check in the mailbox from Daddy, and so they cut their hair and swapped their sandals for shoes and went to college to study accounting or law, and with luck, wound up with a Wall Street firm and a steady paycheck.

The "leaders" of the revolution got caught in the switches. Suddenly, the money to support their free-living style had dried up. Some of them adjusted quickly. They peddled drugs; they joined religious movements; used to the fast buck, they went wherever they could find the fast buck.

Osgood Harley didn't, because unlike the majority of others, he really believed in a revolution, really wanted the overthrow of capitalist society. And so when the tall man with the black hair and the manicured nails and the beautiful even teeth had looked him up and offered him five thousand dollars if he would participate in a plan to embarrass the new American President, Harley gobbled at the chance.

Of course, it could have been better. Harley could have worked in public-with mimeographed press releases, and headquarters, and picketers, and sign-carriers-the way he had always

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worked in the past. But this time, he was told firmly "no." Any publicity and Harley could forget the five thousand dollars. With forty-nine cents in his pocket and a hole in the bottom of his Adidas sneakers, Harley found the choice easy. He would be as silent as smoke.

Even if the instructions about buying 200 cameras in 200 stores were stupid.

Harley had just stopped scratching when the doorbell rang. The young man standing in the hall wore a peaked cap with Jensen's Delivery Service embroidered across the front. In his arms he held a large cardboard carton.

"Mr. Harley?"

"One and the same."

"I've got some cameras here for you."

"Thirty-six to be exact. Come on in." He held the door back and let the younger man enter.

"Want them any special place?"

"Not there. Over there near the closet. That's where I've got the rest of them."

"Rest of them? You've got more?"

"Sure. Doesn't everybody?" Harley said casually.

"You must be opening a store," the youth said as he carefully set the box on the floor.

"Naah. Actually I'm a secret agent for the CIA and this is my newest mission." He grinned the kind of grin designed to impart the feeling that there was more truth than humor in what he had just said. The young man looked at his face with a reciprocal smile, but with narrowed eyes, as if memorizing Harley's face in case they asked questions later.

"There you go," he said.

"Good. Thanks. You saved me a lot of trouble."

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Harley took a roll of bills from his pocket and flashed the wad of fifties, before digging down into the center of it to find a ten-dollar bill.

"Here. For you. Thanks again."

"Okay, Mr. Harley. Really appreciate it."

After the delivery boy left, Harley gave the big carton of Instamatics, purchased at individual list price from a large camera store in the heart of the city, a healthy kick. He was beginning to think this was all kind of stupid. So he had his 200 cameras. So what? Wait for more instructions.

The more he thought about it, the more stupid it became. So he gave the carton another kick. The sound was answered, as if by a sportive echo, by the ringing of the doorbell.

Harley recoiled slightly before going to the door. It was the delivery boy again.

"I found this downstairs on the hall radiator. It's got your name on it." He handed forward a plain white envelope with "Osgood Harley" neatly lettered on it.

"Thanks, kid," Harley said.

After the boy left, Harley opened the envelope. There was a simple hand-printed note inside: Bring pencil and paper to the telephone booth at 16th and K Streets at 2:10 P.M. exactly.

The note was unsigned.

Harley got to the telephone booth at 2:12 P.M., delayed because he had to stop and have an Italian ice. The telephone did not ring until 2:15 P.M.

"Hello, Harley here," said Harley when he picked up the telephone.

"Clever," said the caller.

"I mean, hello," said Harley, who suspected

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from the sarcasm that he had made a mistake but couldn't be sure what it was.

"Do you have pencil and paper?"

"Right here," Harley said.

"Since you have already obtained the cameras, it is time to move on. You need one dozen cap pistols, the kind children use. Write it down. One dozen cap pistols. Get good ones. The loudest you can get. Don't, however, be an idiot and test them in the store.

"Have you got that?"

"Got it," Harley said. "A dozen cap pistols. Loud ones."

"Before you repeat anything else, please close the door of the telephone booth," the caller said. He waited until Harley pulled the door click-closed.

"All right. You also need four cassette tape players. Be sure they are battery operated and run at 1% inches per second. The smaller the size you can buy the better. Be sure to buy the necessary batteries to operate all of them. Good batteries. Not dead ones. Do you have that?"

"Got it," Harley said.

"Repeat it."

"Four cassette tape recorders..."

"Players. They need not be recorders."

"Okay," Harley said. "Got it. Players. Battery operated. Get fresh batteries. Small size players. Make sure they run at 1% inches per second."

"That's fine. Now. Underneath the telephone at which you're standing, you will find a key. It's taped to the underside of the shelf. Take it off and hang on to it. You will use it for your final instructions and for the next installment of your payment. Did you find the key?"

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"I've got it."

"Okay. Now don't screw things up. In a few days we are going to embarrass the entire government as it's never been embarrassed before. Your participation is vital. Goodbye."

Harley recoiled at the sharp click of the phone in his ear. Then he slammed the telephone onto the hook, snarled "jerkoff," and walked out of the booth to go to a wine shop on his way back to his apartment.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"I don't have anything," Remo said for the second time.

"That just won't do." Smith's tone of voice made his usual lemony snarl seem like undiluted saccharin paste.

"Oh, it won't, will it? Well, try this on for size. I don't, have anything and I don't think I'm going to get anything."

"Try this one on for size too," Smith said. "You're all, God help us, that we've got. We don't have much time now. "I . . ."

"Smitty," Remo interrupted, "what's the price for a futures contract on hog bellies?"

"Three thousand four hundred and twelve dollars," Smith said, "but..."

"What's the exchange rate of Dutch guilders for American dollars?"

"Three point two-seven guilders per dollar. Stop it, will you? We are charged with our biggest single mission and we . .."

"What's gold selling for?"

