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  For a day, he was the third employee of CURE who knew for whom he worked and why. And then he was intertwined with the shock absorbers at the bottom of an elevator shaft, and only two employees, Dr. Smith and a man named Remo, knew for whom they worked and why. Which was the way it was supposed to be.

  Now the hourly reports were showing that perhaps the danger of exposure was imminent again, something that Smith had dreaded since the early formation of CURE years before.

  He had dozed at his desk the night before, and awoke with the first salmon shimmers in the cold gray dawn, crowning the darkness of Long Island Sound. His one-way window to the sound collected early morning dew around the edges although he had been assured that the thermal windows would not do such a thing.

  His assistant had just quietly deposited another report in front of him when Smith opened his eyes.

  "Bring me my electric razor and my toothbrush, please," he said.

  "Certainly," said the assistant. "That special clearing section is working very smoothly, sir. I must say this is the first information clearing center to work so smoothly while not knowing what it was doing."

  "The razor, please," Smith said. He turned the bundles of reports in front of him over, and began to look through them chronologically. The reports were apparently unrelated documents, which was as it should be. Only one person should be able to put the pieces together.

  A salesman for a car company in Puerto Rico reported on the love life of the owner of a cab company. An accountant, believing he was being bribed by the Internal Revenue Service, made note of a sudden large deposit of money by the owner of the cab company.

  A doorman, where a young woman kept her pet poodle, told a newspaper reporter who had paid for the poodle.

  A flight from Albania to Leipzig, then Paris. Large amounts of money coming out of Eastern Europe in small bills. An according upgrading of CIA activities, in case the money was payment for increased espionage.

  But the money came in through Puerto Rico. And the taxicab company. And Smith remembered the bodies strewn out behind the cab on the lonely side road near the airport.

  And then disturbing reports.

  The Chinese girl arriving at Dorval Airport. Met by an elderly Korean and a bodyguard. The bodyguard, six feet tall, brown eyes, well-tanned complexion, medium build.

  And there it was. The photograph. Of Remo Williams walking behind Chiun and the girl.

  And if he could be photographed by the Pelnor Investigative Service which believed it serviced an industrial account in Rye, New York, who else could make solid contact with the trio and the only other employee of CURE who knew for whom he worked?

  That photograph alone was like sighting a gun, not only at Remo Williams' head but at CURE itself.

  To be known. To be exposed. The armour of secrecy peeled off. And the fact that the United States government itself could not function within its own laws, laid bare.

  If the Pelnor Investigative Service could so easily spot the trio, who else?

  There it was, the two Orientals obviously yelling at each other, and the man who had been publicly executed years before. A neat picture obviously shot with a not-very-long telephoto lens.

  The face of Remo Williams had been changed by plastic surgery, the cheekbones, nose and hairline altered. But to see their ultimate weapon, The Destroyer, in a common photograph made by simple private detectives made Smith's already queasy stomach turn sour in anticipation of coming doom.

  CURE would be disbanded before being exposed. Only the two men would know, as they had known before, and they would not know for long. Smith had prepared the destruct mechanism the day he returned from his meeting with the President.

  He had his pill. He would phone his wife and tell her he was off on business. In a month, a man from the C.I.A. would tell Mrs. Smith her husband had been lost on an assignment in Europe. She would believe it because she still believed that he worked for the C.I.A.

  Smith dropped the photograph into the shredder basket behind him. The basket whirred and Remo Williams' picture disappeared.

  He spun his chair around and peered out at the sound and the lapping waves breaking over the rocks in small rhythmic currents, dictated by moon and wind and tide.

  The water was there before CURE. It would be there after CURE. It had been there when Athens was a democracy, when Rome was a republic, and when China stood at the center of world civilization, known for its justice and wisdom and serenity.

  They had fallen and the water continued. And when CURE was gone, there would still be the water.

  Smith would do several small things when he put CURE into destruct. He would make the phone call to payroll which would reassign approximately half the people back to the agencies they thought they worked for anyway, turn Folcroft back into a real sanatorium, and dismiss with recommendations the remainder.

  When this large scale dismissal was processed through the computer, it would set off in one day a raging fire within the computer complex destroying the tapes and the equipment.

  Smith would not witness the fire. He would have, 24 hours earlier, left a memo ordering shipment of a box in the basement to the Maher Funeral Home in Parsippany, New Jersey. He would not see the memo executed either.

  He would have gone downstairs, to the corner of the paint room, where the box stood in the corner, slightly taller and wider than the average man. He would remove the light aluminium lid, lie down in the tight white foam rubber, approximately hollowed for his figure, and pull the lid back down over himself. From the inside, he would snap shut four locks that fastened the lid and made it airtight.

  He would need no air. Because when the last lock was closed, he would swallow the pill and go to sleep forever along with the organization he had helped design to save a nation incapable of saving itself.

  What of Remo Williams? He would die soon after if the plan worked. And it was the only plan that could work. For when Smith had put the destruct plan on "prepare", Remo's executioner was already at Remo's side. He had been assigned to accompany him.

