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.