Destroyer 014 - Judgement Day

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The Destroyer: Judgement Day

Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy

For a store detective, a nude model, a sidewalk pedlar, and for the glorious House of

Sinanju, P.O. Box 114, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

CHAPTER ONE

He wanted to know if anyone could hear screams from there. The real estate salesman said

he had never thought of the property in those terms. Secluded, yes. Pastoral, yes.

Fantastic view, most assuredly. Why didn't Mr. Blake Corbish just look around?

"Yes," agreed Corbish. "A fantastic view... but who can see us from here?"

Ignoring the plastic happiness of the real estate salesman, Corbish intently examined

the cliffside, from the coves down to the lapping blue Pacific outside the small

California town of Bolinas. Behind him the lower slopes of Mt. Tamalpais gently rose

toward the sky.

He looked left, then right. Almost a mile down the fragile dirt and gravel road he could

see a small white cabin. With powerful binoculars a man down there could see all the way

up. A man might even be able to hear with the aid of an audio-snooping device. The

things that could be done with electronics nowadays were amazing.

But even more amazing was what could be done with computers. Blake Corbish knew. Why,

you could put a whole country on a computer system if you had to. You could program it

in such a way that only one man could have access to the final printouts. And if that

man was stubbornly selfish with his information, then he should not be allowed to stand

in the way of greater good-in the way of Blake Corbish's employer, International Data

Corporation, IDC. Not even if he screamed.

"As you see, sir, this house, this property is a rare find for someone who wants

seclusion and graciousness."

"Hmmm," said Corbish. He glanced behind him at the sprawling California-style ranch

house with the large stone patio that was too open to helicopter view, the wide,

glaringly open-view windows that faced the Pacific and the surrounding foothills, the

innumerable sliding glass doors that a man could run right through if he were desperate

enough or stubborn enough.

"A lovely house, don't you think, Mr. Corbish?"

"Uh, well..." Corbish looked down the road again at the white cabin.

"Who owns that?" he asked.

"Oh, you're not interested in that. That's barely insulated, only one improperly working

bathroom and the owner wants an unreasonable amount for it."

"Hmmm," mused Corbish. He was in his late thirties, a trim gentleman with clipped brown

hair, parted as if with the help of a mechanic's rule, a smooth, slightly tanned face

hinting of sailing at the Hamptons and skiing at Vail, a neatly tuned body draped in the

elegant simplicity of Brooks Brothers gray, and the strong solid roots of the muted

black and orange stripes in his not-too-wide tie. A perfect IDC executive, a model IDC

executive, a vice president at thirty-seven. Maybe even the next senior vice president

of IDC if there were not thirty others at IDC almost exactly like him on various rungs

of the corporate ladder in "the corporation to be in" if you were talking about

corporations. And no one talked about anything else in the circles of Blake Corbish,

"Let's see the house," said Corbish in that perfect IDC way that committed nothing and

demanded everything.

He endured the flossy enthusiasm of the agent, who described the parquet floors of the

bedrooms, the solid stone of the massive fireplace, the new weather control that could

create anything indoors from Berkshire autumn to Puerto Bican spring, and, of course,

the carpeting. From fireplace right out to patio, indoor-outdoor, and it could take

anything from mud to a hurricane and come up pure and clean as the day it was installed.

Wall to wall, of course.

"Anything else?" asked Corbish, who did not like the telephones in every room.

"As an executive with IDC, you probably have already noticed the telephones. Well, I

must honestly confess, there has been some trouble with telephone service up here. A big

storm can put out the phones sometimes. They come up here on one exposed wire. But you

can, with your influence, I'm sure, have underground lines put in."

Corbish liked the single exposed line just the way it was. But that was about all he

liked. The house was too open, too vulnerable.

"You certainly have made a good presentation," said Corbish. "I'll have to consider it."

"An ideal property like this is sure to move quickly."

"I imagine it is," said Corbish. He moved to the door. There were several other

properties he would check out today.

"And there's the deep basement. I don't imagine you'd be interested in that. One

basement is pretty much like another."

Deep basement,

"Since I'm already here, I might as well take a look," said Corbish.

"I feel I should explain," said the real estate agent. "You can use it for storage or

you can panel it, fix it up. It doesn't look too pretty now. You see, the builder at the

time was caught up in the bomb shelter craze when everyone was afraid of atomic war.

