A pragmatic soul, Smith had at one point considered bringing the bag home for good. It was only taking up space in his office closet. But in the end he had decided that it would be more suspicious to board an international flight with only his battered leather briefcase. And one thing Harold W. Smith did not crave was attention.

Smith picked up his two pieces of luggage. Before the crowd had thinned completely, Smith fell in with it. He left the plane without the flight attendant at the door even making eye contact. Few people ever took notice of Harold W. Smith. He was just a nondescript gray man with a worn overnight bag and briefcase.

Smith walked briskly through the terminal and out into the cold winter day without a single person glancing his way.

The sky above New York was a sallow gunmetal gray. The color of the day seemed reflected in the gaunt man with the worn bags who hurried up the broad sidewalk.

Everything about Smith seemed tinged in grays, from his three-piece gray suit to the pallor of his skin. The only splash of color that stained his otherwise absolute grayness was the green-striped Dartmouth tie coiled around his neck like a knotted snake.

His sheer ordinariness was the perfect camouflage.

No one would have guessed that this shivering gray man hurrying through the parking lot of John F. Kennedy International Airport was more than just the sum of his gray parts.

Harold Smith was much more.

Smith was director of CURE, a secret agency whose existence was known only to the highest level of the executive branch of the United States government. CURE's mandate was to work outside the Constitution in order to protect it. As head of CURE, Harold W. Smith controlled forces far greater than any other man on the face of the planet. The fact that he looked even more boring than the average dull, gray businessman hurrying to his car on a shivering winter day was Smith's greatest shield. His ordinariness turned away prying eyes, preventing discovery of America's greatest, most terrible secret.