"Destroyer - 011 - Kill Or Cure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

‘You’ve got a week,’ the president said. ‘Settle this thing or disband. I’m leaving tomorrow for Vienna, and I’ll be gone a week. The heat won’t really build up until I get back. So you can use that week. Settle it or disband. How can I reach you after this line is dead?’

‘You can’t.’

‘What should I do with the phone?’

‘Nothing. Put it back in your bureau drawers. After 7 p.m. tonight, it will be your direct line to the White House gardener.’

‘Then how will I know?’ the president asked.

‘We have a week,’ Smith said. ‘If we clean it up, I’ll contact you. If we do not… well, it was an honour to serve with you.’

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

‘Goodbye and good luck, Smith.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Dr. Harold W. Smith, director of the Folcroft Sanatorium in Rye, New York, returned the receiver to the cradle.. He would need the offered luck, for in a week the most important of all links would be destroyed—himself. That came with the job. He would not be the first to shed his blood for his country, nor would he be the last.

The intercom buzzed nervously. Smith opened a line.

‘I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed,’ he said.

‘Two FBI men out here, Dr. Smith. They want to speak to you.’

‘In a minute,’ said Smith. ‘Tell them I’ll be with them in a minute.’

Well, the investigation had begun. CURE‘S compromise was well underway. He picked up another phone and dialled through an open line to a ski resort in Vermont, closed for the off-season.

When the phone was answered at the other end, Smith said somberly: ‘Hello, Aunt Mildred.’

‘No Mildred here.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I must have the very wrong number.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘Yes. A very wrong number,’ said Smith, and wanted to say more, but he no longer had any guarantee that this line was not already being tapped.

For all practical purposes, he had said it all. The last hope of CURE, that special person, knew now there was a ‘condition red’.

What Smith had wanted to say was, ‘Remo, you’re our only chance. If you’ve ever come through before, you’ve got to come through now.’ Maybe the tone of his voice carried that plea. Then again, maybe it didn’t, for Smith could have sworn he heard laughing at the other end of the line.


CHAPTER FOUR

‘Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, free at last.’

Remo Williams returned the phone to the cradle and danced out of his lodge room onto the empty carpeted foyer that a few months earlier had suffered the constant tromping of ski boots. Now it supported the bare, dancing feet of one very happy man.