It's not really a basement. It's a lead-lined deep hole in the ground with special air

filtering ducts and, well, it's sort of spooky. We could have it done over as a basement

playroom before you'd even be ready to move in."

Blake Corbish examined the deep basement once and told the real estate agent he not only

didn't mind the basement, he wanted the keys to the house right away.

"Then you wish to buy?"

"Definitely. And I want that little white cabin down the road too."

"The banks here don't like to give mortgages on second homes," said the real estate

agent.

"IDC doesn't need mortgages," said Corbish. I want the sale consummated within twenty-

four hours."

"That white cabin really isn't worth the price, if I may say so, sir."

"IDC wants it."

The real estate agent grinned, flush-faced.

"Well, anything IDC wants, IDC gets."

"We use positive corporate policy, yes," said Corbish.

"I read about you in Forbes, I believe, Mr. Corbish. You are one of the youngest vice

presidents at IDC."

"There are thirty vice presidents at IDC," said Corbish coldly.

"You're exceptional, according to what I read."

"We're all exceptional."

"Then how do they decide who becomes president?"

"Whoever makes the strongest contributions becomes president. We know, down to the very

digit."

"Yes," the salesman agreed. "I've heard that mentioned about IDC, that your advanced

computer research puts you a generation ahead of everyone eke in the field."

"Positive corporate approach," said Corbish coldly. He endured the real estate

salesman's never-ending sales talk all the way back into San Francisco, thirty miles to

the south.

Corbish would not have had a man like that in his organization. He didn't know his job.

A good salesman stops selling when he has made the sale. More often than not, he can

lose an already-made sale by offering too much information. One should only give a

prospect enough information to make the sale and no more.

Information was the true base of power of IDC. Other companies made computers. Other

companies designed computer programs. Only IDC had the whole package, the designing, the

pure science, the construction and the operation. Competitors were into computers; IDC

was into information.

But no corporation could thrive with only one product, and as IDC moved farther into

acquisitions of lumber, oil, coal, aluminum, transistors and real estate-not just the

purchase of a little Pacific coastline house, but vast tracts of undeveloped land-the

executive teams began to realize that they needed even more information. There was a

scarcity of knowledge about what went on in those other fields.

Like taxes, for instance. With computers, one could predict what price the competition

would charge, right to the penny. But one could not predict what the politicians would

decide to spend, unless of course one owned the local politicians. Owning them was much

more easy if you could learn their secrets. Money could not always buy a politician but

information could.

In America, on the shores of Long Island Sound, there was a mother lode of such

information, beyond IDC's wildest projections. Information on who paid what taxes, which

people took what payoffs, where narcotics entered the country, who sold what to whom and

when, even the effect of weather on commodities futures was calculated. The works. And

no one at this place called Folcroft Sanitarium, on the shores of Long Island Sound,

seemed to be using that information to its fullest advantage. It seemed a crime against

nature that IDC did not have access to it. Blake Corbish intended to amend that crime.

At the San Francisco Airport, Blake Corbish prepared the flight plan of his Lear jet to

Westchester Airport, a few scant miles from Rye, New York. He was told there would be

some sticky weather over Colorado. Corbish said he would fly above it.

The man at the control tower seemed impressed by Corbish's knowledge of aeronautics. So

impressed that he asked questions about Corbish's training, very nicely, very politely.

Corbish was polite in return. The man at the control tower might be one of the thousands

of people who unknowingly fed information into those computers at Folcroft. If that were

so, then this man would be working for IDC soon-also without knowing it.

Only a genius could have set up the computers at Folcroft so that only one man had the

information at his terminal. Only one man, so far as Corbish knew now, understood how it

worked. The beauty of the entire organizational set up was that the people who worked in

it had at best only a fragmentary idea of what they were doing. Most thought they worked

for private companies; the shrewder ones suspected they were informants for the FBI, but

none knew that he was really working to help fill up the computer data banks at

Folcroft. So brilliantly was this organization set up, that big firms, even IDC,

supplied it with workers, unawares,

Only one thing puzzled Corbish and that was the reason for this organization, whose code

name was CURE. No one appeared to profit from it. It was not a military operation, even

though it had some military approaches to matters. A military operation worked against

armies and governments; CURE seemed simultaneously to work for some American citizens

and work against some American citizens.

