Destroyer 044 - Balance Of power

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Warren Murphy

Warren Murphy lives in New Jersey. He has been a newspaperman, a sequin polisher and a political consultant.

His hobbies are mathematics, chess, martial arts, opera, politics, gambling and sloth. Occasionally married, he is the

father of four children.

He tells how the Destroyer series got started:

"The first Destroyer was written in my attic in 1963. It finally got published in 1971 and was an overnight success.

In those days, Dick Sapir was my co-author and partner. He retired from the Destroyers a couple of years ago

and took his name off the books when he decided he didn't want anybody to know he knew me. I helped him

make this decision by locking him in my cellar for eight days without water.

"Nevertheless, he still hangs around. Various characters that appear in these pages are Dick's. Occasionally, he

writes sections when someone or something annoys him. Anyone who knows him knows that this guarantees a

certain frequency of appearance.

"We used to get a lot of letters, and answer them, but then Dick took over answering them and lost all the letters and forgot to pay the

rent on our post office box. He said he was sorry.

"In answer to the questions we get asked most: there really is a Sinanju in North Korea, but I wouldn't

want to live there. There really isn't a Remo and Chiun, but there ought to be. Loud radios are the most

important problem facing America. The Destroyer is soon to be a major motion picture. We will keep

writing them forever."

HANDIWORK OF HORROR

Barney moved before Estomago could restrain him. With one leap, he hurled himself toward De Culo and placed an

expert kick at his head. But the president ducked in time and took the blow in the meaty part of his back. Still, it

staggered him and he reeled crazily into the corner of the room. Barney didn't have another chance. Estomago's magnum

was drawn and lodged inside his mouth before he could rise from the spot on the floor where he had fallen.

"Take the American scum away," De Culo said, doubled over from the pain in his back. Estomago

yanked Barney to his feet.

"Wait," De Culo shouted as the two men reached the door. "There is one more thing I wish to give

our guest. A welcoming gift." His eyes vicious, he stumbled over to the desk and threw open a drawer.

"I was saving this for later, but I think that now would be perfectly appropriate."

He reached deep into the drawer and pulled out something soft and ashen. He tossed toward

Barney. It hit him on the cheek, feeling like a cold leather bag, then dropped to the floor.

And there, at his feet, rested Denise's severed hand, its thin gold wedding band still encircling the

third finger.

"Your wife wouldn't take the ring off," De Culo spat. "So we took it off for her. Get him out of my

sight."

Dazed, Barney allowed himself to be dragged out of the room where De Culo's laughter grew

louder and louder, where the little hand with its cheap ring lay on the floor.

ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND CORPORATIONS PINNACLE Books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchases for

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PINNACLE BOOKS

NEW YORK

For Molly Cochran

and the House of Sinanju,

For Molly Cochran

and the House of Sinanju,

P.O. Box 1454, Secaucus, NJ. 07094

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or

incidents is purely coincidental.

DESTROYER #44: BALANCE OF POWER

An original Pinnacle Books edition, published for the first time anywhere.

First printing, June 1981

ISBN: 0-523-40718-1

Cover illustration by Hector Garrido

Printed In the United States of America

PINNACLE BOOKS, INC.

1430 Broadway

New York, New York 10018

FORWARD

Warren Murphy lives in New Jersey. He has been a newspaperman, a sequin polisher and a political consultant.

His hobbies are mathematics, chess, martial arts, opera, politics, gambling, and sloth. Occasionally married, he is

the father of four children.

He tells how the Destroyer series got started:

"The first Destroyer was written in my attic in 1963. It finally got published in 1971 and

was an overnight success. In those days, Dick Sapir was my co-author and partner. He retired

from the Destroyers a couple of years ago and took his name off the books when he decided he

didn't want anybody to know he knew me. I helped him make this decision by locking him

in my cellar for eight days without water.

"Nevertheless, he still hangs around. Various characters that appear in these pages are

Dick's. Occasionally, he writes sections when someone or something annoys him. Anyone

who knows him knows that this guarantees a certain frequency of appearance.

