Target of Opportunity td-98 Read online

  "Just the suspect."

  He stamped back.

  The suspect in the President's shooting lay on his back, jerking uncontrollably like a puppet whose lax strings still had some tug in them. Then he expired.

  "Motherfucker," Win cursed.

  It was in that moment that he took his first hard look at the shooter.

  "I know that face," he said.

  "He on the lookout list?"

  "I don't..."

  Someone pulled his set of the watch cards showing mug shots of people who were considered a threat to the President. The face of the dead man was not among them.

  The other agents gathered round, faces drained of all blood, all emotion except dull shock.

  "Yeah, I've seen him before, too."

  "Where?"

  "Dunno."

  They were like robots now, focusing on the face because to have lost their President like this probably meant the loss of their jobs. They were being professional. To be otherwise would probably have caused them to break down sobbing.

  After several minutes no one could place the face.

  "All right," Workman muttered. "Let's get these bodies out of here."

  "Christ," an agent said bitterly. "It's Dallas all over again. How could we be so stupid?"

  The thought seemed to hit everyone at once.

  "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Win said slowly.

  "What I'm thinking I don't want to be thinking."

  They gathered around the dead shooter again.

  "Oh, man," a third agent said. "It is him."

  "You know what this means?"

  "Yeah," Workman said. "I know exactly what this means. It means the end of the Secret Service as we know it. That's Lee Harvey Oswald lying there."

  And Win Workman reared back and gave the dead man the hardest kick he had in him.

  "Don't look now," another agent said in a dull, drained-of-emotion voice, "but I think this guy in the funny helmet looks kinda like Jack Ruby."

  There was a stampede to the body of the man in the helmet. Enough of it had shattered to show one side of the man's face.

  "Looks like Ruby. But a younger Ruby," Win observed.

  "And that guy back there is the spitting image of Lee Harvey Oswald-if Ruby hadn't shot him dead back in '63"

  "How old was Oswald when he got it?"

  "Maybe twenty-three, twenty-four, something like that," Win said.

  They went back to the corpse that resembled an older Lee Harvey Oswald.

  "Add thirty years and you get a fifty-five-year-old guy."

  "This guy looks about that."

  "Can't be Oswald."

  "Looks just like him. Right down to that simpering-idiot grin of his."

  Win Workman looked from the face of the dead man to the wallet he was opening in his hands. He had brought it out of his pocket woodenly, as if afraid of what it would reveal.

  "The driver's license says he's Alek James Hidell," he said.

  A collective sigh of relief began to slip out of open mouths. Then someone snapped his fingers. It was so loud it might have been a gunshot.

  "What is it?" Win asked angrily.

  "Alek Hidell. That was one of the aliases."

  "What alias?"

  "Oswald's."

  They rushed back to the body of the other dead man.

  He carried his wallet in his back hip pocket. They could feel it, but they couldn't get at it without turning the body over.

  "Better leave it," Workman said. "This is too much for me. "

  "Man, this can't get any worse," an agent muttered.

  But it did. Almost at once.

  An agent reported, "I found the shooter's weapon."

  "Stay there. We'll be right up."

  WORKMAN ALONE stepped out onto the Science Center roof so as not to disturb evidence.

  He walked over to the agent who was half kneeling over the weapon. It was a bolt-action clunker with a makeshift strap.

  "Damn. That's an old one," Workman said, crouching over the rifle.

  "Look at the barrel."

  "What about it?"

  "Look at the name of the make stamped on the barrel."

  Workman twisted his head around until he could read it.

  "Man-"

  "Mannlicher-Carcano," the other agent finished.

  Win Workman said, "Get out of here!"

  "That was what it said. I swear."

  That was what it said: Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 Cal. Made in Italy.

  "Mannlicher-Carcano was the rifle Oswald used in Dallas," Workman said dully. "If it was Oswald-"

  "What do you mean?" the other agent asked.

