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  Smith's voice was flat. " I cannot believe this President would do any such thing."

  "Then can you explain it?"

  "No," Smith admitted.

  "Well, there it is. Look, we'll stay in touch. You do the same."

  "I want results, Remo." Smith hung up on Remo's response. He had work to do.

  Down in Mexico City, Remo snapped, "And you'll get them," into the dead phone. He hung up, adding, "You just might not like them. But then, you never do, do you?"

  Outside, a violent electrical storm had broken out. Rain came down in sheets of metallic needles. It washed the windows like an invisible car wash. Forked lightning stirred the storm.

  Remo turned to Chiun, lying on the bed. "We got to move fast," he said. "Can you hold up your end?"

  The Master of Sinanju opened his tired eyes.

  "Yes. The rain will cleanse the air of impurities."

  "It won't add any oxygen. We're way above sea level. "

  Chiun slipped his legs over the side of the bed.

  "We must do what we can. Where do we begin?"

  "Believe it or not," Remo said, picking up the remote-control unit and pointing it at the television set, "we start with the local news. I'll watch. You translate."

  He fell back onto the bed, felt something hard dig into his back, and pulled out the videotape of the President's rescue. He tossed it on the nightstand and waited for the TV screen to come to life.

  Chapter 16

  The White House staff called it "grips and grins."

  After four straight hours of it, the Vice-President of the United States called it agony.

  He collapsed in his suite at a local hotel.

  "Boy, am I glad that's over!" he told his chief of staff. "I could use a round of golf," he added, squeezing his right hand, "but I think if I get a club in my hand, I won't be able to let go."

  "I got bad news for you, Dan."

  The Vice-President looked up.

  The look on his chief of staff's face was grave. He was pale. His voice had quavered toward the end.

  For an instant the universe reeled under the Vice-President of the United States. For an instant he thought the thing he half-hoped and half-dreaded had come to pass. The thing that the nation talked about, joked about, and even feared, each according to his views and political opinions.

  "You mean . . . ?" The Vice-President croaked.

  "Yes," the chief of staff said. "The White House wants us to go to Detroit and do another one of these damn things."

  The Vice-President let out his breath. His heart started beating again. He was not the new President.

  "What?" he said dazedly.

  "More grips and grins," the chief of staff said grimly. "The White House wants it coordinated with the Bogota thing."

  "Oh," said the Vice-President. He was relieved. He hadn't wanted to become President under these circumstances. But the possibility had been on everyone's lips ever since the President had agreed to go to Colombia.

  "I don't know if I can deal with this," the Vice-President admitted, trying to unclench his right hand.

  "It's a two-hour flight. Take a nap and soak your hand-shaking hand on the plane. But let's go. They're really anxious about this."

  The Vice-President got up and straightened his tie with stiff fingers.

  "Oh, by the way," his chief of staff said, pulling out an envelope, "this is for you."

  The Vice-President reached for the proffered envelope, but his fingers refused to close around it. It dropped to the carpet.

  "I'll get it," said his chief of staff.

  "No, I will," the Vice-President said genially.

  They bumped heads attempting to retrieve the fallen envelope.

  "Sorry."

  "No, I'm sorry," the Vice-President said, holding his head.

  His chief of staff helped the Vice-President to his feet and again handed him the envelope. This time the Vice-President accepted it with his left hand. The transfer was completed without further incident, much to his chief of staffs surprise. He had known the Vice-President to forget his own wife's name.

  The Vice-President looked at the blank white front and asked, "What is it?"

  "From the White House. It's your speech."

  "My speech?"

  "Yeah. They had the President's top speech writer draft it. I think it's tied to the one the President is giving in Bogota."

  "Really?" the Vice-President said, pleased that he rated a presidential speech writer. He reached for the flap.

  "No, don't open it now!"

  The Vice-President's smile turned to a frown. "Why not?"

  "It's not to be opened until you give it."

  "How am I gonna practice it?"

  "You can't. The White House gave strict orders that you not read it beforehand. There's a covering letter inside explaining that."