"One hundred thirty seven dollars twenty-two cents an ounce." Smith paused. "I presume all this has a point."

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"Yeah, it has a point," Remo said, "The point is you've got sixty-three million frigging people on your frigging payroll and you know the market for caterpillar crap in Afghanistan and you know how many pounds of chicken bones the Zulus buy each year to wear in their noses and what they pay for them and you can find out anything and everything and now when it gets sticky, you give the find-out to me. Well, I don't have your damned resources. I'm not good at finding out. I don't know who's going to try to kill the President. I don't know how they're going to try to do it. I don't know how to stop them. And I think they're going to be successful. And I think if you want to stop them you ought to take your far-flung organization and use it and if you can't use it, stuff it, that's what I think."

"All right," Smith said evenly. "Your objections are noted and filed. You've been to the Capitol?"

"Yes. And I didn't find out a thing except that three congressmen are fat and Neil used to work at Colgate's."

"You have no idea how they could attempt an assassination?"

"None at all," said Remo.

"Chiun? What does he think?"

"He thinks it's unusual that there are no roaches in the Capitol."

"That's wonderful," said Smith. His voice would have sounded sarcastic if it hadn't always sounded sarcastic. "That is the best word you have for me?"

"Yeah. If you want anything more, read the Warren Commission report. Maybe they'll tell you something," Remo said.

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"Maybe they will at that," Smith said. "I trust you'll keep working?"

"Trust all you want," Remo said.

He hung up and looked angrily at Chiun who was sitting in a lotus position on a red straw mat on the floor. His golden daytime robe was spread gently about him. His eyes were closed and his face serene. He looked so peaceful it seemed as if he might vanish any moment into a mist of wysteria scent.

Chiun raised his hand in Remo's general direction, a silent soft stop sign.

"I am not interested in your problems," he said.

"You're a big help."

"I have told you. You have to find The Hole. That is how this murder attempt . . ."

"Assassination," Remo corrected.

"Wrong," said Chiun. "Assassination is carried out by an assassin. An act of skill, talent, and training. Until I know otherwise it's crude murder. And please stop interrupting. It's rude. Your manners have become unbearable."

"I'm sorry I'm rude. I'm really sorry. Smitty's yelling at me and the President's going to be killed and you're worried that I'm rude."

"A human being should not stop acting like a human being just because some petty annoyances enter his daily life," Chiun said. "At any rate, you must find The Hole. That is how they will try to kill this man of many teeth."

"And where do I find this hole?"

Chiun's eyes widened like those of a jockey who had just found an unexpected opening on the rail. They showed joy at the chance to stick it to Remo.

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Remo raised his hand. "Never mind," he said. "I know. I can find The Hole in my head. In my fat stomach. In something or other. Can the insults, Chiun. I've got problems."

Chiun sniffed. "Then find The Hole."

"Leave me alone. I don't need any Eastern philosophy right now."

"Wisdom is always useful. If he paid attention to the coming and going of the sun, the worm wouldn't be eaten by the bird."

"Aaaaah," said Remo in disgust and ran at the wall behind Chiun. His feet hit it, four feet up, and he moved his legs up in a running step, while bringing his head down and around. When his feet were almost at the ceiling and his head almost touching the floor, he did a slow almost lazy flip to land back on his feet.

"Work the corners," Chiun said. He closed his eyes again and gently touched the five fingertips of his left hand to the five fingertips of his right.

"Aaaaah," Remo said again. But he worked the corners, moving up onto a wall as he ran to a corner, running around the corner on the wall, coming down off the wall onto the floor, moving across the room, cutting the room into four triangles, his feet touching the floor only four times for each resetted circuit of the room.

He was still at it when the knock came on the door.

Remo stopped. Chiun's eyes were closed. Remo did not know how long he had been exercising, whether it was ten minutes or an hour. His heart beat was the same fifty-two it always was at rest, his respiration still twelve breaths a minute. His body was without sweat; he had not perspired for over a year.

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A bellboy stood outside the door. He had a white envelope in his hand, a large padded envelope. "This was just delivered for you, sir."

Remo looked at the envelope. It was addressed in felt-tipped printing to his hotel registry name: Remo McArgle. No return address. He felt the envelope. It felt like a book.

He gave it back to the bellhop. "I don't want it," he said.

"There's no charges due on it," the bellhop said.

"Why'd you say that?" Remo asked. "You think I'm poor?"

"No sir. Not in this room. It's just if you don't take it, what'll I do with it? There's no return address."

"Oh, all right. I'll take it." Remo took the envelope back. "Here. For you." He reached into his pocket and fished out a roll of bills and handed them to the bellhop without looking.

The bellhop looked. "Oh, no, sir." He fanned the bills and saw tens, twenties, even a fifty. "You've made a mistake."

"No mistake. You take that. Buy your own hotel. I was poor once and I don't ever want you to think I'm poor. Here. Take my change too." Remo turned his pocket inside out and gave the bellhop several dollars in dimes and quarters, Remo having long ago solved the problem of carrying other kinds of change by simply throwing it all in the street before it had a chance to accumulate.

The bellhop raised his eyebrows. "You sure, sir?"

"I'm sure. Get out of here. I'm working the corners and then I'm going to look for The Hole and sixty-three million people can't find out one little

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thing- and I'm supposed to. Wouldn't it make you mad ?"

"It sure would, sir."

"Goodbye," Remo said. Before slamming the door, he yelled out into the hall, "And I'm not poor either."

When the door closed, Chiun said. "You are poor. You are a poor substitute for rational man. If the race had depended on you, it would still be sleeping in the forks of trees."

"I don't want to hear about it. I want to read my mail."

Remo opened the padded envelope with the slit of a fingernail, like a bladed paper cutter. Inside was a book:

Summary: The Presidential Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy.