  "We got the shooter. Add thirty years, and you have the spitting image of Lee Harvey Oswald."

  "There's something else," the other agent said. "Look at this spent shell casing."

  "What about it?"

  "There's something scratched in the metal."

  "What?"

  "Two letters. Looks like RX"

  "RX?"

  "Yeah. RX."

  "What the fuck does that mean?"

  Then, as if it couldn't get any worse, an agent stuck his head out of the greenhouse door leading to the roof and said, "There's a woman demanding to know about the cover-up."

  "What cover-up?"

  "She says she's Pepsie Dobbins."

  "Throw her nosy ass out of here!" Win Workman shouted. "And seal this entire building. This is a Federal crime scene, goddamn it."

  Chapter 8

  At the Furioso International Airport, Remo booked the next flight to Washington and then found a pay phone.

  He dialed his home number in Massachusetts.

  The line rang three times. Remo hung up, rang it another three times and hung up again. On the fourth ring of his third try, the Master of Sinanju came on the line.

  "Remo?" a querulously squeaky voice said.

  "Bad news, Chiun. The President was assassinated."

  "The Fat Prince? The gluttonous one?"

  "Yeah. Him."

  "Did you do this deed?" the squeaky voice asked.

  "Of course not."

  "Then he was not assassinated. He was murdered. Only you and I are capable of work worthy of the name."

  "Cut the self-congratulatory crap. A sniper took him out."

  "Good."

  "What do you mean, 'good'?"

  "Emperor Smith, whom we serve in secret, will know by the crude use of a boom stick that neither you nor I were sunlighting."

  "For the thousandth freaking time, it's 'moonlighting' and it happened in Boston, not three miles from where we live."

  "Remo! This is not true."

  "It's true."

  "Why was I not informed that the puppet President was in this province?"

  "Smith will want to know why you didn't stop the killer."

  "I knew nothing of any President or his killer," Chiun squeaked plaintively.

  "You know that and I know that. But the President was killed on Smith's watch, which is your watch."

  "Your watch, too."

  "I don't have a watch anymore. I'm just tying up loose ends, remember?"

  "We will blame the unfortunate death of the puppet on your recalcitrance," Chiun crowed.

  "The hell you will. Listen, I'm on my way to Washington to protect the new President."

  "There is a new President?"

  "The Vice President."

  "This country is doomed."

  "It will be if there's a conspiracy. I'm going to watch over the Vice President. I could use a hand."

  "If there is a conspiracy, my place is at the side of the rightful emperor, Harold the Mad."

  "Look, no one knows about Smith," Remo shouted.

  "Are you calling from an airport?"

  "Yes, what does that have to do with anything?"

  "Because an airport is a public place and you are shouting your emperor's secrets to any skulking spy who happens by."

  Remo switched ears and w
hispered urgently into the mouthpiece. "I'm officially requesting your presence. Okay?"

  "I will consider your request-once I have it in writing," said Chiun thinly. "Until then, my place is at Smith's side."

  And the line went dead.

  Remo slammed the phone down, breaking the plastic handle. He went to the next phone in line and dialed Smith at Folcroft.

  "Smitty, I just talked to Chiun. He won't join me in Washington."

  "Why not?"

  "I made the mistake of whispering the word 'conspiracy,' and he thinks he should be watchdogging you."

  "I will call him. Where are you?"

  "Furioso International Airport. My flight leaves in ten minutes."

  "I expected you in Washington by now."

  "I had to wade through miles of kudzu before I found a road with cars on it. The first dozen cars wouldn't stop for me, but I had a lucky break."

  "Yes?"

  "Someone stole my rental car and happened to drive by."

  "He stopped?"

  "No. I ran after the car and pulled him out from behind the wheel while he was doing seventy."

  "I assume there were no witnesses to this."

  "A Greyhound bus happened by in the opposite lane, and the car thief bounced under the wheels, if that's what you mean."

