Judgment Day td-14

by Warren Murphy

  "Drive for a while. Better yet, go north. We've got a camp on the edge of the Sound. We could stop there."

  It took twenty-five minutes to get to the camp which was a camp in name only. It was a multi-roomed mansion of redwood, glass and fieldstone, and in the glare of Corbish's headlights, the stones crackled with imbedded pieces of glass, making the base of the house appear as if it had been inlaid with diamonds.

  His whole world would soon be inlaid with diamonds, Corbish thought. First IDC and then the country. And then? Well, who could ever tell? He must dare to dare greatly. Who had said that? Bobby Kennedy? Teddy Roosevelt? It didn't matter. He would say it someday, and make it his own.

  Holly Broon had slipped out of the car and was walking around the front through the headlights. Corbish turned off the engine and the lights and got out onto the hard-packed gravel.

  "Before we go in, let's go down to the shore," she said.

  "Sure."

  "It's beautiful this time of year." Corbish grunted agreement. He cared little or nothing about beauty and would have sworn that Holly Broon, in that regard, was a kindred spirit. So what was it? A seduction attempt again? Perhaps, but he hoped not. He didn't really care for that sort of thing.

  He followed her down a long string of stone steps that ended abruptly at the water's edge. The grass grew down almost to the rocks. Metal chairs dotted the grass, and spike-tipped drink holders stuck into the grass wavered eerily in the slight breeze, reflecting the moon's rays like so many chrome arrows.

  Corbish put his hand out idly and touched one of the drink holders, setting it vibrating from side to side. Holly Broon's back was to him as she looked out at the Sound. Softly, she began to talk.

  "I spoke to your man, Remo, tonight," she said. "He told me that you ordered my father killed."

  "Remo said…" Corbish was suddenly alert.

  "No, don't interrupt," she said. "He said you ordered my father's death. Dr. Smith told me the same thing this morning. I just wanted you to know that I know."

  Corbish was stunned. So she had learned. Was she going to take it smoothly? Perhaps she had wanted the old man dead as much as Corbish did. She must have. He felt almost relaxed. She continued to talk on, softly, and Corbish pulled one of the drink-holders out of the soft sod, and felt its sharp spiked end.

  "I know you wanted him killed because you thought he would stand in the way of your getting power. I just want you to know that I understand." Her voice rose just slightly in pitch and Corbish came to attention again. He saw her hand go toward her pocket. "I understand," she repeated. "It's the same reason I'm going to kill you. Because you stand in the way of my getting power."

  The hand was out of the pocket now, holding the revolver, and Holly Broon whirled to fire.

  She squeezed the trigger. But Corbish had dropped into a squatting position and the bullet whizzed by his head. Then Corbish sprang forward, holding the drink-holder in front of him like a sword. He planted its point in Holly Broon's abdomen and let the force of his body press it through, skewering her like a Wasp-ka-bob.

  She screamed once, a loud piercing scream, and dropped her pistol. Blake got to his feet, withdrew the drink holder and then stabbed her again with it, in the chest. This time, he released it, and the woman dropped heavily to the ground at his feet.

  "You bastard," she hissed. Water from the Sound trickled into her mouth and she coughed. Her hair, whitish in the bright moonlight, floated idly around her face like loose spiderwebs drifting in a breeze, her eyes opened wide, then her head dropped to her side.

  Corbish looked down at the dead body. What's done is done, he thought. He realized that Remo would have to die too because he was the last one who knew about Corbish's role in the Broon death.

  Corbish spent a half hour at the scene, cleaning and replacing the murder weapon, assuring himself there were no prints left on it. He dragged the woman's body to a small nearby cove with a heavy overhang of branches, tied an anchor to it, and wedged it into a small crevice underwater, between two rocks. There would be time for him to come back and dispose of it properly later.

  Then Corbish went back up the stairs toward his car. He decided to go to Folcroft and begin working on the list of the nine board members of IDC. He would need to assure their votes now that Holly Broon could not speak out for or against him.

