“Then I refuse to resign.”

  “If you cook acceptable food and the food tasters do not sicken and die, then you may be allowed to remain,” retorted Chiun.

  The White House chef pawed his tall hat off his head and started chewing off pieces of the starched fabric in rage.

  “Can I see you a minute, little Father?” Remo said.

  Chiun left the chef fighting with the garbage disposal.

  “What is it, Remo?”

  “I’m not an assassin anymore.”

  Chiun’s hazel eyes narrowed briefly. His smooth brow grew furrowed. Then the tiny wrinkles radiating from the hub of his face, his button nose, went smooth in shock.

  “You are Sinanju. You will be an assassin until the day your lazy bones lie moldering in the dirt.”

  “I’ve got a new job description.”

  “Imbecile.”

  “Don’t call me names.”

  “Is that not your new description?”

  “Don’t be like that. You’re looking at the new Remo Williams.”

  “You look like the old Remo Williams.”

  “The old Remo Williams was an assassin.”

  “And what are you?”

  “A counterassassin.”

  Chiun regarded his pupil stonily.

  “You assassinate counters?” he squeaked. “Is that like the karate dancers who break boards with their hands because boards do not fight back?”

  “No. I’m a counterassassin–as in an assassin who foils other assassins.”

  Chiun made a face. “There are no other assassins except you and I. All others are inferior and therefore not worthy of the name.”

  “I like the sound of it. Remo Williams, counterassassin.”

  “Schmuck,” said the Master of Sinanju, dredging up a word he had picked up on a Florida beach so long ago he hadn’t used it on Remo in many years. “You are a schmuck.”

  “I am not a schmuck.”

  “Counterschmuck, if the distinction pleases you.”

  “Look, I’m just trying to find myself. Okay?”

  “It is too late. I found you many years ago. You have been found and made whole by my largesse. And what do I get in return? No gifts, no gratitude, no respect. Putz.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Then do not call yourself anything other than what you are–a Sinanju assassin.”

  “I’m a counterassassin.”

  Chiun puffed out his tiny cheeks. “That is the same as saying anti-Sinanju.”

  Remo blinked. “I never thought of it like that.”

  “You never think. That is the problem. Come, I am not finished rooting out those who conspire against the puppet President.”

  “What have you uncovered so far, besides the chef?”

  “The Shrill Queen.”

  “I don’t think it’s her. The President dies, and she’s out on the street.”

  “There are ways to circumvent the line of succession. Have you noticed that the President of Vice is nowhere to be found since the events of yesterday?”

  “According to Smitty, the Vice President had been told to stay clear of the White House for the duration.”

  “Ha! The puppet suspects him.”

  “No, it’s just that things are so crazy no one wants them to be in the same place at the same time in case a bomb goes off.”

  “Who is next after him?”

  “The Speaker of the House, I think.”

  “Then he should die.”

  “Why?”

  “If he dies and the madness ceases, we will be vindicated.”

  “Better check with Smith before you do the Speaker of the House,” said Remo.

  “Where is Smith?”

  “Out investigating.”

  “The culprit skulks within these walls. It is always thus.”

  “We’ll see,” said Remo.

  · · ·

  They found Harold Smith in the Secret Service command post within the hour.

  “Who is guarding the President?” Smith asked sharply.

  “Capezzi. The President’s trying to plan his trip to Boston, and Chiun kept distracting him.”

  “I did not,” Chiun flared.

  Remo noticed Smith had two video monitors set side by side on a desk and was reviewing a tape on one.

  “Got anything?” he asked Smith.

  “I am reviewing the White House roof-camera tapes from yesterday.”

  “Looking for anything in particular?”

  Smith nodded his gray head. “For whoever inserted the fake Socks into the White House grounds.”

  Remo and Chiun watched Smith watch tape for some twenty minutes before a moving camera panned across the Pennsylvania Avenue fence and they saw the homeless man in the taped sunglasses and black baseball cap.

  He was walking along between the iron fence and the concrete bollards set in the sidewalk and linked by segments of chain to foil truck bomb attacks.

  The camera panned back and forth, losing the homeless man several times. When it swept back, it caught him kneeling at the fence. His hand came out of his shabby rain coat, and a black-and-white cat was shoved between the fence rails.

  “Hey!” Remo said. “That’s gotta be the fake Socks.”

  Smith hit the Pause button.

  The image blurred the man’s body severely. Smith advanced the tape frame by frame. Finally he got a still picture of the man’s face.

  Remo and Chiun leaned into the screen.

  “That’s a big help. All I see are sunglasses and beard stubble.”

  “On the contrary, it is a very big help,” said Smith, hitting the Play button on the adjoining machine. The second the tape rolled, he stabbed Pause.

  Smith tapped the face of a cameraman on the second tape and asked, “Would you say that this man is the same as this other man?”

  “Hard to see with all that stubble,” said Remo. “One’s wearing a Dodgers cap and the other says CI something.”

  Chiun said, “Yes, they are the same. You can tell by the jowls.”

  Remo said, “Yeah, the shape of the lower face is about the same. Kinda fatty and soft. Who is he?”

