Destroyer 052 by Fools Gold

Author:Fools Gold
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

Dr. Harold W. Smith waited in the headquarters of CURE, sitting atop staffs he could not reach, a network

unconnected to anything, running dummy corporations and fronts all operating without purpose.

Through the years, he alone had set up these groups to create a network of people gathering and dispensing

information, all them helping, without knowing it, to help CURE fight crime and to keep America alive.

Only Smith, each president, and CURE's lone killer arm knew what CURE was. Clerks gathering information

on illegal trucking and fraud never knew for whom they really worked. Government agencies with vast

sprawling budgets never knew how much of their workforce actually worked for that secret organization set up

in Rye, New York, behind the facade of the sanitarium called Folcroft.

Smith had prepared for everything and he had not prepared for this. He was not even

sure how long the networks would keep working or what they would do or if they

would just gather, orga-

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12 2

nize, penetrate, and then do it all over again because the information just wasn't being

used.

He didn't know. Only the computers would know, and his computers' brains were as

blank as a baby's at birth.

For the first time since those murky days when a desperate president had called on him to set up this

organization, Harold W. Smith was out of touch with it all.

For the first time, there were no two dozen problems to be juggling at one time.

For the first time, there was only that blank computer terminal, with the lights flashing

meaningless symbols.

And suddenly Harold W. Smith found himself doing something he had not done since grade school when he

had finished reading Peter Rabbit ahead of the rest of the class. He was doodling with a pencil. He was

drawing pictures.

There was a box inside a box inside a box.

He looked at it a moment and then he knew what he would do. Trying to track down

the missing computer records had failed. There had been no response.

But if he set up just the sort of illegal operation that activated the CURE network? Then

when it latched on to him, he could send Remo up through the network. . . .

The pencil dropped on the desk. So Remo could go up through the networks and then

what? None was connected to any other and Smith was disconnected from the whole mess.

He was alone and in this aging part of his life, when the body stopped

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responding to the commands of the mind, he was becoming useless.

And then the telephone rang.

It was the technician in the new headquarters in St. Maarten. They had received a strange message several days

after the failed transmission from someone. Would Smith be interested?

"Absolutely. I want to know everything about the message, especially where it

originates," said Smith.

"I'm sorry, sir, but we didn't get that. Just somewhere in the western part of your country."

"All right. What does it say?" Smith asked.

"It says 'Offer interesting. Will only deal gross.' '

"Deal gross?"

"That's it, sir."

"Did the sender mean big or large or ugly or what?" Smith asked.

"I don't know. Only deal gross, it says.

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