Remo stayed half-in and half-out of the bubble just in case.
The helicopter floated straight down, sustained by the steady braking action of its main rotor.
It settled in a field of kudzu maybe ten miles west of Sam Beasley World.
As Remo got out, he saw another Christmas-colored chopper lift off from the fairyland skyline of the theme park and realized he'd been played for a sucker. It angled away and out of sight.
"Who was that voice that came over the speaker?" the pilot asked.
"Sound familiar?" said Remo.
"Yeah, it did," the pilot admitted.
"That was Popeye the Sailor Man," said Remo.
The pilot just stared at him.
He was still staring when Remo started walking through the endless kudzu toward the nearest highway. The nearest highway wasn't very near, so it was a good twenty minutes before Remo reached it and another ten before he found a gas station with a pay phone.
He called Dr. Harold W. Smith, waiting impatiently as the connection was rerouted twice before ringing a blue contact phone on Smith's glassy desk.
Smith's voice sounded hoarse but lemony. "Remo, is that you?"
"Yeah. What's wrong?"
"The President of the United States has been shot."
"Damn. How bad?"
Smith's voice sank to a hush. "They're reporting his death, Remo."
Remo said nothing. He was no particular fan of the current President, but in the long moment that the news sank in, he thought about where he had been thirty years ago when he had heard those identical words.
He had been in class. Saint Theresa's Orphanage. A nun whose name Remo had long ago forgotten was teaching English. There had come a knock at the class door, and Sister Mary Margaret, whose name and face Remo would remember to his dying day, entered, more pale of face than usual. She had conferred in a low voice with the other nun, whose face lost all color, too.
Then Sister Mary Margaret had addressed the class in a low, hoarse voice. "Children, our beloved President has been shot. We must all pray for him now."
And Sister Mary Margaret had led the class in prayer.
Remo could still remember the cold feeling in that classroom that day. He was old enough to understand a terrible thing had happened, yet still young enough to be dazed by the news.
When the word came that the young President had died, every class had been cancelled and the entire population of Saint Theresa's Orphanage was led in procession to the chapel. A Mass was sung. Those were still the days of Latin Masses.
It was the first time Remo Williams had ever seen the priests and the nuns-the only authority figures he had known up to that point in his life-weep. It had made him tremble in fear back then, and a little of that sick, hollow emptiness rose up to haunt him three decades later.
"Who did it?" Remo asked after his thoughts came back to the present.
"I have no information at present," Smith said, dull voiced.
"But I do. I found Uncle Sam. He was at Sam Beasley World."
"Was?"
"He got away. And I'm stuck in some highway in the middle of Kudzu, Florida."
"Go to Washington, D.C., Remo."
"Gladly. What's there?"
"The Vice President. He may need protecting."
"We blew a big one, didn't we?"
"Someone did," said Smith, terminating the connection with abrupt finality.
Chapter 7
Secret Service Special Agent Win Workman hated guarding the President of the United States.
He hated it every time the President with his two giant 747s blew into town loaded down with communications gear, armored limousines and an endless list of demands on the Boston Office.
Win Workman worked out of the Boston district office of the Secret Service. He liked working out of Boston, where his routine duties included catching counterfeiters, busting credit-card thieves and solving computer crimes. This last category was one of the fastest-growing missions of the service, whose job wasn't just limited to protecting Presidents, whether sitting, retired or aspiring.
Win Workman had gone to the Service by way of BATF. The pay was higher, the duties more interesting. Just as long as he didn't have to guard any Presidents.
There was little danger of that, he had discovered. Win was too "street" for the White House detail. The Boston office preferred him to work on undercover assignments.
So Win Workman worked the street. He liked working the street. The trouble was every time the President blew into town, they pulled him off the street, made him shave and put on his best Brooks Brothers gray suit and handed him the belt radio whose earphone had been custom-fitted from a mold of his left ear for a perfect fit.
Usually he had to deal with the "quarterlies"-the local nuts and screwballs who had come to the service's attention because they had made public threats against the Chief Executive. They were interviewed every quarter as a matter of routine precaution and were checked out whenever the President came to town.
But this time he had to stand post, thanks to a virulent flu that had knocked out half the Boston office.
Win felt like a tailor's dummy standing post as the Presidential motorcade rolled like a segmented black dragon through the narrow streets of the city. All dressed up and hoping for no action. None whatsoever, thank you very much.
The trouble with standing post for the President of the United States, as Win Workman saw it, was not the boredom factor. High as it was. It wasn't even being pulled off the street.
Working undercover, you won some and you lost some. Not much glory either way. Not in the service, where you were trained to take your satisfaction in a job well done, not press ink or TV face time.
Standing post for the President, you got no thank you's if you did your job right. If you didn't, you might as well have been witness to the end of the world.
Win Workman found himself standing post on the roof of the University of Massachusetts Healey Library building when the shots that all but stopped his own heart rang out.
His eyes went instantly to the source. Across the plaza. Down on the Science Center roof, there was a man: with a rifle.
"Fuck!" he said, dropping into a marksman's crouch and opening fire.