  “I do not know,” said Smith, releasing the Pause button to show the man filming the opening of the Presidential limousine door. “But observe his actions.”

  The door opened, the cameraman swung his camera away and pointed it skyward.

  Then the Secret Service agent stepped out and got his head shot clean through.

  “Hey!” said Remo. “That guy took a picture of the sniper.”

  “Exactly,” said Smith, shutting down both machines.

  “He knew the shot was coming,” said Remo.

  “Whoever he is,” said Harold Smith, rising from his seat, “he is at the heart of the conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States.”

  “Then he must die!” cried Chiun.

  “Only if we can determine his identity,” said Smith.

  “That is your task, O Harold of Gaunt.”

  Remo looked his question.

  “A power behind the throne of Richard I,” explained Smith.

  “Just as you are the true power behind the puppet President,” added Chiun magnanimously.

  “Not if we lose him,” said Smith glumly.

  “That’s where I come in,” said Remo.

  “What do you mean?” asked Smith.

  “Just call me counterassassin.”

  The Master of Sinanju groaned like a canvas mainsail tearing in a gale.

  · · ·

  AT 6:00 p.m. Pepsie Dobbins stepped from the taxi near the Lincoln Memorial, which was white with light under a frosty early-evening moon.

  She walked to West Potomac Park and the D.C. bank of the Potomac, and struck south along a treelined path, eyeing each park bench as she came upon it.

  Most were empty. It was a chilly night, and the wind out of Arlington National Cemetery was brisk. No night to sit on benches unless you had your Christmas shopping done and were cuddling with a lover.

  Pepsie saw no lovers as she passed the benches. She was looking for a man, but as she walked along she started to wonder about that. The voice on the phone had been soft. Was it necessarily the voice of a man? Pepsie, whose own on-air voice was once described by TV Guide as “mannishly alluring,” realized that she might just be looking for a woman.

  When she came to the bench on which the wino sat bundled up and taking pulls from a green bottle wrapped in a paper bag, she hurried on.

  A soft voice said, “What is past is prologue.”

  Pepsie stopped.

  The wino was beckoning with a dirty forefinger poking out from a black knit glove without fingertips. He wore a black baseball cap, and impenetrable sunglasses shielded his eyes. The frames were held together with duct tape, and stitched onto the front of the cap were three white letters: CIA. He sat with bowed head so his face couldn’t seen discerned.

  “What took you so long?” he asked.

  “Traffic. Is that you?”

  “Sit. Not too close. Don’t look at me. Look toward Lincoln.”

  Keeping her eyes averted, Pepsie sat in the middle of the bench. “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “I could give you a phony name but I won’t. Just call me Director X.”

  “You look like a homeless guy.”

  “I wear the rags I do to express my solidarity with the dispossessed of the earth, the homeless, the forgotten, the disenfranchised, the uninsured.”

  “Uninsured?”

  “Did you bring the tapes?”

  “In my handbag.”

  “Good. Set them on the bench beside you.”

  “First you have to tell me what this is all about.”

  “I already did.”

  “There’s more to it than the medical-industrial establishment trying to kill the President.”

  “You found something?”

  “On the shooting tape. A cameraman did something strange. He seemed to turn his camera on the sniper’s nest before the shot rang out.”

  “Maybe he spotted the sniper.”

  “Not at that range. Not with all eyes on the President’s car door opening. No one would be looking anywhere else except–”

  “Except who?”

  “The Secret Service,” breathed Pepsie. “Oh, my God. The Secret Service. It’s headed by a director.”

  “I am not the director of the Secret Service.”

  “But you told me before that the establishment is behind this. The Secret Service is part of the establishment.”

  “This is bigger than the Secret Service,” said the soft voice. “It is bigger than the government itself.”

  Pepsie had been sitting with her head fixed in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial. But her eyes, with the geckolike faculty to move independently of one another, were busy. One went to a clump of bushes where Buck Featherstone was supposed to have concealed himself. He had an excellent angle on Pepsie and Director X sitting on the bench–if he didn’t blow it.

  Carefully Pepsie let her right eye drift sideways. The profile of the wino seated on the other end of the bench became clear. Pepsie’s heart skipped a beat as she took in the heavy beard stubble on the man’s plump cheeks. If those cheeks belonged to a woman, she decided, the woman belonged in a circus sideshow between Dog Boy and the Human Crab.

  “How big is this?” she asked.

  “This,” the wino said, “is colossal.”

  “That’s big.”

  “There’s more to this than you can dream. It’s a mystery wrapped inside a riddle inside an enigma. Behind it is something I will call RX.”

  “I’m a journalist. I’m interested in who-what-when-where-how and why.”

  “That’s the real question, isn’t it? Why. The how and the who is just scenery for the public. It keeps them guessing like some kind of parlour game. Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who had the power to cover it up?”

  “Kennedy? We’re talking about the President here. Not Robert.”

  “I was talking about Jack.”

  “What does Jack Kennedy’s murder have to do with the attempt to kill this President?”

  “Everything.”

  “Help me break this story, and I’ll do anything you want.”

