At the base of the tree, a neon sign flashed seasons greetings in dozens of alternating languages:

  Meri Kurisumasu

  Joyeux Noël

  Sheng Dan Kaui Le

  God Jul

  Kellemes Kardcsonyi Ünnepeket

  Merry Xmas

  · · ·

  A reporter flung out the first question: “Mr. President–if you are indeed the President and not an impostor as rumored–was this idea yours or the First Lady’s?”

  The President hesitated. He looked to his wife. She stared daggers at him. He flushed as red as the poinsettia flower itself.

  Before the President could insert his foot in his mouth, Santa Claus arrived at the East Gate, exactly fifteen minutes late, but as far as the Chief Executive was concerned, in the exact nick of time.

  · · ·

  Kirby Ayers of the uniformed Secret Service had been told to expect Santa Claus at eight sharp. He knew the timetable for the President’s travel plans, and when Santa didn’t arrive, he became nervous. That Santa was expected was one thing. He would still have to present his temporary White House pass, verifiable personal ID, submit to a patdown and be walked through the other security procedures.

  By 8:10 Ayers knew that the damn Santa was close to throwing the Presidential itinerary into a stocking cap. By 8:12 he understood Santa had screwed up royally. At 8:14 he figured whether Santa showed up or not, he was going to be joining the ranks of the jobless by New Year’s.

  So when 8:15 came and Santa Claus came across Pennsylvania Avenue at a shuffling dead run, head held low between hunched shoulders, Kirby Ayers got ready to give him a piece of his mind.

  “Where the hell–” he started to shout.

  The lumbering Santa Claus lowered his head and made the most god-awful sound Kirby Ayers had ever heard issue from a human mouth. It was a bellow, low to start but achieving a blood-freezing higher register as the Santa hit the sidewalk before the East Gate.

  Kirby Ayers saw the tiny red-rimmed eyes, saw the big ears wriggling in seeming anger and the way the long, goatlike white beard swung madly beneath the angry red features, giving him a momentary flash of confused recognition.

  I’ve seen this particular Santa somewhere before, he thought. And for some reason his mind harkened back to the Washington Zoo.

  That thought was uppermost in his mind when Santa Claus dropped his head and butted Kirby in the exact center of his chest.

  Kirby Ayers was thrown off his feet and flung backward. The air whoofed from his stunned lungs. He saw stars. His brain disconnected for several all-important seconds.

  He got his senses back just in time to fully appreciate the rib-splintering, lung-flattening, eyeball-bugging experience of being tramped to death by the stomping size 18-EE black boots of the heaviest Santa Claus that probably ever walked the face of the earth.

  This guy weighs as much as a damn elephant, Ayers thought wildly in the moment before his heart was pulped by his own compressing rib cage.

  · · ·

  From his post guarding the President of the United States, Remo Williams spotted the commotion at the East Gate. He was the only one to see it clearly. The lights of the press were blinding everyone else.

  Remo saw a Secret Service guard on his back and a three-hundred-pound Santa come charging up the circular path toward the tree-lighting ceremony.

  There was something not right about the Santa. He carried his head too low, and his eyes were too slitted. And he came in a crazy gallop with his head seemingly fixed in place, the long white beard and tail of his red Santa cap whipping and jingling madly with every pounding step.

  The way Santa moved didn’t compute. It wasn’t the body language of a man, but something else. Something Remo instinctively understood to be dangerous.

  Remo lifted his Secret Service wrist mike and said, “Trouble coming up the East Gate. I gotta check it out.”

  In his earphone the lemony voice of Harold Smith said, “I have just called for Marine One.”

  Remo ducked out, circled the crowd and moved on an intercept line with the charging Santa Claus.

  The guy was stomping to beat the band. The ground actually quivered under each step. Small wonder, Remo thought. He weighed three hundred pounds if he weighed a gram.

  He was charging toward an outlying clot of reporters when he paused and did a strange thing. Throwing back his head, one foot lifted, he made a sound from deep inside himself that could only be described as a trumpeting.

  When he settled back down, he continued his charge. On all fours.

  Remo veered toward him and got in his path.

  “Hold it, Santa. Where’s your pass?”

  The Santa dropped his head and stuck out his ears. Remo almost laughed. He stood his ground until the last possible minute, then stepped aside like a matador evading a lunging bull.

  The charging Santa blew past him. Remo reached out to snap a fistful of the back of the scarlet coat. He dug in his heels, his brain calculating the opposite pull needed to arrest three hundred pounds of charging fury.

  He snatched the fabric. It was solid stuff. It would hold. Remo felt the first pulling-away tension and was ready. Or so he thought.

  Remo was yanked off his feet as if he’d taken hold of a Mack truck. Surprise washed over his face. Before his brain got organized, his reflexes took over.

