Warren Murphy: Killer Watts

The darkness of eternity consumed all conscious thought, and Remo Williams became one with the nothingness.

Chapter 6

Behind the locked door of the administrative director's office of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, Dr. Harold W. Smith sat nestled in the wellworn seat of his cracked leather chair.

The chair had been a gift from his wife on the occasion of their fifteenth wedding anniversary. At the time of the gift close to forty years ago, Smith had just retired from the CIA. He had assumed his duties as the director of Folcroft, and Maude Smith had wanted more than anything to show her husband how grateful she was that he was out of the dangerous espionage business. The chair had been just the thing.

When his beaming wife had presented the gift to Smith, he promptly tried to return it. Parsimonious in the extreme, Smith had told his wife that there were more than enough chairs at Folcroft already. One more would be redundant.

But in the few short weeks from the time she had bought the chair and stored it at her sister's house in Connecticut to the time Smith attempted to bring it back, the office-furniture store had gone out of business. With no hope of getting back his thirty-five dollars and ninety-nine cents, plus tax, Smith had grudgingly accepted the gift.

Though it bothered him at first, over time he had actually come around. After more than fifteen hours of sitting per day, seven days a week, the chair he hadn't wanted now fit him like a comfortable old shoe. The chair was as much a fixture in the Spartan room as Harold Smith himself. They had grown old together.

Smith had been a relatively young man when he assumed his post at Folcroft. Now, as he typed at the high-tech keyboard buried at the lip of his gleaming onyx desk, the reflection that looked back up at him from the shining surface was eerily reminiscent of his father.

The unflattering image accurately reflected its subject.

Smith's bland spirit tinted his entire gaunt being in washed-out, virtually colorless shades of gray. Indeed, the only inaccuracy in the reflection was its failure to properly reflect Smith's green-striped Dartmouth tie. The visual error was forgivable. The green was swallowed up by all-consuming gray.

It was not the daily work of Folcroft that had kept Smith here so late into the autumn of his life. If sanitarium business had been the only reason for Smith's tenure behind the ivy-covered walls of the venerable institution, he would have packed up his chair when he'd reached sixty-five and headed off into well-earned retirement.

No, the thing that kept Smith toiling in his waning years could be summed up in a single word: America.

Smith was the product of a time when being an American meant something. Before coarseness and flagrant lying took the place of public discourse; before depravity and cheap titillation took hold of the popular culture; before America began its slippery slide into narcissism and hedonism, Smith had learned right from wrong.

It was his black-and-white grip on reality as much as his keen analytical mind that brought Smith to the attention of a young President years before.

A new agency was being formed. Its mission was to safeguard the Constitution by flouting the very laws that existed in that monumental document. That agency-called CURE-needed a director. It was Harold W. Smith's unflagging love of country that had been the deciding factor in the clandestine contest for agency head.

His "retirement" from the CIA was a pretense for the work that would consume the rest of his life. Director of CURE.

Over the years, CURE's mission had changed. It had branched out from domestic threats to address international challenges. The greatest change came when the agency was sanctioned to use assassination as a tool to achieve its ends. But the two things that seemed never to have changed completely were Smith and his beloved chair.

As Smith typed at the capacitor-style keyboard, he scanned the information on the monitor.

He had been checking on the New Mexico situation for the past ten minutes. It now seemed more problematic than he had originally thought.

The news was leaking out. It seemed almost as if the military had been strong-arming the local authorities to downplay the number of deaths. For people who had lost loved ones, this could only work for so long. It appeared as if the dam had broke.

An Alamogordo newspaper had carried the headline story that morning. The names accompanied the text.

Smith scanned the list of confirmed dead. There were twelve names in all, alphabetized as they would be for a telephone directory.

Twelve people dead.

It could have been any number of things. Although authorities were suggesting a lone killer, the paper speculated that he might have accomplices. They further theorized involvement of a cult or gang. In New Mexico no one would be surprised if the deaths were drug related.

When he had been dispatched to the area, Remo hadn't been concerned. Smith did not share the casual attitude of CURE's enforcement arm. The names on Smith's computer screen belonged to innocent Americans. It was his duty to see to it that whatever was behind their murders did not become a menace to the nation at large.

Smith left the news story with its accompanying roster of murder victims and shifted his attention to the electronic files of nearby Fort Joy.

Although the base appeared to be heavily involved in the search for the lone suspect in the murders-at least according to what he had been able to glean from local police sources-very little information was being transferred via its computers. To Smith, this was suspicious. It was almost as if a computer blackout had been initiated at the base. Why would they not enter data into their computer network? Did they fear that their quarry was computer literate and might access the database from a remote source? If this were the case, would it not be wiser to enter false information, thus steering the suspect into a trap?

It was all quite puzzling.

As he reentered the base computer system, Smith was surprised to find some information posted.

Those in authority must have realized that the facts had begun to leak out to the public. It was pointless not to list that which was already known.

He scanned the lines, finding only the driest details that had already been covered in both the local police files and the Alamogordo press. There was nothing new.

Smith was about to exit the file when something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned his attention back to the screen. There was something not quite right.

The list of names was there, as it had been in the newspaper. But it seemed longer on the base computer.

As he passed over the lines, his attention was unerringly drawn to one name in particular. Smith froze.

It was an add-on. The twelve-name list was now up to thirteen. The new name had not appeared in the papers.

As his flat, gray eyes passed slowly over the name, Smith felt his mouth go dry as desert sand. Remo Halper.

The cover identity Remo was using while in New Mexico.

His mind raced. A million thoughts vied for supremacy as he read and reread the name.

Was it even possible? Had Remo fallen victim to the same unknown force that was killing innocent people near Fort Joy?

Smith managed to pull himself back together after a moment of dull inactivity. No. It was no use speculating until he had all the facts.

He cleared the cobwebs from his brain, looking down at the ten characters with new eyes. It was only then that he saw the asterisk at the far end of the column. A quick scan proved that Remo's was the only name so noted.

Hands shaking, Smith hit the page-down key. He found the asterisk again, this one followed by a few brief lines of sanitized text.