"Howitzers, sir. They're not called Horlands."
"When you've served as many years in this man's Army as I have," said Major General William Tassidy Haupt, "you don't have time to indulge yourself in that kind of thing. If they had had real generals in charge, we never would have gotten into Vietnam. Any shavetail could have seen there were no votes there, no industrial power there, absolutely no political sock. But you take that childish mentality that always wanted to play soldier and they think you can solve all your basic problems by shooting Horlands at them."
"Howitzers at them, sir."
"Whatever," said General Haupt. "Let's get a drink. It's been a long day."
In Folcroft Sanitarium on Long Island Sound, Smith read the multitude of reports. Since the outset, he had carefully managed to jump the lines of official Washington so that what one office of official Washington thought would be seen only by another office, also went to this sanitarium. The increasing use of computers simplified this. You didn't need a person to feed you a secret report. You merely plugged in, and Folcroft had one of the largest computer banks in the world.
Smith pondered the latest reports. Four witnesses dead. No one seen entering the premises. The waves became dark and gloomy over the sound. A storm threatened. A small Hobie Craft, its sail full-gusted from the growing northeaster, skimmed its way into port.
The witness system was a foundation of everything the organization had worked for these many years. If that worked, organized crime would be through. Of course, there was the growing inability of police to cope with street crime and that too could cause a disenchantment so deep as to bring in a police state. But that was something else, a second problem to solve. And when both those problems had been solved, Smith and CURE could close shop.
Right now, all the work done, all the blood spilled, seemed like so much waste matter on the landscape. Where witnesses did not feel safe to testify, there was no such thing as a working judicial system.
He had played his two top cards, and not only had they failed, but they had become suspects.
Smith fingered a report. It was an interdepartmental memo from a William Tassidy Haupt, Maj. Gen., USA. A skilled bureaucrat, Haupt had made Remo and Chiun with their "Justice Department" credentials the major suspects.
Haupt. Haupt? The name was familiar.
Of course. Smith punched a retrieve program from the terminal at his desk. In all Folcroft, this was the only terminal that could retrieve an entire program. Others could get only parts with words, letters, and numbers missing.
Haupt, Lt. Col, USA, killed in action, Bastogne, 1944. Right. Right. Smith had remembered the name for a very special reason. He had just been out of Dartmouth, and beginning what he thought was an interim career for the government, during World War II, when someone had mentioned that this Colonel Haupt could not be relied on for combat. Colonel Haupt was a bureaucrat who had remained a captain from 1922 to 1941. He was unprepared for war, and what always happened to peacetime armies happened. The combat people took command from the peace people. Colonel Haupt was assigned to a supply battalion. He had been with it when everything was overrun in the Ardennes. Instead of surrendering when it appeared hopeless, Haupt destroyed the supplies rather than let them fall into enemy hands, and then turned his unit into a guerilla band working behind German lines.
Smith, with the OSS, had been assigned to find out if the Germans had enough petrol to make this last offensive stick, and parachuted in behind lines to meet Haupt's little band. Not only had Colonel Haupt prepared a correct analysis of the enemy's fuel supply but as if guided by some genius hand, had known it was the fuel that was the key, and had been attacking just that in his small assaults on the Nazis.
That cold Christmas Colonel Haupt fought with his intestines held inside him by tape. He literally fought while he was dying. There was nothing dramatic about it, and Colonel Haupt did not become one of the better-known heroes of the Battle of the Bulge. One afternoon, the day before the skies cleared enough for Smith to be picked up, Lt. Col. William Haupt rested against the base of a tree and didn't get up.
A hell of a soldier.
He had a son. Haupt, William Tassidy, Maj. Gen., USA.
Maybe like father, like son.
Smith picked up one of the blue phones on his desk. It took longer to get Fort Bragg than a normal phone call would have. This was because the blue phone was a rerouter that switched Smith's calls through various trunk lines in the Midwest before completing them. If any of his calls were ever traced, the call would be terminated in Idaho or Ohio or Wisconsin and no one would ever be able to connect the harmless sanitarium on the Long Island Sound with the phone call.
A general's aide answered. Smith said it was the Pentagon calling and Haupt should answer immediately.
"He's busy now, sir, can he call you back? I didn't get your name."
"You will put General Haupt on this line within one minute or your career and his career are over," Smith said.
"Hello, General Haupt here."
"General Haupt, I have read your report on the Kaufmann killing and it does not look good."
"Who am I talking to?"
"I don't like your suspects."
"Who is this?"
"Someone who knows you've taken the nearest convenient suspects instead of risking looking for the real ones."
"I do not have to conduct a conversation with anyone who does not identify himself."
"Your career, General. It's through. You'll have the real killers or you'll be through." Smith glanced at the small file on the general. There was some small mention of a disorderly conduct incident while the general was at the Point. It occured in New Paltz, New York.
"We know about the New Paltz incident, General."
"Hah," boomed General Haupt. "I was found innocent. I was, I believe, nineteen years old at the time."
"But we know you were guilty," said Smith, taking a calculated shot in the dark. Courts in those days were reluctant to convict West Point cadets for minor offenses because the young men could be thrown out of the Academy for even such minor infractions. "Who the hell is this?"
"The people who are going to end your career."
"This is rubbish. Besides, I can't be held responsible for failure by Fort Dix personnel."
"Your career, General."
"If you're CIA, you're in more trouble nowadays than I am. You're vulnerable."
"Your career," said Smith and with a dramatic dry little chuckle, Smith hung up.
Maybe, like father, like son. CURE needed something. It had played its two top cards and not only had the finest assassins in history failed to protect the witnesses but they had no idea how the killing was done. Sinanju, whose every master had carefully studied the methods of whatever country he was in, did not know how these witnesses were being killed. More than two thousand years of learning stymied.
Like father, like son. Hopefully. Perhaps Haupt could get a lead where Smith and his organization had failed.
CHAPTER FOUR
Salvatore Polastro, president of Dynamics Industries, Inc., Polastro Real Estate, Inc., Comp-Sciences, Inc., and exalted grand leader of the Detroit Grand Council of Buffaloes-a civic and fraternal organization--had finished dedicating the new Holy Name sports complex and was washing his hands when someone blended his left wrist into a stunning colies fracture.
He knew it was a colies fracture because while skiing three years earlier, he had suffered a similar injury, that time jamming his left hand into an oncoming skier and glare ice. Five breaks in his wrist. This time, turning on the water faucet in the boys' room of the Holy Name sports complex.
He had only turned the faucet left and then the hand would not turn anymore and there was this incredible pain. He lowered himself to his knees the better to cradle his left arm with. He did not even feel the soapy floor water on his knees. On his knees, he smelled the sink soap quite clearly because his face rested against the cool washbasin.
"Yaaaah," he groaned.
"Hello there," came a voice from behind him. "My name is Remo, and you're going to talk to me."
"Yaaaahh," said Salvatore Polastro again.
"I'd appreciate something more than groans. You've caused me a problem. You're going to uncause it. How did you kill Kaufmann? Who did it for you? Did you arrange it?"
"My wrist. I can't talk."