The Korean captain stared long into Commander Seabrooke's unhappy face. Evidently he was satisfied that he found truth written there, even if he did not understand it.
A Korean seaman stepped up to Captain Yokang and whispered in his ear. The Captain frowned as he listened. One word escaped his mouth in surprise. "Sinanju?"
The other nodded gravely.
Looking up, Yokang glared at Commander Seabrooke and asked, "Have you ever heard of Sinanju? It is a fishing village near here."
"No."
"Never?"
"Never."
The Korean captain stepped close, standing toe-to-toe with Commander Seabrooke.
"I give you my word as a North Korean officer that if this gold is intended for the village of Sinanju, I will leave it and your vessel to complete your mission without further interference."
Commander Seabrooke blinked. It was an absurd offer. Even if the man had that authority, surely he had already radioed his superiors that he had intercepted a United States submarine in North Korean waters. He could not have depth charged the Harlequin without express orders to do so, not in the rigidly controlled hierarchy of the North Korean Navy. It was a trick question. It had to be a trick question.
So Commander John Paul Seabrooke answered it truthfully. "I'm sorry, I have never heard of any Sinanju,"
"It could not be Sinanju, anyway," Yokang muttered to himself, rubbing his blocky chin. "Sinanju would never work for America, even if America knew of Sinanju. I did not think it was possible. But I had to ask this question. I had to be sure."
As he spoke, the captain drew his service revolver. "You see, if this gold belonged to the village of Sinanju," he continued, lifting the weapon to his right temple, "I would be better off if I shot my brain from my skull than face the wrath of the Master of Sinanju."
Commander John Paul Seabrooke registered the name of the Master of Sinanju and wondered if he was some local warlord. His wondering ended abruptly when the service revolver suddenly snapped out and pointed toward him.
"I thank you for your honesty, fool."
Commander Seabrooke looked into the black barrel of the pistol, thinking, "He wouldn't dare shoot me," when the end turned red three times in quick succession and his rib cage was smashed to kindling.
They left him to bleed to death there in the bowels of his boat as the crated cargo was lifted out through the weapons shipping hatch and taken aboard the frigate SA-I-GU.
Commander John Paul Seabrooke was still alive, but only in the clinical sense, when all hatches were secured and the Harlequin crew were beginning to think they'd see their families again.
While that happy thought was still sinking in, the plastique charges affixed to vulnerable points along the Harlequin's hull went off in unison.
The Yellow Sea poured in cold and black and bitter. Commander John Paul Seabrooke drank more than his fill in the last thrashing minutes of his life, his final thoughts more bitter than brine.
I should never have told the truth. I should never have told the truth, his mind kept repeating like a broken record.
He was thoroughly drowned by the time the Harlequin settled to the rocky seafloor.
Chapter 9
Flashlight in hand, Harold Smith picked his way through the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium. The light roved among the furnaces and came to rest on the glowing grate of the old coal furnace in one cobwebby corner.
Smith approached, knocked the wood-sheathed iron handle upward with the thick barrel of his flash and gingerly pulled open the grate.
The ash-caked coals smoldered resentfully. Smith picked up a poker and stirred them. Sparks flew and hissed. Broken lengths of scorched human bone swirled up from the coals, showing the fractured ends of femurs and tibia.
Buzz Kuttner was coming along nicely. In another night or two, he would be one with the coal ash. Only then would it be safe to pour his cremated remains in an ash can for hauling to the dump.
Closing the grate, Smith continued his rounds. The triple-locked door guarding his computer system was secure. There would be no need to check the machines. No point to it now. They ran, scanning the net, but Smith did not expect to ever access them again.
But from behind the doors, Smith heard furtive sounds.
He pressed an ear to the door, and the sounds became more distinct. They were impossible to describe. Muted organic sounds, like hamburger plopping from a meat grinder.
Fumbling for his keys, Smith got the blank door unlocked and pushed open the door.
His light filled the room.
He saw the Folcroft Four, tape reels turning in quarter-cycle jerks. They were as they always were. But the refrigeratorlike jukeboxes stood ranked like dumb beige brutes. There were no moving parts, no ports, so there was nothing outwardly different or disturbing about them.
But inside, some thing or things moved and squirmed and made soft, indescribable sounds. Horrified, Smith approached. He pulled away a panel to expose the WORM arrays and stepped back with a pungent curse escaping his lips.
The WORM platters were literally alive with crawling earthworms. Blind, limbless things, they crawled among the circuit boards, writhed among the microchips, tiny mouths munching on the disk drives that were stacked around the central spindle.
The drives had been literally gnawed like lettuce leafs.
"My God!" he said hoarsely. "So that's what's wrong with the system. The worms have not been fed properly."
SMITH SNAPPED AWAKE with the first red rays of dawn setting Long island Sound ablaze.
It was not their gory light coming through his sealed eyelids that finally wrenched him out of sleep. It was the fact that his nightmares had for once taken the shape of concrete images. That had never happened before, and it startled his brain to wakefulness. More than anything else, this frightened Harold Smith, who disliked change.
In all the years, from his days with the OSS through the CIA to CURE, Smith had been able to count on untroubled sleep. No man he ever killed in the performance of his duty or had ordered executed in his capacity as head of CURE had ever returned to plague his dreams.
But the failure of his computer system had shaken him to his core. As he sat on the long couch fumbling his shoes on, Smith understood that he might never know a decent night's sleep for the rest of his days. He had failed his country and his President. He didn't know how, but he had. It was intolerable.
Smith walked stiffly over to his oak desk, retrieving his coat and vest on the way. Staring unseeingly over the sound, he put them on, patting the watch pocket of the vest for his coffin-shaped poison pill. It was still there. For thirty years it had been there.
Woodenly Smith took his seat. Reflexively he reached for the concealed stud that would bring the CURE terminal humming into view. He caught himself in time. Thirty years of routine was a long habit to break. There was no need to check the system again. He had been through that.
Instead, he cleared his throat and opened the righthand desk drawer after unlocking it.
He brought out an AT el telephone. It was as red as a fire engine, and instead of a dial there was only a blank face.
It was the dedicated line to the White House. For thirty years, Smith had used this as a secure communications link to eight sitting US. presidents.
Now he was about to call the White House for what he feared would be the final time.
It was 6:00 a.m. Not too early to call a President. They were usually up before first light. This latest President had a habit of rising later, but Smith felt certain that he would be up by now.
Smith placed an unsteady hand on the red receiver. He had only to lift it and automatically an identical phone in the Lincoln Bedroom would ring in sympathy.