  “I want footage, all you can get. Especially of tonight.”

  “What’s tonight?”

  “The Christmas-tree lighting. The President will be making his first public appearance since Boston tonight. Be there. Film it all.”

  “Will something happen?”

  “The forces converging on this President will not rest until every player has found his mark and the full script has been acted out.”

  “Who wrote the script? The Secret Service? The CIA?”

  “Like Caesar, he is surrounded by enemies but they have no face. Take the tapes out of your bag and leave them on the bench. Then go. I will be in touch.”

  Pepsie walked away with her spine feeling as cold and inflexible as a giant icicle.

  She hailed a cab, which took her to her Georgetown town house.

  Buck Featherstone showed up twenty-three minutes later with a happy look on his face.

  “Did you get him on tape?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But at that range, there’s no sound.”

  Pepsie upended her bag on the coffee table. Out slid her minicassette recorder.

  “I have the audio,” she said.

  “So, what did he tell you?”

  “Let’s play the video and audio at the same time. I have a hunch this may be the most important footage since the Zapruder film.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I think Director X is involved in the conspiracy,” Pepsie said thickly.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He reminds me of that cameraman up in Boston.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Orville Rollo Fletcher told the cab driver to let him off in front of Blair House, across the street from the White House. He pulled back the white fur on his scarlet cuff and checked his watch. 8:10. He prided himself on his punctuality. He had exactly five minutes to cross the street and present himself at the East Gate. He took a deep breath and tried to steady his quivering limbs. It was the most nervous he had been since he took Pamela Sue Hess to the high school prom back in 1967. It had been his first and only date. He didn’t even get a good-night kiss.

  Crossing against the traffic, Orville Rollo Fletcher shook off one of his black Santa mittens and dug his blue plastic inhaler from a voluminous coat pocket.

  Nervously uncapping it, he brought the square plastic nozzle to his open mouth and pumped the cartridge once. A steroid jet moistened his drying tongue, and his nose and taste buds both quivered before the very unfamiliar taste and smell.

  And through Orville Rollo Fletcher’s eyes, the world began to change...

  · · ·

  When the White House East Gate was opened, the Washington press corps stormed through it like lemmings seeking the sea. The uniformed Secret Service could hardly pass them through the gate fast enough.

  Barred from entering, the White House press corps had chained themselves to the fence all along Pennsylvania Avenue in protest.

  Up on the platform, the President of the United States looked at his watch while the First Lady fumed.

  “Where’s that damn Santa?” she said through tight teeth. “I need him to represent traditional Western Christian values.”

  “Watch your language. You never know how many shotgun mikes are out there pointed at us.”

  Beside them, the White House Christmas spruce loomed up stark and grim. No lights burned in the darkness created by dousing the protective floodlights on the White House façade and throughout the grounds, and the tree’s trimmings were indistinguishable.

  “I told that agency to have him here at eight sharp. The press is getting restless. They want to ask you a ton of questions.”

  The President turned to Secret Service Special Agent Vince Capezzi beside him and said, “When I light the tree, you alert Marine One. After I’ve spoken my piece, tell them to take off. That will give us enough time to get to the South Lawn and make a quick getaway.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Capezzi.

  On the other side of the podium, standing behind the Chief Executive and out of camera range, Remo Williams hovered worriedly, scanning the crowd, looking toward the high rooftops of the Treasury to the east and Executive Office Building to the west, where Secret Service countersnipers crouched behind their nightvision scopes.

  It was the worst possible exposure for the President. But there was nothing anyone could say or do to convince the President not to go through with the ceremony. The only good thing about it was the fact that Marine One would pluck the President from the South Lawn and to the relative safety of Air Force One unannounced, and therefore before anyone could create a problem.

  Once the President was back in Boston, there would be an entirely new headache, as far as Remo was concerned.

  By 8:14 the rent-a-Santa hadn’t shown, and the President signaled for the ceremony to begin. He stepped up to the dual microphone on the portable podium emblazoned with the Presidential seal.

  “My fellow Americans,” the President said without preamble. “In this season of joy and caring, I want to convey to you all the gratitude myself and my wife feel to be here with you–especially in light of the tragedy that nearly befell the office yesterday. I want you to know that no danger, no peril, will sway myself or the First Lady from prosecuting the cause of universal health care to the fullest. To symbolize the universality of our cause, and the diversity of the America we serve, I hereby inaugurate the Christmas season by the lighting of this magnificent tree.”

  The President and the First Lady laid hands on the lever set on a table beside the podium. In unison, they threw it.

  The magnificent blue spruce lit up like a crazy Roman candle trying to blast off. Flashbulbs popped. Videocams whirred.

  Only when the initial commotion abated did people’s eyes begin to register the uniqueness of the White House Christmas tree.

  The brilliant Star of David on top drew the first gasps. As the eye was drawn down from that, it encountered Kachina dolls, Egyptian ankhs, Kwanzaa candles, Buddhas, signs of the Zodiac and a solitary plastic poinsettia. Strings of red-hot chili peppers glowed on every evergreen bough, groaning under the political weight of inclusiveness.