Out of the corner of her eye, Pepsie saw the director pointing frantically to the monitor. Pepsie allowed her left eye to dart to the screen. She had the faculty of being able to move her eyes independently of each other so that when she turned slightly she appeared to be looking directly at the viewer while surreptitiously watching her surroundings.
To her horror, she saw herself on the in-house monitor-against a dead black background.
"In our Washington bureau, excuse me," she corrected. "This just in from Boston, Massachusetts. The President of the United States was shot by unknown persons as he exited his limousine at precisely-" she glanced at her desk clock and guesstimated a time "-10:47 Eastern Standard Time. ANC News had a crew at the scene, and video is being satellited to us even as I speak. We here at ANC have yet to screen this footage, but in the interest of the public's right to ratings-I mean, to know-and as a public service we are showing it to you raw. We caution viewers that some of the scenes you are about to see may be graphic to the point of gruesomeness and that small children and animals should be shooed away so that they do not see it. Everyone else, pull up your chairs. This is history and you are seeing it almost live."
The news director flashed a signal to the technical crew, and Pepsie's left eye went to the monitor.
The monitor was blank.
"Something's wrong," she hissed.
Technicians in the control room frantically threw switches.
The monitor screen winked, and suddenly there appeared the computer-generated ANC Washington bureau newsroom-without Pepsie Dobbins. No footage rolled.
"Where's the damn footage?" Pepsie screamed.
Over the air millions of Americans watched the static newsroom shot and heard the disembodied voice of Pepsie Dobbins demand that the footage be telecast.
The news director shushed her with a finger to his lips.
"Get that fucking footage on the air before CNN beats us to it!" she hollered, her blue tomcat eyes snapping sparks.
Millions of Americans heard that, too.
Then a technician poked his head out of the control room saying, "The deck ate the tape."
The news director cursed and, without looking back, threw the signal to Pepsie to take back the broadcast.
In TV sets all over America, the empty newsroom was replaced by the sight of Pepsie Dobbins, her head down on her desk, tearing tufts of her short brown-blond mane of hair out with enameled nails, repeating "I'm gonna kill everyone in the control room ...." over and over.
In her earpiece, the news director whispered urgently, "You're still on, Pepsie. Improvise something."
Without lifting her head, Pepsie said in a twisted voice, "On behalf of ANC News, I would like to lead the nation in a moment of silence for our martyred President."
Offstage the news director screamed, "What are you doing? We don't know that he's dead yet."
"Trust me on this one," Pepsie muttered.
Then CNN came on with their version of the footage.
It was merciful. The CNN camera crew, well behind Secret Service rope lines, caught only the shirtfront of an anonymous Secret Service agent as the limousine door opened. In another second the man who emerged from the limo would have stepped into clear sight. But he never did.
A shot rang out, and the agents whirled, forming a tight protective knot around the fallen man, 9 mm MAC-lls and 10 mm Delta Elite handguns coming up at the ready.
After that it was aboil in frantic officials. Someone yelled, "It's Dallas all over again!" and the Presidential motorcade sped away from the rushing cameras, grim-faced agents clinging to bumpers and sideboards.
The camera found a pudding of blood and brains on the pavement and lingered on it for nearly a minute. Then other cameramen saw the stain and they quickly trampled it under their jostling feet.
America was spared the gruesome sight. But nothing spared them the horror. Their imaginations filled in the Technicolor details.
HAROLD W SMITH WAS oblivious to the first bulletin. It was ironic. Harold W Smith should have known about the Presidential assassination as it was breaking. At the very least.
In the best of all possible scenarios, Harold Smith should have seen it coming and been able to intercept the assassin. That, among other responsibilities, was Harold W. Smith's duty, as director of CURE, the supersecret government agency he headed.
As the first reports were breaking, Harold W Smith, incongruously attired in a gray three-piece business suit, was in a concrete vault in one corner of the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium, the cover installation that masked CURE operations. Smith was completing repairs to the great bank of IDC mainframes that constituted the nerve center of CURE's information-gathering arm.
CURE had been without its full Intelligence-gathering capability for three months now, ever since the awful morning when a combined IRS-DEA raid on Folcroft had forced Smith to erase the thirty years of data he had painstakingly compiled. And as the lasers were burning the deepest secrets of a fractious nation out of existence, Smith had taken the poison pill that would have erased him, too.
The raid had been instigated ironically enough by a computer intelligence Smith had already defeated. The doomsday plan had come close to succeeding. The IRS had seized Folcroft and would have auctioned it off over Smith's cold gray corpse but for his enforcement arm, Remo Williams and his trainer, Chiun, the last Master of Sinanju.
They had brought Smith back from the brink of eternity, and working behind the scenes, the three men had gotten the IRS and DEA off their backs without compromising CURE security.
In the aftermath a dangerous patient and security threat had escaped, and the CURE computers, only recently upgraded, were reduced to the status of multimillion-dollar blank slates.
It had taken three months to bring them back online. It would take another decade to restore the most important portions of their data base. Harold Smith, who had been young during his days with the OSS during World War II, did not know if he had another decade.
But because he had taken up the responsibility for CURE, he had done what he could. The systems were back online, and the four great mainframes and the slave WORM-drive units once again held the duplicate data bases siphoned off the IRS, Social Security Administration, FBI, CIA, DEA, DES and TRW computer systems.
It was enough to put CURE back in the Intelligence-gathering and analysis business. It was not enough to restore it to full capacity.
As he secured the three locks that concealed the CURE computers from prying eyes, Harold W Smith reflected that in these early days of the information superhighway, the proliferation of computers out there meant that in many cases he needn't have the raw data locked in his basement to have access to it. He need only reach out through the telephone system to snare what he wanted.
Perhaps, Smith thought as he rode the elevator to his second-floor office, that was for the best.
When he stepped off the elevator, he saw his secretary sobbing at her reception desk. Harold Smith paused, adjusted his Dartmouth tie uncomfortably and contemplated slipping past the weeping woman and into his office. He detested overt displays of emotion. Especially coming from women. They made him feel helpless and awkward.
Mrs. Mikulka abruptly looked up, and it was too late.
"Er, is something wrong?" Smith asked uneasily.
Eileen Mikulka took a deep, ragged breath, her eyes red and moist. "He's been shot!"
"The President. Someone shot him. Oh, what is this country coming to?"
In a stark, still fraction of a moment, Harold W. Smith stood rooted. He remembered an identical time, an identical cold, settling feeling some thirty years ago, when, sitting in his office, he had picked up the telephone to hear his wife sobbing out the identical news. Her words had almost been the same. Why was it that people always said "they" did it. Who were "they"? Why didn't people ever say "someone" shot the President? Or "a killer" shot the President. It was always "they."
The news of the death of that particular President so long ago had been like a cold dagger in Smith's vitals. For that President had installed Smith in the position of CURE director, entrusting him not only with the security of the nation but the political fate of the President, as well. For both men had known that if the truth ever leaked out, that President would be impeached for setting up an extraconstitutional bulwark against crime and corruption. In order to preserve the nation, CURE routinely trampled all over Constitutional guarantees.
Smith snapped out of it. "Hold my calls," he said hoarsely. "I will be in my office."
The renewed sobbing followed him into his office, ceasing only when he shut the oak door that was soundproofed against all noise.
Smith crossed the Spartan but slightly shabby office in long-legged strides that put him behind a desk that was like a slab of anthracite on legs. The chair creaked under his spare frame. Reaching under the desk edge, he depressed a button.
Under the black glass desk top, canted at an angle so only Smith could read it, a computer monitor winked into life, its black screen blending with the desk glass. Only the angry amber letters on the screen showed.