The Last Monarch td-120 Page 5

  But he seemed fine. He recognized faces of family members when shown pictures of them. The same for people from his days as governor of California and as President. Even though he'd only awakened a few hours ago, he already knew many of the doctors and nurses on staff at Weizmann-Teacher's Hospital by name.

  Never in his thirty years as a physician had Dr. Kahler heard of an instance where a blow to the head restored memory in an individual with Alzheimer's. Even if one threw all logic out the window and accepted the premise that the former President's fall had somehow miraculously healed him, it still should only have arrested the progress of the disease, locked it in at its current level. Not only had that not happened, but somehow the irreversible process had been rolled back. It was impossible. Yet...

  In his head, Dr. Kahler was already sketching the rough outline of the paper he would publish on this remarkable case when he heard the first sounds of commotion beyond the closed hospital-room door. There were muffled shouts, followed by something that sounded like firecrackers going off. "What's that din?" the doctor asked, taking a step toward the door.

  Behind him, the President stood slowly, a worried look on his deeply furrowed face. "It doesn't sound good," he answered. The noises were familiar. He remembered similar sounds from a March day years ago.

  "Well, this is a hospital," Dr. Kahler said, marching briskly to the door.

  The President lunged. He tried to grab him. Tried to stop him. But Dr. Kahler was too far away. The physician flung open the door and marched into the hallway.

  As the President held his breath, there came another pop. This one much louder than the rest. The doctor stumbled back into the room a moment later, a thin line of blood dribbling from a spot dead center in his pale forehead. Black powder burns surrounded the bullet hole.

  Sightless eyes turning to the horrified former President, the doctor dropped to his knees. He flopped forward, a look of dull incomprehension on his face.

  The President was already moving, propelled by shock. He raced past the body and over to the door.

  A closet was beside him as he pressed his back against the wall.

  Shouts issued from the hall.

  The Secret Service men who'd been guarding the door were dead. Otherwise, they would have swarmed into the room to protect him. His detachment was small. Only a few men. Not like the old days. Not enough against an all-out assault.

  Footsteps coming closer. Pounding up the hall. Holding his breath, the President fumbled behind him, curling one hand around the cold steel handle of the closet's door. The instant he did so, a face poked into the room. Furtive eyes darted over to the bed. A paisley bandanna covered both mouth and nose.

  The intruder was armed.

  Automatic rifle balanced before him, he took a cautious step into the room, not seeing the former President plastered against the wall to his right.

  A sudden creak.

  Eyes turned away from the unmade bed, opening in shock at the sight of the ex-chief executive. Something else cut into view. Fast. Hard.

  The closet door slammed full force into the intruder's face. Forehead cracked and bleeding, the man fell backward into the hallway. His gun dropped, useless, to his chest. The President jumped forward and grabbed the man by the ankles, struggling to drag him back into the room. If he could just get his gun...

  Other shouts. Running footsteps. A shadow falling over him. Crouching, the President froze. He glanced up.

  Two terrorists towered above him. Like the first, bandannas obscured their features. Still more intruders ran up the hallway, jumping over the bodies of his Secret Service detachment.

  "We got him, man!" a nearby voice exulted beneath a flowery bandanna. Sweat had broken out across the visible portion of his face. His pupils were pinpricks.

  Still squatting, the President reached a rapid decision. If he was going to die then, dammit, he'd die like a man.

  He lunged for the nearest man.

  In his younger days, he'd been strong and spry. But he was old now. Slow. Too slow.

  In a panic, the gunman sidestepped the old man's awkward attack, stumbling hard against the door frame. As he dropped back, another intruder jumped forward, swinging the butt of his rifle down against the side of the President's head.

  The old man saw a brilliant explosion of light ...followed by a shroud of pure enveloping darkness.

  The fog was thick and impenetrable. The President's last thought before he toppled onto the cold hallway floor was of his wife. He hoped she could forgive their daughter. The final light of reality flickered and was gone.

  THE OLD MAN at their feet was a lifeless mannequin. The masked men swarmed around the weather-beaten body.

  "You hit him!" one accused.

