The headquarters for CURE, the supersecret U. S. government agency that existed in no budget, employed no official staff; and yet possessed a multimillion-dollar operating budget, was a second-floor office in a sleepy private hospital in Rye, New York.
The name on the plain door was Harold W. Smith, who was officially director of the hospital, incorporated as Folcroft Sanitarium.
For nearly three decades Smith, formerly with the CIA, had helmed CURE from its early days of crisis management through times of grave political uncertainty. He had not been young when the even younger President had offered him the monumental task of preserving American democracy from those who would twist the Constitution to achieve their vicious ends. And he was not young now.
Smith sat in the same chair he had first occupied in the first day on the job, staring into a modest computer terminal on his desk. He looked like a man who had spent his youth locked in a dank basement eating only lemons and the occasional hard crust of bread. His skin was grayish and dry, his mouth puckered in thought. Behind the prim transparencies of his rimless eyeglasses, his eyes were gray where they should be gray and red where they should have been white.
Smith watched the message-traffic intercepts scrolling before his eyes. The White House was clamped down like a fortress. Cryptic, carefully guarded messages were going back and forth in the State Department and from there to the CIA station in Mexico City.
The lid was still on. It would not stay on long, Smith knew.
He leaned into the screen, his long patrician nose almost bumping the glare-free glass. His fingers lifted like a pianist's. The dry clicking of the keys was as close to music as lemony Harold Smith ever made.
Smith brought up the whereabouts of the Vice-President. All was calm there. He was definitely where he should be.
So whom had Remo and Chiun seen-or supposedly seen-on the Mexican videotape?
"An impostor," he muttered. "Must be." Or was it as Remo had suggested, the other way around?
There was no way Smith could verify either theory. His eyes darted to the black dialless red telephone that sat within easy reach. Normally it was his hot line to the White House. But now there was no one there to pick up the phone. Other than the President, no one in the executive branch knew of Smith or CURE or any of it. That was one of the safeguards built into CURE, which, if it was discovered, would have to be disbanded, because to admit it existed was to admit that one gray man hunched over a computer screen, unknown and unelected, as well as two of the finest assassins ever known, was all that kept America from slipping over the brink into anarchy-or worse.
Smith considered the possibility that the Vice-President had somehow been responsible for the downing of Air Force One. He immediately resolved not to communicate with the man until he knew for an absolute certainty that the President had been lost and the Vice-President was not complicit. He had that option. CURE was autonomous of the executive branch.
Smith switched over to the wire services and TV news digests, automatically processed by the massive computers hidden in Folcroft's basement, two floors below.
A press plane had just arrived in Bogota. It had gone on ahead to record Air Force One's arrival. They would be stalled with a story about weather over the Yucatan Peninsula.
The White House was throwing a lot of attention to the Vice-President's itinerary, obviously hoping by misdirection to keep the domestic press occupied. A major speech by the Vice-President had been announced, one having serious political repercussions.
More misdirection. Unless it too was part of the plot. Smith dismissed that thought. The President's own staff would not throw in with any coup. It made no sense. This was America, not some banana republic. But even as the thought struck Smith, he sat up, realizing that had it not been for CURE, America might be no better than many Latin-American republics struggling against internal disorder.
The ordinary desk phone rang, and Smith reached for it without averting his eyes from the screen.
"Yes?" he said dryly.
"Remo here."
"Progress?"
"We found the Bimbo Bread truck, but it got away."
Smith's hand tightened on the receiver. "The President?"
"He might have been in back, but the V. P. was definitely at the wheel. He drives pretty good too. He got away from us."
"Where are you now?" Smith's voice was bitter.
"In a hotel. The Krystal. That's with a K."
"Return to the field. Every minute counts."
"Wish we could," Remo said worriedly, "but Chiun's incapacitated. I'm not feeling so hot myself."
"What is this?"
"It's the air. The pollution. You know how we function, Smith. Correct breathing, centering. We're weak as kittens."
"I understand nothing of that."
"If you can't breathe, you can't run. Right? If we can't breathe, we can't do the impossible. But we'll manage. "
"Remo, I'm getting the CIA warnings out of Mexico of suspected Colombian narco-terrorists converging on Mexico City. What do you know about that?"
"Oh, right. That flashy DFS comandante you hooked us up with? We think he's been bought off. It's possible he overheard our last talk."
"Then he knows the President may be alive in Mexico," Smith said in a hoarse tone.
"Afraid so," Remo admitted.
"Therefore these terrorists may be en route to locate or possibly to take possession of the President from whoever's holding him." The long-distance trunkline buzzed over the silence as both men considered the possibility. Finally Smith cleared his throat. His voice was metallic when he spoke again.
"Remo, the President must not fall into the hands of the Colombians."
"Gotcha."
"Remo, it would be better if the President died before he fell into their hands-better for him, and better for America."
"You don't mean-"
"Do you want me to repeat that?" Smith said harshly.
"No, I read you, you cold-blooded son of a bitch," Remo said bitterly.
"Do you remember the story of Enrique Camarena?"
"Should I?"
"He was a DEA agent stationed in Mexico. Corrupt Mexican authorities betrayed him to drug traffickers. They tortured him until they extracted every DEA secret they could. Then they killed him. The President holds many secrets too. Our national security-never mind our nation's prestige-rides on his not falling into the hands of these bloodsuckers."
" I said, I read you," Remo snapped. "Look, we're on it. Is there anyone we can trust down here?"
"No."
"That makes it harder for us. We're handicapped as it is."
"Your best lead will be the local Mexican news," Smith said. "That was the source of the bread-truck tip. Follow any rumor, no matter how bizarre."