Warren Murphy: Union Bust

A vice-president of an airline company routinely phoned his business adviser. The adviser was obviously CIA or something like that, but such matters were not the executive's concern. He had risen fast with the help of this adviser—it was a small enough price to pay for a career. The president of his company was willing to make a deal for some strange upcoming contract that none of the other executives knew about. His airline would be the only one allowed to operate for an entire month if it gave the union everything it wanted. The airline had purchased extra planes for this planned overload of passengers. Strange, that any union could guarantee that. Stranger still was that the adviser had asked for just that kind of information recently.

An accountant in Duluth, Minnesota, got angry with his employer, the Joint Council of the Brotherhood of Railroad Workmen.

"You can't just say "contribution to unionism." You've got to list which union. If it is not called the Brotherhood of Railroad Workmen, then, gentlemen, it is not your union, and I cannot put it in the books that way. I'm sorry. But should there be an audit of these books, if I did what you ask, I would be spending considerable time behind bars. Let alone losing my practice."

The accountant assured his clients, however, that he could proceed without listing the expenditures until the end of the fiscal year.

"That's all right. That's fine," said the president of the joint council. "We'll only need a week at the outside."

The accountant gave the books and records of the recent money transfers to his secretary to put into the office safe. This she did, but only after she had made a photocopy for the lovely person at the big department store who liked to collect things like this. He was so nice, that person, he had given her a special charge account. Extended time payments. Nothing down and one percent a year for two years, and the store would make up the difference. The account would be allowed to jump at various very pleasant times. Like when one of their clients was engaged in an oil swindle with a Wall Street stock brokerage firm. That paid for the dinette, the playroom, and the new colour TV. What she wanted most now was a new kitchen. She should get it. The man at the department store had specifically asked for this information. Maybe a new washer-dryer, too. Although she already had two of those.

The lovely person at the department store was thrilled with the photocopies of the documents, so thrilled that he suggested the secretary redecorate her living room. He dialled a special number and surrendered the copy of the documents to his contact, a man he believed was in the FBI. The man was in the FBI, having been transferred to special assignment four years ago. He gave the documents immediately to an undercover office where a woman received them. She knew she wasn't working for the FBI. She was working on a secret mission for the State Department. She was one of their top programmers. She punched the information into the terminal in her office. She had never been able to generate any feedback to see if she were correct. But that was all right. That was a safety device always used by secret operations so that unauthorized personnel would not have access to the information. Only those special people in Washington would be able to get the information from State Department computers.

The information did not go to the State Department, however. The lines led to a sanatorium in Rye, New York, called Folcroft. There, another computer expert supervised the input. Like many computer programmers, he was not sure where the information fit or even how it fit. But if everything worked right, and he was sure it was working right, the gigantic study on the effect of the economy on national health would most certainly prove a momentous and significant report.

Only one terminal could draw feedback from the Folcroft computers and that was in the office of Dr. Harold Smith, director of the sanatorium and director of the study.

Under the oak veneer of his desk was a control panel. There was also a slot for a computer printout. This printout did not drop into a basket, but was fed directly into an electric disposal device passing for only nine inches under a visible glass panel, visible when the veneer slid away to reveal the controls.

The panel was open now and Dr. Smith's lemon face was even more bitter than usual. He watched the green paper with the square typing move like a long green river under the reading glass from computer terminal to electric disposal. He could signal a return of any information, but he could not hold it in his hands.

Outside, through the one-way glass behind him, the Long Island Sound lapped at the shores, a dark body extending into the Atlantic. People had crossed this ocean to establish a new land, a land of law, a land of justice, a land where a piece of paper protected poor and rich alike. And that piece of paper did not work. And justice was a sometime thing. But the hope was left. The hope was coming out of this computer terminal: these times would pass, and one day, without it ever having been known to anyone but those whose lives were dedicated to its secrecy, each President who passed the secret to his successor, the organization would just dissolve. Having not existed, it would not exist.

That was why Dr. Smith could not hold the paper in his hands. Evidence could not be allowed to exist. Like the organization, it would be secret for a few moments in time, then disappear.

Smith read the flowing printout and his face became more bitter with each line.

"Damn," he said, and spun his swivel chair from the machine to look out on Long Island Sound in the darkness of night. A few boats blinked off shore. Smith drummed his fingers on the leather arm of the swivel chair.

"Damn," he said again. He watched the lights a moment, then reran the printout. It was, of course, the same. Nothing had changed, and as he realized that he could not alter the inevitable conclusion, his mind wandered to the time when there was no glass panelling over the printout and he could pick it up and file it in a locked drawer.

One of the sheets—accidentally, despite all precautions—had gotten mixed with the normal sanatorium work, and his brightest assistant, who had nothing whatever to do with the real work of the organization, just the medical cover, had discovered it. That had set him off on a little puzzle. And one day he happily told Dr. Smith he knew what Folcroft really did. He was smiling as he outlined a function all too close to the way CURE really operated.

"Very interesting," Dr. Smith had said smiling. 'What do others think?"

"What others?" said the assistant.

"You know. One man couldn't figure all this out."

"I most certainly did," beamed the assistant. "I know you, sir, and I know you are an honourable man, and you wouldn't be involved in anything illegal or immoral. So I figured what you were doing must be for a good cause. And I didn't want to hurt the cause, so I kept it strictly to myself. Besides, it was more fun that way. This was a most interesting problem."

"I commend you," said Dr. Smith. "Well, I guess our secret's safe with you."

"It most certainly is, sir. And good luck in your good work."

"Thank you," said Dr. Smith. "The work is very trying. I'm leaving on vacation in about a half hour. The coast, Malibu beach."

"I was born there."

"Oh, were you?"

"Yes. Didn't you read my application? Born there twenty-six years ago this August. I can still smell the Pacific. You know it breathes easier than the Atlantic."

"Then come with me," Dr. Smith said with sudden joy. "Come. We'll both go. I won't take "no" for an answer. I want you to meet my nephew, Remo."

And that was when the glass was installed on the printout mechanism designed to clean the machine whether Dr. Smith pressed the button or not. He hated what he had to do, hated what he did to his luckless assistant, hated the very cunning and duplicity which ran counter to his nature. It was not so difficult, when a former employee of another government agency attempted to blackmail CURE. That had a moral justification. But what was Dr. Braithwait's crime? That he was an internist? That he was closer to death than another internist of his calibre? What was the young assistant's crime? That he was clever. That he was honest and meant well, and that if he had wished the organization evil and given the information to the New York Times, he would be alive today? Was that his crime, punishable by death?