[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

The benighted expanse of Long Island Sound sparkled behind Harold Smith like a
restive bejeweled giant. In Rye, New York, Harold Winston Smith was working
overtime.
There had been no reports of Remo Williams since the Tacoma incident. This was
not good. Smith had hoped that if he fed Remo assignments on demand, his lone
enforcement arm would soon grow bored with a string of inconsequential hits
and return. Remo had always complained about the small assignments. Now he
seemed to relish them.
The graphs were keyed to major American cities. They charted something
unusual: raw violence. Smith's massive computers culled this data from ongoing
scans of news reports and quantified them. Most cities charted between twenty
and forty on the violence scale.
Smith was studiously looking for fifty-plus. Anything that high would mean
either an armed incursion from foreign forces or Remo on a tear.
To his profound disappointment, nothing higher than a thirty-seven-point-six
registered. That was a street riot down in Miami.
Smith leaned back in his ancient cracked leather chair, his lemony frown
souring further.
"Where the hell is Remo?" he said aloud. It was an unusual breach of decorum
for the Vermont-born Smith. He seldom swore. And speaking aloud the name of a
man who had ceased to exist long years before-even in an empty office-was not
in character.
But these were not normal times. Everything had been turned upside down. Death
had struck the inner circle of CURE.
As the hour approached midnight, Smith reluctantly pressed a concealed stud
under his old desk.
The desktop terminal began to sink into the oak, its keyboard folding back
politely. The device disappeared from view. A scratched section of desktop
clicked back into place. No seams showed.
Harold Smith got stiffly to his feet. He retrieved his battered briefcase from
atop a gunmetal file cabinet and locked his office behind him.
He took the stairs to the first floor because he needed the exercise. It was
one flight down.
Nodding to the night guard, Smith walked to his reserved space, his shoulders
stooped. Thirty years had taken a toll on the ex-CIA bureaucrat who had
neither asked for nor wanted the incredible weight placed on his rail-thin
shoulders.
Smith tooled his battered station wagon through the lion's-head guarded gates
of Folcroft Sanitarium, his briefcase bouncing on the passenger seat beside
him.
The summer trees-poplars and elms-filed by like a towering eldritch army on
the march. The fresh sea air rushed in through the open windows. It revived
Smith's logy brain.
As he coasted into the center of Rye, New York, Smith searched for an open
drugstore. His stomach had started to bother him. Some antacid would help. He
looked for a chain store. They usually had the generic brands at the cheapest
Page 16
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
prices.
The briefcase beside him emitted an insistent buzzing. Smith pulled over to
the curb and unlatched the case carefully, so as not to trigger the built-in
detonation charges.
The lid came up, exposing a portable computer and a telephone receiver. Smith
picked this up.
"Yes?" he said, knowing it could only be one of two people, the President of
the United States or Remo.
To his relief, it was Remo.
"Hiya, Smitty," Remo said distantly. "Miss me?"
"Remo! Where are you now?"
"Phone booth," Remo said. "One of the old-fashioned ones with a glass door and
the rank bouquet of passing winos. I thought they had all been put to sleep-or
whatever they do to antique phone booths."
"Remo, it is time you returned home."
"Can't go home." Traffic sounds almost smothered his quiet reply.
"Why not?"
"It's haunted."
"What did you say?"
"That's why I left, Smitty. Everywhere I looked, I saw . . . him."
"You cannot run from the natural grieving process," Smith said firmly. He
would be firm with Remo. There was no point in coddling him. He was a grown
man. Even if he had suffered a great loss. "Confronting the loss is the first
step. Denial only prolongs the pain." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

  • zanotowane.pl
  • doc.pisz.pl
  • pdf.pisz.pl
  • thierry.pev.pl

    •