"Dick used to write the first half of books and I would write the second half. When he

was mad at me, he would just send me 95 pages without a clue on how the book might be

resolved. He would never write more than 95 pages. He stopped at the bottom of page 95 no

matter what. Once, he stopped in the middle of a hyphenated word.

"We used to get a lot of letters and answer them, but then Dick took over answering them and lost all the letters

and forgot to pay the rent on our post office box. He said he was sorry.

"In answer to the questions we get asked most: there really is a Sinanju in North

Korea, but I wouldn't want to live there. There really isn't a Remo and Chiun, but there

ought to be. Loud radios are the most important problem facing America. The Destroyer is

soon to be a major motion picture. We will keep writing them forever."

AFTERWORD

What have they done to Richard Sapir? And why is only Warren Murphy's picture on

the cover? These and other vital questions are casting gloom over the tenth anniversary of

the Destroyer.

By Richard Sapir

Why am I asking these questions? Because none of you did. For a year now, my byline has failed to appear on

Destroyer, on the more than 20 million copies sold. These mind-wrenching questions have crossed exactly one

other mind besides mine. And I say to the fine, sweet, noble lady: "Thank you, Mom."

The tragic fact is none of you have missed me. Sales have increased. Readership has

jumped. Complimentary letters abound.

Warren Murphy, whose name now appears alone, has not even gotten a phone call in the

middle of the night, perhaps saying: "You scum bag. Where's Dick Sapir? You're nothing

without him."

Warren claims his phone is as quiet as a midnight kiss over a baby's crib. I know this is not

so, but professional ethics forbid me from revealing my source. Just for your information,

however, let it be known that he gulped and was stuck for an answer and wanted to know

who the caller was.

Well, Warren, I will tell you who it was. It was your conscience.

Enough of that. I am not a bellyacher. But where

vii

were your letters to me? Where was the begging I so richly deserved? Is a simple grovel too

much to ask?

Did one of you possibly consider that you had done something wrong? Did you think you

were the cause of my leaving?

Where was a simple act of contrition? All I got was a wedding invitation from an old

friend now living in Colorado . . . and that was three months late and said nothing about

my leaving the series. Just had some printed nonsense about his daughter getting married.

So I am gone.

And you don't care.

Well, I don't care that you don't care. In fact, I never cared that you didn't care. I was

just somewhat taken aback by the depths of your not caring, its broad base and cross-

community penetration.

But why should I be surprised at this time?

In the ten years that my name appeared on the series, did one of you ever dedicate your

lives to me? Where were the hallelujahs? What about a Richard Sapir festival? I would have

settled for nude photos and obscene propositions.

But getting back to the so-called joyous tenth anniversary-I am above it all. And I'll tell you

something else. I may come back for a book or two with or without your outcry. And I still

contribute significantly, and if it weren't for my father's patience, the series never would have

been bought, and I buy all the typewriter paper, and Warren's typewriter has a missing key,

and he can't quit smoking and I have.

And I know he went out with Geri a few years ago, and I don't believe nothing

happened.

-Richard Sapir

For the special anniversary issue which didn't carry his picture or anything nice about him.

viii

PUERTA DEL REY, HISPANIA

(Associated Press International)

A man claiming to be an agent of the United States CIA held an antic press conference here yesterday and said the CIA was

working on an overthrow of the Hispanian regime.

The man, who was taken into custody minutes later, was identified by General Robar Estomago, head of

the Hispanian National Security Council, as Bernard C. Daniels, an escaped mental patient. He had no

connection with the CIA, Estomago reported. This was confirmed by the U.S. State Department.

During his rambling, incoherent press conference, the man identified as Daniels, who was obviously

intoxicated, claimed he had been a CIA agent for 15 years, the last three in Hispania.

During his rambling, incoherent press conference, the man identified as Daniels, who was obviously

intoxicated, claimed he had been a CIA agent for 15 years, the last three in Hispania.

Prior to that, he had worked in China, Japan and behind the Iron Curtain and in his travels had

participated in the assassination of 74 men, he said.

