Created, the Destroyer

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Harold Smith was eating lunch in his office when the direct scrambler line rang. It had little to distinguish it from the other two phones on the large mahogany desk, but a small white dot in the middle of the receiver handle.

Smith returned a spoonful of prune whip yogurt to the white porcelain dish on the silver tray. He wiped his mouth with a linen handkerchief as though expecting an important visitor, and picked up the receiver.

«Smith, 7-4-4,» he said.

«Well,» came the all-too-familiar voice.

«Well what, sir?»

«What about the canvass in New York?»

«Very little progress, I'm afraid, sir. We can't get past Maxwell.»

Smith dropped the handkerchief to the tray and absently began to build prune whip yogurt drifts with the spoon. In the valley of tears that was his life, upstairs never failed to add a few thundershowers, then wonder why he got wet.

«What about the new-type personnel?»

«We're preparing a man now, sir.»

«Now?» the voice came louder. «Preparing him? The Senate is coming to New York very soon, and it can't come with that Maxwell still operating. Too many witnesses disappear. We need a canvass, and if Maxwell's stopping it, then stop Maxwell.»

Smith said «We only have an instructor-recruiter that's capable in this field…»

«Now, damn it. What the hell are you doing up there?»

«If we send our instructor, we'll only have the trainee.»

«Send the trainee then.»

«He wouldn't stand a chance.»

«Then send your recruiter. I don't care how you do it.»

«We need three more months. Our trainee will be ready then.»

«You will eliminate Maxwell within one month. That is an order.»

«Yes, sir,» Smith said and hung up the receiver. He demolished the yogurt drifts and let the spoon sink into the grayish mixture.

MacCleary or Williams. One untrained, the other the only link to new material. Maybe Williams could pull it off. But if he failed, then no one. Smith stared at the white-dotted phone and then at the inter-Folcroft lines.

He picked up a local phone. «Special unit,» he said into the receiver and waited. The noon sun sparkled on the waters of Long Island Sound.

«Special unit,» a voice answered.

«Let me speak to…» Smith's voice tailed off. «Never mind,» he said. Then he hung up and stared at the waters while he made his decision.