“Crap,” said Aloycius X. “Buck” Featherstone.

  “It worked, didn’t it? And Hoffa was in on it, too.”

  “Who’s Hoffa?” asked Pepsie, jerking her recorder from the front seat to the back in an effort to vacuum up every loose theory.

  “Some smart-ass Teamster boss,” muttered Buck. “They never found his body. It don’t mean nothing.”

  “If you’re saying the CIA whacked Jack to keep him from pulling out of Vietnam, you’re full of it,” the cab driver insisted. “There was no guarantee Lyndon wouldn’t have done the same thing once his fat can was in the seat.”

  “But he didn’t. That’s proof positive!”

  “One sec,” interrupted Pepsie. “Who did Lyndon shoot?”

  “Himself,” grunted Buck. “In the foot. He was the President after Jack. Got hounded out of office.”

  “Why does that keep happening?” Pepsie asked plaintively. “Why do our Presidents keep getting hounded out of office?”

  “The press,” both cab drivers said at once.

  “When I want editorializing, I’ll ask for it,” Pepsie snapped. “Now, let’s get back to hard theory.”

  “First we gotta get you that Warren Report,” said Buck.

  · · ·

  Pepsie found a set in the Washington Public Library.

  “This is the Warren Report?” she asked, staring at a long shelf of dusty leather-bound volumes.

  “That’s it.”

  “It must be very popular. They have so many copies. An entire shelf full.”

  “That’s the full set,” said Buck. “All twenty-six volumes.”

  Pepsie’s already unnaturally wide eyes became saucers. “This is all one book?”

  “Yep.”

  “I can’t read all this! What do you think I am–a print journalist?”

  “I read it all.”

  “And I have a life to lead, and this is only one story.”

  “If what we overheard is true, this isn’t just a story. It’s the story. Maybe the story of the twentieth century. If Oswald or Hidell is still alive and he’s trying to take out the President, that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt there was a conspiracy. And we’re in the perfect position to blow it wide open. You and I could be the next Woodward and Bernstein.”

  Pepsie rubbed book dust off her immaculate fingers. “I heard about them. I think my news director plays golf with one of them or something.”

  “They’re the guys who cracked Watergate wide open, which was nothing compared to this.”

  “Come on. Let’s put this to my news director.”

  · · ·

  When Pepsie Dobbins entered the ANC News building, no one said hello.

  “Looks like they’re giving you the cold shoulder,” undertoned Buck.

  “They’re probably still upset over the assassination attempt. It would unnerve anyone. And a lot of these people actually vote.”

  The news director of ANC News’s Washington bureau accosted Pepsie in the corridor, biting out his words between clenched teeth, saying, “In my office.”

  “Wait outside,” Pepsie told Buck.

  In the office Pepsie Dobbins said, “I have evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.”

  “By Lee Harvey Oswald?” the news director said dryly.

  “Well, his name might be Alek James Hidell. We’re not sure.”

  “We?”

  “My assassinologist and I.”

  “My proctologist!”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s a nice way of saying my ass. Now, do you have any reasonable explanation before I consign you to whatever local news organization will have you?”

  “You can’t fire the reporter who’s sitting on the biggest story of the century.”

  “You have nothing.”

  “Listen to this tape.”

  Pepsie produced her cassette recorder and rewound it.

  A squeaky voice began speaking when she depressed the Play button.

  “Smith has ignored all my entreaties to snuff out the puppet and set him on the Eagle Throne.”

  Pepsie’s recorded voice asked, “You want the President dead?”

  “It will bring stability–”

  “Who’s that speaking?” the ANC news director asked.

  “He said his name was Chiun. I met him on the plane. He told me the President’s a puppet and America is under the control of a man named Smith.”

  “A man you met on a plane?” the news director said.

  “Yes.”

  “And a man named Smith controls everything?”

  “Yes!”

  “And I’m supposed to let you run amok with this story?”

  “Look, I know I’m right about this. You can’t turn away the next Steinway.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy you play golf with.” Pepsie snapped her fingers anxiously. “You know. He broke the old Whitewash story. Floodgate, or whatever they called it.”

  “You mean Bernstein?”

  “Whatever, I’m him. The next him. Some day you could be playing golf with me.”

  “No sale, Pepsie. The network president told me I could keep my job as long as you lost yours.”

  “I’m telling you a man named Smith is important to this story.”

  “Do you realize how many Smiths there are in the world?”

  At that point a news writer poked his head in the door and said, “We just noticed something funny about the President when he went jogging.”

  “Can’t it wait? I’m trying to fire somebody here.”

  The news writer noticed Pepsie for the first time. “Oh! Hi, Pepsie. Good luck in your next job.”

  “Hi,” Pepsie said disconsolately.

  “What is it?”

  “The President was wearing a cap that said Eat Granny Smith Apples,” the news writer said.

  The news director pointed to Pepsie and roared, “Have you been drinking from the same water cooler as this one?”

  “And his T-shirt said Smith College.”

  The news director looked strange for a moment.

  “That’s a woman’s college, isn’t it?”