Daniels accused the CIA of torturing and beating him repeatedly during a recent incarceration on the

island dictatorship, and showed newsmen a grotesque scar forming the letters "CIA" on his abdomen.

According to Estomago, Daniels's wounds were self-inflicted, and resulted in Daniels's commitment to the

mental institution.

Early reports from the American Embassy indicate that Daniels will be returned to the U.S. for medical

treatment.

CHAPTER ONE

It was a white neighborhood with clean, tree-lined streets and mowed lawns, free of garbage and noise and

scrambling bodies. Halfway down Ophelia Street, a three-story wooden house winked through drawn blinds

across the silent Hudson to New York City, squatting like a giant, crouching gray animal.

It was a nice house in a nice place, a place where a man would want to live. That is, if there

were anything to live for in that house, such as a drop of tequila. Or even bourbon. Gin, in a

pinch. Anything.

But for seventy-five thousand dollars, a man had a right to sleep peacefully through the

night in his own house, without being shattered into consciousness by a doorbell so

diabolically designed as to sound like the squawks of a thousand migrating ducks.

He refused to open his eyes. If he should catch a glimmer of light, it would destroy his sleep

and then the squawking would never go away and then he would be awake.

A man had a right to sleep if he paid for his own home. He covered an ear with a palm and curled his legs up

toward his chin, hoping that assuming the

fetal position would catapult him back to the womb, where there were no ducks.

It didn't. The doorbell continued ringing.

Bernard C. Daniels opened his eyes, brushed some of the dust from his white summer tuxedo and

contemplated swallowing. The taste in his mouth told him it was a bad idea.

He pushed himself off the wooden floor that had once seen many coats of polish, but was

now covered thickly from wall to wall with a gray film of dust. Only his resting place and

last night's footprints broke the film. It was a barren room with a high white ceiling and old

unused gas vents for lighting the house during a past era. It was his room, in the United

States of America, where there were laws, in the town of Weehawken, New Jersey, where he

was born and where no one crept up on you in the middle of the night with a machete. It

was a place where you could close your eyes.

He was fifty years old and closing his eyes was a luxury.

His first night of luxury in many years shattered by a doorbell. He would have to get it

disconnected.

Daniels stumbled to the window and tried to open it. Age had sealed it more securely than

any latch.

He needed a drink. Where was the bottle?

He traced last night's steps from the door to his resting place to the window. No bottle.

Where was it? He couldn't have put it in the large closet at the other end of the room.

There was no arcing sweep in the dust on the floor at the base of the closet doors. Where the

hell was it?

Squawk. Squawk. Squawk. The bell sounded again. Daniels muttered a curse and broke a

pane in the window with the empty bottle he had in his pocket.

So that's where it was. He smiled. A cool April breeze off the Hudson River flowed

through the broken window. Daniels filled his lungs with the cool, fresh air, then gagged

and sputtered. He would have to tape over the window, he said to himself, coughing. Too

much air, and a man could breathe himself to death. He'd been so much more comfortable

breathing the homey dust of the floor.

A sharp voice came from beneath the window. "Daniels!" the voice yelled. "Daniels, is

that you?"

"No," Daniels quavered back, his voice hurdling over a lake of rancid phlegm. At first

he hadn't known whether to answer in Spanish or English. Fortunately, he realized, "no" was

the same in both languages.

The bottle was wet in his perspiring hands. He glanced at the label. Jose Macho's Four

Star Tequila. He could get a gallon for a buck in Mexico City. It had cost him nine dollars

at a Weehawken bar.

Squawk. Squawk. Squawk.

"Damn it," Daniels hollered through the shattered pane. "Will you stop that goddamn ringing!" "

"I did," came the voice. It was familiar. Coldly, efficiently, disgustingly familiar.

''Wo estoy aqui," Daniels answered.

"What do you mean you're not home? What other idiot would smash a window

instead of answering a doorbell?"

Succumbing to logic, Daniels dropped the bottle on the floor and left the room, the

squawks still sounding in his ears. He descended the wooden stairs, slowly pausing to

examine all three dusty barren floors.

