Warren Murphy: Angry White Mailmen

Harold Smith did not retire. He instead went on to head an organization that CIA never dreamed existed. It was called CURE. The premise of the President of the US. who had created it and installed Smith as its director was staggeringly simple. The American experiment was in collapse. The Constitution lay in shreds. It was not possible to maintain order and defend the nation from the rain of threats from all quarters-and remain within the rigid limitations of the law.

CURE would operate outside constitutional and legal mandates. Smith's task-one as staggering as those faced by the early Founding Fathers-was to beat back the modern-day Huns and Visigoths who were chipping away at America's freedoms by any means possible.

Three decades later, Harold Smith was still at it, operating from the same cracked leather chair in the same Spartan office in the same cover institution. Folcroft Sanitarium, ostensibly a warehouse for the chronically ill and mentally impaired. Smith ran both organizations with a firm, unsentimental hand. Older, grayer, yet still recognizable as the supercompetent bureaucrat the CIA had nicknamed the Gray Ghost.

The only thing that had changed in those years was Smith's computer setup. Initially it was an oak desk that concealed a terminal that rose from his desktop like a crystal ball and connected to the hidden bank of mainframes in the basement, dubbed the Folcroft Four by Smith.

The Folcroft Four still hummed behind a blank concrete wall, backed up by optical WORM-drive servers and other new innovations in data storage and retrieval. But Smith's desk had been replaced by a modern desk with a black glass top. Buried under the tinted glass was a fixed monitor. Smith hated change, but this new desk was much more secure than the old.

From his chair, he stared down into the black glass. The amber letters on the screen floated as if in some dark liquid medium.

There was no keyboard in the usual sense. When Smith brought his hands close to the desktop nearest him, the thin white letters of a standard alphanumeric keyboard arrangement glowed. But there were no keys in the physical sense. It was a touch-sensitive capacity keyboard, that darkened the second Smith withdrew his hands.

Smith was scanning the vast daily stream of data that his mainframes pulled off the Net and wire-service links, collating the bulletins, discarding the trivia and saving in files those items he believed would be useful for future operations.

It was after noon. Two hours past midnight in Japan. There was no news out of Osaka. Smith had had misgivings about sending Remo and Chiun to deal with Nishitsu before he had fully identified the situation. But sometimes keeping his only employees happy was his only survivable option.

At 12:33 his system beeped, and a red light popped up on one corner of his screen. Smith brushed a flat hot-key, and an AP bulletin appeared. It was brief, indicating it was only a first, sketchy report moving on the wire.

Oklahoma City, OK-Courtroom Shooting (AP) An unidentified gunman burst into the court of Judge Calvin Rathburn at 11:15, Oklahoma time, opening fire. Initial reports indicate more than two dozen persons wounded or killed. The gunman fled. Eyewitnesses have so far provided no description of the assailant. The attack took place in the new Wiley Post Federal Building, which replaced the old Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, destroyed by a truck bomb more than a year ago previously in the worst case of domestic terrorism in US. history.

Frowning, Smith began tapping his keyless keys and dumped the report into a growing file he called Militia Threats. This was supposition on his part. But it seemed a solid one.

Not ten minutes later, the first report of the explosion at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street in midtown Manhattan bubbled up. One glance at it, and Smith immediately consigned it to another file labeled Terrorist Threats.

Nothing about either event suggested a link to the other. Smith invariably thought in links and patterns. But no pattern or link was apparent. In fact, it never occurred to Smith to connect the two, even as closely spaced in time as they were.

Smith had gone on to his work, knowing his ever-vigilant system would alert him to significant followups when, approaching 1:00 p.m., the bulletins began peppering him like thrown darts.

New York, New York-Mystery Explosions (AP) A string of as yet unidentified explosions occurred today at approximately 12:27 in Manhattan's West Side. Initial reports indicate a series of seven detonations, all in a multiblock area surrounding the Manhattan's General Post Office. Damage and casualty reports are unavailable at this hour. No link to the earlier explosion at Eighth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street has been established.

The anonymous AP wire copywriter, bound by the rules of journalism, could do no more than suggesting a link. But not Harold Smith.

Eight explosions at a minimum, all in the relatively confined sector of midtown Manhattan.

Something was up. Something big. With a sharp pang, Smith regretted having sent Remo and Chiun out of the country. But done was done.

In their absence, Harold Smith would look into the situation. There would be time enough to bring Remo and Chiun into this when a target was established.

After all, they were assassins, not investigators. Smith made excuses to his secretary and left his office with a shiny leather briefcase that contained his telephone-computer links to the Folcroft Four. It was a new system, one he had built to replace the old one, which had been destroyed recently. This would be a good opportunity to field-test it.

SMITH TOOK the Henry Hudson Parkway into Manhattan, noticing that the trees on either side of the parkway were being choked by wild catbrier and hops. He frowned. Someone should do something about it. Smith hated untidiness in any form. Even in nature. If he had his way, trees would grow in orderly ranks and flowers would sprout only where they were wanted.

His briefcase lay open on the seat beside him, and the computer system was up and running.

Bulletins continued to pour in. There were now nine confirmed explosions. Eyewitness accounts recounted of death, maiming and carnage. This was a big operation, one of the biggest since the World Trade Center, Smith thought grimly.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the skyline of Manhattan came into view, featuring the twin towers of the World Trade Center. These were Smith's ultimate destination.

New York City was under siege. Law-enforcement agencies would be mobilizing. Security would be tight. That meant one thing to Harold Smith.

The White Room.

IT WAS NOT CALLED the White Room because it was white, although the walls were white. The door was a plain veneer panel with no lettering. The only key belonged to the commissioner of police for New York City.

The plain door lay at the end of a long corridor on a lower floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center. It was soundproof and bugproof. Its phones were scrambled.

That was why, although the police commissioner's office was only a few blocks away, in moments of greatest emergency he held crisis-management meetings in the White Room. No news leaks ever escaped the White Room. No eavesdropper ever overheard a whisper from within. The press knew of the White Room, but could not get to it. Especially in the aftermath of the failed World Trade Center bombing. All that came out was white noise. Hence the name.

It was the irony of ironies, the police commissioner thought as he unlocked the plain door to the White Room, that during the last serious terrorist crisis this leakproof office was denied to the commissioner of police because it literally stood on ground zero. No one had gotten into the White Room that day. The World Trade Center bombing had been a crisis that belonged to a previous police commissioner. Now the current holder of that position had a crisis of his own.