Not the most advanced. There were supercomputers far more advanced than Smith's. Nor the largest. Smith had only a quartet of mainframes at his disposal. Oddly enough, they were secreted behind a concrete wall in the basement of his place of work.
Nor were Harold Smith's computers the fastest. Nor the newest. Modern technology had long outstripped their microprocessors and old-style integrated circuits.
But they were powerful. In this case, knowledge was power. Thirty years of maintaining the system-which had been upgraded often in the early years, but seldom these days for security reasons-had filled its vast memory banks with highly specialized data of specific value to Smith and his work. Long years of toiling behind his shabby oak desk under the shaky fluorescent lights in his Spartan office that overlooked Long Island Sound had enabled Harold Smith to crack virtually every computer net he might have to access in the performance of his duties.
The combined computers of the FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, the Social Security Administration, and the IRS, on down to the lowliest police department terminal in the most rural corner of the nation, were like open books, waiting to have their electronic pages turned by the unseen fingers of the anonymous Harold W. Smith.
Corporate computers, among the most rigidly controlled and protected, had surrendered their passwords to him long ago.
Government systems, despite continual upgrading and password updating, inevitably fell under the brute-force assaults of his keen analytical mind.
If it could be accessed by telephone line, Harold Smith could enter it.
None of it was, strictly speaking, legal. Smith could, in theory, be sent to prison for penetrating government files and siphoning off their secrets.
But all of it was sanctioned.
For Harold W. Smith was a unique man with a unique responsibility.
Back in the grimmest days of the Cold War, when America was beset with foreign enemies and being systematically corroded from within by domestic troubles, a soon-to-be-martyred President had summoned Smith-then a middle-aged CIA bureaucrat-to the White House to offer him a post that Smith had never heard of.
Officially the post did not exist. It was Director of CURE, a supersecret agency that didn't exist either. In any official sense.
Smith had been chosen because of the unique combination of qualities that had made him uniquely Harold Smith. His unswerving loyalty to his country. His inflexible sense of responsibility. Perhaps most of all, his lack of imagination. For what a worried President was contemplating was giving a faceless bureaucrat the power to unseat him-if he had the imagination and ruthless ambition to pursue that goal.
Smith had no such ambition. His imagination was virtually nonexistent.
And so it was that he sat behind his shabby desk thirty years later, his patrician nose almost touching the computer terminal that fed off his hidden mainframes, trying to imagine where his enforcement arm and his trainer could be.
He could not. It baffled him. He had clearly instructed Chiun to go to Miami with Remo. To await orders in the Biltmore Hotel.
They were not registered at the Biltmore. Not under any of their usual aliases.
"Are you certain you do not have anyone registered with the first name Remo?" an exasperated Smith had asked the Biltmore desk clerk.
The desk clerk, after patiently deflecting Smith's question, snapped, "We are not a telephone directory." And hung up.
Smith had hung up too. Then he had dialed into the hotel's own computer records. It was part of a chain and its system was connected to the other hotels in the chain, and thus accessible by modem.
Smith paged through the registration file.
There were no Remos. There was no guest whose name suggested an Asian flavor. Remo always retained his first name, owing to his general difficulty with technical details. And Chiun invariably chose a Korean-sounding cover name-when he bothered with a cover name at all.
This odd development had baffled Smith. He wondered if there had been a plane crash. He logged over to the wire services. There had been none. Neither were any of the flights from New York-Remo and Chiun's most recent address-to Miami hung up by delays, according to the airport traffic-control computers he checked.
Smith next accessed Remo's credit card files. Remo had thirty of them under thirty different cover names, all first-named Remo.
None of those nonexistent Remos had used his card to book a flight that morning, Smith determined.
Smith logged off the last of the credit card companies, absently adjusting his rimless glasses.
He was a gray man. Gray was the hue of his dry skin, and gray was the color of his eyes. His hair was more white than gray, but it was still grayish. He wore a gray three-piece suit enlivened only by a green Dartmouth tie.
Even his worn old wedding ring looked somehow colorless.
As he leaned back, his face pale, Harold W. Smith found himself facing a complete dead end. He could not account for the whereabouts of his enforcement arm.
And all hell was breaking loose.
The first call had come from the President of the United States that morning. Smith had picked up the red handset of the dial-less red telephone sitting on his desk in the middle of the first strident ring.
"Smith. We have a problem."
The President was respectful. He was the seventh president Smith had been privileged to serve. They had all been respectful. Not because they feared Smith and his organization, but because they understood how it functioned.
CURE was set up to operate outside of constitutional restrictions. It was answerable to no one. Not even the Executive Branch. The President was the only person outside the organization who knew it existed. To admit there was a CURE would have been tantamount to admitting the Constitution didn't work and the great modern experiment in democracy was a broken, flailing mechanism.
The President was prohibited from ordering Smith to undertake operations. Chief Executives could only suggest missions. That way, there could be no opportunity for a ruthless officeholder to abuse CURE.
Presidential control was limited to one simple instruction: Shut down.
