Judgment Day td-14

by Warren Murphy

  For five more days, every day at the end of school, Harold and the bully fought. On the fifth day, Harold got in a good right cross to the bully's nose. It bled. The bully cried. And gave up.

  No one picked on Harold again. He wasn't worth it

  When he was fourteen Harold met Maude. She lived in neighboring Windham. They were married thirteen years later after a courtship so dull, she later confesssed to a friend, that Maude felt they were ready for their golden wedding anniversary celebration halfway through their first date. The date was to a Marx Brothers movie at which Harold not only failed to laugh but kept interrupting to point out that Groucho's moustache was painted on and for fifteen cents the least the movie company could do would be to give them a man with a real moustache.

  Harold even had the ability to make his Congregationalist minister, the Rev. Jesse Rolfe Prescott, feel like justifying himself when he said hello. There was an aura about Harold Smith of relentless integrity.

  He got a full scholarship to Dartmouth, went on to Harvard Law, got his doctorate, and was teaching law at Yale when World War II broke out. Everyone thought he would be a natural for the inspector general's office. Everyone except Wild Bill Donovan of the OSS who had an uncanny ability to see talent where others failed to even suspect it.

  Against the high-booted Nazi SS, with their testicle crushers and ceremonial daggers, the honest boy from Vermont cut a swath like a flamethrower through a spider web. By the third year of the war, he had agents placed high in their command. He compromised the Gestapo. It was the classic case of the diligent worker versus the emotionally involved sadist. Workers always won.

  The law professor from Yale had found a vocation he had never sought or even dreamed of. When the OSS retooled to emerge as the CIA for the cold war, Harold Smith was in a high command position. He had the reputation of getting things done successfully and quietly.

  He never confided to anyone why he stayed because no one ever asked. While he longed to return to Yale, he felt he owed it to his country to remain in the CIA, mainly to keep the zanies, as he called them, from mucking things up. The zanies had plans for everything, from kidnapping Mao Tse-tung and replacing him with a double, to setting off a thermonuclear explosion at Magnetogor as a way of convincing the Russians that it was not safe to stockpile nuclear weapons.

  Harold fervently hoped there were men in Russia and China to keep their zanies in line also. If Harold Smith had a prayer for the human race, it was:

  "Lord, save us from those with dramatic solutions."

  One month he noticed he was being checked out as thoroughly as if he had never had security clearance. The investigation, as he would later find out, having access to FBI files, had even interviewed the bully from school days who was now an assistant school principal.

  "The finest fellow I ever knew," was the bully's comment. "Had a good right cross. Became a lawyer, went off to teach at Yale and we never heard from him again."

  Maude's comment was: "Lacks imagination."

  The dean of Yale Law School said: "Rather dull, but brilliant too. He reminds me of Dimaggio in centerfield. He does the difficult so routinely, he makes it look easy."

  "I don't remember him, unless he was that somber little fellow who criticized our Sunday School for being too frivolous," said Reverend Prescott.

  "Somewhat backward in the social amenities. We were worried about him for a while but fortunately he found that lovely girl from Windham," said Nathan Smith, Harold's father.

  "Harold always was a good boy," said Mrs. Nathan Smith, Harold's mother.

  "Who?" asked SS Obengrupper Fuehrer Heinz Raucht, whose special commando units had been rendered ineffective for the last two years of Warld War II by Operation Plum Bob, Col. Harold Smith, commanding.

  "A prick," stated Agent Conrad MacCleary, transferred from European to Asian Theater during World War II for drunkenness, recklessness and gross insubordination. "But a fair prick. Balls to spare. Toughest thin-lipped son of a bitch I ever met."

  The investigation into Harold Smith's background led to one job. The most important job of his life, a job that terrified him by the enormity of its prospects.

  "Why me, Mr. President?" asked Harold Smith. "Out of 180 million people, there must be someone better."

  "You're the someone, Smith. I trust you with a nation's future."

  "It's unconstitutional, Mr. President," Smith had said. "As a matter of fact, we are both violating the law by even discussing this. And I'm not all that sure that I won't make a citizen's arrest right here in the White House."

  The young president had smiled an engaging politician's smile, a smile that had absolutely no effect on Harold Smith, who had heard an impropriety of the grossest order.

  "I'm glad you said that, Smith. I'm not even going to ask you not to do what you have just proposed. I'm going to ask you to think for a week. You know the law. You taught it. You think about whether this cherished constitution can survive. We are facing a trial as a nation, the hope for a kind of government that man has never really known in his history, that we have never faced before. I don't think the constitution is going to survive. I think you've got to violate it to save it. It's that simple."

  "Or that complicated," said Smith. In a week he thought and prayed enough for a lifetime, hoping that this task would pass from him, that he would not have to assume this awful power. "If not me, who?" he wondered unhappily. "If not CURE, what?" And with fear and humility he had agreed, but he refused to shake the President's hand.

  Now someone else, an outsider, was trying to take over the power of CURE. He might very well have it in his grasp already.

  Smith took another long drink of water. It went down with less pain. He heard nothing in the lead room but his heavy breathing. They had not left him much strength, but they had left him his mind.