  Digging in his heels, he found his balance again. The fabric in his hand ripped away.

  Recovering, Remo swept around and got in front of the Santa. Santa reared up, and Remo launched a low kick at the man’s red right kneecap.

  The kick connected. Remo heard the bone crack with the disabling impact. Santa charged on, unfazed.

  Remo got out of the way just ahead of the earthshaking boots.

  Then the Master of Sinanju appeared as if from nowhere.

  “What is wrong with you?” Chiun hissed at Remo.

  “He’s stronger than he looks.”

  “He is only a fat white in a pagan costume.”

  “Then you take a crack at him.”

  The Master of Sinanju slipped up behind the broad red back and inserted a single fingernail into the spine. He withdrew the nail, stepped back and waited.

  The Santa lumbered on.

  Remo caught up with Chiun, whose mouth lay open in shock.

  “See?” he said.

  Chiun made a mean mouth. “I severed his spinal cord.”

  “Obviously his brain hasn’t gotten word yet.”

  There was a microwave van parked in the lawn, and when the Santa came to it, he didn’t bother to go around it. He rammed into it.

  His skull should have caved in. Instead, the cab rocked on its wheels. Santa reared back bellowing and tried again. This time the wheels on one side left the ground. They fell back complaining.

  The third time, Santa screamed in defiance, his white beard whipping wildly with each jerk of his head, and the van went over on its side with a resounding crash.

  That caught the attention of the press. The blaze of videocam lights swung their way, and Remo and Chiun broke in opposite directions to escape being filmed.

  Remo called into his wrist mike, “Capezzi. We got a rogue Santa out here.”

  “A what?”

  “The Santa. He’s off his rocker. Better get Big Mac out of here.”

  “Roger,” said Vince Capezzi. Into his hand mike, he said, “Marine One. Where are you?”

  “ETA ten minutes,” a thin voice said.

  “Roger.”

  · · ·

  The White House lawn became bedlam as the press turned the glare of their lights on the weird figure of Santa Claus climbing atop an upended microwave van and throwing his head back to the moonlit sky, bellowing and screaming and growling in a way that froze everyone’s blood.

  Especially the President’s.

  “What the hell is wrong with that guy?” he asked. Vince Capezzi laid a hand on the President’s shoulder. “Mr. President, I think we should get you to the Rose Garden right away. Marine One is en route.”

  “If you say so,” the President said worriedly.

  “No,” the First Lady shouted. “He can’t go now. He’ll look like a coward running from danger.”

  Then the Santa reared back and began stomping the flat side of the microwave van. The steel panel began to dent up under his boots. The metal complained. The dent grew wider, then deeper, and even the press who had surged closer to get better coverage found themselves falling back.

  In that moment Remo started in again, one hand a spear, prepared to deliver a death blow nothing living could withstand.

  The snipers started firing before he had cleared half the space.

  The shots came from opposite directions–one from the Treasury Building, the other from the Executive Office Building.

  Transfixed in the camera lights, the figure of Santa Claus started coming apart. One arm, in the act of being flung up, kept on going, separated at the shoulder. The arm lanced like a hank of ham bone, and the color of its blood was indistinguishable from the scarlet sleeve.

  Rounds began ripping into his back and coming out the paunch of his stomach, carrying stringy shreds of viscera with them.

  The Santa gave a last trumpeting of pain and horror and fell where he stood.

  The dented white van began turning red in a puddle around the quivering bulk.

  But it wasn’t over yet. Santa struggled to rise, but only the head obeyed. The reddish eyes, full of pain, looked out over its tormentors.

  They saw nothing except a darkening light. Then the head fell with a heavy thud. The chest continued to heave like a great red bellows.

  “Did you see that?” Remo whispered to Chiun.

  “Yes. Its eyes looked into mine at the last.”

  “Its? You mean his.”

  “That was no man, but a musth, wounded, confused and maddened with pain.”

  “A what?”

  “When Hannibal of Carthage crossed the Alps, it was on the back of one such as this. The Greekling Alexander defeated the Persians with great armies of such beasts.”

  “Are we talking rogue elephant here?”

  Chiun indicated the white beard slowly turning crimson, saying, “That is its trunk. Notice the great ears, the small eyes. When attacked, it used its head as a ram. It is an elephant.”

  “That explains the way he charged around,” said Remo, “but not much else.”

  The press was creeping around the other side of the van, so Remo and Chiun slipped up to the dead hulk in the Santa suit.

  Remo plucked off the stocking cap and beard, exposing smooth black hair. The blood-soaked whiskers came off with a snap of a rubber band.

  “Look, Remo! It is Thrush.”