  Smith would receive the daily phone contact from Remo through a Detroit dial-a-prayer, and would 'tell Remo to send Chiun back to Folcroft immediately.

  And when Remo told this to Chiun, Chiun would fulfil his contract of death, as Koreans had been fulfilling contracts for centuries.

  And Remo and Smith would carry with them to their graves the awesome secret of CURE. And when the only other person who even knew of its existence called from the White House, he would get that busy signal on the special line signifying that CURE was no more.

  Chiun, who never knew for whom he worked except that it was the government, would probably return to Korea to live his few remaining years in peace.

  The waves beat steadily on the shore.

  The world was close to peace. What a fantastic dream. How many years of peace had the world known? Was there ever a time when man was not killing man, or when war upon relentless war was not being waged to adjust this border or to right that wrong, or even in its ultimate silliness, to protect a nation's honor?

  The President had a dream. And Smith and Remo might have to die for it. So be it. It was worth dying for.

  It would be nice to be able to tell Remo why he was going to die but Smith could not dare reveal how Remo would die. If one had an advantage against this most perfect killing machine, one kept it. To use when needed.

  And then the special line from Remo rang.

  Smith picked up the receiver. He suddenly felt a deep and disturbing affection for this wisecracking killer, the sort of attachment one makes in a foxhole one has shared with someone for ... what was it now, eight years?

  "Seven-four-four," said Smith.

  "You're some piece of work," came Remo's voice. "You really gave me the business. You know the two of them are fighting?"

  "I know."

  "It's incredibly stupid to keep Chiun on this thing. He's popped his cork."

  "You need someone who can
translate."

  "She speaks English."

  "And what does she speak to a Chinese who might try to contact her?" Smith said.

  "Okay. I'll try to live through it. We'll be leaving Boston later today."

  "We're checking out that Puerto Rican group. We still don't know who sent them."

  "Okay. We're going to start looking around."

  "Be careful. That cab company has delivered a very fat little bundle of cash to the mainland. I think it's for you, $70,000."

  "Is that all I'm worth? Even with the deflated dollar?"

  "If that doesn't work, you'll probably be worth $100,000 soon."

  "Hell, I'm worth that to a medicine show. Or a sports contract. How would that be if everything comes apart? A 35-year old cornerback who retires at sixty? Chiun could play tackle. I bet he could. That would blow their minds. An eighty-year-old, ninety-pound tackle."

  "Stop the foolishness."

  "That's what I like about you, sweetheart. You're all joy."

  "Goodbye," said Smith.

  "Chiun. The ninety-pound Alex Karras."

  Smith hung up and returned to the reports. They were all bad and getting worse. Perhaps his own fear of dying was now clouding his judgment. Perhaps CURE already had passed the point of compromise. Maybe he should have ordered Chiun back to Folcroft then and there.

  From the safe on the left side of his desk, he withdrew a small air-sealed plastic bag. It held one pill. He put it in his vest and went back to the reports. Remo would contact again tomorrow.

  The new reports were coming in again, this time with his razor. Remo's call line had been tapped and traced to Rye, New York. That information came from an assistant traffic manager of a telephone company in Boston.

  Smith flicked the intercom to see if his secretary was in yet.

  "Yes, Dr. Smith," came the voice over the intercom.

  "Oh. Good morning. Please send a memo to the shipping department. We're almost certainly going to send an aluminium box of laboratory equipment to Parsippany, New Jersey, tomorrow. I'd like it routed through Pittsburgh and then flown in."

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ricardo deEstrana y Montaldo y Ruiz Guerner had told his visitor that $70,000 was not enough.

  "Impossible," he said, strolling to his patio, his velvet slippered feet moving silently over the fieldstone. He walked to its edge and rested his breakfast champagne on the stone ledge separating him from his acres of rolling gardens that became forest, and beyond that, the Hudson River about to be enveloped in the glorious bright colours of fall.

  "Just impossible," he said again, and breathed deeply the grape-scented breeze coming from his arbours nestling in the New York hills, good wine country because the vines must fight for survival among the rocks. How like life, that its quality was a reflection of its struggle. How true of his vineyards, which he personally supervised.

  He was well into middle age, yet exercise and the good life left him remarkably trim and his continental manners and immaculate dress provided his bed with constant companionship. When he wanted. Which was always before and after, but never during the harvest.

  Now, this grubby little woman with a purse full of money, obviously some sort of Communist affiliate, and more than likely just a messenger, wanted him to risk his life for $70,000.

  "Impossible," he said for the third time and lifted the glass from the hard rock edge of his patio. He held it to the sun as a thank you and the tinted bubbling liquid glistened, as if honoured to be chosen for an offering to the sun.

  Ricardo deEstrana y Montaldo y Ruiz Guerner did not face his guest, to whom he did not offer champagne just as he had not offered her a seat. He had met her in his den, heard her proposition, and declined it. Yet she did not leave.

  Now he heard her heavy shoes follow him, clomping out onto his patio.

  "But $70,000 is more than twice what you get ordinarily."

  "Madame," he said, his voice cold with contempt. "Seventy thousands dollars is twice what I received in 1948. I have not been working since then."

