Warren Murphy - Misfortune Teller

Besides, he had work to do.

Not Folcroft business. If it became necessary, his secretary was well trained by her employer to handle long absences. The work that occupied all of Smith's time as he sat alone in the virtually abandoned wing of the big old institution had nothing to do with the grounds or building in which he had toiled tirelessly for thirty-plus years. Truth be told, every last brick of Folcroft could have toppled over into the cold black waters of Long Island Sound and the lifework of Harold W. Smith would still go on.

Unbeknownst to all who worked there save Smith himself, Folcroft was merely a cover. A public face for a most private enterprise.

It would have shocked the staff to learn that the place to which they reported to work every day was in reality the greatest and most damning secret in the two-and-a-quarter-century history of the United States Constitution.

Folcroft was the home of CURE, a supersecret agency of the U.S. government.

In the dusty basement of Folcroft, a hidden bank of four mainframe computers augmented with optical WORM-drive servers toiled endlessly and anonymously. Locating, collecting, collating information from the World Wide Web. The Folcroft Four, as Smith had dubbed the computers in a rare display of creativity, stretched their fiber-optic tendrils literally around the world. The data gathered was brought back electronically to Smith for his perusal.

Ordinarily, Smith would have accessed the information from a hidden terminal in his office desk. But Harold Smith was nothing if not adaptable. Circumstances had forced him for the time being to utilize the small laptop setup that he ordinarily used when away from Folcroft.

As director of CURE, Smith was charged with safeguarding the nation against threats both internal and external. In the most dire circumstances, he was allowed to employ the most powerful force in the U.S. arsenal. But at the moment, there were no dire issues facing either CURE or America. It was for this reason that Smith had allowed the agency's two secret weapons time to retrieve some personal property from Germany.

The Nibelungen Hoard. Smith still did not quite believe that Remo and Chiun had found the Hoard. If the legends were true, it was a dangerous amount of wealth for anyone to have.

The same madman whose attack had caused the fluid buildup on Smith's brain could have used the gold to destroy the economy of Germany. Adolf Kluge was dead now, but that would not prevent another from taking up his banner of destruction. This was the reason Smith had insisted Remo and Chiun transport the Hoard to Chiun's native village of Sinanju as quickly as possible. It would be safe there, languishing amid the other treasure for millennia to come.

The past few months had been very trying. For all of them. But it seemed as if a turning point had at last been reached. And if not that, at least it was a lull. There had been so few of them in the past thirty years that Smith had decided to enjoy this one.

As he typed at his laptop, the CURE director sighed contentedly.

Seconds later, a nurse raced into the room dragging an emergency crash cart behind her.

"Oh," she said, wheeling the cart to a sudden, skidding stop. A look of intense concern crossed her face. "Are you all right, Dr. Smith?"

"What?" Smith asked, looking up from his computer. "Yes," he said, confused. "Yes, I am fine."

"I thought I heard you gasping for air," she said, her tone apologetic. "It sounded like an asthmatic attack. Or worse."

Smith's gray face puckered in slight perplexity. "I made no such sound," he said.

Dr. Drew raced into the room a moment later. He skidded to a stop next to the nurse. When he saw Smith sitting up calmly in bed, he turned, panting, to the middle-aged woman.

"Did you call a Code Blue?" he demanded.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," she apologized. "I thought he was going into respiratory failure."

"I do not know what it is you heard, Nurse," Smith said. "But I assure you I feel fine."

Turning away from the doctor and nurse, Smith resumed typing. As his fingers tapped swiftly away at the keyboard, he thought again how calm the world scene was at the moment. As he did so, another pleased sigh escaped his gray lips. It sounded like a dying moose attempting to yodel up a rusted radiator pipe.

Dr. Drew and the nurse glanced at one another in immediate understanding. Without another word, the nurse rolled the crash cart back out into the hallway, leaving Dr. Drew alone with Smith.

"How are you feeling today, Dr. Smith?" Drew asked. He was forced to compete with Smith's clattering keyboard for attention. He tried not to show his irritation.

"As I said, Doctor, I am fine," Smith said. His eyes did not lift from the text on his computer screen.

To Dr. Lance Drew, it was like battling a television for a teenager's attention.

Drew made a soft humming noise. "While I'm here..." he said more to himself than to Smith.

The doctor went over and collected a bloodpressure cuff from a netted holder in the wall. Smith stopped typing long enough with one hand to allow Dr. Drew to slip the cuff up onto his left biceps.

"It would help if you didn't type," Dr. Drew complained as he adjusted his stethoscope under the inflatable bag.

It was as if Smith didn't hear him. The constant clattering noise and the slight arm motion would make it difficult. Frowning, Drew watched the indicator needle as much as listened to the uneven heartbeat of his employer.

Typing furiously at his laptop, Smith had been careful enough to inch the computer to one side in order to keep his work away from Drew's prying eyes. For a moment, the endless staccato drumming of his arthritic fingers against the keyboard paused as he read an AP report the CURE system had flagged.

There had been a break-in the previous night at the Boston Museum of Rare Arts. Three guards were dead, but no valuable artifacts had been taken.

The strangeness of the report was what brought it to the attention of the CURE mainframes. As best as could be determined by a curator, the Greek exhibit of the classical art collection was all that had interested the burglars. And even with the kind of focus the robbers had apparently had, they had ignored the most valuable Greek pottery and Roman glass on display, choosing instead to steal what was being described by the museum as a "common stone artifact."

It was not a job for CURE. Smith was certainly not going to recall Remo and Chiun from Europe to go looking for a useless museum piece.

Smith was about to leave the article when his computer suddenly did so for him. The AP story winked out, replaced by another story, this one attributed to Reuters.

He read the straightforward lines of text quickly, wondering what it was his computers had found so intriguing. It did not take long for him to realize why the Folcroft Four had pulled the story from the Web.

"What's wrong?" a concerned voice beside Smith asked.

Smith's eyes shot up from his computer, shocked. Dr. Drew was standing there. Stethoscope earpieces hung down from either side of his head.

"What?" Smith croaked.

"Your blood pressure," Drew explained. "Your heart rate just shot through the roof."

"No," Smith said, swallowing. "No, I am fine." The words were hollow.

Smith was trying desperately to think. Already his head had begun to ache, bringing back too recent memories of his painful ordeal.

"Is there something I can do?" Dr. Drew offered helpfully. Detaching his stethoscope, he leaned to one side, trying to get a peek at Smith's computer.

Smith instantly slapped the thin folding screen down over the keyboard and hard drive, obscuring the text.

"I'm fine!" Smith snapped. "That will be all."

Dr. Drew stiffened. For a man used to respect, Smith's rudeness at times was intolerable. With only a cursory nod to his patient and employer, he left the hospital room.