Corbish thought about this as his Lear jet climbed over the weather in Colorado, He

would have all the answers within two days. It was ironic that the computers at Folcroft

had told him he would have the information in two days. That too was on one of the

readouts he had waylaid. An extensive study of torture.

It told him what he had always suspected in his years as a special forces captain before

joining IDC: any man will tell you anything if you torture him properly. No special

drugs, no esoteric brainwashing. If you could convince a man that he could stop the pain

you inflicted on him by what he told you, and that he could stop the pain forever if he

told you what you wanted, he would tell. The human animal was like that. Any man could

be broken within forty-eight hours. Stories about people resisting torture were, by and

large, nonsense. Only when the interrogator failed to connect pain with information did

people remain mum. It was not moral weakness that made people talk, it was the very

essence of human nature itself. Stop pain and survive. It was that simple.

Corbish crossed the plains states and could not help thinking of the EDC offices there,

especially in Kansas City. Why, those people at CURE were even plugged into a payroll

computer there used by a professional sports complex.

The weather would be good over Westchester. Corbish checked that on his radio. He also

ordered refueling for the New York stop.

"I want the jet checked out for another cross country. Back to San Francisco in the

morning."

"That's a lot of flying."

"I'm a man on the move," said Corbish. "Over and out."

Funny that the control tower should say "That's a lot of flying." The chairman of the

board had used that phrase. It was a drizzly day in Mamaroneck, New York, when the

chairman of the board had asked for a special meeting. Corbish had been vice president

in charge of international relations, which was six stepping stones to senior vice

president in charge of policy planning, which was the final stepping stone to the

presidency. The president-chairman of the board was not smiling when Corbish entered. He

was alone, which was unusual for an IDC executive whose whole training had been geared

to working in committees. Corbish could not remember ever having met another high-

ranking executive alone, not even on a golf course.

The president and chairman of the board also had that clean-cut, bright, aggressive and

reliable sort of look, with twenty-five years added to it in the form of facial lines

and graying hair.

"Sit down," he said. "This meeting will take no more than five minutes. You will not

remember this meeting, nor will I. We shall never meet alone again, nor will you ever

discuss this with me again. When you have successfully finished your assignment, you

will tell me 'done' and begin showing me the effects of what you have achieved. Within a

week after that date, you will rise to senior vice president in charge of policy

planning. Do you follow me?"

"I follow you, T.L., but I don't understand you."

"Near here-funny that it is near here-is a sanitarium. Folcroft Sanitarium. It has the

385, 971 and the 842 computer systems."

"The 842 is part of a new generation of computers that isn't supposed to be on the

market for two years."

"Correct. They own it."

"But we only lease our computers. We never sell them."

"They own it and they have some of our top-flight research people working on it, a

concentration of talent we never allow out of IDC."

"How could that happen?"

"Do you remember in one of your early training sessions you learned that you could, if

you had enough money and talent, put an entire country, its main sources of power, all

on a computer system?"

"Yes."

"Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, has done it. You will be the next senior vice

president in charge of policy planning because you are the only vice president we have

with special forces training and I wouldn't give this to anyone else. This should give

you an inkling of where we wish you to set your parameters on this assignment."

"What I understand, T.L., is that there are none. I should stop at nothing."

"I didn't hear that, Corbish."

"What will happen if I fail?"

"Then we will have to commit a broad-scale executive thrust in that direction."

"Wouldn't IDC be wiser to just write me off if I fail and continue business as usual?"

"These people at Folcroft, I believe, don't just forget about people, corporations or

organizations that threaten them. They would come after us, I believe."

"Then, T.L., I must ask you one more question. Why not leave them alone if the risk of

failure is so great? There is a point of diminishing returns. I'm afraid my input has

got to weigh on the side of another look-see in depth. IDC comes ahead of my personal

advancement from my view strata, T.L."

And this was the first time Blake Corbish, vice president, ever saw in T.L. Broon

emotion other than responsible optimism or cautious concern. It was anger. A blood-

flushing, red-rising anger that boiled from T.L. Broon's corporate soul.

"They have undermined the profit structure of IDC," he said, his voice quivering with

rage. "Undermined the very profit structure of IDC, by hijacking our computer systems,

by competing with us in the field of total information. If another corporation thought

of doing this, we would crush it. If a politician thought of doing this, we would defeat

him. If a banker tried it, we would bankrupt him. Do you understand? The two of us

cannot exist together."

