Warren Murphy: Judgment Day

In America, on the shores of Long Island Sound, there was a mother lode of such information, beyond IDC's wildest projections. Information on who paid what taxes, which people took what payoffs, where narcotics entered the country, who sold what to whom and when, even the effect of weather on commodities futures was calculated. The works. And no one at this place called Folcroft Sanitarium, on the shores of Long Island Sound, seemed to be using that information to its fullest advantage. It seemed a crime against nature that IDC did not have access to it. Blake Corbish intended to amend that crime.

At the San Francisco Airport, Blake Corbish prepared the flight plan of his Lear jet to Westchester Airport, a few scant miles from Rye, New York. He was told there would be some sticky weather over Colorado. Corbish said he would fly above it.

The man at the control tower seemed impressed by Corbish's knowledge of aeronautics. So impressed that he asked questions about Corbish's training, very nicely, very politely.

Corbish was polite in return. The man at the control tower might be one of the thousands of people who unknowingly fed information into those computers at Folcroft. If that were so, then this man would be working for IDC soon—also without knowing it.

Only a genius could have set up the computers at Folcroft so that only one man had the information at his terminal. Only one man, so far as Corbish knew now, understood how it worked. The beauty of the entire organizational set up was that the people who worked in it had at best only a fragmentary idea of what they were doing. Most thought they worked for private companies; the shrewder ones suspected they were informants for the FBI, but none knew that he was really working to help fill up the computer data banks at Folcroft. So brilliantly was this organization set up, that big firms, even IDC, supplied it with workers, unawares,

Only one thing puzzled Corbish and that was the reason for this organization, whose code name was CURE. No one appeared to profit from it. It was not a military operation, even though it had some military approaches to matters. A military operation worked against armies and governments; CURE seemed simultaneously to work for some American citizens and work against some American citizens.

Corbish thought about this as his Lear jet climbed over the weather in Colorado, He would have all the answers within two days. It was ironic that the computers at Folcroft had told him he would have the information in two days. That too was on one of the readouts he had waylaid. An extensive study of torture.

It told him what he had always suspected in his years as a special forces captain before joining IDC: any man will tell you anything if you torture him properly. No special drugs, no esoteric brainwashing. If you could convince a man that he could stop the pain you inflicted on him by what he told you, and that he could stop the pain forever if he told you what you wanted, he would tell. The human animal was like that. Any man could be broken within forty-eight hours. Stories about people resisting torture were, by and large, nonsense. Only when the interrogator failed to connect pain with information did people remain mum. It was not moral weakness that made people talk, it was the very essence of human nature itself. Stop pain and survive. It was that simple.

Corbish crossed the plains states and could not help thinking of the IDC offices there, especially in Kansas City. Why, those people at CURE were even plugged into a payroll computer there used by a professional sports complex.

The weather would be good over Westchester. Corbish checked that on his radio. He also ordered refueling for the New York stop.

"I want the jet checked out for another cross country. Back to San Francisco in the morning."

"That's a lot of flying."

"I'm a man on the move," said Corbish. "Over and out."

Funny that the control tower should say "That's a lot of flying." The chairman of the board had used that phrase. It was a drizzly day in Mamaroneck, New York, when the chairman of the board had asked for a special meeting. Corbish had been vice president in charge of international relations, which was six stepping stones to senior vice president in charge of policy planning, which was the final stepping stone to the presidency. The president-chairman of the board was not smiling when Corbish entered. He was alone, which was unusual for an IDC executive whose whole training had been geared to working in committees. Corbish could not remember ever having met another high-ranking executive alone, not even on a golf course.

The president and chairman of the board also had that clean-cut, bright, aggressive and reliable sort of look, with twenty-five years added to it in the form of facial lines and graying hair.

"Sit down," he said. "This meeting will take no more than five minutes. You will not remember this meeting, nor will I. We shall never meet alone again, nor will you ever discuss this with me again. When you have successfully finished your assignment, you will tell me 'done' and begin showing me the effects of what you have achieved. Within a week after that date, you will rise to senior vice president in charge of policy planning. Do you follow me?"

"I follow you, T.L., but I don't understand you."

"Near here—funny that it is near here—is a sanitarium. Folcroft Sanitarium. It has the 385, 971 and the 842 computer systems."

"The 842 is part of a new generation of computers that isn't supposed to be on the market for two years."

"Correct. They own it."

"But we only lease our computers. We never sell them."

"They own it and they have some of our top-flight research people working on it, a concentration of talent we never allow out of IDC."

"How could that happen?"

"Do you remember in one of your early training sessions you learned that you could, if you had enough money and talent, put an entire country, its main sources of power, all on a computer system?"

"Yes."

"Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, has done it. You will be the next senior vice president in charge of policy planning because you are the only vice president we have with special forces training and I wouldn't give this to anyone else. This should give you an inkling of where we wish you to set your parameters on this assignment."

"What I understand, T.L., is that there are none. I should stop at nothing."

"I didn't hear that, Corbish."

"What will happen if I fail?"

"Then we will have to commit a broad-scale executive thrust in that direction."

"Wouldn't IDC be wiser to just write me off if I fail and continue business as usual?"

"These people at Folcroft, I believe, don't just forget about people, corporations or organizations that threaten them. They would come after us, I believe."

"Then, T.L., I must ask you one more question. Why not leave them alone if the risk of failure is so great? There is a point of diminishing returns. I'm afraid my input has got to weigh on the side of another look-see in depth. IDC comes ahead of my personal advancement from my view strata, T.L."

And this was the first time Blake Corbish, vice president, ever saw in T.L. Broon emotion other than responsible optimism or cautious concern. It was anger. A blood-flushing, red-rising anger that boiled from T.L. Broon's corporate soul.

"They have undermined the profit structure of IDC," he said, his voice quivering with rage. "Undermined the very profit structure of IDC, by hijacking our computer systems, by competing with us in the field of total information. If another corporation thought of doing this, we would crush it. If a politician thought of doing this, we would defeat him. If a banker tried it, we would bankrupt him. Do you understand? The two of us cannot exist together."