"I was just curious," said the President. His voice was not exactly offended. Neither was it hurt.
"Intelligence came to me that General Tanko was considering a terroristic attack on the NATO Implementation Forces in Bosnia. Orders emanating from his political masters in the rump Yugoslavia. An expression of U.S. displeasure had to be undertaken."
"That's good enough for me," the President said. "This conversation never happened, by the way. You won't read about it in my memoirs."
"I intend to write no memoirs," said Harold Smith, who meant it.
The President hung up, and Smith returned the red telephone to the desk drawer and shut it. Before he left for the evening, he would lock it with a small steel key. It was a dedicated line directly to the White House, and was linked with its identical twin in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.
For the thirty years since Harold Smith had been plucked out of the CIA's data-analysis department to head CURE, the supersecret government agency that didn't exist, he had lived with the only private hot line to the Commander in Chief at his side. A President of the United States had created CURE in the lonely womb of the Oval Office. He had told no one of his idea until he had found the man to head the organization-Harold Smith.
"The nation is sinking into chaos," the President had told Smith, then many years younger but just as gray as today. Smith thought he was being interviewed for a security position with the NSA. That impression was dispelled once he found himself alone with the young, vigorous President who was soon to die a martyr's death. The month was June, 1963. Smith had forgotten the exact date, but the conversation remained etched in his memory like glass scored by a diamond.
"I see," said Smith, letting the President talk.
"Crime is out of hand. Our judges and unions are corrupt. The police-the good apples-are not equal to the demanding task at hand. I don't control the FBI. And the CIA is forbidden from operating on U.S. soil-not that they don't try."
Smith said nothing to that. He was strictly an analyst. His days of action were far behind him, as were the President's. Both had seen action in the Big One, the President in the Pacific, Smith in the European theater of operations.
"I see chaos, perhaps civil war by the end of the decade," the President continued.
Smith did not contradict that view.
"I can suspend the Constitution," the Chief Executive went on, "or I can declare martial law."
He paused, fixing Smith with his crinkling blue eyes.
"But there is a third option."
"Yes?"
"Have you ever heard of CURE?"
"No. What do the letters represent?"
"Nothing. I'm not even sure what I have in mind should even have a name, but let's call it a cure for a sick world. I need an organization that will watch the watchers, get at the cancer infecting this great nation of ours and excise it like a surgeon. Quickly, cleanly and, above all, quietly. And I want you, Harold Winston Smith, to head it."
"I will require a large staff," Smith said stiffly, neither accepting nor rejecting the offer because he loved his country and if the President asked him, he would head up this CURE entity without reservation.
"You do it with next to no staff. If this gets out, it's my backside and your neck. Or maybe the other way around. You are one of the top computer men over at Central Intelligence. You'll sift though data, isolate the malefactors and arrange for them to be dealt with."
"This is extralegal," Smith warned.
"No. It is extra-Constitutional. Which is far worse," the President said soberly. "But it's this or admit the American experiment is an abject failure." The President fixed Harold Smith with his warm, humorous eyes. They turned steely. "Not," he added, pronouncing each word like a drumbeat, "on my damn watch."
"Understood, sir."
With a handshake, the secret pact was made.
Smith resigned from the CIA, ostensibly for the private sector. He took over Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, as its new director. From Folcroft, he quietly ran CURE. Funded by black budget money, using computers and confidential informants, it reached out to the cancers of American democracy and seared them dead.
In the early months of CURE, the President was cut down. Smith was on his own. The successor President, rattled by his abrupt and bloody ascension to power, signed on for the agency to continue operations.
"Indefinitely," he said. The new Commander in Chief was afraid he was next.
Over successive administrations, Harold Smith had worked to salvage a foundering nation. But the forces of social instability were greater than one man could bear.
Smith was forced to recruit an enforcement arm. A former cop named Remo Williams. Vietnam vet. Marine. Expert rifleman. Skills he would have to unlearn if he were to do the work of a wounded world.
A beeping brought Smith's reflective eyes to his computer screen buried in the black glass of his desktop. The hidden monitor connected to the mainframes and optical WORM-drive servers in the Folcroft basement, the information octopus that reached its tentacles out to cyberspace.
It was another AP report. The system was kicking it out as mission related. CURE's mission, not necessarily Remo's.
Sarajevo-Airport Altercation (AP) Serbian authorities report a massacre at the airport at Sarajevo. As many as twenty-nine security forces were reported dead or wounded. A Serb jet has taken off. Destination unknown. It is believed the hijacker or hijackers are aboard.
Smith read this with a visible sign of relief washing over his lemony face. Remo. He had made it out of Yugoslavia. No doubt there would be a NATO security team waiting to take him into custody once he reached Kaszar.
Smith picked up the blue contact phone and placed a call to a U.S. Army major attached to NATO.
"This is Colonel Smith. Pentagon," Smith said. "The hijacked aircraft due in from Sarajevo has been commandeered by a U.S. security agent returning from a sensitive mission. He is to be granted safe passage on a Military Airlift Command flight home."
"Yes, Colonel. Where is he going? Specifically." "Wherever he wants to," said Harold Smith.
"Understood, Colonel."
Hanging up, Smith turned his cracked leather executive's chair. Long Island Sound danced under the noonday sun. The first sails of spring were ghosting across its blue expanse. For more springs than he ever imagined back in 1963, Smith had looked out through the picture window of two-way glass.
How many more would Harold W. Smith, who had devoted his life to his nation's security, enjoy before he finally laid his aging bones in the rocky soil of his native New England?
Heaven alone knew.
Chapter 4
As opening days went, this one was going to be a bitch.
"It's going to be a bitch," Perry Noto muttered.
"I still think it's a risky idea."
"We had to reconcept. We were going down the tubes," he said as he walked through the deserted restaurant with its French-provincial decor.
"We did better than that last reconcepting of yours."
"The novelty wore off. You can get people to try braised alligator or buffalo steak, but they get tired of it. Our clientele was getting bored. They want excitement. They want adventure."
"They want a decent meal for under forty bucks. Why can't we go nouvelle cuisine?"