Almost exactly one mile away from the protest, the “B’nai B’rith Memorial Dinner for Marissa Meyer” was underway.
Three Secret Service agents guarded every entrance. They were the visible deterrents. The invisible deterrents included at least twice that number of plainclothes agents inside, who mingled with the guests. The buildings on all four sides of the Sheraton Pentagon City had snipers set up on their roofs.
“Bricklayer takes the lectern in five,” a voice squawked in all their earpieces, using the code name for the current POTUS. Their eyes scanned for unfriendly faces.
At his place at the table, the President nodded somberly as the Vice-President got into the closing statements of his speech.
Having a great time at the memorial dinner, the President thumbed into the message box on his smart phone. The Jewish people here love me. Voted big for me too. Will again!
He thumbed the submit button, and looked up once more as his second-in-command drove home his main selling point — that hatred had no place in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The President set his phone down and clapped softly along with everyone else.
When he picked it back up, a new message box opened.
Projectile attack possible. Leave immediately. S.
The President took a breath, looked nervously toward the room’s exit, then toward the roof. “What does he mean, projectile?” he said to himself. “A missile? It’d get shot down.”
A loud applause made him look up. The Vice-President had just announced him, and was clapping while looking in his direction.
The President waved with one hand and smiled, while his other quickly thumbed in a text reply: I’m on next. Handle it.
Standing with a confidence he did not completely believe, the President shook hands with the Vice, and then began to speak.
· · ·
At his office in Rye, Smith glowered sourly at the received reply, before tapping the button that digitally scoured any trace of the conversation from both phones and all hops in between. Remo would have to find the killer now, or America would be in mourning within minutes.
· · ·
“Of course he’s going to stay,” Remo said. “Can’t you hack into the hotel and set off the fire sprinklers or something to get everyone out of there?”
In fact, Smith had considered that very tactic. “The resulting chaos would put the Secret Service at a disadvantage,” he replied. “Just because there is a potential assassin we know does not mean there is not another one that we do not.”
“So, I need to find a guy with a detonator, and fast,” Remo said. “Fine. What do we know? There’s enough C-4 here to launch a giant concrete statue like a rocket. It would have taken days to plant that much.” He paused. “No, not days. He’d be seen. It would have taken nights. Someone working late, every night.” Remo’s began to scan the mass of protesters again, this time looking — and smelling — for someone very distinct.
“Smitty, I think I know who I’m looking for,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”
Remo slid through the crowd like an eel through seawater, until he caught wind of the familiar scent of soy lattes. He turned just in time to see the jittery guy making his way out of the group and toward the porta-johns. He passed them and continued walking, picking up his pace from a stroll to more of a trot.
“I don’t think so, Mister Coffee,” Remo growled, setting off after him.
· · ·
Craig Lafferty was sweating through his hoodie. His stomach gurgled from the ‘yumbo’ latte he had chugged before getting on the bus, his second of the day. He briefly regretted not stopping to use one of the porta-johns, but he was too excited.
His hands trembled. Reaching into his pocket, his fingers felt the remote detonator switch, but instead chose to grab a well-worn fidget spinner that sat beside it. Craig found spinning the little toy calming. It gave his fingers something to do as he counted down the minutes until he changed the world.
“Cool toy.”
He gasped and turned, dropping the triple-bladed toy to the ground. The thin man who had startled him wore a tight black t-shirt, tucked into equally black chinos.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to make you drop it.” He bent over to pick it up, and Craig noticed the man’s wrist was unusually thick. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger and glanced at it. “What do you do with this?” the man asked.
“You, uh, you just spin it,” Lafferty stammered. He looked back toward the crowd in the distance, then checked his watch. The stranger flicked one of the blades with his finger, and it began to spin.
The man nodded. “Pretty cool,” he said. “That all it does?”
“Ah, yeah,” Lafferty said. “It just…yeah, that’s it.” He thought everyone knew what a fidget spinner was, and felt awkward having to explain its purpose.
The man flicked it again while it spun, making it go even faster. Craig Lafferty could hear the blades making a whizzing noise as they went around.
“You’ve really got that thing going,” Lafferty said. “Probably won’t stop for a good ten minutes. That’d be a record.” Stranger or no stranger, he was on a deadline. He began to casually slip his hand into the pocket with the detonator.
“Oh, I don’t think it’ll spin that long,” the man said. He gave it one more flick, and suddenly the toy was no longer between his thumb and finger.
Craig Lafferty instinctively looked to the ground for the toy, but it was too dark. Then it was too red. Then it was dark and red. He felt as though he were falling to the ground — then through the ground.
The impact of his face against the dirt drove the fidget spinner deeper into the ridge of his nose, where it had neatly embedded itself, ending the consciousness, and then the life, of Craig Lafferty.
Remo Williams gingerly inspected the man’s pocket and took out the remote detonator. He squeezed it gently, and the sides bowed out until the casing popped open. He pinched off the wire that connected to the relay, rendering the device useless.
He called Smitty to give him the good news.
· · ·
Bob Janos was concerned. It was three minutes past the big moment, and so far there had been no earth-shattering kaboom. He briefly wondered if the plan had gone off track, but put that worry aside. The boss would have a backup plan in place. He was a smart guy.
“Something bothering you, Bob?”
Bob turned with a start. “Remo!” he said. “Man, you walk on cat’s feet, you know that?”
Remo looked at him grimly. “Get to the Memorial Amphitheater,” he said tersely. “Ten minutes.”
