Target of Opportunity

Destroyer 98: Target of Opportunity

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

Everybody thought they recognized the man who tried to assassinate the President of the United States, but ten minutes after he left their sight, no one could remember his face.

The assassin had that kind of face. It was nondescript. Slight of build, vacant-eyed, weak-chinned, pasty-faced, he looked like a nobody. The quintessential nobody.

It was exactly his utter nobodyness that made him slip from memory as soon as he was out of sight.

Yet everyone who got a good look did a double take.

The desk clerk at the Government Center Holiday Inn in Boston, Massachusetts, found himself scrutinizing the man's receding hairline when he presented himself to the front desk, saying, "I have a reservation."

"May I have your confirmation number?" the desk clerk asked, fingers hovering over the reservation terminal.

"Number 334433," the man said from memory. His voice was neither high nor low, loud nor soft. Nor was it evenly modulated. He spoke with a nervous, halting tone.

When the man's name came up on the screen, the desk clerk failed to recognize it. It was only when he asked for the credit card that he looked more closely at the face. It was one of those new picture-ID credit cards. His face struck a chord in memory.

"Have you stayed with us before?" the clerk asked pleasantly.

"No," said the man. He did not look away. Nor did he meet the desk clerk's eyes. He was standing right there, but he seemed as conspicuous as the brass ashtrays that dotted the bright lobby. There but not there. Decoration. Unimportant-unless you had to get rid of a cigarette butt in a hurry.

"I thought you looked familiar, Mr.-" the clerk read the name off the credit card "-Hidell."

Alek Hidell said nothing when he accepted his credit card back.

The desk clerk banged the front bell and, as the bellboy bustled up to scoop up Alek Hidell's two suitcases, he watched Hidell walk toward the elevator, trying to place his face.

He looked so damn familiar . . . .

Then the elevator doors closed on his impassive, pasty features, the desk phone rang and the clerk put the man completely out of his mind.

He only recalled him again when the Secret Service showed up the next day. By then, it was too late to be a national hero.

ALEX HIDELL was next noticed riding in the back of the last car of a four-car Silverbird subway train as it rattled south through the Red Line tunnel between Charles Street Station and the JFK- UMass stop later that day. Noticed and dismissed from memory. Although several passengers looked twice at him as he sat swaying in his seat, clutching a shapeless duffel bag that bulged with something hard and angular. But almost everyone clutched something. It was the week before Christmas.

The driver of the shuttle bus to the University of Massachusetts Harbor Campus also looked twice when the nondescript Hidell boarded his bus just outside the JFK- UMass station.

I've seen that guy before, the driver thought to himself.

Five years of driving the shuttle bus between the JFK- UMass Red Line station and the college had brought him into contact with thousands of riders, most of them students and faculty. A familiar face unless it was a pretty one-shouldn't have caused his eyes to go to the interior rearview mirror all the time the nondescript passenger rode the bus. But this guy's face did.

He sat in the back, gazing out the window, lost in thought. There was a suggestion of a sly smile lingering on the passenger's lips. It was that, not the undershot jaw or dreamy eyes, that kept drawing the bus driver's gaze.

Where have I seen that guy before? he kept asking himself.

He looked fiftyish. Not too old to be a student, technically. But fiftyish students at UMass were comparatively rare. And he looked too vacant to be faculty. Even UMass faculty.

The little guy had never ridden the UMass shuttle. The driver was sure of that. This wasn't a passenger-I-haven't-seen-in-a-long-time experience, he decided. This was a guy-I-haven't-seen-since-high-school experience.

But the bus driver hadn't known the solitary passenger back in high school, either. Maybe grade school. Maybe that was it. He had known the passenger back in grade school before his jaw and hairline receded. Before the brownish hair that sat on his head like a disturbed wig had begun to thin out.

But much as he tried, the bus driver couldn't put a name to the annoyingly familiar face.

The shuttle bus trundled off Morrissey Boulevard and up the lone access road to the imposing complex of chocolate brown brick buildings that comprised the University of Massachusetts at Boston. It came to a stop in the sheltered concrete trough between the administration building and the parking garage under the elevated campus plaza.

The passenger got up and left the bus by the rear door, stepping through to the steel door to the underground garage so quickly he was hardly noticed.

In that brief span of time, the driver followed him with his eyes. Even his jerky walk rang a dim memory bell.

Then the bus filled with departing students and faculty, and the driver closed the doors and continued on his monotonously circuitous route.

By the time he pulled out into the daylight of Columbia Point and the John F. Kennedy library, he had put the disturbingly familiar passenger out of his mind.

NO ONE NOTICED Alek Hidell as he strode through the ill-lighted underground parking garage to the elevator marked Science Center. He waited patiently for the elevator and rode it to the top floor, then worked his way through the narrow corridors until he came to the rooftop greenhouse, a pair of Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses blocking his eyes.

The warm, moist air smacked him in the face when he opened the door. By that time he was already sweating anyway.

A denim-clad woman looked up from tending rows of Christmas cactus. "Yes?" she said.

"Secret Service," he said, flashing a gold badge clipped to his wallet. "You'll have to vacate."

"Why?"

"This spot makes a perfect sniper's nest. We're sealing it off."

"Now? The President isn't due until tomorrow."

"Now," said Alek Hidell.

The young woman gathered up her purse and books, saying, "Will I be able to water my plants tomorrow?"

"Sorry!"

"Could you water them for me?"

"I'll think about it," said Alek Hidell, shutting and locking the greenhouse door after her.

When the elevator doors ran shut, he stripped off his coat and shirt and hunkered down on the tile floor in his undershirt. Extracting the sections of his rifle from his duffel bag, he began assembling the weapon.

When it was all together, he took an oily rag and began polishing it, his pouty lower lip growing moist in the close humid air.

He was still polishing it the next morning when a Secret Service agent stepped off the elevator. Hidell ditched the rifle under a shelf and went to the greenhouse door where the agent stood, his face like a rock behind his impenetrable sunglasses.

"'You'll have to vacate this area," the agent said, flashing his gold badge. "Security precaution."

"Make me," Hidell said in a self-effacing tone.

"I didn't catch that," the agent said, leaning forward.

"I said, 'Make me.'"

The agent's face gathered around the edges of his Ray-Ban Aviators like a wet rag wrinkling up. He stepped into the greenhouse, his right wrist lifting to his mouth. He never got a chance to speak into the flesh-colored wrist mike.

Alek Hidell whipped the rifle from the concealing shelf and shot the agent square in the nose. The slug came out the back of the agent's head. He stumbled back and when he hit the tile, Hidell finished him off with a second shot to the throat.

When he stepped from the greenhouse roof, he was wearing the agent's blue windbreaker with SECRET SERVICE stenciled on the back in white block letters, sunglasses, and belt radio and earphone.

Hidell stood on the eastern coping of the roof and looked down at the starkly abstract black-and-white compound of the Kennedy Library poised on the brink of Columbia Point, where the Atlantic lapped gray and cold.

The press was already gathered. Microwave TV vans spilled miles of thick cable everywhere. Satellite dishes pointed to the winter sky. And, of course, Secret Service agents, unmistakable in their Ray-Bans, moved about with brisk authority.

Rifle at his feet, Alek Hidell waited patiently, the cold breeze off the Atlantic worrying his faded hair, listening to Secret Service communications.

"Point of entry secure."

"Roger."

"Access road is now clear of traffic."

"Roger."

"Library roof checks out."

"Countersniper?"

"Science roof okay," said Alek Hidell into his wrist mike.

"Okay. Stay sharp. Stagecoach is turning onto access road. Repeat, Stagecoach is turning onto access road."

"About time," Hidell muttered under his breath.

A minute later three black Lincoln Continental limousines came up the perimeter road to the entrance to the Kennedy Library. The waiting crowd grew still. A wintry wind seemed to pick up.

And Alek Hidell lay down on the edge of the roof and cradled his rifle in his arms. He put his right eye to the cheap Japanese scope, his finger on the trigger, and tracked the middle limo-the one flying the presidential flags-with cool confidence.

When the three limos eased to a stop before the entrance, his earphone crackled, "Get set. Big Mac is about to step out. Repeat, Big Mac is about to step out."

"Make it easy for me," Hidell muttered, putting the cross hairs of his scope on the dead area where the rear curbside door would open.

Then it opened.

"Big Mac stepping out now. Watch your zones."

A familiar helmet of thick steel-wool hair lifted into the cross hairs and Alek Hidell squeezed the trigger carefully.

The helmet of hair erupted in a pink-and-gray flower of exploding blood and brains.

"He's been shot! Alert Mass General!"

"Sniper on roof! Repeat, sniper on roof! Everybody get down! Get down now!"

Everybody got down on the plaza, fearing another shot.

But there was no second shot. Just the echoes of the single rifle shot reverberating between the great buildings of the University of Massachusetts, and the answering cries of disturbed scavenger sea gulls.

"For the love of God!" a shocked Secret Service voice said over the air. "It's Dallas all over again!"

"You can say that again," said Alek Hidell, leaving his rifle on the roof as he quickly and quietly reentered the Science Center.

On the roof a single shell casing lay smoking. And scratched into the shiny brass were two letters: RX.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he stifled a yawn as the agent at the Mavis Car Rental counter tried to assure him that yes, while the city of Furioso, Florida, is as safe as can be, prudent tourists took precautions before driving into the city.

"What kind of precautions?" Remo wondered, hoping to cut off the droning spiel.

"For one thing, we suggest that our customers do not dress in touristy garb when driving into the city."

Remo looked down at his clothes. He was wearing a black T-shirt and matching black pants. Italian loafers enclosed his sockless feet.

"This," he asked, "is touristy?"

"Actually you're fine in the garb department, sir."

"I always thought so," Remo said good-naturedly.

"We also suggest you store all luggage in the trunk of your rental vehicle. No stacks of conspicuous luggage piled in the rear seat where they might be spotted by urban predators."

"Is that what they call them down here?"

"That's what the City of Furioso safety brochure calls them," said the rental agent, pulling a pastel-colored pamphlet from a plastic holder and offering it to Remo.

"The salient points are inside," he added.

"So why are you running them down for me?" asked Remo.

"Company policy. A lot of adults can't read these days. Lawsuits, you know."

"Lawsuits I know about," said Remo, opening the brochure.

It was festooned with palm trees and pastel bikinis. The Sorcerer's Castle and other famous attractions belonging to the nearby theme park called Sam Beasley World were splashed around the twenty points of safety.

Nowhere in the pamphlet was there any mention that renting a car and driving it from the lot and into the city was an open invitation to be slaughtered.

"It says here not to drive in through International Drive," Remo pointed out.

"Actually that's been updated. It's I-4 that's unsafe now."

Remo looked up.

"Urban predators read, too. Some of them."

"Excuse me, chump," a surly voice said at Remo's side. And a long brown arm reached under Remo's elbow to slip a pamphlet from the plastic holder. "Gotta have one of these here brochures."

Remo felt the butterfly touch on his wallet, which he carried in his right front pants pocket because pickpockets had the hardest time reaching into it undetected.

Remo stepped back, bringing the heel of one hand-tooled Italian loafer down on the instep of the would-be pickpocket with deceptively gentle force. Like a jigsaw puzzle held together by tough ligaments, foot bones began separating along every fault line, and the pickpocket yelped and kept yelping until Remo released the foot.

"Hey, man, what your damn foot made out of anyways? Lead?"

The pickpocket was hopping on his good foot while clutching his other Reebok with both hands. Blood seeped up around the laces with each hop.

The pickpocket saw the blood seepage and rolled onto his back the way Remo had seen hip-hoppers drop to the sidewalk to spin in place.

This man didn't spin. He began screaming that he was going to sue everybody in a fifty-foot radius for inflicting personal injury, emotional carnage and "expensive stuff like that there."

To quiet him, Remo nudged his skull with the toe of the same foot that had rearranged his foot bones. He began spinning. And screaming.

"Haaalllp!"

"Happy to oblige," Remo said as the rental-booth door was opened by a second possible urban predator. He gave the spinning man another nudge, which sent him spinning like a top out the door and onto a moving escalator.

"What his problem?" the newly arrived possible urban predator wanted to know as his head snapped from the escalator to Remo and back again.

"He tried to pick the wrong pocket," said Remo.

"What pocket is that?"

"My pocket."

The possible urban predator-Remo had sized him up by the steely 9 mm bulge in the crotch of his baggy pants pocket-did a double take, pretended to look at the red Mavis sign on the glass door again and said, "Oh. This be Mavis. I want Burtz. They number two and try harder."

"You were saying?" Remo asked, turning his attention back to the rental agent.

"You shouldn't have done that."

"Why not?"

"All he wanted was your wallet."

"And all I wanted was to keep my wallet."

"He might sue."

"He might," Remo agreed.

A screech came from the vicinity of the escalator. "My damn leg! It caught in the fucking escalator! I'm gonna damn sue some sonna bitch over this."

"Just as long as he doesn't sue me," said Remo, grinning. And put out his hand for the keys.

"I need to finish telling you about the safety problems," the agent said.

"I have the pamphlet, remember?"

The agent plowed on anyway. "If, while driving from the airport, you are rammed from behind or someone attempts to run you off the road, under no circumstances should you stop your vehicle. Or if you are forced to halt, do not exit your vehicle."

"Got it," said Remo, signing the credit card slip.

"Your car will be waiting in the lot. For your personal safety our tags are no longer emblazoned with the Mavis corporate logo."

"How many Mavis renters bought the farm before the front office decided on that innovation?" asked Remo.

"When our rentals dropped thirty percent in one month," admitted the rental agent.

On his way to the rental lot, Remo stopped to buy six of the biggest pieces of luggage he could find, in bright red leather, an I'm Going to Sam Beasley World T-shirt and a yellow Day-Glo Welcome to Florida acrylic baseball cap.

He carried them balanced on one upright palm in a stack that teetered right, then left, then right again and threatened to fall countless times but never did because the stack, precarious as it was, had become one with his perfectly balanced body.

At the foot of the escalator Remo paused only to step on the free hand of the urban predator who had earlier tried to pick his pocket and was now trying to free a baggy pant leg from the stalled escalator treads.

Under the brief pressure of Remo's foot, the metacarpals became the base ingredient of gelatin.

"You again. Damn, I gonna sue you ass off."

"Have your lawyer call my lawyer," Remo called cheerily.

"What your lawyer's damn name?"

"Alan Dershowitz. And don't let him tell you any different."

Remo walked out of the airport and into the morning humidity of Florida, whistling. He was a tall lean man with dark deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, a cruel mouth and wrists like railroad ties.

The car was waiting for him, and to the horror of the lot attendant, Remo stacked the red leather tourist luggage in the back seat until it resembled a Lucite luggage rack, put on his yellow Welcome to Florida baseball cap and drew the colorful Sam Beasley World T-shirt over his own.

"Sir, I would not recommend doing that."

Remo slid behind the wheel. "Which is I-4?"

The attendant pointed to an exit. "That one. Whatever you do, don't take it into the city dressed as you are. Take International Drive or the Beeline Expressway."

"Thanks," said Remo, tooling the car out of the lot and onto Interstate 4.

He drove slowly, taking his time. After all, he had two or three hours until Sam Beasley World opened, and there were more interesting things to do than sit around a stuffy hotel room.

Like his job.

As he cruised along I-4, Remo wondered what his job was anymore.

He hadn't filled out a 1040 since the day over twenty years ago when the state of New Jersey had pronounced a death sentence on him and taken away his past life with a single jolt of low-amperage electricity while he sat strapped in the electric chair, a Newark cop convicted of a murder he had never committed. After that day Remo Williams ceased to exist, to his friends and the Internal Revenue Service alike.

Had he been obliged to fill out a 1040 every April, Remo would have written "assassin" in the space designated occupation.

He was no run-of-the-mill assassin. He was America's secret assassin-or had been until he had quit CURE, the supersecret government agency that had framed him in the first place. His job-when he had been employed-was to serve as the sanctioned killer arm of CURE, an organization that had been set up in the early 1960s by a young President who, ironically enough, had himself succumbed to an assassin's bullet.

Remo was not an assassin the way the man who had murdered that President had been an assassin. That guy was a loner, a loser and flake. And he used a rifle.

Remo carried no weapon. He was a weapon. His entire body had been trained to the ultimate in human achievement. The key was the human brain. Scientists had long ago figured out that the average person used barely ten percent of his brainpower. It was like using one lobe of one lung to breathe-which is how most people actually breathed when you got right down to it.

Long before there were scientists to discover this deficiency, the head of an obscure fishing village in what was now called North Korea had discovered this truth and learned to unlock the limitless potential of the human machine.

He had been the first Master of Sinanju. His descendants, of whom Remo was a spiritual if not blood heir, had been trained by the Masters of Sinanju who followed in his awesome footsteps.

The House of Sinanju had been the secret power behind the great thrones of the ancient world, and now in the modern world it stood unknown, unseen and unstoppable beside the leader of the greatest nation in human history in the person of Remo Williams, who had been trained by the last pure-blooded Master.

For twenty years, he had served America and its Presidents, good and bad, honest and not, through CURE, a secret offshoot of the executive branch.

No more. There were some loose ends to tie upnamely the question of his own ancestry, since Remo had been an orphan-but after they were taken care of, he was a free agent. No more CURE. No more Harold W Smith, who ran it. No more running his tail off dealing with America's increasingly unsolvable problems.

Of course, there were some problems Remo considered worth solving.

Like the problem of tourist murders in Florida.

It has gotten so that every week there was a new dead Florida tourist. It was bad for America's image, the President had complained to the press. Bad for Florida tourism, the governor had added. Remo Williams didn't care about America's image or Florida's tourist industry any more than he cared about John Wayne Bobbitt's prospects for romantic bliss.

Innocent tourists he cared about.

Which is why, since he was already on his way to Sam Beasley World to tie up a loose end, Remo didn't mind dealing with it.

Trouble was, no one was taking the bait. Remo turned on the radio and found some Barry Manilow music and cranked it up full blast. Maybe that would draw flies. It sounded treacly enough.

Remo got all the way into the city of Furioso without being rammed from behind, sideswiped or car-jacked. The disappointment showed on his strongboned face.

He found a turnoff and sped back to the airport.

"I have a complaint," Remo told the rental parking-lot attendant as he got out.

"The car is not satisfactory?" said the attendant, who didn't know what surprised him most, the complaint or the fact that the customer was still living.

"It is not."

"What appears to be wrong with it?"

"Too inconspicuous," said Remo.

The lot attendant blinked.

"Sir?"

Remo looked around the lot. He pointed. "I want that one."

In a far corner of the lot was a car identical to the one Remo had just driven back, except that it was Christmas red.

"It's the same."

"I like the color better."

"Oh, I can't let you have that one. It has an old tag on it."

"Looks fine to me," said Remo.

"But, sir, the tag says Mavis Rental Agency. You'd stick out like a sore-"

The attendant looked at Remo in his Day-Glo outfit, the red leather luggage that crammed the entire back seat, and swallowed the rest of whatever he was going to say.

"I want it," Remo insisted. "I'm the customer, and the customer-"

"-is always right," the attendant echoed. Wearily he handed Remo the keys.

"Mind transferring my luggage?" asked Remo. "I forgot to buy paint."

The attendant was only too happy to comply and help a tourist in the last sweet minutes of his foolish life, and when Remo came back he stood idly by while Remo shook a can of orange safety paint and inscribed the word TOURIST on the sides and rear window of the rental car.

Remo stepped back, admiring the way the vibrant orange letters clashed with the red body paint.

"How's that look?"

