"This is Smith, temporarily in charge of the White House Secret Service detail. Why hasn't the collar of the Socks double been sent over here as requested?"
"We found something unusual and we're analyzing it."
"I am on my way," said Smith.
A WHITE HOUSE cart whisked Harold Smith to FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. His Secret Service ID got him into the crime lab where whitesmocked forensics agents were puzzling over the collar that had been taken off the Socks double after it had been shot dead.
"It's an ordinary collar in all outward respects," an FBI agent was saying as Smith joined the circle of tight-faced men. "It's red leather with hollow tin studs all the way around. You can buy one in any five-and-dime or pet store in the nation"
"Then why is it unusual?" asked Smith.
"Inside each stud is a tiny reservoir. See these pinholes?"
Smith nodded.
"Nozzles. One to a stud. And inside, a tiny heating element. I mistook them for a manufacturing defect until I put one under the microscope. The workmanship is exquisite. Evidently a liquid was contained in the studs."
Another lab man said, "It was reported that before the subject cat went crazy, it hissed and began sniffing itself. Someone triggered the collar by radio control, vaporizing its contents, and the cat inhaled the resulting gas."
"What kind of gas?" Smith asked.
"We're still working on that. But there's more." The agent brought up a black ball the size of a marble that hung off the lower end of the collar in lieu of a cat tag. He pressed a catch, and the black ball popped apart, revealing a tiny black lens.
"Miniature spy camera and transmitter. Whoever sent this cat into the White House grounds was recording everything it did from a cat's-eye view. "
"Strange," said Smith, frowning severely.
"We suspect a steroid or mind-altering substance. The cat was not rabid. The brain scan was normal. But something made it wild. A chemical would explain everything it did."
"But not how strong it became," said Smith.
"Sir?"
"When you have the substance in the studs identified," he said, "phone me at the White House. Report to no one else."
REMO WILLIAMS was walking the White House grounds feeling strange.
It wasn't just the fact that he was patrolling the North Lawn virtually in camera range of the stillbarred White House press corps that made him feel strange, although that was a good start.
He had come out when Secret Service Agent Vince Capezzi reported for duty. That gave Remo a chance to check out the White House grounds. There was no telling what might crop up next.
It was a cool December day, yet Remo felt uncomfortably warm. It was the suit. He was not used to wearing so many layers of clothes. The discipline that was Sinanju had given him near total mastery over his own body, and even in the most bitter weather he was comfortable in his usual uniform of T-shirt and chinos.
It had been even worse in the well-heated White House.
Out here it was just annoying. Remo had grown used to the way his skin acted like a giant sensory organ. The pressure of an approaching attacker or the advance edges of the shock wave of a bullet were things his bare forearms alerted him to-sometimes before his other senses kicked in their warnings.
A full night of guarding the President had made him itch to get out. It was not his kind of duty. He was more of an in-and-out guy. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Give me a target, and I'll do the job, Remo thought. Pulling bodyguard duty isn't my style.
Chiun had done his job too well. Maybe Remo had to be an assassin. Maybe it was so deeply ingrained in his nervous system that there was no avoiding it.
The White House press corps was on the sidewalk in front of the White House filming a National Parks Service crew erecting the thirty-foot-tall Maine blue spruce that was to be the centerpiece of tonight's Christmas-tree lighting. A blue crane held it suspended over its steel base, and they were maneuvering it down by hand.
All around the tree folding chairs were arrayed before a podium still under construction. The workmen going about their work tried to ignore the shouting of the press.
"Is the President alive or dead?"
"Who is trying to kill him-if he's still alive?"
"Can you give us the full name and Social Security Number of the impostor President now occupying the White House?"
The workmen pretended not to hear.
"Is your silence a no-comment? Or are you ignoring us?"
"They're ignoring you," Remo said, immediately regretting it. The press turned their attention to him.
"Why has the President fired his Secret Service detail?" a reporter shouted.
Remo said nothing.
"Is the Vice President in charge, or the First Lady?"
Remo started to walk away.
"Can you at least give us a no-comment so we have some audio for airing?"
Sticking his thumbs in his ears, Remo wiggled his fingers and tongue at the press.
As Remo drew near the East Wing of the White House, he felt a vague pressure on the small of his back. As soon as the feeling hit, he ducked behind a huge red oak tree.
When the bullet his subtle senses expected did not come, Remo knelt and peered up through the high branches.
Up on the roof of the Treasury Building, something moved.
Remo whipped off his sunglasses, making sure his face was turned away from the cameras, so he could see more clearly. Sunglasses were a hindrance to someone whose eyes took the natural sunlight and used it to full advantage for seeing.
Up on the Treasury Building roof, the unmistakable silhouette of a man with a scoped rifle skulked. It had been the sniper laying the cross hairs of his scope on his back that had tripped Remo's assassin's reflexes.
"Damn," said Remo, looking toward Pennsylvania Avenue. He could flash across East Executive Ave. and ascend the classical Greek Treasury facade in less than ninety seconds. But not with the press crawling all over the place. All those cameras couldn't help but track him, no matter how fast he moved.
Then a White House car came slithering out of the parking garage, and Remo ran to intercept it. All White House vehicles were equipped with running boards and wide rear bumpers for the convenience of Secret Service agents. Without breaking stride, Remo ran parallel to the left running board and hopped aboard. His weight didn't even compress the suspension springs.
Remo rode the big black vehicle through the White House gate and onto Pennsylvania Avenue. No one questioned him, but the press, seeing a Secret Service agent clinging to the vehicle, jumped to a hasty conclusion. They thought the President was slipping out of the White House.
They gave chase. As the car turned onto Madison Place, Remo casually stepped off and made for the Treasury Building. He looked back once. Not a single camera was tracking him, he saw.
"Two birds with one stone," he said.
Grinning tightly, he went up the broad staircase of the Treasury Building and kept going. The façade carried him up to the roof, and not the other way around. Some of it was momentum, some the steely strength of his fingers and toes. All of it was Sinanju.
On the roof Remo fixed his target and moved on him with the stealth of a ghost.
The sniper was wearing a blue-black windbreaker and crouched low. From time to time he swept the White House with his rifle, sighting through the scope as if scoping out a bit.
Remo slipped up on him and took his skull in one hand and the rifle barrel in the other. He brought them together, and they made a hollow thunking before the sniper started rolling on the roof, holding his head in his hands.
Remo examined the rifle. It was no Mannlicher-Carcano, but a modern Beretta. Holding the stock in one hand and the barrel in the other, Remo flexed his wrists in opposite directions.
The rifle made a grunk of a sound and shattered like painted glass.