  "Good. Keep me informed."

  Smith hung up.

  Remo found a seat in the waiting area. Other passengers were standing around glued to TV monitors as the networks continued their special reports.

  The footage of the death shot was shown a total of eighteen times in nearly as many minutes. Remo, who had dispensed death to the deserving countless times in a long career, turned away from the screen in disgust.

  The hushed conversation of waiting passengers came to his ears, as much as he tried to block it out.

  "Another assassination. When will it stop?"

  "I remember when Kennedy was killed like it was yesterday."

  "He was a good President, despite the stories that have come out."

  "No, I meant Robert Kennedy."

  "Oh. I thought you looked kinda young to remember Jack."

  "There's nothing lower than an assassin."

  A redheaded woman wearing glasses dropped her shoulder bag at Remo's feet and took the seat beside him. "Have they caught the man who did it yet?" she asked Remo, emboldened by the national tragedy to speak to a total stranger.

  "Not that I heard."

  "I can't believe we've lost another President."

  Remo said nothing.

  "The coward," the woman said bitterly.

  "Who?" asked Remo.

  "The assassin. There's nothing more cowardly than an assassin. What would make a person do such a cold-blooded thing?"

  "Search me," said Remo uncomfortably. "Maybe he was a professional."

  "As if that were an excuse," she sniffed. "Scum is Scum."

  "Look," Remo said angrily, "I don't feel like talking to a total stranger just now, okay?"

  The woman reached out and patted Remo's hand sympathetically, cooing, "I understand. You're upset. We're all upset."

  Remo stood up and changed seats. Another total stranger sat beside him and asked the latest news. Without replying, Remo changed seats again.

  Everywhere he sat, the word "assassin" was hissed in bitter tones.

  They called the flight, and after the plane was airborne, Remo left his seat over the wing and took an empty one in the rear of the cabin where he could get away from the incessant talk of assassination.

  In more than twenty years working for CURE, Remo had had his problems with working for CURE. Sometimes America didn't seem salvageable. Sometimes the man in the White House wasn't worth fighting for, either.

  Many times before, Remo had gotten disgusted with everything and quit. He had always come back. Now he was convinced he had come to the end of the line.

  He had given CURE too many years of his life. It was time to move on.

  But to what? He hadn't given it much thought, but as he looked out at the unrolling Florida landscape, he wondered what place he would have in the world.

  His only trade-if that was what one could call it-was in being an assassin. Remo could never go back to being a cop. He still liked the idea of going after the bad guys, but there was too much red tape now. He could never play by the rules again.

  Being an assassin was something Remo had grown comfortable with. Strictly speaking, he never thought of himself as an assassin the way Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan were assassins. They were nut loners. Remo was a consummate professional.

  The first time the Master of Sinanju had told Remo that he was being trained in the ultimate assassin's arts, Remo hadn't thought of Sirhan Sirhan. He had thought of James Bond. A cool, capable guy who slides in and out of dangerous situations dealing with the bad guys no one else could touch.

  That was certainly what they seemed to be training him for.

  When it finally sank in that the Master of Sinanju was an assassin in the traditional sense of the word, Remo had been troubled. Growing up, he had learned to despise the word. Kennedy. Then King. Then another Kennedy.

  "I don't want to be an assassin," he had told Chiun so very long ago.

  "I am offering you the universe, and you decline?"

  "I'm definitely declining."

  "No white has ever before been offered Sinanju."

  "Sinanju, I'll take. The assassin's belt I pass on."

  "Belt! Sinanju does not wear belts. And you cannot separate the art from the result. You are Sinanju. Therefore, you are an assassin. It is a proud tradition."

  "Not in this country. Here 'assassin' is a dirty word."

  "When the songs detailing your glorious exploits reach the far corners of this benighted land, the word will be exalted."

  "You're not listening. Assassins are murderers."