"Loud," the attendant said. "But it suits you, actually," he added with a glassy smile.

"See you on the trip back," said Remo, getting in.

"It's the Christmas season, and miracles do happen," the lot attendant said weakly as Remo drove off again, fodder for the next morning's tragic headlines.

This time Remo had no problems. He hadn't gone an eighth of a mile when a blue Camaro, shedding a purple neon glow from tubes bolted under the Chassis, blasted in behind him and accelerated.

Remo relaxed a fraction of a second ahead of the jolt of bumper meeting bumper. Most people tensed up. That was how bones were broken. Remo's fully working brain, one of only two in these last years of the twentieth century, told him to relax. And he moved in his seat with the jolt, breaking nothing.

A massive arm gesticulated by his side mirror.

"You! Pull over. Gotta exchange insurance papers witchu. "

"Happy to oblige," Remo said to himself, and pulled off an exit and into a gas station that had succumbed to urban blight. There were no pumps, plywood covered the windows, and weeds grew up from cracks in the broken asphalt.

Two probable urban predators popped out of the Camaro. Remo tagged them as probable because they came out holding Tec-9s, one hand on the grip and the other clutching the lower end of a ruler-straight 50round clip jutting from the magazine receiver.

They held the pistols before them like mechanical scythes.

"Give us whatchu got!" one grunted.

Out of the open passenger window sailed Remo's baseball cap and the can of orange safety paint. They landed at the feet of the armed youth.

"Your wallet, fool!" one snarled.

"My wallet's mine," said Remo, opening the door and stepping out. "And you wouldn't shoot a guy over his wallet."

"Wrong. We gangstas!" the other spat.

One Tec-9 came up to shoulder height and began popping.

Remo wove wide of the sudden storm of bullets. The weapons were equipped with hellfire switches that sprang the triggers back into firing position, giving the ticky-tacky weapons an extra edge.

Which in this case was absolutely none at all.

While the hapless rental car began collecting washerlike perforations along its paint job, Remo swept in on the blind side of the nearest definite urban predator. In the strict sense, all sides were blind sides when a ordinary man armed only with a bullet-spewing handgun took on a Master of Sinanju.

The first attacker was still looking at the afterimage of his intended victim poised before the open car door when Remo's right index finger entered his left temple and came out again in a single pumping motion.

Brain function ceased immediately, and he fell on his weapon.

This put the second man at Remo's mercy. He had started firing late and so still had a quarter clip left. Remo hated to see all those bullets go to waste so he slipped up and under the popping barrel that was threaded to accept a silencer and turned the soft part of the gunman's throat into an organic silencer.

The barrel lifted suddenly, came into contact with the underside of a slack jaw, and seven Black Talon rounds entered soft flesh and removed the upper quadrant of the man's head in a single mass like a raspberry pie.

The rest of him fell flat. He landed on his back, and after a few seconds the falling top of his head snacked his face.

Remo returned to the perforated rental car after spraying an orange safety circle around the two dead bodies and then bisecting them with a diagonal slash of paint. A minute later he was back on the highway.

A mile farther along a battered gray van pulled up alongside Remo's car, and a voice insisted that Remo's wallet be tossed into the broad palm that floated between both vehicles.

"If I throw it, I might miss," said Remo.

"Don't miss, else I won't miss," a broad face behind the broad hand growled, displaying the perforated barrel of yet another Tec-9.

"That's a popular make around these parts," Remo commented.

"She be made in Miami."

"Always buy American, I say."

White teeth flashed in the broad face, and the broad palm shook for emphasis.

Remo shrugged and said, "I didn't know my wallet was so popular."

"Fuck the wallet. It's what be in it. And I want it in my fucking hand."

Remo slipped the wallet from his pocket, fingered out the money and ID cards and slapped the empty billfold into the hovering hand.

The hand looked strong enough to support a two-by-four, never mind a soft leather wallet, but the wallet somehow slipped to the speeding highway. Two of the man's four fingers slipped with it, along with his severed thumb.

The man screamed with dull shock as he realized he was shy three fingers and a stranger's wallet.

"My damn fingers! Where'd they go to?"

"If you turn around quick," Remo said helpfully, "you might get them to the hospital in time to get them sewn back on."

"They sew fingers back on, too? I thought that only worked with dicks."

"If you don't hurry, they're going to have to sew your dick onto one of those stumps for a thumb."

The broad man began shouting at his driver, "Turn around! Damn it! Turn around before my damn fingers get run over. I don't want no fucking dick for a thumb."

The van accelerated, and Remo decided to let them both live. Advertising usually paid.

The next attempt to rip him off came disguised as a silver Cadillac. It was shiny with chrome and meticulously kept up. So when it veered in front of Remo and abruptly slowed down, rather than break slowly to minimize an unavoidable crash, Remo accelerated.

The entire rear deck crumpled. Remo backed up, and as the driver jumped out screaming his rage, Remo jammed it again for good measure, destroying the vestigial spare tire.

"Look what you done to my fucking damn car!" the driver screamed.

"You stopped short in front of me," Remo pointed out politely.

"I stopped short just to hold you up, motherfuck. Not to total my wheels. I just stole this baby today."

"Tough. You do the crime, you gotta do the time."

"Time? This ain't about time! Oh, man, lookit my damn wheels."

And while the driver was all but tearing his hair out, Remo took the can of orange spray paint he had recovered from the gas station grounds and carefully drew the circle-and-diagonal-slash "No" sign on the undamaged hood of the Cadillac.

The driver gaped at this casual act of vandalism with disbelieving eyes.

"What you do that for?" he blurted.

"It's my mark," Remo said casually.

"What're you, fucking Zorro?"

"Don't use profanity in the same sentence as Zorro. The Sam Beasley people might overhear and sue you for defamation of copyright."

"You're paying for that."

"If you want my wallet, the last dipshit probably has it by now."

A knife came out. Remo was almost disappointed. The thief might as well have pulled a plantain. But Remo let him take his best shot.

The definite urban predator came in low, going for Remo's seemingly exposed belly. It would have been a perfect disemboweling stroke, a lateral rip calculated to split Remo's abdominal wall into a clown grin, letting his tightly packed intestines come tumbling out.

It never landed, because Remo drove the heel of one shoe into the man's definitely exposed belly.

The man stopped, grunted and turned green. He dropped his knife, the better to clutch his stomach. It felt strangely hollow in his mauling hands, the strong abdominal wall flapping like a loose plastic window shade. He doubled over.

When the awful smell emanating from the seat of his pants reached his quivering nose, the knife man muttered, "I think I done shit my pants."

"Better check to be sure."

"I ain't shit my pants since I was little."

The knife man was definitely greener now and still doubled over. He hobbled over to the side of the road, where he gingerly removed his soiled pants.

When he turned around, the knife man saw the gray slimy ropes hanging out his backside and asked, "What's my damn guts doing on the outside of me?"

Remo shrugged casually. "You tried to disembowel me. I returned the favor."

"I didn't see no knife."

"There's more than one way to disembowel a cat," said Remo, finishing the job by driving a knuckle into the empty cavity of the knife man's stomach and shattering his lower spine.

The knife man made a messy pile when he sat down forever.

Whistling, Remo painted a circle around his body and ran the diagonal slash across it, intestines and all, before driving off.

"Remo Williams," he said in a bright announcer's voice, "you just snuffed half the car-jackers in Furioso, Florida. What are you going to do now?"

In his own natural voice, he replied, "I'm going to Sam Beasley World."

Chapter 3

Flanked by a running roadblock of caterwauling blue-and-gray Massachusetts State Police cars, the Presidential motorcade raced away from the University of Massachusetts at high speed, lights flashing in alternation. Scurrying traffic crowded to the side of the road. Police and Army helicopters buzzed overhead like protective dragonflies.

No one noticed the weaving white Ford Aerostar van as it scooted down the opposite lane to turn up the UMass access road.

If they had, they couldn't have failed to notice the driver. Or the bulky virtual-reality helmet encasing his head like a sensory-deprivation sphere.

Despite the fact that he couldn't see past the helmet's blank eyephone goggles, the driver slid up the curving access road without scraping a fender.

"You're almost there," a voice inside the VR helmet said softly.

"This is so neat," the driver burbled. "It feels exactly like I'm driving a real car in the real world in real time."

"Pay attention to the mission, not the technology, " the soft voice told him. "You are in a totally immersive experience which requires absolute concentration."

"Got it. What was all that commotion back there?"

"You have entered the action phase of the experience."

"Great. No offense, but except for the high-res graphics, it's been a pretty uneventful ride so far."

"Did you notice anything unusual about the motorcade?"

"Yeah, they were hauling ass to beat the band."

"The President has just been shot."

"Damn."

"You and only you can find the assassin hiding in the brick buildings directly ahead of you."

"Good game concept."

"That is the parking-garage entrance on your left. Drive in there."

"Shouldn't I be making my own decisions?"

"You can try the branching nodes later. The clock is ticking. Here is the game scenario. Rogue CIA and Secret Service elements are trying to get to the assassin first. If they succeed, the cover-up will begin and the American people will never know the terrible truth."

"Count on me," said the driver, flooring the accelerator.

It was incredible, from the authentic sound of a racing six-cylinder engine to the acoustics that changed as soon as he slid into the virtual-reality underground parking garage beneath the illusionary University of Massachusetts.

"This is really cool," he blurted. "I actually smell stale car exhaust."

"The Jaunt VR System has a forty-thousand-facsimile olfactory library. We call the process 0lfax.

"Olfactory library. Sensurround sound. Vehicle simulation. Your guys have put together the VR system for the twentyfirst century here. Damn! Everything looks, smells, sounds and feels real. Really real."

"The Jaunt System has achieved seventy-five million polygons per second of resolution. Mere reality is estimated at eighty million polygons."

"Let me tell you," the driver said, parking the car in the nearly empty garage. "You can't hardly notice those missing five million polygons."

"Do not forget your weapon. You'll find it in the glove box."

The driver turned his insectlike head. The glove compartment popped open and revealed a revolver clipped to the panel. He picked it up. It felt real. Probably was.

"This is only a dinky little .38," he said in disappointment.

"Stuffed with Devastator bullets. Perfect for your mission."

"You could have at least included a laser targeting system."

"Make sure you write that on the survey questionnaire when the simulation is over."

"You bet," said the driver, stepping out of the car. He began walking, tentatively at first and with greater confidence as the computer-generated surroundings responded to his presence.

As seen through the eyephone goggles, everything about the game was incredibly real. Oh, there were electronic glitches here and there, but on the whole the fidelity was excellent. Even the close air of the "garage" smelled stuffy. You couldn't beat it for realism.

Except with reality itself.

And who cared about reality when by simply donning a senses-blocking head-mounted display, you could become whoever you wanted, do whatever you wanted and conquer any challenge-if you made the right decisions.

IN HIS THIRTY-ODD YEARS on earth, Bud Coggins had hardly ever made the correct decision. Not in school, not in work and certainly not in his personal life. As a consequence, he had gotten his fill of reality. He was too short, too fat, too balding and too poor to make reality work for him.

Games he could work. Standing behind an arcade video game, Coggins beat the youngest kid at Sonic Hedgehog II six times out of seven. A dozen years of playing every video game known to man had developed in Bud Coggins the lightning reflexes of a fifteen-year-old. The games had come and gone over the years. In the arcades and in home systems. Atari. Intellivision. Nintendo. Sega Genesis. Trio CD-ROM. There was no game he hadn't played, from Pong to Myst. Mortal Kombat to Lovecraft Is Missing. Give him a joystick, trakball or lightgun, and Bud Coggins could hit the target each and every time.

When the first virtual-reality systems came in, Bud got very excited. He soon fell into a deep depression because tending bar for eight-fifty an hour didn't pile up the money fast enough to pay for a ten-thousand-dollar personal VR game system.

But there were still ways. Trade shows. Public demonstrations. Anyplace Bud Coggins could score a free ride, he did. And because he adapted to virtual reality better than mundane actuality, the invitations kept coming in the mail.

Right now the game was called Ruby. And Bud had been selected by computer to be the first person in the history of the universe to play it. That was what the four-color invitational brochure had said. Bud Coggins had only to call a number and make an appointment.

A soft voice on the telephone had told him to come to an office park in South Boston, the site of the testing lab of Jaunt Systems, inventors of the only seventy-five-million-polygon totally immersive virtualreality gaming system on earth.

Bud had felt like an F-22 Stealth fighter pilot when they strapped him into a white Ford Aerostar van that was sitting off the concrete floor on big rubber rollers. That was so the tires would roll freely when he hit the gas, they had explained.

Once he was strapped in, they set the VR helmet on his grinning head and all went black.

When the eyephones came to life, Bud was looking at the same concrete warehouse interior he had entered. It was just as dingy, just as ill lit, and the three VR technicians were just as shadowy. All wore sunglasses, just like real life.

"Nothing's changed," he complained.

"You are not looking at reality, " a soft voice in his VR helmet had informed him. "You are looking at Ruby."

"Ruby?"

"The Mortal Kombat of VR game simulations. It will look, taste, sound and feel absolutely real. And in order to properly evaluate this experimental system, you must drive as if you are driving in Boston traffic."

"Good challenge," said Bud Coggins, who drove in Boston traffic every day. It was said when Parisian taxi drivers congregated to swap stories about the worst drivers in the world, they invariably threw up their hands at the mention of Boston drivers.

"Got it," says Bud Coggins, clutching the steering wheel and wondering if the new-car smell in his lungs was from the Aerostar upholstery or VR generated.

"We will see everything you see via our remote console. Do you have any questions?"

"Great. Why is the game called Ruby?"

"That will become clear as the game scenario progresses. You may start your engine now."

Bud Coggins had fired up the engine. The car simulator revved up nicely, vibrating comfortably when he left it in neutral.

"You may exit the warehouse."

Coggins released the brake, pumping the gas. There was a bump, and the warehouse surroundings fell behind the van, which seemed to be actually moving.

"That was one hell of a bump," he said aloud. "It felt like I came off the rollers."

"Sorry. Must be a bug in the software controlling the multiaccess motion-simulator seat. Is the helmet still functioning?"

"Yep. Good thing it's padded. Think I banged it on the roof."

"You are going to Dorchester."

Bud turned left onto Morrissey Boulevard, and the soft voice inside the VR helmet kept him busy with questions while impressing upon him the need to avoid jostling the delicate VR gear packed in the back of the van.

"Drive as if the cars around you are real, Bud. Avoid reckless driving. Do not call attention to yourself. "

"Gotcha. "

Bud Coggins enjoyed the high-adrenaline sensations of driving through virtual Boston traffic. The other drivers were honking and cursing at him without any justifiable reason, just as they would in real life.

"People kept staring at me," he remarked at one point.

"Ignore them. Trust no one. "

"Is that important to the game?"

"People stare at other drivers. It's simply part of the natural feel we've given Ruby."

At one point Coggins lowered his window and stuck his hand out. The cold air blew through his fingers just as it would in true expressway traffic.

"Amazing," he had said over and over again. "I am fully, totally, absolutely immersed in virtual reality."

BUD COGGINS was still thinking that as he crept through the simulated underground parking garage of the University of Massachusetts, stalking a Presidential assassin who could be anybody with only a .38 revolver.

"Bud, the concrete posts are color coded. You are looking for the yellow-orange section."

"It's just ahead," said Bud, voice tightening in anticipation.

An elevator door slid open, and Coggins whirled in time to see the too-obvious figure of a Secret Service agent carrying a MAC-11.

The agent saw him, but was too slow. Coggins lifted, sighted and fired once. The agent went down, his weapon unfired.

"I got him. I got him!"

"Don't shout. It will attract others. Remember all real-world scenarios have been programmed in."

"Right, right," said Bud Coggins, stepping over the body and marveling at the metallic scent of blood that tickled his nostrils.

"Take his belt radio, " the voice in the helmet instructed.

"That will help me track the renegade Secret Service guys, right?"

"Their quarry is your quarry. It is important that you find the assassin before they do."

Kneeling, Coggins stripped the corpse of the radio set and put it on, following the instructions of the helmet voice. There was a port in the helmet for the Secret Service earphone jack. It fit perfectly. The body felt so real Bud wondered if one of the technicians hadn't lain down on the warehouse floor to play dead Secret Service agent.

When he arose, Bud could hear realistic-sounding radio conversation.

"Suspect spotted on roof of Science Center."

"Roger. Seal off all entrances and exits."

"Did you hear that?" Coggins asked the voice.

"Yes. Go to the Science Center," the VR-helmet voice said.

Coggins searched the signs until he found one that pointed the way. He rode the elevator up two floors and got off.

And stepped right into an ambush.

There were two Secret Service agents crouching before double doors signaling to one another as if about to kick in the doors.

They heard the sound of the elevator door open, started turning-and Bud Coggins got off two shots a fraction of a second apart.

Both agents went down, painting the door with their blood.

"Looks like they had the suspect cornered behind those doors," Bud muttered. There was a sign that said Herbert Lipke Auditorium.

"It's an auditorium. Shit. I have only three shots left and I have to track the suspect in a theater."

"You are allowed to acquire any weapons you find along the way," the helmet voice instructed.

"Good," said Coggins, picking up a fallen Delta Elite automatic. With a weapon in each hand, he eased one of the double doors open.

The theater was dark. The seats appeared empty. Three bays of red-covered seats sloped down toward the stage at a steep angle, backed by a horseshoe-shaped pinewood backstop.

Hunkering low, Bud Coggins began to move down one aisle, sweeping his pistol muzzles from side to side. If anything moved in these deep shadows, he was going to get it before it got him.

The curving ranks of seats fell behind with every step. All were empty. He was holding in his breath so that if he had to fire he could exhale with the shot, the way the pros did it. Coggins had picked up a lot of pointers over his stellar career of playing electronic games.

The voice in his helmet was quiet now. He could hear tense breathing, and knowing it wasn't his own, realized that the control technician was just as excited as he was.

This was a great game. Still couldn't figure out why it was called Ruby. Then again, he never understood why Tetris was called Tetris.

The doors on either side of the stage blew open under the hard shoulders of sunglassed men with guns.

Flashlights blazed and a voice cried, "Freeze! Don't move! Secret Service! Don't move!"

Coggins dropped to one knee, waiting. Had they seen him?

And the agents converged on a man who had been sitting in the front row, waiting in sinister silence.

The man stood up. His back was to the seat rows. He was short and slight and might have been some harmless professor of astronomy waiting to expound on the top quark.

The Secret Service agents treated him like a coiled asp.

"Keep your hands where they are!"

"I'm not resisting!" the man shouted suddenly. "I'm not resisting arrest!"

A human wave, they converged on him, threw him to the floor and cuffed him. He submitted without a struggle.

"You are under arrest for attempting to assassinate the President of the United States," an out-of-breath Secret Service agent said.

"I didn't assassinate anybody," the man said in a nervous voice. "I'm a patsy."

When they hauled him to his feet again, someone hit the lights. Everybody got a good look at the assassin then. Except Bud.

"Holy shit!" an agent exploded. "He's wearing one of our countersniper windbreakers."

"I don't recognize him," another said.

"He's not from the Boston office," said a third.

"Still, this guy looks vaguely familiar," a fourth agent said.

"We'll sort it out later. Let's get him out of here."

They spun the handcuffed prisoner around and marched him roughly up the aisle.

Bud Coggins ducked behind the pine barrier and watched the knot of men approach, their captive stumbling before them, his pasty face sweaty and drained of blood.

"Did I fail?" he whispered into his helmet.

"No. Do you see the man's face?"

"Yes."

