Harold W. Smith was submitting to the latest in the interminably long line of physical examinations he had been subjected to over the past three months.
He sat in his spotless white T-shirt on an examining table in one of the doctor's offices of Folcroft Sanitarium, a Rye, New York, mental-health facility of which he was director. Smith breathed calmly as the physician inflated the blood-pressure cuff around his left biceps.
The doctor watched the indicator needle on the gauge in his hand as he gently released the air from the bag. He nodded his approval.
"Your blood pressure is good," he said.
"I assumed it would be, Dr. Drew," Smith responded crisply. There was an icy edge in his voice. The doctor looked up over his glasses as he slipped the cuff from Smith's arm.
"Forgive me, Dr. Smith, but you were the one who insisted on these examinations."
"Yes," Smith replied. "However, they appear to be no longer necessary."
"You were in rough shape a few months ago," Dr. Drew cautioned, as if Smith had forgotten. Smith hadn't. There was no way he would ever forget his recent trip to London.
"It was a very stressful time," Smith admitted.
"Yes," Dr. Drew agreed, dragging his stethoscope from his ears. "I imagine it would be. It's a shame that on the first vacation you took since I came to work here at Folcroft, you wound up in the middle of a war zone. Do you and your wife plan to take another?"
Smith pursed his bloodless lips. He didn't appreciate the informal tone Drew had taken with him over the past few months. After all, the Folcroft doctor was Smith's employee.
"I fail to see how my private life is your concern," Smith said, getting down from the table.
Drew stiffened. "I didn't mean to pry, Dr. Smith," he said tightly.
Smith didn't even seem aware that he had insulted the physician. The older man had already found his shirt on a brass hook near the door. He had pulled it over his creaking shoulders and was in the process of buttoning it.
"If that is all, I will return to work," Smith said absently as he fastened the top two buttons. He drew his green-striped Dartmouth tie from the same hook and began knotting it around his thin neck.
"Of course," Dr. Drew replied without inflection. "Same time next week?"
"That will not be necessary," Smith declared officiously.
Drew raised an eyebrow. "If you wish to postpone, it's obviously at your discretion. Remember, my day off is-"
"Thursday," Smith supplied. "And that does not matter. Our appointments are no longer necessary." He finished with his tie, checking the perfectly formed four-in-hand knot with his aged fingertips. Satisfied, Smith took his gray vest and suit jacket from another hook.
"Are you sure?" Dr. Drew asked.
"Of course," Smith sniffed. "I will let you know if there are any changes in my physical condition. Please excuse me."
Without so much as a thank-you, Smith left the office.
Dr. Drew stared at the door for a few minutes. "You're welcome," he said with a sarcastic laugh.
He didn't know why he was surprised by his treatment at the hands of the sanitarium director. The real surprise was that Smith came to him for help in the first place. But the old man had been in pretty rough shape back then. Now that he was better, Smith was back to being his old nasty self again.
Dr. Drew realized that it was his own fault for expecting anything more than being treated as a servant. At this stage, there shouldn't be anything that Dr. Harold W. Smith could do to surprise him any longer.
With a sigh, Dr. Lance Drew began labeling Smith's latest blood sample.
HAROLD SMITH WALKED briskly to the administrative wing of Folcroft. He took the stairs up to his second-floor office.
Mrs. Mikulka, his secretary of many years, smiled maternally as he entered the outer room of his small, two-office suite.
"Dr. Smith," she said with a concerned nod. Smith didn't appreciate the familiarity her smile represented. Some in the staff had been treating him differently since he had returned from his week-long European vacation three months before. Dr. Drew and Mrs. Mikulka were the two worst offenders. Smith found it easier to remonstrate Drew than Mrs. Mikulka. After all, doctors were a dime a dozen, but good secretaries were impossible to find in this day and age.
"I will be in my office for the duration of the morning," he noted crisply as he passed her tidy desk.
There was no need to ask her if there had been any calls while he was downstairs. Eileen Mikulka was efficient enough to let him know immediately if there was anything that required his attention. When he pushed the door closed on the world a moment later, Smith felt a tide of relief wash over his thin frame.
This was Smith's sanctum sanctorum, his haven from the foolishness and trivialities of the outside world. In this sparsely furnished room, Harold Smith had created for himself a perfect, orderly environment.
He crossed over to his desk, taking his seat behind the smooth onyx slab. The desk was the only hint of intrusion by the modern world into the decidedly low-tech room.
Smith's arthritic fingers located a rounded button beneath the lip of the desk. When he depressed it, the dull glow of a computer screen winked on beneath the polished surface of the large desk. The monitor was angled in such a way to make it invisible to anyone on the other side of the desk.
Smith raised his fingers above the edge of the desk's surface. Immediately the orderly rows of a computer keyboard appeared as if summoned by magic. In actuality, the capacitor keyboard needed only to sense the presence of his hands above it in order to activate.
Smith began typing rapid commands into the computer. His fingers drummed softly against the flat surface of the desk. Each key shone obediently in amber in the wake of Smith's expert touch.
To the uninitiated, everything within this office was gauged to appear precisely as it should for the rather bland director of an anonymous private health facility. However, the work that consumed Dr. Harold W. Smith was decidedly atypical for the humorless head of a medical facility. Smith was using his computer to search out neo-Nazi activity.
There was a vast store of data through which to sort. Too much for Smith's liking.
He began scrolling down a list of German names. Some were marked with asterisks. Many more were not.
The delineated names were members of neo-Nazi groups who were now deceased. The dates of their deaths were clearly marked beside their names. All of the dates had been entered since September. Smith knew this for a fact. After all, he had entered the dates himself.
His lemony features grew more pinched as he scanned the list of dead. There were a great many of them. More than he would have liked. And not one of them had been any help whatsoever.
It was slow, slow going.
So far, they had limited the hunt to Germany. Smith dreaded the prospect of expanding the search parameters further. There was so much to sift through in this one country alone that he couldn't begin to figure out how he would approach searching through the files of fascist sympathizers around the world.
As he worked, a dull ache began to grow at the back of his head. Smith did his best to ignore the pain, as he had for the past few months. His work was too important to be sidetracked by a minor headache.
Of course, Smith was not concerned with his work as director of Folcroft. Mrs. Mikulka was able to handle nearly all of the day-to-day operations of the facility herself.
The work that Smith found so important was that which was conducted without the knowledge of any of his underlings. This included his search through neo-Nazi files. Indeed, Folcroft could be consumed in flame and burn to the ground and Smith's true work would continue.
For in truth, Folcroft Sanitarium was only a front. Beyond the high brick walls and the attendant dignified stone lions that guarded the somber iron gates, within the ivy-covered walls of Folcroft itself, beat the heart of an organization so secret its existence was known to only a tiny handful of people.