Warren Murphy: Created, The Destroyer

"Five years."

"You know I still believe that our bones are going to be bleaching on the sand on some Pacific island."

"There's that possibility. So let's keep casulties down in our section. Just me and you. Others do their jobs without knowing. Good enough?"

"And we used to laugh at Kamikazes," MacCleary said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was more than five years. CURE had found crime bigger, more organized than the strongest suspicions of Washington.

Whole industries, labour unions, police departments, even a state legislature were controlled by syndicates. Political campaigns cost money and crime had it. From the top came the word: "CURE to continue operations indefinitely."

Folcroft trained hundreds of agents, each knowing a special job, none knowing its purpose. Some were assigned to government agencies all over the country. Under the cover of FBI men or tax men or grain inspectors, they gathered up scraps of information.

A special section set up an informer network that plumbed careless words from gin mills, gambling dives, brothels. The agents were taught to use the fast five dollar bill or even the larger bribe. Bar flies, pimps, whores, even clerks at checkout counters unwittingly contributed to CURE as they picked up their small change from the guy on the block or the man in that office or that lady writing a book. A few words for a few bucks.

A bookie in Kansas City thought he was selling out to a rival syndicate when, for $30,000, he outlined how his bosses worked.

A pusher in San Diego who somehow was never convicted by the courts, despite numerous arrests, always kept a pocketful of dimes for the lengthy phone calls he would make from pay booths.

A bright young lawyer rose in a crooked New Orleans union as he kept winning cases until one day the FBI received a mysterious 300-page report that enabled the Justice Department to indict the leaders of the union. The bright young lawyer suddenly became very clumsy in court. The convicted union racketeers didn't get a chance for vengeance. The young man just left the state and disappeared.

A high police official in Boston got in over his head at the track. A wealthy suburbanite writing a novel lent him $40,000. All the young author wanted to know was which cop was on whose pad. Of course, he wouldn't mention names. But he needed them to get the feel of his work.

And behind it all was CURE. The information, in millions of words, the useless information, the big breaks, the false leads flooded into Folcroft, ostensibly headed for people who never were, for corporations that existed only on paper, for government agencies that never seemed to do government work.

At Folcroft, an army of clerks, most of them thinking they worked for the Internal Revenue Service, recorded the information on business deals, tax returns, agricultural reports, gambling, narcotics, on anything that might be tainted by crime and some of it that couldn't possibly be, they thought.

And the facts were fed into giant computers in one of the many off-limits sections of Folcroft's rolling grounds.

The computers did what no man could. They saw patterns emerging from apparently unrelated facts and through their circuits, the broad picture of crime in America grew before the eyes of the chiefs at Folcroft. The how of organized lawlessness began to unfold.

The FBI, Treasury Department and even the CIA received special reports, lucky leads. And CURE operated in different ways, where the law enforcement agencies were powerless. A Tuscaloosa crime kingpin suddenly got documented proof that a colleague, the man with whom he had split up Alabama's crime, was planning a takeover. The colleague got a mysterious tip that the kingpin was planning to eliminate him. It ended in a war that both lost.

A large New Jersey pistol local changed command when sudden injections of big money saw the honest insurgents win at the union ballot boxes. It also saw the man who counted the votes retire quietly to Jamaica.

But the whole operation was slow, murderously slow. CURE made its strikes but no really finishing blows against the giant syndicates that continued to grow, prosper and stretch their money-powered tentacles into every phase of American life.

Moving agents into certain spheres—especially in the New York metropolitan area whose Cosa Nostra worked more smoothly and efficiently than any giant corporation—was like unleashing doves into a flock of hawks. Informants disappeared. A special division head of the informer network was murdered. His body was never found.

MacCleary learned to live with what he called "the monthlies." Like the agony of a woman's period would be Smith's every-thirty days berating.

"You spend enough money," he would say. "You use enough men and equipment. You spend more on tape recorders than the Army does on guns. And still the recruits you bring us don't do the job."

And MacCleary would give his usual answer. "Our hands are tied. We can't use force."

Smith would sneer. "In Europe, where you might recall we were highly successful against the Germans, we did not need force. The CIA uses very little force against the Russians and does rather well. But, you... you have to have cannons against these hoodlums."

"You know very well, sir, we're not dealing with hoodlums." MacCleary would start to boil. "And you know damn well we had armies following us in Europe against the Germans and a whole military establishment waiting against the Russians. And all we have here are these goddam computers."

Smith would straighten at his desk and imperiously command: "Computers would be good enough if we had the right personnel. Get us some people who know what they're doing."

Then he would make out his reports for upstairs, saying computers were not enough.

CHAPTER NINE

For five years, the routine was the same until two a.m. one spring morning when MacCleary was trying to put himself to sleep with his second pint of rye, and Smith rapped on the door to his Folcroft suite.

"Stay out," MacCleary yelled. "Whoever you are."

The door opened slowly and a hand snaked its way to the light switch. MacCleary sat in his shorts on a large purple pillow, cradling the bottle between his legs.

"Oh, it's you," he said to Smith who was dressed as though it were noon, in white shirt, striped tie and the eternal gray suit.

"How many gray suits you got, Smitty?"

"Seven. Sober up. It's important."

"Everything's important to you. Paper clips, carbon paper, dinner scraps." He watched Smith glance around the room at the assorted pornography in oils, photographs and sketches, the 8-foot high cabinet stacked with bottles of rye, the pillows scattered on the floor and finally to MacCleary's pink shorts.

"As you know, we've had problems in the New York City area. We have lost seven men without recovering even one body. As you know, we have a problem with a man named Maxwell whom we don't even have a line on."

"Really? That's interesting. I wondered what happened to all those people. Funny we didn't see them around."

"We're going to low profile in New York until we have our new unit ready."

"More fodder."

"Not this time." Smith shut the door behind him. "We've been given permission, highly selective but permission nevertheless, to use force. A license to kill."

MacCleary sat upright. He put down the bottle. "It's about time. Just five men. That's all I need. First, we'll get your Maxwell. And then the whole country."

"There will be one man. You will recruit him this week and set up his training program in thirty days."

"You're out of your bloody mind." MacCleary jumped from the pillows and paced the room. "You're out of your goddam mind," he shouted. "One man?"

"Yes."

"How did you get us roped into that deal?"