  “I went there,” Pepsie volunteered helpfully. “I never saw any guys. Unless you count dykes.”

  “Why would the President wear a Smith College shirt?”

  Pepsie started jumping an place. “Smith! Smith! Don’t you get it? It has something to do with the Smith I told you about.”

  “Who’s Smith?” the news writer asked curiously.

  “Play down that story and get out of my office,” the news director roared.

  The door slammed.

  The news director said slowly, “Pepsie, I know I’m going to regret this, but here’s the deal. You’re fired. Officially.”

  “Damn.”

  “Unofficially if you want to follow this cockeyed story of yours, go to it. But I didn’t authorize it. I don’t know anything about it. And I don’t want to hear about it unless you come up with something solid. If you do, and this is as big as it sounds, even the network president will welcome you back with open arms.”

  “Guarantee me no other reporter gets to run with the Oswald angle, and it’s a deal.”

  “Believe me, that’s between you and me. And I’m forgetting it the minute you’ve left the building.”

  “I’ll need a Minicam,” said Pepsie.

  “I’ll have one messengered to your apartment. But no cameraman.”

  “No problem. I’ll have my assassinologist carry it. All you have to do is know where to point it. It’ll be just like driving a cab.”

  The news director opened the door invitingly. “Goodbye, Pepsie. Unless you pull off a miracle.”

  “Don’t think I won’t.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Remo and Chiun were seated on the rug of their Watergate hotel room, eating take-out rice from cardboard containers and talking. Chiun’s steamer trunks were stacked on the big bed.

  Remo was saying, “I don’t want to be an assassin anymore, Little Father.”

  Chiun’s voice grew thin. “Why is this?”

  “‘Assassin’ is a bad word in this country.”

  “This is a country where vast sums of money are showered upon a starved blond singer who cannot sing simply because she makes a public spectacle of herself. It is no wonder.”

  “I would have paid Medusa not to publish that book of naked pictures of herself,” Remo admitted.

  “You are an assassin,” said Chiun. “It is not only what you do, if clumsily, but what you are. You can no more not be an assassin than you can cease to breathe correctly.”

  “And it’s the week before Christmas. It’s always a sad time of year for me.”

  “We do not celebrate Christmas,” Chiun sniffed.

  “I know.”

  “Christmas is a pagan festival started by the Romans, which was debased even further by the followers of the Nazarene, who brought ruin to the old Rome just as they will bring ruin to this new Rome called America.”

  “I’ve heard this story a thousand times before,” Remo said wearily. “Sinanju celebrates the Feast of the Pig instead.”

  Chiun made a face. “It is not called that! That is your cruel name for the beauty of the day in which certain obligated persons bestow a small offering to those who have shared wisdom with them.”

  “I like Christmas better,” Remo said dryly. “The presents flow in both directions.”

  “Pah! What good are presents flung about willy-nilly? A present should be given in gratitude, not in expectation of a gift in return. Otherwise, even the unworthy receive presents, debasing the giver, the recipient and the offering in a shameful spectacle of mutual greed, avarice and ingratitude.”

  “A good way to describe Christmas these days,” Remo grunted. “But when I was a kid, I always looked forward to Christmas. Sometimes–” his voice caught “–sometimes I used to dream that my parents would come for me at Christmas, and everything would change.”

  “Everything has changed, my son,” Chiun said in a suddenly gentle tone of voice. “You have a father. Me.”

  “I have another father out there,” Remo said sadly. “I need to find him.”

  “If you wish to make me an offering in return for all that I have bestowed upon you, Remo Williams, do not seek out your father.”

  The grave tone in Chiun’s voice made Remo eye the Master of Sinanju suspiciously.

  “Why are you so against my finding my father?” he asked.

  “It will only bring you unhappiness.”

  Remo dug a folded artist’s sketch from the pocket of the gray Brooks Brothers suit he was wearing on Smith’s instructions. He unfolded it. It showed a young woman with sad eyes and long dark hair. The face in the sketch had been drawn by a police artist from Remo’s instructions. It was a perfect likeness of the phantom woman who had appeared to him at his grave site.

  “I don’t even know her name,” he said quietly. “She’s my mother, and I don’t even know her name.”

  “She is not your mother!” Chiun spat.

  Remo looked up. “That wasn’t what you said before.”

  “I did not wish to break your heart,” Chiun said evasively. “Now, I cannot bear to see you pine so over a fragment of your imagination. I cannot conceal the truth from you.”

  “I think the truth is the last thing you want me to discover,” Remo said. “And I’d like to know why.”

  The phone rang.

  “Must be Smith,” said Remo, getting up to answer it.

  Remo had no sooner said “Hello” into the mouthpiece than a breathless, lemony voice said, “No names. You know who this is. Meet me at the logical place in twenty minutes.”

  Before Remo could say “What?” the line went dead in his ear.

  Remo slammed down the telephone, saying, “Damn it!”

  “What is wrong?” asked Chiun.

  “That was Smitty. And he’s so paranoid he said to meet him in the logical place. Then he hung up before I could ask him what the logical place is.”

