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"Okay," the aide said. "We can do that."

"But check it with my wife first," the president said. "She might have some other ideas."

"She usually does," the press secretary muttered under his breath as he left the office.

His remaining aide said, "Shouldn't we do something about security?"

The president fixed him with his best I-was-just-coming-to-that glare and the man quieted down.

"I want the Russians notified that we have to be involved in the security arrangements. Our team's been threatened. They have to let us in."

"All right, sir."

"The FBI's working on this?"

"Yes."

"Okay, go do what I told you."

When the room was empty, the president brooded and thought about the no-dial telephone upstairs in the dresser in his bedroom.

The telephone connected directly to the secret organization CURE and its director, Dr. Harold W. Smith. The president's predecessor in office had explained it all to him. Smith had been tapped some years back to run the CURE operation. The idea was to work outside the Constitution to put the squash on crooks who were hiding behind the Constitution. But over the years, CURE'S operations had expanded and now it was ready to go anywhere, to do anything. Every president, he was sure, had felt the same way coming into his office: he would never use CURE.

And just as he had, every one of them had wound up using it.

Not that it was easy. The president could not give CURE orders. He could only suggest missions. Dr. Smith was the final boss. There was only one order a president could give that would instantly be obeyed: disband. No president had ever done it because every

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president had found that America needed CURE and Dr. Smith and the enforcement arm, Remo, and the little old Oriental who did the strange things.

The President of the United States went up to his bedroom and removed the receiver of the phone and waited for Smith to answer at the other end.