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  The attendants had placed Williams' hands rather formally across his belt buckle. But as they pushed the stretcher quickly down dark prison corridors, the hands slid loose and off the stretcher until his prone body looked like a diver entering the business part of a half-gainer. The attendants pushed the stretcher, its sheets barely trailing the ground, to a door opening onto a loading dock in the prison yard.

  A new Buick ambulance waited there with open doors. The attendants lifted the wheeled stretcher into the ambulance, then shut the vehicle's doors, whose windows were blacked out. The windows on the sides were also blackened. Inside, the dark-haired man who had stood by Haines in the control room threw a blanket off his lap as soon as the doors clicked shut. In his right hand, he held a hypodermic ready. With his left, he switched on an overhead light, then leaned over the body and ripped open the gray prison shirt. He felt carefully for the fifth rib, then sank the needle through the flesh into Remo's heart. Carefully, he pushed the plunger, slowly, evenly, until all the liquid was emptied into Remo's body.

  He withdrew the needle, careful to keep it on its entry path.

  When it was out of the body, he tossed it toward a corner, then reached up to the ceiling and pulled down an oxygen mask on a tube. He could hear the hissing of the oxygen which started pumping the moment the mask was removed from its brace on the ceiling.

  He pressed the mask over Remo's still pale face, then waited, staring at his watch. After a minute, he pressed his ear to Remo's chest. Slowly, a smile formed on his lips.

  He straightened up, removed the mask, replaced it in its bracket, made sure the oxygen was off, then tapped on the window behind the driver's head.

  The ambulance's motors coughed and the big Buick was on its way.

  About fifteen miles from the prison, the ambulance stopped at a side road. One of the attendants, who had exchanged his white garb for a civilian suit, got out of the front seat and went over to a parked car against whose fender a man with a hook for a left hand leaned, casually smoking a cigarette.

  The hooked man flipped the keys to the attendant, dropped his cigarette, then trotted to the rear of the ambulance. He rapped on the door and in an even tone, said: «MacCleary.»

  The doors flung open and he stepped into the vehicle in one smooth motion, almost like a large cat darting into a cave.

  The dark-haired man shut the doors. MacCleary shuffled rapidly to a seat beside the body, still motionless on the black leather of the stretcher. MacCleary turned to the other man and said, «Well?»

  «We got a winner, Conn,» the dark-haired man said. «I think we got a winner.»

  «Nobody wins in this outfit,» the man with the hook said. «Nobody wins.»

  CHAPTER SIX

  The air in the ambulance tasted shot through with oral laxatives as the ambulance rolled along. «Probably the high oxygen content,» MacCleary thought to himself.

  He concentrated on the man on the raised stretcher in the middle of the ambulance and rejoiced at every up-and-down motion of the large chest covered by the sheet. This was the man. He might be the answer.

  «Turn on the lights,» MacCleary said.

  «You sure, Conn? I was told no lights.»

  «The lights,» MacCleary repeated. «Just for a minute.»

  The dark-haired man moved an arm and suddenly the confinement was bathed in a bright yellow glow. MacCleary blinked and then focussed on the face, the high cheekbones, the closed eyes, the lids that hid the deep brown orbs, the smooth white skin, marked by only a faint scar on the chin.

  MacCleary blinked and MacCleary stared. He stared at the biggest pot he had ever been in on. It had violated every rule he had ever been taught about all the eggs in one basket. It was the wrong solution, but it was the only solution.

  And, if the breathing human body on the stretcher worked, a lot more would work. A lot more people would live in a land they loved. The greatest nation on earth might survive as it has been intended to survive. And it might all rest with the slumbering body with the closed eyelids, glinting a shade darker in the bright light than the man's normal skin. Those eyelids. MacCleary had seen them before. And the light had shone on them then, too.

  Only, it had been the sunlight, the hot Vietnam sun and the Marine had been sleeping underneath the wooden skeleton of a gray tree.

  MacCleary had been in the CIA then. Dressed in Army fatigues, he had hiked up a hill with two Marines as escorts.

