Market Force td-127

by Warren Murphy

  One doomed animal was so close MacGulry could have reached out and scratched it behind its furry ears.

  MacGulry brought the gun barrel within an inch of the kangaroo's gray head and pulled the trigger.

  As the latest explosion rang out, Robbie MacGulry whooped with joy.

  "Gotcha, ya bastard!" MacGulry screamed.

  In the side mirror, the driver glimpsed the dead kangaroo. The animal was suddenly something from another planet-all feet and tail. The head had been shot clean off. A ragged chunk of torso was missing, as well. One limp arm hung in grisly red strips.

  Robbie MacGulry grinned at his driver. Flecks of sticky wet blood stained his big white teeth. The smile suddenly collapsed into a scowl.

  "Here! What the hell ahh you doing!" MacGulry yelled as his driver puked on the dashboard. "Sorry, sir," the young man gurgled. He was trying to hold in the vomit with one hand while driving with the other.

  "What ahh you, some kind of Greenpeace pooftah? It's just blood." MacGulry ran his tongue across his teeth, licking off the sticky red film. "See?"

  The man did see. He saw his boss lapping up blood like a ghoul, and he saw thick chunks of furry gray flesh stuck to his own knees and then he saw last night's supper joining breakfast on the dashboard of the Land Rover.

  The driver's hands fled the wheel and he slammed on the brakes. Chucking clouds of dust, the Land Rover skidded to a spinning stop.

  Sensing salvation, the kangaroos cut off in another direction. In a haze of hot dust and pounding feet, they hopped to freedom across the vast plain.

  MacGulry's eyes grew wide with rage. Raw fury knotted his wrinkled face. Baring pink-stained teeth, he was contemplating swinging the barrel of his gun to the driver's head when his dashboard-mounted phone buzzed to life.

  The media giant exhaled angrily. "You're fired," he growled, flinging the gun into the back of the truck.

  Dropping into his seat, MacGulry snatched up the receiver, flicking off bits of kangaroo flesh. "What?" he demanded.

  There was only a handful of people on Earth with access to this private number. The voice on the phone was clipped and obsequious. Very professional and very, very British.

  "Mr. MacGulry, sir, I hate to bother you, but it's important."

  "What's wrong?" MacGulry pulled the phone away before the caller could answer.

  "Stop puking, ya underdaks-wearing bastard! If you're gonna be crook, do it in the dunny!"

  The driver looked around for a dunny. The prairie was vast. No outhouses in sight.

  "Nature's dunny, idiot," MacGulry snarled.

  The driver understood. Climbing from the truck, he went over and puked in the dirt.

  "What is it?" MacGulry growled into the phone. The caller picked his words carefully.

  "There is someone-that is to say, there's something here you should see, sir. At once."

  Like all News Company employees-which was the corporate umbrella under which virtually all of Robbie MacGulry's businesses existed-the caller knew enough not to waste his employer's time. The Englishman was being vague for a reason. MacGulry sighed hotly.

  "I'll be back quick as a can," he grumbled. He slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

  MacGulry sat there for a long moment, staring at the bleak horizon.

  The kangaroos were a distant cloud of hopping dust. He pulled off his glasses, blowing dirt off the thick lenses.

  "Bastard," he whispered so softly even the wind failed to hear. Had someone been there to hear, they would have gotten the clear impression MacGulry was talking about neither the Englishman on the phone nor his incompetent driver.

  MacGulry glanced to his right. His driver was still doubled over. The young man seemed to be almost finished.

  Quietly, MacGulry slid over behind the wheel. When he started the engine and stomped on the gas, his driver had to jump out of the way to avoid the lurching Land Rover.

  The media tycoon floored it and cut the wheel. When he zoomed back the way they'd come, he could see his panicked driver waving helplessly from within a cloud of beige dust.

  "Teach you for ruining my day off, mate!" Robbie MacGulry yelled.

  The vehicle sped across the endless plain, away from the distant looming mountains of the Great Dividing Range.