  “The logical place is the logical place,” Chiun said blandly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Remo fumed.

  “It is logical because it is obvious.”

  “Well, it isn’t obvious to me.”

  “That is because you do not have a logical mind.”

  “And I suppose you do?”

  “Bring me a guide to the attractions of this latter-day Athens.”

  Remo grabbed a thick guidebook off the writing desk and laid it at Chiun’s sandaled feet, simultaneously scissoring down into a lotus position, facing him.

  “I defy you to find the logical meeting place in that,” he said.

  The Master of Sinanju frowned and brought his long nailed fingers together prayerfully. He closed his eyes. The nails touched, but his palms did not. He might have been communing with his ancestors.

  Abruptly Chiun’s eyes opened, and his hands, as if moving of their own volition, pried open the book at random. He looked down. His wide hazel eyes darted along the open pages.

  “Well?” said Remo.

  Without warning, the Master of Sinanju clapped the guidebook shut.

  “Finish your rice,” he said. “For we have less than twenty minutes to meet our emperor at the logical and obvious place.”

  Scooping the last chopstickfuls of rice into his mouth, Remo muttered, “This, I have to see.”

  · · ·

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Remo stood alongside the Master of Sinanju outside the Watergate Hotel while the doorman signaled a cab. One pulled up instantly.

  Remo opened the door and allowed the Master of Sinanju to enter. By the time he got around to the other side and got in himself, Chiun had instructed the cabbie where to go.

  “Don’t I get let in on the secret?” Remo asked Chiun as the cab sped off in the late-afternoon twilight.

  “If you had a logical mind such as mine, you would not need to be told.”

  “I have a logical mind,” Remo insisted.

  “No, you have an obvious mind. It is drawn to the obvious, never the logical.”

  “Blow it out your kazoo,” said Remo, momentarily distracted by a passing set of D-cups bouncing before a leggy brunette.

  Chiun rearranged his kimono skirts in a more artful manner and said nothing. Some truths were so obvious they required no repeating.

  When the cab drew up to an imposing stone castle on the National Mall in the heart of Washington, Remo got out and asked, “Where are we?”

  “The logical place,” said the Master of Sinanju, drifting toward the great entrance.

  Remo followed. His eyes went to the name carved deep into the facade over the massive entry.

  It said Smithsonian Institution.

  “Oh,” said Remo.

  “Is it not both logical and obvious?” asked Chiun.

  “I guess,” Remo said doubtfully. “It would have been a lot more logical to just tell me where to meet. It’s not as if this isn’t a public place.”

  “That would have been too obvious,” said Chiun, walking with his hands firmly tucked into his kimono sleeves.

  “You know,” said Remo, as they walked into the vast vault of the Smithsonian Museum, “I thought I’d broken Smitty of all this supersecrecy bullcrap years ago.”

  “A good emperor keeps his secrets. As does a good assassin.”

  “You should talk, the way you spilled your guts to Pepsie Dobbins.”

  “I merely spoke the truth. If more rabble knew that we stood beside Smith and Smith stood behind the puppet President, no rival assassin would dare to threaten either.”

  “Not in this country. We grow more nuts than Lebanon and Iran combined, and every one of them wants to take a whack at the President.”

  The Master of Sinanju looked both ways. “Which way do we go?”

  “The logical way.”

  Chiun made a wrinkled face. “There is no logical way.”

  “Maybe there’s an obvious way,” said Remo, happy to have the upper hand for a change.

  In the end they split up, Remo going one way and Chiun the other.

  Remo found himself in the section devoted to TV show memorabilia, and it made him wonder what future generations would make of the latter years of the twentieth century when a black leather jacket worn by a comic actor occupied the same weight as the Spirit of St. Louis or the Gettysburg Address.

  After making a circuit of one wing and finding no trace of Harold Smith, Remo started wondering if Chiun had been mistaken. The thought gave him a moment of quiet joy, until he realized that if it were true, finding Smith would be impossible.

  Remo found Chiun pestering a woman at an information booth.

  “I seek the emperor,” Chiun was whispering.

  Before Remo could intervene, the woman looked blank a moment and said, “You’re in the wrong building. Try the Museum of American History across the mall.”

  “Thank you,” said Chiun, who joined Remo, saying, “We are in the wrong place.”

  “I think that woman misunderstood you,” Remo started to say.

  “She understood me perfectly. I asked for the emperor, and she has directed me to another building, also called Smithsonian.”

  Remo bit his tongue and followed the Master of Sinanju out of the building. Time enough to straighten this out once Chiun found out the truth for himself.

  They went to a modern white building that resembled a Kleenex box across the mall. The sign on the front read National Museum of American History. A pylon out front explained that it was part of the Smithsonian family of museums.

  They entered and at once were confronted by a two-story pendulum methodically knocking over a series of red pegs that were arrayed in a wide circle at the outer edges of the pendulum’s scope of movement. Most of the pegs were down.

  Remo joined the crowd at the glass barrier, followed by Chiun, and read a sign that called it the Foucault pendulum.

  “Says here the pendulum’s changing swing proves the earth rotates,” Remo explained.