He walked with grace, each step the product of years of gymnastics, built into a solid

muscular body

that 35 years of frequent abuse had not managed to debilitate. Daniels was a handsome man. He knew this because

women told him so. His rugged face was topped by a shock of short, steel-gray wavy hair. His nose had been

broken six times, and the last fracture restored the dignity that the first five had taken away.

A cruel face, women called it. Sometimes the perceptive ones added, "But it fits you, you

bastard."

Barney would have smiled remembering that, if he hadn't been seeking desperately to

burn out the barnyard-flavored coating of his tongue with a blast of alcohol. Any decent

rotgut would do. But there was nothing.

Squawk. Squawk. He waved his arm in the oak-paneled foyer as though the man behind the

stained glass window could see his movements and would stop ringing. No good. He fumbled

with the three brass locks on the door, finally twisting the last into position.

Then, firmly grasping the tarnished doorknob as if it would fall to the floor if he let go,

he pulled back hard and a gust of April swatted his face. "Ooh," Barney gasped.

A man in a stylish Ivy League blue worsted suit stood in the doorway. He wore an

immaculate white shirt and a striped tie, knotted tightly, and carried a black attache case. He

had the kind of well-bred, old-money face that was accepted everywhere and forgotten

immediately. Barney would have forgotten it too, except that he'd seen its smug, vain,

monotonously snotty expression too many times.

"Quit ringing the frigging doorbell," Daniels demanded, refusing to let the wind blow

him to the floor and amazed, as ever, that its force failed to muss the man's careful

Christopher Lee hairdo.

"My hands are at my sides," the man said without humor.

Daniels stared into the wind. They were. '

Squawk. Squawk.

He needed a drink.

"You wouldn't happen to have a drink on you, would you, Max?"

"No," said Max Snodgrass emphatically. "May I come in?"

"No," said Barney Daniels just as emphatically and slammed the door in Max

Snodgrass's face. Then, watching the dark shadow on the other side of the stained glass, he

waited for the outrage.

"Open this door, Daniels. I have your first pension check. If you don't open up you won't

get your check."

Barney shrugged and tilted his head back, looking at the solid beamed ceilings fifteen

feet high. They didn't build them like that any more. It was a fine buy.

"Open up now or Fm leaving."

And the paneling, thick oak. Who paneled with oak nowadays?

"I'm leaving."

Barney waved goodbye. And the ceiling joints.

"I'm serious. I'm leaving."

Daniels opened the door again. "Don't leave," he said softly. "I need your help."

Max Snodgrass stepped back slightly, a wary half step. "Yes?"

"An old woman is dying upstairs."

''I'll call a doctor."

Daniels raised a shaking hand. "No. No. It's too late for that."

"How do you know? You're not a doctor."

"I've seen enough death to know, Max," he intoned somberly. "I smell death."

Daniels could see the pink neck stretching, the flat gray eyes trying to peer into the house. "And you want

me to do something for her, is that right?"

Daniels nodded.

"And I'm the only man in the world who can help, is that right? And it's not a loan of a

few dollars because I have the check with me, right? Then it must be something else. Could

it be she wants one last glass of tequila for her dry old throat before she passes on to that great

desert up yonder?"

Snodgrass smiled, an evil, vicious, untrusting smile. The smile of a man who would not

give a dying grandmother a drink.

"You have no heart," Daniels said. "From a man who has no heart, I will not accept the

check."

"You're not doing me any favors."

"Yes I am, buddy. If I don't take the check, your bookkeeping will get all fouled up." He

grinned wickedly. "And we both know what your boss will think about that."

Your boss. Not ours. Thank God.

"Ridiculous," Snodgrass said in a casual voice that suddenly squeaked. "Just add another

memo to the files."

"But the CIA doesn't cotton to memos," Daniels taunted.

The pink neck grew red and the gray eyes above it flashed. "Quiet," Snodgrass hissed.

"Will you shut up?"

