The young man glanced back over his shoulder. "Oh, morning, Mrs. M.," he said, offering a pleasant smile. "I didn't realize it was you sneaking up on me."
Mrs. Mikulka returned the young man's smile. "Good morning, Mr. Howard," she said.
Assistant Director Mark Howard was a new addition to the Folcroft family. He was such a nice young man. Always so cheerful. Although lately he seemed a bit more careworn than when he'd first arrived at Folcroft two years earlier. That was no doubt due to his great responsibilities. Folcroft administered to the needs of many elderly and invalid patients. Mr. Howard took that duty very seriously. So nice for a man his age to treat his job with such sobriety.
Mrs. Mikulka wondered briefly how old he was. Probably about thirty. Younger than Kieran and already in a position of authority.
"You're a little late getting down here today, aren't you?" Mark Howard asked Mrs. Mikulka as he paid for his food.
"A little," she admitted. "I was still on time for work," she added hastily. "It was just something I saw on the television this morning slowed me down."
"Not those poor kittens?" the cafeteria worker asked as she prepared Dr. Smith's usual breakfast. Two halves of toast. Dry. No butter, no jelly.
"You saw?" Mrs. Mikulka asked. "My Kieran showed it to me. Wasn't it terrible? The poor dears."
"They say it might be hours before they get them out," the cafeteria worker said knowingly.
With a bemused smirk, Mark Howard extricated himself from the conversation. "I'll see you in a bit, Mrs. M.," he said softly, not wanting to interrupt.
Still grinning, he carried his tray with its bowl of cornflakes, carton of milk and glass of orange juice out the side door and was gone.
Mrs. Mikulka felt her face flush. She didn't know what was wrong with her this morning. She certainly hadn't wanted to seem like a gossip in front of Mr. Howard.
Paying hastily for her breakfast tray with the change picked from the coffee-fund can, she hustled upstairs.
The coffee was ready. She filled a mug from the pot and placed it on the tray beside the plate of toast. She walked to the inner office door and rapped a soft knuckle beneath the nameplate even as she pushed the door open.
The room beyond was cheerlessly functional. Everything was bland and colorless, including the gaunt man who sat behind the big desk across the room. "Good morning, Dr. Smith," Mrs. Mikulka said as she brought the tray over. She set down coffee and toast. "Is there anything else you need?"
"No," replied Director Smith, in a voice as tart as unsweetened lemonade. "Thank you, Mrs. Mikulka, that will be all."
She nodded efficiently. Cafeteria tray in hand, she left the drab office to begin her day's work.
When the door clicked shut behind Mrs. Mikulka's ample form, Dr. Harold W. Smith checked his Timex.
One minute after eight. Mrs. Mikulka was a minute later than usual this morning.
Frowning at what he hoped was not the start of a trend for which he would have to discipline his normally punctual secretary, he turned his attention to his desk's surface.
The gleaming onyx desk was a high-tech departure from the rest of the decidedly low-tech office. Beneath the surface was a computer monitor, canted so that it was visible only to whoever sat behind the desk.
With eyes of flint gray, Harold Smith watched the monitor. Every now and then, long fingers swollen at the joints with arthritis tapped at the edge of the desk. Where fingertips pressed, luminescent keys of a touch-sensitive keyboard lit like sparks of amber lightning.
Relentless streams of data rolled past, reflected in the owlish glasses perched on Smith's patrician nose. Though Smith had been in this same position since coming to work at 6:00 a.m., there was no strain in his back or on his face. He had spent the better part of his life like this, staring into the electronic abyss. The information that rolled past had nothing to do with operating a small, private hospital.
Here there was a report of a corrupt judge in Ohio; there was damning data on a crooked mayor in Massachusetts. A major drug shipment was due in the country that night, flying from Haiti into Louisiana.
In each of these cases, Smith merely watched. A program he had written took the necessary action. State police and the FBI were informed of the problems in Ohio and Massachusetts. The DEA was told about the drugs. Orders were issued surreptitiously. Through untraceable means they were sent back along invisible tendrils to the persons and agencies who would need to look into each event.
