Smith had greeted him somewhat cautiously that night, but not cautiously enough. He had kept the desk between them, and Corbish guessed that the office had a scanner at the door that would not have allowed him to bring in a weapon. At least, not a metal weapon. Thus, Smith considered himself safe.
"I suppose you're wondering why I, as a vice president of IDC, want to leave my job and work for you?" said Corbish.
"It had crossed my mind," said Smith, "especially since this is a social research center."
"Well, I know it isn't," Corbish said. He sat across the desk, more than an arm's length away from Smith. All the trinkets on the desk that could be used as weapons, the sharp-edged calendar, the heavy telephone, the pen set, were all on Smith's side of the desk. Even the picture of his wife, an incredibly unattractive woman, was on Smith's side instead of the visitor's, where it would ordinarily be placed so that Smith could see it better.
"You know Folcroft isn't a social research institute?" said Smith smiling, "Well, I know it isn't also. It's a country club for scientists, but I hope to change that."
"It's not that either," said Corbish, "and before I get into that I'd like to explain why I want to join."
Dr. Smith looked puzzled. Perfect acting, thought Corbish.
"Well, you're already here," said Smith. "I think you might be confusing us with someone else. But go ahead. I don't know what I can do for you though."
"I know what I can do for you, sir, and I think you'll agree with me when I outline these five points about what the International Data Corporation is doing."
Corbish asked for a piece of paper. Smith reached into the desk drawer and handed him a sheet of onionskin, Corbish took a small ballpoint pen out of his pocket. It was light blue with the IDC markings in white.
"Do you have something thicker? This paper rips if you write on it."
"Sanitarium stationery?" said Smith. "But frankly I'm not sure I want you writing crazy things on our letterhead. We're heavily government funded and any bad publicity…"
"I'll return the stationery to you. After all, it is for your eyes only."
Dr. Smith had nodded, shrugged, made a comment about not knowing what was going on. Before he could slide the sheet of paper across the desk, Corbish was up, politely reaching for it
"Thank you," he said and jammed the point of the pen into Smith's hand, drawing blood. For a middle-aged man, Smith moved quickly, which was just fine with Corbish. A man moving quickly made his heart move more quickly, and that moved the blood more quickly, and before Smith could reach for something underneath his desk, the blood had carried the drug through his system, and he collapsed in his chair.
It was then that Corbish noticed he had jammed the pen so deep into Smith's right hand that it was bloody up to the I in the IDC logo. Corbish had been more nervous that he had thought.
From his inside jacket pocket he took what appeared to be a portable raincoat, except that it was thinner and stronger and more opaque. When he unfolded it he had a large plastic bag. Into this bag he pushed the fallen Smith, careful to keep his head near the two small holes in the top. He inserted two tubes that looked like tiny pill bottles and wedged them tight into Smith's cheeks between teeth and gums. The body would have air.
On the way to his car, his theory about CURE proved correct. In an effort to maintain its cover as a harmless research center, there were no guards in the administration building. In an effort to maintain secrecy, CURE had no more protection and security than any other social sanitarium. A part-time guard was at the gate; he was probably a retired policeman. Corbish woke him up driving through. IDC would not keep a person like that. He did not even ask about the plastic bag in the backseat.
Corbish would have to find out why CURE was able to function without guards or gates or questions to visitors, he thought. The flight back to the West Coast was perfect, although he had to fly through some weather, unable to risk putting an oxygen mask on the unconscious Smith.
The car he had rented the day before was waiting at the San Francisco Airport. Even the drive up the twisting Route 1 and then along the mountain path to his special home seemed smooth. As he passed the white cabin on his way up, he saw that it was already boarded up. Excellent. He had only asked that it be vacated, then boarded up later. What was the cover story he had used with the real estate man? He wanted seclusion from the pressure of business, that was it. Naturally, the salesman believed he had purchased the house as an executive love nest. That was just what Corbish wanted. The best cover stories were those where you let someone believe he had discovered something you wanted hidden, something embarrassing.
