Warren Murphy: Target of Opportunity

The next shot Hardy Bricker squeezed off made the sound of a hammer falling on an empty chamber.

The thick wristed man reached up and relieved Hardy Bricker of his pistol. Finger skin came away with the weapon.

Bricker started backing away.

From behind Pepsie, the tiny figure she knew as Chiun stepped up and impaled the back of Bricker's back with a single deadly fingernail.

Bricker screeched as if a red-hot needle had penetrated his plump body. "You're not going to kill me," he blubbered. "You can't. I'm a major, major player in the film industry."

"I should have wasted you the first time," said the thick wristed man bitterly. "My mistake."

Hardy Bricker's eyes squeezed out tears like tiny sponges. "I don't want to die."

"Tough."

"'This isn't in the script."

"Screw the script. This is real life. And for you, it's about to come to an sudden end."

"Look," Bricker pleaded, folding his hands together, "I can put you in my movie. You'll be famous."

"I'm already in the movie."

"We can be in the movie together. I promise you won't end up on the cutting-room floor. You have my word as a child of the sixties."

"Remo, I weary of this man's prattle," said Chiun.

"Just a sec," said Remo. "Bricker, who else knows about CURE?"

"Just her. You're going to have to kill her, too."

"Not true," Pepsie shrilled. "I only know about RX, and I don't really know about that."

"We'll get to you later," said Remo. "I got an idea-you're going to confess your crimes to the world."

"Never. It'll spoil the film and wreck the health-care."

Little Father, see if there's a video camera in that car.

A moment later the Master of Sinanju returned carrying a video camera.

Remo lifted it to his shoulder and started taping Hardy Bricker.

"Start confessing. Just leave out the stuff about CURE and Smith and us."

"I refuse."

The Master of Sinanju stepped up, and all the resolve drained out of Hardy Bricker's quaking body. He began confessing. He spoke in exhaustive detail, adding things he had not told before.

Remo stopped him at one point and asked, "Who was the Oswald double?"

"A has-been actor," Bricker mumbled. "He'd built a career out of playing Lee Harvey Oswald in a string of made-for-TV movies back in the seventies. When he got too old for the part, he lost it. Started believing he was Oswald. Changed his name to Alek James Hidell. He was an extra in CIA. He was the only one I didn't have to drill a hole in his skull before I sent him after the President. Let me tell you, when he read the script, he couldn't wait to take a shot at the President."

"He was willing to kill the President to be in your movie?" Reno said incredulously.

"Docudrama. And he knew he was shooting a Secret Service decoy. If we killed the President before the credits, we'd have no movie. He was the only one besides me who knew what was going on. That's the beauty of it. We had a conspiracy involving literally thousands of people, just like I theorized in CIA, and it all held together."

"Until now. He know he was going to be killed by a Ruby double?"

"That was a later revision. I never got around to showing him that draft."

"Keep confessing," Remo said.

When Hardy Bricker was through, he was on his knees sobbing before the eternal flame of the President whose memory he had invoked and defiled.

Remo said, "Now it's time for you to commit suicide."

"The gun is empty," Bricker sobbed. "You can't make me shoot myself with an empty gun."

"Good thinking. Besides, if I did that, it would go on the books as a simple suicide. I don't want a simple suicide. I want something for the conspiracy buffs to chew on for the next two hundred years. Maybe that way they'll stop messing with history."

A thick wristed hand reached down and made one of Hardy Bricker's limp hands into a fist. Remo brought the fist up to the right side of Bricker's throbbing temple. He pulled the index finger out, setting the tip against Bricker's head.

"Shouldn't you at least be filming this?" Bricker asked.

"Why?"

"It's the end of the movie."

"Only for you, pal."

And while everyone watched with furrowing brows, including the owner of the finger, Remo gave Hardy Bricker's wrist a sharp inward push.

The index finger plunged into Bricker's soft brain all the way up to third joint.

Bricker's right eye bugged out of its socket. His entire body shook. But he didn't attempt to extract his finger from his brain. He couldn't. Neither was working anymore.

They left Hardy Bricker kneeling at the eternal flame, where he would be later found-the first human being in recorded history to commit suicide by ramming his index finger into his own skull, a mystery for the ages, never to be solved.

AS THEY WALKED THROUGH Arlington National Cemetery, Chiun asked, "Was all that cretin said true, Remo?"

"Yeah," Remo said glumly. "I heard Bricker was in town and I was sick of all those movies of his where he blamed every bad thing that ever happened in the world on American government conspiracies. I figured if I put him out to pasture, that would be the end of his propaganda campaign. I never told Smitty."

"Emperor Smith will be displeased," Chiun said gravely. "Even more displeased than he is over my slip of the tongue where this unimportant woman is concerned."

"Look, I need Smith to help find my parents. He can't know about this."

"Nor will he."

Remo looked relieved.

"Provided certain persons show certain other persons proper gratitude according to the season," added Chiun.

Remo sighed. "Just name your price."

"I will," Chiun said thinly, regarding Pepsie with narrow eyes. "Once we are through with unimportant details."

Remo and Chiun loaded Pepsie Dobbins into the borrowed police car, and she asked, "What happens to me?"

"The same thing that happened to Bricker the first time," said Remo.

"What happened to him the first time?" asked Pepsie.

A long-nailed hand the color of old ivory drifted up to Pepsie Dobbins's shoulder and squeezed once. She instantly forgot the question. Then her mind went dark.

Just before the coming of darkness, a squeaky voice said, "This time I will do it and no one will undo it."

WHEN PEPSIE WOKE UP, she was sleeping in the back seat of a police car parked outside of the ANC Washington news bureau and, head in a fog, she stumbled into the building.

Her news director found her wandering the halls and said, "'There you are. Where have you been?"

"Oh, hi, Greg. I think I've been in a daze."

"That's the understatement of the turn of the century," Greg said bitterly. "Better sit down." Pepsie sat. The bare floor was not as comfortable as she'd hoped.

"Do you want the good news first or the bad?"

"What's the good?"

"The President's not dead."

Pepsie made a confused face. "Isn't that the bad news?"

"No."

"Okaaaay. So what's the bad?"

"CNN is showing a tape found at Kennedy's grave where they found that wacko film director Hardy Bricker, dead with his finger in his brain."

"Huh?"

"He committed suicide, though no one can figure out how. He was behind everything."

"It's bad that we lost the story, isn't it?" Pepsie said dimly.

"It's worse that we declared the President dead twice in forty-eight hours. I've been fired. And the only reason I haven't left the building is that I had something to do first."

"What's that?"

"Firing you."

"Oh," said Pepsie Dobbins, who still didn't get it all, but one day would.

Chapter 33

In the White House basement command post, Harold Smith watched the confession of Academy Award-winning Hollywood director Hardy Bricker on CNN. It was being shown for the fourth time.