Smith's instructions were clear in that event. The computer files would be erased, the enforcement arm disposed of, and when those details had been attended to Smith was to ingest the poison pill he kept in the watch pocket of his gray vest. It would leave no trace-other than a gray corpse.
And he would execute this order without hesitation. Because he was Harold Smith. Every President for the last thirty years had known this, and so none had given the order to shut down.
And so this latest President was saying in a reserved tone of respect, "I have something you might want to look into."
"Go ahead, Mr. President," said Smith with equal respect.
"Someone has just tried to invade Cuba."
"Yes?"
"They landed a small force on the Bay of Pigs. It was wiped out. The survivors have been captured. They are currently being interrogated."
"Havana will blame us," Smith said without skipping a beat.
"Havana be damned. We gotta find out who these guys are!"
"Cuban exiles. There has been stepped-up harassment of Cuba for the last year or so. After Castro executed that last group of freedom fighters, they have been bent on revenge."
"I have no intelligence on the who, Smith," said the President. "But tensions between Washington and that grubby flyspeck of an island are growing worse. The Cold War is supposed to be over! And we're still having to look over our sovereign shoulders at this guy!"
"What would you like me to do?" asked Harold Smith.
"Find out who these guys are, and muzzle them."
"Are you certain this is what you want? Cuba is ripe for revolution. The people are starving. Basic necessities are rationed where they are not nonexistent. Defectors are risking their lives to come to Florida in droves. A new leadership-almost any leadership-would be infinitely preferable to the people in power now
."
"Agreed;" said the President, as if speaking to an equal. "But we're trying to keep the lid on in Russia-I mean, the Commonwealth. We have a secret agreement with Moscow, Smith. Hands off Cuba. That way we don't embarrass the former Soviet military-and they stay out of Commonwealth-and therefore world-politics."
"I see," said Harold W. Smith.
"And we don't need to give Castro any more of a seige mentality than he already has. The man is poised to land on the ash heap of the twentieth century. And he's railing about the future of Socialism in the Americas. He's cornered. And there's no telling what a cornered dictator will do."
"Understood, Mr. President. I will send our people to Miami."
That had been morning.
By afternoon, things had gotten worse. Smith was monitoring message traffic. There were signs of increased activity, according to Department of Defense intercepts of coded Cuban radio traffic.
The President had called again.
"Smith, the DoD reports that Havana is telling their people the prisoners have been interrogated and they implicate Washington."
"Which is not the case, I assume."
"Absolutely. We have-want-nothing to do with this. Get your people moving. We gotta root out the real culprits and flush them into the open. This cannot be allowed to stand."
That was the point when Harold Smith had reached out to his enforcement arm without success.
Now he was frantic, trying. The red phone shrilled again. Smith hesitated. He lifted the handset on the second ring.
"Is something wrong?" asked the President, tone worried.
"Sir?"
"It took you two rings. You usually grab it on the first."
"I was preoccupied," Smith said carefully.
"The situation is going critical."
"Sir?"
"Somehow, that lunatic has overpowered TV transmissions in South Florida. We always suspected Havana had the capability, being that he's only ninety miles off our shores, but we didn't dream he'd dare provoke us that much."
"What is Castro saying?" asked Smith. He had already brought out a portable TV set and turned it on. It had been purchased at a yard sale, and usually took its time warming up.
"I think he's giving Speech Number 33," the Chief Executive said tiredly. "They all sound alike to me. They start with 'We are the defenders of the Revolution' and end with ' "Socialism or Death" is our battlecry.' You'd think he'd make a master tape and just play it every once in a while."
"God," Smith croaked, as his set blinked into life.
"What is it?"
"I'm watching him now. I hadn't realized he'd gotten so fat."
"Smith, any progress?"
Smith hesitated. "No," he said truthfully.
"Very well. Stay in touch."
"Yes, Mr. President," said Smith. He returned to his humming computer.
Harold Smith knew only one thing. That the Master of Sinanju was upset over the stalled state of their current contract negotiations. Usually they were contentious. This time, they had become interminable as well. Never before had they gone on so long. Technically, the old contract had expired. Such a situation had never been allowed to go unresolved for this long.
But Smith had been unable to break down the impasse. The Master of Sinanju had demanded the impossible.
Had Smith been blessed with imagination, he might have been able to imagine where Chiun had gone. But he could not. So he doggedly returned to his computer, his fingers on the keyboard making hollow, manic clicks.
Somewhere, in the vast databanks of the nation, he knew, there must be a lead.
The bulletin came while Smith was staring at a blank screen. The computer beeped musically, and an AP bulletin digest began scrolling before his bleary eyes.
It was brief.
An Air Force jet out of Homestead AFB had shot down a MIG Flogger over the Gulf. The fighterbomber was presumed of Cuban origin.
"My God!" croaked Smith again.
This time the President did not call. Smith knew why. He was too busy conferring with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in an attempt to deal with the escalating situation.
This was no longer a CURE covert operation. It was lurching toward war.
While updates poured in, Smith redoubled his efforts.
The engagement had been brief. The press was speculating on the lone MIG's mission.
"Suicide mission," Smith muttered. "But what was his target?"
