"Destroyer 002 - Death Check.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

4) He was now Remo Pelham. A former policeman. Bora and raised in the Bronx. DeWitt Clinton High School, where he remembered only the football coach, Doc Wiedeman, who would not remember him. An M.P. in Vietnam. Chief of industrial security at a Pittsburgh mill. No family. No furniture, but books and clothes would be arriving in two days at Brewster Forum, which had just named him director of security at $17,000 per year.

He scanned the sheet and committed it to memory. Then he folded it up and dropped it into the remnants of his ginger ale. In ten seconds, it had dissolved, making the drink murky. It had been the intention of someone that Remo should be able to dispose of the paper by swallowing it. There were two reasons he would not swallow it-one, it tasted like glue; two, he didn't swallow things sent to him by anyone.

He took a cab into New York City with a woman who didn't like New York City, didn't know why she was visiting it and would never visit it again. So many people with only one thing on their minds. Not like Troy, Ohio. , Had Mr. Pelham heard of Troy, Ohio?

"Yes, I know Troy, Ohio," said Remo Pelham. "It has an intelligence quotient of two hundred. That's cumulative for everyone."

Mr. Pelham did not have to be insulting. Mr. Pelham might have told her he was from New York City instead of becoming abusive. After all, she was sure not everyone in New York City had only one thing on their minds.

Mr. Pelham informed the woman he was born in the Bronx and took to heart things said about New York City. He loved his home town.

Mrs. Jones loved New York City also, she was only teasing and what hotel was Mr. Pelham staying at?

"Not sure yet. I'm going to Riverside Drive."

"Is it pretty?"

Remo turned to the woman for closer scrutiny. He should get rid of her. Now he was deciding whether he wanted to.

She was a full-bodied woman with strong clean features, a blonde with brown eyes under heavy blue eyeshadow. She wore a neat suit, whose sewing and material Remo estimated at $250 in a large Cleveland store or $550 in New York City. The ring was three karats-if flawless, a fine stone.

The shoes oozed the subtle richness of expensive leather. Wife of manufacturer or leading citizen, on shopping trip to New York, and if convenient, uncomplicated lay for herself.

Estimating clothes and accoutrements had been one of his poorer programs during training. But he was good enough to trust himself. As much as indicating wealth, clothes tell you what a person wants you to believe. Invariably, that could give you a handle.

Remo Pelham answered the question: "Riverside Drive overlooks the Hudson. It's pretty."

"Where on Riverside, Mac?"

"Anywhere," Remo told the driver.

"You, too, lady?"

"If I wouldn't be bothering anyone," she said.

Remo Pelham said nothing. He said nothing as he paid the driver at 96th Street and Riverside Drive and got slowly out of the cab. He did not turn around nor offer to help the woman with her luggage.

Remo Pelham did not need luggage. Neither did a half dozen other names he lived by. He walked to the low stone wall and stared out across the Hudson, glimmering in the hot September day.

Across that river and beyond the decaying docks of Hoboken, in the city of Newark, a young policeman had been tried, found guilty of murder and executed at the state penitentiary. A young policeman who swallowed a pill from a. priest who had offered last rites and promised him not eternal life, but life. He had taken the pill, passed out in the electric chair, and awakened to hear a story from a man with a hook for a hand. The story was this:

The American constitution didn't work and was working less each year. Criminals, using the safeguards of the constitution, daily increased in number and strength. The next step was a police state. Machiavelli's classic perception of chaos and then repression.

Should the government scrap the constitution? Or allow the country to come apart? There was a third choice. Suppose an organization outside the government evened the odds? An organization which could not transcend the constitution because the organization would never exist?

If it never existed, who could say the constitution didn't work? And when the odds were more even, the organization which did not exist would quietly close shop. Closing shop would be very easy. Only four people knew for sure what CURE did-the highest elected official; Harold W. Smith, who was the operations head; Conrad MacCleary, the man with the hook who was the recruiter and now, the latest addition, the young policeman Remo Williams who had officially died the night before in an electric chair.

It was the high elected official who had given the ! go-ahead for what Remo would do. What he would do was kill. When all else failed, he would kill.