"Does he look familiar to you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he does! But I can't place him."

"Then here is a clue. The name of the game is Ruby. You are Ruby, Bud Coggins. Do you understand now? You are Ruby."

And Bud Coggins understood perfectly. He came out from behind the pinewood barrier in a marksman's crouch and shouted, "Oswald! You killed my President!" He then emptied the contents of both guns into the handcuffed prisoner. The man gave out a groan, twisted on his feet and sprawled on the carpeted aisle.

A storm of return fire tore into Bud Coggins's wildly pounding heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, liver and most importantly, his '7R helmet. It cracked open like an Easter egg.

As he lay broken and bleeding in the cavernous auditorium, looking at the real world through real eyes, Bud Coggins smiled through his pain.

This Ruby is a great game, he thought. He felt totally, absolutely, scarily immersed in the experience of dying.

And then he did die. Happily. He had been the first human being to play Ruby and he had won first time out.

Chapter 4

Remo Williams cruised past the entrance to Sam Beasley World.

It looked exactly the way he remembered it. Before it had fallen into the biggest sinkhole in Florida history, that is. Pennants chattered in the wind, and colorful bunting everywhere proclaimed Have a Beasley Christmas.

Two years ago an armed invasion of Cuba had brought Remo to the Cuban-exile community of Miami on the trail of the mastermind attempting to destabilize the island nation. The trail led, of all places, to Sam Beasley World, where Remo had discovered an underground installation in which preparations were under way for a second assault using animatronic soldiers under the command of the legendary animator and theme-park operator, Uncle Sam Beasley.

It was hard to judge which was more fantastic: that the Sam Beasley Corporation, with theme parks in several nations, would try to overthrow the Castro government in order to establish a tax-free world headquarters and theme park in the Caribbean; or that the mastermind was none other than Uncle Sam himself, who was supposed to have died in the mid-1960s.

Eventually Remo and his mentor, Chiun, had gone to Cuba to head off the second invasion. In the process they had captured Uncle Sam alive. Normally disposing of a problem like Uncle Sam would have been easy. Remo was sanctioned to kill in the name of national security. Except that Remo had grown up watching "The Marvelous World of Sam Beasley" and had been a huge fan. The Master of Sinanju, too, had a soft spot for the defrosted animation genius.

So they had spirited him to Folcroft Sanitarium, the CURE cover installation, where Uncle Sam was stripped of his hydraulic hand and cybernetic eyeball. Then he'd been installed in a rubber room to live out the rest of his natural life, which, considering that he had been given an animatronic heart in addition to the other cyborg parts, could mean a hundred years or so.

Uncle Sam had recently escaped, and for three months Dr. Smith had been trying to track him down. No luck. The CURE computers were down, leaving the organization virtually blind except for human intelligence.

So every few weeks Remo would infiltrate a part of the Sam Beasley empire looking for him. Now that it was completely rebuilt, it was time to hit Sam Beasley World in Furioso, Florida, once again. It was no fun, but it beat putting up with the snotty French at Euro Beasley.

Remo parked in the lot and bought a ticket at the entrance. He walked down Main Street, which was bedecked with silvery tinsel and other Christmassy decorations, eyes and ears alert for signs of trouble. The last time he was here, the cartoony greeters had been put on alert and issued weapons. They had been told they were repelling terrorists.

Instead, Remo and Chiun had gone through them like buzz saws. Back then, the entire park had been honeycombed with snares and booby-trapped attractions. Remo had no reason to think the rebuilt attractions were any different.

As he melted through the crowds, Remo pretended not to notice the greeters whispering into their snouts and fuzzy paws.

"He's here," whispered Gumpy Dog into his paw.

"The one with the thick wrists," added Missy Mouse.

"He's headed toward Horrible House," said Mucky Moose into his drooping foam antlers.

Remo overheard them tracking him. No response seemed to come back. Maybe Beasley was here, maybe he wasn't. If he was, there was only one place he would be. Utiliduck.

Casually Remo sauntered over to a great plastic hippopotamus with a yawning mouth. A sign hung on the hippo's lower tusks. It said Trash.

As people passed by, they tossed their empty soda cans and candy wrappers into the hippo's mouth. When the hippo's belly got full, it shut its mouth and, with a whoosh, emptied its trashy guts into a pipe that led from its fat gray rump to somewhere underground.

Remo watched the hippo's mouth reopen. So did a greeter dressed as Mongo Mouse. He was pretending to ignore the curious questions of a little ponytailed girl while trying to act nonchalant.

Instead, he looked like a human radar dish with those ridiculous ears zeroing in on Remo Williams.

Remo ignored him and waited for the mechanical pink mouth to yawn its fullest. When the little girl with the ponytail tugging on his spun-glass tail succeeded in distracting Mongo for a moment, Remo dived into the hippo's mouth.

The hippo, stomach counterweights responding to Remo's lean one hundred fifty-five pounds, promptly shut its happy jaws.

Mongo Mouse looked up and muttered, "Shit."

"Don't say bad words, Mongo," the little girl cautioned. "Uncle Sam might be listening."

"Get lost," Mongo Mouse growled, striding toward the hippo and whispering into his snout mike, "I lost him. Anybody see where he went?"

"Not me," reported Screwball Squirrel.

"Not me," said Gumpy Dog.

Remo heard all this through the hippo's gray polystyrene shell. Then the pneumatic pipe at his feet irised open, and with a whoosh he was sucked down.

The pipe was narrow, its sides slick Teflon. Remo just went with the flow, legs straight, arms flat to his sides as he was drawn into the massive trash-moving ductwork of Utiliduck, the underground complex that housed the dark underbelly of Sam Beasley World, the place where the refuse was processed, power and electronics were generated, and the other systems needed to keep the park operating year-round were hidden.

Remo just hoped that he hadn't picked a tube that fed directly into an incinerator.

IF IT WASN'T for that damn figure skater with the big teeth, Godfrey Grant would not have been consigned to the bowels of Utiliduck. That much he knew.

Oh, how the world had come to love her clean, graceful body as it flashed and swirled over Olympic ice. Her face graced endless magazine covers and cereal boxes and billboards.

And Godfrey Grant had come to hate her guts. And her damn jumbo teeth.

Grant's downfall had begun when the figure skater had been whacked in the knee by dimwits in the pay of a rival figure skater. Overnight she had became an object of sympathy the world over. America clung to her sobbing, piteous, plaintive "Why me's?" until miraculously she had recovered enough to challenge her rival at Lillehammer.

Godfrey Grant had cheered her on even when she won only the silver. At least she had left her rival in the dust. Or the ice. Or whatever.

When the greeter-overseer had come to Grant the next day and informed him that he would sit beside her in the post-Olympics parade through Sam Beasley World, Grant was ecstatic. The fact that he would be encased in a polyurethane Monongahela Mouse greeter's outfit didn't matter at the time. He was going to share the spotlight for all the world to see. If only his girl and his immediate family knew it was him wearing the lollipop ears, that was okay. It was enough.

Came the glorious day, and the figure skater climbed into the pink-and-purple Mousemobile for a turn around the Enchanted Village.

The cameras were rolling. They were waving to the cheering crowd. That part was fine.

But some idiot in publicity had miked the Mousemobile and caught the damn figure skater, a two-million-dollar Sam Beasley check stuffed down her flat ice-princess chest, complaining to beat the band.

"This is cornball city," she had muttered for all the world to hear. "I can't believe I'm sitting next to a giant mouse and people are taking it seriously. Puhleeze!"

Under his mouse head, Godfrey Grant had gone white. He knew how image sensitive the Mouseschwitz High Command was. So he gave the figure skater a gentle nudge in the ribs.

A harmless nudge. That's all it was supposed to be. A nudge and a whispered suggestion to cool it while you're a guest of Sam Beasley World.

Trouble was, the Mongo Mouse head didn't afford much peripheral vision. Grant couldn't see as clearly as he should. And the gentle nudge in the ribs became a hard elbow to the temple.

With a yelp the figure skater dropped right off the back of the Mousemobile, where a team of Clydesdale horses clopped all over the ungrateful bitch, mashing fingers, breaking teeth and most unfortunately shattering the very same kneecap the moron with the collapsible steel baton had failed to even dent.

The figure skater's career was over.

Godfrey Grant's career with Beasley would have been over, too.

Except for the fact that they had miked the Mousemobile.

When he was summoned before the Beasley overseer, Grant expected they'd want his head. The rodent head. And his resignation.

They took the head, all right. But instead of firing him, they consigned Grant to Utiliduck duty, the lowest niche in the the Beasley food chain.

"You're not firing me?" he had asked.

"Normally you'd have been out on your curly tail in a flat minute," the overseer had barked. "But you lucked out. The networks picked up the bitch's whinings and broadcast them clear to Tokyo."

"That's why I tried to nudge her," Grant had protested. "To keep her quiet. I knew the company wouldn't want people to hear. It would spoil the moment."

"The moment," the overseer had shot back, "is not only spoiled, but the bitch is suing us. The cameras caught it all, so she'll probably triple her fee for that one stupid ride."

"I don't get it."

"The big cheese saw and heard it all. He thought she deserved to have her kneecap broken for mouthing off like that. In fact, he was distinctly heard to say that it was too bad the horses didn't bust both of them and put her in a wheelchair."

"That's why I'm not fired?"

"That's why you're not fired," the overseer had said, handing Godfrey Grant a long-handled push broom and saying, "Now get to sweeping."

So Godfrey Grant got to sweeping. A year of sweeping had not endeared him to the job or Utiliduck or mouthy ingrate figure skaters, but in these hard times a job was a job and the truth was that between the heat and the bratty kids, being a greeter could be murder.

At least down in Utiliduck, it was cool and quiet and not much happened to spoil a man's workday.

So Grant was surprised when the white ceiling lights suddenly turned yellow. He had never seen that before. A moment later they shaded to orange, and section control doors began slamming shut.

The lights then became red, and a Klaxon started hooting.

"What's going on?" he asked a squad of security men as they pounded his way.

"Intruder alert."

"Someone trying to sneak in for free?"

The team leader stopped. "Can you handle a gun?"

"Gun?"

And he handed Grant a machine pistol with a mouse-head silhouette stamped on the buttstock.

"Be on the lookout for a guy in a T-shirt with thick wrists. If he comes this way, shoot on sight."

"Shoot?" muttered Godfrey Grant. "Who'd try to sneak into Utiliduck that would need shooting?"

The security team leader didn't reply. They kept running as if they were on a deck of an aircraft carrier during a strafing attack.

So Godfrey Grant tucked his machine pistol into his belt and went back to sweeping the trash that periodically dropped from the nest of ceiling pneumatic terminals.

It was his job to push the incoming trash into the waiting valve of a floor trash compactor. It would have been just as simple to have the stuff go directly into the compactor, but that was Beasley World up above. Anything could come dropping down with the trash. Wristwatches. Wallets. Guns. Medicine. Even cranky baby sisters who kept their older brothers from the Buccaneers of the Bahamas ride.

So Godfrey Grant maneuvered his push broom through the trash, keeping an eye peeled for valuables and inconvenient children.

When a pair of loafers dropped from above, bringing with them a tall skinny guy with thick wrists and the deadest eyes Godfrey Grant had ever seen, he dropped his broom and stammered, "You're the guy."

"What guy?"

"The guy with the thick wrists everybody's looking for."

The man seemed unperturbed. "That's me."

"I'm supposed to shoot you," said Grant.

"Go ahead."

"But I don't want to," Grant admitted.

"Suit yourself," the guy with the thick wrists said in a bored voice. He looked around, saw he was in a white room with slick walls and asked, "Where's Uncle Sam?"

Grant hesitated. "Beasley?"

"Yeah."

"He's been dead longer than I've been alive."

"They don't tell the custodial staff very much around here, do they?"

Grant looked blank.

"Where's the warmest room down here?" asked the man.

Grant frowned. "Warmest?"

"You heard me," said the guy with the thick wrists, drifting up to Grant. Grant backed off, thought he succeeded, but then his machine pistol was suddenly in the guy's right hand. He brought his other hand up, and the machined steel began complaining. It squeaked. It barked. It began coming to pieces as if it were made out of stale sugar cone.

"There's a room two lefts down that corridor, that no one's allowed to go into," Grant offered. "When people come out, they're usually sweating like pigs."

"Sounds about right."

"They're going to make me pay for that broken gun."

"Between you and me and the wall, I don't think anyone's going to be counting guns after I'm through."

And when the thick wristed guy was gone, Grant looked up. He could have sworn the tube he'd come out of was too narrow for a full-grown man. Although the guy was on the skinny side.

Shrugging, Godfrey Grant reached down to retrieve his long-handled push broom and resumed sweeping. After all, he was paid to push a broom, not deal with security problems.

Not to mention the skinny guy with the wrists had treated him better than his bosses ever did.

"FIRE that fuck, Maus."

"At once, Director."

"No, not at once, you idiot. That lumber-wristed meddler is running around loose. Swat him first. Then fire that fuck."

In the perpetually steamy Utiliduck control room, Captain Ernest Maus strode to the console and punched up the ceiling camera in the corridor approach.

The man with the thick wrists was walking purposefully along the corridor.

He hit a key and barked, "Intruder in Corridor G. Repeat, intruder in Corridor G. Approach and neutralize."

"This ought to be good," chuckled the voice from the high-backed console chair.

Maus nodded. "They'll get him in a cross fire and chip his skeleton to pieces."

"Serve the bastard right. Lock me in a damn rubber room for two years, will he?"

The main monitor on the other side of the room covered Corridor G. Satellite monitors showed Utiliduck security teams regrouping to take up positions of attack at turns of the branch corridors.

"They're in position, Director. The intruder seems oblivious to them."

"What's that he's doing to the wall?"

"Touching it with his fingertips," Captain Maus reported.

"After he takes that next turn, he'll be touching the face of God."

REMO WILLIAMS felt along the wall. It was of sheet steel. Rock solid. An excellent conductor of vibrations. His ears caught the padding of feet made heavy by the weight of awkward weapons. He counted seven in ambush at three separate points just ahead and four more trying to pace him a turn in the corridor behind.

The steel wall grew warm. He was near the hothouse control room that Uncle Sam Beasley would naturally favor because, even after two years out of the cryogenic capsule that had sustained his body until the animatronic heart could be developed, he had not shaken the chill from his old bones.

A tiny whir told Remo that he was being tracked by a camera. He ignored it. As the wall under his brushing fingertips grew warmer, Remo paid attention to the sounds coming from the ambush zone ahead.

Heartbeats began to pick up. Shallow breathing all but stopped. He was close. They were getting ready to spring out.

At the moment just before they would have jumped, Remo set the fingernails of his right hand against the wall and scratched them like nails on a chalkboard.

His nails, hardened by years of diet and exercise, scored the steel with a harsh high-speed screech.

In that paralyzing second when human eyes blinked in startled response, Remo zipped ahead, flashed by the blinded ambush teams, and one hand held flat before him hit a warm blank door.

It caved in, driven as much by the hard column of air Remo was pushing before his flat palm as it was by the hand itself.

It was a sliding door. So one side buckled completely while the other held. But one side was enough.

Remo stepped into a short entryway that shouldn't have been there, so he kept going.

A sharp plate of steel like a guillotine dropped behind him, stirring the hair on the back of Remo's head.

"Too late," Remo told Maus, whose finger had just stabbed the button that had released the descending blade.

"Damn!" Maus muttered.

The voice of Uncle Sam Beasley barked from behind his chair. "What's wrong with that ambush team?"

"I don't know, Director."

"Time to go back to the happy home," Remo called to the back of the console chair. Uncle Sam didn't bother to turn. One hand reached out to stab a button. The good one.

"Never," he snapped.

Remo stepped toward the chair, spun it around and looked into the cold eyes of Uncle Sam Beasley.

One eye exploded like a camera flashbulb. Too late. Remo had already heard the click of the cybernetic relay in the eyeball and shut his own eyes. The insides of his eyelids turned a brilliant laser-beam red. Aiming from memory, he drove his right index finger into the prosthetic eye.

The eye imploded. The animatronic heart kept beating as usual.

A flat click to his rear brought Remo spinning around.

Captain Maus had a gun. An Uzi, a mouse head stamped on the butt. He was holding it steady on Remo.

"Shoot me," Remo warned, "and Uncle Sam buys it, too."

Maus hesitated.

Behind Remo, Uncle Sam growled, "Shoot anyway."

Sweaty faced, Maus said, "But, Uncle Sam-"

"Shoot, you toady!"

The pale trigger finger turned to bone, and Remo, astonished, started to move in on Captain Maus. He cleared the room in less than three seconds, wove left to avoid a fistful of bullets snapping at him and struck Maus in the temple with a hard slap.

Maus went flying into the console, not dead but chastised to the point of multiple fractures.

Remo whirled.

The back of the console was dotted with vicious black holes. Uncle Sam's one good hand flopped off the console and swung loose like a hinged stick.

Remo crossed the room and spun the chair.

Uncle Sam Beasley sat folded in his chair, his head hanging down between his knees in the prescribed airline-crash position. He wasn't moving. Not even his dead dangling arms.

Horrified, Remo said, "Uncle Sam!"

Remo grabbed the broken figure by his collar and lifted the bloodless face into view. It was intact, the good eye rolled up until only the white showed, the frosty mustache seeming to droop in death.

Remo's ears told him that Uncle Sam's animatronic heart beat no more.

"Damn," he said under his breath. "Damn, you're dead."

A familiar voice boomed above Remo's head. "No. You are."

Remo looked up. The main monitor was filled with the age-seamed visage of Uncle Sam Beasley.

"Didn't think I'd let you get that close to me again?" Uncle Sam gloated.

The inert body in Remo's hand suddenly snapped back to life, and a hydraulic hand with snapping steel fingers sought his throat.

Chapter 5

For years after, everyone remembered where they had been when they heard the chilling news bulletin that the President of the United States had been shot.

Republican Congressman Gila Gingold was addressing the House of Representatives.

"Once again the big-spending, big-government side of our government has concocted a so-called healthcare reform package. I can tell you as House minority whip that I will do everything in my power to see that this bill goes down in defeat, just like all the other harebrained attempts to governmental- medical care in this country the Democrat in the White House has tried to jam through Congress."

A House page slipped him a note. Gila Gingold glanced at it, and his emerald green eyes went wide in his flushed face. "I-I have just had word that the President has been shot."

A hush fell over Congress.

Gila Gingold gathered his thoughts and wondered if he should call for a moment of prayer or finish what he'd started. Sensing a golden opportunity to do both, he decided to improvise.

"Even as we speak, our fallen President is undoubtedly being tended to by the finest private physicians available. Were universal health care to become law, he, like all Americans, would have to take potluck. We can't afford potluck medicine in America. So I ask you to join me in saying a resounding no to this latest travesty even as we bow our heads in prayer for the fallen author of said travesty."

IN NEW YORK CITY, in the studios of the Tell the Truth radio network, broadcaster Thrush Limburger was taking calls.

"Go ahead, caller. You're on the air."

"Roger, Thrush."

"And Roger right back to you. What's on your mind?"

"What do you think of this latest health-care proposal?"

"It's a naked grab for control of a multibilliondollar health-care industry, perpetrated by the unthinking but temporary occupants of the White House."

"They keep coming up with these bills, Thrush. Every time one gets shut down, they pop up with another. Is there anything we can do to stop it?"

"Well," Thrush said, and chuckled, "we can pray for divine intervention. Maybe God will vote this President out of office a year early, if you catch my drift."