"I'll say it louder," Daniels-said. "Louder and louder. CIA. CIA. CIA."

Snodgrass, glanced quickly and desperately to both sides. He slapped the oak panel of

the door

with the flat of his hand. "All right, all right, all right. Will you shut up? Shhhh."

"Mickey's Pub will sell it to you, and it's only three blocks away. The liquor store's six

and a half blocks," Daniels said helpfully.

"I'm sure you've counted the steps," Snodgrass sneered as he turned to go.

"Don't forget to bring two glasses and a lemon."

"First take the check."

"No."

"All right. I'll be back. And shut up." Snodgrass pranced neatly down the steps to the

cracked path that led to his well-polished Ford.

Squawk. Squawk. Squawk. The ducks started flying through his head again. Damn it,

when would Snodgrass get back?

Snodgrass didn't knock. He walked through the open door to the kitchen where Daniels

sat on the sink desperately desiring a cigarette.

"Got a smoke?"

"One thing at a time," Snodgrass said, opening his attache case and extracting the tequila

bottle.

He offered the bottle as if throwing out a challenge. Daniels accepted it as if accepting a gift

from the altar of grace.

"No glasses?" Daniels asked.

"No."

"How can you expect a man to drink in his own private home straight from the bottle?"

Daniels asked, twisting off the cap and dropping it into the white porcelain sink. "What are

you, Snodgrass? Some kind of animal that never lived in a house? Where were you brought

up, some South American jungle or something?"

Indignantly, Barney Daniels raised the bottle to his lips and let the clear, fiery liquid pour into his

mouth and singe it clean. He swished the tequila in his mouth, careful that it washed over each tooth and

numbed the gums. Then he spat it over his right arm, twisting around so the spray splattered the sink. He softly

exhaled, then inhaled. It was good tequila. Magnificent.

numbed the gums. Then he spat it over his right arm, twisting around so the spray splattered the sink. He softly

exhaled, then inhaled. It was good tequila. Magnificent.

Finally, he took a long swig and sucked it into his whole body. The ducks disappeared.

"Cigarette," he said weakly and took another sip from the bottle.

Snodgrass flashed open a gold cigarette case filled with blue-ringed smokes. With deft

hands, Daniels plucked out all of them, leaving the case shining and empty before Snodgrass

could close it. He stuffed one in his mouth and the rest in his pocket.

"Those are imported Turkish, my special blend," Snodgrass whined.

Daniels shrugged. "Got a light?"

"I'd like some of them returned."

"I'll give you two. Got a light?"

"You'll return the rest."

"All right. Four."

"All of them."

"They're crushed. You wouldn't want crushed cigarettes, would you?"

Snodgrass snapped the case shut and returned it to his vest pocket. "You're a disgrace.

No wonder upstairs is so happy to get rid of you."

He did not look at Daniels when he said it, but busied himself taking three form papers and

a small green check from his case. "Sign these and this is your check."

"I don't have a pen."

"Return this one," Snodgrass said, offering a gold pen.

Daniels grasped the pen between right thumb and forefinger, looking at it quizzically. "It's not one of your idiot

gas gun devices, is it?"

"No, it's not. That was always the trouble with you, Daniels. You were never a team

player. You never learned to adjust to modern methods."

Daniels steadied the bottle between his knees and signed the papers in long even grade-

school penmanship strokes. He finished with a flourish. "What did I sign?"

"That you resign officially from Calchex Industries for which you have worked for

twenty years, the only firm for which you have worked."

"An three of them say that?"

"No. The others say that you resigned from the firm because you embezzled money from

it."

"Pretty nice. Anytime I open my mouth, you can get a warrant, pick me up nice and legal

and no one will ever see me again."

"Well, if you want to be crude about it, yes," Snodgrass said, his eyebrows arching

disdainfully. "Ordinarily, of course, such a thing would never happen. But you're not an

ordinary case." He forced the papers into his attache case, then, smiling as though someone

had just forced gravel into his gums, he surrendered the check.

