Harold Smith went pale. Remo turned to Chiun and said, "You really blew it this time."
The Master of Sinanju's mask of a face went stiff.
"This group is known by the code name RX. And it is headed by a shadowy figure known only as Smith."
Harold Smith rose from his seat, seeming to leave his blood in the chair, he went so pale. "I must speak with the President at once," he said, his voice shaking.
"Good luck," said Remo.
After Harold Smith left the room with wooden strides, Remo turned to Chiun and said, "I think we're both out of a job now."
The Master of Sinanju said nothing. He was staring at the screen with eyes so slitted they might have been cut by a sharp blade.
Chapter 31
In the Presidential suite of the Hay Adams Hotel, within sight of the White House, a man lay on the bed watching a TV through dark sunglasses. A blue L.A. Dodgers cap was cocked back off his forehead. Every flat surface in the room was stacked with black plastic videotapes. And in the corner a red-brown capuchin monkey squatted on a parrot stand, staring out the window with inexpressibly sad eyes.
Pepsie Dobbins was saying, "The significance of the initials RX remain murky, but it strongly suggests what some are calling the medical-industrial complex."
The man bolted upright. "That's my story! She stole my story! The bitch stole my story."
He picked up the bedside telephone and said, "Have my Porsche brought around to the front. And hurry." Going to the bathroom, he quickly shaved the two days' growth of beard from his plump face, tossed the Dodgers cap into the trash and replaced it with a black one emblazoned with the letters CIA.
Selecting a pair of insect green mirrored sunglasses from a traveling case, he clapped them over his eyes and walked out of the room, belting an expensive topcoat around his waist.
After the door closed, the capuchin monkey on the parrot stand opened its small mouth and made a long, low mournful sound that sounded amazingly like the moo of a very tiny cow.
TEN MINUTES LATER a blue Porsche pulled up before the Washington Bureau of ANC News.
Presenting himself to the security desk, the man in the topcoat and CIA cap said in a soft voice, "Tell Pepsie Dobbins the Director is here to see her."
"She doing a stand-up at the White House."
"Don't give me that. I know a studio job when I see it."
"Sorry," said the security guard in a firm voice.
"Not as sorry as you're going to be," said the man in the CIA cap, pulling out a silenced .22 pistol and jamming it into the guard's blue paunch.
Between the silencer and the paunch, the three bullets that shattered the guard's spinal column went in with no more sound than straws through pudding.
IN THE WHITE HOUSE, the President of the United States didn't know whom to believe-the frantic voice of the director of the Secret Service coming from the telephone receiver or Harold W. Smith's careful explanations.
"I am not Director X," the Secret Service director was saying. "The service has nothing to do with any of this!"
Harold Smith was insisting, "We are not RX. I absolutely guarantee it."
The President hesitated. The director of the Secret Service was all but screaming. He had no idea whom he was talking to. He had asked for the President and assumed he had been put through to the former Vice President. The President hadn't spoken a single word through the one-sided conversation.
Then Smith said, "I swear this on the memory of the President whom we both revere."
Abruptly the President hung up and faced Smith. "I'm willing to trust you, Smith, because I trust the judgment of that man. So who is behind this?"
"I hesitate to point the finger of guilt where I am not certain of all my facts."
"I want to hear your ideas."
"The mastermind has great financial and logistical resources. He also has unusual access to Secret Service procedures. He was obviously able to eavesdrop on their transmissions so he could insert his own Marine One into the South Lawn ahead of the real one."
"You blame rogue Secret Service agents?"
"At every incident they were in the thick of it."
"How does Pepsie Dobbins know so much?"
"I suspect she knows very little. She surmises much. We can sort that problem out later."
A knocking came at the door, and then Remo's voice called out, "Smitty. I just had a flash."
Harold Smith hurried to the door and urged, "Not now!"
"Listen a minute. Pepsie's talking about a Director X, right?"
"Yes."
"That's what they call Uncle Sam Beasley. The Director."
"Are you saying Uncle Sam Beasley is behind the conspiracy?"
"You got a better theory?"
"For God's sake, why? What would his motive be."
Remo shrugged. "Who knows. Maybe he thinks the new health-care premiums will drive his theme parks out of business."
Smith rubbed his sharp chin thoughtfully. "It is conceivable," he muttered. "He does have the funds, manpower and technology to accomplish everything we've thus far seen in this plot." Smith stole a look over his shoulder at the waiting figure of the President. "But I cannot tell the President that. For one thing, we allowed Beasley to escape from Folcroft detention. For another, he would scarcely believe that a famous animator considered dead for thirty years is trying to kill him."
"Why don't Chiun and I try to shake some leads out of Pepsie Dobbins? What do we have to lose? We're practically out on the street as it is."
"Whatever you do, don't let yourself be filmed," warned Smith, who then closed the door and straightened his tie and his crestfallen face before turning to the President of the United States.
"Mr. President," he began in an uncomfortable voice. "We may have to revise our working theories."
The President looked skeptical in the extreme.
OUTSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE, Remo and Chiun looked up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.
"I don't see Pepsie," said Remo.
"Nor do I," said Chiun, face gathering into a troubled web.
Remo spotted an ANC microwave van parked on Jackson Place beside Lafayette Park and ran to it. The rear door was unlocked. Yanking it open, he asked the technician at the controls, "Where's Pepsie Dobbins?"
"Back at the studio."
"But she's broadcasting live from the White House lawn."
"What can I say? She's an amazing reporter."
"I get it," said Remo. "Come on, Little Father, let's snag a cab. Pepsie's up to her old tricks again."
INSIDE ANC QUARTERS, Pepsie Dobbins was winding up her live report from the White House.
". . . Stay with ANC News for more on this breaking story. This is Pepsie Dobbins, live from the White House."
The red light winked off, and Pepsie removed her IFP earpiece, carefully unpinning a lapel mike from her green Carolyn Roem dress.
"How'd I do?" she asked.
"Well," said Buck Featherstone, "except for getting Dallas and Houston mixed up, not to mention screwing up Kennedy's middle name, I'd say you did fine."
"No one pays any attention to facts. Just hair and delivery."
"You'd better hope they don't pay attention to backdrops, either," said Buck as they exited the bluescreen studio.
"What are you talking about?"
"Because the White House slide they threw up behind you is a little out of date."
"What do you mean?"
"No Christmas tree on the lawn."
Pepsie made a face. "I don't think anyone will notice."
"You didn't see that tree," Buck said, following Pepsie through the cramped cable-strewn corridors of the ANC Washington news bureau.
"I wouldn't have to electronically enhance my reports if the White House hadn't blocked off Pennsylvania Avenue," Pepsie said in a peevish voice.