"Pale piece of a pig's ear," Chiun replied.
They drove out of the desert, back to civilization.
Chapter 17
No light spilled through the high windows of room 36E. Night had long since claimed the Eastern Seaboard.
Even before twilight drew its dense black shroud across the land, the troubled gray soul of Dr. Harold W. Smith had already been stained with shadows of despair.
It was afternoon when the world grew as dark as a midnight cave for the director of CURE. For the taciturn Smith, the eclipse blotted out all light, all hope.
He learned of the events at Lamonica Towers through the normal CURE network. A low-paid reporter for the local East Hudson, New Jersey, newspaper supplemented his income by passing on unusual stories by phone to an anonymous number in Kansas City. He assumed it was for some kind of government agency that was analyzing crime statistics. He was partly right. What he didn't know--could never be allowed to know-was that his regular reports were rerouted through several dummy sites until they reached a certain lonely desk in a vine-covered building on the shore of Long Island Sound.
MacCleary had failed.
At first Smith couldn't believe it. His heart pounded wildly when he read the news. Blood sang loud in his ears.
There were few details. The digest was concise, standard procedure for CURE's unwitting informants. A man with a hook had jumped from a balcony in Lamonica Towers. Police had interviewed Norman Felton, the building's owner. Felton-whom the world would never know worked for the Viaselli crime syndicate-claimed that the man had attacked him in his apartment. Documents found on the jumper identified him as Frank Jackson, a patient of a private mental institution in Rye. Foul play was not suspected.
A few short lines. And the end of the line for CURE.
MacCleary couldn't be brought back to Folcroft. Not without raising too may questions.
It was all too soon.
Too soon since MacCleary had brought Remo aboard.
Too soon since his trip to Korea aboard the Darter to retrieve Master Chiun.
Too soon since he'd gone to Trenton State Prison in his guise as a monk.
MacCleary had been too active these past few months. Many had seen him. It had been an acceptable risk until now. MacCleary was CURE's only field agent. Everything that he'd been involved in had been necessary.
But this? This brought it all to a head.
A man with a hook jumping from a building. The news item had made it into a few papers already. How many more would it find its way into? Would it snowball from there?
How many sailors who had just seen another man with a hook would read that paper? How many prison guards would recall the monk with the hook who had visited that prisoner on death raw? What was his name, Williams, wasn't it? And by the way, wasn't it odd how fast that trial was? A cop going to the chair just for killing a pusher-wasn't that strange? Maybe someone somewhere should look into that, maybe even an enterprising young reporter from an East Hudson paper who subsidized his meager pay by passing along news stories to a mysterious phone number in Kansas City.
It was improbable that it would play out quite like that. But not impossible. And therein was Smith's dilemma.
The existence of the mere possibility that some of those things might happen was unacceptable. MacCleary could not be brought back. To spirit him from the East Hudson Hospital where he was in intensive care would raise questions.
Too many questions. Smith's brain swam.
All the lies, the cover-ups. They had all been necessary. Necessary to preserve the most damning secret in American history. Necessary to save a country from chaos and anarchy. All absolutely necessary.
And the thing that would inevitably have to happen next was necessary, too.
Smith couldn't even think it.
At one point soon after he'd heard the news, Miss Purvish buzzed him. The East Hudson police were calling. Something about a former patient who had attempted to commit suicide in New Jersey.
Smith took the call. He didn't even know what he was saying. The cover story came out by rote. More lies.
When he was through on the phone, he left his office, telling his secretary where he would be. With a few instructions delivered woodenly to Miss Purvish, he headed deep into the sanitarium. Up the stairs to this corner room.
He sat down in the drab vinyl chair. And there he had stayed for hours. Day bled into night. The shadowy twilight slipped away from the windowsill as fluorescent bulbs flickered and hummed to life in the corridor beyond the open door. Yet Smith stayed.
In the bed near him, the Folcroft patient who had become Conrad MacCleary's obsession in recent years continued to breathe rhythmically. The comatose young man's eyes were lightly closed.
He would never wake up. Never again open his eyes on the world.
Smith felt sick.
The chair in which he had sat all afternoon still smelled vaguely of MacCleary's aftershave. How many hours had his old comrade sat in this chair?
Smith hadn't eaten all day. His stomach was a growling pocket of churning acid.
It was well past two in the morning. For the whole time he had been there, Smith hadn't once checked his watch. His mind was still lost in swirling thought when a hand reached in from the hallway. The light switch inside the door clicked and the room was awash in garish white light.
Smith blinked away the brightness.
The prim nurse who entered seemed surprised to find someone else in the room.
"Oh, excuse me."
When she realized that it was Folcroft's director sitting alone in this room, the nurse hesitated.
"Dr. Smith," she stammered. "I didn't realize-Is something wrong with the patient?"
His vision was coming back. Blinking away the dancing spots, Smith looked over at the teenager in the bed.
"There's been no change in his condition," the Folcroft director assured her. His own voice sounded strange to him. Hollow. He cleared his throat. "I was merely checking in on him. For a friend." The last words were difficult for him to get out.
The nurse didn't notice the catch in his voice. Smith had been balancing the patient's chart on his knee all night. He had picked it up when he came in the room. He didn't know why. It was something he had seen MacCleary do countless times. He handed the chart to the nurse.
She accepted it with a curious expression, replacing it at the foot of the bed. When she began fussing with the sheets, Smith was already leaving the hospital room.
He trudged down the hallway.
It was closing in on three in the morning. At this hour he didn't expect to meet many faces in the hall. Smith kept the sanitarium staff to a minimum at night. He caught only a few odd looks from Folcroft's civilian employees on his way out of the hospital wing.
The administrative wing was empty. He walked through deserted halls to his office suite. When he reentered his office for the first time in hours, he found a note waiting on his desk.
Dr. Smith:
The patient you were asking about showed up at about 5:00 this afternoon. The guard phoned me, but I didn't want to bother you. He and his nurse(?) are in his room. Hope this is okay. See you tomorrow.
K. Purvish
The daft woman had wasted an entire sheet of yellow legal paper for one small note. No matter how much he tried to instill in her a sense of frugality, she refused to change her spendthrift ways. And that question mark. She was always just a little too curious.
Questions. Would there be more questions? A foam-lined steel box in the basement. The questions would end when he pulled the lid tight over that airtight box.
Smith crumpled the note in one hand, throwing it to the drab carpet.
He sat there for a long time. As he contemplated the shadows, his long fingertips pressed his vest pocket.