"It was a first step," Hardwin argued into the phone.
"First step being the operative words. Like baby step. Washington's the big one. Do you have any idea how much coverage this stunt is getting?"
"Not really, no. A lot?"
"What, they don't have TV in the White House?"
"I don't watch television," Reginald Hardwin sniffed in his most superior British tone. "Except the occasional episode of Masterpiece Theatre. "
"Well, I watch it. Just like every other red-blooded American. You're wall-to-wall, Reg. Everywhere. They're not just breaking into the shows-you are the shows. Every network. Gavel to gavel. Front to back. Cover to cover. Beginning to end. You are it."
"Yes," Hardwin replied slowly. "Doesn't that make you a little nervous? After all, there is hardly a neat way out of this situation." He had risen to his feet and was peeking around the drapes. The activity around the White House hadn't lessened. If anything, it had only gotten worse.
"There is a way out," Bernie insisted. "A way out that'll make you a multimillionaire. We discussed this, remember? You agreed."
"Yes, I remember," Hardwin admitted.
He was finding it difficult to stay focused. Reginald Hardwin the man had begun to eclipse Reginald Hardwin the terrorist character. His hours of waiting idly in the White House were beginning to jangle his nerves.
"Ours is a celebrity-driven culture, Reg," the agent reminded him. "It doesn't matter how you get famous, as long as you are famous. Maybe being British you don't understand it, but that's the American way. Now, I can spin this off a million different ways. Even if it doesn't go the way I know it's going to go-and I'm 110 percent certain it will-but if it doesn't I can still spin it to your advantage. If everyone goes all ga-ga patriotic on us, we can license I Hate Reginald Hardwin T-shirts and bumper stickers. Hell-and this is off the top of my head, could be completely off base here-but think Reginald Hardwin toilet paper! People'd kill to wipe their asses on your face!"
Hardwin was aghast. "Bernie, we never discussed-"
"Got a call on my other line, babe. Gotta run." Closing his eyes on the mocking buzz of the dial tone, Reginald Hardwin replaced the President's phone.
This was the tenth call he'd made to his agent since the start of the White House siege and the ninth for which he had used the phone of the President of the United States. Let the Colonials pick up the tab.
Bernie had avoided him the first nine times. Hardwin was beginning to think that things weren't going as well as his agent claimed.
Wishing he'd gone with CAA, he left the phone and the President's desk. Hands behind his back, he strolled past the glass doors to the Rose Garden, walking grimly into the secretary's office to the right of the Oval.
His men weren't there.
They were all struggling American actors he'd hired either in New York or Los Angeles. And since they were actors, whenever they weren't sneaking off to have sex with one another in the study, they were off stealing towels and soap from the bathrooms. In between those times, there was only one other thing that kept the men busy.
"Not another bloody union break," Hardwin complained.
He marched into the hall. It was empty. This was unforgivable.
"If you do not show yourselves immediately, I'm canceling the deli platter!" Hardwin shouted to the corridor.
The bellowed threat should have brought a stampede of actors, all flapping towels and zipping flies. When none materialized, Reginald Hardwin felt the first twinge of concern.
He had studied the White House blueprints carefully before taking this job-especially the special sketches given him by his employer. The voice on the phone had told him the optimum points where his men should be stationed. He went to each of them in turn.
Checkpoint after checkpoint was left unguarded. By the time he reached the north portico without encountering even one of his men, his anxiety had grown wings of full fluttering fear.
Hardwin peeked out the door.
Cars jammed the street between the battered White House fence and Lafayette Park. Helicopters sat like angry insects on the grass, rotor blades whirring in perpetual readiness.
It seemed that the enraged eyes of an entire nation were focused squarely on him. Reginald Hardwin panicked.
Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out his cellular phone. He was ready to accept anything-even another demeaning underwear ad-if only Bernie could get him out of this.
"Solomon, Raithbone and Schwartz."
"Get me Bernie Leffer!" Hardwin begged.
The woman's voice took on a frosty tone that indicated his call wasn't unexpected.
"Mr. Leffer is with a client and can't be bothered for the rest of the day," she said.
"Week," Bernie's voice wailed from the background.
"The rest of the week," the woman parroted.
"What?" Hardwin demanded. "What?" he repeated when his phone floated out of his hand. He jumped back.
It was true. His cellular phone had taken on a life of its own. For a surreal moment, it seemed to hover in place.
Hardwin's first thought was that the White House was haunted. But then an even stranger thing happened. A body seemed to materialize from the shadows around the floating telephone. The apparition-possessed of the cruelest face Reginald Hardwin had ever seen-spoke into the phone.
"He'll call you back," Remo said coldly.
He squeezed his hand shut. The cell phone cracked into brittle plastic fragments. Remo dusted them off his palms.
Hardwin gulped, backing slowly away from the intruder. "Will I?" he asked, voice tremulous.
"No," Remo said, eyes dead.
"That's what I thought." Hardwin nodded. Turning, he ran screaming out the door. He got only as far as the middle of the portico before he found he wasn't making anymore progress. Even when he realized that the terrifying specter was holding him aloft, preventing him from fleeing, Hardwin's spindly legs continued to pump madly in the air.
To escape unscathed, he would have to inspire fear in this fear-inspiring demon. A lifetime's worth of acting skills burst forth in one brilliant thespianic flash. For an instant, Reginald Hardwin the man was replaced once more with Reginald Hardwin the fiendish character.
"Release me," he commanded, in his best diabolical-villain sneer, "or I swear to you Lucifer himself could not imagine a more terrible fate for you."
"Okeydoke."
Remo set Hardwin down. Legs still pumping, Reginald promptly ran at a full gallop across the north portico and straight into one of the white Ionic columns.
The crunching impact smashed his nose, one cheekbone and an eye socket. Hardwin was pulling himself off the portico when Remo approached.
"Stop!" Hardwin commanded, desperately trying to stay in character. "Or you consign your President to death. This building has been wired to explode in one minute. Only I can stop the countdown." He spit out a few bloodied incisors.
"Give it a rest, Dr. Evil," Remo said, annoyed. "Bombs have an odor and I didn't smell any. You're just some dingwhistle actor who was hired to pull off this cockamamy plan. Now, what the hell is going on here?"
As Remo spoke, Reginald Hardwin felt more and more of his character slip away until in the end there was nothing left but the actor beneath the role.
"I want a lawyer," Hardwin squeaked. Tears welled up, stinging his injured eye.
"We're beyond lawyer. Think undertaker," Remo said. "Who hired you? And if you tell me it was a voice on the phone who you never met in person and who paid you through the mail, you're going over that railing, ass, accent and all."
Since this was precisely what had happened, Hardwin weighed the risk of lying and being thrown off the balcony or, apparently, telling the truth and being thrown off the balcony, as well. His eyes darted left and right in search of a third alternative that wouldn't result in his winding up airborne. He chirped in cornered fear.