There was no note. Remo threw the hard-covered blue bound book onto the floor.

"Just what I need," he growled. "Smitty sending me a book to read."

Chiun said, "With all these interruptions it becomes more and more impossible to meditate. First the Mad Emperor on the telephone, then you working the corners with heavy leaden feet, puffing like a chee-chee train ..."

"Choo choo," said Remo.

"And that boy at the door. Enough is enough." Chiun rose to his feet like a twist of smoke under pressure, released from a wide-topped jar. As he came up he brought the book with him. "What is this document?" he said.

"A report the government made when President Kennedy was murdered."

"Why do they call it 'assassination,'" Chiun

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asked, "when it was murder, not an assassination?"

"I don't know," Remo said. "I forgot to ask."

"Have you ever read this book?"

"No. I favor light reading. Schopenhauer. Kant. Like that."

"Who is Schopenhauer and why can't he?"

"Why can't he what?" Remo asked.

"What you just said. Schopenhauer can't."

"Never mind," Remo said.

"You can always improve your mind by reading," Chiun said. "In your case, it may be the only avenue left."

He opened the book and looked inside.

"This is a nice book," he said.

"Glad you like it. Consider it a gift from me to you. With love."

"That is very thoughtful of you. You are not all bad."

"Enjoy it. I'm going out."

"I will try to endure," Chiun said.

Down in the lobby, Remo looked up the telephone number of the Secret Service. He fished in his slacks for a dime, but his pockets were empty.

He saw the bellboy who had delivered the book to him and motioned him to come over. The boy came slowly, as if fearing Remo had come to his senses and wanted his money back.

"Hey, kid, can you lend me a dime?"

"Yes sir," the boy said. He handed over exactly one dime.

"And I'm not poor," Remo said. "I'll pay it back."

Obviously the Secret Service had not yet caught the full meaning of Washington's new

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spirit of open people's government because when Remo arrived to talk to someone about a plot to assassinate the President, he was not directed to the office he wanted. Instead he was whisked off to a room where four men demanded to know who he was and what he wanted.

"When did you plan to do it?"

"Do what ?" Remo asked.

"Don't get smart, fella."

"Don't worry, I won't. It'd make me too conspicuous around here."

"We'll just have to hold you for a while."

"Look. I'm looking for a guy. He's always popping pills. I don't remember his name, but everybody ought to remember his nervous stomach. I talked to him yesterday."

"You mean Benson ?"

"I guess so. I talked to him yesterday with a congressional committee."

"You're with a congressional committee."

"That's right," Remo said.

"Which one?"

"The House Under Committee on Over Affairs. I'm the Middle Secretary."

"I don't know that one."

"Call Benson, will you please?"

When Remo was escorted into Benson's office a few minutes later, the assistant director was swallowing a palmful of pills as if they were salted peanuts and he was in training for a cabinet appointment.

"Hello," the man sputtered as he choked and coughed.

"Drink some water," Remo said. As Benson drank, he said, "I thought Chiun got you off the pills. By talking about the egg."

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"He did. I was golden for a day. But today everything started off wrong and before I knew it I was hooked again."

"Stay with it, that's the answer," Remo said. "The first few weeks are the hardest."

"I'm going to. I'm going to try again as soon as I get rid of this pile of papers on my desk."

Remo looked at a foot-high stack of reports and correspondence on the wood-finished metal desk and wanted to shake his head. Benson would never get off the pills because he would never find the time to get off the pills. There would always j

be too much work, or a too-cranky wife, or too-bad weather. There would always be something to stop him, to put off his plan until tomorrow, and he would just keep on with pills. Better living through chemistry. Better living and faster dying.

"So what can I do for you?" asked Benson, the coughing jag completed.

"You know that the threat has come. The President's supposed to be killed tomorrow."

Benson met Remo's eyes levelly, then nodded. "We know. We're on it. One thing I don't understand is how you know so much about it."

"Congress," Remo said by way of explanation.

"If Congress knew anything about this, it'd be all over the papers by now. Just who are you?"

"That's not important," Remo said. "Just we're on the same side. I want to know more about the payments that you made in the past."

Benson squinted, then shook his head. "I don't think I can give you that," he said.

"If you want, I can have the President of the United States call you and tell you to give me that," Remo said. He met Benson's eyes coldly.

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Benson's eyes were bloodshot, the eyes of a man who had gotten early on into the bad habit of working too hard and then found out that bureaucracies searched out such people unerringly and loaded work on them until they collapsed under the pressure. Benson's workload would decrease the day the bureaucracy found out he had been dead for three months.

"You won't have to do that," Benson said. "I guess it won't do any harm to tell you about that." Talking to Remo meant one less phone call he'd have to take, a half-dozen fewer pieces of paper that came across his desk, one less problem to take home. It was a mistake, but the kind made by the overworked. That was the way empires crumbled. Because people became too busy to be careful.

"We sent the tribute money to a bank account in Switzerland," Benson said. "I told you, I think. Walgreen delivered it for us."

"And that's where it died?"

"No. We had it tracked from there, but it went through different accounts to a half-dozen different countries. Mostly in Africa. And eventually it just got lost out and we couldn't ever nail anybody with it."

"No clues ? No surmises ?"

"None at all," said Benson.

"And you've still got nothing about tomorrow's festivities ?" Remo asked.

Benson shook his head. "Somehow," he said, "I get the idea that you're more than just a congressional flunkie."

"That's a possibility," Remo said. "Have you done everything for tomorrow? In the way of protection?"

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"Everything. Every tree. Every telephone pole. Every manhole cover. Every rooftop within mortar range. Everything. We've done every goddam thing we can, nailed down every loose end we can think of. And somehow I know it's still not enough."