“What? Why? What are you talking about?” Bob asked.
“You know,” Remo said. “So does ‘The Hutch.’”
The blood drained from Bob Janos’s face. He knew something was off about this Remo Lee character the whole time, but he never considered he might have been a plant from the boss to check up on them. He opened his mouth to make some excuse for why things had not gone as planned. He would pin the blame on unreliable agents, or even his brother Tom if he had to.
But Remo had already disappeared into the darkness.
· · ·
Across the venue, Tom Janos was having similar worries. He jumped as he felt the touch of a hand on his shoulder.
“Goddammit, man,” he said, recognizing Remo. “Make some noise, will you?” He gave a nervous laugh to gather his composure.
Remo pointed across the cemetery to the Memorial Amphitheater. “You’re needed over there,” he said. “It’s for ‘The Hutch.’” Remo heard Tom Janos’s heart quicken, and smiled grimly to himself. These men were deathly afraid of their boss, confirming Remo’s hunch about the man who was pulling all the strings. He backed away into the shadows before Tom realized he had gone, and watched as Tom made a beeline for the covered enclosure.
· · ·
Bob and Tom Janos arrived at the amphitheater almost simultaneously.
“What the hell’s going on?” Tom hissed.
“How should I know?” Bob replied. “The key guy was in your camp. Did you lose him?”
“No way,” Tom said. “I had eyes on him the whole time, right up until the moment he went to set it off.”
“Well, what happened to him?” Bob asked.
“He died.”
Both men turned toward the direction of the voice, which came from a dark corner of the amphitheater. They could barely make out the silhouette of a slender man in the blackness. The darkened figure held his hand out into a pool of light, filtering into the area from a street light. From that hand unfurled a bandana.
The red, white, and blue of the American flag glowed vibrantly in the lamplight.
“Remo?” both men said together, then looked at each other, realization dawning on them at the same time.
“This means something,” Remo said, somberly. “It’s a symbol that reminds us of who we are. What we’ve endured. Where we’ve come from.” He stayed in the shadows, letting the tiny flag remain the visual focus of the twins. “It’s not something that covers your actions. It’s not something you hide behind. It stands for unity — the United States of America.”
Remo Williams stepped into the light.
“And so do I.”
In two strides he was on the twins, his arms wide. Faster than they could react, he knocked their heads together. He continued applying pressure, grinding their heads into each other, until there was only one head between them — half Bob, half Tom, a grotesque scar of blood bisecting the near-symmetry of the merged face.
Remo exhaled. This felt right, he thought. This was what he was meant for.
Remo smiled grimly.
He still had more to do.
· · ·
As he made his way back to the Confederate Memorial, Remo noted the shouting had died down to nearly nothing. There was still one distinct voice, however, screeching in a high pitch.
“Oh no,” Remo groaned. “Chiun, what are you doing?”
When Remo got to the scene, both crowds were looking up to the top of the monument, as were all the news cameras. Even the guards looked upward, some scratching their heads in confusion.
Following their gaze, Remo saw Chiun standing atop the dome, next to the carved female figure of ‘The South.’ He wore the white KKK robe he had been given, but the garment had been reworked with black beads, patterned into tiger stripes from shoulder to hem. The matching hood had likewise been altered, and it now bore an uncanny resemblance to a dunce cap, a thought Remo promised himself never to disclose to Chiun.
“Why do you all march and scream impotently into the night?” Chiun shouted from his perch. “What do your mere words accomplish when your hands are more effective?”
Remo shook his head. He had just saved the monument from certain destruction, and now Chiun was trying to motivate the crowd into tearing it down by hand.
“Does your past offend you?” he cried. “Then pluck it out. That will make it unhappen, no? Reach out and take this symbol with your hands, crush it, and absolve yourselves of all guilt!”
The crowd began to murmur on both sides. “Is he for real?”
“Crazy old man.”
“Come!” Chiun exhorted them. “Come, and change your history!”
“History doesn’t change,” someone called out from the crowd.
Chiun smiled. “Then change your future,” he said. “Does this rock I stand upon inspire you with pride? Does it fill you with shame? It is merely a carved rock. It means nothing other than that dead men are buried here. Honor or dishonor their memories as you wish, for they are not my ancestors. But know that they laugh at you from the void for your foolishness.”
Remo noticed the crowd dissipating on both sides. Signs were tossed to the ground as a few people, then a few dozen more, turned to leave, slump-shouldered and shamed.
“He’s trying to shut us down!” cried one of the few protesters who remained. She tried to rouse the others into joining her, chanting: “No Nazis! No Nazis!”
Chiun cackled and joined her until she shut up in embarrassment. “You need monsters to validate you?” Chiun called out. “All of you have become the monsters you claim to fear,” he intoned, looking out over both groups. “Look inside yourselves, and you will see that I speak the truth.”
By now neither group could be called a crowd. There were only a handful of people left on either side, as more and more people walked away.
Remo knew those who remained were too deeply invested in their beliefs to give up. They needed to feel hate in order to define their existence. But Chiun had held up a mirror to the rest of them, and shown them something that they would always remember.
“Come down, Little Father,” Remo called. “Sorry about this, guys,” he told the guard beside him. “He gets a little nutty without his meds.”
“I do not take ‘meds,’” Chiun scoffed, suddenly standing beside Remo and startling the guard.
“I know you don’t,” Remo said, patting his shoulder and winking at the guard. “I know. Let’s just get out of here.”