Shock Value (Destroyer 51)

Chapter One

Orville Peabody was watching television. Had his mind been operating correctly, he might have said that he liked television as well as anybody. Back home in the nondescript clapboard ranchstyle house in West Mahomset, Ohio, which he shared with his regulation homemaker wife and their requisite quota of average children, he had watched quite a bit of television. As a child, in another nondescript clapboard ranch-style house in West Mahomset, he had squeezed in regular doses of "Howdy Doody" and "Ted Mack's Amateur Hour" between his activities at Junior Achievers, Four-H, and the Boy Scouts. His taste had improved since then. Sometimes, back in West Mahomset, he even watched "Masterpiece Theatre."

He was not watching "Masterpiece Theatre" now. If Orville Peabody's mind had been operating correctly, he might have questioned what he was watching, which was a daytime soap opera titled "Ways of Our Days," featuring an inane cast of adolescent rock musicians turned actors. He might have questioned the place where he was watching it, which was about as far from West Mahomset as you could get.

He might also have questioned the identities of the two men who flanked him on either side, each gazing intently into his own silent television set, listening through earphones to the greedy squeals of a game show audience and violins in a rerun of an Old Lassie movie.

But Orville Peabody's mind was not operating correctly. It was drinking in each millisecond of "Ways of Our Days" with a thirst unequalled in the annals of telecommunications. It was absorbing information with an intensity that left Peabody breathless and expectant. It was extracting from the beating light in front of him a message so clear that it stood out like a shining nugget, hard and inviolate, against the vague flapping images on the television screen.

It was telling him his destiny.

And so Orville Peabody, in his glorious moment of revelation, did not wonder why he was sitting in a darkened room on a tropical island, his skin brown from unremembered days in the sun, huddled beside two strangers who might have been sitting, unmoving, beside him for hours or days or weeks for all he knew. Nothing mattered now. He had a mission. It had come to him through the television, and it was not to be questioned. Orville Peabody was at peace.

Smiling like a prophet who has viewed the future of man and found it good, he rose from his contoured chair and turned off the set. The two other men in the room never glanced his way. Without a thought for the stiff muscles brought on by the hours of sitting, he walked over to the small closet in the room and put on his suit jacket. Everything was in place: his wallet, containing the forty-two dollars he had left West Mahomset with; three credit cards; a passport; photographs of his wife and kids; and a Swiss Army knife. His father had given him the knife for his tenth birthday, and Orville carried it wherever he went. "Just in case one of those muggers comes to West Mahomset with any fancy ideas," he would tell his kids with a wink.

Outside, the sun was shining, fairly pelting cheer onto the narrow dirt roads of the primitive island where the land gave way to the rocks and the rocks to the wild sea. It would be a wonderful day for traveling. He walked the two miles to the small island airport and bought a ticket for Newfoundland, Canada.

"How will you be paying for this, sir?" asked the clerk behind the makeshift counter.

"Credit card," Peabody answered, smiling. Automatically he reached into his trouser pocket and placed the card on the counter.

"Very good, Mr. Gray," the clerk said, "Now, if you can show some other identification ..."

He looked at the name on the card, Joshua Gray. But he was Orville Peabody. All of his cards said so. Warily he reached inside his pants pocket again.

Wait a second, he thought. He didn't keep anything inside his trousers pockets. His I.D. was in his jacket. And yet his hand had gone immediately for the card bearing the name of Joshua Gray. His fingers reached around a small booklet.

"That's it," the clerk said, opening up the passport to Peabody's picture. Below it was the name Joshua Gray. Peabody stared at it, uncomprehending. The clerk was motioning somewhere off to the right. "Your plane's boarding now, Mr. Gray." she said. "Have a pleasant trip."

"Thank you," Peabody said, fingering the strange passport and credit card. How had they gotten there? And why was he going to Canada? For a moment he panicked, sweat suddenly popping up on his brow and streaming cold from his armpits.

