Dark Ages

Harold W. Smith had also been recruited from the CIA to CURE by a U.S. President, but it had been long before Mark Howard. It was decades ago, when a young and idealistic President had come to the shocking revelation that the U.S. was doomed. The Constitution of the United States, which promised freedom and due process to every crook and killer, tied the hands of those who would enforce the laws of the land. For every murderer who got jail time, another killer was set free by the machinations of a clever attorney. For every rapist who served hard time there was another who spent a few token years behind bars and then walked out into the streets again, free to resume his predatory ways.

The solution was easy enough to formulate. Create a law-enforcement agency that operated beyond the law, just as the criminals operated.

For that young President, it was a pill he almost could not swallow. When he finally decided to take this drastic step, he knew the new agency would need an exceptional individual to organize and manage it. It would have to be a man of unquestioned loyalty—and maybe someone a little lacking in imagination. Someone with a ramrod sense of duty to his country.

Harold W. Smith was ideal. He was retired from the CIA after an oddly brilliant career, and he was about to take on the role of a college professor. Countless university students didn’t know how lucky they were to miss being his student.

Smith’s ingrained dedication to his country would not allow him to refuse a request from the President CURE was formed, using Folcroft Sanitarium as its cover. The President who founded the organization was gunned down in a motorcade.

CURE continued. Smith and Conrad MacCleary, Smith’s friend from the CIA, were the sole employees of the secret organization. A large staff of data-gatherers and data processors worked in the sanitarium and around the world. They never knew they actually worked for CURE.

CURE channeled information in all directions, digging up evidence the police were not allowed to find, fouling organized crime systems, monitoring international intelligence agencies that the CIA couldn’t tap into for one reason or another. CURE made a dent, but not a big one.

It became clear that CURE needed to do more than gather information—it needed an enforcement arm. It needed an assassin.

Harold W. Smith was still running the show. Conrad MacCleary? He was long gone. For decades Smith managed the agency alone. Smith still thought of Mark Howard as the new man.

Mark Howard was watching a news feed from one of the global news networks. They were interviewing Americans on the streets of an unnamed city.

“They took over a bunch of dogs?” asked a woman in a business pantsuit. J

“Not the breed,” answered the reporter. “There’s a province of Canada that’s named Newfoundland. It’s been taken over in a bloody coup.”

The woman was shocked. “Did they hurt any of the dogs?”

“Thank you,” the reporter said, then walked to another figure on the city street. He asked an elderly man, J obviously well-to-do, about the troubles up north in Newfoundland and Labrador.

“Newfoundland is up north?”

“It’s a Canadian province.”

“How come I’ve never heard of it?”

“I couldn’t say, sir,” the reporter replied. “Have you ever heard of Saskatchewan?”

“New kind of wheat bread, right? No carbohydrates, comes with a free pedometer baked into every loaf.”

Finally the reporter found a black, blue-collar worker in his sixties, his face a mask of gray grizzled beard. “Of course I’ve heard of it, son. I can’t understand it though. Makes no sense, even from a crazy man’s way of lookin’ at it. Why take over Newfoundland? What’s in Newfoundland? It’s like trying to take over the Falklands. What’s the point?”

“I wish I knew the answer to that one,” Howard said.

“I may have an idea.” Smith was scanning a series of stacked on-screen windows one after another. “I think I’ve found the Proclamation of the Continuation of the British Empire.”

Howard frowned. He had already looked for it, combing a hundred intelligence systems and online libraries. How had he missed it?

Smith looked up at him. “It was just posted,” he explained. “It’s a new message on alt.history.british.medieval.”

“So where did it come from? Why couldn’t I locate it?”

Smith regarded the screen like he would have looked at a bitter piece of fruit he had just been forced to spit out. “It came from many places and many times.”

Chapter 7

“Not today,” Remo Williams said. “I have a headache.”

“Liar!” Chiun spit.

“Okay, I made up the part about the headache. I’m just not in the mood for a history lesson,” Remo said to Mark Howard. “I’ve had enough tall tales in the past couple of days.”

“They were not tall tales,” Chiun responded. “They were brief, accurate and compact with relevance—but it takes a wise man to see it.”