  It was a back and forth stalemate time of the war. In a few months, he would be home. But right now, MacCleary had an assignment.

  In a small village within American lines, a Viet Cong had set up headquarters. CIA's objective: enter main communications house and capture records, a list of major Viet Cong sympathizers in Saigon.

  If the farmhouse, pinpointed as communications center for the VC, were attacked in normal fashion with men inching forward, the Commies could burn their lists of contacts. CIA wanted the lists.

  MacCleary had worked out a plan to have a full company of Marines stage a charge on the building, with no one seeking cover, almost a Kamikaze attack. This, MacCleary hoped, would be fast enough to deny the time for record burning or anything else.

  The Marines gave him a company. But when he approached the captain in command of the unit, the captain just nodded to a tarpaulin-covered pile on which two Marines sat, their M-l's cradled in their arms.

  «What's that?» MacCleary asked.

  «Your records,» the captain said casually. He was a small, thin man who managed to keep his uniform pressed even in combat conditions.

  «But the assault? You weren't supposed to start it before I got here.»

  «We didn't need you,» the captain said. «Take your records and get your ass out of here. We've done our job.»

  MacCleary started to say something, then turned and walked to the tarpaulin. After 20 minutes of leafing through heavy parchments with Chinese lettering, MacCleary smiled and nodded his respects to the Marine captain.

  «I will make a report expressing CIA gratitude,» he said.

  «You do that,» the captain said sullenly.

  MacCleary glanced at the farmhouse. Its dried mud walls were free of bullet pockmarks.

  «How'd you go in? With bayonets?»

  The captain pushed up his helmet with his right hand and scratched the hair over his temple. «Yes and no.»

  «What do you mean?»

  «We got this guy. He does these things.»

  «What things?»

  «Like this farmhouse deal. He does them.»

  «What?»

  «He goes in and he kills the people. We use him for single-man assaults on positions, night-time work. He, uh, just produces, that's all. It's a lot easier than running up casually lists.»

  «How does he do it?»

  The captain shrugged. «I don't know. I never asked him. He just does it.»

  «I think he should get the Congressional Medal of Honor for this,» MacCleary said.

  «For what?» the captain asked. He looked confused.

  «For getting these damn records by himself. For killing… how many men?»

  «I think it was five in there.» The captain still looked confused.

  «For this and for killing five men.»

  «For that?»

  «Certainly.»

  The captain shrugged his shoulders. «Williams does it all the time. I don't know what's so special about this time. If we make a big deal now, he'll be transferred out. Anyway, he doesn't like medals.»

  MacCleary stared at the captain, looking for the traces of a lie. There was none.

  «Where is he?» MacCleary asked.

  The captain nodded. «By that tree.»

  MacCleary saw that barrel chest in the crotch of the tree, a helmet pulled over a head. He glanced at the farmhouse, the bored captain and then back at the man under the tree.

  «Keep a guard on those records,» he said, then he walked slowly to the tree and stood over the sleeping Marine.

&n
bsp; He kicked the helmet from the head with enough dexterity not to cause injury.

  The Marine blinked, then lazily opened those eyelids.

  «What's your name?» MacCleary asked.

  «Who are you?»

  «A major,» MacCleary answered. He wore the leaves on his shoulders for convenience. He saw the Marine look at them.

  «My name, sir, is Remo Williams,» the Marine said, starting to rise.

  «Stay there,» MacCleary said. «You get the records?»

  «Yes sir. Did I do anything wrong?»

  «No. You thinking of making a career out of the Marines?»

  «No, sir. My hitch is up in two months.»

  «What are you going to do when you get out?»

  «Go back to the Newark Police Department and get fat behind a desk.»

  «It's a waste of a good man.»

  «Yes, sir.»

  «Ever think of joining the CIA?»

  «No.»

  «Would you like to?»

  «No.»

  «Won't change your mind?»

  «No sir.» The Marine was respectful with a sullenness that let MacCleary know the sirs were short convenient words just to avoid complication or involvement.

