Outside the pot Remo examined his handiwork. Too much head fit into too little pot. Mouth, chin and jowls stuck out from below the steel rim. The curved black handle jutted forward like a crooked witch's nose. The mayor's twitching mouth beneath the handle helped further this image.

"Is this a kidnapping?" the mayor asked fearfully.

"Only in the strictest sense of the word," Remo replied. "It's more like a lesson in good mayoring." And, taking Boston's mayor by his handle, Remo led the shaking, kettle-domed official down the broad staircase.

THE LIBERTY RALLY, which took place annually on historic Boston Common, had, over the course of its decade-long life, grown into the single largest prodrug event in the United States. Born of the radical 1960s hippie culture, the gathering managed to each year dump some forty thousand assorted drug addicts, pushers and thieves onto the Common's well-tended green lawns. Thrown into this mix of human flotsam were the requisite soulless teenagers, college-age revolutionary wanna-bes and celebrity activists.

In a land where freedom begat folly and true sacrifice came when daddy refused to give the kids gas money for the new cars he'd just bought them, the Liberty Rally became a focal point of rebellion among a class too strung out to realize how privileged it truly was.

On this first night of the eleventh such rally to be held, the air of Boston had taken on a hallucinatory quality. A smoky fog hung above the park. Even this late in the evening, city workers were still mopping up the remains of the unfortunate birds that had made the mistake of flying through the smokechoked sky above the Common earlier in the afternoon, only to end up as anesthetized splats against the sides of the Prudential and John Hancock Buildings.

When Remo Williams led the disguised mayor of Boston into the midst of the throng gathered on the Common, he was forced to keep his breathing shallow.