Smith's voice was chillingly metallic. "Sorry, sir. When we worked only for our country I would have shut down immediately upon word from any president. But that is not the case now. You cannot close us down now because we are working just as much for some herder in a yak tent in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia as we are for the American people."
"What if I order physical force against you?"
"Sir, a few thousand marines with perhaps ten years of training are hardly going to be a match against thousands of years of training of the Masters of Sinanju. Really, Mr. President, that is very silly. For all you know, they could have me hidden in your own White House right now. And I think you understand that as well as I."
"Yes, I do," the President said slowly. "I saw them in action once. All right. There is nothing I can do now except turn off this line. You are now disconnected from service because I will not call on you. One other thing, Smith."
"Yes, sir?"
"Good luck. Go with God."
"Thank you, Mr. President."
Harold Smith waited for the phone to ring again. He waited all day and when it became dark on that spit of sea water known as Long Island Sound, when his watch said 9:01, he knew the last time that day for Remo to call had passed.
He did not have forebodings about his two men because Harold W. Smith did not allow forebodings any more than he allowed hope.
Those who had put him in charge knew his strength was his rational power. Yet he could not now push away thoughts of Remo when he first came to Folcroft. How young he seemed then. He had a bright open face with just a little baby fat.
Stop it, Smith told himself. He is not dead and you have no evidence that he is dead.
Smith also told himself that Remo had become something other than just an enforcer arm, something so much different and so much better than the average person that one should feel no more affection for him than one would feel for the fastest airplane or the finest watch.
A few lights blinked in the Sound. They were boat lights in a vast darkness. Smith realized his lights were still off in the office. He had not turned them on when it had gotten dark.
He watched the lights of the Sound and after a while left his office and went home.
Good-bye, Remo, he said softly to himself as he was leaving. He did not know why he had that hunch.
In Boston, the assistant director of the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation saw orders come through to remove even more men from the Chromosome Cannibal Case. He started throwing in-files and out-files into the round wastebasket. He cabled Washington headquarters that he had already had too few agents on the matter and the case was being so scantily and ineptly covered that he wasn't sure they would ever find out with what they were dealing. If they did, they probably wouldn't be able to handle it anyway.
An answer came that he should carry on in the fine tradition of his office, within the parameters set down by Washington. Which in real language, the kind not used by the FBI, meant, "Go blow your nose. Leave it to the local cops to screw up. We're protecting our ass and you should do the same."
It was the Vietnam attitude brought home, the attitude where getting a job done properly was not nearly as important as protecting yourself. It was understandable when men could be indicted for doing their jobs in a way some legal stickler didn't like. After a few trials you had men not trying to protect the public, but themselves. If you were indicted for doing your job too vigorously, then you did your job so as not to be indicted.
It happened with local police forces. Changes were ballyhooed as measures to improve the legality of police forces, to make them more responsive to the citizenry. What happened was the police, after a few court cases, took to protecting themselves and now criminals had taken over the streets.
The American public had had it with a war they lost, with city streets they lost and now, with the FBI, they were losing their national security. The great disasters America had suffered never came as disasters but as improvements.
John Hallahan, assistant director of the Boston office of the FBI, vowed late that warm night he would not let his superiors get away with it.
Let them try to protect themselves when the story got out that the local office was being cut back, despite the threat to the city by the chromosome killer.
John Hallahan was forty-eight and knew how to protect himself. First, he tidied his office. Then he told four subordinates to make a report on the best way to deal with this menace, considering they were being cut back in manpower.
"Of course you realize how sensitive this whole matter is and I expect you to carry out your jobs with traditional Bureau excellence." There was a giggling snort from one.
No matter, Hallahan realized. He had just created his own defense screen. When everything exploded in the papers, there would be four others to share the blame. While he might be shipped off to the Bureau in Anchorage, Alaska, he would still collect his pension, still have his income, still have his benefits.
This small triumph of rebellion brought little joy to Hallahan. He remembered when there was pride in what he did, the kind of job that made even the preservation of your own life less important, the sort of work burden that made your life happy.
The joy of a successfully concluded case. Of nailing someone really tough to nail. Going head to head against the greatest spy system the world has ever known, the KGB of Russia.
FBI meant something then.
You worked sixty hours a week, often seven days a week. You weren't paid as much as now with the new regulations. The time was less, but oh, how long the weeks seemed now, when you just counted the days to your retirement. You weren't defending a country anymore. You were defending yourself. The country be damned.
What did he want to say to America? Stop hurting those who want to help you? Don't you know who your real friends are? When was the last time a bank robber ever did you any good? Or a terrorist?
Yet those were the very people so many in Washington seemed peculiarly hellbent upon defending. As if all you had to do was mug some old lady to show you had some great moral complaint against the only country that ever existed that gave so much to so many if they would just work for it.
The only country.
The night people came into the Boston office and James Hallahan left. He was off to turn on his own bureau. He had sworn an oath once, but that was a long time ago when oaths meant something. He realized that was when he was happy.
The Boston Times reporter was late. Hallahan had a beer and a shot of rye. He was a scotch on the rocks man now but he remembered his father drinking this drink and the boozy, old-wood atmosphere of the South Boston bar. When he had been accepted to Notre Dame, his father had bought him a beer here and lots of people bought rounds. He had gotten tipsy and everybody laughed. And of course, graduation. How his father had cried to think his son, James Hallahan, the son of a man who collected other people's garbage was "now a graduate of Notre Dame University, the United States of America. Oh, the glory of it, son."
Someone down the bar had said universities in America weren't as good as universities in Dublin, couldn't hold a candle to them, as a matter of fact. Of course in this Irish-American bar, that started a fist fight. Then came the law degree from Boston College.
Of course another drink to celebrate. And James Hallahan's confession. "Dad, I'm not going to practice law. I'm going to be an agent for the FBI."
"A policeman?" his father asked, in a state of shock. "On your mother's grave, son. We broke our backs to make you something. Why, you could have been a policeman right out of high school. You didn't need all that educating. We could have gone right to Alderman Fitzpatrick. It wouldn't have cost a penny. It's not like we're Eyetalians what's got to pay for it and all."