  He looked at the table he was on. The straps hung uselessly at its side. His own blood was on them. The walls of the place were curiously familiar. A bomb shelter. There were two kinds of people who would build a shelter. A military operation or a private individual afraid of nuclear war. Now, if this were a military post, there was nothing much Harold Smith could do for the moment. But if a private individual had constructed this place, a man who was obviously insecure, then there just might be something, then there probably was something.

  A frightened man would visualize himself in this chamber during a nuclear attack. He would see himself in a cellar with the world around him in ruins. He certainly wouldn't want this room to be his coffin. Supposing a beam from the roof above this room, or suppose even a boulder, were to fall on the door? He could not open it himself. He would be trapped. He who sees nuclear wars also sees their aftermath.

  The man who had built this shelter would not be content to die there just because he could not open the door to get out.

  Smith looked around; he noticed a small box on a nearby wall. It had numbers and appeared to be a thermostat for the heating and cooling system. It was the only break in the smooth, gray dullness of the walls.

  Smith steadied himself and tried to stand. He tumbled, his elbow knocking over a water glass, A small cut. He hardly felt it. By comparison to the rest of his pain, it was only a minor annoyance. Blood flowed from his elbow. He examined the wound with his fingertips looking for the little gurgle that would show a vein had been punctured. There was none. Good. He crawled to the box. His right leg did not work correctly, and he had to drag it behind him, even though dragging shot paralyzing pain through the broken, burned, electrically singed skin. He rested beneath the box, then summoning all his energy and using the wall as a brace, he got to his knees.

  He felt the box and his hand searched for a button or a lever. There was none. He pulled open the door of the thermostat and felt inside. There was a small thumb-sized hook which he grabbed and pulled. He heard a whirring and a grinding, but nothing moved. Nowhere in the room did a door open. He felt a lightness in his head and then everything became dark. When he aw
oke, his cheek was against the side of the lead wall. The box was above him. Mucous and blood had formed near his mouth during unconsciousness. His cheek was caked with it. He tried to lift himself and this time it was easier. He was beyond pain now and beyond tiredness, observing his failing muscles the way a dispassionate coach might judge a lineman to see what he might be able to do in the upcoming season.

  Apart from the right leg, his other parts seemed to work, although his sight was still fuzzy and his stomach muscles were in disarray, and he was surprised at how much they were needed to stand up straight. But stand he did, for his legs supported him, even though his right leg felt as if it were made of skin stuffed with wet cloths, and then bless them, they moved and he moved with them, and he was able to walk a little.

  He made his way to the far wall, and there he saw what had made the whirring, grinding sound before he passed out. A lead panel had slid open and inside it, he saw a large plunger like the terminal of a three-foot-wide syringe. He threw his body against it, and with a cracking sound, a big, wide beautiful square of light opened up as the door rolled slowly into the room, pushing Harold Smith aside on legs that somehow managed to keep him upright. The fresh air was like a bath of light. He waited and heard nothing. Bent over, he made his way up a short staircase, three painful steps to a wall of wood. He pushed and the wall gave way. And then he was in a living room with a magnificent view and he saw or heard no other person. He was alone. Through a large ceiling-high window, he saw a sun set red over a large body of lapping water. It was an ocean. If it were the Atlantic, he was in Europe. If it were the Pacific, he was still in America. All he remembered was offering a piece of paper to Blake Corbish, just one of the many IDC people he had been watching. Then he had awakened to the never-ending pain.

  Smith saw the electrical outlets in the wall. Many of them. America, it must be America. The house was on the side of a hill and down the road he could see a little white cabin. Something was strange about the windows. Hazily, he saw they were boarded up. He saw a phone near him. Outside, a wire hung limp against a pole. If the phone was dead, then it was likely that no one had been left on guard. The dead phones were obviously a precaution. With great effort, Smith knocked the receiver off the cradle. He listened but heard nothing. No dial tone. Just silence.

  Smith turned toward the window. Then, dragging his right leg behind him, he began to move, painfully, slowly. Even as he moved, he was planning his counterattack.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A commodities broker who had once been caught embezzling and had been forgiven provided he reported every day the tidbits of gossip that swirled around the Chicago Exchange like wheat chaff in a storm, was suddenly asked to report on different things. Not only was he required to relay information as usual on any movements of large amounts of cash and brokerage infighting, but now he was ordered to supply the kind of inside information from which people could make fortunes, the kind of information he dare not use himself lest he lose his license.

  A Teamster official, who had been keeping tabs on organized crime in the trucking business, now found out that the extra monthly stipend he received required advance information on contract demands.

  And a federal judge was told point-blank that the Internal Revenue Service had discovered grave discrepancies in his returns, though some things could be overlooked for the good of the country. It was explained to this judge, as he sat in his chambers in a Phoenix courthouse, that America needed a strong International Data Corporation, just as it needed good judges. The judge must decide he could not find against IDC in a monopoly suit brought by a smaller computer firm. A decision against IDC could wreck the nation's whole economy. The country was, of course, willing to forgive him his unreported extra income if he would help the country. Hardly pausing for breath, he proved himself a true patriot.

