"First question," said Remo. "Do you approve of the National Weather Service's new naming system for hurricanes?"
"What?" shouted Roger Sherman Coe over the growing roar.
"Hurricane Elvis," Remo shouted back. "It's an experiment. After we saw how popular the post office was with the Elvis stamp, we thought we'd try it. You know, try to improve the popularity of tropical storms. Do you approve of Elvis as a hurricane name? Please answer yes or no."
"No! I don't approve of hurricanes at all."
"Good. Now, the National Weather Service hopes that Hurricane Elvis will be just the first of a new series of celebrity hurricanes. We're considering the following names for the rest of the hurricane season-Tropical Storm Roseanne, Hurricane Madonna and Hurricane Clint."
"Eastwood or Black?"
"Black. Country music is big again. Now, could you rank the choices in order of preference?"
"Look, I'd like to get through Elvis before worrying about the next blow, if it's all the same to you."
"Got it. Now, the obligatory sexual-preference question. Do you prefer hurricanes named after men or women?"
"I prefer no hurricanes!" Roger Sherman Coe shouted, trying to hold the door open. Remo wondered why the man didn't simply invite him in, and decided some people just didn't know when to come in out of a blow.
"That wasn't a trick question. I need a sexual preference."
"Girl hurricanes sound better. I grew up in girl hurricanes."
"Same here," said Remo.
"Are we done now?" asked Roger Sherman Coe, squinting against the wind that seemed not to bother Remo at all.
"Stay with me. Just a couple more questions."
"Make it fast!"
"What about building so close to the water on hurricane-active areas? If Elvis smashes this place down, do you think FEMA money should be used to rebuild?"
"FEMA is a joke."
"Tell it to the Midwest flood victims."
"I almost lost this place to Hugo."
"No wonder you prefer girl hurricanes."
"I prefer no hurricanes."
Elvis's wail was building now. It didn't have the freight-train roar that characterized a full-blown tropical storm, but it was coming. Remo knew he would have to wind this up.
"Do you have any next of kin?" he asked.
"Why does the National Weather Service care about that?" Roger Sherman Coe wanted to know.
"Because you're not going to survive Elvis," Remo said in a casual voice.
Roger Sherman Coe saw the lips of the pollster from the National Weather Service move, but didn't catch the words.
"What?" he shouted.
"Do you believe it's a dog-eat-dog world?" Remo shouted.
"What kind of fool question is that?"
"A direct one."
"Yeah, it's a dog-eat-dog world."
"So if you're a dog that eats other dogs, it's okay?"
"It's the way the world works."
"And if another dog, a bigger dog, decided to eat you, you can't really complain, can you?"
"Not if I barked first."
"You ain't nothin' but a hound dog," said Remo.
"What?" said Roger Sherman Coe.
"I just wanted to see if you understood why they sent me to take a bite out of you!"
"I'm not following you," Roger Sherman Coe screamed into the growing blow.
"You're Roger Sherman Coe. Right?"
"Right."
"The Roger Sherman Coe who makes his living as a contract killer?"
"What?"
"Who burned down an entire house with the family in it so they wouldn't testify against the D'Ambrosia Family?"
"Are you crazy? You have the wrong man."
"Not according to the National Computer Crime Index," said Remo, lifting an innocent-looking hand. He made a fist but left his index finger sticking out. He was very casual about it-because that was the Eastern way-and that gave Roger Sherman Coe time to slam the door in Remo's face.
But not enough time to step back from the door. They say a hurricane can drive a straw through a solid tree trunk. Remo didn't need a hurricane to back him. His right index finger shot through the panel and caught Roger Sherman Coe directly over the heart. When Remo withdrew the finger, the door slid open and Roger Sherman Coe's jittering body fell with it. When he landed at Remo's feet, he was already dead. His heart had burst under the piston-like power of Remo's single finger.
The wind was pretty wild now, and Remo decided to leave the body where it lay, with the front door open. The hurricane would sweep right in, and with luck, when they found Roger Sherman Coe's body after it was all over, his death would be blamed on Elvis. An act of God would have killed Roger Sherman Coe and not a force of nature or a secret arm of the United States government that had decided a criminal of Roger Sherman Coe's caliber deserved the ultimate sanction.
Remo was walking away when he heard the tiny shriek.
He turned.
Standing in the doorway of the beachfront house was a little girl with sad brown eyes and dirty blond hair. She had a fist up to her mouth and she was saying "Daddy?" in an uncomprehending voice.
"What is it, April?" a woman's anxious voice demanded. And a tall blond woman stepped into the wind. Seeing the body, she pulled the little girl away from the door, then fell on the body, crying, "Roger. Roger. Get up. What's wrong, Roger?"
By that time Remo Williams had disappeared into the howling wind whose freight-train roar was not long in coming.
At the height of the storm, a state police helicopter spotted a man in a black T-shirt standing firm at the end of a stone jetty against the incoming wind. That was incredible enough.
The part that was astounding, and ultimately decided the pilot against reporting the sighting, was the way the man stood up to the gale. Especially when airborne driftwood and other debris snapped toward him. Each time he lifted an open hand or the tips of his shoes he smashed the wind-driven wood into splinters that were carried, whirling and harmless, away.
He looked angry. He looked very angry. A person would have to be very, very, very angry to take on Hurricane Elvis.
Strangest of all, it looked as if the guy was trying to protect a single beach-front house from destruction. And he was winning.
Chapter 3
Dr. Harold W Smith arrived in his office as dawn broke, nodded to his private secretary and carefully closed the door to his Spartan office, whose picture window of one-way glass overlooked the dead gray expanse of Long Island Sound. It was usually a sparkling blue dotted with white sails. Today it was gray and strange and flat.
There was a hurricane watch from Charleston, South Carolina, to Block Island. Elvis had glanced off Wilmington and now was prowling up the East Coast like a howling wolf, pushing ahead of it heavy, oppressive air and sullen clouds.
Harold W Smith was not concerned about Hurricane Elvis as he settled in behind his shabby oak desk and for the last time touched the concealed stud that brought the blank glass face of his hidden desktop terminal humming from its well.
Harold W Smith didn't know that he had executed that action-one he had performed almost daily for most of the thirty years he sat in the director's chair of Folcroft Sanitarium-for the final time. He simply logged on and initiated the virus-scanning program. It ran its cycle in less than six seconds and announced the new WORM arrays, as well as the old IDC mainframe tape drives, to be virus free.
It had been almost a week now since he had had the new XL SysCorp jukeboxes with their WORM drives installed in the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium, the nerve center for CURE, the organization he secretly headed.
So far, Smith was pleased. It was rare for Harold W Smith to be pleased about anything. He was a gray individual to whose dry, patrician visage smiles did not easily come. No smile actually touched his thin lips this morning. Something tugged at the corners, but only someone who had known Harold Smith all his life could have recognized the faintly constipated grimace as an expression of pleasure.