  "Is he dead?" another asked.

  "Get the tranq," commanded a third.

  A syringe was brought forward. The needle was jabbed into the ex-President's arm.

  "Should we get his clothes?" the man who had administered the injection asked, his bandanna sopped with sweat. He tossed away the syringe.

  "Yes! But hurry!"

  As one man dashed into the room, the others grabbed the former President under the armpits. He was deadweight. Grunting, they began to drag the old man rapidly down the hall past the bloodied bodies of the Secret Service agents.

  "He's gonna be in for one hell of a surprise when he wakes up," one of them enthused, the outline of his mouth quivering wetly beneath his multicolored bandanna.

  "If he wakes up," cautioned another. "We were just supposed to use the tranquilizers on him."

  The man who had bashed the elderly ex-President in the head shrugged. "It's a kind of tranquilizer," he snarled. "Besides, he doesn't deserve any better."

  They dumped the ex-President into a laundry cart near a nurses' station. Behind the desk, two RNs were sprawled on the floor, glassy eyes staring blindly at fluorescent lights. Crimson stains seeped from their bellies onto crisp white uniforms.

  Two men helped up the groggy terrorist the President had coldcocked. Running now, the group wheeled the cart away from the desk and onto a rear service elevator.

  A moment later, the silver doors slid across the bloody scene of carnage with barely a whisper.

  Chapter 8

  Chiun didn't kill anyone on the long cross-country plane trip from Boston to Los Angeles. Remo considered this not only a blessing, but a surprise.

  At first, Remo was worried that the Master of Sinanju wouldn't even want to accompany him to California. The old Korean's troubles with Hollywood were far too fresh. But Chiun had agreed readily.

  The flight had been surprisingly peaceful. On their way through the crowded LAX terminal, there were no sudden and mysterious bloody noses or severed ears on anyone they passed. In fact, as they headed off in search of a cab, Chiun even managed a sympathetic smile for a harried young woman hauling two crying children.

  His teacher's uncharacteristically placid behavior made Remo intensely uneasy.

  Chiun was building to something. The Master of Sinanju was planning to use his time on the West Coast to wreak some sort of terrible vengeance against those who he thought had perpetrated injustices against him. But to Remo's knowledge, there wasn't anybody left for the old Korean to kill.

  "Quintly Tortilli is dead, Little Father," Remo reminded Chiun in the cab on the way from LAX to the hospital.

  "And rightly so," Chiun replied calmly. "He was a foul-mouthed liar who endangered Emperor Smith's charge, the corpulent marionette. However, that is all water under the bridge."

  "We're not stopping by Taurus," Remo warned.

  "That studio no longer exists," Chiun answered.

  "Neither do Bindle and Marmelstein," Remo suggested, naming the studio chiefs who had betrayed Chiun during the making of his film.

  "This is true," Chiun mused. He tipped his head to one side, considering. "Perhaps I will visit their graves to pay my respects."

  "You're not going to dig them up and try to kill them ag
ain, are you?" Remo asked worriedly. Chiun raised a thin eyebrow.

  "Now, Remo, you are being silly."

  "Can you blame me?" Remo asked. "Last night, you were ready to tear all of Hollywood a new A-hole. Now you're acting sweeter than a Prozac pixie stick. It's scary as all hell."

  "Meet the new me," Chiun announced airily, waving a long-nailed hand. "I am like a duck."

  "Short and greasy?"

  Chiun frowned at his pupil. "Everything runs off my back," he explained.

  "Yeah?" Remo said doubtfully. "We'll see." When they arrived at Weizmann-Teacher's Hospital, they found a gaggle of reporters standing in an unhappy knot in front of the main parking area. Dozens of news vans emblazoned with station call letters blocked the ambulance entrance. Satellite dishes from the network and local news vehicles pointed skyward.

  Cables snaked from trucks to videocameras and lights.

  Hoping to avoid the newspeople, Remo instructed the cabdriver to drop them off down the street. As the taxi drove away, he and Chiun walked up the sidewalk to the hospital.

