The Juber Club was a Washington, D.C., institution, and its members were, too. No first-generation politicians or millionaires were invited to join, and the club had stopped taking new members anyway in the 1970s. There were more than enough members and their sons to sustain the Juber Club, and these days—as in the past forty years—even the private clubs were pressured to desegregate. Closed membership made that a nonissue.
Blacks? Jews? In the Juber Club? No, thank you very much.
Asians? Women? Never. That was the message the concierge communicated as he strode into the reception foyer.
“Don’t even start, Jeeves.” The one member of the trio who was at least acceptable in terms of race and gender was dressed like a truck driver.
“I must ask you to—” The concierge found himself walking with the man in the T-shirt. No, not walking. His feet weren’t touching the ground.
“We lost him here,” said the woman, who looked worried, but the concierge knew her now. Secret Service. She had been here yesterday. “While we were coughing up ID for Mr. Stick up the Butt, Whiteslaw slipped around this corner and into the library—we thought,” Vespana explained. “When we finally got inside, no Whiteslaw.”
Remo considered that, examining the short hall, then he idly bounced the concierge up and down. “Does that help you think?” Chiun asked.
“Pay attention.” Remo loved it when he had the chance to say such things to Chiun. As the wide-eyed concierge was bobbled, his shoes clattered on the marble floor. Remo was greatly satisfied to see Chiun nod in understanding.
“Female, did you hear the despicable senator’s shoes clop down this hallway? Are you not trained to notice such things?”
Vespana had a smart-mouthed response ready, then it occurred to her that she hadn’t heard the sound of receding footsteps.
“Proves nothing” she declared.
“Except that he probably did go into the library after all.” Remo entered the library and locked the door behind them. “I bet there’s a secret passage in this place. What do you say, Chiun? Sign out front says it was built in the 1850s, and even I know everybody would have been getting edgy about the slavery thing, so there had to be a lot of paranoid spies and politicos hanging around.”
“Wherever there are politicians, you can be assured there will be a means of escape,” Chiun agreed.
Remo tapped on the bookshelves until he found the section without a wall behind it, then tapped again until the tactile response led him to the instrument used to open the door. That took all of fifteen seconds, but for another minute he pushed it, lifted it, prodded it and yanked it. The wall wouldn’t open.
“Little help?” he asked Chiun.
“I was not even invited.”
“Okay, you, then,” Remo said to the concierge; “Open it.”
“Never, sir.” The concierge, even dangling helplessly, felt he had bested his attackers. They would never learn the secret code that activated the door’s mechanics.
“It’s your library.” Remo shrugged and tapped again, disintegrating the handcrafted bookshelves. The splintered cherry wood still smelled fresh, even 150 years after the bookshelves’ construction.
The concierge was too shocked to notice he was being carried into the passage at amazing speed, down and then east under Front Street and then up again.
The building across the street from the Juber Club looked like just another federal office building, but when they ascended again to ground level they were in a windowless secret section, just wide enough for the elevator. When the elevator opened, there was just one button inside.
Alarms were ringing all over the system. Jack Fast knew the rats were finally in his trap. The old man was going to eat his words.
It was a real bummer when people stopped thinking you were the greatest. The old man gave Jack some serious attitude when Jack claimed the proton-beam chisel couldn’t be adapted for a sustained firefight. Why not, Jack? Losing your touch, Jack? As if Jack hadn’t already engineered the proton-beam chisel way beyond what those doctoral types at Singapore City U ever dreamed of.
Now Jack was going to hit the assassins with souped-up proton-beam chisels that worked in series. This was the most outrageously hostile hotel room on the planet—at least, as far as these assassins were concerned.
They were in the elevator now. Jack was monitoring the normal electronic controllers for the elevator, so there wouldn’t be any extra sensors to alert the assassins. There were no cameras in the elevator because the assassins hated cameras—but there would be cameras in the hotel room. By then the assassins would be helpless and begging for mercy, and Jack was going to love watching that.
