The first item of interest was from New York City. A CURE informant in the FBI's New York branch had forwarded a memo to a superior in Washington. Little did he realize that the superior didn't exist and the note had found its way to the computer of Harold Smith.

According to the report, an FBI agent in New York City had turned up dead that morning. Sadly, such a thing was not unprecedented in this lawless age. Smith was about to file the report in the CURE system when something caught his eye.

The dead man was an Agent Alex Worth.

Only when he scanned the man's name did Smith's heart skip a cold beat.

The man was a CURE agent. Of course, he didn't know it. There were only three men on the face of the planet who knew of the covert agency's existence. Worth was not one of them. The FBI man had been placed in the field by a circuitous order from Smith one week ago. And now he was dead.

With renewed interest the CURE director's flintgray eyes quickly scoured the report. The details of the memo brought a puzzled expression to Smith's lemony face.

There was precious little information.

According to the terse report, the agent had been killed by some inhumanly powerful force. If Smith's source was right, Agent Worth's chest had been crushed. A hasty autopsy revealed pulverized internal organs.

"Odd," Smith said to the empty room.

In his experience men were shot or stabbed or died in one of a hundred familiar ways. This, however, was new.

Ostensibly on order of his FBI superiors, Worth had been sent to investigate some new type of weapon in the arsenal of New York's organized crime. The only clue given up by a dying informant was the name Maxwell. But where this Maxwell might be remained a mystery. And now the man who had been charged with uncovering Maxwell was dead.