"What plot is that?"
"Wrong answer," Remo said, taking Sir Guy Phillistone who knew exactly what Remo Williams could do with those terrible thick-wristed hands of his-by the throat.
"What is the correct answer?" Sir Guy choked out. "Tell me and I shall tell you."
Remo turned to Chiun. "Did that make any sense to you?"
"No. But he is telling the truth."
"Look, Guy. It's a British plot. I know it, even if you don't. Someone in your government is trying to create economic panic. Whom should we be looking for?"
Sir Guy hesitated. Remo squeezed.
"The queen!" Sir Guy bleated. "The prime minister! Perhaps the foreign secretary! The chancellor of the exchequer has always struck me as a right berk. Anyone but myself. I know nothing of this. I really do not."
"I believe you, Sir Guy," Remo said. "Be a good chap and don't warn anyone."
"I was just on my way to the pub around the corner. I feel the urge for a pint of stout."
"Don't let us keep you," Remo said.
Sir Guy left hurriedly, not stopping to pick up his cracked pipe. He left the door open for Remo's convenience.
"Trusting sort," Remo said, picking up the phone and asking for the overseas operator.
When he heard Smith's cracked voice, he explained that every lead had evaporated.
"Sir Guy suggested we shake up the local government," Remo concluded. "What do you think?"
"Do it," Smith said. "Things are heating up here. The treasury-bond rumors have reached the Far Eastern markets. The dollar is going south."
"We're on it." He hung up.
To Chiun, Remo said. "We've got his blessing. We can do this faster if we split up."
"You may treat with the House of Windsor," Chuin said, "I will have none of them."
"Parliament's yours."
"We will meet afterward beneath that ugly clock."
"Big Ben?"
"That is what they call its bell," Chiun sniffed. " I do not care to know what they call the clock."
They walked together as far as Birdcage Walk, which Chiun took. Remo continued on and mingled with the knots of tourists outside the palace gates.
He considered going over the wall, when suddenly the gates were thrown open. Remo turned to see a tiny coach pulled by two white horses rounding the circle dominated by the Victoria Monument and realized he had found the perfect way in.
John Brackenberry huddled in his bright red coat as the light rain pattered the top of his high black stovepipe hat, his coach whip rigid in his right hand.
He was proud to drive the wooden-wheeled clarence which carried state papers from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace, where they would be affixed with the royal assent. Driving a clarence, which seldom carried passengers, and never a member of the royal family, was not as prestigious as driving a state coach, but it was honorable work, and suited his traditional sensibilities.
As the clarence passed through the gates, Brackenberry never heard the coach door open. The springs never shifted despite the 155-pound weight that settled into the velvet cushions, brushing aside the box containing state documents fresh from Whitehall.
Thus, when John Brackenberry dismounted to open the coach, the last thing he expected was to find a passenger within.
"I say," he demanded, "who the bloody hell are you?"
"Don't mind me," the man said in a crude American accent.
"Tourists are not allowed in the royal clarence," he sputtered. He was nearly apoplectic. Nothing like that had ever happened before. He had heard of Yank tourists urinating in the parks and neglecting to pay their bus fare, but this was the limit.
"I'm just here to see Mrs. Windsor," the man said, stepping out. "Know where I can find her?"
" I do not know whom you could mean."
"The queen."
Brackenberry drew himself up in indignation. "One does not address the queen as Mrs. Windsor, my good fellow."
" I love the way you people are so polite even when you're upset. Restores my faith in humanity. I thought Windsor was her last name."
"It is not! That is, it is Windsor, but Her Highness is not permitted to use it."
"Heavy hangs the head, huh? Look, this is fascinating, but just point me to the royal chambers and I'll take it from there."
That was too much even for John Brackenberry. "Guards!" he shouted.
"Damn!" Remo said. "I hoped you were going to be British about this."
" I am being British about this, you sluggard!"
A trio of Household Guards appeared as if out of nowhere. One of them happened to be the one Chiun had roughed up earlier. Remo gave him a little wave. The man stopped dead in his tracks, then beat a hasty retreat.
The other two were only too happy to escort Remo into Buckingham Palace after he relieved them of their rifles and dismembered the unloaded weapons before their eyes. For good measure, he took one of their high hats and, rolling it between his hands at high speed, set it afire by friction. He replaced it on the guard's head.
"The queen is not in," the guard with the flaming hat said.
"Prove it," Remo countered.
"Happy to."
Remo was escorted through the palace. The Household Guards even showed him the queen's private chambers and offered him the souvenir of his choice. Remo politely declined. Instead, he asked after the queen's current whereabouts.
There was some dissension on that score. One guard thought the queen was sojourning at Windsor Castle, the other thought she was somewhere in Wales. Perhaps on holiday at Portmeirion.
Outside the palace, the guards escorted Remo to the big gate and opened it for him. They wished him well as he sauntered up Birdcage Walk, his eyes on Big Ben.
The Master of Sinanju regarded the garishly carven Houses of Parliament from the foot of Westminster Bridge, on the north side of the Thames River. His hands, behind his back, were tucked into his kimono sleeves, and he was heedless of the light rain, which evaporated almost as soon as it touched his aged head.
He examined the moat below street level, covered by immaculate greensward. His nose wrinkled at the high green fence whose top almost paralleled the sidewalk. It might possibly be electrified, but that did not matter. He could achieve it with one leap, and the grass in two. He wondered who would be so foolish as not to fill the serviceable moat with water.
Chiun strolled up Westminster Bridge to gain a view of the southern face of Parliament. He spied a patio filled with awninged tables-no doubt for the pleasure of the lords of Parliament. But those tables were empty now.
Chiun paused on the bridge. He looked down. The water was unspeakably discolored. Its smell offended his sensitive nostrils. But for that he would have gone all the way to the end of the bridge and, from its other bank, raced across the water to that most vulnerable point of attack.
It was a sound plan, except the Master of Sinanju would never have been able to get the stench from his sandals, no matter how lightly he raced across the thick waters.
Chiun returned the way he came. There would be a way. There always was.
On Millbank, he paced before the grimy facade of Parliament, cleaned for half of its length by sandblasting. It only made the sootier section all the more ugly.
He crossed Millbank to get a better view. Standing in the smallish Old Palace Yard behind Westminster Abbey, Chiun considered that no fortress was ever built that did not have a secret escape tunnel, which to the professional assassin could serve as an entrance. He went in search of one.
Chiun found what he sought tucked away at one end of the yard-a concrete ramp that led to an underground parking garage.
Smiling to himself, Chiun realized he had found the entrance he required. He floated down the concrete ramp, past the guard box and yellow-and-black-striped dropgate.
The guard in the box noticed him coming down, happened to look away, and when he looked back, there was no sign of the approaching Asian.