"I always knew you yankees were gonna throw that damned Catholic altar boy stuff at me some day," the President said, his ample lips trying to smile. "Think about this, though. If I hide, who says the presidency endures? It's been hanging on by a thread since 1963. One President shot and another one forced to hide in the White House and another one thinking he was Louis the Fourteenth. So what've we got? A presidency that's a prison and a President who's a prisoner. Four years of my hiding and there won't be any presidency. The leader of this peckerheaded country may be a damned street mob, for all we know. I'm going and that's that." He hurried on quickly to silence any interruption. "Now the reason I called you here was this. I'm going to make sure the Vice President is at his desk on Saturday and doesn't leave this building for anything. And I don't want you on the Capitol steps with me. Or anybody else if you can swing it. You keep your guys inside."
"They're going to bitch that you're just trying to keep them off television. Another dirty political plot."
"Good. Let them bitch. Let them bitch like a constipated hound dog. And with luck they'll still be bitchin' at the end of the day, because everything's been a piece of cake, and maybe we can explain it to them."
126
"And if we can't ... if ..." The Speaker of the House could not bring himself to speak the word "assassination."
"If we can't, we'll know that we tried to do the right thing. Trust me. This is right."
After a long wait, the Speaker nodded glumly and began to toy with his liver. Maybe it was right. He had to trust and at least, he wasn't being asked to trust a President who thought he had to be a public macho symbol to the western world. This President's judgment would be cool and unemotional. But the Speaker still did not like the idea of a President walking into an assassination attempt, perhaps without any solid way of defending himself. He looked across the table at the man who sat in the nation's highest office. His face was wrinkled with the twisting gouge of the duties he handled every day; his skin was leathered like a man who had known what it was to make his living out of the inhospitable ground soil, whose own roots in America went back to the days when to survive meant to fight because it was a hostile land, and only the strong had endured. He looked at the President.
And he trusted him.
Remo didn't.
He moved through the darkened White House corridors like a silent wisp of smoke through a cigarette holder.
Secret Service men stood at every stairway and sat out of sight in alcoves at the intersection of each corridor in the living quarters of the President on the building's third floor. They were a
127
palace guard, the first palace guard in history to ask questions first and to shoot later, Remo thought. But why not? America was a first in history too. The building he was in was an example of English Palladian architecture, designed by an Irishman, for the American chief of state. It was the story of the United States. It had been built by the best from everywhere and so, of all the nations in the world, it worked best. Not because its system was necessarily best, but because its people were the best to be found. That was why, no matter what America and its leaders tried to do, they could not export the American democratic system. It was a system designed by the best of the world, for the best of the world, and to expect cattle to understand it, much less emulate it, was asking too much of cattle.
Remo decided America had a much better, simpler policy for its relationships with the rest of the world.
"Screw 'em all and keep your powder dry," he mumbled.
Remo realized he had spoken aloud when a voice answered from behind him: "My powder's very dry. Don't test it."
He turned around slowly to confront a Secret Service agent. The man wore a gray suit with a tieless shirt. He had a .45 caliber automatic aimed at Remo's belly, held tight to his hip in safe position, where no sudden move of hand or foot could reach it before the weapon could be fired.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"
Remo realized the man was new to the White House detail. Good procedure didn't call for on-
128
the-spot interrogations. It called for the intruder to be removed from the dangerous area, and then questioned at length somewhere else.
"I'm looking for the Rose Guest Room," Remo said.
"Why?"
"I'm sleeping over tonight and I went to the bathroom but I got lost trying to get back. I'm the Dali Lama."
There was just a moment's hesitation, just a split second of confusion on the face of the agent, and Remo moved slowly to his right, then darted in quickly to his left. The automatic was out of the agent's hand, and Remo's right thumb and index finger were alongside the large carotid artery in the man's neck, squeezing just hard enough to cut off blood flow and sound. The man collapsed and Remo caught him in his arms, and carried him over to put him on the chair, underneath a large oval gilt mirror.
He put the man's automatic back in his shoulder holster. He had no more than five minutes and he would have to move quickly now.
He found the room he wanted and did what he had to do quickly, and then was back out in the corridor moving in the shadows to the President's bedroom. His thin body flowed through the corridors, drifting in and out of shadows, his body rhythms not those of a man walking or running, but randomly smooth, like the passage of air, and no more seen or noticed than the movement of air molecules.
Then Remo was in the presidential bedroom. The First Lady lay on her side, both hands under the pillow, snoring lightly. She wore a rhine-
129
stoned mask over her eyes to keep out the light from her husband's late-night in-bed reading. The President slept on his back, his hands folded over his bare chest, his body covered only by a sheet.
The President's hands moved up when he felt something drop lightly on his chest. Military service had given him the light sleeping habit, and he woke quickly, moved his hands and felt the object. He tried to determine what it was in the dark but couldn't. He reached for the light, but his hand was stopped by another hand before it could reach the switch.
"Those are the braces out of your daughter's mouth," Remo's voice said. "As easy as that was, that's how easy you go on Saturday."
The President's voice was close enough to being cool for Remo to be impressed.
"You're that Remo, aren't you?" the President said in a hushed whisper.
"Yeah. One and the same. Come to tell you that you're staying home Saturday."
"You haven't found out anything yet?" the President said.
"Just enough to convince me you're a damned fool if you think you're going to some open-air rally to stroke a lot of teeny-boppers when someone wants to put you down."
"That's where we differ, Remo. I'm going."
"You'll be a brave corpse," said Remo. "We warned you before. You're dead meat. You're still dead meat."
"That's an opinion," the President said. He lowered his voice as his wife's steady regulated snoring stopped for a second, then resumed.
130
"I can't stay hidden in this building for four years."
"Not for four years. Just Saturday."
"Sure. Just Saturday. Then Sunday. Then all of next week . . . next month . . . next year . . . forever. I'm going." The presidential voice was soft, but it had a stubborn intensity to it that made Remo feel like sighing.
"I could keep you here," Remo said.
"How?"
"I could break your leg."
"I'd go on crutches."
"I could do something to your voice box and make you silent for the next ninety-six hours."