"I'm going to set up a meeting," Bindle sniffed.
"We can't," Marmelstein said. "We've got what's-his-name to deal with. The desk-smashie guy."
"No," Bindle insisted. "He left here like a bat out of hell. No one's seen him for a couple of hours."
"You think he's gone?"
"We'd better hope so. For all our sakes."
The line went dead. Marmelstein opened his eyes. He stared at the TV screen for an instant. "Oh, God," he muttered.
Lunging for the wet bar, Bruce Marmelstein filled his tumbler with scotch. This time, he didn't add soda.
Chapter 24
The spotlights that ordinarily bathed the White House grounds in brightness remained doused. The only light to spill across the soggy lawn came from distant amber streetlights and from the many TV cameras huddled back at the police cordon. Though the shadows were long and deep, Remo's highly developed eyes drew in enough available light to make the area seem as bright as midday.
He had slipped through one of the openings made by the terrorists across from the Zero Milestone at the Ellipse. Although the grass was drenched, the soles of his loafers left not a single impression. No one saw him as he moved unmolested through the shadows toward the mansion.
The south lawn fountain sent gurgling spurts into the damp air. Remo skirted the pool, slipping from the edge of the long tulip bed around the fountain. The loamy smell of overturned earth was thick in his nostrils as he moved stealthily over to a tangle of purple magnolias.
From the shrubs, he slid across shadowy open lawn to the drive. Remo spotted the first terrorists as he approached the neatly trimmed hedge.
There were two of them. They stood beside the thick trunk of a spreading white ash beyond the hedge.
They didn't seem interested in the assault rifles in their own hands. Bored, one of the men banged his against the tree trunk, apparently unmindful that the barrel was aimed at his own stomach.
The men spoke in hushed tones. Their whispered words traveled to Remo's hypersensitive ears even as he moved-unseen-toward them.
"What are we doing here?" the first said with a sigh.
"Gotta pay the bills." The second shrugged. He tapped the tree with his gun butt.
"Yes, but what's my motivation? You know, I don't need this. I've done summer stock for the past three years. I was even in a play in New York."
"Broadway?"
"Off-off Broadway. Dinner theater mostly. But I got noticed. My agent's sister knows Neil Simon's mechanic's brother-in-law. His wife saw me and loved me."
Listening to the two men jabber, Remo had begun to get a troubled feeling. He hopped the hedge, landing on silent soles in the wide driveway. As the men continued to talk, he slipped around the fat angled tree trunk.
"I was up for the lead in The Gypsy Lover," one terrorist was boasting.
"No kidding?" asked the other, bored. He was staring out at the amber lights of E Street. "What happened?"
He would never know the answer.
The terrorist heard a grunt, then a thwuck. When he spun toward the commotion, he found to his shock and horror that the white ash tree had swallowed his partner. Or at least some of him.
The man was doubled over at the waist, his head jammed deep into a puckered knothole where once there had been a limb. His arms dangled limply to the ground. It seemed impossible for so much head to fit in so little space.
The surviving terrorist gasped, horrified. In his sheer panic, there was only one thing racing through his fear-paralyzed mind.
"If you're dead, can I still borrow your leather jacket on Monday? I've got that One Life to Live audition."
A face appeared before him. Hard. "Show's over," Remo said.
The man suddenly realized what had happened to his partner. And in those dark eyes was promise of a similar fate for him. He abruptly dropped his gun and covered his male-model-perfect face with both hands.
"Not in the face!" he begged. Remo obliged.
A two-fingered tap to the chest shocked the heart between beats. When the dead man's hands fell away, there seemed almost to be a look of relief that his handsome face had come through his death intact. He collapsed to the asphalt.
His concern deepening, Remo left the first two bodies.
Another five men waited at the top of the staircase beneath the south portico's entablature. They were using the colonnade of thick support columns for cover.
Keeping the farthest column on the left between him and the terrorist behind it, Remo moved swiftly up the left staircase. A few short bounds put him only a few feet away from the last man in line.
"I can't believe we signed on for three of these," one of the men on the long portico was complaining.
"It's pretty standard," another said. "The original with an option for two more. I guess they thought New York went well enough to warrant a sequel."
The last word finished it. Sequel. They were talking about the bombing in New York and the terrorist takeover of the White House in movie terms. Remo couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"What's that?" one terrorist asked suddenly. Another helicopter was sweeping in over the Ellipse. All eyes on the portico turned to the noise. And behind the final column, Remo used the distraction to his advantage.
When the others were looking off toward the sound, Remo reached around the column. Grabbing hold of a shirt collar, he yanked. The terrorist's boots shot off the portico. He disappeared without a sound. Remo muffled the snap of cracking vertebrae with cupped hands.
While the rest of the men were still fixated on the landing helicopter, Remo skipped to the next column.
Only when he finished off the second man and was propping the body against the wrought-iron rail that ran between pillars did he realize that stealth was probably not necessary. The remaining three men seemed oblivious to everything.
"Helicopters are pretty," one said, staring wistfully at the hulking shape of the distant chopper.
"I thought they were gonna feed us," the second whined. "I've been eating nothing but margarine sandwiches for a month."
"If you guys aren't doing anything after the siege, maybe we could, I don't know, hang out," the third suggested with a leer.
Actors. No doubt about it.
Remo walked out from behind the column. Their guns were lying wherever they'd dropped them. The men were all far too good-looking, with highlighted hair, bulging biceps and jaws that looked as if they'd been welded on.
"Oh, hello." One smiled as Remo took hold of the other pair and stuffed their heads beneath the dirt of a nearby potted cherry tree. The actor frowned as his two companions wiggled in place. "Is this in the script?" he asked, getting reluctantly to his knees. "'Cause if it's not, I want another five bucks."
The other two had stopped squirming. Remo released the inert bundles. When he looked down at the third, the man offered him the back of his neck.
"You actors drain the fun out of everything," Remo grumbled.
Taking the man by the shirt collar, he steered him headfirst into the nearest column. The head went splat. The column didn't.
Leaving the five dead thespians to shine in their new role as corpses, Remo moved swiftly to the glass south doors of the White House.
"IF YOU WANT to fire me, fire me. But listen, I'm the one who booked you this gig."
"My talent got me New York," Reginald Hardwin insisted. He was sitting at the President's desk in the Oval Office.
"Reg, baby, sweetheart. Listen to me. With talent and thirty-three cents you can buy a stamp. New York was penny-ante. A nickel-and-dime waste of all our time."
Hardwin didn't bother to tell his agent how much he'd made for presiding over the Regency Building bombing. It was only two days since he'd hired Bernie Leffer. Like all Hollywood agents, if he learned of the amount, he'd somehow find a way to tap into the five million Reginald had been paid to do the Regency.