  "okay," the Vice-President said, digging at the flap.

  "No! You're not supposed to read that until five minutes before the speech."

  "This is crazy!"

  "The White House chief of staff says it's very, very important. It's a major speech. He says it may be one of the most important of your career."

  "This is weird."

  "This is politics. And you know how the President is about leaks. Now, come on. We're got a plane to catch."

  Chapter 17

  Emilio Mordida wore the stony copper face of a mestizo. His expression seldom wavered. It might have belonged on a Mayan rain god. Emilio was of Mayan descent. Also Zapotec, Chichimec, and of course Spanish.

  Like most mestizos, he had no concept of time. Not even years of working as a desk clerk in the Japanese-owned Nikko Hotel in Mexico City's Zona Hotelera had inculcated him with a shred of punctuality. A wake-up call for seven sharp might be made at seven-fifteen or even seven-fifty-nine. It did not matter. This was Mexico, where the only god was manana.

  It was another desultory afternoon in the massive neo-Aztec lobby of the Nikko. Emilio shifted between the computer terminal and the guests checking in and out, looking very modern in his powder-blue jacket, but wearing the immutable mask of his Mexican forebears, one that betrayed no hint of ego or inferiority. It was the mask many Mexicans wore in a land that did not belong to them anymore.

  Nothing, not the drumming of impatient fingers on the marble countertop, nor the half-muttered insults by foreign turistas who thought they too were the lords of Mexico, brought a flicker of reaction as Emilio went about his methodical unhurried day.

  The drone of the fountains was his clock. Unlike the Japanese or the Americans, who saw time as a straight line, Emilio saw time as a bubble-a warm amniotic bubble in which a man might float through life. And so patrons waited while Emilio went on his silent, officious way, his face impassive.

  Until a man who bore a strong resemblance to the Vice-President of the United States of America entered the spacious lobby.

  Emilio Mordida noticed him because he entered carrying a dusty golf bag. Golf was not unknown in Mexico City, but it hardly rivaled soccer or bullfighting.

  Emilio studiously ignored a West German couple who were attempting to check out in time to meet their plane and followed the man with the golf bag with his dark eyes.

  Yes, those were definitely golf clubs in the bag. And it was certainly the Vice-President. He walked mechanically, looking neither left nor right, his face a mask as stiff as Emilio's own. Only instead of a sullen set to his mouth, the Vice-President wore a smile that might have been carved of ivory and rose marble.

  The Vice-President spurned the reception desk and went directly to the elevators.

  It was enough to cause one of Emilio Mordida's inflexible eyelids to lift in surprise.

  All morning the city had been buzzing with rumors that the American Vice-President had been seen driving around the city. At first it was said he had been driving a bread truck. Then he was seen at a discotheque dancing with Charro. Or that he had lost two fingers fighting over a bullfighter's woman
in the affluent Colonia del Valle district, but had emerged victorious.

  Emilio had absorbed these rumors with interest, dismissing them as hysteria in the wake of the imminent arrival of the President in Bogota. Many had thought that Mexico City was a better-and safer-location for the drug summit. The President of Mexico himself had prevailed on the U.S. President to consider reconvening in Mexico City, but was politely rebuffed.

  But here was the Vice-President, clearly the Vice-President. Although it could have been Robert Redford. They looked very much alike.

  Emilio, showing uncharacteristic swiftness, fairly leapt to the reservations terminal and punched up the Vice-President's name. He was not registered, which did not surprise Emilio one bit. Robert Redford was also not listed.

  Moving swiftly, Emilio Mordida left the reservations desk and made for the elevator bank.

  He was not surprised to see that the Vice-President was still awaiting an elevator. Even the elevators were slow in Mexico.

  When one arrived, Emilio followed the Vice-President into the car. The Vice-President pressed sixteen. Emilio then pressed seventeen.

  They rode in silence, Emilio watching the Vice-President's boyish, almost ghoulishly smiling profile. He was even younger-looking than he had appeared on television.