"Maybe we'll struggle through," Remo said, suddenly feeling pity for Benson, and envy for the dedication to his duty that drove him into his destructive overwork.

"You got your best men on this?" Remo asked as he stood and walked toward the door.

Benson was popping an Alka Seltzer into a glass of water. He looked up and nodded. "I'm heading the detail myself."

"Good luck," Remo said.

"Thanks. We're all going to need it," Benson said.

"Maybe."

Osgood Harley had bought the four battery-operated cassette players in an office supply store on K Street. He paid for them with four new fifty-dollar bills. Then, grumbling because the cardboard box was bulky and heavy, he hailed a cab outside the store.

When the driver got to Harley's tenement building, Harley tried to pay with a fifty-dollar bill.

"Can't change that, buddy."

"Don't see too many of these, I suppose," Harley said.

"Not in this neighborhood. What you got that's smaller?"

"You name it."

"A pleasant little five-dollar bill would be nice,"

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said the cabbie, glancing again at the $3.45 fare on the meter.

"You got it," Harley said. He handed a five-dollar bill to the driver, then waited for his change, which the driver slowly and painstakingly counted out, giving Harley plenty of time to consider the virtues of tipping.

Harley stuffed the change in his pocket without counting it. He had the carton only halfway out of the cab when the driver pulled away.

"Hey, slow down," Harley yelled through the still open door.

"Cheap bastard, screw you and your fifty-dollar bills," the driver called.

He stepped harder on the gas. The cab lurched away. The box of tape players slipped out but Harley caught them before they had a chance to drop hard on the pavement. Then he hoisted them to his chest and still grumbling curses under his breath carried them up to his fourth-floor apartment.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Remo knew why the Secret Service men had ulcers, nervous conditions, and the highest rate of early retirement in the federal service.

Because they were asked to do the impossible. It was impossible to try to protect the President. If someone wanted him dead bad enough and was willing to die himself, a kamikaze attack would work.

Air the Secret Service could do was to try to protect the President against planned killings, against plots on his life whose motive was something different from blind, unreasoning hate. And they worked at it.

Remo had checked the roofs of all the buildings within sight and shooting distance of the Capitol steps where the President would speak in the morning. The Secret Service had already been there. Remo could see the scuff marks in the tar and gravel roofs where men had been clambering around, inspecting the buildings.

And they had checked the trees and the utility poles and the sewers and the manhole covers. Remo checked them too and found tape seals that the Service had placed over the covers. In the

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morning they would check them again to make sure they had not been tampered with.

The Secret Service had logged the make and license numbers of all cars parked in the area and run them through federal data banks, against the lists of everyone who had ever made a threat against any President. If one of the cars belonged to somebody with a history of talking about killing the President, they would have scoured the city looking for him, to place him under arrest.

The inspection took Remo the entire night. Chiun had told him to look for The Hole. But where? And what the hell did an ancient Korean legend have to do with an attempt to kill a twentieth-century President? Still, Walgreen had been blown up in Sun Valley. That was the classic use of The Hole by an assassin. And it had worked.

If there was any trouble at the Capitol in the morning, the Secret Service would probably push the President into a car and whisk him the hell out of there. It was inconceivable that the Secret Service would not be sure its cars were secure; that there was nothing planted in them, no bombs, no poison gas. Inconceivable that the escape route from the capitol would not be secured by agents all along the route.

Pink was beginning to streak the low corners of the sky as Eemo stood across the street from the Capitol and watched the guards watch the platform from which the President would deliver his speech.

Maybe Chiun was wrong. Maybe the attack on the President would be simple and straightforward, a simple bombing attack. It gave Remo chills. The thought stuck with him that someone could have a damned mortar out there somewhere

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in the city and could, with reasonable accuracy, plump down a high explosive fragmentation shell in the President's vicinity while he was talking. And Remo could do nothing about it.

Maybe the platform, the speaking platform itself. Who could tell?

Remo moved away from the wall against which he lounged and into the blackness of shadow cast by a tree. He moved, picking his way from shadow to shadow, across the brightly illuminated street and plaza, toward the Capitol steps. The two guards at the platform looked resolutely ahead, toward the streets as if that were the only place trouble could come from. Remo moved to the side of the long steps. At the base of the building, he climbed the wall and let himself lightly over the top railing of the steps.

He was behind the guards now. They did not hear him and did not turn around as he came down the steps from the direction of the Capitol entrance. He slid under the wood and steel platform which cantilevered out over a dozen of the stone steps, and began to inspect the joints where the structure had been put together.

The joints were clean; Remo went over every inch of the underside of the platform. He ran his fingertips over the wooden four-by-fours and the steel piping that gave the structure its strength. He felt the wood for weaknesses that might indicate some kind of load had been placed in It. Nothing.

His fingertips tapped along the pipe very lightly, looking for sound variations that would signal that a hollow steel pipe was no longer hollow. But all the pipes were hollow.

Glints of light were now coming through the

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wooden flooring of the platform over his head. Remo could hear the guards on either side of the stand moving heavily from foot to foot. In the silent still of pre-dawn Washington, in which no breeze blew and no puff of air moved, he could smell the meat on their breaths. One had been drinking beer too. The sour smell of fermented grains assaulted Remo's nostrils. And once, he had liked beer.

"Lot of crap this is," one guard said. The accent was pure Pittsburgh, a farmer's twang with the harsh consonants of the city stuck into it like tacks in a board.

"What's that?" the other guard asked.

"What the hell we standing here for all night? What they expect? Termites?"

"I don't know," the other said. The voice was nasal New York. Remo reflected that Washington was one of the few cities in the world that didn't have any distinctive speech pattern of its own. It was filled with drifters and accents from all over. The only change now from ten years earlier was there were a few more people saying "Y'all." And that might all stop in a few hours, Remo thought. The idea made him chilly.