  «That's Newark, New Jersey,» MacCleary questioned. «Not Newark, Ohio?»

  «Yes sir.»

  «Good job.»

  «Thank you, sir,» the Marine had said and closed his eyes without bothering to reach for the helmet as a shade.

  That had been the last time MacCleary had seen those lids shut. It was a long time ago. And it had been a long time since MacCleary had been with the CIA.

  Williams slept just as peacefully under drugs. MacCleary nodded to the dark-haired man. «Okay, switch off the lights.»

  The sudden blackness was just as blinding as the brightness.

  «Expensive son of a bitch, wasn't he?» MacCleary asked. «You did a good job.»

  «Thanks.»

  «Got a cigarette?»

  «Don't you ever carry them?»

  «Not when I'm with you,» MacCleary said.

  The two men laughed. And Remo Williams emitted a low groan.

  «We got a winner,» the dark-haired man said again.

  «Yeah,» MacCleary said. «His pain's just beginning.» The two men laughed again. Then MacCleary sat quietly smoking, watching the cigarette glow orange red every time he inhaled.

  In a few minutes, the ambulance turned off the simple two-lane road onto the New Jersey Turnpike, a masterpiece of highway engineering and driving boredom. Several years before, it had had the best safety record in the United States, but the growing control of the road, its staff and the state police by politicians had turned it into one of the most dangerous high-speed highways in the world.

  The ambulance roared on into the night. MacCleary bummed five more cigarettes before the driver slowed down and tapped on the window behind him,

  «Yes?» MacCleary asked.

  «Only a few more miles to Folcroft.»

  «Okay, keep going,» MacCleary said. A lot of big shots were waiting for this package to arrive at Folcroft.

  The journey was one hundred minutes old when the ambulance rolled off the paved road and its wheels began kicking up gravel. The ambulance stopped and the man with the hook jumped from the rear door of the ambulance. He looked around quickly. No one in sight. He faced toward the front of the big Buick. A high iron gate loomed overhead, the only entrance through high stone walls. Over the gate, a bronze sign glinted in the October moon. Its somber letters read: Folcroft.

  Inside the ambulance, another groan.

  And back at the prison, Harold Haines realized what had been wrong. The lights had not dimmed when Remo Williams had died.

  At that moment, Remo Williams' «corpse» was rolling through the gates of Folcroft and Conrad MacCleary was thinking to himself: «We should put up a sign that says 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'»

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  «He's already in Medical?» asked the lemon-faced man sitting behind the immaculate glass-topped desk, the silent Long Island Sound dark behind him, and the computer outlets waiting by his fingertips like metallic butlers of the mind.

  «No, I left him lying on the lawn so he could die from exposure. That way we can finish the work of the state,» growled MacCleary. He was drained, emptied by the numbing exhaustion of tension.

  He had borne that tension for four months-from setting up the shooting in the Newark alley until last night's execution. And now, the unit chief, Harold W. Smith, the only other person at Folcroft who knew for whom everyone really worked, this son of a bitch with his account sheets and computers, was asking him whether he had looked after Remo Williams properly.

  «You don't have to be so touchy, MacCleary. We've all been under a strain,» Smith said. «We're still not out of the woods either. We don't even know if our new guest is going to work out. He's a whole new tactic for us, you know.»

  Smith had that wonderful way of explaining something you were fully aware of. He did it with such casualness and sincerity MacCleary wanted to break up the computer outlets with his hook and shred them over Smith's immaculate gray-vested suit. MacCleary, however, only nodded and said: «Do I tell him it will be only five years?»

  «My, we are in a nasty mood today,» Smith said in his usual professorial manner. But MacCleary knew he had gotten to him.

  Five years. That was the original arrangement. Out of business in five years. That was what Smith had told him five years ago when they both resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Smith had been wearing that same damned gray vested suit. Which looked pretty damned peculiar because the two of them were on a motor launch ten miles east of Annapolis in the Atlantic.

