He sat in the dark, smoking Havana cigars, thinking for a long time. He could get back into the computer center and stick a hand under Pamela Thrushwell's dress. Or he could even follow her and do it on the street or in the subway. Maybe he would get away with it and suffer only mortification.
But what about next time? What would the voice want next time?
He took out a pencil and computed what his lifestyle would cost. He thought a couple of thousand a week for life would do, but was stunned to find out he was spending twelve thousand dollars a week and that was before food.
No more. He was taking his money and going.
He read the balance on his Insta-Charge statement and wrote a check for seven million dollars.
He went to the bank. The teller asked if he were serious. He said he was. The branch manager came over. He checked with the main office. The main office laughed. Waldo had only fifteen hundred dollars in his account and that was because of the security blanket of his overdraft checking program.
The next morning, Waldo lurked in a doorway outside the computer center. When Pamela arrived for work, he rushed up behind her and stuck his hand quickly underneath her skirt. She screamed. Another woman with a very heavy pocketbook blocked his retreat, a man yelled "masher," but Waldo dropped to his knees and crawled out of the crowd. He glanced back and saw the surveillance cameras inside the computer center pointed out toward the street. He could feel them laughing at him.
A few days later, he got another Insta-Charge statement in the mail. It was an order to show up at another address.
The soft feminine voice in the new office said, "Spank Pamela Thrushwell with a paddle." Waldo knew he would soon be asked to kill. A paddle could kill. He phoned Detective Joe Casey.
They met on a dark Hudson River pier, facing New Jersey. Waldo had picked the spot for its isolation. He was sure that whoever or whatever was behind this could see almost anywhere. He wanted to get away, away from any form of computer, away from any place that had surveillance cameras, but mostly away from all computers. A computer had started all this by changing his monthly statement. And Pamela Thrushwell worked at a computer center. Waldo thought computer and he thought get away.
"I'm in trouble," Waldo told the detective. And he explained how a bank error had led him to live a higher and higher life-style so that now he was dependent on the money. He needed it. But he was afraid of what he might have to do for it.
"I get the feeling that I'm being played with," he said. "I can't cash a check at the bank to get any real cash, but I can still buy anything with my credit card. So all I can get is what I need to live on."
"How much is that?" Casey asked.
"A half a million a year or so," Waldo said.
"Good money," Casey said.
"Where's it leading?" Waldo asked.
"A half million to cop a feel? For a little goose? A spank? Hey, Waldo, I'm a cop. I get paid a lot less for a lot tougher work."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying for a half million, I'd paddle the pope," Casey said.
"But where does it end?"
"What do you care?" Casey said.
"What are you saying?" Waldo asked.
"Spank the girl is what I'm saying."
Waldo shook his head. Something deep inside him said no. Enough. Bit by bit, he had been played into losing every little piece of himself. He knew that to go on further was to lose everything. Even going back to Millicent would be preferable. He was getting out.
"No," he said firmly. "I want to turn these people or this thing, whatever it is, in. I've had enough. I've gone far enough. I guess you do have to pay for what you get, and I'll pay whatever I have to pay."
"Are you sure?" asked Detective Casey.
"Yes," said Waldo.
"Tell everything? Littlest details? Everything? You're willing to give up everything?"
Waldo nodded.
"Listen, buddy. As a friend. Why don't you just give the broad a little bump on the bottom and pick up your dough?"
"Dammit, Casey, it's illegal and I'm not doing it anymore. Some things I won't do for money. Even big money."
Detective Lieutenant Joseph Casey withdrew his .38 Police Special and put it in Waldo Hammersmith's face and shot away a very large segment of it.
Too bad for Waldo, Casey thought. But a person did get used to the big money. It got so that you would even murder to keep the money coming in.
In Nemonthsett, Utah, a lieutenant colonel in charge of a Titan nuclear missile battery bought himself two new Mercedes Benzes and paid for them with a personal check. He earned less than half that much in a year. But the check did not bounce.
He wondered if someday he would have to pay the money back. But he did not wonder too long. He was due at work, due to spend the next eight hours watching over twenty-four missiles that were aimed at Russia, threatening it with the force of millions of tons of TNT.
sChapter Two
His name was Remo and the Iranian sun was cold this winter, colder still because he wore only a thin black T-shirt and chinos.
Someone had told him that the winters in Iran were like those in Montana, and that in ancient times, before Islam had come, the people of the region believed that hell was cold. But then they had left the religion of the Parsi and taken that of the desert, that of the prophet Mohammed who lived where the sun scorched away life on burning sands, and eventually like all religions whose holy men talked first from deserts, they came to believe that hell was hot.
But Remo did not mind the cold of Iran and the men he was watching did not mind the heat of hell because they were all sure they were going straight to heaven when the time came. Heavy woolens covered their backs, and their hands thrust forward to warm near flickering yellow flames and their voices chanted in Parsi.
Guards every few feet looked into the blackness and told themselves that they too were earning heaven, although not as surely as those men who sat around the fire.
Remo could see the guards try to avoid the cold by tightening their bodies, not even knowing that they were attempting to generate heat by straining their muscles under their clothing.
The cold was real, only three degrees above zero and with a wind that tried to tear away all the body's heat, but Remo was not part of that cold.
His breathing was slower than that of the other men, taking in less cold, having to warm less air, a thin reed of human calm that suffered no more than the tall grass around his thighs. He stood so still that a rock this night would attract more attention from a human eye.
Those around the campfire tried to dull their senses and fought the cold. Remo let his senses run free. He could hear the grass strain ever so gently at its roots in the gravelly dust of the soil that had been leached of nutrients for thousands of years. He could feel a sentry tremble, leaning against a dried tree trunk, feel the young man shake in his heavy boots, feel the shaking come through the ground. He could smell the dinners of beef and lemon rotting in the mouths of those who had eaten them just hours before. And from the little fire, he heard the cells in the logs collapse as they puffed into smoke and flame.
The chanting stopped.
"We now speak in English, beloveds," came the voice of the leader. "We dedicate our lives in sacrifice against the Great Satan and for that we must speak the language of the Great Satan. Waiting for us in the United States are a thousand daggers and a thousand hearts ready to enter the gates of paradise."
"A thousand daggers and a thousand hearts," the voices came back.
"We all seek to end our lives to have eternal life. We fear not their bullets or their planes or any device of the Great Satan. Our brothers have gone before and taken many lives of the unbelievers. Now we too will bleed the Great Satan. But our honor is the greatest, because we will bleed its most important blood. Its snake head. Its President. We will show there is nothing safe from the wrath of Allah."
"Allah Akbar," chanted the young men around the flames.