"Then I am being audited?" Smith said in a disbelieving voice.
"You are."
"Impossible."
"Actually, we're auditing quite a number of medical facilities. Don't worry, you're in good hands. Ballard is thorough and, of course, fair."
"What I meant to say," Smith said, "is that I received no official notice of an audit."
"Give me your business-taxpayer identification number."
Smith rattled off the number from memory. There was silence on the line. Then Vonneau came back to say, "According to my files, the notice was sent out a week ago, and an appointment was arranged for today by telephone."
"I did no such thing," Smith said tartly.
"According to our computerized logs, you did. Perhaps one of your staff handled it."
"I do not delegate such matters," Smith said stiffly. "There must be a mistake."
"IRS computers," Vonneau said just as stiffly, "do not make mistakes of this scope."
"Thank you," Smith said without emotion, and hung up.
Ballard stood up and said, "I will need to see all your in-house financial records to start."
"Why is Folcroft being audited?" Smith demanded suddenly.
"Routine. Your return popped up on the random-audit list."
"I happen to know that random auditing has been suspended for the next two years while the new IRS computer system is being installed."
"True," said Ballard, offering a weak smile. "I might as well tell you, word has come down from the top. The President's health-care program has to be paid for somehow. Waste and fraud in the medical profession are rampant, as you know if you watch any of the Pews-magazine shows. The IRS has been asked to look into this very thorny area. We've already collected substantial sums in back underreported taxes, FICA payments and fines, all of which will be earmarked to pay for the health-care program. Of course, I'm sure that won't be the case here."
Harold Smith heard all this with his ears ringing. He was being audited by the IRS. It was a virtual impossibility. Smith had continual access to Folcroft's IRS records by computer. He knew the mathematical formulas the service used to target institutions for auditing and every year carefully made out his returns, underreporting legitimate deductions and not taking others so that no red flags triggered the random-audit process.
And just in case, his computers were programmed to monitor the IRS master file in Martinsburg, Virginia, for this very eventuality. Smith should have been warned Folcroft had been targeted for an audit. He could have headed it off by remote manipulation of the IRS's own computerized files.
The Folcroft Four had failed him again. And he was forced to sit numbly in his chair as IRS Agent Bryce Ballard droned on about his needs. Harold Smith stared at the scarred corner of his desk that hid the system he could not access and now no longer, trusted if he could.
"First," Ballard was saying, "I will need to see your computer system."
Smith looked up, startled. "System?"
"You do have financial records?"
"Yes. On a standard three-book ledger."
Ballard's round face slackened into stunned lines. "Do you mean to say, Dr. Smith, that a facility of this size has never been computerized?"
"I have never seen the need for it," retorted Smith.
Chapter 11
If Jane Kotzwinkle didn't have three children to raise and an ex-husband who believed child-support payments were due only when he won the daily number, there was no way she'd put herself through the many indignities of wearing a Con Ed hard hat and snug uniform in broad daylight. The night shift was fine by her, and usually it was enough. But she needed the overtime, her babies needed new clothes, and with so many of her colleagues on vacation, Manhattan needed her services.
What Jane Kotzwinkle didn't need was the stares. Not from the passersby who did a double and sometimes triple take when they happened upon her digging up a section of New York City pavement in her Con Ed blue-and-gray coveralls, nor from her fellow workers who stopped what they were doing to appraise her rear end whenever she bent over to look down a manhole or pick up a tool.
And especially she did not need the wide cow eyes she got whenever a NYNEX rep came out to check on the dig.
This one looked fresh out of CUNY or some damn place. He pulled up in a NYNEX company car that was no more than three months old and, spotting her hard hat with its Con Ed symbol, walked right up to her and asked, "Where can I find Kotzwinkle?" The brainless mutt.
"I'm Kotzwinkle."
This one didn't even try to hide his surprise. "You?" Duh, Jane Kotzwinkle thought. Like this wasn't the 1990s.
She got down to business using her best ramrod voice, the one she used on her boys when they wouldn't turn in at bedtime.
"We're digging in back of this building," she said, walking away. "Come on. I'll show you!'
"My name's Larry," he said, clutching his rolled-up blueprints. "Larry Lugerman."
Like I care, you waxy-eared dip, Jane thought. She took him around to the side and pointed to the spot. They were in the shadow of one of the few new buildings in upper Manhattan. Her crew stood around drinking Dunkin' Donuts coffee, looking bored in the early-morning light.
"Is this a line break?" Larry asked, his voice a little nervous.
"Client wants a gas line put in. That's what we're going to do. Hook him up."
They came to the spot. Jane Kotzwinkle indicated it with a disdainful toss of her head. "We've got a gas pipe that runs north-south, right here," she said. "We're going to tap it and run a line into the basement. According to DigSafe, we're okay."
Larry looked at the spot and unrolled his blueprints, holding them so Jane couldn't read them over his shoulder. Like the location of NYNEX trunk lines was a fucking national-security secret, she thought. "Let's see..." he muttered. He looked from the blueprints to the spot in the concrete that Jane was impatiently tapping with her work boot and back to the blueprints.