Corbish was an expert at getting through cover stories, but had never seen a person who had so many layers to one as Smith.
He had put Dr. Smith on the floor of the deep lead-lined cellar, then gotten a kitchen table from upstairs. The house had come furnished. He tied the hands with leather straps he had fashioned at home from old belts. He had picked up a stethoscope in a pawnshop.
He had strapped Smith down and waited for him to revive. The pen had gone so deep that it was well into the next day before the old man opened his eyes. When he did so, Corbish first offered the proposition. Tell him about CURE's operation and there would be no pain. Smith played dumb, then Corbish began with the homemade electrodes he had fashioned. The old man jumped. Corbish worked all over Smith's body and then came the first cover story. It was a foreign operation.
That story went after the first day. And then Smith was silent until forty-eight hours into the operation when, with Corbish himself suffering from lack of sleep, Dr. Harold Smith told him a wild story about an organization set up by the United States government more than ten years before:
When the organization had been set up, the country had a choice between becoming a police state or a mass of chaos that would inevitably end in a dictatorship of the right or the left. The Constitution had been breaking down. Its individual freedoms enabled criminals to function freely. What the President had wanted was an organization Outside the law, to make the law work. The government could not acknowledge its existence because that would be acknowledging that the Constitution did not work. Only three men would know about its operation. The President, Smith, and—this was where the story became wild—one other man, the enforcement arm of the agency.
"One man? For the entire country?" Corbish had repeated as he set the electrodes on Smith's groin. The area was already swollen and Smith did not scream. Corbish tested the circuit and it was functioning. It was then that Corbish realized that the old man had passed out.
Now it was well into the third day and Corbish began again, this time with lighted cigarettes. The danger of burning was that it could become infected. Burns were very susceptible to this and he did not wish to make this man a corpse before the successful conclusion of his project. IDC had not become IDC by promoting failures to senior vice president in charge of policy planning.
The old man began whimpering, then groaning. He came to with a scream. Corbish put some water on his lips.
"Now I'm a reasonable man. I want you to be a reasonable man. We deal in reason. Right?"
"Yes," said Smith in a faint whisper. Corbish could see the veins in his head throb.
"I didn't hear you," said Corbish and put his cigarette out on Smith's right leg. The flesh sizzled, and the pulpy skin extinguished the ember.
"Yes, yes," screamed Smith.
"All right. Now reasonably explain to me how this one man can act as your enforcement arm?"
"Sinanju. The Master of Sinanju."
"He is the Master of Sinanju?"
"No. He is the only white man who knows the secrets."
"I see. And with this Sinanju, this white man can do anything?"
"Practically. His nervous system isn't quite human anymore."
"Don't people tend to recognize him? I mean, he must be a very busy man."
"From time to time, Remo has had plastic surgery."
"Remo. I see. And wouldn't his mother recognize him?"
"He's an orphan."
"Wouldn't his friends recognize him?"
"He doesn't have any. They think he died in an electric chair. No prints either."
"Well, that's a lovely way to eradicate identity. Now this Sinanju, tell me about it. It is karate, judo, kung fu?"
"No. They are only beams, but not the light."
"Very poetic. Will you tell me how it works?"
"I don't know. I don't know. I don't know," said Smith and tears formed in his eyes because he did not know and could not give an answer and whenever he did not given an answer there was the pain again.
"Now, now," said Corbish gently. "Let's get to the real truth and there will be no more pain."
Smith became convulsed with sobbing. Corbish wiped the perspiration from his own brow.
"All right," he said. "Let's try the computers. I know computers and I have some questions for you."
"It's the truth," said Smith. "It's the truth."
"All right, all right," said Corbish as if he were talking to a baby.
