"By killing the President?"
Hardy Bricker shrugged carelessly. "I had been away from the Hollywood scene for over a year. People forget. I needed a hit. Besides, I didn't kill anybody personally."
"But he's the President of the United States!"
"The bastard sold out the film industry during those GATT talks a year ago," Bricker snarled. "All of Hollywood felt betrayed."
"GATT?" said Pepsie.
"General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. The French were holding out for concessions that protected their shitty little artsy-fartsy film industry against big-budget US. films. The President swore up and down he wouldn't cave in. But he did. A world leader who can't stand up for his own nation's chief entertainment industry doesn't deserve to live. That's what I say."
"So who killed the President?"
Hardy Bricker threw up his arm in agitation. "Who! Who? Who? Don't you get it? The shooters don't even know. That's the beauty of this. Nobody knows the big picture. Everybody has their role, but nobody on the inside knows what's going on. Even the people in the fucking loop are out of the loop. I have crafts people who think they're building prop replicas for one picture I have in development. I have a talent agency recruiting the doubles. I have a quack Mexican doctor putting the animal brain centers into the doubles."
"Excuse me?"
Bricker calmed down. "It's a French technique actually. Discovered back in the eighties. You drill a hole in someone's skull, introduce cells taken from other animals that control certain instinctive behaviors into the brain, and they lie dormant until the alien cells are activated by inhaled steroids. They did it with animals at first. Quails that crow like roosters, because they think they are roosters. Dogs that quack. Lions that think they can fly. Those ones don't live very long. I have a pet monkey that moos like a cow. They're called chimeras. It's the latest fad pet on the coast. I just adapted the idea to people. My Gila Gingold thought he was an alligator. The Thrush Limburger double thought he was a rogue elephant. He wasn't, but between his three-hundred-pound body and the adrenaline kick from steroids, he might as well have been."
"This is insane. You assassinated the President just so you could make a movie?"
Hardy Bricker looked injured. "Actually it's a docudrama. I had everything taped by crews who were pretending to be news crews. All that tape you supplied will be a big help. Once it's cut together, over my narration, my version of events is the one that will go down in the history books. The President will go down as a martyr for health care. If it all holds together, who knows, universal health coverage should become law by the time I'm giving my next Academy Award speech."
A voice from nearby said, "Not where you're going, pal."
Pepsie looked up.
From behind a hedge stepped a man in a black T-shirt and chinos. He had very thick wrists and the deadest eyes in the world. And they were looking at Hardy Bricker with cold rage.
Bricker whipped his .22 target pistol from his topcoat. He lined it up and said, "That's far enough."
But the man kept advancing.
Bricker fired five consecutive shots, and every one seemed to miss. The man with the dead eyes kept on coming.
Bricker aimed very carefully and, since the man was in no particular hurry, only fired when the length of a human body separated them.
This time Pepsie saw the man sidestep the buffet. He simply stepped out of its path and back into place like a ballet dancer performing a minor exercise. The edges of his body blurred, indicating incredible speed, but otherwise it seemed to execute the maneuver with casual nonchalance.
The next shot Hardy Bricker squeezed off made the sound of a hammer falling on an empty chamber.
The thick wristed man reached up and relieved Hardy Bricker of his pistol. Finger skin came away with the weapon.
Bricker started backing away.
From behind Pepsie, the tiny figure she knew as Chiun stepped up and impaled the back of Bricker's back with a single deadly fingernail.
Bricker screeched as if a red-hot needle had penetrated his plump body. "You're not going to kill me," he blubbered. "You can't. I'm a major, major player in the film industry."
"I should have wasted you the first time," said the thick wristed man bitterly. "My mistake."
Hardy Bricker's eyes squeezed out tears like tiny sponges. "I don't want to die."
"Tough."
"'This isn't in the script."
"Screw the script. This is real life. And for you, it's about to come to an sudden end."
"Look," Bricker pleaded, folding his hands together, "I can put you in my movie. You'll be famous."
"I'm already in the movie."
"We can be in the movie together. I promise you won't end up on the cutting-room floor. You have my word as a child of the sixties."
"Remo, I weary of this man's prattle," said Chiun.
"Just a sec," said Remo. "Bricker, who else knows about CURE?"
"Just her. You're going to have to kill her, too."
"Not true," Pepsie shrilled. "I only know about RX, and I don't really know about that."
"We'll get to you later," said Remo. "I got an idea-you're going to confess your crimes to the world."
"Never. It'll spoil the film and wreck the health-care."
Little Father, see if there's a video camera in that car.
A moment later the Master of Sinanju returned carrying a video camera.
Remo lifted it to his shoulder and started taping Hardy Bricker.
"Start confessing. Just leave out the stuff about CURE and Smith and us."
"I refuse."
The Master of Sinanju stepped up, and all the resolve drained out of Hardy Bricker's quaking body. He began confessing. He spoke in exhaustive detail, adding things he had not told before.
Remo stopped him at one point and asked, "Who was the Oswald double?"
"A has-been actor," Bricker mumbled. "He'd built a career out of playing Lee Harvey Oswald in a string of made-for-TV movies back in the seventies. When he got too old for the part, he lost it. Started believing he was Oswald. Changed his name to Alek James Hidell. He was an extra in CIA. He was the only one I didn't have to drill a hole in his skull before I sent him after the President. Let me tell you, when he read the script, he couldn't wait to take a shot at the President."
"He was willing to kill the President to be in your movie?" Reno said incredulously.
"Docudrama. And he knew he was shooting a Secret Service decoy. If we killed the President before the credits, we'd have no movie. He was the only one besides me who knew what was going on. That's the beauty of it. We had a conspiracy involving literally thousands of people, just like I theorized in CIA, and it all held together."
"Until now. He know he was going to be killed by a Ruby double?"
"That was a later revision. I never got around to showing him that draft."
"Keep confessing," Remo said.
When Hardy Bricker was through, he was on his knees sobbing before the eternal flame of the President whose memory he had invoked and defiled.
Remo said, "Now it's time for you to commit suicide."
"The gun is empty," Bricker sobbed. "You can't make me shoot myself with an empty gun."
"Good thinking. Besides, if I did that, it would go on the books as a simple suicide. I don't want a simple suicide. I want something for the conspiracy buffs to chew on for the next two hundred years. Maybe that way they'll stop messing with history."
A thick wristed hand reached down and made one of Hardy Bricker's limp hands into a fist. Remo brought the fist up to the right side of Bricker's throbbing temple. He pulled the index finger out, setting the tip against Bricker's head.
"Shouldn't you at least be filming this?" Bricker asked.
"Why?"
"It's the end of the movie."