"Are you all right?" The clerk's face showed alarm.

"Yes, yes." Peabody drew a deep breath and irritably snatched up the identification. The moment of fear passed. Whatever had prompted him to use a false card he hadn't known to be in his possession was, he decided, nothing of his choosing. There were greater forces at work in him now, and it was not his place to question them. He was going to St. John's, Newfoundland, because that was where he knew he must go to live out the pulsing, unreachable message in his brain. He was to go there under a false name, because that was what the message had decreed. He knew also that, once in St. John's, he would discard the Joshua Gray passport and credit card and book passage on still another flight under his own name.

He wondered, as he walked into the airport at St. John's, where that flight would take him.

He looked for a men's room. His hands mechanically stashed the false card and passport into a trash bin, then his feet walked in sure, brisk strides toward the BOAC counter.

"Rome, first class," he heard himself say, reaching automatically for his Orville Peabody identification inside his jacket pocket.

Rome?

"Ladies and gentlemen. We are now making our final descent into Leonardo Da Vinci airport... ."

He was lost. He had no business in Rome. Or in St. John's, Newfoundland. Or on that cheerfully anonymous tropical island where he had spent the last eternity since he had seen West Mahomset, Ohio.

Orville Peabody worked in a clothing store. He had graduated without distinction from the local high school. He had married the daughter of one of his parents' friends. His kids played in Little League and belonged to Cub Scouts. Sometimes he watched "Masterpiece Theater."

What the hell am I doing here? he thought.

But those were not the words his lips formed. What came out of his mouth was a request for directions to some place he'd never heard of. The man he had spoken to, a distinguished-looking white-haired gentleman, pointed to his right.

"Spanish Steps?" the white-haired man asked in a refined British accent. "Can't miss it. Beautiful sight. Early eighteenth century, you know. Magnificent architecture. Of course, you won't see much of that today. Some kind of rally going on. Leftists, no doubt. They're everywhere. A pack of troublemakers, if you ask my opinion."

"Pack of troublemakers," Peabody repeated, dazed.

"Well, I daresay you'll enjoy it all the same," the Englishman said with gruff cheer. "Spot of color for your holiday, what? Cheerio."

"Pack of troublemakers," Peabody chanted under his breath.

The rally was in full force. Angry young men and women squeezed together, cheering zealously as one of their number shouted something incomprehensible to Peabody on the ancient steps above the crowd. For a few moments he watched the speaker without emotion. It was, after all, a foreign language everybody was screeching in, and the press of unwashed bodies and writhing, violent movement made Peabody feel even more uncomfortable, if that was possible, than before.

It was bad enough to be in a strange country with no luggage, no friends, and no apparent reason to be there. But to be stuck in the middle of some hostile campus demonstration, surrounded by the kind of freewheeling loonies he'd cross the street to avoid back home in West Mahomset ...

He squeezed his eyes shut. The revelation had been blinding. Not the speaker, you dummy! He nearly laughed aloud. Of course. He should have known it would come to him. The false I.D., the trip to Newfoundland, the flight to Rome, the Spanish Steps--it was all perfectly clear now, as clear as the message that had dawned, bright and unspoken, as he watched "Ways of Our Days" in that darkened room.

He was in Rome not to watch the speaker, but the crowd.

For in that crowd, he knew, would be a face. And that face would have a name, Franco Abbrodani. How Orville Peabody knew this face and its attendant name, he could not recall, since neither was familiar to him. But his brain, still operating independently, thrummed with the pleasure of anticipation. His heartbeat quickened. A thin bar of moisture glistened on his upper lip.

Perhaps the man named Abbrodani would be a friend. Perhaps he was part of the unknown mission Peabody had been sent on, Peabody's destiny. With an Italian villa, perhaps, and a table filled with spaghetti and dago red wine and maybe even a telephone so he could call the wife back in West Mahomset ...

The thrumming wailed into a shriek. Peabody could hardly breathe. He was here ... near ... now.