And then began the line of questioning about information sources, payrolls, the absence of project knowledge by its personnel and surprisingly, all these things made sense. Corbish saw how Smith could have a portion of the IDC payroll on his staff without them knowing of it, and how he could get the new generation of computers even before IDC's most prized customers.
He saw how telephone code words would trigger operations, how government research subsidies could be turned into operating funds for any purpose, and how, with correct programming and brilliant use of personnel, one success could lead to another, so that the person at top could obtain incredible information, fantastic leverage, the ability to get anybody to do anything. Right up to the White House.
The programming, the concepts, the execution of it all, made it seem far away from this whimpering shell of a man who was supposed to have planned it.
For the first time in three days, Corbish left the room. He checked one of the phone codes, a minor thing, that hooked up into Dewline weather forecasts, the early warning device that protected America's air space over Alaska and Canada. Surprisingly, he got a forecast that was followed by weather patterns over Russia, China and France, the only other three nations that had nuclear weapons.
Corbish cupped his face in his hands while he thought. He felt the heavy growth of beard. Suddenly he realized how refreshing the afternoon sun was over Bolinas.
He thought of one more question for Smith. Why, if he had all this power at his fingertips, didn't he take over the government? Or even IDC, for that matter?
But when he returned to the deep cellar, Smith was unconscious. Corbish unshackled the old man, put some water to his lips, but he did not move. He hoisted him to a corner, opened some cans of food and left the stuffy, fetid room. Since the shelter only locked from the inside, Corbish wedged an iron bar through the outside handle of the door. If Smith lived, there might be more questions.
Corbish shaved himself, washed, and made a phone call. It was to T. L. Broon. He got his secretary.
"Tell T. L. that Blake Corbish called. Just tell him 'done.' Thank you," said Corbish, and he went outside the house and ripped out the telephone wire.
He took a helicopter from the Marin County Airport to San Francisco, where he boarded a superjet liner and had his first good meal at a New York restaurant. He hired a chauffeur then to take him to Folcroft sanitarium, which was just beginning a bustling ordinary Tuesday morning—with one exception.
The difference was that usually only Dr. Smith knew the real purposes of Folcroft Sanitarium. But now, a different man knew. Blake Corbish went to Smith's office. The secretary told him Dr. Smith was not in this morning and she did not have an appointment for a Mr. Corbish.
"In the back of your top left drawer is an envelope with instructions for you," said Corbish. Smith had given him the procedure for the change of CURE's directors, but it had been given out when Smith was delirious and Corbish was not really sure it was accurate. Still, if it should fail, he had a secondary plan that involved access to the computer complex.
But it wasn't necessary. He felt a pleasant sense of assured success when indeed there was an envelope in the back of the top left drawer. The envelope was sealed with wax. It had dust on it.
"You know, when I first came here, I wondered what was in this envelope. And Dr. Smith said that one day I would be told to open it. Well, at first I was curious, but then I forgot about it. So many peculiar ways he has."
Inside the envelope was a typewritten sheet; Corbish could tell that it had been written with one of the earliest IDC typewriters from the old typeface and the heavy impression.
The secretary pursed her lips.
"I see," she said. "Well, let's see. There's one of four things I'm supposed to ask you to do. I'll give you a choice. Get me my own tax return or my father's for any year I name, or the weather of China, France, and Russia, or…"
Corbish used the secretary's phone for the weather. He did not even let her finish the list. He put the receiver to her ear, she nodded, and he hung up.
"Well, I hope you'll enjoy your stay at Folcroft, sir. Is Dr. Smith all right?"
Corbish could see the honest concern in her face. She might make a good secretary.
"He's fine."
"Good. I'm so glad. When he didn't show up for three days, I was worried, but his wife didn't even seem to bat an eye. Well, I'll tell you, three days for Dr. Smith to be out of this office is very unusual. Very unusual. But then, he has his own way of doing things. A strange, man, if you know what I mean, but a fine man. A decent man. A good man."