A frantic waving hand from the control room caught Thrush Limburger's eye. His assistant, Cody Custer, had slapped a big sheet of paper against the glass. The Magic Markered words froze Thrush Limburger in midguffaw: President Shot in Boston.

"Ahem," Thrush said, rustling a commercial script between his thick fingers. "Of course, I don't actually mean that. I may be on the other side of the fence, politically speaking, from this President, but we both want the same thing. A better world."

Thrush tapped a chime and said, "Now for a word about my favorite beverage, Tipple."

PEPSIE DOBBINS, Washington correspondent of American Networking Conglomerate News, was at her desk working the phones when an aide popped his head into her cubicle and said, "The President's been shot!"

" What!"

"He stepped out of his limo, and a sniper took the top of his head off."

Pepsie Dobbins clutched the edge of her desk, slim fingers going white at the knuckles. Her face froze. Her eyes teared. She bowed her expertly coiffed shag.

"Did-did we get film?" she choked out.

"Yes. The feed's coming in now."

Pepsie lowered her head, eyes squeezing tears of relief that coursed down her makeup-powdered cheeks.

"Thank God," she sobbed.

With an effort she came out of her chair and followed the lemminglike streams of staff heading for the monitor room.

"Satellite feed's coming in now," a technician said, hoarse voiced.

All eyes went to a monitor, one of many banks of monitors in the monitor room. Pepsie's eyes raced along the grid, pausing at the one that monitored CNN, which scooped them with annoying frequency.

"Hurry, hurry," she urged. "CNN doesn't have film yet."

The feed came in.

The angle, everyone saw, was not straight on. The ANC cameraman had been blocked by the broad backs of the Secret Service protective ring. The camera jumped around several times.

Pepsie wrung her hands. "Come on. Come on. Steady it. Steady it, please."

As if in response, the camera caught the opening of the limo door emblazoned with the Presidential seal.

"Here it comes," the technician warned. "Prepare yourselves. It could be gruesome."

"Be gruesome," Pepsie whispered prayerfully. "Please, oh please, be gruesome."

The familiar steely haircut ducked up from the dark interior of the limo back, one hand fumbling for the middle button of the dark suit. Abruptly the top of the victim's head came apart.

"This is better than the Zapruder film," Pepsie screamed. "We've got to go on. We've got to go on right now!"

"Let go. Damn it, let go," the news director was saying, trying to disentangle Pepsie's claws from his collar. "I make the decisions here."

"CNN hasn't broken in yet..." the technician reported.

"No cut-ins from the other networks," an intern called.

Pepsie pleaded, "Greg, you've got to go on the air with this. Let me do it, please."

"This is the anchor's job."

"He's not here. I am. Please, please." She was bouncing on her heels now, pulling the news director by his tie as if trying to ring a church bell.

"It's news. We gotta go with something."

"All right. Do it from your desk. We'll superimpose a newsroom background over it."

"Great. Great. You won't regret this," Pepsie Dobbins said, running in her stockinged feet for her desk.

Flinging herself behind her desk, she primped her short sassy shag as she stood up straight. Her back was to a blue screen that the camera couldn't read. A computer-generated newsroom would be laid in the background. Only the audience would see it. No one would suspect it didn't exist.

The red light came on. The news director threw her the signal, and Pepsie Dobbins moistened her red lips as the announcer intoned, "This is an ANC special report."

"And this is Pepsie Dobbins speaking to you from our newsroom here in Washington."

Out of the corner of her eye, Pepsie saw the director pointing frantically to the monitor. Pepsie allowed her left eye to dart to the screen. She had the faculty of being able to move her eyes independently of each other so that when she turned slightly she appeared to be looking directly at the viewer while surreptitiously watching her surroundings.

To her horror, she saw herself on the in-house monitor-against a dead black background.

"In our Washington bureau, excuse me," she corrected. "This just in from Boston, Massachusetts. The President of the United States was shot by unknown persons as he exited his limousine at precisely-" she glanced at her desk clock and guesstimated a time "-10:47 Eastern Standard Time. ANC News had a crew at the scene, and video is being satellited to us even as I speak. We here at ANC have yet to screen this footage, but in the interest of the public's right to ratings-I mean, to know-and as a public service we are showing it to you raw. We caution viewers that some of the scenes you are about to see may be graphic to the point of gruesomeness and that small children and animals should be shooed away so that they do not see it. Everyone else, pull up your chairs. This is history and you are seeing it almost live."

The news director flashed a signal to the technical crew, and Pepsie's left eye went to the monitor.

The monitor was blank.

"Something's wrong," she hissed.

Technicians in the control room frantically threw switches.

The monitor screen winked, and suddenly there appeared the computer-generated ANC Washington bureau newsroom-without Pepsie Dobbins. No footage rolled.

"Where's the damn footage?" Pepsie screamed.

Over the air millions of Americans watched the static newsroom shot and heard the disembodied voice of Pepsie Dobbins demand that the footage be telecast.

The news director shushed her with a finger to his lips.

"Get that fucking footage on the air before CNN beats us to it!" she hollered, her blue tomcat eyes snapping sparks.

Millions of Americans heard that, too.

Then a technician poked his head out of the control room saying, "The deck ate the tape."

The news director cursed and, without looking back, threw the signal to Pepsie to take back the broadcast.

In TV sets all over America, the empty newsroom was replaced by the sight of Pepsie Dobbins, her head down on her desk, tearing tufts of her short brown-blond mane of hair out with enameled nails, repeating "I'm gonna kill everyone in the control room ...." over and over.

In her earpiece, the news director whispered urgently, "You're still on, Pepsie. Improvise something."

Without lifting her head, Pepsie said in a twisted voice, "On behalf of ANC News, I would like to lead the nation in a moment of silence for our martyred President."

Offstage the news director screamed, "What are you doing? We don't know that he's dead yet."

"Trust me on this one," Pepsie muttered.

Then CNN came on with their version of the footage.

It was merciful. The CNN camera crew, well behind Secret Service rope lines, caught only the shirtfront of an anonymous Secret Service agent as the limousine door opened. In another second the man who emerged from the limo would have stepped into clear sight. But he never did.

A shot rang out, and the agents whirled, forming a tight protective knot around the fallen man, 9 mm MAC-lls and 10 mm Delta Elite handguns coming up at the ready.

After that it was aboil in frantic officials. Someone yelled, "It's Dallas all over again!" and the Presidential motorcade sped away from the rushing cameras, grim-faced agents clinging to bumpers and sideboards.

The camera found a pudding of blood and brains on the pavement and lingered on it for nearly a minute. Then other cameramen saw the stain and they quickly trampled it under their jostling feet.

America was spared the gruesome sight. But nothing spared them the horror. Their imaginations filled in the Technicolor details.

HAROLD W SMITH WAS oblivious to the first bulletin. It was ironic. Harold W Smith should have known about the Presidential assassination as it was breaking. At the very least.

In the best of all possible scenarios, Harold Smith should have seen it coming and been able to intercept the assassin. That, among other responsibilities, was Harold W. Smith's duty, as director of CURE, the supersecret government agency he headed.

As the first reports were breaking, Harold W Smith, incongruously attired in a gray three-piece business suit, was in a concrete vault in one corner of the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium, the cover installation that masked CURE operations. Smith was completing repairs to the great bank of IDC mainframes that constituted the nerve center of CURE's information-gathering arm.

CURE had been without its full Intelligence-gathering capability for three months now, ever since the awful morning when a combined IRS-DEA raid on Folcroft had forced Smith to erase the thirty years of data he had painstakingly compiled. And as the lasers were burning the deepest secrets of a fractious nation out of existence, Smith had taken the poison pill that would have erased him, too.

The raid had been instigated ironically enough by a computer intelligence Smith had already defeated. The doomsday plan had come close to succeeding. The IRS had seized Folcroft and would have auctioned it off over Smith's cold gray corpse but for his enforcement arm, Remo Williams and his trainer, Chiun, the last Master of Sinanju.

They had brought Smith back from the brink of eternity, and working behind the scenes, the three men had gotten the IRS and DEA off their backs without compromising CURE security.

In the aftermath a dangerous patient and security threat had escaped, and the CURE computers, only recently upgraded, were reduced to the status of multimillion-dollar blank slates.

It had taken three months to bring them back online. It would take another decade to restore the most important portions of their data base. Harold Smith, who had been young during his days with the OSS during World War II, did not know if he had another decade.

But because he had taken up the responsibility for CURE, he had done what he could. The systems were back online, and the four great mainframes and the slave WORM-drive units once again held the duplicate data bases siphoned off the IRS, Social Security Administration, FBI, CIA, DEA, DES and TRW computer systems.

It was enough to put CURE back in the Intelligence-gathering and analysis business. It was not enough to restore it to full capacity.

As he secured the three locks that concealed the CURE computers from prying eyes, Harold W Smith reflected that in these early days of the information superhighway, the proliferation of computers out there meant that in many cases he needn't have the raw data locked in his basement to have access to it. He need only reach out through the telephone system to snare what he wanted.

Perhaps, Smith thought as he rode the elevator to his second-floor office, that was for the best.

When he stepped off the elevator, he saw his secretary sobbing at her reception desk. Harold Smith paused, adjusted his Dartmouth tie uncomfortably and contemplated slipping past the weeping woman and into his office. He detested overt displays of emotion. Especially coming from women. They made him feel helpless and awkward.

Mrs. Mikulka abruptly looked up, and it was too late.

"Er, is something wrong?" Smith asked uneasily.

Eileen Mikulka took a deep, ragged breath, her eyes red and moist. "He's been shot!"

"The President. Someone shot him. Oh, what is this country coming to?"

In a stark, still fraction of a moment, Harold W. Smith stood rooted. He remembered an identical time, an identical cold, settling feeling some thirty years ago, when, sitting in his office, he had picked up the telephone to hear his wife sobbing out the identical news. Her words had almost been the same. Why was it that people always said "they" did it. Who were "they"? Why didn't people ever say "someone" shot the President? Or "a killer" shot the President. It was always "they."

The news of the death of that particular President so long ago had been like a cold dagger in Smith's vitals. For that President had installed Smith in the position of CURE director, entrusting him not only with the security of the nation but the political fate of the President, as well. For both men had known that if the truth ever leaked out, that President would be impeached for setting up an extraconstitutional bulwark against crime and corruption. In order to preserve the nation, CURE routinely trampled all over Constitutional guarantees.

Smith snapped out of it. "Hold my calls," he said hoarsely. "I will be in my office."

The renewed sobbing followed him into his office, ceasing only when he shut the oak door that was soundproofed against all noise.

Smith crossed the Spartan but slightly shabby office in long-legged strides that put him behind a desk that was like a slab of anthracite on legs. The chair creaked under his spare frame. Reaching under the desk edge, he depressed a button.

Under the black glass desk top, canted at an angle so only Smith could read it, a computer monitor winked into life, its black screen blending with the desk glass. Only the angry amber letters on the screen showed.

Thin fingers touched the strip of desk top closest to him. A touch-sensitive keyboard illuminated. Smith logged on with hard stabs of his fingers.

A warning message was already in the system, which patrolled all open news and data feeds in the nation.

Smith read the first bulletin, and a chill climbed his curved-with-age-and-work spine.

PRESIDENT OF U.S. SHOT EXITING OFFICIAL CAR AT KENNEDY LIBRARY IN BOSTON, MASS. RUSHED TO MASS GENERAL HOSPITAL. NO WORD ON CONDITION.

In the spare, stark prose of the wire services lay a world of horror.

Smith swallowed hard, his bony Adam's apple sliding from sight.

"It's happening again," he said.

IN THE MAIN TRAM BAY of Mass General Hospital, Chief of Surgery Kevin Powers was scrubbing for a scheduled colostomy when the hospital's chief administrator burst in and started to say something.

"The President-"

A phalanx of men in business suits and impenetrable sunglasses pushed the man and the half-open swinging doors in and, without stopping, seized Dr. Powers by his blue surgical scrubs and walked him out of the scrub room to the OR.

A gold badge was flashed in his face. "Secret Service," a man said, tight-upped.

It hit Powers with the clarity only dire emergency brought to the brain. "The President?" he blurted.

"It's a head wound."

"Christ."

They continued walking him down to the OR and marched him like a white-faced automaton through the double doors.

Dr. Powers started to protest. "You're not scrubbed."

"There's no time," the agent said. "There he is. Save him, please."

The patient already lay on the operating-room table. Other agents were finishing stripping off the expensive suit and undergarments. They tore at the clothing with gritted teeth and tears of rage and frustration in their eyes.

The body lay utterly inert, moving only when the jerking rips made it jiggle.

"What is it-gunshot?"

"One shot to the head," the Secret Service agent told him.

Dr. Powers found himself being impelled toward the head. When his eyes fell on the wound, he knew there was no hope. Not for a thinking recovery anyway.

The bullet had exposed the pinkish gray mass of the brain. It throbbed lazily as the electrocardiogram machine began emitting jittery pulses and beeps.

"It's bad, isn't it?" an agent said tearfully.

"Let's get to work," Dr. Powers said grimly as his gloved hands picked up a scalpel.

Carefully he smoothed the matter-spattered hair away from the area of the wound. Gasps all around. Under his mask, he winced. The wound was larger than it seemed.

Then the EKG machine began emitting a low, frightening beep, and a nurse said, "Flatline."

"Resuscitate," someone shouted. It was a Secret Service man.

"Don't bother," Powers said.

"We can't lose him!"

"I'm sorry. He's gone."

Strong hands came at Dr. Powers from both sides, grabbing him roughly by his gowned shoulders.

"You save that man," a voice said with rough violence.

"He's beyond saving, damn it. A third of his brain is pulp. I bring him back, and he'll be a withered vegetable. Is that what you want?"

No one said anything. Slowly the hands released his gown. The agents began weeping openly. One turned and, with a steady rhythm, pounded the white tile wall with his fist until blood appeared.

As he did the decent thing and drew a clean sheet over the strong clean body defiled by violence, Dr. Kevin Powers could only reflect dully that he had been a participant to history.

But he wanted to pound his trembling fists on the wall in frustration, too.

FOR NEARLY two more hours, the press and the people stood vigil in the crisp December air outside of Mass General Hospital. No word came. In the absence of facts, rumors abounded. They grew in the telling, and across the nation hope for the President's survival began to die.

A unshaven man wearing aviator sunglasses and a blue L.A. Dodgers baseball cap kept saying, "I'm ashamed to be an American today. I'm ashamed to be an American." A video camera hung from his dead fingers. From time to time he filmed the stunned faces of the crowd.

At the top of the third hour, Pepsie Dobbins leapt from a cab and forced her way through the crowd. They stood about like sheep, eyes turned up to the top of the building. A few hung their heads in sorrow or prayer.

Pepsie wormed her way through the crowd, fighting toward the hospital entrance, which was guarded by stony-faced state troopers at stiff attention. An ANC cameraman followed, lugging his Minicam.

"Let me in. I'm Pepsie Dobbins."

"No admittance."

Pepsie started to argue.

The clatter of a helicopter rotor began bouncing off the buildings. All eyes looked upward. Pepsie took a step back in order to see.

The big olive-green-and-black shape floated majestically to the hospital roof and disappeared from view. It was out of sight in less than forty seconds. It lifted off again, lumbering majestically in the direction of Logan Airport.

"That's Marine One," someone whispered. "The President's helicopter."

"Maybe he's all right," someone else said.

A third person said in a dead tone, "Maybe they're taking the body back to Washington."

Pepsie whirled on the state troopers and demanded, "Where are they taking the President?"

"Back to Washington," said one state trooper in a robotic voice.

"I demand to speak with the hospital director," Pepsie demanded.

"Sorry."

"I demand some information."

"You know what we know."

"Is the President alive or dead?"

"Unknown."

"Is there a cover-up going on here? Is that it? Has the cover-up already begun?"

"There's no cover-up," the second trooper said, tight-upped.

"How do you know unless you know more than you're saying?"

"No fucking comment," said the first and second state troopers a beat apart. Then they sealed their lips and looked stony eyed over Pepsie Dobbins's head at nothing.

Pepsie Dobbins struggled her way to a pay phone and dialed the Washington bureau of ANC News and said, "The President has died."

"You have that confirmed this time?"

"Marine One touched down on the hospital roof and took off again before the wheels bit gravel. It's on its way to Logan Airport."

"Have you confirmation the President's body is aboard?"

"You saw the footage. No one could have survived that shot. Mass General Hospital is one of the best in the nation. If he were alive, they wouldn't dare move him."

"This is too important to put on the air without corroboration, Pepsie."

"You idiot! Do you want CNN to beat us again?"

"Do you want to look like a fool to all America again?" the news director countered.

"This morning wasn't my fault. It was that screw-up technician."

"Hold the line."

Pepsie held. She tapped her toes impatiently, counting the seconds. She wasn't going to be scooped again. Not if she had to march up to a local camera crew and seize a microphone.

The news director came back on the line. "The White House has put out a statement," he said.

"Yeah?"

"They say the President will address the nation later this afternoon."

"That's crazy! We all saw the top of his head come off."

"They're hinting he's alive."

"My God! It's a cover-up. Do you realize how big this story just got?"

"Pepsie, get a grip. Maybe they mean the Vice President. If the worst has happened, he's President now."

"What are the call letters of our local affiliate?"

"Don't you dare go over my head and air this story like that time in Baltimore."

"There's a cover-up going on. And I'm on ground zero."

"Look, we'll sort the pieces out on this end. Everybody's at the hospital, right?"

Pepsie scanned the crowd with her wide feral eyes. "Right. Of course. I see MBC. BCN. And Vox."

"Go back to the shooting scene. See what you can pick up there."

"But the story's here. "

"No, the story's on Marine One heading for Air Force One. "

"Maybe I can sneak on board ...."

"Fat chance. But if there's a cover-up brewing, that story's back at the Kennedy Library."

"You'll hear from me," said Pepsie, hanging up and sticking two fingers into her mouth. She blew a whistle shrill enough to derust the Lusitania.

Looking like a chocolate-milk carton on wheels, a brown-and-white Boston taxicab stopped briefly and whisked her away.

"Kennedy Library," she snapped, shoving her cameraman in ahead of her.

The driver stared into his rearview mirror in surprise. "Aren't you Pepsie Dobbins?"

"None other."

"Can I get your autograph? I think you're the funniest newswoman on the air."

"I'm not supposed to be funny," Pepsie snapped.

"That's why you're so funny."

"Shut up and drive," fumed Pepsie.

Chapter 6

In the hothouse control room under Sam Beasley World, Remo Williams blocked the animatronic stainless-steel hand that clutched at his throat.

It was neither swift nor strong. The wrist encountered Remo's thicker wrists and, thwarted, the steel hand opened and closed like a clutching flower of metal.

Remo unblocked his wrists and captured the steel fist in his own fingers. He exerted pressure. The fingers, tiny servo motors whirring in complaint, tried to reopen. And failed.

Remo looked up at the screen and the eager face of the real Uncle Sam Beasley.

Uncle Sam was snapping an unseen switch over and over again angrily.

"Watch this," Remo said.

And he crushed the metal hand into a ball of steel wool.

The head of the animatronic Beasley snapped around and, teeth champing, tried to take a chunk out of Remo's wrists. As the porcelain teeth disturbed the tiny guard hairs on Remo's wrist, he brought his hand down hard. Uncle Sam's jaw fell off, trailing sparks and wires.

Up on the screen, the real Beasley's jaw dropped open. He shut it and demanded, "What the hell are you made out of?"

"Snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails," Remo said, casually batting the head off its spinal stalk. It flew at the screen. The real Beasley, caught off guard, recoiled. The head burrowed into the shattered screen, and both began emitting acrid electrical smoke after the screen went dead.