  THREE HOURS LATER-showered, shaved and dressed in an impeccably tailored Bond Street two-piece blueblack suit-Robbie MacGulry stormed into the main production facility of his Wollongong, New South Wales television station.

  South of Sydney, the Wollongong station was small compared to others in his globe-straddling television empire, but it was the one closest to his main home. If Robbie MacGulry had a heart, Wollongong would have been the one nearest and dearest to it.

  Wollongong was the first TV station he'd ever owned. Although off the beaten path of his global media empire, an uncharacteristic lapse into sentimentality by its owner made it the flagship of his entire entertainment empire.

  Banks of television screens lined up like unblinking eyes above dozens of computerized stations all around the production room. A visitor might have mistaken the facility for a space-shuttle control room if not for the images on the screens. On most of the monitors, a yellow-headed cartoon family was sliding around an icy parking lot. The cartoon was one of the most popular shows in the decade-plus history of MacGulry's American television network.

  "You better not have called me back here to watch bloody cartoons!" MacGulry roared.

  The men in the room wheeled on the booming voice. As the rest resumed working double-time, one hurried over to Robbie MacGulry.

  "I'm sorry again for disturbing you, sir. I presumed you'd want to see something we received from America."

  Rodney Adler was as English as frigid women and warm beer. It seemed as if the very act of speech pained his perpetually locked jaw.

  MacGulry only liked the British as employees, and even then he didn't care for them very much. As a people, he'd always considered them to be condescending nitpickers whose sole joy in life was to piss in the party's punch bowl. His dream was to amass a big enough fortune to buy the British Isles and order the entire population to march off the bloody White Cliffs of Dover.

  The billionaire followed Adler to one of the stations. There were two nervous men seated before it. MacGulry dropped into the empty swivel chair between them.

  "We have been monitoring the situation in Harlem," Adler said, "per your instructions."

  "I don't need to be reminded of my orders," MacGulry growled. "Stop wasting my time and get to the point."

  Adler nodded crisply. "Sorry, sir," he said. He had one of the seated men insert a big black videotape into the slot on the face of the monitor station.

  "I can't be completely certain at this point, mind you," Adler said. "But I believe we've found what you were looking for. Or, rather, who."

  On the four television screens above the station, the cartoon cut out. A video image began playing. It had been taped at a weird angle. Blurry, snow-covered branches jutted directly in front of the lens. Beyond them, MacGulry saw a lone man walking down a bombed-out street.

  "It's out of focus," MacGulry complained gruffly. "I can't see his face." In his head, the media magnate was already planning on firing the anonymous camera operator.

  Adler leaned forward, peering up at the blurry image.

  "I thought it was the fault of the cameraman," the Englishman said, his big jaw locked tight in concentration. "But according to our person on the ground, the subject did that to his face by himself."

  MacGulry's eyes grew flat. "So he's hooked up to a bloody paint mixer?" he snarled. "People's heads don't move like that. Not without scrambling their brains to mush. How many baby brains do your nannies have to puree before you Brits figure that out? Who told you he could do that?"

  As he spoke, the man with the blurry face stepped over to where the cameraman was hiding. Things went crazy for a moment before the camera settled on a pale, pretty face. The woman was standing u
p from behind a broken-down section of wall in an otherwise empty lot.

  Robbie MacGulry's face sagged with strained patience.

  "Cindee Maloo," he muttered to himself.

  "Yes," Rodney Adler said uncomfortably.

  He knew that MacGulry had been linked romantically to the woman in question. Adler assumed it had ended when she had gotten a job at rival BCN on the high-profile Winner show. He had only recently found out that she was still somehow secretly on the team.

  "He's not even a Vox cameraman," Adler said. "He works on 'Winner' with Ms. Maloo. Even though he did a poor job, that is still probably, er, possibly the individual--or rather one of the individuals-you were looking for."

  He held his breath, hoping he wasn't about to join on the dole queue a thousand other Vox employees who had been foolish enough to upset the great Robbie MacGulry.