"Can do, sir," said Corbish in a phrase reminiscent of his brief Army career when

everyone was talking about the problems of Vietnam and all the younger military men were

saying "can do." It was the way captains became majors and majors became colonels. It

was the way a vice president could become senior vice president in charge of policy

planning before he was forty.

"You've got a lot of flying to do, Blake. Get to it," T.L. had said.

There were a couple of problems with Folcroft, but Corbish being a top-flight operations

man, made sure his approach was secure and thorough. He didn't rush into Folcroft.

Instead he sent people to repair computers, to examine bills, to attempt to sell new

software and hardware, keeping himself out of the picture to see what Folcroft's

corporate response would be.

Two programmers Corbish never saw again; a third was found with his chest crushed to

jelly on a Long Island beach. The coroner had sent detectives to look for some huge

hydraulic machine-he explained that only a machine like that could have performed such a

body-splashing killing. But it was obvious the programmer had been killed on the beach

and any machine capable of that sort of force would have left marks.

IDC dutifully paid death benefits to the families-IDC always took care of its own-and

with the final death, Corbish had his point of operations bracketed. He focused his

attention on a rather prim, middle-aged man, with a mind so addled he even refused a top

executive position with IDC.

Dr. Harold Smith, director of Folcroft Sanitarium, was the man with the office that had

the only computer terminal that took all the hookups from all the computers and

unscrambled them. It was a brilliant system, Corbish thought. But the man running it was

too stubborn. Perhaps that was a function of late middle age, another reason why IDC

retired its executives before they became doddering, senile, and worst of all, stubborn.

There was no room in the corporate world for stubbornness. That was old-fashioned,

outmoded, obsolete as the abacus. People became obsolete also. Too bad for Dr. Smith.

Corbish's landing at Westchester Airport was, as usual, perfect. He was a careful,

impeccable flyer who, though be entertained no fear-not even in the most hazardous

storms-never indulged in unnecessary risks. There were old pilots and bold pilots, he

knew, but never any old bold pilots.

He supervised the refueling, discussed checking out the craft with one of the few

mechanics he trusted, then drove away in his wife's station wagon which he had parked

there two days before. He thought of phoning her to say hello, but decided against it.

He did not want to waste the time. It would not hurt to be a few minutes early for his

evening meeting with Dr. Smith. Better a few minutes early than a second late.

Corbish drove through the high gates of Folcroft with the rising brick walls that

discreetly hid everything, and parked his station wagon alongside the administration

building in the back. Only one light was on. It came from Smith's office with the one-

way glass that emitted just a faint glimmer of light at night, but obscured any shapes.

Within forty-eight hours, according to the best research on the subject, Corbish would

see all he wanted about Folcroft. He would see everything with utmost clarity.

By happenstance, Corbish glanced into the clean dark night at the awesome array of stars

whose distance and magnitude had remained mysterious before the advent of the computer.

Seeing the eternity of space, Corbish, for reasons he did not know, thought of a

perplexing readout from Folcroft. It had referred to The Destroyer, some kind of navy

ship obviously, and to a little village in North Korea called Sinanju.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he was making a polite visit to a Detroit suburb, a gracious

large-lawned sprawling house in Grosse Pointe, miles from the inner city where people

injected death into their arms or sniffed it or sold it in "protected" houses.

Those who used the product that provided the income that enabled this lawn to get a

daily manicure, the house to receive daily cleaning by two maids, the swimming pool to

remain heated and functioning-all winter-were not allowed in this neighborhood. If they

were seen walking the streets after dark, policemen asked them what they were doing.

Unless they could name a house where they were going to tend bar, make beds, or take out

garbage, they were whisked away. They were very easy to spot in this neighborhood

because black faces stood out very well.

Remo's face did not stand out. He had high cheekbones and dark eyes that seemed to go on

for eternity and the paleness of a just lost tan. He was about six feet tall and, except

for his large wrists, appeared almost lean. He rang the doorbell of the Jordan home, a

name which had once been Giordano when Angelo Giordano was running numbers in downtown

Detroit, before he had found the awesome profitability of bulk-supplying black pushers

with the white powder that continued its fine sales despite a lack of advertising and

the marketing handicaps, like fifteen years to life.

Arnold Jordan had so many broken links between himself and the final sale, that it was

very unlikely that he would personally face these handicaps. That was for the little

men.

A maid answered the door.

