"What name did you say?"
"William something Densen."
The secretary watched in amazement as the vice president buzzed the president on an intercom.
"Do you remember that funny account you were telling me about, well, someone is here to claim it."
"I'm busy right now," the president said. "Hold him up for a few minutes. I'd like to see him." The vice president nodded and hung up.
"If I may ask, sir, is Mr. Densen someone important?" the secretary asked.
"Oh, no," said the vice president. 'It's just that we've had this peculiar account here for the last, oh, eight to ten years. I heard about it when I first came to work here. Somebody deposited some money. I think it was no more than $5,000. He sent it in by mail on American Express travelers' checks. Now you know the law says a person has to show up to open an account. But Densen sent the money with instructions that we should pay anyone with the correct signature. He said it would be all right with the authorities, and no passbook was needed. Well, we naturally reported it to the banking commission, and the commission did say it would be all right."
"And then what?"
"Then nothing. The account just stayed here."
"Drawing interest?"
"No. That's another peculiarity. No interest was asked for. No passbook. No interest. No one showed up. The money just sat."
"Densen certainly does look strange," said the secretary. "Like a bum."
Strange, too, was Densen's request when he received the money. He wanted two hundred dollars in quarters, one hundred dollars in dimes, twenty dollars in nickels and the rest in twenties and fifties. He carried his money out in a little box. The bank officers watched as he crossed the street to an Army and Navy store. Out of curiosity, the youngest V.P. went to the store to browse. He saw the strange Mr. William Cudahy Densen whose signature had proven valid, buy a bus driver change dispenser, and put it in the box. He saw the strange Mr. Densen go across the street to a clothing store and reemerge in a dull gray suit more than conservative enough for a banker.
Densen's next stop was a stationery store, where he purchased pads, pencils, a slide rule, a billfold and a cheap attache case.
At the bus station, the young bank officer lost Mr. Densen. He could have sworn he saw him waiting in line. And then there was no one.
Dr. Harold Smith walked out of the Minneapolis bus terminal, mildly amused by the young man's attempt to follow him.
CHAPTER TEN
Of course he would wear a suit, but should it be black? Black might look like instant mourning, and perhaps that was just a shade too obsequious a posture to be adopted by the man who would be the next president of IDC. On the other hand, a light-colored suit might be considered frivolous by Holly Broon in her state of grief over her father's death.
After weighing his options, considering the variables, the upside potential and the downside risks, Blake Corbish decided to wear a black suit with a blue pinstripe. The black covered the mourning, the stripe showed that Corbish was not a man to stand on inane ceremonies, not when the world's greatest corporation was in need of effective leadership. He hoped the point would not be lost on Holly Broon.
He dressed quickly, his mind on T.L.'s daughter and what he knew of her. Indeterminately thirtyish. Pictures in the beautiful people magazines. Inside talk was that she was at least as much the brains of IDC as her father.
Corbish had never met her, but one of the lower-ranking vice presidents had.
He had come into Corbish's office after that meeting six months before. He had wiped sweat from his brow, sighed, lit a cigarette, exhaled the smoke and said, "What a bitch."
Corbish knew whom he meant, but one could never tell what was real or what was a setup, so he asked simply, "Who?"
"That Holly Broon," the other young V.P. had said. "She just cut off my balls and barbecued them."
The vice president had been in charge of a narrow-goaled program to buy up European germanium for use in transistors. It was supposed to be done quietly, but the previous day a line had been dropped into the Wall Street Journal mentioning IDC's interest in European suppliers. This of course had the immediate effect of jamming up the price so that IDC would realize no savings by going overseas.
The idea for the program apparently had been Holly Broon's. The young vice president had met with her that day in T.L.'s Mamaroneck office, in the presence of old T.L. himself.
Corbish remembered thinking that it was odd the young vice president hadn't mentioned T.L. at all. Just Holly Broon. She had impressed him and frightened him. Corbish had listened to the story but he'd said nothing, not wishing to commit himself. Later, he gave his immediate superior hints of the comments made by the young vice president. As he knew it would, the story was passed on to T.L. Soon after, the young vice president was gone.
That was all Corbish knew about her, except of course the pictures he had seen of her. They made her look beautiful. Well, he would wait to see about that. He had seen too many stunning pictures of corporate women who turned out to have all the beauty of footprints, to be impressed by what the camera said.
He glanced at his watch, sneaked a look into his bedroom where Teri had collapsed back onto the bed, her martini spilled on the carpet, its contents darkening the light blue wool. He shook his head and left. There would be time to deal with Teri after he was president of IDC.
When Corbish drove his own Cadillac through the gates, he warned the head guard, "A Miss Broon is coming to see me. Let her right in, then call me."
"Yes sir, Mr. Corbish."
Corbish had his secretary prepare two pots, one of coffee and one of tea, and gave her orders to keep both hot, and to bring them in on a silver service when he buzzed on the intercom.
He buzzed as soon as the guard called him, and by the time Holly Broon swirled into his office, the silver service was sitting on one corner of the conference table. A class touch, Corbish thought, looking at it. A presidential-class touch.