  The car stopped at the sixteenth floor. The Vice-President stepped off: The doors rolled shut.

  Emilio rode to the next floor and slipped back down the stairs.

  The Vice-President was still in the corridor, Emilio discovered when he peered around the elevator alcove. He was behaving very strangely. He was going from door to door, putting his ear to each panel. He would listen for a brief instant, then move on.

  Until he reached Room 1644. There he paused a bit longer. The Vice-President dropped to his knees with a quick folding of his knee joints and put his eyes to the electronic lock, much as a submarine captain looks through a periscope.

  The Nikko's locks required no key, but a magnetized passcard. The lock combinations were changed daily. They could not be breached without the correct card.

  Yet, as Emilio watched, the Vice-President proceeded to breach the lock. He accomplished this in a novel, perhaps unique manner. Withdrawing his eyes from the card slot, he lifted his right hand and, retracting his thumb, jammed the remaining four into the slot.

  This was an impossibility, Emilio knew. Human fingers are too large for the card-reader slot. But not only did the slot accept them right up to the knuckles, the metal gave no squeal of protest.

  Most mysteriously, the red light over the slot turned green, signifying the magnetic card reader recognized the Vice-President's four fingers.

  The Vice-President withdrew his remarkable fingers and slipped into the open door. The green light winked out and the red light winked back on. The corridor was silent.

  Eyes puzzled, Emilio Mordida passed down the corridor to the door to Room 1644. The lock was as it should be. Undamaged. There was not so much as a scratch around the slot.

  Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door.

  After a moment a voice demanded, "Who is there?"

  "Hotel staff, senor. Is everything satisfactory?"

  "Yes. Go away."

  "Si, senor."

  Emilio Mordida withdrew to the elevator alcove and looked back around the corner. He saw the door suddenly open, and a multilingual "Do Not Disturb" sign was surreptitiously hung on the doorknob. The door clicked shut again.

  All the way down to the lobby, Emilio Mordida thought quickly. This was worth money, this information. The news agencies like Notimex would pay many pesos for such a tip. As would, he supposed, the local police and the Federales.

  Returning to his counter, where one of his fellow clerks was stolidly enduring the fractured-Spanish abuse of the West German couple Emilio had earlier ignored, he wondered who would pay the most handsomely for such a tip. The Security Police. Perhaps the Federales.

  Emilio checked the reservations terminal, punching up Room 1644. It showed vacant. It had been vacant two days.

  As Emilio Mordida dialed the local office of the Federales, he wondered what would compell the Vice-President of the United States to become a squatter in this hotel. Did they not pay him enough?

  The Primer Comandante of the Distrito Federal of the FJP haggled with Emilio Mordida only a few moments before proper remuneration was agreed upon. Swiftly Mordida told the comandante of the Vice-President's unorthodox residence at the Nikko.

  "Who else knows of this?" the comandante inquired suspiciously.

  "No one, comandante."

  "See that no one else learns," barked the comandante, who abruptly hung up.

  Emilio Mordida hung up, confident that within a week-no more than three-a fat envelope would be presented to him by a Federal. Corruption was a way of life in Mexico, but everyone valued a good source. The comandante would be true to his word.

  Still, Emilio thought, there was always the chance that the comandante would forget or his messenger would pocket the money for himself.

  Emilio picked up the receiver and began to dial the DFS. He could have saved himself the trouble. For the Federal comandante had already sold the DFS the intelligence for three times what had been promised Emilio Mordida.

  And so, word was eventually relayed to Tampico Zone Comandante Oscar Odio, who had agreed to remunerate his FJP informant handsomely.

  Odio quickly put in a call to Bogota.

  "Padrino," he said.

  "Si?"

  "I have news, both good and bad."

  "I am listening."

  "I regret to inform you that your pistoleros-I assume it was they-were all annihilated earlier today. Their dead bodies were found by my agents beside the Aquila Azteca train, which they attempted to board."