"Good evening," said Remo. 'I'm from the Grosse Pointe Homeowners' League and I would

like to talk with Mr. Jordan."

"Is Mr. Jordan expecting you?"

"No," said Remo.

"If you would wait here, I'll see if Mr. Jordan is at home."

"Thank you," said Remo. He began to whistle somewhat nervously while he waited for a

reply. He had an unusually busy schedule for the evening. Upstairs-where his orders came

from-had become highly unreasonable recently, almost bordering on the worst of all

possible sins, incompetence. It was this IDC thing. It had to be the IDC thing, although

Remo had not even been formally notified that there was such a thing as an IDC thing. He

had just been given the names and general whereabouts of three computer programmers.

Disposing of the last one on a Long Island beach had taken fifteen seconds. Remo spent

the first fourteen of them laughing as the man had assumed some sort of silly Kung Fu

stance, which was fine for a martial arts school, but which left the chest as open as

the ocean.

Remo did not know the name of the stance, because as the Master of Sinanju-Remo's

trainer-had explained, one should not waste precious time cataloguing someone else's

foolishness. Sinanju, unlike the known variations of the martial arts, was not an art

but a working tool. Less and less could Remo fathom how people would want to make games

out of daily work, even devoting leisure hours to it. But then there were even lawyers

who mowed lawns for relaxation.

The maid, in starched white apron, returned with apologies that Mr. Jordan was

unavailable.

"It will just take a minute. I'm really in a rush," said Remo, gliding around the maid

who could have sworn she had a hand out there to stop him. She watched the visitor seem

to slip through it as she stood there, hand upraised in empty air.

Arnold Jordan was having dinner with his family. He was poised with a forkful of

blueberry pie when Remo entered the somewhat overfurnished dining room.

"I'm awfully sorry to bother you," said Remo. "This will only take a minute. Finish your

pie. Go ahead. Don't let me bother you."

Jordan, a massive man with the strong rocklike face of a Roman legionnaire but the

styled dry hair of a TV announcer, put down his fork.

"Go ahead, finish it," said Remo. "You like blueberry pie?"

"May I ask who you are?"

"Grosse Pointe Homeowners' League. It will only take a minute. I really don't have more

than a minute for you anyhow."

"You can phone my secretary in the morning. I am eating now."

"I said, finish it."

Arnold Jordan wiped his mouth with the fine white linen napkin, excused himself from the

table, receiving scarcely a nod of recognition from his wife and children. "I will give

you a minute," said Jordan heavily. "But I think I should warn you that you are not

doing yourself any good by interrupting my supper."

Remo merely nodded. He did not have time for polite chitchat. Jordan led Remo into a

book-lined den.

"All right. What's your name? What are you here for? What's your employer's name? I told

you, you didn't do yourself any good by interrupting my supper. I want his name and

phone number."

"His name's Smith, but don't worry about making any phone calls. That's not why I'm

here. You see, you've just connected with a massive shipment, and it's so big I was sent

to dispose of it." Remo muttered under his breath, "No one bothered to think that I

can't be two places at one time or there are so many hours in the day. No, just go to

Jordan's house, find out where it is, then do the normal thirty-five hours work in one

night. And we're supposed to be efficient."

"I beg your pardon," said Jordan.

"C'mon. I don't have all night," said Remo.

"That's right," said Jordan. "That's very right. You don't have all night at all. Now

why don't you do yourself a very big favor and leave."

"I take it that's one of your subtle threats." Jordan shrugged his shoulders. He

estimated that he could crack this man in two if he had to, but why should he have to.

He merely had to phone the police and have the man arrested for trespassing. Then when

the man was released in his own recognizance, he would prove that the courts were too

lenient by just disappearing. Perhaps in Lake Michigan.

Jordan's self assurance was somewhat shaken by a searing, biting pain in his right

shoulder. It felt like a hot iron. His mouth opened to scream but there was no sound.

Just the pain and his visitor's forefinger and thumb where the pain was. Jordan could

neither move nor speak.

He sat at his desk, like a frog that had just had its stomach rubbed, helpless.

"All right," said the visitor. This is pain."

The shoulder felt as if hot needles pricked the socket But the visitor's fingers hardly

moved.

"This is an absence of pain."

Jordan felt a relief so blessed he almost cried.

"You can have an absence of pain, or this."

The hot needles again.

"This goes when I find out where the heroin shipment is."

Jordan tried to speak but he had no voice.