  These accomplishments were the first in what Blake Corbish was sure would be a delightful series of successes. Blake Corbish considered them and whistled a pleasant tune as he drove a pickup truck up the winding hillside road to the estate outside Bolinas, California.

  He had told his secretary back at Folcroft that he needed a rest, some physical exercise and he would be back in a day. Any messages for him could be left at IDC headquarters in Mamaroneck, or he could be reached the following morning at the Manhattan offices of T. L. Broon, president and chairman of the board of IDC.

  "You seem to do an awful lot of business with IDC, Mr. Corbish," the secretary had said.

  "We have a heavy computer commitment here at Folcroft."

  "Dr. Smith never had that many computer people around," said the secretary.

  Blake Corbish had smiled and said that a new broom sweeps clean. The nosey little biddy had been transferred to the cafeteria before his car had cleared the grounds.

  The rattle of bricks and tin in the rear of his pickup was a reassuring sound. It said Blake Corbish, vice president, Blake Gorbish, senior vice president for policy planning, Blake Corbish, president, Blake Corbish, chairman of the board. And as he passed the boarded-up white cabin, it said something else: Blake Corbish, President of the United States.

  Why not? Why not Blake Corbish? The ranging blue of the California sky reminded him of how far he had come, how many times he had been close to failure and had toughed it out. Like high school. They had been giving scholarships to the raving little geniuses or the hulking athletes. His parents were not poor enough to qualify him for aid on the basis of need, and not rich enough to afford to pay tuition at Williams, a not-quite Ivy League school where one could nevertheless launch a career. So Blake Corbish had joined extracurricular activities. Committees, plays, social events, School projects, he was there. But when he found out in his senior year that it would not be enough, Blake Corbish ran for class president and worked at being liked. His opponent had been one of those zanies that people are naturally attracted to. Running against him threatened to make the school election into a popularity contest, which in later analysis, Corbish realized all school elections were. But this one had seemed more important at the time, important enough to call his supporters to a private meeting and sincerely plead with them not to spread the gossip that his opponent was a thief who stole watches from the gym lockers.

  "I don't want to win if I have to win that way," said Corbish. Naturally the unfounded rumor spread through the school. In approximately an hour it had become such widespread knowledge that after much audible soul searching Blake Corbish had found it necessary to publicly plead with the senior class not to let the personal lives of the candidates unduly influence their votes.

  Corbish won by a landslide. He got his scholarship to Williams, finishing 73rd in a class of 125. As one professor described him, he was "an incredibly undistinguished scholar whose morality reflected social convenience rather than any sense of right or wrong, a man who could throw people into ovens as easily as he might work to support the Salvation Army making no distinction between them."

  Why not President of the United States? thought Blake Corbish. After all, who would have suspected Blake Corbish of Mendocino, California, would become the youngest senior vice president for policy planning in the history of IDC?

  When Corbish parked the truck in the small driveway he noted that the kitchen door was ajar. Had someone entered the house? He could have sworn he locked it, and the old man had to be dead by now. He checked the back of the pickup. The bricks and cement were in fine order. Within a month or two, it wouldn't matter if the body were found. If he continued at Folcroft the way he had started, in a month he could get the person who found Dr. Smith's body convicted of the crime. He could do anything.

  But right now he had to handle the sticky details. And there were many of them. For instance, the direct line from the President of the United States to Smith's desk. Corbish had made a tape recording and cut it into the line. The recording said simply that there was transmission trouble on the line. The call would be returned. This was just a holding action, but it would keep
the President out of it until Corbish had gotten all of CURE and Folcroft under his control.

  There were many similar details which Corbish had to handle. And when they were done, he would be able to use the power of CURE in any way he wanted. Why not President of the United States?

  Corbish had intended to return sooner for Smith, but when he discovered that the old man had indeed given him the correct programming instructions, he tossed himself into his work with the glee of a child playing with a new set of toys. One day led to another and then another and then another. Day after day of successful operations. Now it was too late. So be it. Smith would already be dead. Corbish had learned from the computers that Smith had been investigating Blake Corbish and that meant Smith planned to have him killed. It was just Smith's bad luck that Corbish had been smarter.

  Corbish saw dark stains on the kitchen floor. He bent to examine them. He scratched one with his thumb. It crinkled like a nut frosting. Bloodstains. Several days old. They came from the living room. In the living room, he saw they came from a passageway behind a bookcase. The passageway, he saw, led to the lead-lined room.

  And the room was empty.

  He felt the first rushes of panic overcome him and he subdued them. He had been in tight spots before. All right, Smith had escaped. Reasonable. He was also very weak. Was it possible someone had come to rescue him?

  Corbish looked at the stains. Doubtful. You don't rescue someone in Smith's condition and let him bleed all the way to the door.

  No, the old man had somehow found the energy to escape. By himself.

  All right. What could Smith do? He could contact his killer arm. Corbish thought about the long winding road, the isolation of the area, and, most blessedly, the dismantled telephone line. But the stains were days old. If Smith had contacted the killer arm, Corbish would have been dead by now. And he was very much alive.

  All right, this is where the successes are separated from the failures. He would tough it out.