  He whistled as he started his car and began to back out of the long driveway. Two down. Broon and his daughter. Two more to go. Smith and Remo.

  Smith waited until he was sure Remo and Chiun had gone, then pulled the cord leading to the bomb. It disengaged itself from the wall behind the dynamite where Smith had stuck it with tape, and fell harmlessly to the floor. Smith smiled to himself as he reached onto the window sill for the spare key to the handcuffs, unlocked them and freed himself.

  Good, he thought. Remo had fallen for it. If he got through to the one man who could clear up the question of CURE's leadership, there would be nothing to worry about. But if Remo could not, when he returned, he would find Smith gone. And Remo would be out of Smith's way when Smith returned to Folcroft, where he had business to take care of: Blake Gorbish.

  Before leaving, he wrote a note for Remo.

  "Have returned to Folcroft. Don't worry about the dynamite. It's fake. H.S."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The most important resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was jolted from his sleep by a hand pressed over his mouth.

  A voice close to his ear in the darkened bedroom hissed, "Don't shout and I'll let you go. You're in no danger."

  The man in bed nodded and felt the hand move away from his mouth. He turned toward the other bed in the room. In the black silence, he heard the rhythmic slurps of air from his wife.

  He turned again to the night visitor.

  "I have a question to ask," the visitor said.

  "What network are you with?"

  "No network, sir. Just one question."

  "You know I can have this place crawling with Secret Service men in twenty seconds."

  "Don't count on those four outside in the hall. They're napping. Now, the question. I know all about the secret agency, CURE. I know that Dr. Smith was running it for you. My question is, did you remove him and appoint a new man?"

  The man in the bed hesitated. CURE was the country's deepest secret. No one had dropped a loose word about it in more than ten years. He vowed not to be the first.

  "CURE?" he said. "I know nothing of any CURE."

  "Please," came the voice, again close to his ear. "I work for CURE. I have to know who's running it. It's for the good of the country."

  The man in the bed paused. The voice hissed again: "Is Dr. Smith still the head of CURE?"

  The man hesitated, then said softly, "Yes."

  "Thank you," came the voice. "We'll leave you now. It was nice seeing you again."

  The man in the bed remembered. Over a year ago, someone had accosted him in the hallway and whispered a children's song to him. Was this that person? The enforcement arm of CURE?

  The man in bed heard the stranger move away from him. He hissed into the darkness. "Are you that special person?"

  "Yes, I am. Good night, Mr. President."

  And then the President of the United States saw the door open and the figure of a man move out; behind him he saw a wizened, wispily bearded old man, who seemed to be dressed in an Oriental robe. The President thought this was very curious; the door closed, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized he was dreaming and he finally closed his eyes and went back to sleep, hoping he could recapture his previous dream in which he had been a court constable, serving warrants on newspapermen who failed to pay their bar bills.

  Remo and Chiun moved through the darkened White House, then out a window to a second-floor balcony.

  Noiselessly, they slid down the side of the building and moved back toward the iron fence. They scaled it, landing softly on the sidewalk, and began walking away from the main entrance to the building.
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  "He is a very nice man," Chiun said.

  "If you like the type."

  "I will never again believe what those vile correspondents of television say about him."

  "Well, I never believed much of that anyway."

  "Why do they have those vile correspondents on television? Why do they not have more of those beautiful dramas?" Chiun asked.

  "I guess they figure people couldn't stand so much beauty."

  In the darkness, Chiun nodded his head. "That is probably true. Beauty is hard for most people to deal with."

  "Step it up, Chiun," said Remo. "We've got to go back and release Smith."

  "Are you not glad you did not kill him?"

  "Yes, I am. Tell you the truth, I prefer him to Corbish. He's gonna be sore as hell we took so long to get back."

  "Smith will not be angry," Chiun said.

  "Why?"

  "He is not there."

  Remo snorted.

  "He's not here, Chiun."

  "Of course not."

  "The dynamite was a fake."