He rose.
"Good morning, Miss Broon, I can't tell you how…"
"Then don't try, Corbish," she said. "We've got work to do." She looked at the silver service. "Coffee and tea?"
"Yes. Which would you…?"
"Have any vodka?"
There was, he knew, liquor in one of the cabinets, but now he wondered with some anguish what to do. He had not expected a morning drinker. He did not want to look like a boozer himself by going right to the liquor cabinet. On the other hand, if he delayed getting the drink, it might looked as if he lacked social grace.
He picked up the phone and called his secretary.
"I ordered some liquor the other day for guests. Where is it? Thank you."
He hung up. "It's over here," he said to Holly Broon. "I didn't know where they had put it." There. Social grace and teetotalling in the office.
As he walked to the cabinet, Holly Broon slumped down in one of the large leather chairs facing him across the table. She called out to his back, "A double in a big glass. No ice. No mix."
Another problem. Should he drink with her? Let her drink alone? Oh, the difficulties in drawing the line between corporate image and personal pushiness.
He poured Holly Broon's drink, using a shot glass to measure out exactly two ounces, decided on coffee for himself, but changed his mind at the last minute and poured himself tea. Coffee was so… so, plebeian.
Holly had taken her drink from his hand and when he turned toward her with his teacup, her glass was half empty.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
He had anticipated that question all the way over in his car. And even though Holly Broon now stood to inherit control of ten percent of IDC's outstanding stock, and could guarantee him the corporate presidency, he had decided to tell her as little as he could get away with.
"Before your father's untimely demise," he said, "He put me in charge of a special computer operation. This is where it's headquartered."
How much did she kn
ow? Were the stories true about her being old T.L.'s brains? If they were, then she already knew what he was up to. His answer was bland enough to go either way if she gave him any inkling of how much she knew.
He met her eyes straight on, which he knew was the right thing to do, and raised the teacup to his lips so she could not see any telltale expression around his mouth. The eyes can usually disguise a lie, but the mouth rarely can.
"I know you were put in charge. What have you produced?"
"I was working on personal orders from T.L., Miss Broon. It was kind of a novel approach to corporate problems but one with great promise and that showed genius. T.L. wanted a computerized setup of the entire country… interrelationships between private industry and government at all levels, the impact of law enforcement, the courts, the unions, yes, even of the criminal element." There. That still gave away nothing.
"Why?" she said. She was making it difficult
"IDC needed to have solid information on the social structure of the country in order to make sensible long-range decisions based upon our very best planning."
Holly drained the rest of her glass and without a word held it out to Corbish for a refill. As he took the glass from her hand, she said, "You're full of shit."
He turned toward the liquor cabinet before saying, "I beg your pardon."
"I said, you're full of shit. First, T.L., didn't give a rat's ass about social structures. He wanted to sell computers. Second, even if he did, it's hardly likely that he would have bought you this mausoleum to fool around in. Why this place?"
As he refilled the glass, Corbish smiled slightly to himself. "Actually," he said, "this place has been kind of a testing ground for IDC computers for some time. All our latest models are here, even the newest generation that isn't on the market yet. I gather that this place was formerly some kind of government information-gathering network. Much of the information T.L. wanted was already in the computers here, and he sent me up to plug into it for maximum utilization."
He turned with the drink. Holly took the glass and nodded. She held it between the fingertips of both hands and looked over it at Corbish, her head tilted down, her heavy-lashed eyes fixed on him, seductively showing whites under her irises.
Corbish recognized the look and knew he had her. She had given up trying to break him; now she was going to use feminine wiles on him. Why, this would be a piece of cake, he thought.
"How would you like to be the next president of IDC?" she asked.
He lifted then put down his teacup and walked around behind his desk. "I'm overwhelmed, Miss Broon. I never…"
"Don't crap me," she said. "You always. All of you vice presidents. And don't think I just promised you anything. I only asked how you'd like to be president."
Blake Corbish, who that morning had considered the power he wielded through CURE, had already decided that he would indeed be president, but not just of IDC. He chose his words carefully and paused before speaking.
"More than anything else I can imagine," he lied.
"You know, as my father's heir, I'm the largest single stockholder."
"Yes, Miss Broon."
"I can't guarantee you anything," she said, "but between my stock holdings and my influence with the board, I think I could pick Mickey Mouse if I wanted."
Corbish nodded. No comment seemed necessary.
"I just wanted to be sure you aren't really Mickey Mouse," she said. "I don't know yet whether you are or whether you just think I am, with that ridiculous story you've been giving me about your work here."
She sipped at her vodka, waiting for a comment. The silence hung in the room for a moment as each cooly took the other's measure. Finally, Corbish said, "You must understand, Miss Broon, that I've been here less than ten days. It would really take more time than that to figure everything out and to draw the kind of conclusions T. L. must have been looking for."
They stared at each other a moment longer, neither satisfied with Blake's no-information answer, and then the telephone rang on Corbish's desk. Without taking his eyes off Holly Broon, he slowly snaked his hand toward it.
In Cleveland, Dr. Harold Smith walked into a telephone booth on a street corner, looked carefully at his newly purchased wristwatch, then dialed the operator.
