Created, the Destroyer

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.»

Smith 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.