"This should bring you up to date," Snodgrass said. "Your next pension check will

arrive about May first." He looked Daniels up and down as though Barney were a

malignant tumor. "This is just my personal opinion, Daniels," Snodgrass added, "but,

frankly, it makes me sick to see you collect a pension at all, after what you did to the

company back there in Hispania."

"I know how you feel, Max," Barney said sympathetically. "The company gave me the

fantastic op-

portunity of being tortured limb by limb for three months, having my fingers broken at the hands of your local

thugs, getting drugs poured down my throat, not to mention the exquisite pleasure of feeling your emblem

burned into my belly with hot irons, and I have the nerve to accept a four hundred dollar check from you." He

shook his head. "Some people just got no gratitude." He drank deeply from his bottle.

"You know we didn't do that," Snodgrass snapped.

"Stuff it, Max." He drank again. The liquor felt like a friend. "I don't care. You and the

rest of your clowns can do whatever you want. I'm out."

"The company didn't do it," Max said stubbornly. Barney waved him away.

"Tell me something, Snodgrass. I've always wondered. Is there really a Calchex Industries?"

"Certainly," Snodgrass said, glad to be off the subject.

"What does it do besides provide pensions for cashiered CIA agents?"

"Oh, we operate a very thriving business. At our main plant in Des Moines, we

manufacture toy automobiles aimed at the overseas market. We sell these to a major

company in Dusseldorf. There they are all melted down and the steel is sold back to us to

make more toys. All very up and up. We own both Calchex and the German company.

Calchex hasn't missed a dividend in fifteen years."

"Good old American enterprise."

"Are you planning to work, Daniels?"

"Yes, yes. Quit peeing your pants about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I am planning on

devoting the major portion of it to research on the lifesaving properties of tequila."

"I mean a job. We can't have you running around getting involved in wild schemes." He looked worried.

"I've got a job," Daniels lied.

"Nothing in South America, of course."

Daniels sipped some more tequila and nodded slowly. "I know what I'm allowed to do."

"Just so you know. Nothing controversial and nothing outside the borders of the United

States."

"Don't worry about it. I'm going to be a librarian." .

"I suppose you expect me to believe that."

"I do."

Snodgrass turned crisply to go. Before he reached the kitchen doorway, he turned back to

face Daniels. "I'm sorry things didn't work out for you," he said, suddenly contrite about his

crack that Barney didn't deserve his paltry pension. Daniels had been one of the best agents

the company had ever used. And use him it had, over and over, in missions where none of

the CIA's expensive gadgetry was worth a fart in the wind next to Barney's courage and

cunning.

There had been no one better. And now there was no one worse. Snodgrass looked to Daniels, sucking on his

tequila bottle like a gutter rummy, and remembered the final episode in the professional life of Bernard C.

Daniels. How he had crawled into Puerta del Rey more dead than alive after God knew what unspeakable

happenings in the Hispanian jungle, how he drank himself back to health, and then called a press conference to

announce, between hacking up blood and giggling drunkenly: "Do not fear. The CIA is here."

In five minutes, he spilled more about CIA operations than Castro had learned in five years.

Snodgrass looked at the bottle, then up at Barney.

"Forget it," Barney said, answering the question in Snodgrass's eyes. "It just happened and there isn't any why.

And don't knock the tequila. God's greatest gift to tortured man."

He slid forward off the sink. "Now go home. I've got some serious drinking to do."

And Max Snodgrass, whose income tax return listed him as executive vice president of

Calchex Industries, walked out of the house and drove away.

Barney wondered, as he polished off the last of the tequila and staggered back to his spot

on the upstairs floor, how long the vice president of Calchex Industries would wait before

having him killed.CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he was buying dirt.

He was buying dirt because this was Manhattan, and dirt didn't come cheap here unless it

was New York City dirt, the kind that blew out of automobile exhausts or sifted out of the

sky or fell from the bodies of its earthier inhabitants who made their homes on the

sidewalks. New York dirt was just too dirty.

Remo needed clean dirt that flowers could grow in, even though those flowers would be

growing in a

window of a motel room off Tenth Avenue, where they would be abandoned shortly after

they were planted and replaced by candy wrappers and cigarette butts and used condoms-

New York dirt.