"You're in the clear if you don't disturb anything beyond twenty yards in either direction," he said finally.
"Good. Thanks," she said dismissively. DigSafe had told her the exact same thing.
Larry Lugerman looked stricken. "I'm supposed to stay."
"Fine. Can you manage a jackhammer?"
"No."
"Then what's the use of you staying?"
"In case there's a problem with the phone lines."
"You just said if we stay within a forty-foot box, we're okay."
Larry swallowed. "Sometimes the blueprints aren't updated as well as they should be."
"Then what's the point of all this hoop jumping?"
He took a step backward. "I'm just doing my job."
"Fine. Just stay out of the way while men are working.
Jane walked away from his melting face. She knew he had been thinking of asking her if she was free for lunch. He had that gooey look in his eye.
Like she'd date a guy who wore a coat and tie to work.
An hour later the stuttering of the jackhammer had died down, and they were into the shovels and pickaxes portion of the excavation.
"Got something here," Melvin Cowznofski called out.
Jane beat the NYNEX suit to the hole. Partially buried in the dirt was a braided steel cable, half-severed. Twisted strands of copper wire lay exposed to the early-morning light. The strands were protected by bright red rubber tubing.
"Looks like a phone line," Jane muttered.
"Let me see," Larry said anxiously, pushing through the ring of gas company workers.
"That look like a phone line to you?" Jane demanded.
"Yeah. But an old one. It's a copper analogue line. All the cable on the island is fiber-optic."
"Is it a problem?"
"I gotta call this in. Don't do a thing till I get back." Three minutes later Larry Lugerman came back, relief on his youthful face. "It's okay. They have no record of it."
Jane Kotzwinkle looked at him pointedly. "So?"
"That means you can cut through it, work around it, do anything you want."
"Just because they don't have a record of it?"
Larry shrugged. "If there's no record, it doesn't exist, as far as we're concerned."
"But it's a phone line. You said so yourself. How can it not exist?"
"It's probably an old test line upgraded or abandoned years ago that some lazy SOB forgot to remove."
"You're the authority," Jane said aridly, picking up a pickax and chopping away. The line parted. Nothing happened. There was no spark of complaint, not that anyone expected a spark.
As a piece of the copper wire came flying out of the hole, Larry picked it up and said, "Boy, this is really old. They haven't used two-wire lines like this for carrying voice since I don't know when." He noticed the red rubber sheathing, looked into the hole and saw that every line in the cable was protected by the exact same red rubber coating.
"This makes no sense," he muttered. "They always color code the individual lines. Otherwise, how would the linemen know which lines were which?"
Nobody paid him any mind. They were busy excavating the gas pipeline. After a while Larry dropped the utterly fascinating copper telephone wire and stared at Jane Kotzwinkle's ass as she bent to her work.
He was wondering if she was up for lunch.
Chapter 12
After Harold W Smith got IRS agent Bryce Ballard squared away and out of his office, ledgers in hand, he returned to his desk to punch the concealed stud of the CURE computer system.
His finger stopped short of the button when a muffled ringing came from the right-hand desk drawer. It was the red presidential phone.
Smith dug it out of the drawer and brought the receiver to his ear. "Yes, Mr. President?"
The Chief Executive's tone was hoarse and urgent. "Smith, I need an update for the hounds of hell."
"The White House press corps. Someone leaked the Harlequin story. I've gotta to issue a statement to settle things down."
"Mr. President, I regret to say I've not been able to get to the matter."
"What?"
"Sir, an IRS revenue agent unexpectedly walked in."
"For God's sake, why?"
Smith cleared his throat unhappily. "Er, it appears I have been targeted for audit."
"What the hell do you do up there that the IRS would want to target you? Scratch that. I don't want to know. If I don't know where you operate out of or your cover, I have limited deniability."
"Very wise, Mr. President."
The President pitched his voice low and conspiratorial. "Want me to pull a few strings? Squash the audit? I can do that-I think."
"I am tempted, Mr. President, but for the White House to order the audit squashed would be so highly unusual as to call undue attention to my cover operation."
"Yeah. Good point. Now, let's get back to this submarine thing."
Smith hesitated. "Mr. President, there has been another difficult development."
"Yeah ... "
"It appears that the CURE operating fund has been possibly, ah, embezzled."
"Embezzled! I thought you and only you controlled that fund."
"I do. It appears to be a bank embezzlement."
"Well, can't it wait until this Harlequin incident is dealt with?"
"Without operating funds, I cannot replace the missing gold the Master of Sinanju is demanding in order to start the next contract."
"You telling me you don't have any agents?" the President asked sharply.
"I'm afraid so."
"And you're caught between contracts?"
"Yes."
"Smith, what kind of operation are you running there?"
"One that has suffered a regrettable cluster of setbacks," Harold Smith admitted, trying to keep the embarrassment out of his voice.
"Well, they couldn't have come at a worse time."
"I know."
"You know I have serious reservations about this operation," the President continued. "If it wasn't for the fact that the past President I most admire set you up, I would have shut you down my first week in office."
"I have had that sense," Smith admitted.