  "Of course. Why else would it bear the legend on the bottom: Hong Kong Fireworks Company?"

  "He's gone back to Folcroft."

  "Of course. That is where we must go."

  Smith drove the short distance from Kennedy Airport to Folcroft with uncharacteristic speed. He had just made his plane to New York. Remo and Chiun would be following him soon. They might even be landing now.

  No matter. He had time.

  Up ahead, he saw the faint glimmer that indicated the lights were on in his office behind the one-way glass. He slowed and drove past the main gate of Folcroft. That was something new. Uniformed guards were on duty. It would be foolhardy to try to get past them.

  He drove past the Folcroft grounds and three quarters of a mile down the road, where he made a sharp left turn onto a dirt road. The road wound its way down a long incline until it stopped at the water's edge in the midst of a string of vacation cabins. Smith turned off his lights and engine and got out of the car. After a moment, his eyes became used to the dark and he saw what he wanted, a small rowboat, with an electric trolling motor, tied up to a dock.

  Smith smiled slightly to himself. It was almost like wartime again. In those days, they called the theft of property "a moonlight requisition." Well, this really was a moonlight requisition.

  He clambered into the rowboat and using one oar as a paddle, moved it slowly away from the dock. He waited until he was thirty yards out into the Sound before starting the electric trolling motor which caught with a faint whir. Then he moved to the seat at the back of the boat and turned its nose north towards Folcroft.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Blake Corbish fished the printouts on the nine executive board members of IDC from his top desk drawer, arranged them carefully on his desk, and began to read again.

  But his mind, he found, wasn't on it. Nor was it on the body of Holly Broon, now buried beside Long Island Sound.

  No, he found his mind wandering to the telephone on his desk. Where was Remo? Why hadn't he called with a report on Smith? He tried to fix his eyes on the printouts, but unconsciously they drifted away from the paper and back to the telephone. Why the hell didn't Remo call? After all the switchboard was now open twenty-four hours a day; Remo would have no trouble getting through. Call, dammit, call.

  Corbish spun in his chair and looked at the one-way windows. The lights in the room bounced off the glass and he was annoyed that he could not see the Sound, only a brief glimmer occasionally that must have been a light from a passing boat.

  How many times had Smith sat here just like this, waiting for the telephone to ring? And he had done it for how many years? Ten years? Of waiting for phone calls, waiting for reports? For a moment, he felt almost a tinge of sympathy for Smith. He had probably done a fine job. His setup of the computer operation was nothing short of brilliant; and how well he handled the pressure of the job was proved by his longevity in it. Ten years. It could be an eternity in a job such as director of CURE.

  It was just rather a shame that Smith had gotten old. But it happened to everyone, just another way station on the road to death. Smith was probably well along that road now, Corbish thought. But he'd still feel better when Remo called.

  Smith, however, did not consider himself on the road to death. Actually, he was walking a path between rows of shiny stainless steel pots and pans in the basement kitchen of Folcroft, heading for an elevator that led upstairs to the main office complex.

  "Doctor Smith!" came a heavily-accented woman's voice. "When did you get back?"

  Smith turned. The woman was a short, buxom matron, wearing a blue uniform and a broad smile.

  "Hello, Hildie," Smith said. "I just returned." He kept walking toward the elevator.

  "Did you enjoy your vacation?" she asked.

  So that was the cover story. Smith was pleased; it would adequately explain his sudden reappearance.

  "Very nice, Hildie," he said. "I saw the country."

  "Well, I am glad you are back. I do not mind to tell you that this Mr. Corbish—Oh, all right, I guess he is a very smart man and all, but he is not you, Doctor Smith."

  Suddenly, Smith felt hungry.

  "Hildie, is there any yogurt? Prune whip?"

  "No one eats it since you left and Corbish"—gone was the Mister—"says don't buy it, cause it'll just be wasting." She smiled even more broadly. "But I bought some anyway. I hid it in the back of the big icebox."