With a grasp, he spotted the face he had been looking for. A face utterly unfamiliar to him, yet somehow as recognizable to him as any of the folks back home.

"Franco!" he shouted. A swarthy man in his late thirties wearing a combat jacket jerked his eyes from the speaker on the steps and regarded the grinning, sweating American with suspicion. Peabody stretched out his hand in welcome. "Golly, buddy, I just can't tell you how glad I am to see you."

Abbrodani grunted and waved the man away.

"No, really, you've got to believe me, pal. I know less about this whole crazy thing than you do. Here, wait a second. I'll show you."

With a hand on Abbrodani's shoulder, he fumbled inside his jacket pocket. "I know I've got it somewhere... . Gee, I was so relieved to see your face, I almost wet my pants. Here. Look here. What'd I say, right?"

And with a chuckle and a wink and a squeeze on Abbrodani's shoulder, Orville Peabody pulled out the Swiss Army knife he had carried since he was ten years old and slashed open the man's throat.

ROME (AP) Diplomatic tensions mount as the mystery surrounding the violent deaths of three international terrorists remains unsolved.

Franco Abbrodani, suspected leader of the Italian Red Army Underground, Hans Bofschel, head of the Stuessen/Holfigse gang in Berlin, and Miramir Quanoosa of the Arab Brigades, a violent splinter faction of the PLO, were all murdered at exactly 3:45 P.M. yesterday in different parts of the world and in full view of hundreds of witnesses.

The assassins, all dead, were identified as Eric Groot (Quanoosa), a clerk in a records office in Amsterdam; Pascal Soronzo (Bofschel), an Argentinian sheep rancher; and an American, Orville Peabody (Abbrodani), a clothing salesman from West Mahomset, Ohio.

None of the assassins was known to have any political affiliations.

Groot and Soronzo both died of cyanide poisoning, which was probably self-inflicted, according to medical examiners. Peabody was beaten near death by the angry mob who witnessed the assassination of Abbrodani, and was taken by ambulance to St. Peter's hospital in Rome. He was pronounced dead on arrival.

According to a paramedic on duty in the ambulance, Peabody's last word was "Abraxas."

In response to the mounting allegations between the PLO, Israel, Germany, Italy, Argentina, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, and the United States regarding what power lay behind the extremely well-organized assassinations, the U.S. State Department stated that the president himself was looking into the source.

Of the American assassin's last word, "Abraxas," the department declined further comment.

The woman laughed as she tossed the newspaper onto the long redwood conference table strewn with other newspapers from around the world. Each held a front page story about the assassinations, along with pictures of the three assassins.

She was alone in the room. Sunlight streamed through the large windows onto the desk and caught the brown-gold wisps of hair that danced around her face. It was a beautiful face, strong and elegant, but marred by a long scar that ran from one temple diagonally toward her chin. It missed her eye and mouth by a half-inch, so the features were not distorted; still, it was an unsettling face, a face that commanded attention. From the woman's imperial stance and the calm manner of her hands, it was clear she knew it.

"It's working," she said, lighting a cigarette. The casual remark was directed toward a camera propped in a corner of the ceiling. It buzzed faintly in the quiet enclosure, focusing on the newspaper the woman had tossed in front of it.

"Yes." The voice, rich and modulated, came from several sources at once. The speakers were mounted unobtrusively inside the walls, and when the voice spoke, it seemed to surround the empty table. "Excellent, Circe. A true success. Even to the American's dying word."

"Abraxas," she said softly, the word forming through a cloud of white tobacco smoke.

The tone of the voice from the walls changed. "But this is only the beginning. There is still much to be done. At the conference we will begin our real work. The conference, I trust, is ready to convene?"

"Nearly," Circe answered. "We have had some difficulty in locating one of the delegates. But he has been found. He will be approached today."

"Which one?"

"The computer expert," she said, squinting through the smoke into the sunlight. "The one named Smith. Harold W. Smith, of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York."