  "But this is an important assignment."

  "For you perhaps. Not for me."

  "Why won't you take it?"

  "That is simply none of your concern, Madame."

  "Have you lost your revolutionary fervor?"

  "I have never had a revolutionary fervor."

  "You must take this assignment."

  He felt her breath behind him, the intense heat of a nervous sweaty woman. You could feel her presence in the pores of your skin. That was the curse of sensitivity, the sensitivity that made Ricardo deEstrana y Montaldo y Ruiz Guerner precisely Ricardo deEstrana y Montaldo y Ruiz Guerner. Once, at $35,000 a mission.

  He sipped his champagne, allowing his mouth to surrender to its vibrancy. A good champagne, not a great one. And unfortunately, not even an interesting champagne although champagnes were notoriously uninteresting anyway. Dull. Like the woman.

  "The masses have bled for the success which is imminent. The victory of the proletariat over the oppressive, racist capitalist system. Now join us in victory or die in defeat."

  "Oh, piffle. How old are you, Madame?"

  "You mock my revolutionary ardour?"

  "I am shocked at a grownup's addiction to it. Communism is for people who never grow up. I take Disney-land more seriously."

  "I cannot believe that you would say such a thing, you who have fought the fascist beast."

  He turned to examine the woman more closely. Her face was lined with years of rage, her hair cast scraggly in many directions beneath a plain black hat that could use a cleaning. Her eyes seemed tired and old. It was a face that had lived through a lifetime of arguments about the absurdities of dialectical materialism and class consciousness, far from where human beings lived their lives. She was about his age, he believed, yet appeared old and worn as though beyond the reach of even a spark of life.

  "Madame, I fought the fascist beast, and so, am qualified to speak on it. It is identical to the communist beast. A beast is a beast. And my revolutionary fervor died when I saw what was supposed to replace the oppression of fascism. It was the oppression of such dullards as yourself. To me, Stalin, Hitler and Mao Tse Tung are identical."

  "You have changed, Ricardo."

  "I should hope so, Madame. People do grow up, unless stunted by some mass movement or other group sickness. I take it you knew me before?"

  "You do not remember me?" Her voice, for the first time, wore some warmth.

  "No, I do not."

  "You do not remember the siege at Alcazar?"

  "I remember that."

  "You do not remember the battle at Teruel?"

  "I remember that."

  "And you do not remember me?"

  "I do not."

  "Maria Deloubier?"

  The champagne glass shattered on the fieldstone terrace. Guerner's face paled.

  "Maria," he gasped. "You?"

  "Yes."

  "Gentle, sweet Maria. No."

  He looked at the haggard, cold face with the old eyes and he still could not see Maria, the young woman who believed and loved, who had reached out each morning for the sunshine as she reached out for a new world.

  "Yes," said the old woman.

  "Impossible," he said. "Time does not ravage like that, without leaving a trace."

  "When you give your life to something, your life goes with it."

  "No. Only if you give your life to something without life." Ricardo deEstrana y Montaldo y Ruiz Guemer gently placed his left hand on the woman's shoulder. He could feel the coarseness of the material, over the hardness of the bone.

  "Come," he said. "We will eat. And we will talk."

  "Will you do this thing for us, Ricardo? It is so important."

  "We will talk, Maria. We have much to talk about."

  Reluctantly, the woman agreed, and during the morning repast of fruit and wine and cheese, she answered questions about where she went after this cell collapsed, or that revolution
succeeded, or this agitation failed or that one succeeded.

  And Guemer discovered where Maria had fled, leaving only this passionless woman before him. Maria was the classic revolutionary, so involved with masses and power structures and political awareness that she forgot human beings. People became objects. Positive responses meant Communists, negative responses meant not Communist.

  So it was easy for her to lump Nazis together with monarchists, democrats, republicans, capitalists. To her they were all alike. They were "them." He also found that she had never remained in a country where her revolutionary efforts were successful. Those who dream most of the promised land are the ones most afraid to cross its borders.

  Maria had softened as she shared the wine. "And what of you, Ricardito?"

  "I have my vines, my estate, my land."

  "No man owns land."

  "I own this land as much as any man owns anything. I have changed this land and these changes are mine. Its beauty is nature. Which I might add does very well without the help of a revolutionary committee."

  "You no longer use your skill?"

  "I use it in different ways. Now I create."

  "When you left us, you worked for others also, no?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Against the revolution?"

  "Of course."

  "How could you?"

  "Maria, I fought for the loyalists for the same reason many fought for the fascists. It was the only war around at the time."

  "But you believed. I know you believed."

  "I believed, my dear, because I was young. And then I grew up."

  "I hope then that I never grow up."

  "You have grown old without growing up."

  "That is unkind. But I would expect that of someone who could pour a life into a hillside instead of giving it to mankind."

  Guerner threw back his leonine head and laughed.

  "Really. That is just too much. You ask me to kill a man for $70,000 and you call it serving mankind."

  "It is. It is. They are a counter-revolutionary force that we have been unable to overcome."