  Only a few reporters stood before cameras to offer taped digests for hourly news updates. The rest lounged around the area, bored expressions on their plastic-surgery-tightened and makeup enhanced faces.

  There were several card games in progress. Smith had been worried that Chiun might call attention to them, but Remo saw as they approached that only a few faces looked in their direction. These quickly turned away in disinterest. A kimono in L.A. just wasn't news.

  As Remo and Chiun slipped behind one cameraman, a female reporter was summing up her taped spot.

  "Few have shown up here outside the hospital to wait out the end of the former President. No doubt, most have realized the damage his monster deficits and hate mongering caused this nation. The most evil man in American history, or just a misguided old fool? You be the judge. Konchacata Badadada reporting."

  She waited a few seconds before dropping her microphone. The woman seemed very pleased with her unbiased work.

  As the reporter handed off her microphone to an intern, Remo tapped her cameraman on the shoulder. "Did she just say they're waiting for him to die?" he asked.

  "That's what we've been hearing," the cameraman said.

  Remo frowned, assuming he'd just wasted his time coming all the way to California to give selective amnesia to someone who was already knocking on death's door.

  "Who's saying it," he asked, "the hospital?"

  The cameraman shook his head. "Him," he replied, pointing to a spot closer to the main hospital doors.

  The Big Three networks had bullied their way to the front of the line as soon as they'd arrived on the scene, staking out the prime reporting real estate. Remo saw a giant A peeking out from one of the parked network vans. The other two letters were obscured by a bizarre-looking man in a dark blue suit and fire-engine-red tie.

  He looked half vulture, half Vulcan and all Satan. Demonic eyebrows-painted black-rose at crooked angles above eyes that were twin lasers of focused malice. The mouth was twisted back in a constipated rictus. Worst of all was the hair. The man wore a ghastly jet-black toupee that was so flat it looked as if it had been run through a clothes wringer and secured in place with shellac.

  Remo recognized the hairpiece even before he saw the man. Stan Ronaldman. Longtime political reporter for one of the big networks.

  While the ex-President inside the hospital was in office, Ronaldman had been the White House correspondent. The reporter had a hatred for the President that was so obvious and so visceral it was almost as if he blamed the chief executive for the genes that had cursed him with his own hairless pate. His infamous bile was on full display as Remo and Chiun approached.

  "Isn't he confirmed dead yet?" Ronaldman was complaining to a harried producer.

  "There's still a news blackout," the woman replied.

  "I think something might have happened." Ronaldman clapped his hands together ecstatically. Dull eyes bugged out over a corpselike smile. "Dead. That's the only explanation," he enthused.

  "I'm not sure, Stan," the producer warned. The woman was listening to something on a headset that ran into the open back of the news van. "There's lots of weird radio stuff going back and forth. All kinds of yelling and code words that aren't in any of our source books. I think all those cars that showed up early this morning were Feds or something."

  "More government waste," Ronaldman complained, shaking his toupeed head. "He specialized in that." His happiness at the thought of the former President's death shifted to anger, a change in expression so subtle it was barely discernible. "So I suppose now we'll have a big state funeral at taxpayer expense. Why don't we just throw him in a landfill somewhere and spend all that wasted funeral and B-1 bomber money where the people want it? On follicle-stimulation research and sheep-ranch subsidies."

  "What's national defense or honoring a beloved political icon when you could be getting mohair aid from Washington?"

  "Exactly," Ronaldman enthused. His tight smile returned as he sought out the source of the voice behind him.

  The reporter was surprised at the very odd couple he found. One was an Asian who was as old as the hills around Ronaldman's own Arizona sheep ranch. The other was a thin Caucasian in a white T-shirt and black Chinos.

  "Is the President okay?" Remo asked, noting the many news vans.

  "Ex-President," Ronaldman stressed. "And he's dead. Dead as a five-hundred-dollar Pentagon toilet seat."

  "Possibly," his producer cautioned from her post on the van floor. The woman turned away, grateful to have Ronaldman distracted, even if only for a moment.