"I don't hear you."

Jordan tried to yell but he couldn't.

"You've got to speak up."

Didn't this man realize that he couldn't speak? He was a crazy and the shoulder felt as

if it were coming out of the socket and Jordan would say anything, tell anything, if

only his voice would cooperate. He felt the pain shift to his chest and suddenly his

vocal cords were free but he could hardly breathe.

Hoarsely he mentioned a "protected" house downtown. But the crazy visitor wouldn't

believe him, just kept saying that it wasn't true.

"My god, I swear it's true. Fifty-five kilos. I swear it. My god, please believe me,

it's true. Please. The heroin's behind a wooden panel that secures the front door.

Believe me."

"I do," said the visitor. And then the pain was magnificiently, gloriously, joyously

gone and a sudden night descended on Angelo Giordano, alias Arnold Jordan, who

encountered the ultimate marketing difficulty that can result from merchandising heroin.

Remo put the body in a lounging chair, closed Jordan's eyes, and left the room, jamming

the lock to give himself twenty to thirty minutes. He expressed regrets to the Jordan

family that he could not stay for dessert, and told Mrs. Jordan her husband was busy

working on a decomposition and should not be disturbed.

"Composition, you mean," said Mrs. Jordan.

Remo did not have time to explain. Once again, Smitty had overloaded a work night,

probably because of those computers. Remo had no faith in computers. He had faith in

only one thing now and that was a person: an elderly wisp of an Oriental who could so

often make Remo's life unpleasant. It was strange to have lost his faith in almost

everything else in the last decade, but that might be because, as Chiun, the Master of

Sinanju, had told him, his very essence was changing. Dr. Smith, on the other hand, had

ascribed the change to a massive transformation of the nervous system not yet understood

in the west

Whatever it was, he could not get himself to the inner city of Detroit and back out to

the airport in less than an hour. He would have to risk missing the fifty-five kilos or

risk missing the fourth IDC man that Smith had instructed him to eliminate. Remo noticed

there was an absence of pay phones in Grosse Pointe. He had to walk three miles before

he found a cab, and it was another twelve minutes before they reached a phone booth.

A line was to have been kept open for him all evening. It would be an insecure line, but

what it lacked in privacy it made up for in availability. No one could secure a random

pay phone.

The booth smelled more like a urinal than a phone booth. Remo dialed the 800 area code

number. That meant that a dime from anywhere could reach it. It rang four times. Remo

hung up and dialed again. With the phone system working the way it was, it was possible

to get a wrong number. He dialed again. Again it rang and Remo counted to five rings.

He hung up and dialed "O."

"Operator, there's some trouble with the lines. I must be getting a wrong number. It

just rings."

Remo gave her the number with the 800 area code.

"It's ringing, sir," said the operator.

"It's got to be answered," Remo said.

"I'm sorry, sir. Would you like me to try it again?"

"Yes, thank you."

Again the number rang and no one answered.

"It's ringing, sir."

"I fucking hear you," said Remo. He threw the receiver across the street and the metal-

wrapped line popped like a dried-out rubber band.

The cab driver waiting at the curb saw this and said that he had suddenly gotten an

emergency phone call. Since he had to leave so abruptly there would be no charge.

Remo wouldn't hear of it. He gave the driver the address of the house which probably

still had the fifty-five kilos. The heroin could fly at the first warning and once it

was broken down into nickel packs, it could never be destroyed. Remo would just have to

hope that the IDC programmer would wait. Besides, Dr. Smith must be miscalculating if

Remo had to make so many hits in the IDC thing, whatever it was. A well-thought-out

operation should have only one elimination in it, two at the most.

Remo got into the cab, but the driver stood by the door.

"That house you're talking about, buddy, is in a black neighborhood."

"That's nice," said Remo.

Remo's mind wandered. Was it possible that the phone had rung in Smith's office in

Folcroft and no one was there to answer it? No. If Dr. Harold Smith said he would be at

a certain place at a certain time, Dr. Harold Smith was at that place at that time with

disgusting regularity.

Maybe Smitty had had a heart attack and died? Probably not. Remo hadn't had any good

luck all evening. Why start now? The cab still wasn't moving. The driver stood by the

door.

"C'mon, c'mon," said Remo.

"I ain't driving to a black neighborhood at this hour of night."

"I see your point," Remo said. "But I've got to get there and you're the only way."