"Maybe they're expecting some trouble or something," New York said.

"If they was, they sure as hell wouldn't be going through with this," Pittsburgh said. "They'd keep the President in the White House and not let him out."

"Yeah. Guess they would at that," said New York. "If they had any sense, anyway."

Remo nodded. That was right. If anybody had any sense they would keep the President in the White House until the danger had passed. To hell

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with the freedom of the presidency and to hell with what the President had decided he must do. Remo had just made the decisions for the day. The President was staying home.

Remo rolled out from under the platform and was moving again up the steps when he met Viola Poombs coming out of the building. She was smoothing the skirt of her white linen suit.

"Remo," she called. The guards turned to watch them and Remo did not want to run away from her now. He waited on the steps for her to reach him.

"Working overtime?" he asked.

"Yes. And no smart talk from you either," Viola said. "What are you doing here?"

"Just hanging out." He walked down the steps with her.

"Will your Oriental friend really help me with my book?" she asked.

"Sure. It's what we want most in life. Personal publicity."

"Good," Viola said. "Then it'll be a great book and I'll make tons of money."

"And pay tons of taxes."

"Not me," said Viola. "I'll figure out a way to squirrel it away."

They were on the sidewalk now, walking away from the Capitol.

"Oh, that's right," Remo said. "Swiss bank accounts."

They were almost out of eyesight of the guards. Then he would leave this dip.

"Swiss accounts? Kindergarten stuff," Viola said. Where had she heard that, she wondered. "You just wash your money through a Swiss bank, then you transfer it around into a lot of

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African accounts . . ." Why did she say that? Why Africa? She knew nothing about Africa. "And it gets lost there and nobody can trace it."

Remo stopped on the street and took Viola's elbows in his hands. He turned to face her. "What do you know about washing money through Swiss banks and African accounts?"

"Nothing. I don't even know why I said that. Why are you looking like that? What'd I say ?"

"You must know something about it to talk like that," Remo said. "One of those congressmen you work for. Was it Poopsie who told you that?"

"Poopsie? No. He didn't," Viola said.

"Who then ?" asked Remo.

"I don't know. Why?"

"You've got to know. The guy I'm looking for does that with his money. And I've got to find him."

The squeezing by Remo's hands hurt her elbows.

"It's important," he said.

"Let me think. Let go of my elbows. They hurt."

"They'll help you think. Kind of stops the mind from wandering."

She screwed up her face in pain as Remo squeezed.

"Okay, let go. I got it now."

"Who is it?"

"First let go," Viola said.

Remo released her arms.

"Montrofort," she said.

"Montrofort?Who..."

"The dwarf with the nice teeth," Viola said. She wondered why she'd said that.

"At Paldor?" Remo said.

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Viola nodded. "He told me the other night, about how you do money and everything. He said African banks." It was coming back to her now.

"What'd you say?" Remo asked.

"I said if he touched me, I'd roll him into the fireplace," Viola said.

"Reasonable. You have to do me a favor. Can you take a message to Chiun?"

"Why don't you just telephone him?"

"He has this way of answering phones which involves ripping the wires out of the wall and crushing the instruments to powder."

"All right. I'll do it."

"Go tell Chiun that we know'it's Montrofort. Got that so far?"

"I'm not stupid. What's the message?"

"We know it's Montrofort. I'm going to go get him. Tell Chiun to stop the President from coming to the Capitol today."

"How's he going to be able to do that?"

"The first step he'll take will be to tell you I'm an idiot. And then he'll figure out a way to do it. Hurry now. It's important," Remo said. He told Viola the suite number in their hotel, and then turned and ran off down the street to find Sylvester Montrofort.

They had started coming to Osgood Harley's walkup at five o'clock in the morning.

He no longer had 200 friends in what used to be called the peace movement. But he still had twenty. And those twenty had friends. And those friends had friends. And to each of them, Harley gave a camera and instructions, told them that at the least they could keep the cameras and sell them, and told them how much fun it would be to

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raise a little hell with a presidential speech. Some got cap pistols. To his three closest associates, Harley gave a camera, instructions, and a small tape player, a roll of adhesive tape, and more instructions.

And in the early morning, he was among the group that started to gather in the plaza in front of the Capitol. There wasn't much happening yet. He saw some of his own people. Two guards stood at the speakers' platform watching everybody. The Capitol itself looked empty. Nobody going in or out. The only sign of life was some guy with thick wrists and dead eyes standing on the steps, talking to a woman in a white linen suit with a bust so incredible it made him yearn for the good old days when girls thought the best way to get peace was to give a piece.

The President of the United States had quietly changed his plans the night before. The nerves were getting to him a little. He had not heard from Dr. Smith at CURE. The Secret Service had learned nothing new. He hoped through dinner for a visit from Smith's two field men, Mr. Remo and Mr. Chiun.

But they had not come and so, after dinner he helicoptered to Camp David to spend the night. The next morning he would fly back to Washington, right to the Capitol grounds, for his address.

"Remo is an idiot."

Viola Poombs had found Chiun in the hotel room. He had not answered her knocks on the door, but the door was surprisingly unlocked. Who left hotel room doors unlocked anymore?

Inside she found Chiun sitting on a reed mat,

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reading a heavy leather-bound book. He smiled when she entered and closed the book.

"I have found The Hole," he said.

"I guess that's good. Remo says you have to stop the President from speaking today."

"That Remo is an idiot. Where is he now? Why doesn't he do anything himself? Why must I? Remo is an idiot."

"He said you would say that," Viola said.

"He did? Did he say I would say he was a pale piece of pig's ear?"

Viola shook her head.

"Duck droppings?"

She shook her head no again.

"An impossible attempt to make diamonds from river mud?"

"No. He didn't say that," admitted Viola.

