"You will understand, it is more efficient this way," the stranger in the tidy black suit explained. "He is young and clumsy and would doubtless have awakened your wife. This way in his sloppiness he will not have to kill her, as well."
The last words rang hollow in the politician's brain. Kill. His waking dream had become a nightmare. He instantly snapped alert.
He would jump inside and slam the door. There was a phone in the front hallway. He would bolt the door and call the police. As he was dialing, he'd holler upstairs for his wife to lock the bedroom door. He grabbed the door handle.
He could do this. Just some kid and a crazy Chinaman. He'd be safe inside.
His hand wrapped around the brass. A final, desperate glance back.
The Oriental was still on the sidewalk.
The kid was on the steps. Standing funny now. Bent at the hip. Standing on one leg. Like a plastic pink flamingo lawn ornament. The leg was gone. Gone?
No, not gone. Here it was. Moving slowly.
No, wait. Moving fast. Faster than anything the politician had ever seen.
The boy's toe caught the old man in the Adam's apple. The power thrust carried the foot clear through the neck until it reached the brittle spine.
The head of Senator Dale Bianco did precisely what it was supposed to do given the circumstances. It popped neatly off his neck and bounced off the aluminum siding of his suburban Maryland town house. It made one big dent and then dropped into the rhododendron bushes.
There was a sliver of guilt in the boy as he watched the headless body fall back into the foyer. By sheer force of will, he crushed it.
He had worked the foot perfectly. Just as he'd been practicing. Precisely as he had been trained. The boy looked back to his teacher for a hint of approval, a flicker of satisfaction. Anything.
The Oriental wasn't even looking. He had already turned away. As if the perfect death that had been delivered-as if the boy himself-were less than nothing.
The boy stood next to the senator's body for a moment. Finally, he began slowly padding down the walk after his teacher. There was nowhere else for him to go.
Chapter 12
Harold Smith found Conrad MacCleary passed out in Folcroft's hospital wing.
MacCleary was sitting in a patient's room, clutching a nearly empty bottle in his hand. He held the bottle down near the floor, hidden by the leg of the chair in which he was slumped. His hook rested on his belly.
Smith wasn't surprised MacCleary was in here. Although he didn't like the thought of his rough-and-tumble ex-CIA comrade in arms spending any time mingling with the sanitarium's civilian staff, this was a unique situation.
In the bed next to where MacCleary sat dozing lay a Folcroft patient. The boy had been brought to the facility two years earlier after an automobile accident had put him in a permanent comatose state. All the doctors who'd examined him insisted the boy's condition was irreversible.
Although Smith prided himself on his ability to remain emotionally detached-from patients and even from his own family members-his old friend didn't possess the same ability. MacCleary oftentimes embraced the maudlin, reveled in the lugubrious. And there was no telling where or how strongly his sentimentality would rear its ugly head.
Even though the teenager in the bed was beyond all hope of medical science, it hadn't stopped MacCleary from coming to this room every day, day after day. It hadn't kept him from sitting in the warm sunlight that poured in from the high, clean window or from smoothing the crisp white sheets and of, eventually, passing out dead drunk in the same green vinyl chair over and over. No one else ever came to see the kid. MacCleary would be damned if he let him rot away in his tidy little room with his clean sheets, alone and forgotten.
Smith understood that this was a special case. Still, he would have preferred it if MacCleary directed his emotional energies to more productive activities.
With a bleak expression he took the big man by the shoulder, shaking him awake. Conn snorted loudly, opening his bloodshot eyes. When he saw who had awakened him, MacCleary shut his eyes with tired impatience.
"The nurses stealing paper clips again, Smitty?" he said. His hoarse voice was phlegmy.
"We need to talk," Smith said tightly. "In my office."
MacCleary's eyes rolled open once more. It was the tone Smith used that got his attention.
"Is it big?" Conn asked.
"Potentially," Smith admitted. The grim look on his face told a more certain story.
Grunting, MacCleary heaved himself up out of his chair. He dropped the bottle into the big pocket of his overcoat. Struggling to maintain his balance, he lumbered after Smith.
As they were leaving the room, MacCleary suddenly touched Smith on the sleeve.
"Smith."
When Smith turned, MacCleary was glancing back at the boy in the bed. When he looked back at the CURE director, his eyes were moist.
Smith nodded. "I understand."
That was all. For two old friends like these, no more words were necessary.
They took a flight down from the third floor of the hospital wing. A set of fire doors led to the administrative wing. MacCleary was coming around by the time they entered Smith's office suite.
Although Miss Hazlitt had recently been rotated back to the hospital wing, Miss Purvish had not yet returned. This time behind the outer desk was a plumpish woman who looked to be somewhere in her late thirties. Although, MacCleary realized once he'd gotten a good look at her, she was the sort who looked older even when they were young.
"Who's she?" MacCleary asked blearily.
"This is Mrs. Mikulka," Smith explained tightly. "She was transferred from the medical wing to fill in for Miss Purvish for the time being."
"Hello," the woman said nervously.
"I like the other one better," MacCleary slurred. The woman's face reddened with worry and embarrassment.
"Please pay Mr. MacCleary no mind, Mrs. Mikulka," Smith apologized as he hustled the big man into his office.
Smith shut the door behind them.
"I will not bother to lecture you yet again on your drinking," the CURE director said tersely. "But I would appreciate it if you would attempt to keep yourself reined in when you are around the Folcroft staff."
"Yeah, okay," MacCleary grunted, waving his hook. He flopped onto the sofa. "Anything you say, boss."
Smith could tell MacCleary was peeved. That was the only time he used the term "boss." There was little respect behind it. Back in the OSS they had been equals. The "boss" showed up only when Smith became MacCleary's superior upon his return to the espionage game after completing school.
"The Maxwell situation may have just reached critical mass," Smith said gravely, taking his seat. "As you know, I had recently started up the investigation again when several CURE informants hinted that something big might be coming out of the Viaselli crime syndicate in New York. However, the three federal agents I had assigned to the case have all disappeared in recent days."
"Yeah, they're dropping like flies," MacCleary said. "What's that bring the total to now? Six? Seven?"
"Seven agents," Smith said. "But at the moment they have become the least of my concerns."
The CURE director's tone was funereal. MacCleary knew that tone. And knew enough to be instantly wary of it.
"Why? What's happened?" MacCleary asked evenly.
Smith's gaze was unwavering. "Senator Dale Bianco was murdered this morning outside his Maryland home."
MacCleary slowly absorbed the CURE director's words.
Conn normally didn't bother with politics. Still, he was aware of Bianco, largely due to the senator's vocal crusade against organized crime.
"You think this is related to New York?" Conn asked.
Smith nodded. "Possibly. The method of death was...unorthodox. While he wasn't killed in the same manner as the first agent I sent to look into the Maxwell affair, the extreme, atypical nature of his death suggests that they could be connected."