It was all handled in seconds. Quietly and efficiently, and in such a way that no one would know of the involvement of the dull little man in a drab, three-piece gray suit sitting in a sedate, ivy-covered brick building on the shores of Long Island Sound. Such was the life's work of Harold Smith.
Eileen Mikulka knew her employer only as Dr. Harold W. Smith, director of Folcroft Sanitarium for the past forty years, and her employer for just over thirty of those years. She and the rest of the regular sanitarium staff would have been surprised to find that penny-pinching and time-clock-watching Dr. Smith held another post, vastly more powerful than that of Folcroft's director.
Harold Smith was also secret director of CURE. CURE was the dream of an American President, long dead. The agency was created to work outside the Constitution in order to preserve that most sacred document. Harold Smith was CURE's first and only director. For forty years he had come to that same office every day, doing his small part to see to it that the greatest experiment in democracy survived for another generation of Americans.
So engrossed was he in his work, Smith scarcely noticed the toast and coffee Mrs. Mikulka had brought him.
An electronic beep sounded from within his desk. As it did so, a new window opened on his monitor. It was an interoffice communication. There was only one other person on Earth with access to the CURE system.
Smith scanned the information forwarded him by Mark Howard-his assistant both at Folcroft and with CURE.
It was the latest information on the expanding list of dignitaries who intended to visit the small nation of Mayana for the Globe Summit later in the week. Smith frowned when he saw additions to the Cuban and Iraqi delegations.
Mark had denoted each of the add-ons. With no trouble Smith was able to find summaries of all available background information on each of the men. None were diplomats. Most were members of security or armed forces.
Smith shook his head. "It would be safer for him to not attend," he muttered to his empty office. Worry etched deep in his frown lines, he closed out the window and returned to his other work.
He didn't realize he had worked for nearly a full hour until there came a knock on his door.
"Come in," he called tartly.
As Mark Howard entered the office, Smith noted the time. Precisely 9:00 a.m. The CURE director met with his assistant at the same time every morning. This day as every day, Smith was quietly pleased that good fortune had blessed him with such a conscientious young man for an assistant.
"Did you have a chance to read the stuff I sent you?" Howard asked as he took his familiar plain wooden seat before the CURE director's desk.
"Yes," Smith said. "And there is virtually no way the Secret Service or FBI can weed through all of the data. Not on this timetable. It's a security nightmare. And I have just read an account of an incident in the Caribbean. Apparently two garbage scows have sunk."
"I saw that," Mark Howard said. "There was an open radio. They heard the captain yell something about a torpedo before the boat went down. Mayana's dismissing it all as an accident. You think the guy was for real?"
"I'm not sure," Smith said. "If so, it is something outside the ordinary purview of the Secret Service." An uncomfortable expression passed over his gray face. "Mark, you have no, er, sense that something is wrong, do you?"
Howard shook his head. "Sorry, no."
It was a subject neither man was comfortable discussing. Mark Howard's unexplained sixth sense for danger had come in handy for CURE in the past.
Wordlessly Smith pursed his lips, lost in thought. "If you're worried, Dr. Smith, you should talk to the President again," Mark suggested.
Smith shook his head. "It would do no good. The President has stated in no uncertain terms publicly and privately his intention to attend the Globe Summit."
"But doesn't that vaporizing thing of theirs change things? In the past three days, the Caribbean has been piling up with garbage scows. They're leaking oil, trailing trash in the water. There are a half-dozen countries in the region with environmental complaints already. It's a bigger zoo down there than anyone thought it would be, even for an environmental conference the size of the Globe Summit."
"Yes," Smith agreed, his voice grave. "And perhaps someone sees Mayana's new technology as a threat. Or views the Globe Summit itself as an inviting target."
"You think there's really a sub loose down there?"
"Perhaps," Smith said. Tapping a finger on his desk, he considered for a thoughtful moment. "If someone is creating mischief, the risk is greater than to just the President of the United States. By week's end, most of the other leaders of the world will be there, as well. It might be wise to investigate."