Remo turned his attention back to Captain Maus.

"Where is he?"

"I will die before I betray Uncle Sam."

"Let's test that theory," said Remo, taking Maus's right hand by the wrist.

"This little piggy went to market," Remo said, dislocating Maus's right index finger simply by yanking it straight. The joint gave a tiny pop. "This little piggy started home," said Remo, doing the same to the ply.

Maus's eyes widened as he watched his fingers wilt like fleshy flowers under the casual violence of the thick-wristed man.

"The Sorcerer's Castle!" he bleated.

From a hidden speaker, Uncle Sam Beasley snarled, "Maus, you are a traitor."

"But-but," Maus protested, his face twisting like heated wax. "I've been a fan of yours since I was a little boy!"

"Consider yourself defrocked of your mouse ears."

Captain Maus hung his head and blubbered like a child.

"Grow up," said Remo. "What's the best way to get to the castle from here?"

Maus kept blubbering, so Remo took his temples between his forefinger and thumb and exerted pressure. The fused skull plates at the top of Maus's skull actually bulged upward under his thin hair, and he let out an inarticulate scream that would have meant nothing to anyone except Remo, who over years of practice had learned to understand people when he squeezed the truth out of their skulls.

"Hatchinthecenterofthefloorwillgetyouthere," Maus had said at ultrahigh speed.

"Much obliged," said Remo. "Stay here till I get back."

But as Remo popped the hatch in the center of the floor, he heard a faint gritty crunch as Maus broke something between his teeth. Maus slumped in his console chair, and Remo shrugged. One less loose end to worry about.

An aluminum ladder led down to a square brick tunnel. There was a golf cart in the tunnel, and Remo climbed aboard. That made it easier. He sent it humming along the tunnel, which went in only one direction.

When he reached the end, Remo jumped from the moving vehicle to an identical aluminum ladder hanging from an identical well and was halfway up when the unattended golf cart crashed into a bulkhead.

By the time Remo reached the top-the well was barely three stories high-the whine of a helicopter was audible.

Remo stepped out into a stone corridor through a stone niche that had a knight in medieval armor bolted to it.

The helicopter whine was growing louder. It was coming from above-far above-so Remo ignored the graceful stone staircase that swept upward and slipped out a narrow window. The castle walls were made of big stone blocks with plenty of handholds between them. Remo climbed a turret as if it were made for that purpose.

The helicopter was a fat green lime with Christmassy red trim and snowy white rotors. It had already lifted off a concealed helipad when Remo came over the battlements and floated toward it on gliding feet.

Remo snared one snowy skid just as it was lifting out of reach. His fist closed, and his feet left the ground.

The helicopter tilted and angled out toward the west.

Below, orange groves and kudzu patches rolled by as Sam Beasley World was left behind.

Remo waited until the helicopter pilot had settled onto his course before boarding.

Using both hands, he pulled himself up until his heels hooked onto the skid. He executed this maneuver with such smooth grace that there was no sudden shifting of weight to unbalance the colorful craft.

Once wrapped around the skid, it was an easy enough matter to reach up and find the side-door handle. Remo yanked it open and slipped in with an uncoiling motion that landed him in the rear seat while pulling the door shut after him.

"Going my way?" he said airily. The pilot looked over his shoulder, white as a ghost.

"Where the hell did you come from?" he sputtered.

Remo started to smile. The smile evaporated when he realized only he and the pilot were on board.

"Where's Uncle Sam?" Remo asked.

"Twenty-five years in his grave," the pilot blurted.

"A popular rumor, if untrue," the filtered voice of Uncle Sam Beasley said from a speaker inside the bubble.

There came a pop, a puff of evil black smoke arose from the rotating rotor shaft above Remo's head, and the turbine cut out.

"Oh, Jesus. We've lost power," the pilot snapped, throwing switches.

Remo kicked open the door.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" the pilot shouted in the sudden silence.

"Bailing out," said Remo.

"It's sure death."

"So is falling straight down in this oversize Christmas ornament."

"We'll be fine," the pilot said. "The main rotor is still turning. It'll act like a parachute. It's called autorotation."

Remo stayed half-in and half-out of the bubble just in case.

The helicopter floated straight down, sustained by the steady braking action of its main rotor.

It settled in a field of kudzu maybe ten miles west of Sam Beasley World.

As Remo got out, he saw another Christmas-colored chopper lift off from the fairyland skyline of the theme park and realized he'd been played for a sucker. It angled away and out of sight.

"Who was that voice that came over the speaker?" the pilot asked.

"Sound familiar?" said Remo.

"Yeah, it did," the pilot admitted.

"That was Popeye the Sailor Man," said Remo.

The pilot just stared at him.

He was still staring when Remo started walking through the endless kudzu toward the nearest highway. The nearest highway wasn't very near, so it was a good twenty minutes before Remo reached it and another ten before he found a gas station with a pay phone.

He called Dr. Harold W. Smith, waiting impatiently as the connection was rerouted twice before ringing a blue contact phone on Smith's glassy desk.

Smith's voice sounded hoarse but lemony. "Remo, is that you?"

"Yeah. What's wrong?"

"The President of the United States has been shot."

"Damn. How bad?"

Smith's voice sank to a hush. "They're reporting his death, Remo."

Remo said nothing. He was no particular fan of the current President, but in the long moment that the news sank in, he thought about where he had been thirty years ago when he had heard those identical words.

He had been in class. Saint Theresa's Orphanage. A nun whose name Remo had long ago forgotten was teaching English. There had come a knock at the class door, and Sister Mary Margaret, whose name and face Remo would remember to his dying day, entered, more pale of face than usual. She had conferred in a low voice with the other nun, whose face lost all color, too.

Then Sister Mary Margaret had addressed the class in a low, hoarse voice. "Children, our beloved President has been shot. We must all pray for him now."

And Sister Mary Margaret had led the class in prayer.

Remo could still remember the cold feeling in that classroom that day. He was old enough to understand a terrible thing had happened, yet still young enough to be dazed by the news.

When the word came that the young President had died, every class had been cancelled and the entire population of Saint Theresa's Orphanage was led in procession to the chapel. A Mass was sung. Those were still the days of Latin Masses.

It was the first time Remo Williams had ever seen the priests and the nuns-the only authority figures he had known up to that point in his life-weep. It had made him tremble in fear back then, and a little of that sick, hollow emptiness rose up to haunt him three decades later.

"Who did it?" Remo asked after his thoughts came back to the present.

"I have no information at present," Smith said, dull voiced.

"But I do. I found Uncle Sam. He was at Sam Beasley World."

"Was?"

"He got away. And I'm stuck in some highway in the middle of Kudzu, Florida."

"Go to Washington, D.C., Remo."

"Gladly. What's there?"

"The Vice President. He may need protecting."

"We blew a big one, didn't we?"

"Someone did," said Smith, terminating the connection with abrupt finality.

Chapter 7

Secret Service Special Agent Win Workman hated guarding the President of the United States.

He hated it every time the President with his two giant 747s blew into town loaded down with communications gear, armored limousines and an endless list of demands on the Boston Office.

Win Workman worked out of the Boston district office of the Secret Service. He liked working out of Boston, where his routine duties included catching counterfeiters, busting credit-card thieves and solving computer crimes. This last category was one of the fastest-growing missions of the service, whose job wasn't just limited to protecting Presidents, whether sitting, retired or aspiring.

Win Workman had gone to the Service by way of BATF. The pay was higher, the duties more interesting. Just as long as he didn't have to guard any Presidents.

There was little danger of that, he had discovered. Win was too "street" for the White House detail. The Boston office preferred him to work on undercover assignments.

So Win Workman worked the street. He liked working the street. The trouble was every time the President blew into town, they pulled him off the street, made him shave and put on his best Brooks Brothers gray suit and handed him the belt radio whose earphone had been custom-fitted from a mold of his left ear for a perfect fit.

Usually he had to deal with the "quarterlies"-the local nuts and screwballs who had come to the service's attention because they had made public threats against the Chief Executive. They were interviewed every quarter as a matter of routine precaution and were checked out whenever the President came to town.

But this time he had to stand post, thanks to a virulent flu that had knocked out half the Boston office.

Win felt like a tailor's dummy standing post as the Presidential motorcade rolled like a segmented black dragon through the narrow streets of the city. All dressed up and hoping for no action. None whatsoever, thank you very much.

The trouble with standing post for the President of the United States, as Win Workman saw it, was not the boredom factor. High as it was. It wasn't even being pulled off the street.

Working undercover, you won some and you lost some. Not much glory either way. Not in the service, where you were trained to take your satisfaction in a job well done, not press ink or TV face time.

Standing post for the President, you got no thank you's if you did your job right. If you didn't, you might as well have been witness to the end of the world.

Win Workman found himself standing post on the roof of the University of Massachusetts Healey Library building when the shots that all but stopped his own heart rang out.

His eyes went instantly to the source. Across the plaza. Down on the Science Center roof, there was a man: with a rifle.

"Fuck!" he said, dropping into a marksman's crouch and opening fire.

It was a dumb-ass ridiculous thing to do. Win had only his service-issue 10 mm Delta Elite automatic. The range was too short. But he was the only agent close enough to distract the shooter.

So Win Workman emptied his clip as the shooter, one shot fired, laid his rifle carefully at his feet and took off.

It was only then that Win saw the man's aviator sunglasses and white coil going from his earphone into his windbreaker collar and realized that he'd waved to the man only minutes before. Waved to what he thought was a D.C.-based Secret Service countersniper named Don Grodin.

The man walking away wasn't Don Grodin. He was wearing Grodin's service-issue windbreaker and he practically swam in it.

"Jesus," he said as he pelted toward the stairs.

After that everything became a mad blur. His earphone filled with so much chatter Win had to pull it out and scream into his hand mike.

"Shut the fuck up! Everybody! Shut the fuck up right now."

When the earphone stopped buzzing, he jammed it back into its place. By that time, he was on the plaza. "Boston agents, this is Win. Switch to backup frequency. Suspect shooter has left roof of Science Center. Repeat, suspect shooter has just left Science Center roof. Be aware he's wearing a countersniper windbreaker. I want men on the garage elevator, men on the plaza and at all exits including the damn catwalks. The rest of you sweep the Science Center."

Someone asked, "How is the Man?"

"Forget the Man. He's the White House detail's problem. Ours is the shooter."

"Looked like he was hurt pretty bad, " someone else muttered.

After that the only conversation came in snatches, punctuated by gunfire.

"We have shooting in the parking garage. "

A moment later it was, "Shooting in Science."

"My God! There are two dead agents here."

"We think he's in the Lipke Auditorium."

By that time, Win Workman had reached the Science Center with a knot of agents and got them organized.

The main entrance to the Lipke Auditorium was one floor above. But the stage entrances were on the plaza level.

"Half of you take stage right. The rest of you come with me. We're going in stage left."

It took less than thirty seconds for the other detail to report that they were in position. Everyone took deep breaths, and Workman shouted, "Go!"

They poured into the gloom of the auditorium, flashlights pointing in all directions like a million-feelered insect.

The shooter was sitting quietly in the front row, exactly dead center. He made no effort to resist as they fell on him, throwing him to the floor.

"I'm not resisting. I'm not resisting arrest!" he screeched.

"Good thing for you, you bastard," Workman barked.

After patting him down and finding no concealed weapons, they hauled him to his feet again. Someone took his wallet and handed it to Workman. He hastily pocketed it and said, "Let's get him the fuck out of here."

They were hustling him up the steps when someone with a head like a high-tech diver's helmet popped up from behind a section of rows and started firing two pistols at once, straight-arm style.

It was one of those heart-stopping moments you play and replay in your mind forever, rolling the tape back, looking at your own mistakes or a juncture where you could have done something to change what happened.

For years afterward Win Workman would do that in the grim hours before he fell asleep. But when it happened, he was just one of the many who mowed down the assailant as he methodically pumped hot rounds into the prisoner.

THE GUNSHOT ECHOES were still bouncing when Win Workman kicked the .38 revolver and what looked suspiciously like a service-issue Delta Elite away from the dead assailant's hands and shouted, "Anyone hurt? Anyone hurt, damn it?"

"Just the suspect."

He stamped back.

The suspect in the President's shooting lay on his back, jerking uncontrollably like a puppet whose lax strings still had some tug in them. Then he expired.

"Motherfucker," Win cursed.

It was in that moment that he took his first hard look at the shooter.

"I know that face," he said.

"He on the lookout list?"

"I don't..."

Someone pulled his set of the watch cards showing mug shots of people who were considered a threat to the President. The face of the dead man was not among them.

The other agents gathered round, faces drained of all blood, all emotion except dull shock.

"Yeah, I've seen him before, too."

"Where?"

"Dunno."

They were like robots now, focusing on the face because to have lost their President like this probably meant the loss of their jobs. They were being professional. To be otherwise would probably have caused them to break down sobbing.

After several minutes no one could place the face.

"All right," Workman muttered. "Let's get these bodies out of here."

"Christ," an agent said bitterly. "It's Dallas all over again. How could we be so stupid?"

The thought seemed to hit everyone at once.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Win said slowly.

"What I'm thinking I don't want to be thinking."

They gathered around the dead shooter again.

"Oh, man," a third agent said. "It is him."

"You know what this means?"

"Yeah," Workman said. "I know exactly what this means. It means the end of the Secret Service as we know it. That's Lee Harvey Oswald lying there."

And Win Workman reared back and gave the dead man the hardest kick he had in him.

"Don't look now," another agent said in a dull, drained-of-emotion voice, "but I think this guy in the funny helmet looks kinda like Jack Ruby."

There was a stampede to the body of the man in the helmet. Enough of it had shattered to show one side of the man's face.

"Looks like Ruby. But a younger Ruby," Win observed.

"And that guy back there is the spitting image of Lee Harvey Oswald-if Ruby hadn't shot him dead back in '63"

"How old was Oswald when he got it?"

"Maybe twenty-three, twenty-four, something like that," Win said.

They went back to the corpse that resembled an older Lee Harvey Oswald.

"Add thirty years and you get a fifty-five-year-old guy."

"This guy looks about that."

"Can't be Oswald."

"Looks just like him. Right down to that simpering-idiot grin of his."

Win Workman looked from the face of the dead man to the wallet he was opening in his hands. He had brought it out of his pocket woodenly, as if afraid of what it would reveal.

"The driver's license says he's Alek James Hidell," he said.

A collective sigh of relief began to slip out of open mouths. Then someone snapped his fingers. It was so loud it might have been a gunshot.

"What is it?" Win asked angrily.

"Alek Hidell. That was one of the aliases."

"What alias?"

"Oswald's."

They rushed back to the body of the other dead man.

He carried his wallet in his back hip pocket. They could feel it, but they couldn't get at it without turning the body over.

"Better leave it," Workman said. "This is too much for me. "

"Man, this can't get any worse," an agent muttered.

But it did. Almost at once.

An agent reported, "I found the shooter's weapon."

"Stay there. We'll be right up."

WORKMAN ALONE stepped out onto the Science Center roof so as not to disturb evidence.

He walked over to the agent who was half kneeling over the weapon. It was a bolt-action clunker with a makeshift strap.

"Damn. That's an old one," Workman said, crouching over the rifle.

"Look at the barrel."

"What about it?"

"Look at the name of the make stamped on the barrel."

Workman twisted his head around until he could read it.

"Man-"

"Mannlicher-Carcano," the other agent finished.

Win Workman said, "Get out of here!"

"That was what it said. I swear."

That was what it said: Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 Cal. Made in Italy.

"Mannlicher-Carcano was the rifle Oswald used in Dallas," Workman said dully. "If it was Oswald-"

"What do you mean?" the other agent asked.

"We got the shooter. Add thirty years, and you have the spitting image of Lee Harvey Oswald."

"There's something else," the other agent said. "Look at this spent shell casing."

"What about it?"

"There's something scratched in the metal."

"What?"

"Two letters. Looks like RX"

"RX?"

"Yeah. RX."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

Then, as if it couldn't get any worse, an agent stuck his head out of the greenhouse door leading to the roof and said, "There's a woman demanding to know about the cover-up."

"What cover-up?"

"She says she's Pepsie Dobbins."

"Throw her nosy ass out of here!" Win Workman shouted. "And seal this entire building. This is a Federal crime scene, goddamn it."

Chapter 8

At the Furioso International Airport, Remo booked the next flight to Washington and then found a pay phone.

He dialed his home number in Massachusetts.

The line rang three times. Remo hung up, rang it another three times and hung up again. On the fourth ring of his third try, the Master of Sinanju came on the line.

"Remo?" a querulously squeaky voice said.

"Bad news, Chiun. The President was assassinated."

"The Fat Prince? The gluttonous one?"

"Yeah. Him."

"Did you do this deed?" the squeaky voice asked.

"Of course not."

"Then he was not assassinated. He was murdered. Only you and I are capable of work worthy of the name."

"Cut the self-congratulatory crap. A sniper took him out."

"Good."

"What do you mean, 'good'?"

"Emperor Smith, whom we serve in secret, will know by the crude use of a boom stick that neither you nor I were sunlighting."

"For the thousandth freaking time, it's 'moonlighting' and it happened in Boston, not three miles from where we live."

"Remo! This is not true."

"It's true."

"Why was I not informed that the puppet President was in this province?"

"Smith will want to know why you didn't stop the killer."

"I knew nothing of any President or his killer," Chiun squeaked plaintively.

"You know that and I know that. But the President was killed on Smith's watch, which is your watch."

"Your watch, too."

"I don't have a watch anymore. I'm just tying up loose ends, remember?"

"We will blame the unfortunate death of the puppet on your recalcitrance," Chiun crowed.

"The hell you will. Listen, I'm on my way to Washington to protect the new President."

"There is a new President?"

"The Vice President."

"This country is doomed."

"It will be if there's a conspiracy. I'm going to watch over the Vice President. I could use a hand."

"If there is a conspiracy, my place is at the side of the rightful emperor, Harold the Mad."

"Look, no one knows about Smith," Remo shouted.

"Are you calling from an airport?"

"Yes, what does that have to do with anything?"

"Because an airport is a public place and you are shouting your emperor's secrets to any skulking spy who happens by."

Remo switched ears and whispered urgently into the mouthpiece. "I'm officially requesting your presence. Okay?"

"I will consider your request-once I have it in writing," said Chiun thinly. "Until then, my place is at Smith's side."

And the line went dead.

Remo slammed the phone down, breaking the plastic handle. He went to the next phone in line and dialed Smith at Folcroft.

"Smitty, I just talked to Chiun. He won't join me in Washington."

"Why not?"

"I made the mistake of whispering the word 'conspiracy,' and he thinks he should be watchdogging you."

"I will call him. Where are you?"

"Furioso International Airport. My flight leaves in ten minutes."

"I expected you in Washington by now."

"I had to wade through miles of kudzu before I found a road with cars on it. The first dozen cars wouldn't stop for me, but I had a lucky break."

"Yes?"

"Someone stole my rental car and happened to drive by."

"He stopped?"

"No. I ran after the car and pulled him out from behind the wheel while he was doing seventy."

"I assume there were no witnesses to this."

"A Greyhound bus happened by in the opposite lane, and the car thief bounced under the wheels, if that's what you mean."

"Good. Keep me informed."

Smith hung up.

Remo found a seat in the waiting area. Other passengers were standing around glued to TV monitors as the networks continued their special reports.

