The Destroyer - 73 - The Destroyer 073 - Line of Succession by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:51:50+00:00

Chapter 18

The Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States was al­ready awake when the spe­cial tele­phone rang. He had been ly­ing in bed en­joy­ing a few min­utes of ex­tra rest be­fore hav­ing to get up, when the muf­fled ring­ing start­ed.

“Not again,” cried his wife.

“Could you ex­cuse me, dear?” the Pres­ident said, ma­neu­ver­ing him­self in­to a sit­ting po­si­tion on the edge of the bed. The phone rang again.

The First La­dy mum­bled some­thing un­der her breath and climbed in­to a sheer night­gown. “If that’s World War III, I’ll be in the show­er.”

When she was out of hear­ing, the Pres­ident opened the end-​ta­ble draw­er and lift­ed the re­ceiv­er of the red phone. “Good morn­ing,” he said cheer­ily.

“I’m sor­ry to wake you, Mr. Pres­ident,” said the voice of Dr. Harold W. Smith.

The Pres­ident’s voice hard­ened. “I’ve been awake for sev­er­al min­utes. Why does ev­ery­one as­sume I’m not awake at this hour? It’s al­ready nine o’clock.”

“Yes, Mr. Pres­ident,” Smith said stiffly. “If I may make my re­port.”

“Fire away,” said the Pres­ident.

“As you may know, there was an at­tempt on Gov­er­nor Prin­cip­pi’s life last night.”

“A gang of street punks,” said the Pres­ident. “Prob­ably copy­cat­ting the at­tacks on the Vice-​Pres­ident.”

“There’s no rea­son to be­lieve oth­er­wise at this point in time,” Smith said, “but we should not as­sume any­thing.”

“The gang mem­bers are dead, I’m told.”

“Yes, my spe­cial per­son ac­count­ed for most of them.”

“That should im­press the gov­er­nor.”

“Mr. Pres­ident, the gov­er­nor knows about our op­er­ation. And he’s not hap­py with it, or with me.”

The Pres­ident’s hand tight­ened on the re­ceiv­er. “How?”

“It ap­pears that an un­known per­son sign­ing him­self ‘Tulip’ has sent let­ters de­scrib­ing CURE op­er­ations to both the gov­er­nor and the Vice-​Pres­ident. The gov­er­nor’s let­ter is in my hands. It’s post­marked South Ko­rea. From that, I be­lieve I can in­fer the source of Tulip’s knowl­edge.”

“Yes?”

“He seems to have ac­cessed per­son­al di­aries of our spe­cial per­son which have re­mained in the vil­lage of Sinan­ju since the in­ci­dent with the So­vi­ets last year.”

“I re­mem­ber it well,” the Pres­ident said bit­ter­ly.

“A fluke, sir,” Smith said un­com­fort­ably.

“Well, this makes two flukes in one year.”

“I am aware of that, sir. If it’s your wish that I cease op­er­ations, I can be shut down with­in the hour. I should have been aware of this pos­si­bil­ity.”

“I’m not pre­pared to do that, Smith,” said the Pres­ident with­out hes­ita­tion. “Af­ter that last in­ci­dent, you’ll re­call we de­cid­ed that you could op­er­ate with­out an en­force­ment arm. You’d be do­ing that if your spe­cial per­son, the Ko­re­an, hadn’t re­turned to Amer­ica and of­fered you an­oth­er year of ser­vice. Isn’t it about time for your con­tract with him to lapse?”

“Yes, he hand­ed me a new one just this morn­ing. Its terms are quite gen­er­ous. Of course, I ex­plained to him that if I sign it, I may not be able to guar­an­tee its terms af­ter you leave of­fice.”

“What the next ad­min­is­tra­tion de­cides is their busi­ness. For now, you will con­tin­ue op­er­ations.”

“And our spe­cial per­son?”

“Have him de­stroy his records. Make that a stip­ula­tion of this new con­tract. If he re­fus­es, ter­mi­nate his em­ploy­ment. Is that all?”

“Not quite, sir.

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