"Good. Then I have a few things to tell him myself when he returns. Where is he now?"

"He's gone after Sylvester Montrofort. He said that he's the one."

"One should never trust a man like that," Chiun said.

"You mean a cripple?"

"No. One who smiles so much."

"What did you mean, you found The Hole?" Viola asked.

"It is all here in this book," Chiun said. He pointed to the blue-bound summary of the Warren Commission report. "If Remo knew how to read I would not have to do clerk's work. You find him and tell him that. And tell him that I will do this last thing for him, but none of it has been contracted for, and this will have to be adjusted later. How much am I expected to do? Is it not enough that I have spent ten years trying to

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teach a pig to whistle? Now I am supposed to make your emperor stay home today. And will Remo want me to do it right ? No, he'll say. Don't you dare hurt the emperor, Chiun. Be nice, Chiun, he will say. All right. I will do this last thing. I will go to this ugly white building at number 1600 Philadelphia Avenue ..."

"Pennsylvania Avenue?" Viola said.

"They are the same," Chiun said.

"No, they're not."

"I will go there nevertheless to do this thing. But after that, no more Mister Nice Guy. Tell Remo that."

"I will. I will."

"And be sure to put it in your book," Chiun said.

The crowd had doubled and redoubled in only minutes. Now there were more than a thousand persons crowded around the Capitol steps and the small plaza in front of the building, awaiting the arrival of the President. Osgood Harley looked around for faces he recognized. He saw more than a do/en that he knew. But he knew he had more people there than that. He could tell by the new Instamatics hanging from cords around people's necks, scores and scores of them. He smiled to himself and casually patted the tape player he had attached to the inside of his right thigh with adhesive tape, under his baggy khaki pants. Soon now.

The door to Sylvester Montrofort's private office was locked. When Remo stepped on the pressure plate on the receptionist's side of the door, it did not open.

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Remo dug his fingers, like wood chisels, into the end of the walnut door, near the lock. His hardened fingertips bit into the polished wood as if it were marshmallow. He curled his fingers, and threw his body back along the direction of the door's slide. The door slipped its lock and slammed open with a shuddering thud.

Remo stepped inside, looked around and then up. Sylvester Montrofort was sitting on a platform behind his desk, but six feet above the floor. He was smiling down at Remo, a broad, even smile, perhaps even more joyful because in his right hand he carried a .44 Magnum. It was pointed at Remo. Behind him, on a wall, was a six- by four-foot television screen. In full color, it showed the crowd gathering at the Capitol.

"What do you want?" Montrofort asked Remo. "You."

"Why me?" asked Montrofort. "Because I couldn't find Grumpy, Sneezy, or Doc. You'll have to do. You know goddam well why."

"Well, it's nice that you're here. You can stay and watch the President's speech at the Capitol," Montrofort said.

"The President's not going to be there." Montrofort's smile did not waver. Nor did the gun pointed at Remo's belly. "You lose, old fella," Montrofort said. "There's his helicopter landing from Camp David."

Remo glanced at the large television projection screen. It was true. The presidential chopper was landing on the Capitol grounds. The side doors opened and the President was coming down the portable steps. Secret Service men swarmed around him as the President briskly stepped off

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the hundred yards to the Capitol platform where he was going to deliver his speech.

Remo could feel a small sinking sensation in his stomach. Chiun would have gone to the White House, but with the President not there . . . more than likely he would have gone straight back to his hotel room to ponder the cruelties of a world that sent the Master of Sinanju off on a fool's errand. The President was without protection against Montrofort's plan, whatever it was.

Remo looked up again at the dwarf, still seated six feet above the level of the floor, his wheelchair locked into position atop the carpeted platform.

"Why, Montrofort?" Remo asked. "Why not just keep collecting the blackmail?"

"Blackmail's a hard word. Tribute sounds so much better."

"Call it what you want. The blood money. Why not just keep collecting it?"

"Because I have all the money I need. What I want is for them to know that there is a power here . . ." he tapped his forehead with his left forefinger, ". . . that is greater than any defense they can muster. In exactly twelve minutes, this President will be dead. Some poor fool will be hunted down and made out to be the mastermind. And I will be free. And maybe next time I won't ask for tribute. Maybe I'll ask for California. Who knows?"

"You're as loose as lambshit," Remo said. "And you're not going to ask for anything. Dead men don't ask."

He glanced toward the television. The President had passed through the rear of the Capitol building and was coming down the steps toward the

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speaker's platform. A phalanx of Secret Service men surrounded him. At the top of the steps, Remo could see the Speaker of the House standing, glumly watching. When Remo looked away, Montrofort was staring at him again.

"I'm going to be dead?" he said. "Sorry, bucko, but there are two things wrong with that. W-R-0-N-G. Wrong. I've been living in a dead body all my life. Dead doesn't scare me because I can't get any deader. That's one."

"What's two?" asked Remo.

"I'm the one holding the gun," Montrofort said.

The television set concentrated on the crowd roar now, as they cheered the President who stood on the wooden platform, waving to the audience. His famous smile seemed a little strained to Remo but he was smiling and Remo admired him, for a moment, for his foolish courage. His stupid bravery.

"Don't you know guns are out this year?" Remo told Montrofort. "The beautiful people don't carry them anymore and since you're such a raving beauty, I can't figure you knowing how to use that. How are you going to get the President?"

"I'm not going to get him. He's going to get himself."

"Like Walgreen ? Moving into a safe house and have it explode underneath him ?"

"Just like that," Montrofort said. "The report on the Kennedy assassination. It tells you in there just how to do it."

The Hole, Remo thought. Chiun had been right.

"Since I'm going to be dead," Remo said, "tell me how."

"Watch and see."

"Sorry, Tom Thumb. I don't have time for

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that." The President had started speaking to the crowd. Remo's lips were set hard. Even with Montrofort's plan, he could not get to the Capitol in time to stop it.