The footage of the death shot was shown a total of eighteen times in nearly as many minutes. Remo, who had dispensed death to the deserving countless times in a long career, turned away from the screen in disgust.

The hushed conversation of waiting passengers came to his ears, as much as he tried to block it out.

"Another assassination. When will it stop?"

"I remember when Kennedy was killed like it was yesterday."

"He was a good President, despite the stories that have come out."

"No, I meant Robert Kennedy."

"Oh. I thought you looked kinda young to remember Jack."

"There's nothing lower than an assassin."

A redheaded woman wearing glasses dropped her shoulder bag at Remo's feet and took the seat beside him. "Have they caught the man who did it yet?" she asked Remo, emboldened by the national tragedy to speak to a total stranger.

"Not that I heard."

"I can't believe we've lost another President."

Remo said nothing.

"The coward," the woman said bitterly.

"Who?" asked Remo.

"The assassin. There's nothing more cowardly than an assassin. What would make a person do such a cold-blooded thing?"

"Search me," said Remo uncomfortably. "Maybe he was a professional."

"As if that were an excuse," she sniffed. "Scum is Scum."

"Look," Remo said angrily, "I don't feel like talking to a total stranger just now, okay?"

The woman reached out and patted Remo's hand sympathetically, cooing, "I understand. You're upset. We're all upset."

Remo stood up and changed seats. Another total stranger sat beside him and asked the latest news. Without replying, Remo changed seats again.

Everywhere he sat, the word "assassin" was hissed in bitter tones.

They called the flight, and after the plane was airborne, Remo left his seat over the wing and took an empty one in the rear of the cabin where he could get away from the incessant talk of assassination.

In more than twenty years working for CURE, Remo had had his problems with working for CURE. Sometimes America didn't seem salvageable. Sometimes the man in the White House wasn't worth fighting for, either.

Many times before, Remo had gotten disgusted with everything and quit. He had always come back. Now he was convinced he had come to the end of the line.

He had given CURE too many years of his life. It was time to move on.

But to what? He hadn't given it much thought, but as he looked out at the unrolling Florida landscape, he wondered what place he would have in the world.

His only trade-if that was what one could call it-was in being an assassin. Remo could never go back to being a cop. He still liked the idea of going after the bad guys, but there was too much red tape now. He could never play by the rules again.

Being an assassin was something Remo had grown comfortable with. Strictly speaking, he never thought of himself as an assassin the way Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan were assassins. They were nut loners. Remo was a consummate professional.

The first time the Master of Sinanju had told Remo that he was being trained in the ultimate assassin's arts, Remo hadn't thought of Sirhan Sirhan. He had thought of James Bond. A cool, capable guy who slides in and out of dangerous situations dealing with the bad guys no one else could touch.

That was certainly what they seemed to be training him for.

When it finally sank in that the Master of Sinanju was an assassin in the traditional sense of the word, Remo had been troubled. Growing up, he had learned to despise the word. Kennedy. Then King. Then another Kennedy.

"I don't want to be an assassin," he had told Chiun so very long ago.

"I am offering you the universe, and you decline?"

"I'm definitely declining."

"No white has ever before been offered Sinanju."

"Sinanju, I'll take. The assassin's belt I pass on."

"Belt! Sinanju does not wear belts. And you cannot separate the art from the result. You are Sinanju. Therefore, you are an assassin. It is a proud tradition."

"Not in this country. Here 'assassin' is a dirty word."

"When the songs detailing your glorious exploits reach the far corners of this benighted land, the word will be exalted."

"You're not listening. Assassins are murderers."

"No. Murderers are murderers. Assassins are artists. We are physicians of death. If there is a problem vexing a nation, we remove it like a cancer. If a ruler is surrounded by intrigues and pretenders, we cleanse his castle."

"You sound like a roach exterminator."

"Upright roaches only," Chiun had said. "There are standards."

"What if he's being stalked by an assassin?" Remo had challenged.

"Doesn't matter who."

"It matters very much who. If someone is being stalked by a rival house of assassins, the clumsy ninja for example, or a low poisoner, we will eradicate this vermin."

"What if he's being stalked by a Master of Sinanju?"

Chiun had beamed at that question. "Then he deserves to die."

"Why?"

"Because he hired cheap help to guard his throne while his enemies hired the best. Us."

"In other words, we work for the highest bidder."

"No, we work for the richest thrones. They deserve the best. All others deserve scorn for not hiring us, and death if their enemies do."

"Sounds like blackmail!"

Chiun had shrugged. "You will come to see it differently when you learn to breathe with your entire body."

Remo had learned to breathe with his entire body, thus liberating the unused portions of his mind. He had become a Master of Sinanju capable of feats of skill, strength and speed ordinary humans only read about in comic books.

In time he came to understand Chiun, last Master of Sinanju, and the five-thousand-year tradition of the House of Sinanju, which had hired out its best to the thrones of the Old World so that the village, on the rock-bound coast of the West Korea Bay, could eat. Especially the children.

But nowhere over the decades did Remo ever think of himself as an assassin the way the screwballs who murdered Presidents did.

But as the 727 winged north to the District of Columbia, he began to wonder. If he left the service of America, would Chiun leave, too? And if Chiun left, would he install Remo as sole heir to the village, and go to work for some foreign nation?

Would Remo go? And if that nation gave the order to snuff the US. President, what would Remo do?

It all came down to one simple question. Deep down, who was Remo Williams?

It was a question that had been bothering him more and more these days.

It had all started with a mission to Tibet, where he had had the worst case of deja vu on record. And he'd never been to Tibet before. Chiun, who had for years been convinced that Remo was the reincarnation of a Hindu god called Shiva the Destroyer, claimed that Remo was merely remembering his ancient home.

After that he had gone to visit the grave with his name on it. A ghostly woman had appeared to him and told him to seek out her own grave. She had given Remo a few cryptic clues and promised that finding her grave would reveal his father.

Remo, whose first view of his mother had been as a phantom at his own grave site, had never known neither his father nor mother. That quest was all that kept him with CURE for now. Smith had promised to help in the search. But with the CURE computers crippled, it looked to be a long process.

Remo was determined to see it to the end, wherever it led.

After that he would sort out his future. If he had one.

As the plane circled Washington National, Remo's sharp eyes made out a big blue-and-white 747 on approach to Andrews Air Force Base, the great seal of the President on its flank. Air Force One, bearing the honored fallen.

He thought back to that bleak November day in 1963-the last time a dead President had been brought home for burial-and he didn't feel good about himself at all.

Then the airline captain's voice came over the PA system.

"The White House has just announced that the President of the United States is about to land at Andrews Air Force Base, and that he is in good health. I don't know what it's all about, folks, but considering the alternative, I think I'll take the good news at face value."

Spontaneous applause rippled through the passenger cabin.

In the rear Remo wondered what the hell was going on. He'd seen the President gunned down just like the rest of America.

Chapter 9

Not until Air Force One lumbered off Runway 22 Left on spooling engines and banked south over the Atlantic did the head of the White House Secret Service detail allow himself the luxury of tears.

He was a big man, with the wide shoulders of a linebacker and a face composed of smooth ledges and ridges that looked strong without the aviator-style sunglasses and indomitable with them clapped over his eyes. He had served through three administrations and had not lost a man. Until now.

So the tears rilled down from behind those opaque lenses as Vincent Capezzi stood post over the coffin that had been strapped to the master bed in the flying White House. Other agents stood outside the door. Capezzi had wanted to be alone with the fallen man.

"We did our best," he said in a low voice as if the dead, unhearing ears could hear every word. "I want you to know that. We did our best for you. But there was nothing we could do."

The coffin, a simple white capsule of composite material, sat mutely on the oval bed.

"And you knew the risks. It doesn't make it right, but you knew the risks when you took the damn job."

There came a knock at the door.

"What is it?" Capezzi said impatiently. He had not finished what he had to say.

"ANC is reporting the President is dead," a voice said.

"Goddamn," said Capezzi, taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes with a linen handkerchief.

"It just broke."

"Has the Man been informed?"

"No."

"I'll do it," he said. When he stepped out into the narrow corridors, the glasses were back on his face and his face was again a fleshy rock.

Thank God for shades, he thought to himself as he knocked on the door with the Presidential seal.

A hoarse, dispirited voice said, "Yes?"

"Capezzi, sir. May I come in?"

"Is it important?"

"Very."

The door unlocked from within, and Vince Capezzi stepped in.

THE PRESIDENT of the United States wore shock on his face like a crumbling mud pack. He was looking out the window at the winter clouds, which reared up like gray-black mountains. He turned in his seat.

He wore a blue poplin windbreaker, the Presidential patch over his heart. There was still blood and brain matter on his shirtfront from the shooting.

"ANC has you dead," Capezzi told him.

The President of the United States snapped out of his spell. "Don't they know better than to go on the air with wild speculation?" The President caught himself. Since the day he took office, they had been tracking his political highs and lows as if he were some kind of fool IPO stock on NASDAQ.

"The other networks are sure to follow. It's a panic situation."

"Has the First Lady been told?"

"Yes. First thing. If she hears the bulletin, she'll know to discount it."

"And the wife of the agent who took the bullet meant for me?"

"No wife. No immediate family."

"Small comfort in that," the President said bitterly.

"He knew the risks of wearing his hair cut like yours and stepping out of the limo first, Mr. President. It was an invitation to take the first shot."

The President looked up. "What is it you boys call that duty?"

"Playing the designated goat, sir."

"I want his sacrifice made known to the American people."

"Sorry, sir. If we released those details, the next sniper will hold back that first shot until he's certain he has the right skull in his cross hairs."

The President made a tight fist. He rubbed his puffy eyes wearily. "I look like a low coward, running away like this," he said bitterly.

"Sorry. But in the event this is a conspiracy and not some lone agent, you have to be returned to the White House. It's for your own personal safety."

The President's eyes flared. "I needed to give that speech. You had no right to hustle me away like that! I'm the damn President of the United States."

"Our mandate to protect you supercedes your wishes," Capezzi said, trying to keep his voice calm. "You need to issue a statement, Mr. President, reassuring the nation."

The President seemed to deflate like a tire. "What I really need is a fresh shirt."

"I'll send your chief of staff in."

Vince Capezzi started to leave.

"Tell him to take his time. If the networks all go on the air with unsubstantiated rumors, they deserve to eat their broadcasts."

"Yes, sir," said Vince Capezzi, closing the door behind him.

Politicians, he thought. A good agent lay in his coffin, a bullet meant for the Chief Executive in his brain, and the true target still had the presence of mind to shuffle the deck before he dealt the next hand.

LIKE A REPEATING IMAGE, six stone-faced Secret Service special agents blocked Pepsie Dobbins's attempt to enter the Science Center at the University of Massachusetts Harbor Campus.

They were resealing the entrance doors with white barrier tape. Two ends of a broken seal hung from the spot where one of two sets of double doors came together.

"I'm Pepsie Dobbins," she said. "What can you tell me?"

"Get lost."

"I mean, what can you tell me about the conspiracy to assassinate the President?"

"Nothing."

"Ah-hah! Then there is a conspiracy."

Behind their aviator sunglasses the six stony faces grew long.

"Nobody said that," an agent said.

"Nobody has contradicted it, either," said Pepsie. She turned to her cameraman. "Did you get that on tape?"

The cameraman nodded. A mistake. Two burly agents strode up to him and relieved him of his Minicam. One said, "I'm confiscating this as evidence in an ongoing investigation" as the other slapped white protective tape over the cassette port.

"Don't you dare!" Pepsie snapped.

"It's done. And you have exactly thirty seconds to leave this campus or we'll confiscate you. "

"I still have my quote," Pepsie warned. "And if you people are involved in any cover-up, ANC News will be the first to see you hung."

"That's 'hanged,'" an agent said.

"How many people involved in the conspiracy?" demanded Pepsie.

"No comment."

"Hah! Another nondenial. Further evidence of conspirators."

"Get stuffed."

Pepsie stormed off campus saying, "We've got to get to the local affiliate."

"Why?" her cameraman asked. "You don't have film."

"We have a Secret Service agent explicitly not denying that there was a conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States."

"Is that a double negative?" the cameraman asked as they went looking for their cab.

"I don't care what they call it, it's news."

The cabbie was still in the idling Boston taxi down in the underground garage when they got there.

As they got in, they found him fiddling with the cab radio.

"Boy," he said. "You'd think the Secret Service would be talking over a secure channel at a time like this."

Pepsie's eyes and voice grew eager. "You can pick them up?"

"What do you think I've been doing while I've been waiting? The limes crossword?"

"Well, don't just sit there," Pepsie said, pulling a minicassette recorder from her purse. "Turn up the volume so we can all hear."

The tense, urgent voices of the Secret Service crackled over the tinny dash radio.

"They're bringing the shooter's rifle down now," a voice said.

"They sure it's a Mannlicher?"

"It says Mannlicher-Carcano on the barrel, stamped big as life" came the hushed reply.

"What's a Manhiemer-Carbano?" Pepsie wondered aloud.

"Mannlicher-Carcano," the cabbie said. "It's a piece-of-shit Italian rifle."

"How do you know?"

"Hell, everybody knows what a crummy rifle the Carcano is. Even though Oswald did pretty well by it."

"Oswald?"

"Lee Harvey Oswald. The nut who shot Kennedy."

Pepsie frowned. "I thought Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy."

"Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy. I'm talking about Jack."

"I wasn't born then," said Pepsie, who hated it when baby boomers flaunted the fact that she hadn't been alive during most of the sixties.

The Secret Service voices continued. "Call out the serial number. I'll radio it to the BATF's NFTC for tracing."

"What did he say?" Pepsie wanted to know.

"He said," the cabbie said patiently, "he's going to radio the Mannlicher's serial number to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The NFTC is their National Firearms Tracing Center. They can trace any gun manufactured in this country that way."

"How do you know all this stuff?"

The cabbie shrugged. "I'm a buff." He turned around in his seat. "How come you don't?"

"It's a girl thing," Pepsie retorted. "You wouldn't understand. You have testicles."

A voice crackled from the dash speaker. "Serial number C2766. Repeat, C as in Charlie, twenty-seven sixty-six."

"Holy fucking shit!" said the cabbie.

"What is it? What does that number mean?"

"It means," said the cabbie, "that the Mannlicher-Carcano that shot the President dead is the same one that killed Kennedy."

Pepsie Dobbins and her cameraman exchanged blank looks.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"It means," said the cabbie, "that this is one hell of a story and how come you're sitting here when you should be getting it on the air before the cover-up begins all over again?"

THE CABBIE PEELED out of the garage on burning rubber and sped to the local ANC affiliate.

When Pepsie Dobbins barged in the door, she filled her lungs with air and called out at the top of her voice, "Point me to the nearest hot camera and get my news director in Washington on the line."

She was greeted with a sea of stony faces.

"Well, what are you standing around for?"

The stony regards grew stonier still.

"Don't you know who I am? Pepsie Dobbins. I broke the historic news that the President was murdered. Now I'm about to blow the lid off the conspiracy behind it."

No one made a move except a guard in a booth who picked up a telephone and began dialing.

"What's wrong with you people? I know the President is dead, but you can mourn on personal time. We have the people's right to know to exploit."

"The President isn't dead," someone said in a dull monotone.

Pepsie took a single step backward. "Oh, my God," she whispered to her cameraman. "Do you think they're in on the conspiracy, too? Maybe part of the cover-up?"

"Looks that way to me," the cabbie undertoned.

Pepsie whirled. "What are you doing here?"

"I want to see how everything comes out. Besides, you don't know jack shit about the subject. I do. I've read every book on assassination I could get my hands on. I'm a walking encyclopedia. Maybe I should be put on retainer."

"Later," Pepsie said. She cleared her throat and said, "The President has been killed, and the Secret Service is trying to cover up the truth. God knows how deep this goes or how big it is."

A man stepped out into the waiting area, face tight as a drum. "The President is not dead," he said.

"We all saw it on TV."

"That was a Secret Service special agent who was killed, not the President."

"How do you know?"

"I'm the news director here and I just got it from your news director. The network is issuing a retraction and apology right about now."

"Oh, my God. They aren't mentioning my name, are they? I'm still trying to live down that last little faux pas. "

"You mean the one where you were pretending to do a live remote from the Capitol Building, except it was a color slide projected onto the wall behind you?" the cabbie asked amiably. "Or the faux pas where you did a stand-up in front of NASA headquarters and they put up a slide of Nassau in the Bahamas?"

"I was tricked into doing both of those against my better judgment," Pepsie snapped.

"Your better judgment," the news director said, "has given ANC a black eye and caused the stock market to drop one hundred sixty points in three minutes. They had to halt trading. The currency markets are in an uproar. It was looking pretty grim until Air Force One issued their official denial."

"Are we sure the President is still alive?" Pepsie demanded.

"He hasn't gone on the air yet."

"It could be part of the cover-up."

The news director accepted a cellular phone handset from a secretary, spoke into it briefly, then tossed it to Pepsie.

"Tell it to your news director. And then clear out of my building."

"Greg? I can explain," Pepsie said into the handset.

But Greg wasn't in the mood for hearing explanations. He swore a continuous blue streak until Pepsie stopped wincing and just hung her head in shame.

When he was through with his tirade, Pepsie said, "I think I can redeem us a little. Maybe."

"How?"

"I have hard evidence that the rifle used to shoot the President-I mean the Secret Service agent-is the same one that killed Kennedy. Jack, not Robert."

"Don't screw with me, Pepsie. You're on thin ice as it is."

"It's true. I have it on tape. Listen."

Pepsie rewound her minicassette and played snatches of the Secret Service radio exchange into the cellular handset.

"Who's that explaining everything to you?" the news director asked.

"My cab driver."

"You're depending on the memory of a fucking cab driver for your fact checking?" the news director roared.

"I resent that remark," the cabbie said. "I happen to be an amateur conspiratologist. "

"Look," Pepsie said, clapping a hand over her free ear, "if it's the same rifle, this could be big. We've got to go on the air with it."

"I'm going on the air with nothing! You get your ass back to Washington, and we'll sort it out later. In the meantime, I have an unscheduled appointment in the network president's woodshed. And you have one in mine. "

The phone went click in Pepsie's ear.

"Take me to the airport," Pepsie told the cabbie dispiritedly. "And don't be in such a rush."

On the way out, the cabbie was saying, "I don't suppose I could talk you into letting me accompany you to D.C.? I got a lot to offer and I'm sick of contending with these maniac Boston drivers ...."

Chapter 10

The airline reservations agent was unapologetic.

"We have no adjoining seats in coach and none in first class at all."

"But I'm Pepsie Dobbins. Bump someone."

The agent remained unmoved. "The flight has boarded. Would you prefer to wait for the next flight."

"I'd love to," Pepsie muttered. "But I have to be in Washington."

"Do you have a preference-12-A or 31-E?"

"Just give them both to me," Pepsie said. "Since when does the ANC News Washington correspondents get so little respect?" she fumed.

"Since she screwed up royally," suggested the cabbie.

"You watch your mouth. You're along for the ride only as long as you pull your own weight."

"Happy to oblige," said the cabbie, accepting his boarding pass from Pepsie.

"What about me?" asked the ANC News cameraman, who stood a little off to one side, his hands dangling uncomfortably as if he didn't know what to do with them when not packing around the chief tool of his trade.

"Walk," said Pepsie. "And next time hold on to your camera."

ON BOARD, Pepsie found a little mummy of an Asian man sitting in 12-A. A lavender kimono covered his pipe-stem body. He was as bald as an egg except for some snowy cloud puffs over each ear. A wisp of smoke too vaporous to be called a true beard hung off his wrinkled chin. He stared out the window with narrow eyes that were hazel in the reflected glass.

