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"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?"
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"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"Because the White House slide they threw up behind you is a little out of
date."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.
A man in a black CIA baseball cap and mirror sunglasses stepped out of the
men's room and said, "You know too much, Pepsie Dobbins."
Pepsie whirled. She saw the cap and the sunglasses before she noticed the gun.
Buck Featherstone stepped between them, and she heard the dull gunshot
reports.
Buck dropped at her feet, his mouth bubbling blood like a dying drinking
fountain.
His eyes were wide and full of disbelief. "But-you're my hero," he bubbled.
"Tough," said the man in the CIA cap, lifting his silenced .22 and taking aim
at the notch between Pepsie Dobbins's stunned blue eyes.
The pistol went click-click-click, and Pepsie assumed she was shot. Her legs
gave way, corkscrewing her to the floor.
She was grabbed up, thrown across a soft fleshy shoulder and carried out of
the building. No one stopped them. No one dared.
"We record the news, we don't participate," a man said, hastily squeezing out
of the way of the man with the silenced pistol.
Pepsie was dumped into the trunk of a blue car, and by the time her brain
unblocked, the car was roaring from the curb and she found herself inhaling
carbonmonoxide fumes coming from a faulty exhaust connection.
"I MYSELF HOLD that it was a joint Cuban Intelligence-Sicilian mafia hit,"
said the cab driver as he wrestled with the traffic at Dupont Circle.
"Mind paying attention to your driving?" Remo said from the back of the taxi.
"I can drive and talk fine. Like I was saying-"
A single ivory fingernail flicked out to depress a spot over the driver's neck
vertebrae, and the driver continued moving his mouth, but nothing came out.
"Thank you, Little Father," said Remo.
A metallic blue Porsche came squealing around a corner and the cab driver
evaded it by the width of a paint job. Remo caught a fleeting glimpse of the
driver. His eyes had gone to the white letters CIA on the black baseball cap,
so the face beneath made only a fleeting impression.
"You know," Remo told Chiun, "that guy looked familiar."
"Yes?"
"If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was Hardy Bricker."
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"Who is Hardy Bricker?"
"You know, the paranoid film director. The one that made that movie a few
years ago about the Kennedy assassination that claimed a government conspiracy
of about twenty-two thousand people was behind it all."
"I did not see that movie," Chiun sniffed.
"It was called CIA."
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