  MacGulry crossed his arms, his perpetual scowl drawn into deeply angry furrows.

  "Ten words or less. Why is it him?"

  Adler released a slip of breath. "Um..."

  "First word," MacGulry snapped.

  Rodney Adler wasn't sure um would pass the official Scrabble requirements of an actual word, but he couldn't very well argue.

  He concentrated. "T-shirt. Loafers," he said.

  "Three. And I'm still not impressed."

  "Thin. Thick wrists. Graceful."

  "Four, five, six, seven."

  Adler began counting on his fingers. "Displays ... unusual ... abilities."

  He finished with a weak shrug, unconvinced by his own argument.

  MacGulry exhaled. He could still taste the kangaroo blood on his breath. The scowl never left his face as he examined the screen.

  Adler had looped the footage. It skipped off of Cindee Maloo, cutting back to the point where the stranger was walking along the street.

  "Freeze frame," MacGulry ordered.

  A technician quickly did as he was told. The image froze on the thin man on the Harlem sidewalk. The subject's face remained maddeningly out of focus.

  MacGulry studied the picture for a few seconds. The camera work was sloppy, but enough was visible to make an educated guess. The image of the man in Harlem did match the description he had been given. MacGulry made an abrupt decision.

  "Get outta here," he ordered the men, twirling back around in his seat.

  The nearby men didn't need to be told a second time. They were joined by the rest of the Vox employees. Rodney Adler in the lead, they quickly fled the room.

  Eyes locked on one monitor, MacGulry snatched up a phone receiver from the console before him. Without looking, he stabbed out a number. He didn't have to look to know he hadn't misdialed. He'd never misdial that number.

  The phone didn't ring. It never rang. As usual, it went from empty air one moment to the voice the next. To MacGulry, somehow that familiar voice seemed more insubstantial than the dead air that preceded it.

  "Hello, Robbie."

  MacGulry used to wonder how the man on the other end of the line always knew it was him. He had realized in recent years that the man with the smooth voice had to have had some early version of caller ID long before it had become available to the general public.

  "G'day, mate," MacGulry said. "Thought you might be interested in seeing something one of my people taped in the States."

  "Yes. The younger of the two men I asked you to look for."

  MacGulry's tan face bunched into a frown. He knew. Somehow he already knew.

  There had been two men described to MacGulry initially. An old Asian and a young white. He had been ordered to report if they showed up in Harlem. "I think the mob action must have worked," MacGulry said.

  "I wasn't entirely certain it would," said the smooth voice. "I'm pleased that it did. I only wish I'd been certain one of them would show up at the police station. I could have monitored the situation personally rather than rely on the automated signals. But with the rioters in custody there was no certainty they would follow up. It's clear I made in error calculating those odds. Oh, well. No harm. Actually, Robbie, I was wondering how long it would take you to call about all this. It's been some time since your people received the Caucasian's image."

  "I didn't think your friends would show up so soon."

  "One did. And instead of being where you were supposed to be, you decided to go hunting."

  "You knew that, too?" MacGulry asked dully.

  "There is precious little I don't know, Robbie. I told you to remain in Wollongong. I told you this situation would have to be monitored carefully if it is to turn out beneficially for both of us. I told you the subjects could arrive very quickly. They have a history of doing so."

  "I heard all that, mate," MacGulry said, his tone apologetic. "I just didn't think it'd be so soon." MacGulry was starting to sweat. He got nervous every time he talked to the cold bastard on the phone. In those brief phone conversations, he caught a glimpse of the torture he lived to inflict on his own employees.

  The smooth voice didn't miss a beat. "Next time, be more conscientious."

  "Yes, sir," MacGulry replied.

  "Don't call me that. It's far too formal for longtime business associates like us."

  "Sorry, mate," MacGulry said.

  "That's better. Now, with the Caucasian on the ground in Harlem, you'll need to act quickly. With this particular crisis now over, he might not remain in the New York region long."

  "I'll get started right away," MacGulry promised. "I just have one question. How could you possibly know about this before me? The footage was only sent to us via satellite a few hours ago."

