[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
"Murdered?" the nervous desk clerk sputtered.
"Well," the repairman said dryly, "if he was, he got a hell of a charge out of
the experience."
The body was taken out the back way by the ambulance attendants and hustled
into the waiting vehicle to spare street traffic the spectacle of a body whose
shroud tented up in a place where dead people usually didn't.
Across town, Kimberly Baynes returned to her Capitol Hill hotel, where she
quietly paid her next week's hotel bill in advance. In cash.
She was pleased, upon entering the room, to see that the clay image
squatting-on the dresser had grown a new arm. This one protruded from its
back. It had grown so fast-as fast as it had taken for Cosmo Bellingham to
expire-that it had right-angled off the wall like a tree branch veering away
from a stone wall.
Kimberly had left a newspaper lying at the statue's feet. Now it lay scattered
about the floor as if a furious reader had gone through it for a misplaced
item.
One soft white hand clutched a torn piece from the classified section. Another
had the upper portion of the front page. Kimberly recognized the photograph of
a man who had been in the news almost daily.
"I know whose blood you seek, my lady," Kimberly murmured.
Plucking the other item free, she read it. It was an advertisement.
"And I know how I shall reach this man," she added.
Kimberly Baynes changed clothes in the privacy of her room. Even though she
was on an upper floor, she drew the drapes before she disrobed.
When she left the hotel, she was wearing a yellow sheath dress that
accentuated her lean waist, lyre-shaped hips, and size-thirty-eight bust.
With the remainder of Cosmo Bellingham's billfold contents she had bought a
fresh yellow scarf for her naked throat. The purchase made her feel so much
better.
For today, she intended to apply for her first job.
Chapter 4
No American ever cast a vote for Dr. Harold W. Smith.
It was doubtful that had Smith ever shown up on a ballot, very many people in
this age of television campaigning would have voted for the aging bureaucrat.
He was a thin Ichabod Crane hank of man with skin the unappetizing color of a
beached flounder. His hair was as gray as his face. His eyes yet another shade
of gray. And his three-piece suit-definitely not selected with an eye to
pleasing the modern voter-was still another neutral gray.
As he sat at his worn oak desk, gray eyes blinking through his rimless
spectacles, this gray man unknown to over ninety-nine percent of the American
electorate quietly exercised more power than the executive, legislative, and
judical branches of the U.S. Government combined.
For nearly three decades, since a promising young president tragically cut
down a thousand days into his only term had appointed him to his lonely post,
Harold Smith had held forth in his Folcroft Sanitarium office, guarding
America and its constitutional form of government from subversion. Under cover
of Folcroft, Smith headed CURE, a supersecret government agency that
officially didn't exist. Created in the sixties, when the fabric of American
Page 15
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
society began to burst at the seams, Smith was invested with the awesome
responsibility of protecting America through extralegal means.
In order that Smith might uphold the Constitution, his job called for him to
violate it as if it were a dishwasher warranty. Where the law stopped, Smith
was sanctioned to proceed. When the Constitution was perverted to shield the
guilty, Smith was empowered to shred it to punish them.
For the last twenty of those thirty years Smith had relied on a human weapon
in his ongoing war. One man, long believed dead, who, like CURE, officially
didn't exist. And now that person, the assassin he had code-named "Destroyer,"
was ranging the forty-eight contiguous states as if he could single-handedly
stamp out all lawless elements.
Not that he wasn't making a dent, Smith thought ruefully.
His aged fingers tapped clicking keys. Bar graphs appeared, their data [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szkicerysunki.xlx.pl
"Murdered?" the nervous desk clerk sputtered.
"Well," the repairman said dryly, "if he was, he got a hell of a charge out of
the experience."
The body was taken out the back way by the ambulance attendants and hustled
into the waiting vehicle to spare street traffic the spectacle of a body whose
shroud tented up in a place where dead people usually didn't.
Across town, Kimberly Baynes returned to her Capitol Hill hotel, where she
quietly paid her next week's hotel bill in advance. In cash.
She was pleased, upon entering the room, to see that the clay image
squatting-on the dresser had grown a new arm. This one protruded from its
back. It had grown so fast-as fast as it had taken for Cosmo Bellingham to
expire-that it had right-angled off the wall like a tree branch veering away
from a stone wall.
Kimberly had left a newspaper lying at the statue's feet. Now it lay scattered
about the floor as if a furious reader had gone through it for a misplaced
item.
One soft white hand clutched a torn piece from the classified section. Another
had the upper portion of the front page. Kimberly recognized the photograph of
a man who had been in the news almost daily.
"I know whose blood you seek, my lady," Kimberly murmured.
Plucking the other item free, she read it. It was an advertisement.
"And I know how I shall reach this man," she added.
Kimberly Baynes changed clothes in the privacy of her room. Even though she
was on an upper floor, she drew the drapes before she disrobed.
When she left the hotel, she was wearing a yellow sheath dress that
accentuated her lean waist, lyre-shaped hips, and size-thirty-eight bust.
With the remainder of Cosmo Bellingham's billfold contents she had bought a
fresh yellow scarf for her naked throat. The purchase made her feel so much
better.
For today, she intended to apply for her first job.
Chapter 4
No American ever cast a vote for Dr. Harold W. Smith.
It was doubtful that had Smith ever shown up on a ballot, very many people in
this age of television campaigning would have voted for the aging bureaucrat.
He was a thin Ichabod Crane hank of man with skin the unappetizing color of a
beached flounder. His hair was as gray as his face. His eyes yet another shade
of gray. And his three-piece suit-definitely not selected with an eye to
pleasing the modern voter-was still another neutral gray.
As he sat at his worn oak desk, gray eyes blinking through his rimless
spectacles, this gray man unknown to over ninety-nine percent of the American
electorate quietly exercised more power than the executive, legislative, and
judical branches of the U.S. Government combined.
For nearly three decades, since a promising young president tragically cut
down a thousand days into his only term had appointed him to his lonely post,
Harold Smith had held forth in his Folcroft Sanitarium office, guarding
America and its constitutional form of government from subversion. Under cover
of Folcroft, Smith headed CURE, a supersecret government agency that
officially didn't exist. Created in the sixties, when the fabric of American
Page 15
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
society began to burst at the seams, Smith was invested with the awesome
responsibility of protecting America through extralegal means.
In order that Smith might uphold the Constitution, his job called for him to
violate it as if it were a dishwasher warranty. Where the law stopped, Smith
was sanctioned to proceed. When the Constitution was perverted to shield the
guilty, Smith was empowered to shred it to punish them.
For the last twenty of those thirty years Smith had relied on a human weapon
in his ongoing war. One man, long believed dead, who, like CURE, officially
didn't exist. And now that person, the assassin he had code-named "Destroyer,"
was ranging the forty-eight contiguous states as if he could single-handedly
stamp out all lawless elements.
Not that he wasn't making a dent, Smith thought ruefully.
His aged fingers tapped clicking keys. Bar graphs appeared, their data [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]