"No way, mister."

Remo felt in his pocket for some bills. He took out five of them. Three were tens and

two were twenties.

"What good's money to a corpse?" asked the driver.

Remo did a very funny thing with the bulletproof shield which was supposed to separate

driver from passenger. Applying pressure to the weak bolt points, he snapped it off.

This impressed the driver, who suddenly thought a person should be driven anywhere if he

had the fare. Remo insisted the driver take the money and even some extra for the

shield. The driver noted how glad he was that his passenger tended to vent most of his

hostility on property, not people.

A "protected" house is a relatively new innovation of the heroin trade. Instead of

sending pushers out into the warring streets, where they can be ripped off by junkies,

the junkies go to these houses to get a fix on the premises or to take out if they

desire.

The houses are well supplied with weapons and even with what is called a hot needle-a

syringe containing poison-should a buyer be suspected of being a narco cop. They have

many fine locks, very thick doors and barred windows. In this respect they are not

unlike the liquor stores in the same general neighborhoods.

For the fifty-five kilos, special precautions were taken. No small time customers were

allowed; extra men with guns were placed inside the window openings. The front door was

reinforced by plywood panels and two-by-fours that moved away so customers could be

admitted. All the windows were nailed shut and the basement doors boarded and nailed.

It was the perfect defense. Against just about anything but a penny book of matches and

a gallon of gasoline.

As Remo watched the front of the house flame up to become a funeral pyre for its

inhabitants and an incinerator for the fifty-five kilos hidden inside the front door, he

thought he heard the cab driver crying. But when he asked him, the driver said he was

not crying. He was happy. He was happy because he loved his passenger with all his heart

and soul.

"Lucky we're dealing with a slum neighborhood; although sometimes you get some good

structures here that won't burn," said Remo.

Boy, did the cab driver think his passenger was right. Absolutely. Always thought that

himself. Yes, sir. Was the passenger happy? Because the only thing the driver wanted was

to keep his passenger happy. To the airport? Absolutely, sir.

At the airport, Remo discovered the IDC programmer was still waiting. Remo apologized

for being late, said he would talk to the man in the men's lavatory. Remo left him in a

pay toilet to be discovered only when the janitors realized the same still legs had been

in the booth too long for even the most severe constipation.

"Rush, rush," muttered Remo as he quickly left the airport in another cab. If things had

been properly assigned, he would not have had to run from an assignment so carelessly.

But strange things were coming from upstairs and Remo did not want to think about what

they might mean. For as much as he often hated the parsimonious, bitter-faced,

unredeemed-by-any-human-warmth Dr. Harold Smith, he did not want to have to exercise the

final option against him.

CHAPTER THREE

The report was wrong. The old man had not broken in forty-eight hours. Oh, it looked

like it, but all Corbish got was a very clever cover story about a gigantic undercover

operation. A waste of precious time.

Why hadn't the report on interrogation told how hard it was to torture someone? Corbish

felt the perspiration drip down the small of his back and the stethoscope was wet to his

touch as he placed it over the white-haired chest and listened to the heartbeat. Good.

The heartbeat was still good. Did this old fool wish to die? Corbish checked his watch

again. He was well into the second day. The lead-lined cellar of die house near Bolinas

had suffered a breakdown in one of the air ducts, so now it was not only incredibly hot

but oxygen was getting scant. He removed the stethoscope from the chest and saw that the

chest was now swelling in massive red welts where he had placed the electrodes. He had

thought torture would be so easy, and now he realized he was outside the proper time

projection for reasonable project success. Everything had worked so well until he had

strapped Dr. Smith onto the table of the lead-lined room.

The meeting at Folcroft three days ago had gone perfectly. Corbish had set himself up as

an informer who wished not to be seen lest he lose his job at IDC. Dr. Smith had gone

for the story, agreeing to the late night meeting. Corbish had limited his externally

observable acts to the time between his first contact with Smith, pretending to be an

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TheDestroyer:JudgementDayRichardSapirandWarrenMurphyForastoredetective,anudemodel,asidewalkpedlar,andforthegloriousHouseofSinanju,P.O.Box114,Pittsfield,Massachusetts.CHAPTERONEHewantedtoknowifanyonecouldhearscreamsfromthere.Therealestatesalesmansaidhehadneverthoughtofthepropertyinthoseterms.Secluded...

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Destroyer 014 - Judgement Day

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