  "No. Murderers are murderers. Assassins are artists. We are physicians of death. If there is a problem vexing a nation, we remove it like a cancer. If a ruler is surrounded by intrigues and pretenders, we cleanse his castle."

  "You sound like a roach exterminator."

  "Upright roaches only," Chiun had said. "There are standards."

  "What if he's being stalked by an assassin?" Remo had challenged.

  "Doesn't matter who."

  "It matters very much who. If someone is being stalked by a rival house of assassins, the clumsy ninja for example, or a low poisoner, we will eradicate this vermin."

  "What if he's being stalked by a Master of Sinanju?"

  Chiun had beamed at that question. "Then he deserves to die."

  "Why?"

  "Because he hired cheap help to guard his throne while his enemies hired the best. Us."

  "In other words, we work for the highest bidder."

  "No, we work for the richest thrones. They deserve the best. All others deserve scorn for not hiring us, and death if their enemies do."

  "Sounds like blackmail!"

  Chiun had shrugged. "You will come to see it differently when you learn to breathe with your entire body."

  Remo had learned to breathe with his entire body, thus liberating the unused portions of his mind. He had become a Master of Sinanju capable of feats of skill, strength and speed ordinary humans only read about in comic books.

  In time he came to understand Chiun, last Master of Sinanju, and the five-thousand-year tradition of the House of Sinanju, which had hired out its best to the thrones of the Old World so that the village, on the rock-bound coast of the West Korea Bay, could eat. Especially the children.

  But nowhere over the decades did Remo ever think of himself as an assassin the way the screwballs who murdered Presidents did.

  But as the 727 winged north to the District of Columbia, he began to wonder. If he left the service of America, would Chiun leave, too? And if Chiun left, would he install Remo as sole heir to the village, and go to work for some foreign nation?

  Would Remo go? And if that nat
ion gave the order to snuff the US. President, what would Remo do?

  It all came down to one simple question. Deep down, who was Remo Williams?

  It was a question that had been bothering him more and more these days.

  It had all started with a mission to Tibet, where he had had the worst case of deja vu on record. And he'd never been to Tibet before. Chiun, who had for years been convinced that Remo was the reincarnation of a Hindu god called Shiva the Destroyer, claimed that Remo was merely remembering his ancient home.

  After that he had gone to visit the grave with his name on it. A ghostly woman had appeared to him and told him to seek out her own grave. She had given Remo a few cryptic clues and promised that finding her grave would reveal his father.

  Remo, whose first view of his mother had been as a phantom at his own grave site, had never known neither his father nor mother. That quest was all that kept him with CURE for now. Smith had promised to help in the search. But with the CURE computers crippled, it looked to be a long process.

  Remo was determined to see it to the end, wherever it led.

  After that he would sort out his future. If he had one.

  As the plane circled Washington National, Remo's sharp eyes made out a big blue-and-white 747 on approach to Andrews Air Force Base, the great seal of the President on its flank. Air Force One, bearing the honored fallen.

  He thought back to that bleak November day in 1963-the last time a dead President had been brought home for burial-and he didn't feel good about himself at all.

  Then the airline captain's voice came over the PA system.

  "The White House has just announced that the President of the United States is about to land at Andrews Air Force Base, and that he is in good health. I don't know what it's all about, folks, but considering the alternative, I think I'll take the good news at face value."

  Spontaneous applause rippled through the passenger cabin.

  In the rear Remo wondered what the hell was going on. He'd seen the President gunned down just like the rest of America.

  Chapter 9

  Not until Air Force One lumbered off Runway 22 Left on spooling engines and banked south over the Atlantic did the head of the White House Secret Service detail allow himself the luxury of tears.

  He was a big man, with the wide shoulders of a linebacker and a face composed of smooth ledges and ridges that looked strong without the aviator-style sunglasses and indomitable with them clapped over his eyes. He had served through three administrations and had not lost a man. Until now.