JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY 1917-1963
The familiar soft voice said, "I told you that what is past is prologue."
Pepsie tried to struggle to her feet, but a foot pressing against the small of her back kept her down.
"Who . . . what . . . ?" she said dazedly.
"When . . . where . . . how?" said the soft voice. "Maybe this will answer your questions." And a ream of paper bound in a black laminated folder landed by her hand. Through a rectangular window cut in the cover, the top sheet showed white. On it was typewritten:
CURE
A Film by Hardy Bricker
Pepsie Dobbins looked over her shoulder and saw the man in the black CIA baseball cap. He had shaved his puffy checks. He removed his sunglasses. The name and face immediately connected. "You're Hardy Bricker! "
Bricker smiled thinly. "I told you the script had been written, and now you're part of the picture. Why did you have to spill my story line all over the place?"
"Story line?"
"Damn it! I needed you to supply me tape. Now CURE is going to have to silence you, too."
"What's CURE?"
"The real name for the black assassin operation I have been calling RX."
"Why not call it CURE?"
"Because someone might steal the title. Besides, I didn't want Smith to send his thick wristed assassin after me during shooting."
"You mean shooting shooting? Or filming shooting?"
"I mean both," said Hardy Bricker. "Since you know about Smith you must also know about CURE and the assassin with the thick wrists."
"I never heard of CURE. I got all my information from a little Asian man who called himself Chiun. I met him on the plane."
Bricker looked thoughtful. "The thick wristed man spoke about a house of assassins in Asia. Before he silenced me."
"Huh?"
Hardy Bricker took a deep breath. "I was lecturing at Harvard when he approached me. He told me that I had stumbled upon the truth. There was a secret shadow government that enforced its will through assassination and black operations. It was called CURE, he said. It was headed by a man named Smith, he said. I had been right all along. My film CIA was closer to the truth than even I dreamed. And then he did something to me. I lost my mind, I mean my memory. I wandered the streets of Cambridge for over a year, living out of garbage cans and the coins people dropped into my paper cup until a film student recognized me and called my agent. A brain operation unblocked my memory. I remembered that I was Hardy Bricker. But I also remembered what the man with the thick wrists had done to me. And I vowed to expose him and the evil, racist, fascist infraorganization that controlled him."
"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."
"Only for you, pal."
And while everyone watched with furrowing brows, including the owner of the finger, Remo gave Hardy Bricker's wrist a sharp inward push.
The index finger plunged into Bricker's soft brain all the way up to third joint.
Bricker's right eye bugged out of its socket. His entire body shook. But he didn't attempt to extract his finger from his brain. He couldn't. Neither was working anymore.
They left Hardy Bricker kneeling at the eternal flame, where he would be later found-the first human being in recorded history to commit suicide by ramming his index finger into his own skull, a mystery for the ages, never to be solved.
AS THEY WALKED THROUGH Arlington National Cemetery, Chiun asked, "Was all that cretin said true, Remo?"
"Yeah," Remo said glumly. "I heard Bricker was in town and I was sick of all those movies of his where he blamed every bad thing that ever happened in the world on American government conspiracies. I figured if I put him out to pasture, that would be the end of his propaganda campaign. I never told Smitty."
"Emperor Smith will be displeased," Chiun said gravely. "Even more displeased than he is over my slip of the tongue where this unimportant woman is concerned."
"Look, I need Smith to help find my parents. He can't know about this."
"Nor will he."
Remo looked relieved.
"Provided certain persons show certain other persons proper gratitude according to the season," added Chiun.
Remo sighed. "Just name your price."
"I will," Chiun said thinly, regarding Pepsie with narrow eyes. "Once we are through with unimportant details."
Remo and Chiun loaded Pepsie Dobbins into the borrowed police car, and she asked, "What happens to me?"
"The same thing that happened to Bricker the first time," said Remo.
"What happened to him the first time?" asked Pepsie.
A long-nailed hand the color of old ivory drifted up to Pepsie Dobbins's shoulder and squeezed once. She instantly forgot the question. Then her mind went dark.