Pepsie bent over and asked, "Would you mind trading seats with my friend?"

"Yes, I would mind," said the old Asian in a squeaky voice. He did not look away from the window.

"But I need to sit with my friend."

"Then sit on his lap. Just do not bother me."

"But I'm Pepsie Dobbins."

"And I am the Master of Sinanju."

Pepsie blinked. "I guess he won't budge," she told the cabbie.

"You are very astute," said the Master of Sinanju. "For a mere female."

Reluctantly Pepsie took her seat next to the little wisp of a man, and the cabbie went to the back of the plane. Within a few minutes the jet was airborne.

After the Please Fasten Seat Belts light was doused, Pepsie turned to the old Asian and complained, "It wouldn't have hurt you to be nice to me."

"I do not see you being nice to me."

"But I'm an important network correspondent."

The face of the old Asian gathered its wrinkles together like parchment taking on water. "Pah! I am even more important than you."

"How so?"

"I am the resolute guardian of the throne of America."

"That's nice," said Pepsie in a thin voice, instantly dismissing the old man as senile.

The old Asian lapsed into silence.

"Of course," the old man added after a long pause, "it is a state secret."

Not looking up from her copy of People, Pepsie murmured, "What is?"

"The fact that I serve the true ruler of America in a secret capacity. Do not tell anyone."

"I won't."

"It is a thankless task."

"I'm sure it is."

"Especially thankless since I am reduced to protecting the puppet President and not Emperor Smith."

Pepsie shook off her disinterest. "Puppet President?"

"He is a sham. Though few know it."

"I'm sure," Pepsie said vaguely.

"Your entire government is a sham. A sham and a farce."

"But never dull."

"But this is what an assassin is reduced to in these odious times."

"Excuse me. Did you say 'assassin'?"

The old Asian placed a thin finger like a yellowed mummy bone to his papery lips. "Secret assassin."

"You're an assassin?"

"Secret."

"This is very interesting," said Pepsie, surreptitiously reaching into her purse and squeezing the Record button on her minicassette recorder.

"Of course, I cannot speak about it. Tongues would wag-"

"They always do. But just between you and I, you didn't have anything to do with what happened here today?"

"The disgrace?"

"Yeah. The disgrace."

"It was a base act. To use a boom stick and strike down a member of the palace guard and not the proper target."

"You think it's bad they got the wrong guy?"

"It is a disgrace. A proper assassin dispatches his target and no other. And he does this without resorting to smoke and thunder."

"So if it were you, the President would have been killed?"

"If it were I," the old man said, "the puppet would not only have expired, but have expired in a way that no one would ever suspect fool play."

"You mean foul play."

"A chicken would be insulted by what happened this day."

"Really?"

"Truly." The old man lapsed into another long silence. His quick hazel eyes went continually to the gleaming aluminum wing just below the window.

"We are past the point of danger," he said after a while.

"You mean the country?"

"No. I mean this conveyance. The wing has not fallen off. Typically this only happens in the first ten minutes. If it has not fallen off now, it is unlikely to do so until we are again on the ground. By then, it does not matter if the wing falls off or not."

"Back to the puppet President," Pepsie said quickly. "If he's a puppet, who pulls his strings?"

"Emperor Smith. It is he who truly rules this land and who, for stubborn reasons I cannot understand, allows the fallacy of democracy to lurch on unchecked."

"You mean, like voting?"

"Another sham."

"I've never voted."

"You show uncommon wisdom."

"Do you think Smith has anything to do with the attempts on the President's life?"

"No. It is Smith who has ordered me to Washington to protect the puppet from those who covet his life. I do not understand this. Smith has ignored all my entreaties to snuff the puppet and set him on the Eagle Throne."

"You mean the Oval Office?"

"I mean what I mean. It matters not where the emperor places his throne, only that he sits upon it with firmness."

"You want the President dead?"

"It will bring stability to this land of mass confusion. Every four years it is the same circus. Many vie for the puppet throne, and each time the prettiest face and the loudest voice triumphs. Seldom has a true ruler won the contest."

"Name one who did."

"Milhous the Trusted. He was a true leader. Cold. Ruthless. Calculating. The years when he was puppet were good ones, relatively."

"What did you say your name was?"

"I did not say," the old man sniffed. "But I am called Chiun. Remember the name well. Just do not repeat it to anyone."

"My lips are sealed," Pepsie said, surreptitiously shutting off the tape recorder.

Chapter 11

The Washington press corps had already staked out Andrews Air Base when Air Force One touched down on barking tires.

Secret Service Special Agent Vince Capezzi spotted them as the lumbering 747 swung off the runway, trundling toward the waiting black-and-olive-green helicopter that, like others designated for the Chief Executive's official use, was called Marine One whenever the President himself stepped aboard.

"We got press in large numbers," he barked into his hand mike. "Inform the pilot to park her in the hangar. We'll take the Man off inside."

"Roger."

Turbines spooling down, the Presidential plane veered toward a waiting hangar. Seeing the course change, the Washington press corps surged toward the hangar.

"Wonderful. They're going to try to beat us to the hangar."

"I'd better put this to the President," said Capezzi, lifting himself out of his seat in the Secret Service cubicle.

He moved through the narrow blue corridors and encountered the chief of staff.

"We have press," Capezzi said grimly.

"Good."

"Good? We've got to get the Man to Crown as fast as possible."

"It's the White House. Call it the White House when you talk to me. All these dipshit code names drive me crazy."

"Until we've ascertained that there is no conspiracy, the President belongs in a secure place."

"He has a health-care plan to push. He's pretty steamed you pulled him out of Boston."

"I didn't notice your vociferous objection."

The chief of staff shrugged. "You know how it goes."

"Yeah, I know how it goes. Whenever the President has to change his schedule, the service is trotted out as scapegoat. But this time the threat was real."

"Look, I'm going to recommend the President speak briefly to the press."

"It's a risk."

"It would have to be a pretty big conspiracy to have agents in Boston and Washington," the chief of staff pointed out.

"It's not impossible. And I object to any Presidential appearance in the strongest possible terms."

"He's still the President. He makes these decisions. But I'll relay to him your concerns."

"Like hell you will. I'm going in there with you. I won't lose this President to staff politics."

"Fine," the chief of staff said stiffly. "We'll both go see the President."

"Don't bother," the hoarse voice of the President of the United States said. "I heard everything."

The President appeared behind them, looking grim.

The chief of staff spoke up quickly. "Mr. President, now would be an excellent time to assure the nation that you are alive and in control of the reins of power."

"You mean word hasn't gotten out yet?" Capezzi said.

The chief of staff smiled tightly. "We thought it would endanger the President's security if word were released prematurely."

Buttoning a fresh jacket and smoothing his replacement tie, the President said, "I'll address the press when I step off the plane. Have the air stairs rolled into place and make the usual security arrangements."

"Damn," Capezzi said, turning on his heel to do his thankless duty.

Air Force One was braked short of the hangar. The Washington press corps uncertainly stopped its mass stampede and looked indecisive.

There was a runway staircase mounted on a waiting truck and it started up, moving into position. Once the bumpers touched the hull on either side of the main exit door, the door was thrown open and Secret service agents, clutching MAC-11s, rattled down the red-carpeted steps and began going among the press contingent, demanding to see plastic press IDs and frisking unfamiliar reporters with metal-detecting wands.

"Okay," one barked into his wrist mike. "All clear."

"Roger. We're moving him down from Angel One now."

The President emerged, flanked by two agents whose immobile faces rotated back and forth with metronomic regularity.

The President lifted one hand, and gasps floated up from the assembled press.

Walking steadily, the President descended to the bottom of the steps and stopped before a portable podium that had been hastily set in place.

"I would like to make a statement," he began in a somber voice.

"Who are you?" a reporter blurted.

"Looks like the President," a second reporter said.

"But he's supposed to be dead," a third said.

The President ignored the outburst and pressed on. "As you all know, earlier today there was an incident where a shot was fired at the Presidential limousine."

"Mr. President," a reporter asked, waving. "A question, please."

The President ignored him. He opened his mouth to continue his statement.

"Mr. President, why aren't you dead?" the reporter interrupted.

The President looked up to see who had spoken. It was a former White House correspondent famous for his rude questions and bad hairpieces. He was wearing a serious expression despite the utter ridiculousness of his shouted question.

"You are the President of the United States, aren't you?" he added pointedly. "I mean, you're not a double or ringer brought in to calm the nation?"

"You know better than that," the President snapped, dispensing with his address.

"But, sir, with all due respect, how do we know you are indeed the President?"

"Because I just stepped off Air Force One wearing the President's well-known face," the President said, swallowing a bitter "you moron."

"I mean no disrespect, Mr. President, but the networks have reported your death. In fact, they have film. And it clearly shows your head being blown apart in living color."

"That was not me but a Secret Service agent who looks a little like me."

"In other words, a double?" the former White House correspondent said quickly.

"A decoy," the President snapped back. "Not a double."

"Can you prove that you're the real double and not the dead double?"

The President jerked an angry thumb over his shoulder at Air Force One. "His brave body is in the process of being unloaded," he said tightly.

"When will we be allowed to film the corpse?"

"You wouldn't be able to broadcast the film. Trust me."

"We telecast the film of you having your head blown apart," a woman reporter corrected. "Semilive."

"That wasn't me," the President snapped.

"We haven't fully established this yet," another reporter pointed out in a tone more reasonable than the comment itself.

"Look at me!" the President exploded. "I am the President of the United States. I am standing here in my own flesh speaking in my own voice. What is so darn hard to understand?"

"Do you have a comment on Watergate-I mean Whitewash? Whatever it's called now. You know, the scandal thing."

"I'd rather talk about health-care reform."

"Yeah, that's him," the former White House reporter with the silly hairpiece said.

The President continued his statement. "I would just like to assure the American people that, despite this tragedy, the governing of this nation will go on uninterrupted. And I would also like to express my sincere condolences to the family of the slain agent. Thank you."

"You said there would be questions," a reporter complained.

"I've answered all the questions I intend to answer," the President snapped.

"Does that mean you don't know the answers?"

"Just one more," the President said wearily.

"Don't do it, Mr. President," the chief of staff whispered.

Too late, the President pointed to the person who had spoken.

"Will the Vice President take over your duties during the period of uncertainty over your identity?"

"There's is no uncertainty! I know who I am. And the American people know who I am!"

"Is that a yes or a no?" asked one reporter.

"That will be all. That will be all," the chief of staff said, leading the fuming President away from the podium.

"Hey, that will make a great instant-poll question," another piped up. "Let's let the American public decide."

An armored limousine slithered under the shadow of Air Force One and the President was pushed into it for the sixty-yard trip to Marine One, which was whining into life.

Agents surrounded the President when he emerged, forming a moving diamond around him. He was jostled up the stairs like a convicted felon being hustled off to court.

When Marine One lifted into the air, Secret Service Special Agent Mince Capezzi breathed a long, whistling sigh of relief.

Once they reached Crown, the President would be safe.

Chapter 12

The network news vans and satellite trucks had been parked on the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue before the White House for over an hour now, their microwave dishes pointed in all directions. Cameramen were perched on the van roofs, panning tripod-mounted video cameras back and forth.

Roving news crews prowled the perimeter fence, blocked from entering by uniformed Secret Service agents.

"We need a statement from the First Lady," a reporter called over the fence.

"The First Lady isn't making any statements right now."

"She's gotta make a statement. She's the new Jackie Kennedy. She owes it to the nation to share her pain with ordinary citizens."

The Secret Service agent bit his lips. The word from the West Wing was to stonewall the press until an official statement was put out.

"Sorry," he said.

Frustrated, reporters descended on citizens and tourists who were gathering on Pennsylvania Avenue, weeping and stunned.

"What does the Presidential loss mean to you personally?"

"Where were you when you heard the news?"

"I need a shot of someone crying," a reporter called out. "If you've got tears in your eyes, raise your hand and I'll put you on the BCN Evening News. "

No one raised their hand. But someone threw a rock. It bounced off the reporter's skull, and for the next ten minutes he became the story as cameras closed in on him lying on the pavement, bleeding from a gash over one eye, saying, "Help me. Someone help me."

"Sorry," he was told by his colleagues, "you're news now. We can't help you."

"Can't you bleed a little more?" another colleague requested. "This is kinda dull. How about a nice painful groan?"

NO ONE NOTICED the panhandler arrive in a metallic blue Porsche.

The panhandler stepped from the Porsche after parking it near the Treasury Building, one block east of the White House. He was wearing a shabby tan trench coat and a black acrylic baseball cap with the letters CIA stamped on the front. His aviator-style sunglasses were taped together with duct tape on the bridge and stems.

He shuffled toward the east White House fence, making no effort to solicit spare change from the gathering crowd.

There was a Secret Service special agent stationed under a spreading magnolia tree, and while his attention was elsewhere, the panhandler suddenly knelt and pulled a black-and-white cat from under his trench coat. He shoved the complaining feline through the fence, saying, "Scat!"

Secret Service Special Agent Clyde Norman caught the motion out of the corner of his eye.

"Hey!" he yelled at the kneeling panhandler. "Get away from that cat!"

The panhandler abruptly straightened up. "I was just petting it," he said defensively.

Trotting down to the fence, Norman lifted his left hand to his mouth. "Flea Dip is loose again."

"Who the hell is Flea Dip?" a voice called back.

"First Cat."

"Oh, right. Just take it slow, Norman. He's very mellow for a cat."

"Must have inhaled," Norman said, slowing up when he realized the black-and-white tabby wasn't disposed to run away.

He looked mellow, all right. In fact, he looked somewhat on the stoned side.

"Here, Socks. Come, boy. Or girl. Or whatever you are."

The cat swung its piebald head around, fixing Norman with dull yellow eyes. It wore a red leather collar.

Norman sank to one knee. The panhandler had already moved on.

"Come here, Socks. Come on."

The cat simply sat there, looking absolutely zoned out.

"What are you, deaf?"

Norman got up, taking care to make no sudden moves. Still crouching, he inched toward the cat.

Just as Norman was about to scoop him up, the cat gave an unexpected leap, sailing over his shoulder, and bounded along on paws like soft white fur boots.

"Damn!" Norman got up, whirling.

"Norman to Base. Flea Dip is coming your way. Repeat, Flea Dip is coming your way."

"Roger."

SECRET SERVICE Special Agent Dick Armbruster was standing post on the breezeway between the Oval Office and the family quarters of the White House when he received the transmission.

"Damn that moron cat," he grumbled, stepping onto the lawn.

More often than not he got stuck with feline protection, as the service had dubbed it in its limitless bureaucratic hightestosterone style. Feline protection ran the gamut from hauling the little fur ball down from Andrew Jackson's magnolia tree to the joys of the weekly flea dip.

It was Armbruster who had coined the First Cat's code name, Flea Dip-a coining scrupulously kept from Ballbuster and Braces, or the First Lady and First Daughter in service code.

Armbruster was coming around a corner when he heard a faint hissing. "Aural contact with Flea Dip on north side."

"Roger. Approach with caution, Armbruster."

"Roger," said Armbruster, thinking they make it sound as if they were stalking a wild animal.

The hissing was still audible as Armbruster turned the corner and came upon the First Cat diligently licking its fuzzy butt.

Armbruster froze, his agent's instincts kicking in. The cat was licking itself steadily. Yet there was a protracted hissing coming from the cat itself.

As he knelt to observe more closely, Agent Armbruster thought he saw a fine mist rise from the feline's red leather collar.

The cat seemed to sense something was wrong, too. It began to sniff itself with delicate curiosity.

Not for the first time, Armbruster thought it was one hell of an ugly cat. Its face mask was a mottling of black-andwhite patches without symmetry or beauty.

Blithely unaware of its ugliness, the First Cat continued sniffing itself.

Armbruster reached out a tentative hand. Usually the First Cat would come to him, dumb-ass feline that it was.

"Here, brain dead."

Without warning, the cat gathered itself up on stretching legs and arched its back. Hackles rising with porcupine suddenness, the First Cat opened its mouth and hissed. This was a different hiss than the earlier sound, deeper, more threatening.

"Come on, Socks. Don't bust my chops. You know me."

Armbruster knew the best way to soothe a nervous cat-at least this nervous one-was to let it sniff his loose, unthreatening fingers. He let his fingers go limp and pushed them toward the hissing feline.

"Have a good sniff," he said soothingly The cat growled like a junkyard dog.

Armbruster pulled back slightly. "Whoa, there, tiger. What's your problem?"

The cat straightened its ebony back, and Armbruster approached again.

In his ear the radio voice of the assistant detail head asked, "What's keeping you with that fool cat, Armbruster?"

"Hold your horses," Armbruster barked. "I'm closing in for the kill."

And the cat pounced.

THE ASSISTANT HEAD of the White House detail was named Jack Murtha and he had just received word that Marine One was about to land.

"We're going to need as many agents as we can scrounge up to meet Big Mac. "

"Roger," Murtha said, and then into his mike he asked, "Murtha to Armbruster. What's keeping you with that fool cat?"

Back came a testy and unprofessional "Hold your horses."

Then his earphone filled with a hissing, spitting, snarling ball of sound, and Armbruster was screaming in a high, frightened voice, "Backup! I need backup! Rose Garden!"

"All available agents! Rose Garden. Armbruster in trouble."

As he ran, Murtha wondered what the hell was going on. It sounded as if Armbruster had gotten himself tangled up in the mother of all cat fights.

They found Special Agent Dick Armbruster sprawled in the Rose Garden, his face striated with streaks of red and his right hand in ribbons.

"There he goes, the bastard," Armbruster shouted, pointing with a shredded index finger.

Everyone looked where he pointed.

"There who goes?"

"That damn killer cat. It jumped me. Look what it did to my hand."

"What'd you do, kick it?"

"I never touched it. It attacked me. Christ, it was a damn cougar."

"Get that cat," Murtha said. "Two of you, stay with me. We'll get him inside before the press or the President sees this mess."

Jack Murtha was overseeing the moving of the injured agent when the sound of wildcats came in stereo. In the earpiece and just around the corner.

"Ahh!" an agent screamed.

"That sounds like Reynolds."

"It's that cat. It must be rabid," Armbruster said.

"You sure?"

"You know that cat. Mellow as pipe smoke. Look what it did. It's not itself."

"Damn," Murtha said, lifting his wrist mike on the run. "All agents. Possible rabid cat moving toward South Lawn. All available agents pursue and surround. Use extreme caution."

The wildcat sounds stopped suddenly, and when Murtha, two special agents in tow, reached the place where they heard the sound, they found the two agents squirming on the grass.

"Reynolds! What happened?"

Reynolds looked up with pleading eyes. He was clutching his throat with both hands. Blood was dripping through the cracks in his fingers, and when Murtha yanked them away, he saw exposed trachea.

Reynolds gave out a choking gurgle, and his eyes rolled up in his head.

The other special agent was sitting, holding his left eye cupped in one hand.

"I think it got my eye."

"Damn, what's got into that cat?" Into his hand mike, he barked, "Report on Flea Dip."

"Burton here. Vonier and I have that tick-bait cat in sight."

"Use extreme caution. Do not attempt to apprehend without assistance."

"The cat?"

"Yes, the fucking cat. Surround but do not approach."

"Roger," Burton said in a dubious tone.

FULLY SEVEN trained special agents converged on the South Lawn where Marine One was due to arrive shortly.

Socks the First Cat was pacing in increasingly smaller circles as it became aware of the closing net of frightened humans.

