"Hey, look out," B.O. ordered with a scowl. Remo ignored him. His eyes focused on the ground, he tapped his ball with his wedge. The Titleist seemed suddenly charged with electricity. With a whir it rose from the ground and spun straight up the shaft of Remo's club. It seemed as if he caught it in his hand, but when he opened his palm there was nothing there. Only then did Anson see the ball was back on the grass where it had started.
B.O. blinked amazement. "You some kinda pro?" he asked.
For the first time, Remo looked up at the big exfootball player. "Yes," he said flatly. "But not at golf."
B.O. bit his lip. "I'm always lookin' to improve my game. You giving lessons?"
Remo smiled tightly. "No. I'm making lemonade."
B.O. frowned as he looked Remo up and down. All he saw was a skinny white guy with one club and a lonely bucket of balls. He didn't even see a single packet of Kool-Aid.
"Where are your lemons?" B.O. asked.
Remo shook his head. "Where aren't they," he insisted, an annoyed edge creeping into his voice. By this point Anson's companions were getting anxious. At their urging, the notorious celebrity abandoned Remo. With B.O. in the lead, they continued to the first tee.
Anson's first swing surrendered a 250-yard drive straight down the fairway. When he turned, the star's mouth was split in a wide grin that was all teeth and tongue.
From his isolated spot away from the tee, Remo noted the ex-football player's delighted reaction with studied silence.
Once Anson's party was through on the first tee, they climbed into carts for the trip to the second. Remo trailed them on foot. As he walked, Remo considered his conversation with Anson.
He had told the ex-football player the truth. Remo was making lemonade. It was age-old advice first given him by Sister Mary Margaret way back at the Newark orphanage where Remo had spent his formative years. "When life deals you a lemon," the nun had been fond of saying to her young charges, "make yourself some lemonade."
Well, according to Remo's calculations, he was ass deep in lemons right about now.
B.O. Anson's drive on the second hole wasn't as strong as the first, but another powerful stroke on the third brought back the same wide-open grin he had displayed at the start of the round.
Remo's lemons had been coming at pretty regular intervals over the course of the past year or so.
It had all started with a ghostly visitor who had insisted that the coming years would be difficult for Remo. But unlike your basic chain-rattling Dickensian ghosts, the little Korean boy who had haunted Remo didn't show him any way to avoid his fate. His life was going to suck. There was no two ways about it.
The specter proved accurate in his prediction.
The place Remo had called home for the past ten years had recently burned to the ground. For the past nine months he had been forced to live at Folcroft Sanitarium, a mental and convalescent home here in Rye.
Folcroft doubled as the home of CURE, a supersecret agency for which Remo worked and that was sanctioned by the top level of the U.S. government to work outside the law in order to protect America. That led to lemon number two.
The previous President of the United States had done something his seven predecessors in the Oval Office hadn't. He had blabbed of CURE's existence to an outsider. Squeamish to order the elimination of this man, the new President had given him a role with CURE. Mark Howard had been welcomed into the Folcroft fold as assistant director, directly answerable to Remo's own boss, Dr. Harold W. Smith.
Which brought him to lemon number three: Chiun, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju. Remo's teacher and general all-around pain in the neck.
The wily old Korean had welcomed Howard's arrival as heir apparent with open arms. After all, the coffers of CURE were deep and Harold Smith was old. Sucking up to the new guy seemed the best way to stay on the gravy train well into the new century.
Remo, on the other hand, had never been good at sucking up, and he had no intention of starting now. Ahead, B.O. Anson's arthritis was nowhere to be seen as he drove a deep ball down the fairway. This time a joyful laugh escaped his widely parted lips. He muttered something to the men with him, and they chuckled appreciatively.
As the four men climbed back into their carts for the trip to the fifth tee, Remo slipped quickly around the periphery of the course. Anyone who saw him assumed he was late for an appointment, since his gait was more a hurried glide than a sprint. However, if they'd continued to watch they would have noticed that the speed at which he was traveling was only deceptively slow.
Somehow, without appearing to rush, Remo managed to outdistance B. O. Anson's party on their way to the next tee.
When the former football star's cart slowed to a stop, Remo was a hundred yards ahead, waiting at the edge of the green near the woods that rimmed the course.
B.O. was still laughing when he approached the tee.
Remo had taken only one ball with him. Unlike the ones he'd bought, this ball was personalized.
He noted the name on the side as he fished it from his pocket. "B. O. Anson."
In the shade of a denuded maple, he dropped the ball he had swiped from the ex-football player to the grass.
This wasn't acting out, he reasoned as he lowered the head of the wedge. It was making lemonade, pure and simple.
B.O. hauled back and swung mightily. The ball whooshed audibly from the tee, arcing high into the pale autumn sky.
Another clean shot down the fairway, this one closing in on 260 yards. The ex-football star was having one of the best games of his life. As expected, his mouth dropped wide in the same open smile he displayed after all his best strokes.
The instant he saw the first flash of teeth, Remo brought his own club back.
The wedge flew too fast to even make a sound. Over his shoulder and back down again. When the club connected, the ball didn't have time to flatten before it screamed from the grass. It became a white missile flying at supersonic speed.
Remo alone tracked its path as it soared a beeline up the fairway, directly into the happy gaping mouth of B.O. Anson.
It hit with a wet thwuck. When the ball reemerged into daylight an instant later, it was dragging ragged bits of scalp and brain in its wake.
B.O.'s grinning mouth remained open wide. His dull eyes were unblinking. For an instant Remo saw a flash of sunlight shining down the dark tunnel the golf ball had drilled through his hard skull.
And then the most famous ex-football-playing murderer the world had ever known fell face first into the grass.
As his golf buddies began cautiously poking Barrabas Orrin Anson with the grip ends of their drivers, Remo Williams nodded in satisfaction.
"Hole in one," he said, impressed.
No doubt about it. This was the best lemonade he'd ever tasted. Tossing his club into the woods, he stuffed his hands deep in the pockets of his chinos. Whistling a tune from The Little Mermaid, Remo sauntered off the fairway.
Chapter 3
Behind the closed door labeled Special Project Director, Virgil Climatic Explorer, Dr. Peter Graham was being read the riot act by his NASA superiors.
"Who's going to pay for this disaster?" asked Deployment Operations Director Buck Thruston.
"Technically, this falls in the lap of Science Director for Solar System Exploration," Alice Peak replied crisply. She spoke with great authority since, as Director of Space Policy, this would put it out of her purview.
The Virgil probe sat motionless in the corner of the big room. Though they had tried to get it to walk inside after the long flight back from Mexico, the probe had refused to respond to any commands. They'd been forced to carry it in.
"Wouldn't it be Director of Planetary Exploration?" Thruston asked, confused. At NASA it was hard to keep track of all of the various department directors. At last count there were 8,398 of them in all. They were pretty sure of this figure, since the office of the Director of Director Enumeration had said so.
"Solar system is above planetary," Alice replied.