  «Five years should see this thing all wrapped up,» Smith had said. «It's for the safety of the nation. If all goes well, the nation will never know we existed and the constitutional government will be safe. I do not know if the President authorized this. I have one contact whom you are not permitted to know. I am your contact. No one else. Everyone else is deaf, dumb and blind.»

  «Get to the point, Smitty,» MacCleary said. He had never seen Smith so shaken.

  «I chose you because you have no real ties to society. Divorced. No family. No prospects of ever starting one. And you are also, despite some odious character defects, a… well, a rather competent agent.»

  «Stop the crap. What are we doing?»

  Smith stared across the foaming waves. «This country is in trouble,» he said.

  «We're always in some kind of trouble,» MacCleary said.

  Smith ignored him. «We can't handle crime. It's that simple. If we live within the constitution, we're losing all hope of parity with the criminals, or at least, the organized ones. The laws don't work. The thugs are winning.»

  «What's it to us?»

  «It's our job. We're going to stop the thugs. The only other options are a police state or a complete breakdown. You and I are the third option».

  «We're going under the name of CURE, a psychological research project sponsored by the Folcroft Foundation. But we are going to operate outside the law to break up organized crime. We're going to do everything, short of actual killing, to turn the tables. And then we disband.»

  «No killing?» MacCleary asked.

  «None. They figure we're dangerous enough as it is. If we weren't so desperate in this country, you and I wouldn't be here.»

  MacCleary could see moisture well in Smith's eyes. So he loved his country. He had always wondered what moved Smith. Now he knew.

  «No way, Smitty,» MacCleary said. «I'm sorry.»

  «Why?»

  «Because I can see the whole pack of us, everyone who knows about this CURE thing, being ferried out to some crappy island in the Pacific after we close shop. Anyone who knows anything about this is going to be dead. You think they're going to take a chance on you and me writing our memoirs? No way, Smitty. Well, not me, baby.»

  Sm
ith stiffened. «You're already in. Sorry.»

  «No way.»

  «You know I can't let you out alive.»

  «Right now I can throw you overboard.» MacCleary paused. «Don't you see, Smitty? It's started already. You kill me; I kill you. No killing, huh?»

  «Internal staff is allowed. Security.» His hand was busy in his jacket pocket.

  «Five years?» MacCleary asked.

  «Five years.»

  «You know I still believe that our bones are going to be bleaching on the sand on some Pacific island.»

  «There's that possibility. So let's keep casulties down in our section. Just me and you. Others do their jobs without knowing. Good enough?»

  «And we used to laugh at Kamikazes,» MacCleary said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was more than five years. CURE had found crime bigger, more organized than the strongest suspicions of Washington.

  Whole industries, labor unions, police departments, even a state legislature were controlled by syndicates. Political campaigns cost money and crime had it. From the top came the word: «CURE to continue operations indefinitely.»

  Folcroft trained hundreds of agents, each knowing a special job, none knowing its purpose. Some were assigned to government agencies all over the country. Under the cover of FBI men or tax men or grain inspectors, they gathered up scraps of information.

  A special section set up an informer network that plumbed careless words from gin mills, gambling dives, brothels. The agents were taught to use the fast five dollar bill or even the larger bribe. Bar flies, pimps, whores, even clerks at checkout counters unwittingly contributed to CURE as they picked up their small change from the guy on the block or the man in that office or that lady writing a book. A few words for a few bucks.

  A bookie in Kansas City thought he was selling out to a rival syndicate when, for $30,000, he outlined how his bosses worked.

  A pusher in San Diego who somehow was never convicted by the courts, despite numerous arrests, always kept a pocketful of dimes for the lengthy phone calls he would make from pay booths.

  A bright young lawyer rose in a crooked New Orleans union as he kept winning cases until one day the FBI received a mysterious 300-page report that enabled the Justice Department to indict the leaders of the union. The bright young lawyer suddenly became very clumsy in court. The convicted union racketeers didn't get a chance for vengeance. The young man just left the state and disappeared.