Montrofort looked at his wall clock. "Six more minutes."

"You know what?" Remo said.

"What, laddie?"

"You're never going to see it happen."

Remo moved into the room on a run and a roll, heading for the protective overhang of the huge cubic platform that Montrofort sat on.

As he moved, he heard a woman's voice behind him.

"Remo." It was Viola.

He moved toward the platform before turning back to caution Viola away. Atop the platform, Montrofort had swung his wheelchair around to face the door at which Remo had been standing. He squeezed off a shot. The large room resounded with the echoing blast of the heavy charge. The slug caught Viola in the center of her chest. Its force lifted her body and tossed her three feet back into the receptionist's office. Remo had seen mortal wounds. That was one.

He growled, more in frustration than in anger, then coiled his leg muscles and exploded them upward. He was standing on the platform behind Montrofort's wheelchair. The dwarf was trying to spin around, to find Remo to get a shot at him.

Remo pressed his hands against both sides of Montrofort's skull from behind.

"You lose," he said. "L-O-S-E." Montrofort tried to point the gun up over his shoulder. But before his finger could tighten on the trigger, he could hear the sound of cracking. His own skull

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was cracking under the pressure of Remo's hands. It was as if walnuts were being broken inside his head. The cracks were loud and sharp but there was no pain. Not yet. And then the bones gave way and shards of bone imploded into Mon-trofort's brain. And then there was pain. Brutal blinding pain that no longer felt as if it were happening to someone or something else.

Remo gave the wheelchair a shove. It catapulted forward off the six-foot-high platform, sailing into the room like a motorcycle stunt man clearing six buses. The chair hit with a heavy metallic thump and it and Montrofort lay in a heap.

Remo did not see it hit: he was at Viola's side.

She was still breathing. Her eyes were open and she smiled when she saw him.

"Chiun said ..."

"Don't worry about it," Remo said. He looked down at the wound. The front of her linen suit was matted with blood and flesh, a spreading stain already a foot square. In the center of the fabric was a two-inch hole and Remo knew that in the back of Viola's body would be a hole six times that big. Magnums had a way of doing that.

"I worry," she gasped. "Chiun said he'd go to the White House and stop the President."

"It's okay," Remo said. Behind him he heard the President's unrhythmic voice speaking to the crowd at the Capitol.

"Said something else . . ."

"Don't worry," said Remo.

"He said you're an idiot," Viola said. "You're not an idiot. You're nice." She smiled again and her eyes closed. Remo felt the life leave her body as it rested in his arms and he set her gently down on the rug.

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Behind him, in Montrofort's office, Remo heard a change in the television sound. The President's voice had stopped. The announcer's voice had cut in.

"Something appears to be going on here," the announcer said.

Remo looked back at the screen covering the side of Montrofort's wall.

The television camera at the Capitol was mounted on a platform, high over the scene. It panned around the crowd and caught the look of confusion on the faces of the thousands who jammed the Capitol steps. The picture seemed to be flickering and Remo realized what it was. Hundreds of people in unison, setting off flashbulbs. In the background, there was the sound of a siren. Remo could make it out. People were looking around to see where the sound came from.

Remo saw that it came from a slack-jawed man on the right side of the crowd. He was wearing floppy khaki trousers and was trying too hard to be casual.

Then there were more sounds. This time of screams and shouts. It came from the left side of the crowd. Remo spotted the man who was the source of the sound. Probably some kind of recording devices, Remo thought. He knew now what was going to happen and here he was on the other side of the city, helpless, unable to do anything. For a fleeting moment, he thought of calling Smith. But even Smitty could do nothing now. It was too late.

The Secret Service men around the President had pinched in closer to him. There was confusion on their faces. Remo recognized the pained

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look of Assistant Director Benson who had told Remo he would lead the security detail himself.

Then there were more sounds. Cap guns, Remo realized. And then the sound of rifle shots. There was a pause. Then the sound of machine gun fire. The wail of a mortar. Remo could see where the sounds came from. Must be tape recorders on their bodies, he thought.

The Secret Service decided it had waited long enough. The crowd was surging back and forth in confusion that could easily be turned into stampeding panic. The tape-recorded screams gave way to real screams. The recorded gunfire continued. The recorded siren wailed. The cap guns popped.

The Secret Service shielded the President with their bodies and moved him away, up the steps to the Capitol building.

"Not up there," Remo said aloud. "Not up there. That's what he wants you to do. That's The Hole.'

The President of the United States wasn't sure what was happening. He had stopped speaking when the flashbulbs and the sirens had started. And then there were the other sounds. Gun shots. Screams. Somehow they didn't sound real.

He still heard the sounds behind him as he was hustled up the broad Capitol steps by the nine Secret Service men.

Protocol vanished when the President was in danger. The Secret Service was in full control.

"Hurry up, for Christ's sakes," a Secret Service man grumbled at the President. He could feel their bodies pressing against him, their arms

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around his neck and head, shielding him from sniper fire. But there was no sniper fire.

There was nothing. Just noise.

Through a brief slit in the wall of the bodies of the men in front of him, the President could see the Speaker of the House standing in the entrance to the Capitol. The speaker took two steps down toward him, as if to help. The Secret Service brushed by him without slowing down, propelling the President along as if he were a cranky child, into the Capitol. To safety.

He was going to celebrate by drinking two large bottles of Pepto Bismol on the rocks, Assistant Director Benson of the Secret Service decided. He was the first man in the group leading the President up the steps. It looked to him as if the assassination threat was just so much bullshit. So they set off flashbulbs. So they had screams and sirens and maybe even some firecrackers. Cap guns. So what? Only a few feet more and the President would be safe. And there hadn't been a shot fired. There hadn't been an attempt on his life. Nothing had happened. Only a few more feet to safety.