Just before the coming of darkness, a squeaky voice said, "This time I will do it and no one will undo it."
WHEN PEPSIE WOKE UP, she was sleeping in the back seat of a police car parked outside of the ANC Washington news bureau and, head in a fog, she stumbled into the building.
Her news director found her wandering the halls and said, "'There you are. Where have you been?"
"Oh, hi, Greg. I think I've been in a daze."
"That's the understatement of the turn of the century," Greg said bitterly. "Better sit down." Pepsie sat. The bare floor was not as comfortable as she'd hoped.
"Do you want the good news first or the bad?"
"What's the good?"
"The President's not dead."
Pepsie made a confused face. "Isn't that the bad news?"
"No."
"Okaaaay. So what's the bad?"
"CNN is showing a tape found at Kennedy's grave where they found that wacko film director Hardy Bricker, dead with his finger in his brain."
"Huh?"
"He committed suicide, though no one can figure out how. He was behind everything."
"It's bad that we lost the story, isn't it?" Pepsie said dimly.
"It's worse that we declared the President dead twice in forty-eight hours. I've been fired. And the only reason I haven't left the building is that I had something to do first."
"What's that?"
"Firing you."
"Oh," said Pepsie Dobbins, who still didn't get it all, but one day would.
Chapter 33
In the White House basement command post, Harold Smith watched the confession of Academy Award-winning Hollywood director Hardy Bricker on CNN. It was being shown for the fourth time.
"Incredible," he said. "It was all a film. No wonder the President was not killed outright the first time. There wouldn't be a story otherwise."
Smith turned in his chair to face Remo and Chiun. "You did an excellent job," he said. "From identifying Bricker as the mastermind to dealing with the Pepsie Dobbins problem."
"Actually Chiun deserves most of the credit," said Remo.
"I taught him everything he knows," added Chiun blandly.
"And CURE is off the hook now that Bricker confessed that RX did in fact symbolize the medical community he was trying to frame, along with Congressman Gingold and Thrush Limburger, among others."
"Another mission successfully completed, and another President saved," Remo said brightly. "All in the line of duty."
"The Secret Service has confiscated the tapes found in Bricker's hotel room," said Smith.
"That ties up that loose end," Remo said, grinning fixedly.
"There is only one thing," said Smith.
Remo and Chiun looked blank.
"The script. They could find no trace of it."
"Oh, that," said Remo. "Bricker had it on him."
"Where is it now?"
Remo hesitated. "I gave it to Chiun."
Smith directed his gaze at the Master of Sinanju. "Master Chiun?"
"Pah, I threw it away."
"Why? It was evidence."
"It was the most inept script I ever read," said the Master of Sinanju. "I was not even mentioned."
Harold Smith looked blank. They stared at one another, all equally blank of face until Smith cleared his throat and said, "Now that the threat to the President is suppressed, it is time we left the White House the way we came in."
"Like thieves in the night?" asked Chiun.
"Security," said Smith, rising to go. "And we have much to do, starting with locating Uncle Sam Beasley, who is still at large."
"No," said Remo. "Starting with finding my parents."
"I will do my best," Smith said.
They followed Harold Smith to the basement boiler room and the secret tunnel to the Treasury Building at a careful distance.
"Remember," Remo whispered to Chiun. "You promise never to tell Smith that I was the one who set Bricker off."
"You will bear that burden to the end of your days!'
"Okay, I'll bear it. But mum's the word."
"And you in return will cook every meal for the next three thousand years."
"You said two thousand," Remo hissed.
"I am including your afterlife in the Christian place of atonement. I will visit you there often when we are both dead."
"I'm sure I'll appreciate the company," Remo said dryly.
"Just remember to steam the rice, not boil it like a lazy white."
"For the next two thousand years or in the afterlife?"
"Both."
As they entered the tunnel under the White House, Remo laughed softly and guiltily.
"Merry Feast of the Pig, Little Father," Remo said warmly.
"The same to you, counterschmuck."
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