  Remo canted his head to see.

  “Damn. Thrush Limburger. The press will have a field day with this.”

  The great body shuddered and gave out a final pungent exhalation.

  “Whew!” said Remo, backing away. “That’s gotta be the worst case of peanut breath west of Africa.”

  “India. He thought he was an Indian elephant.”

  Then the clatter of helicopter rotor blades made the suddenly still night air quiver and shake.

  Remo looked toward the Washington Monument, a brilliant stone finger behind the White House, and told Chiun, “That’s Marine One. We’d better get a move on if we’re going to Boston with the President.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Secret Service Agent Vince Capezzi heard the clatter of Marine One’s rotors as an answer to a silent prayer.

  “This way, Mr. President,” he urged, hustling the Chief Executive from the podium. The First Lady followed, complaining, “This is going to look awful on CNN.”

  They entered the White House and walked quickly through to the South Portico. Capezzi checked his watch. Marine One was five minutes ahead of schedule. It was one of those minor miracles that happen when they are most needed.

  “We’ll have you in the air shortly,” he told the President, and they stepped out onto the South Lawn.

  The blazing floodlights limned Marine One as she settled heavily into the Kentucky bluegrass of the South Lawn, and her green-and-white shape had never been more welcome, Capezzi thought. The rotors continued winding as the bluecarpeted steps dropped into place.

  Retired Secret Service Agent Smith stepped out from nowhere and said, “You must hurry, sir.”

  “Smith, you come with us.”

  “I cannot, Mr. President. I must remain here to continue the investigation. But Remo and Chiun will accompany you to Boston. You will be in good hands.”

  “I know.”

  The President started up the blue-carpeted steps, the First Lady holding his arm. Their faces were drained white under the glare of the floodlights.

  Vince Capezzi, his MAC-11 at the ready, covered the stairs.

  · · ·

  Remo came around the corner of the White House in the shelter of the open breezeway, Chiun pumping along at his side.

  “There’s Smitty,” he said. “Looks like the President’s on board already.”

  Chiun nodded. They crossed the rotor-wash-flattened lawn to the waiting helicopter.

  “Stay with the President every step of the way,” Smith told Remo over the whine of the impatiently turning rotors.

  “Gotcha,” said Remo.

  “No harm will befall the puppet while Sinanju stands beside him,” cried Chiun in a firm voice.

  “Shh,” said Smith, indicating Vince Capezzi with a tilt of his head. “Security.”

  “Advertising always pays,” said Chiun.

  Remo started up the stairs, but Chiun blocked him.

  “As Reigning Master, I have the honor of going first.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Remo. Chiun floated up the steps, and Remo turned to Vince Capezzi, “You go next.”

  Capezzi climbed aboard, relief making his face go slack.

  Remo turned to Harold Smith, “You know that Santa?”

  “Yes?”

  “I pulled his cap and whiskers off. Guess who he was?”

  “Who?”

  “Thrush Limburger.”

  Smith groaned.

  “It’s probably another double,” said Remo.

  “Let us hope so,” said Harold Smith fervently.

  Then Remo started up the stairs.

  The pilot was looking over his shoulder at Remo through the Plexiglas side port. Something about his face made Remo pause.

  Something was wrong. Something serious. He wore the impenetrable Ray-Ban Aviators of a Secret Service agent. But on his head sat a black baseball cap emblazoned with the letters CIA.

  Remo stopped.

  “What is wrong?” Smith called.

  Remo said nothing, but his senses were keying up. The rotor noise drowned out any subtle infrasounds. A pungent scent came to his nostrils over the residual scent of gasoline. The smell resembled gasoline, but wasn’t. Not quite. It was an astringent smell Remo associated with dry-cleaning establishments.

  It took a moment for Remo’s brain to put a name to the strong odor. Naphthalene.

  Then he looked down.

  The blue-carpeted steps under his feet looked too new. They were pristine, as if they had never known the regular tread of feet.

  Then Remo realized something was missing.

  “Damn!” he said, plunging in.

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

  “There goes my–I mean your–chance for reelection,” the First Lady was saying.

  “Evacuate!” shouted Remo.

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

  “What?”

  “This thing is booby-trapped! Get out now!”

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

  “That stuff will go up like flash paper.”

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

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

  “C’mon, Chiun,” urged Remo.

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

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

  The steps pulled away into the night.

  “Remo! What is it?” Smith asked hoarsely.

  “Look at those steps. Where’s the Welcome Aboard Marine One sign?”

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

  “No,” said Smith. “We’ll have it tracked. It may lead to the conspirators.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “That looks like Marine One,” Vince Capezzi breathed.

  “It is,” said Remo. “The real one.”

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

  “Don’t I know it,” the President said thickly.