Smith logged off and brought up a schematic of the Florida coast. He input the MIG's intercept position, using signals intelligence siphoned off Pentagon mainframes. Then, he projected the jet's probable course.
His gray face blanched as the line plotted through the Turkey Point nuclear power station on the tip of Florida.
"My God!" said Smith. "He's long threatened that plant. This time he actually went for it."
Smith returned to his search, his eyes stark.
It might be too late for Remo and Chiun to enter the crisis, but he would have to try.
If only he had some inkling of their location . . .
Chapter 5
Remo Williams was torn between duty to his country and his responsibility to the House of Sinanju.
It was not the first time. Almost since the day he had been framed for a crime he didn't commit and subjected to a chillingly convincing mock execution, only to wake up in Folcroft Sanitarium with a new face, all traces of his past erased, and then placed in the hands of the Master of Sinanju to be trained in Sinanju-the first and last word in the martial artsRemo had experienced divided loyalties.
In the early years, the choices had been clearer. Remo was an American. A former Newark cop. A Vietnam veteran. America was his home. America his choice, hands-down. No contest.
Over the long years of training, Remo had begun to change. He had become Sinanju, which made him kin to the long line that had stood beside the thrones of history. Although the blood of the past masters did not flow through his veins, their responsibilities had fallen onto his shoulders.
In North Korea, on the West Korea Bay, lay the village of Sinanju, a cold, stark place of mud huts and ignorance. It was from this village that the art of Sinanju had emerged. In the harsh village there was no arable land, and the fishing was unreliable.
In the good years, the simple folk of Sinanju eked out a meager existence.
In the bad years, the children were drowned. First the females. Then, if the times demanded it, the irreplaceable males. It was called "sending the babies home to the sea."
Centuries of this heartbreaking cycle had forced the leaders of the village to seek another way. And so the men of Sinanju had hired themselves out as mercenaries to other provinces. This practice grew, and before long the name of the Master of Sinanju and his cunning mercenaries-the night tigers of Sinanju-had become feared throughout the kingdom of Korea.
With their increasing reknown, the Masters of Sinanju had taken to foreign lands to ply their cold trade. The courts of China, India, Japan, Persia, and Egypt came to know them. Not as mercenaries, but as assassins.
They were a dynasty unrecorded by history. An invisible power that had changed the course of empires. The art they plied was at first simply the seminal martial art. But in a time harsher than any other, a Master, Wang the Greater, had discovered a secret deeper than the hidden historical role of the House of Sinanju. He had unleashed the sun source-the power of the unlocked human mind.
This secret had been handed down from Wang to Ung to Chen to each succeeding master, until, in the latter part of the twentieth century, the last true Master of Sinanju, Chiun the Younger, bereft of an heir and without clients, had been summoned to serve the newest and greatest empire in history: The United States of America.
Chiun had trained Remo. Remo had learned well. He also unlearned bad breathing, unmasked his senses, foresworn the use of weapons, and waxed in skill. And became the secret enforcement arm of CURE. America's unknown assassin.
As he grew in
Sinanju, Remo became one with Sinanju. The village of the ancestors-who-were-not-his became as important to him as America.
Now, in the hotel that was more palatial and wonderfilled than the royal halls through which the old Masters of Sinanju had moved with uncanny stealth, Remo Williams fretted about his choices.
His responsibility to the organization and to his country demanded that he call Harold W. Smith.
But he had a responsibility to the House of Sinanju, too.
Above all, it was to feed the babies of the village, lest they be sent home to the sea once again. It had not happened in over a generation. But the gold that emperors paid was the sole coin of value in Sinanju.
To shirk this responsibility would be the same as betraying the country of his birth.
Worse. The worst Harold W. Smith would do to him was to hunt Remo down and kill him-if he could. Remo was under no illusions. He was an expendable component of a supersecret "black budget" operation.
On the other hand, if he pissed off Chiun badly enough, he would suffer horribly. Chiun would see to it.
And to Remo Williams, raised in the orphanage called St. Theresa's, never married, and cut off from his past, the Master of Sinanju was the closest thing to family he had ever known.
A clear choice. In the early days, he would have called Smith. Now, his gut told him to obey his Master.
Still, Remo was torn. Maybe there was a way to finagle things so Smith could locate them.
The arrival of room service brought Remo out of his worried state. Whatever he ended up doing, it could wait until after dinner.
He let the waiter in. The man wheeled in a gleaming stainless-steel cart that was busy with silver and linen napkins.
"Looks great," Remo said, handing the man a twenty. It was Smith's money, so he felt free to squander it.
"Complimentary bottle of champagne from the room service manager," the waiter said. "Shall I open it for you?"
"No. Why don't you take it?"
"I couldn't, sir."
"Okay," said Remo, pulling the six-hundred-dollar bottle from its ice bucket and tossing it over his shoulder.
The waiter watched as the bottle, as if in slow motion, tumbled like a sweaty candlepin across the room, caromed off a wall, and mimicking a billiard ball, landed in the kitchenette sink with a resounding crash and splash.
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