He was not a gardener. He was an assassin, the second best assassin on the face of the earth.

The best was fifty years older than Remo, fifty pounds lighter, with fifty centuries of lethal

tradition. He was the gardener.

Remo hoisted a hundred-pound plastic bag labeled Amaza-Gro onto his shoulder.

According to the pressure on his deltoid muscle, it weighed exactly ninety-one pounds. Well,

what the hell, Remo thought. Ninety-one pounds of dirt ought to be enough to hold down a

couple of geraniums. Ninety pounds, fourteen ounces. Remo glanced down at the other bags

what the hell, Remo thought. Ninety-one pounds of dirt ought to be enough to hold down a

couple of geraniums. Ninety pounds, fourteen ounces. Remo glanced down at the other bags

in the pyramidal display at the back of the five and ten cent store. A golden sunburst on

the front of each bag boasted that the soil was fortified with pure dehydrated Kentucky horse

manure.

Remo was impressed. Imagine that. New York was getting better all the time. Dirt plus

pure dehydrated Kentucky horse manure, mixed together in this plastic hundred-pound bag

weighing ninety-one pounds less two ounces, for only $39.95. What a bargain. In midtown

Manhattan, you could barely get a steak sandwich for that price. Then he noticed the pile of

dirt on the floor where his bag of Amaza-Gro had been. He did not need to use his eyes to

discern that the identical p'roduct, composed of earth, potassium sulfate, phosphorus

additives, nitrogen compounds, and a heavy dose of pure dehydrated Kentucky horse manure

was trickling down the right side of his black tee shirt.

"Yecch," he said aloud and tossed the bag back onto the floor. A young man wearing a cheap

brown suit and tinted glasses over a nose bubbling with fresh acne passed by.

"What's your problem, mister?" he sighed, slapping his blank clipboard against his thigh.

"My problem," Remo answered angrily, although he had not been angry until the pimply-faced person standing

next to him opened his mouth, "is that this bag has just leaked horseshit all over me."

"So?"

With an effort of will, Remo ignored him. His boss, Dr. Harold W. Smith, a man who knew more about trouble

in America than the President of the United States did, had been on Remo's back not to cause any more trouble

than absolutely necessary. Unless, of course, it was in the line of duty.

"Duty" meant doing the dirty work for CURE, an organization developed by a young

president years before to control crime in America by operating outside the bounds of the

Constitution. He thought it was the only means left to a nation that had become so civilized,

so fair, so lenient, and so dependent on the whim of lobbyists, protesters and scared politicians

that it could no longer function effectively within the Constitution. CURE was dangerous. But

so were America's assailants. And there were many, many assailants around the world, people,

organizations and nations who despised America for its wealth and power and used its

principle of fairness to cripple it.

So CURE had been created. Officially, it did not exist. Only three people on earth knew

about it: the president, who passed along the .knowledge of CURE to his successor. The

young president who began CURE did not wait for an election to determine who his

successor would be. He told his vice president, because he knew he would not live to the

election, to such an extent had crime grown out of control. The young president was

assassinated. But CURE would continue, so that other presidents and other Americans could live

in safety.

Dr. Harold W. Smith was the second man who knew of CURE's existence. Smith worked alone in a sealed area of

Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, nursing the most sophisticated computer hookup known to man, trying

to treat some of America's wounds. When greedy entrepreneurs, under total Constitutional sanction, threatened to

unbalance America's hair-trigger economy by cornering commodities on the stock exchange, those commodities

suddenly devalued dramatically through the efforts of a thousand people who performed their regular jobs without

suspecting that Smith and CURE had begun the avalanche that toppled the sandcastle.

When death stalked the streets in riots, assassinations, political plots, or organized crime

waves, CURE quelled it.

When people sought to break America's back, those people were destroyed. That was

CURE'S main job: to destroy evil.

