As he was speaking, the door opened. The young guard reappeared, his face nervous.
"I don't want to rush you, Mr. Scubisci, but if you're gonna take much longer, I'll have to stay in here."
Anselmo Scubisci's eyes were flat as he pushed up from the table. "It's okay," he rasped. "We're through."
He didn't bother to shake hands with Sweet. Collecting his airmail letter, he nodded crisply to his lawyer. "Keep in touch, Sol," he said. It was a command. Letter in hand, Don Scubisci was ushered from the room.
As he waited for the guard who would take him back outside, Sol Sweet gave only a passing thought to the strange envelope. It was just the latest of many Scubisci had received in recent months.
As usual, Sol wondered what was in the envelopes. Not that he'd ever try to check. He valued his life too greatly to be so foolish.
When the guard came to collect him, he banished all thoughts of the mysterious letters. Sol followed the man out into the hallway, grateful for the parking lot and his rented car and the miles of empty highway that waited for him beyond the high prison walls.
Chapter 9
The walls that enclosed the sprawling, snow-covered grounds of Folcroft Sanitarium were a prison to but one man. The others who passed through the high gates with their attendant stone lions-be they staff, visitors or patients-all left in their time. There was only one individual who had been committed to Folcroft for life.
Dr. Harold W. Smith would not have considered himself a prisoner. After all, he could come and go as he pleased. And yet most of the time he did not go. Most days and for much of the day, Harold Smith could be found in the same place he had been the day, the week, the year before.
As director of CURE, which operated in secret from behind the high stone walls of this exclusive mental-health facility and convalescent home in Rye, New York, Harold W. Smith was as much a prisoner as any man with a life sentence. It was only the cell that was different.
In his Spartan administrator's office, Smith sat behind his broad onyx desk. Through the one-way picture window at his back could be seen the churning black waters of Long Island Sound. Whitecaps formed on the wintry surface like Poseidon's grasping claws. Smith failed to notice.
His arthritic fingers moved with swift resolve across the edge of the desk. Below the surface, an illuminated keyboard tracked his sure path with bursts of soothing amber. A buried monitor reflected a constant data stream in the owlish glasses perched on Smith's patrician nose.
The CURE director had spent hours attempting to unravel the complicated finances of Raffair, with little success. As a corporation, Raffair was a mess. But it was clear that it was a mess with a purpose: to thwart an investigation such as the one Smith was attempting.
Still, in spite of the roadblocks he'd encountered, some rough outline of the beast had begun to take shape. Raffair was big and popular. Like a lot of high-technology stocks that had fueled the economic boom of the nineties, there seemed to be not enough revenue generated by the company to justify the inflated price of its stock. Yet like those high-tech stocks, ordinary people were eager to invest. Interest in Raffair's stock had further driven up the price, rewarding handsomely those who had bought into the company in the month since its initial offering.
The pattern was the same one that had developed of late for on-line bookstores, auction houses or Internet service providers. Yet in those cases, though greatly inflated, there was a clear product or service provided. With Raffair, there was none. Individuals were sinking their money into a ghost of a corporation that seemed on the surface to do little more than accept the influx of capital.
To Smith, it was clear that Raffair was nothing but a massive front for something. But for what, he had no idea.
With a troubled sigh, he rubbed his tired eyes. Sinking back into his cracked leather chair, he spun to face Long Island Sound.
Winter's wind attacked the rolling waves. Frothy foam collected at the shore near the rotted boat dock that extended into the Sound from Folcroft's back lawn.
Smith removed his rimless glasses, dropping his hand down beside his chair. The days when he could stare at his computer for hours on end without a break were long gone.
A thin UV coating on his glasses, as well as in his desk just above his monitor, was meant to shield his eyes from damage. If it worked, he was lucky to have the protection, for at this point in his life the years he'd spent sifting through cyberspace had caused an enlargement of his optic nerve. Possibly a precursor to glaucoma. Another sign of the march of time.
The signs had been there for some time now. There was no denying it. Smith was old. His body was beginning the inevitable betrayal visited on all living things.
At first, it had been small things. Tired eyes, creaking bones. Silly things that could be dismissed or ignored. But like a snowball rolled down a steep hill, the small things had begun to grow large.
His hands ached.
Understandable, of course. After all, he'd spent forty years pounding day after day on a computer keyboard. But an understanding of the reason didn't lessen the pain.
The worsening arthritis in his gnarled fingers made it difficult to type. Some mornings, it took him a full hour before he could work out all the overnight kinks.
The creaking bones had given way to aches in nearly all his joints. His right knee in particular was giving him problems lately. Some mornings, it was as if there were nothing beneath the skin but bone on bone.
These were problems of the flesh, however, and could be easily ignored. Indeed, Smith had put the minor aches and pains to one side even as they grew to distractions. Most troubling to him of late were his lapses in concentration.
It was not yet a memory problem, nor did it seem to be developing into one. Yet. But there were moments when weariness combined with age would take hold and Smith would find himself lost in a gray fog. They were not technically daydreams, for Harold Smith did not dream. But they were instances of lapsed consciousness during which his tired brain seemed to close itself off from the world.
Smith had always prided himself on his sharp mind. Even that seemed to be betraying him of late.
And a man in his position could not afford to lose his faculties.
It was fitting that his daydreams should be filled with clouds of gray, for Smith himself was cast in shades of gray. From his grayish skin, to his flinty gray eyes, to his three-piece gray suit, he was an emotionless figure from the age of black-and-white. A gaunt representative of the World War II generation, he was a man out of time. An anachronistic throwback to an era that an increasing number of Americans were beginning to view as ancient history.
In truth, all was not gray for Harold Smith. In his vest pocket was a small pill-not gray, but white. Fashioned in the shape of a coffin, it held a special place near his heart, not emotionally but literally. On his last day as head of CURE, Smith would remove the pill and swallow it. The fast-acting poison would kill him in a matter of minutes.
He had considered taking the pill several times over the past few years.
The current President had placed a strain on Smith like none of his predecessors had. He seemed unwilling to see CURE for what it was, an emergency firewall to deal with threats both domestic and foreign. There had been a number of instances where the President had wanted to use the resources of CURE for personal or political gain. The most recent was his less than subtle suggestion that Smith help him to remain in office beyond his constitutionally mandated two terms.
Of course Smith had refused. The President had withdrawn into silence broken by occasional bouts of surliness. Smith fully expected that the change of power would come in Washington this weekend without his ever having to speak to the President again. He was surprised when the chief executive called. Even more surprised to learn what it was he wanted Smith to do.