"Destroyer 029 - The Final Death.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"I was just coming to that. Take a tight grip on your cup and let me fill you in."
The balding politician sat back and began to tell the new President about a secret government organization named CURE, begun back in the early 1960s to fight corruption and crime, outside of the constitution, before corruption and crime destroyed the constitution.
Only the Presidents of the United States knew of the organization that was so set up that it did not even take orders from the President. The President could suggest assignments but CURE did its own thing.
"You've got no controls on it then," said the new President.
"You've got the ultimate hammer," the balding man said. "Tell it to disband and it disbands. Gone, forgotten and no one ever knows it was there." And the ex-President continued, telling how the organization had always been
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headed by a Dr. Harold W. Smith, and only Smith and one other man, their enforcement arm, knew what the organization did.
"Who's this enforcement arm?"
"I don't know," the President said. "I met him once. A surly looking thing. I don't know his name. His code's The Destroyer."
The new President had begun shaking his head as if grieving over what the older man had told him.
"What's all that cluck-clucking for?" asked the ex-President.
"It's true. I always knew it was true. There's a secret damned government in this country, secret intelligence people running around, trampling civil rights, abusing law-abiding Americans, and I'm just not going to have it. I wasn't elected to tolerate that kind of thing."
"You weren't elected either to tell the American people that someone is trying to poison them but you don't know who or why but tune in tomorrow and you'll keep them posted. When 30 of our best European spies get killed by the Russians inside four days and we're left defenseless in Europe, well, maybe you'll just want to tell the American people all about it. My decision was to respond in kind. I called this organization CURE and let them handle it." He stood up and smiled down at the smaller man. "You know, it's not really a matter of integrity. It's a matter of intelligence. Of running the country the best way you can for the largest number of people. CURE can help you. But you do what you want to do. If you want them to get off this poisoning busi-
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ness, that's up to you. All you've got to do is tell them to disband. Of course, if the deaths start up again next week, I don't know who you'll turn to then." He smiled sadly. "Because that's the first thing you're going to learn in this job. When the shit hits the fan, you're alone. Your cabinet, your family, your friends. Forget 'em. You're alone. CURE helps. But it's all up to you."
The ex-President walked to the door.
"I don't like it," the new President said. "I just don't like secrets."
"Do what you want. There's a red phone in the bottom right hand drawer of that cabinet. Just pick it up. They'll answer."
He opened the door to the hallway, then turned around and let his gaze run around the room.
"This is your office now. Enjoy it. And do the best job you can."
Then he turned his back and walked out into the hall, closing the door behind him.
The Southerner stood up and walked around the room nervously rubbing his hands together. But each circuit of the office brought him closer and closer to the cabinet that held the phone and finally he stopped, opened the bottom right-hand drawer, reached in, and lifted the red telephone without a dial.
As the telephone reached his ear, he heard a clear voice which he immediately categorized as lemony, say "Yes, Mr. President?" No hello, no question, no welcome. Just "Yes, Mr. President?"
The new President paused.
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"About this poison thing," he said.
"Yes?"
The new President paused again. Then quickly, as if it could not be a mistake if spoken quickly, he said: "Keep on it."
"Yes, Mr. President."
The man with the lemony voice hung up. The new President looked at the telephone for a moment, then replaced the receiver on the cradle, and closed the drawer.
He looked around the office, then through the windows, out toward Pennsylvania Avenue.
As he walked toward the door, he allowed himself a comment on his newfound knowledge:
"Sheee-it."
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Chapter Two
His name was Remo and the drunk tank smelled. The stench of vomit and booze-breath and whisky-soaked clothing would have been enough to asphyxiate any normal man. So Remo closed down his nasal passages and breathed thinly and waited for his case to be called.
The cops in Tucston, North Dakota, had found him wandering down the middle of the street wearing a black T shirt and black slacks, ripping the hubcaps off cars, and singing "Blowing in the Wind." When they shoved him into the back of the squad car, they failed to notice that he wasn't shivering, even though he was only lightly clothed and the temperature was fourteen below zero, Fahrenheit.
And Remo hadn't said anything. He had
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presented his New York identification listing him as Remo Boffer, former cab driver, and been booked and waited in his cell.
And waited.
And waited for Judge Dexter T. Ambrose Jr. "Hanging Dexter," they called him. And they were right, just so long as the defendants before him weren't part of organized crime or well connected or had a buck. Because those people somehow found a softer, more gentle side of Dexter T. Ambrose Jr., whose steel and acid was reserved for the poor, the unrepresented, the flotsam that floated through his courtroom. .
It was 9 a.m. Remo knew without looking at a watch, and his plane would be leaving in two hours, and he hated time pressure and he hated hurrying. He had spent most of the early part of last night trying to find Judge Ambrose, but had had no luck. The man wasn't home and wasn't at his mistress' house, and wasn't at any of his regular haunts, and Remo realized that the fastest way to find him was to present himself at Ambrose's regular court session in the morning.
He had been standing now for six hours, leaning against the cinderblock wall of the cell, ignoring the grunts, the belches, the attempts at conversation of the nine other drunks in the tank.
Most of them had slept it off by now and they were a contrite, dirty band as they waited for their day in court and their one-way ticket to the county jail.
One of them woke up yelling. He was a big
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red-faced cowboy type in a yellow plaid shirt and jeans and a heavy hip length sheepskin coat. And when he had finished screaming his protest at the start of another day, he had struggled to his feet, looked around the cell, and marched upon Remo.
"You," he said. "Give me a cigarette."
"Don't smoke," Remo said.