Remo stepped inside, looked around and then up. Sylvester Montrofort was sitting on a platform behind his desk, but six feet above the floor. He was smiling down at Remo, a broad, even smile, perhaps even more joyful because in his right hand he carried a .44 Magnum. It was pointed at Remo. Behind him, on a wall, was a six- by four-foot television screen. In full color, it showed the crowd gathering at the Capitol.
"What do you want?" Montrofort asked Remo. "You."
"Why me?" asked Montrofort. "Because I couldn't find Grumpy, Sneezy, or Doc. You'll have to do. You know goddam well why."
"Well, it's nice that you're here. You can stay and watch the President's speech at the Capitol," Montrofort said.
"The President's not going to be there." Montrofort's smile did not waver. Nor did the gun pointed at Remo's belly. "You lose, old fella," Montrofort said. "There's his helicopter landing from Camp David."
Remo glanced at the large television projection screen. It was true. The presidential chopper was landing on the Capitol grounds. The side doors opened and the President was coming down the portable steps. Secret Service men swarmed around him as the President briskly stepped off
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the hundred yards to the Capitol platform where he was going to deliver his speech.
Remo could feel a small sinking sensation in his stomach. Chiun would have gone to the White House, but with the President not there . . . more than likely he would have gone straight back to his hotel room to ponder the cruelties of a world that sent the Master of Sinanju off on a fool's errand. The President was without protection against Montrofort's plan, whatever it was.
Remo looked up again at the dwarf, still seated six feet above the level of the floor, his wheelchair locked into position atop the carpeted platform.
"Why, Montrofort?" Remo asked. "Why not just keep collecting the blackmail?"
"Blackmail's a hard word. Tribute sounds so much better."
"Call it what you want. The blood money. Why not just keep collecting it?"
"Because I have all the money I need. What I want is for them to know that there is a power here . . ." he tapped his forehead with his left forefinger, ". . . that is greater than any defense they can muster. In exactly twelve minutes, this President will be dead. Some poor fool will be hunted down and made out to be the mastermind. And I will be free. And maybe next time I won't ask for tribute. Maybe I'll ask for California. Who knows?"
"You're as loose as lambshit," Remo said. "And you're not going to ask for anything. Dead men don't ask."
He glanced toward the television. The President had passed through the rear of the Capitol building and was coming down the steps toward the
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speaker's platform. A phalanx of Secret Service men surrounded him. At the top of the steps, Remo could see the Speaker of the House standing, glumly watching. When Remo looked away, Montrofort was staring at him again.
"I'm going to be dead?" he said. "Sorry, bucko, but there are two things wrong with that. W-R-0-N-G. Wrong. I've been living in a dead body all my life. Dead doesn't scare me because I can't get any deader. That's one."
"What's two?" asked Remo.
"I'm the one holding the gun," Montrofort said.
The television set concentrated on the crowd roar now, as they cheered the President who stood on the wooden platform, waving to the audience. His famous smile seemed a little strained to Remo but he was smiling and Remo admired him, for a moment, for his foolish courage. His stupid bravery.
"Don't you know guns are out this year?" Remo told Montrofort. "The beautiful people don't carry them anymore and since you're such a raving beauty, I can't figure you knowing how to use that. How are you going to get the President?"
"I'm not going to get him. He's going to get himself."
"Like Walgreen ? Moving into a safe house and have it explode underneath him ?"
"Just like that," Montrofort said. "The report on the Kennedy assassination. It tells you in there just how to do it."
The Hole, Remo thought. Chiun had been right.
"Since I'm going to be dead," Remo said, "tell me how."
"Watch and see."
"Sorry, Tom Thumb. I don't have time for
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that." The President had started speaking to the crowd. Remo's lips were set hard. Even with Montrofort's plan, he could not get to the Capitol in time to stop it.
Montrofort looked at his wall clock. "Six more minutes."
"You know what?" Remo said.
"What, laddie?"
"You're never going to see it happen."
Remo moved into the room on a run and a roll, heading for the protective overhang of the huge cubic platform that Montrofort sat on.
As he moved, he heard a woman's voice behind him.
"Remo." It was Viola.
He moved toward the platform before turning back to caution Viola away. Atop the platform, Montrofort had swung his wheelchair around to face the door at which Remo had been standing. He squeezed off a shot. The large room resounded with the echoing blast of the heavy charge. The slug caught Viola in the center of her chest. Its force lifted her body and tossed her three feet back into the receptionist's office. Remo had seen mortal wounds. That was one.
He growled, more in frustration than in anger, then coiled his leg muscles and exploded them upward. He was standing on the platform behind Montrofort's wheelchair. The dwarf was trying to spin around, to find Remo to get a shot at him.
Remo pressed his hands against both sides of Montrofort's skull from behind.
"You lose," he said. "L-O-S-E." Montrofort tried to point the gun up over his shoulder. But before his finger could tighten on the trigger, he could hear the sound of cracking. His own skull
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was cracking under the pressure of Remo's hands. It was as if walnuts were being broken inside his head. The cracks were loud and sharp but there was no pain. Not yet. And then the bones gave way and shards of bone imploded into Mon-trofort's brain. And then there was pain. Brutal blinding pain that no longer felt as if it were happening to someone or something else.
Remo gave the wheelchair a shove. It catapulted forward off the six-foot-high platform, sailing into the room like a motorcycle stunt man clearing six buses. The chair hit with a heavy metallic thump and it and Montrofort lay in a heap.
Remo did not see it hit: he was at Viola's side.
She was still breathing. Her eyes were open and she smiled when she saw him.
"Chiun said ..."
"Don't worry about it," Remo said. He looked down at the wound. The front of her linen suit was matted with blood and flesh, a spreading stain already a foot square. In the center of the fabric was a two-inch hole and Remo knew that in the back of Viola's body would be a hole six times that big. Magnums had a way of doing that.
"I worry," she gasped. "Chiun said he'd go to the White House and stop the President."
"It's okay," Remo said. Behind him he heard the President's unrhythmic voice speaking to the crowd at the Capitol.
"Said something else . . ."
"Don't worry," said Remo.
"He said you're an idiot," Viola said. "You're not an idiot. You're nice." She smiled again and her eyes closed. Remo felt the life leave her body as it rested in his arms and he set her gently down on the rug.
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Behind him, in Montrofort's office, Remo heard a change in the television sound. The President's voice had stopped. The announcer's voice had cut in.
"Something appears to be going on here," the announcer said.
Remo looked back at the screen covering the side of Montrofort's wall.