  "Good girl, Hildie," said Smith, considering and then rejecting the idea of docking her salary the cost of the yogurt since she had bought it despite instructions. "Would you put some on lettuce for me?"

  "Bring it to the office, should I?"

  "Yes."

  "Right away," the woman said.

  "No," Smith said quickly. "Not right away." He looked at his watch for a moment, then said: "In seventeen minutes."

  "You got it, Doctor Smith," she said, looking at her own wristwatch. "Should we symphonize our watches? Like they do in the spy movies?"

  Smith smiled his thin-lipped grimace. "No, Hildie. We'd get it all wrong. What do we know about spy movies?"

  He turned and continued walking toward the elevator.

  The door to Smith's office had always squeaked. Blake Corbish had found this terribly annoying, and one of his first acts had been to have a maintenance man oil the hinges. When that didn't totally silence the door, he had had the hinges replaced.

  The door was now absolutely silent. Without warning, Blake Corbish heard a voice behind him say, "Hello, Corbish."

  Corbish wheeled in his chair, shocked. Shock turned to horror when he saw Smith.

  For a moment, he could not get words out of his mouth. Then he said, "How… Smith… how… ?"

  "How isn't really important now, is it?" Smith said coldly. "I'm here. That really should be more than enough for you to worry about, by itself."

  Corbish moved to his feet; Smith's hand moved to his pocket and brought out a .45 caliber automatic.

  "Well, well," Corbish said. "A weapon. I wouldn't have suspected it of you."

  "I don't generally carry them," Smith said. "But this was a gift. From a man who tried to kill me in a Pittsburgh motel."

  Smith waved the gun at Gorbish. "Sit back down. You've got time yet. There are some things I want to know."

  "You think I'll tell you?"

  "Yes, I think so," Smith said, his eyes locked with Corbish's, the words coming from his mouth even though his lips did not even seem to move. "It's rather interesting, but we once had a study done here. It showed that forty-eight hours was the absolute limit that a man could withstand torture. I know you'll talk."

  Corbish grimaced. He knew the study. Smith had proved that it was accurate. "What do you want to know?"

  He expected Smith to quiz him on changes in procedure, in personnel, in the operation of the computers. Instead, Smith asked, "What have you carried outside this building?"

  "
Excuse me?"

  "Have you taken any papers home?"

  "No," Corbish said, answering truthfully.

  "All right. Who else knows what this place is? Besides Broon, that is. He took his information with him."

  "No one."

  "Not even his daughter?" Smith said. His tone of voice made it clear he knew Corbish was lying. Corbish could see Smith's hand tighten around the grip of the automatic.

  "I wasn't thinking of her," Corbish said. "She's dead."

  "You?"

  Corbish nodded, and picked up the straight pen from his desk, twirling it nervously between his fingers.

  "Well, then I guess we have everything we need, don't we?" said Smith.

  "How did you get away from Remo?" Corbish asked.

  "When I left him, he was verifying just who was supposed to run this organization. By now, I'm sure he knows you are an impostor."

  Corbish grinned. He dropped the pen and stood up. 'It wouldn't matter, you know, what anyone else told him. Give me five minutes with him, and I'd have him believing the moon is made of cheese."

  Another voice came from the doorway.

  "The only cheese in this place is you." It was Remo's voice.

  Smith turned slightly toward the door, just enough to see Remo and Chum in the open doorway, and just enough to enable Corbish to reach across the desk and pull the automatic out of Smith's hand.

  "All right, you two," he called, waving the automatic. "Move in here. Close the door."

  Chiun closed the door. He and Remo moved toward the front of the room. Smith stood motionless at the side of the desk.

  "I told you once before," Corbish said to Smith, a savage smile on his mouth, "you're too old for this sort of thing. Now we're going to have to retire you. All three of you. With honors, of course."

  "Just an academic question," Smith said. "Were you telling me the truth? You took nothing out of here?"

  "Yes, it was the truth. Why would I need to take anything out? I've got everything I need right here. Everything."