And there was one other man who knew about CURE, a former cop who was officially

executed in an electric chair for a crime he did not commit, to begin a new life as the

enforcement arm for the secret organization, a life spent in the most arduous training known to

all the centuries of mankind to make him a human weapon more dangerous than a nuclear

bomb.

His name was Remo.

Remo Williams.

The Destroyer.

Remo brought under control the almost over-

whelming impulse to rid the young man in the five and ten cent store of the burden of existence and decided

Harold W. Smith was a pain'in the ass.

Killing forty-three men in broad daylight at a union rally was okay. Knocking off a fake

army installation, with the arms and legs of a complete squadron of trained thugs flying

dismembered through the breeze like link sausages, was peachy. But let Remo Williams pop

a snotty dune store floorwalker in his acned cauliflower nose, and Smitty would be on Remo's

case with razorblades for words.

Remo picked up another bag, weighing eighty-eight pounds. He picked up a third. It was

also leaking. As he moved from one bag to the next, the floor beneath his loafers took on

the appearance of Iowa farmland. The seventeenth bag emptied its contents at Remo's feet

before it was two inches off the ground.

"This is ridiculous," Remo said. "These bags are all torn."

"You're not supposed to handle them so rough, lunkhead," the man sneered to Remo,

who could count the legs on caterpillars as they walked over his hands, whose fingers had

been exercised by catching butterflies in flight without disturbing the pollen on their wings.

"You're just clumsy. Now look at this mess you made. You've wrecked my display. It took

me three hours to set this up."

"To set me up, you mean. You knew these bags had holes in them."

"Look, it's not my job to make sure your hands don't get dirty."

"Oh yeah? What is your job, then?"

The man smiled, pushing a lock of greasy hair off his forehead, raising the curtain on

another field of acne. "I'm the assistant manager, wise guy. Man-

ager, hear? My job is to see to it that customers take what we got, or get out. You want

something, buy it. If you don't like what we stock, blow. This is New York, jerk. We don't

need your business."

"Oh, excuse me," Remo said politely. To hell with Smith. "I forgot my place. I must

have been thinking I was in a store, where the employees were supposed to be friendly and

helpful."

The assistant manager snorted a laugh, sizing up the thin man with the abnormally thick wrists, figuring that he

would bully him into buying a half-empty bag of potting soil for forty dollars, just as he had bullied his other

customers into buying defective irons, soiled baby clothes, torn paperback books, dying parakeets, dented pots,

and other items which customers bought because they knew they would be in approximately the same condition

in other stores where the employees would be just as rude.

There was rudeness, plain old run-of-the-mill New York rudeness, and there was that

special rudeness that separated the retail world from the rest of the citizenry. That special

rudeness, the assistant manager knew, could not be learned. It was a gift.

The assistant manager had the gift. He was born to his calling, and he was a pro in his field.

He knew how to make his customers feel "so miserable, so beaten, so helpless, that they would

not dare spend their money elsewhere. Since he began his job six months before, sales had

gone up more than fifty percent. In another month, he would be manager. In a year, he'd be

heading up the entire chain of thirty-five New York stores.

He was nearly lost in his reverie when he noticed the thin man in the dirt-spattered black tee

shirt was

doing an amazing thing. He was picking up one of the Amaza-Gro bags with one hand. With his other hand, the

thin man was wrapping a green garden hose around the assistant manager from neck to ankles. It all took place in

less than three seconds.

"Just tidying up," Remo said. "Don't want you to be upset because of messy customers who

dare to criticize your merchandise." He yanked the assistant manager's hair so that his eyes

bulged and his mouth popped open and every folh'cle on his head screamed in anguish.

The assistant manager also screamed, but no one heard him because Remo had stuffed

his mouth with pure dehydrated Kentucky horse manure.

"Yum, yum, eat 'em up," Remo said, kicking the assistant manager's feet out from

beneath him so that he toppled to the floor and bounced on his rubber tubing exterior like a

beach toy.

"Mff. Pfft," said the assistant manager.

"Beg pardon? Speak up."

"UHNNK! MMMB!"

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Destroyer 044 - Balance Of power

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