Now, months later, Smith was back to normal. No, he was more than normal. His stomach no longer bothered him. His blinding headaches had abated. He no longer needed his Zantac, or Maalox, or Tums, or Flintstones-brand aspirin, or any of those common remedies.
Another man would have been relieved. Smith was worried. He was a chronic worrier.
He decided against taking a tablespoon of Maalox, just in case, and closed the drawer. Pressing a concealed stud on the other side of his shabby oak desk, Smith watched a panel drop and slide away. An ordinary computer terminal hummed up and clicked into place.
It was no more ordinary than Smith. It connected to a bank of mainframes deep in the Folcroft basement. These in turn fed off virtually every computer in the country that could be accessed by modem. Their memory banks contained a vast reservoir of raw data on people, companies, and organizations that could conceivably be of use to Smith in the performance of his secret duties.
Smith got to work. He was relieved that he would not need Remo and Chiun on this one. They invariably brought results-but also problems.
Smith logged on to the wire service news-feeds. He got the preliminary bulletins that were now breaking all over the nation.
These told him the bare facts. The airline; flight number, and confirmation that the governor and lieutenant-governor were on the passenger list although the bodies had yet to be recovered.
This scant information was enough. Smith logged over to the airlines reservation data banks, using the access code of a mythical travel agency.
The governor's ticket had been purchased by a third party, Smith discovered, through a Sacramento travel agency. He called up the purchaser's name.
Behind his rimless eyeglasses, Smith's puritanical gray eyes blinked.
The name was Emmanuel Nogeira.
"This must be a joke," Smith muttered.
Smith next went to the lieutenant governor's ticket file. It, too, was a third-party purchase, charged to the same Mastercard number.
This time Smith gave vent to a gasp as dry as the New England soil that had nourished him.
An "Emmanuel Nogeira" had purchased that ticket as well. He had also paid for the Federal Express shipping cost to the recipient ticket holder's name.
Smith switched off, and called up the Mastercard file after a brief tapping of keys and the press of a hot key. Smith had set up his system so that by pressing the hot key marked F4 on his keyboard, whatever computer system he had called up would be immediately attacked by the proper password, kept on permanent file in the mainframe.
The Mastercard system surrendered in a twinkling.
The file showed that the "Emmanuel Nogeira" in question currently resided at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Miami, Florida. His occupation was given as "Displaced Dictator and Prisoner of War."
Reflexively, Harold Smith reached for his drawer of pharmaceuticals.
He pulled it open, looked inside, and realized that, despite the horrific discovery he had made, he felt no need for medical support. Slowly, he closed the drawer.
The card file showed that Emmanuel Nogeira was carrying six months' worth of debt. He was just a hair under his credit limit.
It also showed that he had purchased two front-row tickets to a Nana Mouskouri concert at the L.A. Music Center for eight P.M. on this very night.
Smith swallowed what little saliva remained in his rapidly drying mouth. The fatal flight had had a Los Angeles destination.
Harold W. Smith was a man who believed in order. He understood that he lived in a mathematical universe, one ruled by variables and constants. Coincidence abounded, but unbroken chains of coincidences did not.
In a rational universe governed by mathematical principles, the green alphanumeric symbols that wavered before Harold Smith's eyes told of a clever plot to lure the governor and lieutenant governor of California to their deaths.
Smith did not yet know how. He was a long way from understanding why. But he had a working model of the problem-and he had pulled it all together in just under five minutes.
Smith sat back in his chair, his gray eyes still on the screen, but no longer seeing the displayed data, except as abstract green lights. His eyes were focused inward.
Smith was a gray man. He was thin and pinch-faced. He might have been a stern headmaster out of the nineteenth century. His clothes, although twentieth-century, had that flavor too. His lanky, angular frame was swathed in a three-piece gray suit of conservative cut. His hair was white and thinning. His school tie bore Dartmouth stripes. It was the only splash of color on his otherwise colorless person.
No one looking at Harold Smith could imagine his burdens, or grasp the fact that, next to the President of the United States, he was the most powerful man in the U.S. government, which of course meant the entire world.
Through his nondescript computer, Smith ran CURE. He enjoyed full autonomy. Although he reported directly to the President, just as he had to the current President's predecessors going back to the one who had died in office after creating CURE, a victim of an assassin's bullet, Smith was not answerable to the Executive Branch. He took requests, reported concerns. That was as far as it went. Smith was empowered to take whatever action he deemed necessary to deal with internal problems and external threats.
Technically, this arrangement made him more powerful than the President. But there was one presidential directive Smith was obligated to accept: the shutdown command. If invoked, Smith would, without hesitation, erase his massive data banks, put into motion a plan of action that would take his sole enforcement arm, Remo Williams, out of the picture. And when that was accomplished, and only then, he would swallow his vest-pocket pill and go to his reward-whatever that might be.
Right now, Smith wasn't thinking about any of that. He was wondering what plan General Emmanuel Alejandro Nogeira had in mind-and for the first time, he was worried that his enforcement arm might succeed in an assignment.
Because right at this moment, Harold W. Smith wanted General Emmanuel Nogeira very much alive. And only hours before he had sent Remo to Miami to liquidate Nogeira.
"Damn."
The curse was barely a breath. Smith rarely cursed. He was of taciturn New England stock. Vermont Smiths didn't curse, although sometimes they kicked the furniture.
There was no way to contact Remo in the field. He was the perfect field agent in some respects. He almost always came through. But a dismal failure, insofar as carrying communications equipment was concerned. In desperation, Smith had simplified his contact phone number to an unbroken succession of ones. Even Remo could not forget that code.
If only he would call in, Smith thought, his weary eyes going to the blue contact telephone.
They were still on the blue instrument, several minutes later, when it shrilled suddenly.
Smith grabbed the receiver, said, "Remo! Have you completed your mission?"
"Yes and no," Remo said guardedly.
"Please do not burden me with evasions. I want a direct answer. Did you terminate your target?"
Remo's voice was abashed. "I'm sorry, Smitty. I kinda screwed it up."
"Thank God," Smith said.
"Huh?" Remo grunted.
"Nogeira is alive then?"
"Not exactly."
"What do you mean?"
"An alligator got him."
"Got? By what do you mean, 'got'?"
"Got, as in 'turned into a human Tootsie Pop,' " Remo said flatly. "What other kind of 'got' is there, where alligators are concerned?"
"Then he is dead," Smith said woodenly.
"I think his toes may still be twitching, but his head was definitely dead," Remo said dryly.
"This is unfortunate. I very much wanted Nogeira alive."
"Yeah? Then why'd you send me out to take him out? Was this some bullshit field test that I screwed up by not screwing up?"