As Corbish entered his new office with the one-way mirrors that looked out to the Long Island Sound, he made a note to himself that he would have to get rid of this talky old biddy. Loyalty was one thing. Yakety yak was another. An IDC subsidiary, such as Folcroft had just become, did not allow yakety yak.
CHAPTER FOUR
A match? Why didn't he use a bomb? A tornado? A flood? An earthquake?
Why hadn't Remo used a car or an electric toaster or a plastic neon-coated sign?
"But Little Father," complained Remo, "there is no such thing as a plastic neon-coated sign." He stood on the balcony of the Fontainebleu Hotel in Miami Beach, the salty breeze from the Atlantic blowing hot and muggy at his back, the wisp of an Oriental—Chiun, the Master of Sinanju exhorting heatedly at his front Chiun's gracious flowing kimono was wrapped around his knees and came off his back like a yellow and red flag at rest. His thin white hair barely touched the neck of the gown. His back was to Remo.
He had just said, "One should not be forced to gaze constantly upon the wasted years of one's life." The "wasted years" he referred to was the time devoted to training Remo as the one and only assassin for CURE. Chiun had also muttered something in Korean, so quickly the words ran together, but Remo recognized it. It was the usual comment that even the Master of Sinanju was unable to transform mud into diamonds.
"There's no such thing as a plastic neon-coated sign," insisted Remo.
"I know, or you would have used it," said Chiun.
"I didn't have time."
"A fool is always in a hurry."
"I had several assignments that night."
"That is because you do not know how to deal with an emperor. You do not understand an emperor. You do not wish to understand an emperor. You wish to set fire to things. You wish to burn down things. Little children like to set fires to things, too. They like to see the pretty flames."
"But wasn't it you, Little Father, who told me that the secret of Sinanju was that it was beyond play-dancing, that it used everything?"
"Everything properly. Setting fire to property is not proper. Any fool can burn down a palace. Any fool can reap carnage upon a land. Any army can do that. If an emperor wants an assassin—" Churn's voice quivered as if he were a priest referring to the original Twelve Apostles, his voice
implying that one could find a fisherman or a tax collector anywhere, but an assassin, ah, that was someone special "—he seeks an assassin."
"I did what I had to do and I was glad I did it," said Remo angrily. "Fucking glad, if you want to know."
"Obscenity is the first sign of a man out of control," said Chiun.
"I heard you use obscenity once," Remo replied. "As a matter of fact, you use it very often. What do you call 'a pale piece of a pig's ear'?"
"You," said Chiun, who thought this response so humorous that he repeated the question and answer several times to his pupil, whose white man's sense of humor could not appreciate a joke of such subtlety.
"What do you call a pale piece of a pig's ear? You," said Chiun.
"I heard, I heard, I heard," said Remo. He headed for the door to the suite. They had been here four days and for four days he had endured this criticism and ridicule. During morning training, Chiun had asked Remo why he bothered to train when for a penny Remo could buy matches or for dollars a gun. Better yet, why didn't Remo get himself a bomb and drop it hither and yon? Preferably hither because if he aimed hither it would land yon. Like a disease, sloppiness led to more sloppiness, Chiun said.
Remo went out into the hot Miami day. He had long ago purged himself of his appetite for pizza, fatty corned beef, fried shrimp, and Chinese food loaded with monosodium glutamate. But sometimes when it was hot and a bar looked dark, damp and inviting, he thought wistfully of what it would be like to just walk in and order a foamy golden brew like anyone else. Just like anyone else. Which he wasn't.
He did not know when he had become different. He could not point to a day, or even a month or year. There was a time when he realized that after day after day of Chiun's training, guidance, prodding, and probing, his entire life was filled with hating the discipline while trying to achieve it and there came that one moment when he realized he could never go back to what he had been.. That he was someone else. And he had felt very frightened and very alone even though he could have, if he had wished, laid waste to every person he had seen that day, excepting Chiun himself, of course.
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