"Goddamn it. The country is spending a billion dollars a day servicing the national debt, and you've let twelve million slip through your fingers. Not to mention another five million in gold bullion lost with that sub."
"I am certain it will be recovered."
"Well, Well, recover it."
"I am trying, Mr. President. All I can say is that my best efforts are being put forth."
"Well, your best efforts aren't worth spit in a wind-"
The line went dead. The President's voice was simply cut off. There was no click. No dial tone. Nothing but dead air.
Harold Smith said, "Hello? Hello?" several times and hung up. He waited exactly thirty seconds by his Timex wristwatch before lifting the receiver again.
Dead air. He repeated the operation twice more with the same disappointing result and finally replaced the receiver and nervously waited for the President to call back.
Ten minutes crawled past before Harold Smith knew the President of the United States wasn't going to call back. Or couldn't call back.
For a cold moment Smith wondered if the President, whose voice had been on the verge of being coldly furious, had not simply ripped the red White House phone out of the baseboard in anger. And in failing him, he had resolved to dissolve CURE.
If so, Smith realized after a moment's thought, there was no way he could issue that directive until the CURE telephone line was restored to working order.
That gave Harold Smith time to deal with the growing crisis.
Again he reached for the concealed stud.
Again he withdrew his finger as his intercom buzzed. "Mr. Ballard has a question," Smith's secretary said.
"Send him in," Smith said tightly, simultaneously restoring the red telephone to its desk drawer.
Ballard poked his head in and asked, "Dr. Smith, do you have a calculator I could borrow? The batteries in mine seem to be failing."
"Mrs. Mikulka will see to it."
"Thanks."
The door closed and Smith reached for the stud. The door reopened and Ballard stuck his head in again.
His hand hovering under his desk, Smith looked up, trying to keep the tension out of his patrician face. "Do you have any problem with my eating in the hospital cafeteria? It's a long drive to the nearest restaurant, and I'm under pressure to have this audit done by the weekend."
"By all means," said Smith, making a mental note to instruct the cafeteria cashier to charge Ballard the higher visitor's price rather than the subsidized Folcroft employee rate.
The door closed again. Smith let out a sigh of tension that did nothing to release the tightness in his chest. He stared at the scarred corner of his desk, finger hovering uncertainly near the concealed stud, and realized that there was no way he could conduct normal operations with a busybody IRS agent hovering about the place.
Smith drummed his fingers on the oaken desktop impatiently with one hand as he fumbled in the desk drawer for a bottle of children's aspirin with the other. He undid the childproof cap and shook out four pink-and-orange tablets, downing them dry.
It had been a difficult week, he thought unhappily, ever since he had had the new system put in. The most powerful system imaginable dedicated to the multiple tasks of the CURE organization awaited his sure fingers, and he could not safely bring his monitor into view, much less trust its operation.
If only there were some other, more secure method of working at his desk.
Then he remembered a loose end. It was one he had planned to dispose of but had proved too heavy to manage alone.
Tapping the intercom key, he said, "Mrs. Mikulka, have the custodial staff go to the basement and bring up a glass-topped desk stored there."
"Yes, Dr. Smith."
"Tell them to bring it to my office," Smith added.
"To your office?"
"Yes. I recently acquired a new desk."
"I don't recall a purchase order crossing my desk."
"I, ah, purchased it at a store closing on my own time," said Smith.
"Yes, Dr. Smith."
TWO MEN in khaki coveralls came squeezing a substantial office-style desk through Smith's door ten minutes after he had unplugged the hidden desk terminal connections from the floor plate.
The black-tinted tempered-glass desktop shone like onyx.
"Be careful with that," Smith warned, coming out of his seat. "It is quite heavy."
"What's this made of, ironwood?" one of the custodians grumbled.
"Set it down and move the old one aside," Smith directed.
The new desk hit the hardwood floor with a floorshaking thud, and the men came and shunted Smith's old oaken desk off to one side. They set the new desk in its place without a word.
"Thank you," Smith said when they were done. "That will be all."
"What about that one?" one of the men asked, pointing to the old desk that had served Smith for as long as he had occupied his lonely post.
"Leave it there for the moment," said Smith. "The drawer contents need to be transferred, and I haven't time to do all that now."
"Yes, sir."
The men departed, closing the soundproof door after them.
Harold Smith stood with his back to the picture window with its panoramic view of Long Island Sound and stared down at the pristine black of the desktop. He saw his own reflection, like a photo negative, staring back at him. He did not like that. In fact, Smith distrusted anything new. He disliked change in any form. His old desk had been as comfortable and familiar to him as his own bed, which he had purchased upon his return home from wartime duty in 1947 and stubbornly refused to replace as long as all four legs held out.
But this was an emergency.
Clearing his throat, Harold Smith sat down. The desktop glass felt smooth and cool under his palms when he laid them there. He liked that, at least.
Reaching into the kick space, he found the connector cable, pulled it out of its receptacle-it was on a spring reel-and pushed the cable into the floor plate.
Nothing happened. He looked for a button. There had to be a power switch somewhere.
Obviously it could not be on the desktop. It was glass. Nor was it in the drawers that hummed out smoothly on well-oiled rollers.
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