  "Don't listen to Madame de Gloom over there," Ronaldman insisted. "I say he's dead, and I should know. After all, I have been interviewed extensively on the subject by my colleagues in the press."

  "Interviewed?" Remo asked. "Aren't you supposed to be reporting on this thing?"

  "I have a history with the late former President," Ronaldman replied. "People are interested in what I have to say."

  The reporter glanced momentarily at Chiun.

  The Master of Sinanju had sidled up to Ronaldman. Hands behind his back, he was standing on tiptoes, the better to see the glistening black wig plastered to the man's skull. He dropped quickly to the soles of his sandals when Ronaldman looked his way. Chiun whistled casually.

  "Forget about the fact that it's supposed to be your job to report, not offer commentary," Remo said, tearing his own eyes from Chiun. "What was the last official word from the hospital on his condition?"

  "Of course I don't trust them to give the real story," Ronaldman sniffed. "But they claim he only bumped his head. There were early reports that his brain condition had somehow been miraculously healed, but I don't buy it. Propaganda. Plain and simple. Everyone inside the Beltway knows he had Alzheimer's when he was in the White House. If they don't know, I tell them."

  As the reporter was speaking, Chiun surreptitiously signaled Remo. Pointing at Ronaldman's toupee, he covered his mouth with one hand, stifling a silent laugh.

  "Knock it off, Chiun," Remo groused.

  Sensing movement, Ronaldman twisted sharply to Chiun. He found the Master of Sinanju standing placidly, hands clasped behind his back. Face growing even more suspicious, the reporter turned back to Remo.

  "So, as far as you know, he's fine," Remo pressed.

  "He's dead," Ronaldman insisted. "About a hundred of those government cars showed up here around seven this morning. They're part of his funeral procession."

  "Government cars?" Remo asked. "Are you sure?"

  "I've been in Washington long enough to know what G-men drive," Ronaldman replied aridly. Satanic eyebrows rising in disdain, he turned from his insulting visitor.

  Remo frowned at that information. Would so many government vehicles show up in the wake of a simple accident for a man who hadn't been President for more than a decade? Only if he had something important to tell them.

  Remo's worried thoughts were of C
URE as he turned to Chiun. "Let's go, Little Father," he said tightly.

  Walking briskly, Remo and the Master of Sinanju headed for the hospital doors. They had gone only a few paces when Remo noticed something in Chiun's hands.

  It was flat, black and shiny. And hairy.

  "What are you doing with that?" Remo demanded. He nodded to Stan Ronaldman's wig, which dangled like a harpooned rat from one of the Master of Sinanju's long fingernails.

  "He annoyed me," Chiun replied flatly.

  "Dammit, Chiun, he annoys everybody." Remo shot a look back to the news van. Ronaldman was as bald as a plucked chicken. He fussed around the open door of the van, pale head slathered in dry glue, oblivious to what had transpired. The reporter had yet to notice the draft on his scalp.

  A crowd of smiling gawkers was beginning to form.

  "Is this some kind of latent hostility from this whole Die Down fiasco?" Remo whispered harshly.

  "Latent?" Chiun asked blandly. "Forgive me, Remo. I thought I was being obvious."

  "Har-de-har-har," Remo said, voice hushed. "Now get rid of that thing before we have to spray you for chiggers."

  "It does look diseased," Chiun said, examining his prize. "Very well. But I do not want to hear a complaint when you get nothing on your next birthday."

  With a snap of his wrist, he launched the toupee back in the direction from whence they'd come. The hairpiece soared like a flung Frisbee. It ate up the distance in an instant. With a thick splat, it attached itself like a remora over the C in the network logo on the side of the news van.

  When Ronaldman turned toward the odd sound, he saw what looked like a giant, flattened tarantula glued to the truck's side. Only after he saw his own reflection in the glistening black surface of the nylon hair did he realize what it was. His eyes grew as wide as fried eggs.

  "Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!" the reporter screamed. Desperate, he flung one hand, his arm, his necktie, anything he could up over his head, even as he unstuck the wig from the side of the truck. Wilted toupee in hand, he dove inside the van amid a chorus of laughter from the gathered media.