Corbish would have to find out why CURE was able to function without guards or gates or questions to visitors, he thought. The flight back to the West Coast was perfect, although he had to fly through some weather, unable to risk putting an oxygen mask on the unconscious Smith.
The car he had rented the day before was waiting at the San Francisco Airport. Even the drive up the twisting Route 1 and then along the mountain path to his special home seemed smooth. As he passed the white cabin on his way up, he saw that it was already boarded up. Excellent. He had only asked that it be vacated, then boarded up later. What was the cover story he had used with the real estate man? He wanted seclusion from the pressure of business, that was it. Naturally, the salesman believed he had purchased the house as an executive love nest. That was just what Corbish wanted. The best cover stories were those where you let someone believe he had discovered something you wanted hidden, something embarrassing.
Corbish was an expert at getting through cover stories, but had never seen a person who had so many layers to one as Smith.
He had put Dr. Smith on the floor of the deep lead-lined cellar, then gotten a kitchen table from upstairs. The house had come furnished. He tied the hands with leather straps he had fashioned at home from old belts. He had picked up a stethoscope in a pawnshop.
He had strapped Smith down and waited for him to revive. The pen had gone so deep that it was well into the next day before the old man opened his eyes. When he did so, Corbish first offered the proposition. Tell him about CURE's operation and there would be no pain. Smith played dumb, then Corbish began with the homemade electrodes he had fashioned. The old man jumped. Corbish worked all over Smith's body and then came the first cover story. It was a foreign operation.
That story went after the first day. And then Smith was silent until forty-eight hours into the operation when, with Corbish himself suffering from lack of sleep, Dr. Harold Smith told him a wild story about an organization set up by the United States government more than ten years before:
When the organization had been set up, the country had a choice between becoming a police state or a mass of chaos that would inevitably end in a dictatorship of the right or the left. The Constitution had been breaking down. Its individual freedoms enabled criminals to function freely. What the President had wanted was an organization Outside the law, to make the law work. The government could not acknowledge its existence because that would be acknowledging that the Constitution did not work. Only three men would know about its operation. The President, Smith, and—this was where the story became wild—one other man, the enforcement arm of the agency.
"One man? For the entire country?" Corbish had repeated as he set the electrodes on Smith's groin. The area was already swollen and Smith did not scream. Corbish tested the circuit and it was functioning. It was then that Corbish realized that the old man had passed out.
Now it was well into the third day and Corbish began again, this time with lighted cigarettes. The danger of burning was that it could become infected. Burns were very susceptible to this and he did not wish to make this man a corpse before the successful conclusion of his project. IDC had not become IDC by promoting failures to senior vice president in charge of policy planning.
The old man began whimpering, then groaning. He came to with a scream. Corbish put some water on his lips.
"Now I'm a reasonable man. I want you to be a reasonable man. We deal in reason. Right?"
"Yes," said Smith in a faint whisper. Corbish could see the veins in his head throb.
"I didn't hear you," said Corbish and put his cigarette out on Smith's right leg. The flesh sizzled, and the pulpy skin extinguished the ember.
"Yes, yes," screamed Smith.
"All right. Now reasonably explain to me how this one man can act as your enforcement arm?"
"Sinanju. The Master of Sinanju."
"He is the Master of Sinanju?"
"No. He is the only white man who knows the secrets."
"I see. And with this Sinanju, this white man can do anything?"
"Practically. His nervous system isn't quite human anymore."
"Don't people tend to recognize him? I mean, he must be a very busy man."
"From time to time, Remo has had plastic surgery."
"Remo. I see. And wouldn't his mother recognize him?"
"He's an orphan."
"Wouldn't his friends recognize him?"
"He doesn't have any. They think he died in an electric chair. No prints either."
"Well, that's a lovely way to eradicate identity. Now this Sinanju, tell me about it. It is karate, judo, kung fu?"
"No. They are only beams, but not the light."
"Very poetic. Will you tell me how it works?"
"I don't know. I don't know. I don't know," said Smith and tears formed in his eyes because he did not know and could not give an answer and whenever he did not given an answer there was the pain again.
"Now, now," said Corbish gently. "Let's get to the real truth and there will be no more pain."
Smith became convulsed with sobbing. Corbish wiped the perspiration from his own brow.
"All right," he said. "Let's try the computers. I know computers and I have some questions for you."
"It's the truth," said Smith. "It's the truth."
"All right, all right," said Corbish as if he were talking to a baby.
And then began the line of questioning about information sources, payrolls, the absence of project knowledge by its personnel and surprisingly, all these things made sense. Corbish saw how Smith could have a portion of the IDC payroll on his staff without them knowing of it, and how he could get the new generation of computers even before IDC's most prized customers.
He saw how telephone code words would trigger operations, how government research subsidies could be turned into operating funds for any purpose, and how, with correct programming and brilliant use of personnel, one success could lead to another, so that the person at top could obtain incredible information, fantastic leverage, the ability to get anybody to do anything. Right up to the White House.
The programming, the concepts, the execution of it all, made it seem far away from this whimpering shell of a man who was supposed to have planned it.
For the first time in three days, Corbish left the room. He checked one of the phone codes, a minor thing, that hooked up into Dewline weather forecasts, the early warning device that protected America's air space over Alaska and Canada. Surprisingly, he got a forecast that was followed by weather patterns over Russia, China and France, the only other three nations that had nuclear weapons.
Corbish cupped his face in his hands while he thought. He felt the heavy growth of beard. Suddenly he realized how refreshing the afternoon sun was over Bolinas.
He thought of one more question for Smith. Why, if he had all this power at his fingertips, didn't he take over the government? Or even IDC, for that matter?
But when he returned to the deep cellar, Smith was unconscious. Corbish unshackled the old man, put some water to his lips, but he did not move. He hoisted him to a corner, opened some cans of food and left the stuffy, fetid room. Since the shelter only locked from the inside, Corbish wedged an iron bar through the outside handle of the door. If Smith lived, there might be more questions.
Corbish shaved himself, washed, and made a phone call. It was to T. L. Broon. He got his secretary.
"Tell T. L. that Blake Corbish called. Just tell him 'done.' Thank you," said Corbish, and he went outside the house and ripped out the telephone wire.
He took a helicopter from the Marin County Airport to San Francisco, where he boarded a superjet liner and had his first good meal at a New York restaurant. He hired a chauffeur then to take him to Folcroft sanitarium, which was just beginning a bustling ordinary Tuesday morning—with one exception.