"We'll close the circle and keep it contained until Marine One sets down," Murtha said, whispering into his hand mike so as not to spook the First Cat.

A chorus of "Rogers" filtered back.

"Anybody notice if it's foaming at the mouth?"

"Negative. No foam."

"No foam from this side."

The cat continued pacing, arching its back often.

"It's not acting like Socks at all."

"When they contract rabies, they lose their minds," Murtha said grimly.

"It does have that stupid look rabid animals get."

"You ask me, that fool cat was born looking stupid."

The circle continued closing. Socks walked in tighter and tighter circles, starting in one direction and retreating when it realized there was no loophole in the circle of polished cordovans.

The distinctive echoing rattle of Marine One came at the worst possible time.

The First Cat gathered itself up.

"Okay," Murtha said urgently. "Just everybody hold your ground. It's too well fed to jump very high."

In that, Jack Murtha was wrong. From a standing start, Socks jumped straight backward. Everyone expected a forward leap. So the agents behind the First Cat were caught by surprise.

The cat hopped backward like a bullfrog to land between Jack Murtha's legs.

"Mother-" he said, reaching down to grab the cat by the neck in both hands. Maybe he could immobilize it by cutting off its oxygen. He had been taught that hold at the service's training center at Beltsville.

Jack Murtha wrapped all ten fingers around the cat and lifted. It was an adaptation of his training and looked good in theory.

In practice it was a disaster.

The cat squirmed, clawing, and its rear claws raked his wrists and hands. It was like trying to hold on to a threshing python. Its strength was incredible.

Marine One settled closer. He could feel the hair at his neck stir under the fierce prop wash.

"Give me a hand!" he cursed.

But it was too late. Frenzied claws forced him to let go.

The First Cat sprinted off, tail curled high, a halfdozen Secret Service special agents in hot pursuit.

"Damn it! Don't let it get near the President," Murtha said, holding up the ribbons that were now his wrists. "Shoot it if you have to, but don't let that the little fucker get near Big Mac!"

THE PRESIDENT of the United States looked out the window of Marine One as the great expanse of the South Lawn came into view.

He saw a knot of Secret Service special agents pounding toward the landing pad.

"Don't you think they're overdoing it?" he asked his Secret Service bodyguard.

"Until a conspiracy is proven or disproven, there is no such concept as overdoing it, sir," said Vincent Capezzi.

"That, I plan to take up with your superior."

"I understand he's en route to the White House, Mr. President," Capezzi said as the big helicopter touched ground. He unbuckled and leapt from his seat to open the door for the Chief Executive.

The President of the United States emerged from Marine One to see a frantic clot of agents pounding toward him. Leading the group, as if in welcome, was Socks the family cat.

Despite his bad mood, the President let a smile come to his puffy face. "Now, isn't that just the cutest thing you ever did see?"

"What is?"

"Socks. Looks kinda like he's leading the Secret Service."

Vince Capezzi turned and saw the look on the faces of his fellow agents. Their shouting blended into a hoarse burst of sound.

Reaching for his belt, he turned on his radio.

Through the earphone came a blur of frantic shouting.

"Shoot him!"

"Shoot the fucker!"

Capezzi spotted the guns in his fellow agents hands and jumped to a reasonable conclusion.

There was no one between the frantic special agents and the President but himself and the family cat. They obviously weren't out to shoot the cat. They must mean either the President or himself.

Either way, Vince Capezzi's duty was clear.

Throwing the President of the United States to the grass at the foot of the blue-carpeted fold-down helicopter steps, Capezzi snapped his MAC-11 from its whip-it shoulder sling, simultaneously throwing himself across the President's bulky form, and prepared to mow down his fellow agents and ask questions later.

He just hoped a stray round didn't catch the First Cat. Ballbuster would kill him.

Chapter 13

Capitol Hill police cruisers and sawhorses had blocked all approach roads to the White House, so the taxi driver turned to Remo Williams and said, "This is as far as I can take you."

"Thanks," said Remo, throwing the cabbie a twenty and stepping out of the car.

Marine One was coming down at a shallow angle toward the the dull green expanse of the South Lawn, so Remo figured matters were reasonably well in hand.

The burst of gunfire brought him from a standing position to a floating run that was deceptively fast.

Remo went over the White House fence and flashed over the ground so fast his feet never tripped the seismic sensors buried under the turf.

There were no guards to stop him as he whipped toward the South Lawn. Not that any guard would have been fast enough to react.

Remo's senses were trained to absorb and analyze dangerous situations in a split second. A microsecond was sometimes all he had to dodge a bullet or evade other forms of sudden death.

Coming around the corner, Remo saw a clot of Secret Service agents dropping into firing positions.

The weapons were pointed toward Marine One. At the foot of the fold-down blue-carpeted steps whose risers were emblazoned with the words, Welcome Aboard Marine One, a lone agent was sprawled over the President of the United States and was shooting short bursts over the heads of the others, crying, "Lay down your arms! Goddamn it, lay down your arms!"

Confusion marked the faces of the crouching agents. Some hesitated. Others were throwing up their hands in surrender.

And in between, a black-and-white cat crouched in fear, ears laid back, not knowing which way to go.

For once Remo's training was not equal to processing the information his brain was receiving.

He flashed among the crouching agents and began relieving hands of weapons. Slap. Slap. Slap.

He used restrained force. Still, a few fingers got broken. But every visible weapon went bounding along the grass, clips and bullets popping out.

Remo started sweeping around for another pass when the agent spread-eagled over the President paused, holding his fire.

He had seen Remo. He was the only one who had. He adjusted his weapon, trying to track him. Remo feinted, moved backward and managed to keep the muzzle pointing every place except where he was.

During the lull, the First Cat ran toward the nearest shelter. Marine One.

An agent hollered, "The cat! Stop the cat! It's rabid!"

In the act of weaving, Remo shot forward.

He came up behind the cat, reaching out to grab its tail.

The cat felt the hand and curled its spine, claws unsheathing. It was like taking hold of a live high-voltage wire, Remo found. Hissing and spitting, the cat squirmed and struggled and went for Remo's throat.

Remo simply spun in place and gave the cat a kaleidoscopic 360-degree view of the White House grounds.

When he finally dropped it, the cat wove dizzily on its feet and staggered three steps.

A bullet caught it in the flank, and it flopped over dead.

"What'd you do that for?" Remo snapped as trotting Secret Service agents approached.

"It was rabid."

"I had it under control. That was someone's cat."

"Who the hell are you?"

Remo pulled out his wallet and showed his Remo Eastwood Secret Service ID card and gold badge.

"You're with us?" the agent asked skeptically.

"Yeah."

"Dressed like that?"

"I'm undercover."

"Where are your sunglasses?"

"If I wore sunglasses in December," Remo said acidly, "I might as well carry a sign saying, Pay No Attention to Me. I'm an Undercover Secret Service Agent."

"Then what are you doing here without a White House pass?"

"Maybe you should disentangle the President before you throw your weight around," Remo suggested.

The agent looked past Remo's shoulder.

The President of the United States lay under a pile of three Secret Service agents. Two more had poured out of Marine One after the shooting began.

A muffled "Get off me" was coming from under the pile.

"It's okay," Secret Service Special Agent Dick Armbruster said.

"It's not okay until I know what went down," Capezzi said from somewhere within the pile.

"The Presidential cat is rabid. It tore up a bunch of agents. We were trying to stop it from attacking Big Mac."

"Did somebody say something about Socks?" an anxious female voice called.

All heads turned.

It was the First Daughter. She was peering around one of the Ionic columns strung along the White House breezeway, her face as white as the column she clutched. Sunlight glinted off her braces.

"I'm afraid we have bad news about Socks," Armbruster said.

"But he's right here," said the First Daughter.

And from behind the column, a familiar black-and-white mottled face peered with dull yellow eyes.

"If that's the First Cat," Vince Capezzi said, pointing toward the cat sitting at the feet of the First Daughter, "who the hell is this?"

The dead cat on the grass just lay there, dead.

"Somebody has some tall explaining to do," the angry voice of the President of the United States said from under a pile of protective agents.

"All right, all right," Jack Murtha called out. "Everybody on their feet."

"Hey, where is that guy Eastwood?"

Everyone looked for Secret Service Special Agent Remo Eastwood. But he was nowhere to be found.

THE PRESIDENT of the United States didn't know whom to trust.

It was written on his face as his Secret Service agents picked him up off the grass at the foot of Marine One's fold-down steps.

"We're going to walk you to the Oval Office, sir," Vince Capezzi said.

"What's going on?" the President asked, shaky voiced.

"I wish to God I knew," said Capezzi.

Capezzi called for a box-there were three basic protective formations used to protect a moving President, the box, diamond and circle. Capezzi called for all agents to assemble in four enclosed lines around the Man, their handguns held at the ready.

It was a short dash up the path to the Oval Office, which faced the South Lawn, and they moved to it with urgent speed. It was the longest short dash Vince Capezzi ever experienced.

"Daddy, Daddy," called the First Daughter, coming running, the First Cat bounding along on its snow white paws.

Jack Murtha dropped to one knee, trained his shaking Delta Elite automatic on the First Cat and shouted, "Get that cat out of the way!"

The President's daughter went bone white. She gathered up the cat, shrinking back from the angry finger pointing at her.

"Daddy, what's going on?" she moaned.

"What are you doing?" the President demanded, pulling Murtha to his feet.

"Sir," Murtha said flatly. "We can take nothing on face value."

"That's my daughter, you clown!"

"Ask her a question only you and she know the answer to," Murtha said, not taking his eyes or his gun off the First Daughter.

"Where's your mother?" the President asked his daughter.

"Up-upstairs."

"Go to her. I'll be up shortly," the President urged.

"Daddy, I'm scared."

"I know," said the President, who wanted to reach out and give his daughter a hug but dared not move out of the box.

They escorted him to the latticed doors to the Oval Office, and only then did the human box of shaken agents dissolve to take take up their posts outside the doors.

The President got behind his desk and put in a call to the director of the Secret Service.

"I am glad you are all right, Mr. President," said the director.

"I am not all right," returned the President. "I just landed on the South Lawn, and a contingent of the White House detail were shooting all over the place."

"Shooting at what, sir?"

"It looked like they were shooting at me."

The director of the Secret Service was speechless. The President could almost hear him gulping for air on the other end of the line, not two blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue.

"But they claim they were trying to shoot the First Cat," the President added.

"My agents?"

"Except the cat they were shooting at wasn't the First Cat, but an exact double."

The director of the Secret Service seemed to be having trouble breathing now.

"You know what this means?" the President continued. "A conspiracy. Maybe with roots in the Presidential protective service."

"I-I'm on my way, Mr. President," said the director of the Secret Service.

"Plan on a long stay," said the President before hanging up.

The First Lady burst into Oval Office a moment later, her blond hair bouncing, her face so white her cheeks looked like smoldering coals.

"Tell me what's going on!" she hissed. "I had to practically kick those agents in the balls before they'd let me in to see you."

"I want you to take Chelsea to Camp David. It may not be safe here."

"I'll do nothing of the kind."

The President looked at his wife, saw the sparks in her blue eyes and knew that all of Congress hitched together like a team of horses could not drag the First Lady to Camp David.

"I want you to do something for me," the President said.

"What's that?"

"Go through the incoming White House E-mail. Look for a message from Smith."

"Not that Smith?"

"Yes, that Smith. If you find one, bring it right here."

"First I want to know who Smith is."

"Sorry. National-security secret. You have no need to know."

"My foot! I'm the-"

"-wife of the President. Nobody elected you. Now get going. Unless you yearn to be the Jackie Kennedy of the nineties."

The First Lady turned even more pale, then turned on her heel and stormed out of the Oval Office.

After she was gone, the President went to the somber privacy of the Lincoln Bedroom and opened a drawer in an antique rosewood bed stand.

The red telephone without a dial sat where it had since the days of the President who had inspired him to run for high office a generation ago. He picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear. There was no dial tone. But as the outgoing President had explained to him, there never was a dial tone. It was a dedicated line to a faceless man named Dr. Harold W. Smith at

CURE, the supersecret branch of government only the Chief Executive knew about.

The President waited for the phone at the other end to ring. But there was only a dead, gravelike silence on the line.

It had been like this for three months. In those three months the Chief Executive had heard nothing from Smith. He had no idea where CURE was located. There was no other way to reach Smith, and since the last crisis in which Smith had gotten word to the White House by E-mail, there had been no further communication. But then there had been no further crises, either.

The President replaced the red receiver. It had been a wild stab in the dark to contact Smith this way. He wondered if the man had died.

As he returned to the Oval Office, he decided that the President who had set up CURE in the first place must have made provisions for the agency to continue in the event Smith passed on. Otherwise, without CURE, American democracy might pass from the world forever.

The First lady was waiting in the Oval Office when the President reached it. She was wearing that frustrated impatient look of hers.

"No word?" he asked.

"None. And I'd like to know who Smith is and what Cure is."

The President winced. When Smith had contacted him that last time, the E-mail address had been smith@cure.com. There was no such mailbox address, they discovered, and so no way to reply.

"Some day you'll know."

"When?"

"Not when. If."

"If what?" pressed the First Lady.

"If," said the President, dropping heavily into the chair behind the desk where so many Presidents before him had toiled, "you ever become President yourself."

"Don't think it couldn't happen," the First Lady flared.

"Not for a moment," said the President, smiling.

The First Lady relaxed slightly.

"I want you to do something important for me," the President said.

"What?"

The President lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Fetch me a couple of things."

The First Lady approached the executive desk and put one ear to the President's mouth.

When the President explained his needs, the First Lady frowned, then blurted, "What do you need those for?"

"Because," said the President, "I'm going jogging."

"Are you insane?" the First Lady shrieked.

"No, just scared out of my skin," admitted the President of the United States in no uncertain terms.

Chapter 14

At a pay phone on Virginia Avenue, Remo Williams phoned Harold W. Smith at Folcroft Sanitarium.

"Smitty. Did you hear? The President's still alive."

"Yes. It is a great relief."

"Well, don't relax yet. Something weird's going on down here."

"What is it? Where are you, Remo?"

"D.C. I just got back from the White House."

"You should be protecting the President."

"Scratch that plan. I just pulled his fat out of the fire in front of his personal Secret Service guards. I've been made."

"Pulled his fat out of the fire? What do you mean?"

"Just as I was pulling up, he was stepping off Marine One. No sooner does he do that than the Secret Service starts to draw down on him."

Horror made Smith's voice wobble. "His own agents?"

"No, not the guys in the chopper. The ones patrolling the White House grounds. It looked like they were going to slaughter one another until I stepped in and grabbed the cat."

"What cat?"

"The First Cat. What's his name? Puss? Boots?"

"Socks," said Smith.

"Except it wasn't Socks, because Socks showed up later."

"Why would the Secret Service be shooting at a stray cat?"

"I don't think it was a stray. It was a dead ringer for the real Socks."

"How can you be sure?"

"If you ever looked Socks in the puss, you'd be sure. That is one ugly kitty cat."

Smith made a strange noise, and when he got his throat cleared he asked, "Remo, please begin at the beginning."

"Let me finish up my story before I go back to square one. I moved in and grabbed the cat. Let me tell you, it was strong. Or thought it was. The agents swore it was rabid. But I don't think it was. It was just an upset cat. Once I defused the situation, everything seemed to get back to normal. I flashed my Secret Service ID and, while the pieces were being picked up, I got out of there."

Smith said nothing for a long time.

"The Secret Service is extremely well trained," he mused.

"Not these guys. They were having conniption fits over a stray cat."

"It is entirely too coincidental that a cat exactly resembling Socks should appear on the White House grounds creating such a disturbance."

"I hate it when you're right," Remo said glumly.

"Remo, Chiun should be arriving at Washington National any minute now. Rendezvous with him, then call me."

"What are you going to do in the meantime?" wondered Remo.

"Dedicate my computers to the problem. Something is going on, and there is insufficient information to make out what."

"While you're at it," said Remo, "don't forget to keep looking for my parents." He was about to hang up when an unexpected sight came trotting around the corner on fourteen legs.

It was the President of the United States, jogging amid a loose circle of very white-faced Secret Service agents. Everyone was wearing running shorts and sweats.

Except the President. He was wearing a T-shirt too thin to protect him from the late-December chill, mild as it was. And a green baseball cap.

Remo read the legend on the cap and, as the President approached, his pasty legs jiggling like Jell-O with each step, he got a glimpse of the front of the T-shirt.

Hastily he turned his face away from the sweeping sunglass lenses of the Secret Service and said, "Smitty, you won't believe this, but the President just jogged by."

"After two assassination attempts?"

"Well, I think the President is trying to reach out to you."

"Why do you say that?" asked Smith.

"The hot line to the White House still down?"

"Yes. I've been unable to locate the break in the line."

"If you have a TV at hand, turn it on. The news guys up the block look excited enough to be broadcasting this live. They've set up a roadblock to ask the President the usual dippy questions."

"One moment, Remo."

AT HIS DESK at Folcroft, Harold W. Smith tapped a sequence on his computer keyboard. Instantly the amber glow of his computer screen went black as it shifted to receiving broadcast-quality TV signals.

Sure enough, the networks were broadcasting live footage of the Presidential jog.

"This is Fred Flowers," a reporter was saying, "coming to you live where the President of the United States, not two hours after an attempt on his life and a mysterious altercation among the Secret Service agents on the South Lawn, is calmly jogging down Constitution Avenue."

The camera zoomed in on the President's puffy face. It looked like a sponge in water. His eyes were squeezed almost shut. He did not look calm. Neither did his agents, who looked, if anything, like men marching through an unmarked minefield.

The long onyx Presidential Lincoln Continental limousine followed at an uneasy crawl.

As the President trotted up to the waiting press ambush, questions were called out.

In response, the President turned his head and gave a forced smile. To the consternation of his bodyguards, he suddenly put on speed, pulling ahead of them.

Then he turned his jogging body toward the camera and waved broadly.

Harold W. Smith read his last name on the President's thin T-shirt front and again stitched in white lettering on the front of the green baseball cap.

Smith leaned down to read the legend better, but he could not. The screen was too small.

He clapped the phone receiver to his face and asked, "Remo, what is that written on the President?"

"T-shirt or cap?" asked Remo.

"Both."

"The cap says Eat Granny Smith Apples, and the T-shirt says Smith College."

"Smith College is a women's college," Smith said tartly.

"And from the way he's eyeing that Burger Triumph hungrily," Remo said, "I don't think he's that big a fan of Granny Smith apples, either."

"He is trying to contact me," said Smith.

"Is that a good idea? Last time you talked to him, he was threatening to shut down the organization."

"I have no choice," Smith said instantly. "This is an unmistakable signal that the President wishes to meet with me."

"How are you going to arrange that?"

"I am doing it right now," said Harold Smith.

"How?"

"By electronic mail," explained Smith.

"I don't hear any clicking of keys."

"My new keyboard is keyless," reminded Smith.

"Oh, right," said Remo, watching the President jog on past. The more Remo had seen him jog on TV, the more pounds the Chief Executive seemed to gain. A moment later Remo saw the explanation. A Secret Service agent came jogging out of the Burger Triumph carrying a steaming cardboard container of jumbo fries. He handed it off to the President, who munched hungrily as he ran.

"I have just suggested that the President see a movie," Smith was saying.

"Tell him to skip the popcorn," grunted Remo.

"Excuse me."

"Never mind. Any particular movie?"

"Yes. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. "

"I don't think that's playing anymore," said Remo.

"It will play tonight," Smith said. "In the White House theater. And I expect to see it with him."