As he drove away from the dig site, he unclipped the plastic ID card from the breast pocket of his gray suit.
The Harold Jones identification was phony. Another secret in a life of secrets.
Dr. Harold W. Smith was used to secrets. At least he thought he was. During the war he had seen his share. In the CIA he had seen even more. But they were all nothing compared to his life now. And that life was only growing more complicated as these latest hours passed.
He took the Boston Post Road up the coast from New Rochelle to Rye. He avoided the heart of the city. Skirting the center of town, he headed up a wooded road.
To his right stretched Long Island Sound. Obscured mostly by trees in the early autumn, he could see the dappled water now and then through breaks in the brightly colored foliage. Boats bobbed on the surface of the white-capped water. Somewhere far beneath their thin hulls snaked a telephone cable, connected to the same line that was even now being entombed forever by the New Rochelle Department of Public Works.
The phone line had been tricky. It was something he had wanted to do from the outset. But though it would have been convenient, patience was needed. After all, he couldn't very well have it done all at once. Workmen digging a straight furrow to lay a single line from Rye to Washington, D.C., would have drawn far too much attention. The equivalent of drawing an arrow on a map.
No. In the end restraint had won out over any inconvenience he had experienced while waiting.
The line went in piecemeal. In his spare time for the past five years Smith studied the work schedules of many a local telephone company office. When a particular crew's daily work happened to coincide with the route Smith had established, a circuitous order was sent to lay a single section of cable. There was never any doubt that the special type of cable would be available. Smith made certain it was.
To Smith it was like remotely assembling a jigsaw puzzle. The map he had drawn early on for the proposed telephone line was updated as progress was made. It was spotty at first. After three years it was little more than a long dotted line. But over the course of the past two years, that dotted line had slowly, laboriously closed up. Until all that remained was the final connection in New Roehelle.
A man of lesser patience would never have lasted so long at such a project. But, among his other sterling attributes, Dr. Harold W. Smith had patience in abundance. He was also single-minded of purpose. When he began a task, he didn't stop until it was completed.
Which was part of the reason he was chosen for his current position as the man who would save America.
"A cure for a sick world." That was what the man who hired Smith for this impossible task had said. "America is in trouble, Smith," the young President of the United States told him during one of the handful of early, fateful meetings that set Smith on his new life's mission. "We can no longer handle crime. Government is living within the boundaries of the Constitution while organized crime continues to turn the Constitution on its head. It's a losing battle that the thugs are winning."
That conversation took place eight years ago. Right now, as he drove along the autumn-shaded New York road, it seemed like another lifetime.
At the time Smith had been a CIA analyst nearing early retirement. He had logged more time for king and country than most. As his youth darkened under the looming shadow of middle age, Smith decided to opt out for a more settled life. He was offered and had accepted a professorship at Dartmouth, his alma mater.
His wife was thrilled. Maude Smith couldn't wait for her Harold to assume the role of normal father. At the time, their daughter, Vickie, was in the early stages of some sort of teenage rebellion. Maude didn't much like to talk about it. When she did, she blamed it on the crazy times they lived in. It would be good for all of them for Harold to be at the dinner table like a traditional husband and father.
A new life and a new chance for the Smith family was to begin with the fall semester of 1963. But fate had charted another course for Harold W. Smith.
Smith had been summoned to the Oval Office in the summer of '63. By the time his first clandestine meeting with the President was over, Smith's life had changed forever.
The Dartmouth position was quietly declined. From that summer to fall, Smith worked on the details of a new type of crime-fighting organization. One that would operate outside the confines of the Constitution in order to preserve the very document it would habitually violate.
Smith's organizational abilities and keen mind were without equal. Strategies, funding, staffing were all set up in less than eight weeks. When it came time to name the new agency, Smith chose CURE. It was not an acronym, but a desire. "A CURE for a sick world."
The only thing left was a headquarters. Washington was out of the question. There were too many government agencies, too many prying eyes. With the new computer technology, it was possible to operate from a remote location. However, the woods of North Dakota or some hollowed-out bunker beneath the Rockies were not exactly convenient-either for himself or his family. After a two-month-long search, Smith stumbled upon the perfect location for CURE in, of all places, the New York Times.
As he drove his station wagon along the winding road, Smith allowed himself a rare smile at the memory of that back-page Times throwaway piece.
A high wall rose up from the woods. The road on which he was driving followed the contours of the wall around to a gated entrance. Two stone lines perched atop the granite columns on either side of the main gate. Above, a bronze sign was etched with the words Folcroft Sanitarium.
The guard at the booth nodded and waved as Smith passed.
Smith barely acknowledged the man.
He steered his car up the great gravel drive. A somber brick building loomed ahead, cloaked in spreading ivy.
Folcroft Sanitarium had been an exclusive retreat for the rich and eccentric since the 1920s. If a Rockefeller or Getty or Vanderbilt showed signs of what might be charitably termed "mental fatigue," Folcroft was one of the approved places they could be sent. The staff at Folcroft was always caring, efficient and, above all, quiet. After all, if old Uncle Jebediah went squiffy in the head, it was vital to remand him to the care of people who knew enough to keep the good family name from appearing in the papers. According to the Times article Smith had read, Folcroft had lived off its reputation for four decades. Unfortunately as the twentieth century rolled along, the sanitarium's fortunes faded along with those of America's nineteenth-century moneyed aristocracy. By the time the 1960s marched in, it was pretty much expected that the venerable old institution would soon have to close its doors forever.
However, those who predicted Folcroft's demise had not factored in Harold W. Smith.
Smith had come to Folcroft as director in October of 1963. In the past eight short years, he had turned the sanitarium around. In under a decade Smith transformed the mental and convalescent home that was Folcroft Sanitarium into an institution that was even more exclusive than it had been in its celebrated heyday.
On most days Smith felt some satisfaction at the work he had done to revive Folcroft. On this day he had more important things weighing on his mind.
He parked his car in his reserved space at the edge of the employee parking lot. A briefcase that had been designed to look old in order to discourage thieves sat on the front seat beside him. Smith gathered it up and headed for the side door of the building.
Two flights up, he entered the administrative wing. It was a quick walk to his office suite.
A dour young woman with an impenetrable knot of sprayed-stiff blond hair looked up at him as he entered the outer office. A clunky black Smith-Corona typewriter sat on her desktop.