"Destroyer 023 - Child's Play.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

Was he a hit? He was a real live hit, wasn't he?
Well, ma'am, we believe that his demise was, so to speak, intentional.
That's for dang sure. Folks don't blow up by accident.
Yes, sir.
So here they were, talking to little children about froobies and bang bangs and sand boxes, while other agents went around picking up pieces of the man called Calder from the schoolyard.
"Anything else?" said the agent.
"He went like a ladyfinger. Bang. You know how ladyfingers blow up when you light them," said Jimmy.
"Ladyfingers are firecrackers. They're against the law. I never used them," said Kathy Poffer. "Jimmy used them a lot though. Jimmy and Johnny Kruse and Irene Blasinips. She showed herself to the boys, too. I know that."
"And you took extra cookies before nap," said Jimmy, turning in his playmate to the FBI. But the FBI did not seem interested in firecrackers or who showed what to whom, just Mr. Calder who was new to the town and had gone bang like a ladyfinger with some of him left, like those little firecrackers that never quite went all up.
There was something else, too, Jimmy remem-
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bered, but no one would be interested in that. They wanted to know about the bang, not about the new kid who wouldn't let anyone play with the froobie but just hung around sort of, and when Mr. Calder came by, called out to him and seemed to know him because he called him Mr. Calder.
"Mr. Calder, they say you can throw a football,. but I bet you can't throw a froobie," the new kid had said.
And everyone had watched Mr. Calder take the froobie, while the new kid had backed away to the other side of the schoolyard as Mr. Calder raised the yellow plastic froobie to his ear, just like the football players did when they wanted to throw footballs like grownups. But when the froobie was ready to go, bang.
And Mr. Calder was only partly left. Outside the infirmary, the strangers were still examining the area for the sprayed pieces of Mr. Calder. Lights came on, and there were television cameras, and everyone was talking about how hard it must have been on Jimmy and Kathy to see such a horrible thing at their ages, so Kathy started to cry, and since Kathy was crying and everyone said it was horrible and since Jimmy's mother was hugging him as if something horrible had happened, Jimmy started to cry, too.
"The poor babies," said someone, and Jimmy couldn't stop crying. All this over Mr. Calder, who went up like a little firecracker with some of him left.
The two agents caught the nightly news on television as they went over their day's notes. There were the two children, crying away before the tel-
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evision cameras. The schoolyard. And Calder's home.
"A modest home on a well-kept street," said the announcer of the local television station.
"Well kept, you can bet," said the agent who had questioned the children. "We had both sides and the front of the house covered. And the backyard neighbor was a retired Marine." He blew air out of his mouth and went over the notes. Somehow, apparently in the children's toy, a bomb had been smuggled in. But then why did Calder play with it? How had it happened that a child hadn't grabbed it first and blown himself up, instead of Calder?
How did anyone even know the subject was in Fairview? He had changed his name to Calder when his children were only babies, so they never knew his real name. No one at the factory where he was assistant purchasing agent knew his name. The agent at the plant had kept an eye on that.
No stranger had entered Fairview. No stranger could have entered Fairview without the whole town knowing about it-that was why Fairview had been chosen. Everyone in this town talked. Gossip was the major industry here. That, and the single manufacturing plant.
The agent in charge of the investigation had also been in charge of picking the town for Calder. He had been careful about it. As the district director had told him, keeping the man called Calder alive was a career move:
"If he lives, you have one."
That blunt. That final.
Calder was just one of seven hundred government witnesses hidden away each year by the
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Justice Department. Seven hundred. Not one in the last ten years had been uncovered until he was ready for trial. This was necessary because as the Justice Department closed in on the mobs around the country, the mobs had started to fight back in their traditional way.
Good lawyers could occasionally discredit a witness in a courtroom, but the mobs had long ago found out that the best way to get rid of a troublesome witness was simply to get rid of him. During the twenties, a government witness against a racketeer signed his death warrant when he signed a statement. A secretary, a witness to a shooting, a thug who wanted to turn state's evidence-the mob would get them, even in jail. And righteously, defense counsel would get the signed statement thrown out of court because the witness's death had denied him his right to cross-examine.
So about ten years ago, the Justice Department had a good idea. Why not give the witnesses new identities and new lives and keep them absolutely secure until the trial? Then, after the trial, give them another life and watch them a while to make sure they were safe? And it had worked. Because now witnesses knew they could testify and live.
So the man called Calder had thought.
The phone in the motel room where the agent was staying rang. It was the district director of the FBI.
The agent wanted to speak first.
"As soon as I finish my report, you can have my resignation."
"Your resignation won't be required."
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"Don't give me the official bullshit. I know I'm going to Anchorage or somewhere I can't live because of this thing."
"You don't know that. We don't know it. I don't know it. Just continue your work."
"You can't tell me that the agent who loses the first government witness in ten frigging years isn't going to get canned. C'mon, I'm not Bo Peep."
"You're also not the first. We lost two others this morning," said the District Director. "This whole thing may be coming apart."
In a sanitarium called Folcroft on Long Island Sound, giant computers received the details of the Fairview incident and the two others. Because of the designs of these machines, the printouts could only be gotten at one office. It had one-way windows, a large sparse desk, and a terminal which could be operated only through a code. The Fair-view incident was the last to clack out of the machine. A gaunt man with a lemony face read all three reports. Unlike the district director in Oklahoma, Dr. Harold W. Smith did not think ten years work might be falling apart. He knew it was.
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CHAPTER TWO
His name was Remo and the hotel guest wouldn't let him go. Was Remo aware that he and his Oriental friend probably produced an incredible amount of Theta waves and functioned to a great degree at the Alpha level?
Remo didn't know that. Would the guest please pass the salt?
The guest was sure that Remo and his elderly Oriental friend functioned at these states, otherwise how could Remo explain yesterday. How?
The salt.
Certainly, the salt. There was no other explanation, said Dr. Charlese, Averill N., as in Averill Harriman except he wasn't related to the wealthy and famous railroad family, just a poor parapsychologist trying to let people know of the great powers locked within humanity. He had a card:
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