Warren Murphy - Line of Succession

This is cheerleading, Smith told himself. Nothing more. But he felt a chill that wasn't carried by the late-fall breeze. "For all I know, there are extralegal, extraconstitutional organizations in existence at this very moment, implementing policy and conducting operations," the Vice-President continued, jabbing a finger at the audience emphatically. "I want those folks to know that their days are numbered. When I get in there, I'm gonna clean house."

The audience applauded wildly. Smith sank lower in his seat. His headache was coming back with a vengeance. The Vice-President looked around the crowd. He beamed. He drank in the approval of the audience. His lifted hand could not quiet them. He glanced back at the seated VIP's and grinned boyishly, as if to say: what can I do? They love me.

But when his eyes locked with those of Dr. Harold W. Smith, he winked knowingly.

Smith, seated at one end of the back row, turned around and, under cover of the thunderous applause, vomited over the back of the podium.

When he was done, he twisted back into his seat and wiped his mouth free of food flecks.

The Vice-President knew. His wink was a clear warning. Somehow, he had learned about CURE. And he intended to close it down. It was all over.

Harold Smith sat stony and unhearing as the Vice-President's speech droned on for another twenty minutes. After the last ripple of applause had faded, the Vice-President was hustled back to his limousine by the Secret Service and whisked out the stone gates of Folcroft Sanitarium.

Like a man who had been condemned to death, Smith stumbled back to his office. He did not hear the hard clapping of wood chairs being folded and stacked, or the cheerful chatter of his secretary as she followed him back to the office. He did not feel the wind on his cheek or the sun on his stooped shoulders. He did not hear or feel anything because he knew that his life was over.

Chapter 4

Michael "The Prince" Princippi had come a long way in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. When he had first broached the possibility of running for the highest office in the land, they laughed at him. Even his chief supporters voiced serious reservations.

"You're a sitting governor," they said. "If you lose, you'll never get reelected in this state. They'll call you an opportunist who's using the office as a stepping-stone to national office."

"I'll take that chance," he told them.

"No one knows you. Nationally, you're a nonentity."

"So was Jimmy Carter, and look what he did in seventy-six. "

"Yeah, and look what happened to him in eighty. Today the guy couldn't get nominated to run a bake sale."

"I'm not Jimmy Carter. I'm Michael Princippi, the Prince of Politics. Even my enemies call me that. "

One by one, he had shot down their misgivings, their weak arguments, their timid objections, until he knew in his heart he was presidential timber. But his supporters remained unconvinced.

"You don't look presidential," they finally said.

"What do you mean, presidential?" he had asked. "I'm a two-term governor of a major industrial state. I've been in politics all of my adult life."

They had shuffled their feet and looked down at the carpet. Finally one of them had blurted out the objection that was on all their minds.

"You're too short," he said. "Too ethnic," another one added. "You're not the type," a third offered.

"What is the type, then?" he had asked, wondering if he should throw them out of the house. Then he remembered it wasn't his house, but that of a financial backer who had given them the use of it for this strategy meeting. The governor's own house was too small for his family, never mind staff meetings.

"John F. Kennedy," they chorused.

"Look at the rest of the Democratic pack," one of them explained. "You can barely tell them apart. They all have the same haircut, the same hearty face. They copy his mannerisms, his speaking style. Hell, half their speeches are rewrites of the 'Ask Not What Your Country Can Do,' chestnut. You'll never be able to pull it off. We think you should forget it, Prince."

But he didn't forget it. The man his cronies called the Prince of Politics knew that the very reason his supporters didn't think he stood a chance at getting the nomination was going to catapult him into the White House. In a crowded field of tall, rangy Kennedy clones, he was a short, intense man with a slightly hooked nose and dark bushy eyebrows. In a sea of sandy-haired candidates, he was the only brunet. In debate after debate, as the cameras panned the seated debaters, he stood out, distinct and separate.

This strategy had worked for Michael Princippi in one of the most heavily Irish states in the Union. Among the Connollys and the Donnellys, the Carringtons and the Harringtons, the O'Rourkes and MacIntyres, Michael Princippi stood out like a raisin in a bowl of snow peas.

It was even more effective on national television. In debate after debate, Michael Princippi had held his own in his quiet confident manner. The pollsters swiftly singled him out as a dark horse, a long shot, an outsider in a race where every other candidate primped and studied for hours to blend in with the pack. And one after the other, the other would-be candidates had dropped out until the Democratic convention, in one of the swiftest counts in recent history, had gone with him on the first ballot.

The latest polls had Michael Princippi slightly ahead of the Republican nominee, with just days to go until the nation went to the polls. That slight margin was meaningless, he knew. And so he campaigned as if his very political future was at stake. Because it was.

At a campaign stop in Tennessee, he took time out of his busy schedule to watch his rival, the Vice-President, give a speech. He switched on the hotel-room television and, dismissing his key aides, settled onto the unmade bed to watch.

The speech was broadcast live from the grounds of an institution in New York State.

The speech was a bore. The Vice-President gave it his best preppy shot, but it was the standard "I'm going-to-clean-up-the-dark-corners" speech Michael Princippi had given when he was first elected governor. But as the speech went on, the Vice-President grew more intense, his voice filling with conviction. It made Michael Princippi stop and think about a letter he had received over the weekend. A very strange letter.

When the speech had ended, the network anchorman came on with an instant wrap-up that was half as long as the speech itself and not nearly as clear. The anchorman signed off with the redundant reminder that he was "Reporting live from the grounds of Folcroft Sanitatrium, in Rye, New York. "

For some reason, the name Folcroft sounded familiar to Michael Princippi, but he couldn't place it. Then he remembered. The letter.

Princippi bounced off the bed and shut off the TV on his way to his briefcase.

He pulled the letter from a pocket of the briefcase and shook it from its envelope as he settled into a chair. He had assumed it was a crank letter, but it was so crammed with facts and details that he held on to it. Just in case.

The letter was addressed to him personally, the envelope marked personal and confidential. It had been postmarked in Seoul, South Korea. Michael Princippi skimmed the letter again, looking for the name.

Yes, there it was. Folcroft Sanitarium. His eyes jumped back to the beginning and he read the letter quickly. When he was done, he read it all over again more slowly.

The letter purported to reveal the existence of a highly secret governmental agency that operated from the cover of Folcroft Sanitarium and was run by Dr. Harold W. Smith. The organization was known as CURE. Its letters signified nothing, said the letter. It was no acronym, but a statement of intent. Set up to cure America of its internal ills, under Dr. Smith CURE had become a rogue operation, no longer responsible to presidential or constitutional restrictions. With access to the computer files of every government agency and major corporation in America, CURE was the ultimate Big Brother.