  "Muy triste," El Padrino hissed, sounding more hateful than sad. In a softer voice he added, "And their quarry?"

  "That is the good news I have for you, Padrino. I have been reliably informed that the Vice-President has been located in one of our best hotels."

  Odio could hear El Padrino sit up.

  "And el presidente, el jefe, himself?"

  "I do not have that information as yet, but I am working on this."

  "Who else knows of this, Odio?"

  "By this time," Oscar Odio said truthfully, "probably half the Mexican security appartus."

  "I have other assets in the area," EI Padrino said smoothly. "But it will take time to move them into position. What can you do to further my interests?"

  "The Vice-President is occupying a room illegally," Odio explained. "He can be detained on these grounds."

  "Do this, and I promise you, Comandante, you will never stoop to accepting fat envelopes again. You will be passing them out."

  "As you say, Padrino. "

  Comandante Oscar Odio hung up the phone, his wide smile threatening to pierce his earlobes. He put on his mirrored sunglasses and wrapped a silk scarf around his neck.

  Outside, the helicopter was waiting. He anticipated trading it in for a newer model by month's end. Perhaps one with rocket pods. Yes, he would enjoy waving rocket pods.

  Chapter 18

  Federal Judicial Police Officer Guadalupe Mazatl was forced to give up her search for the loco American diplomats. They had disappeared in the controlled confusion of Mexico City traffic more quickly than she would have believed possible. Even the sick Asian one, who looked as if he could barely walk, never mind run.

  Officer Mazatl had given up the foot chase and returned to the taxi. After thirty or forty minutes of aimless circling of the Zona Rosa and questioning numerous local police, she decided they were unfindable. There had been no sign of the Bimbo Bread truck, which had compelled them, for some strange reason, to leap into traffic, risking their very lives.

  Something strange was happening, Officer Mazatl considered as the taxi drove her to Mexico City FJP headquarters, a white colonial building with the words "POLICIA JUDICIAL FEDERAL DE ESTADO" in gold lettering ove
r the entrance.

  The Mexico City primer comandante was only too happy to assist Officer Mazatl in her plight.

  "You have lost your charge, eh, chica?" he said, coming around from his desk. He shut the door. His arm went around Officer Mazatl's shoulders. Officer Mazatl undid the flap of her belt holster. It made a loud snap. The arm withdrew with alacrity.

  "You misjudge me, chica. You are out of your district. I only wish to assist you."

  "They are an Anglo and an old Asian man," Officer Mazatl clipped out. "The Anglo dresses in a black T-shirt. The Oriental wears a fine red silk robe."

  "Ah," said the comandante. "Yes. I have heard of them."

  "They are supposed to be attached to the U. S. embassy."

  "If that is so, why have they taken up residence in a hotel?"

  "Which hotel?"

  "Ah, but if I tell you that, what will you do for me?" His voice was like cream.

  "We are companeros of the FJP," Officer Mazatl said tightly. "We should be working together."

  The comandante smiled generously. "I am, like you, poorly paid, and forced to seek opportunities in order to make my poor way in the world."

  "You do not expect me to bribe a fellow officer into sharing police intelligence!" Officer Mazatl flared.

  "No, I do not expect it, but . . ." His hands spread like separating birds, lazily taking wing.

  "Never mind! I will do my duty without you."

  As Officer Mazatl stormed out, the comandante's voice called coolly after her, "When you change your mind, chica, I will be here, thinking of your strong womanly body."

  It cost Officer Mazatl only ninety pesos and a look at her credentials to commandeer an FJP car from the motor pool. The comandante had been too eager to have his way with her. He had admitted the americano and his friend were registered in a hotel. There were many, many hotels in Mexico City, it was true. But it would be infinitely easier to check with every one of them than to have to bed that criadero de sapos of a comandante.

  As she pulled into traffic, Officer Guadalupe Mazatl noticed the heavy police patrols. On one corner, three officers stood around talking to one another, two holding machine guns at the ready, the third casually swinging a doublebarreled shotgun. They looked tense, even for Mexico City police.