  "I intercepted it in transit. Remember, I am very interested in the events in New York. Keep in touch." The line went dead.

  Robbie MacGulry replaced the receiver. He was screaming even as he dropped the phone in its cradle. "Turn up the bloody air conditioner!" he bellowed. The door sprang open and a dozen men piled into the room. Rodney Adler was tripping along at the head of the pack. He raced over to the thermostat.

  As his employees stumbled to accommodate their boss, Robbie MacGulry pulled out a handkerchief to mop the sweat that glistened in the grooves of his dark, lined forehead.

  "Taking over the world'd be a hell of a lot easier without a silent partner," he muttered to himself. He got up from his chair. On the monitors behind him, Remo's blurry image remained frozen in place.

  Chapter 12

  Behind his locked door in the administrative wing of Folcroft Sanitarium, Harold W. Smith studied the data on his computer monitor with deeply troubled eyes.

  Several hours had passed since Remo's image had been broadcast to the Harlem police station. Apparently, no one who had seen it was aware they'd done so. According to the report Smith had just read, no one was quite sure what had happened at the police station where Remo had been attacked. A police spokesman was suggesting that the officers there had been overcome by narcotics fumes, although so far no one had been able to locate the source. There was no mention of a chase involving a suspect matching Remo's description. By the sounds of it, memory of the event was already bleeding from the minds of the police.

  The report offered welcome breathing room for Smith to think.

  So far events in Harlem had not blossomed into something worse for CURE. Good for the moment, but it might only be a matter of time.

  Under ordinary circumstances it would have been easy to blame Minister Shittman for what had happened in and outside of the police station. He was a man comfortable with mobs, having spent a career stirring the embers of racial hatred. But apparently he was an unwitting dupe in a larger scheme.

  There had been 147 rioters arrested that morning. While some of them had criminal records, many more did not. There were mothers, grandmothers. Even a Korean grocer and his wife had joined the mob. Neither the previous night's rioters nor the police were typical Shittman followers.

  The truth had come to startling light minutes after Remo had called from the Harlem police station. In a shockin
g sidewalk press conference in Harlem, it was revealed that the BCN television network was possessed of a technology capable of brainwashing television viewers. BCN was to blame for the mob attack on the former president's building. The network executive who had set up shop in the basement of Shittman's church had attested to that fact before committing suicide.

  Smith was greatly relieved when the BCN executive's last words made no mention of Remo. But there was still the question of why a major American television network had been subliminally broadcasting an image of CURE's enforcement arm.

  The dead man had named the president of the network as a coconspirator. When Remo called back after stopping by the Harlem church, Smith had sent him after the head of BCN.

  Now, as he sat in the solitude of his office, Smith stared in frustration at the canted monitor below the surface of his desk. He had done all the digging he could do. Until Remo turned up something more, all Smith could do was wait.

  As he sat in the afternoon gloom of his office, something nagged at the back of Smith's mind. With a thoughtful hum, he lowered his hands to the edge of his desk. An alphanumeric keyboard appeared as if by magic from the black background.

  Typing swiftly, he accessed the BCN network's prime-time lineup. There were only three network shows on the previous evening. Shittman had indicated to Remo that he had received his subliminal commands through a program called Winner.

  Something about that title seemed familiar to Smith. It had first come to him during Remo's call, but he didn't know why. In a flash, he realized where he'd heard it before.

  Smith reached across the desk for his intercom. "Yes, Dr. Smith?" asked his secretary's voice.

  "Mrs. Mikulka, could you please come in here for a moment?" Smith said.

  He pressed a button at the base of the intercom, silently unlocking the door. A moment later, Eileen Mikulka stuck her blue-haired head in the room.

  "Is something wrong, Dr. Smith?" Mrs. Mikulka asked worriedly. "It's not Mr. Howard, is it?" She wrung her hands as she approached his desk. It was a nervous habit she had displayed ever since the police had come stampeding into her office two days before.