"I don't want to win if I have to win that way," said Corbish. Naturally the unfounded rumor spread through the school. In approximately an hour it had become such widespread knowledge that after much audible soul searching Blake Corbish had found it necessary to publicly plead with the senior class not to let the personal lives of the candidates unduly influence their votes.
Corbish won by a landslide. He got his scholarship to Williams, finishing 73rd in a class of 125. As one professor described him, he was "an incredibly undistinguished scholar whose morality reflected social convenience rather than any sense of right or wrong, a man who could throw people into ovens as easily as he might work to support the Salvation Army making no distinction between them."
Why not President of the United States? thought Blake Corbish. After all, who would have suspected Blake Corbish of Mendocino, California, would become the youngest senior vice president for policy planning in the history of IDC?
When Corbish parked the truck in the small driveway he noted that the kitchen door was ajar. Had someone entered the house? He could have sworn he locked it, and the old man had to be dead by now. He checked the back of the pickup. The bricks and cement were in fine order. Within a month or two, it wouldn't matter if the body were found. If he continued at Folcroft the way he had started, in a month he could get the person who found Dr. Smith's body convicted of the crime. He could do anything.
But right now he had to handle the sticky details. And there were many of them. For instance, the direct line from the President of the United States to Smith's desk. Corbish had made a tape recording and cut it into the line. The recording said simply that there was transmission trouble on the line. The call would be returned. This was just a holding action, but it would keep the President out of it until Corbish had gotten all of CURE and Folcroft under his control.
There were many similar details which Corbish had to handle. And when they were done, he would be able to use the power of CURE in any way he wanted. Why not President of the United States?
Corbish had intended to return sooner for Smith, but when he discovered that the old man had indeed given him the correct programming instructions, he tossed himself into his work with the glee of a child playing with a new set of toys. One day led to another and then another and then another. Day after day of successful operations. Now it was too late. So be it. Smith would already be dead. Corbish had learned from the computers that Smith had been investigating Blake Corbish and that meant Smith planned to have him killed. It was just Smith's bad luck that Corbish had been smarter.
Corbish saw dark stains on the kitchen floor. He bent to examine them. He scratched one with his thumb. It crinkled like a nut frosting. Bloodstains. Several days old. They came from the living room. In the living room, he saw they came from a passageway behind a bookcase. The passageway, he saw, led to the lead-lined room.
And the room was empty.
He felt the first rushes of panic overcome him and he subdued them. He had been in tight spots before. All right, Smith had escaped. Reasonable. He was also very weak. Was it possible someone had come to rescue him?
Corbish looked at the stains. Doubtful. You don't rescue someone in Smith's condition and let him bleed all the way to the door.
No, the old man had somehow found the energy to escape. By himself.
All right. What could Smith do? He could contact his killer arm. Corbish thought about the long winding road, the isolation of the area, and, most blessedly, the dismantled telephone line. But the stains were days old. If Smith had contacted the killer arm, Corbish would have been dead by now. And he was very much alive.
All right, this is where the successes are separated from the failures. He would tough it out.
Corbish did not have to brick up the deep basement anymore so he drove back into town, every once in a while braking the increasing speed that came when he brooded about the empty cellar. The bricks rattled loudly in the back of the truck, but none bounced out. By the time Corbish was at his Manhattan appointment with T.L. Broon on the other side of the country, he was smiling confidently, assured, gracious and rather humble as praise was heaped upon the youngest senior vice president for policy planning in the history of International Data Corporation.
He spoke before the executive committee of IDC—nine men who looked remarkably like Blake Corbish and T.L. Broon himself—and before T.L. Broon's father, whose portrait hung in the Manhattan boardroom, a pastel-carpeted expanse of low-ceilinged space with indirect lighting and a table so long and so wide it made everyone sitting at the sides feel insignificant. Only the person at the head of the table could feel he mattered. And that, Corbish reflected, was T.L. Broon. At least for the moment.
Only one face in the door did not exude dynamic optimism. It was the portrait of Josiah Broon, who had started IDC with a sales route for a cash register that was much like all other cash registers, until Josiah came up with the slogan, "It thinks for you." As more and more executives realized the dangers of doing any sort of thinking at all, at least any that could be traced to them, IDC grew and became a giant.
The expression of old Josiah looked down on the boardroom as if someone had created an unpleasant odor. It was much the same expression he had worn in life and had worn when he transferred the company to T.L. Broon.
"I don't think even you can fuck it up, sonny. We're too rich for that now."
In the published history of IDC, these words mellowed, with the help of the public relations department, until they became: "You represent, son, what is best in America."
Those words were engraved in a bronze plaque beneath the portrait of Josiah before which Blake Corbish now spoke.
"I accept this promotion on behalf of the IDC team," said Corbish. "IDC always has meant the future and the future is youth."
There were smiles and applause around the table. Corbish reveled in the insincerity of the smiles because here insincerity was the sincerest form of compliment. If youth was the future, then these members of the executive board were the past
Broon called Corbish to the head of the table and shook his hand.
"You are now senior vice president for policy planning," said Broon.
And it was done.
Senior Vice President Blake Corbish. Who would have thought it? Blake Corbish from Mendocino, California. And maybe one day, President of the United States Blake Corbish.
Of course, there were still some obstacles. One of them was at that moment in a San Francisco hospital, insisting that he not only felt good enough to walk, but to make a phone call himself.
He dialed a Miami hotel.
"I'm sorry, sir. That party has checked out," said the operator to Dr. Harold Smith.
CHAPTER SEVEN
There were guards now at Folcroft, young men with neat snappy uniforms and polished black holsters who stopped people at the entrance to examine identification. Remo noticed that only those with little printed badges that glowed purple under a scanner were allowed to pass.
Camera eyes scanned the old brick walls of the onetime estate.
"It doesn't look the same," said Remo. "Not just the guards and the cameras, but the walls don't look as I remember them. They used to seem so big and thick and impenetrable."
"This is not the same place you left, because you are now different," said Chiun.
"I guess so," said Remo.
"The weather in Persia must be beautiful at this time of year. Have you ever tasted melon at the very moment of ripening? It is one of the truly rare fruits."
"It's Iran, now, Little Father," said Remo, who had been fielding these suggestions since Miami. First, it had been Russia. The czars always paid reliably and generously, Czar Ivan being the finest.