Remo watched as the presidential phalanx disappeared into the entrance of the Capitol. Another camera mounted at the top of the Capitol stairs was wheeled around and was able to focus inside the building. The light was dim and the picture vague but Remo could make . out the President standing inside the building, now out of the line of fire of any sniper outside. But it wasn't going to be a sniper. He wanted to shout.

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It was going to be a bomb, controlled by a time clock, and it should be going off any second now.

Then Remo saw another figure. A small figure whirled past the camera only momentarily, just long enough for Remo to see him and recognize him. Around the small figure a red robe swirled. The figure swept through the swarm of Secret Service men as if they were fog, and moved to the President.

It was Chiun.

Remo could see the small Oriental's arm raise and his robe wrap itself around the President and then he was moving the President away from the Capitol entrance, back into a farther corner of the building.

"Attaboy, Chiun, attaboy," Remo told the television.

The Secret Service men followed the President and Chiun. Some drew guns. The Speaker of the House ran after them.

They were all out of the view of the camera now. The camera still focused on the empty Capitol-entrance.

And then the explosion came. The front of the building seemed to shudder. Smoke and dust poured out. Rock was blasted loose from inside the' entrance and peppered the crowd below the Capitol steps. The screaming now became real. Many ran. Some fell to the ground, trying to find cover.

The television announcer's voice, which had been a wet-palmed attempt at a professional drone, now surrendered to panic.

"There's been an explosion. There's been an explosion. Inside the Capitol where the President is.

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We don't know yet if he's been hurt. Oh, the humanity."

The image on the television screen switched back and forth as the director at the studio could not make up his mind what to show. There were shots of the crowd panicking. Then shots of the dust-splashing, smoking entrance to the Capitol. Then more shots of the crowd.

Finally the director backed off to the long overall camera view which showed the crowd and the entrance to the building.

Remo kept watching. He was no longer worried about the President. Chiun had been in the explosion too.

There was some movement in the entranceway to the Capitol and the camera moved in, panning in, zooming in as close as its lens would take it.

And then, standing there in the entranceway, was the President of the United States. He waved to the crowd. Then he smiled.

Next to him Remo saw Assistant Director Benson of the Secret Service. He was throwing up.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Tell Chiun he was right about the roaches." Smith's voice over the telephone came as close to expressing joy as Remo had ever been able to remember hearing.

"You were right about the roaches, Chiun," Remo said. Chiun sat looking out the window of their hotel room. He was wearing a powder blue resting kimono.

He waved his hand over his head in a gesture of disgusted dismissal.

"We checked," Smith said. "Montrofort had a controlling interest in the extermination company working on the Capitol. He had planted gelignite explosive all over the building entrance, covering it up as vermin paste," Smith said. "I guess it was a be-ready-for-anything move and when he decided to kill the President, he just put a timer in it and the damned right-to-the-minute presidential scheduling played right into his hands."

"That's how I figure it too," Remo said.

"Tell Chiun he was very brave in shielding the President that way. And smart to leave in the confusion. No one right now, except the President,

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really knows who was there and what happened."

"Smitty says you were very brave. And smart," Remo said to Chiun.

"Not smart, stupid," said Chiun.

"Chiun says he's been stupid," said Remo.

"Why?" Smith asked.

"He thinks he's been used. His contract with you doesn't call for being a presidential bodyguard. And he got stiffed on the cab fare from the White House to the Capitol. He doesn't think you'll ever pay him back because everybody knows how cheap you are."

"He'll get it back," said Smith. "That's a promise."

"You'll get it back," Remo said. "That's a promise to you from Smitty, Chiun."

"Emperors promise much," said Chiun. "But promises are such empty things."

"He doesn't believe you, Smitty."

"How much was the fare?" Smith asked.

"Chiun, how much was the cab?" "Two hundred dollars," Chiun said.

"C'mon, Chiun, you could take a cab to New York for two hundred dollars. You only went to the Capitol."

"I was overcharged," Chiun said. "Everyone takes advantage of my basic good and trusting nature."

"Smitty, he says it cost him two hundred dollars but he's just trying to shake you down," Remo said.

"Tell him I'll give him a hundred," Smith said.

"He'll give you a hundred, Chiun," said Remo.

"Tell him in gold," said Chiun. "No paper."

"In gold, Smitty," said Remo.

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"Tell him okay. By the way, how did he know there was going to be a bomb set off?"

"Easy. Walgreen was killed by a bomb. It was a dry run. Chiun figured it would be the same. A bomb planted long before the threat was made. Put it in a place where the President would be vulnerable. You sent over that Warren Commission report and Chiun read it. He said the Secret Service stupidly told assassins how to act. The report says the Secret Service, in cases of danger to the President, first protects him and then moves him away to the nearest safe place. That obviously had to be right inside the Capitol."

"Obviously," Smith said drily. "If it was so obvious, why didn't I think of it? Or the Secret Service?"

"That's easy," said Remo. "Why?" said Smith. "You're not the Master of Sinanju." "No, that's true," Smith said after a pause. "Anyway, the President would like to thank both of you."

"The President says thanks, Chiun," Remo called out.

"I do not want and will not accept his thanks," Chiun said.

"Chiun doesn't want his thanks," Remo told Smith.

"Why not?"

"The way he figures it the President owes him a new robe. The other one was ripped in the blast."

"We'll get him a new robe." "Chiun, Smitty says he'll get you a new robe. How much was that one worth ?" "Nine hundred dollars," said Chiun.

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"He says nine hundred dollars," said Remo. "Tell him I'll give him a hundred." "He'll give you a hundred, Chiun," said Remo. "I will take it just this one time. But then no more Mister Nice Guy," Chiun said.

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