He fished a stopwatch from his jacket pocket as he said, "I'd like to make a long distance call to Rye, New York." He gave the operator the area code and number.
"That will be three dollars and twenty cents," the operator said.
"I'm going to talk for three and a half minutes," Smith said. "How much will the extra minute be?"
"That will be, let's see, seventy cents extra."
"All right, operator. I'll pay for it now. Just a moment please." Smith hooked the receiver on the small shelf under the phone and began to click quarters out of the bus driver's changer he wore on his side under his jacket. He clicked out four, deposited them, did that twice more, then clicked out three more quarters, a dime and a nickel, and put them into the phone.
"Thank you," the operator said, "I'll put the call through now."
Smith heard the beeps on the line as the line transfers were made. He hoped that no one had changed the private line on his desk, which he had used only for outgoing personal calls. Then Smith heard the phone ring. Quickly, he depressed the pushbutton on the stopwatch and looked down at it. The phone was picked up on the first ring.
"Hello," came the voice, sharp, crisply efficient as Smith had remembered it, with little accent and no trace of regionalism.
Smith waited a few seconds until the voice said "hello" again.
"Corbish," Smith asked.
"Yes."
"This is Smith." Smith glanced at his watch. Twenty seconds had gone by. He heard a sudden sip of air at the other end of the phone and then a quick recovery.
"Well, hello, doctor, where are you?"
"That's really rather immaterial," said Smith drily. "You've installed yourself at Folcroft, I take it?"
"Why not? Someone has to keep things running."
"I've called, Corbish, to appeal to you." By now, Smith figured, Corbish should have recovered from the shock of Smith's voice and should be reaching for the switch that would activate CURE's elaborate phone-tracing system.
"What kind of appeal?" came Corbish's voice. Right, Smith thought. Ask questions. Keep the old fool talking.
"I wanted to appeal to you to give up this mad enterprise you're conducting."
"I don't know why you should consider it mad, doctor. It's very sensible, that is, from a corporate point of view. Don't you agree."
"No, I don't agree," Smith said. "But if I can't talk to you from that standpoint, perhaps as an American. Can't you see you're tampering with the very structure of our society? That there could be dangerous ramifications of what you are doing?"
"There is no gain without pain," Corbish said. "Personally, I think the gain will be worth the effort. Can you imagine the power I will have?"
They talked on. Smith asked questions, Corbish countered and asked his own questions.
When his stopwatch hit the three-minute mark, Smith said, "Never mind then, Corbish. I just wanted to warn you of something."
"Oh. What's that?"
"I'm going to kill you."
Corbish laughed. "I'm afraid you've got it wrong, Doctor Smith. You're not going to kill me."
The stopwatch's second hand passed twenty.
"Well, we'll just have to see about that," Smith said. "By the way, have you met Remo?"
"Yes."
"Don't think he'll do a job on me for you," Smith said. "He's too loyal to me for that."
Corbish laughed again. "Loyal?" he said. "He doesn't even remember your name."
He started to say more but was unable to. The sweep secondhand of the stopwatch was nearing the minute and Smith hung up the telephone.
He stepped out of the telephone booth and looked around. His face caught the eyes of an old man inside a tailor shop on the street
next to the booth. Smith locked eyes with the man a moment, then stepped down the stairway leading to the city's subway system. He stopped at the change booth and bought one token, careful to pay with loose coins from his outside jacket pocket
"When is the next train uptown?" he asked.
The bored token seller said, "Every five minutes, Mister."
"What track?" Smith said.
"Over there," said the token seller, looking up in annoyance, which was what Smith wanted him to do.
"Thank you," Smith said.
He took the token and used it to get through the turnstile leading to the uptown train platform. He walked casually along the platform, trying not to draw attention to himself. At the far end of the platform, he moved through an exit turnstile, headed for the flight of stairs that he knew was nearby and went back up to street level.
He came out of a subway kiosk diagonally across the street from the phone booth, and slid behind the wheel of a parked, unlocked car which he had left there several hours before.
He slumped down in the seat and pulled his hat down slightly over his eyes. He glanced at his watch. It should be any moment now.
Tracing a dialed call within the city limits generally took CURE's elaborate electronic network seven minutes. But an out-of-town call handled by an operator took only three minutes and twenty seconds to trace. Smith had given Corbish enough time. Now to wait and see how much control Corbish had over CURE's operations in the field.
Smith lighted a cigarette. Although he hated the taste and considered smoking a vile habit, he had found that nicotine was a reasonably effective pain duller. Now, he clung to the habit, even though the pain had lessened and he was able to walk, using his right leg almost normally.
Midway in his third drag, an unmarked tan Chevrolet sedan pulled up to the phone booth. Two men in light gray suits stepped out and looked both ways down the street. One of them went into the phone booth and Smith could see him examine the floor and the shelf under the phone.
Smith's stomach sank involuntarily. FBI. The two men wore their anonymity like public address systems. The first man came out of the booth and moved toward the dry cleaning store, while the second agent continued to look both ways along the street.
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