CURE's director, Harold W. Smith, founded the organization long ago as a deterrent against crime, at the direction of a man who was then President of the United States. But unlike other law enforcement agencies, CURE worked. It worked because it operated against the law. Outside the Constitution. There was nothing legal about CURE. Smith's own base of operations, a powerful bank of computers inside the executive offices of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, and duplicated in another bank on the island of St. Maarten, regularly tapped other information centers, paid informants, instigated IRS investigations, forged documents, blackmailed politicians, circulated rumors, and generally did whatever Smith deemed necessary to halt the activities of those criminals who were normally beyond the pale of the law. And then there was Remo, the enforcement arm of CURE. Remo was probably the single most illegal individual in the world, let alone the U.S. government.

Remo was an assassin. His job was to kill people— with his hands, his feet, his wrists, his shoulders, even his neck. He killed efficiently, exquisitely, and, most of the time, uncomplainingly. No government could ask for better.

The President of the United States, the one person besides Harold Smith and Remo himself who knew of CURE's existence, referred to Remo only as "that special person." But in the president's mind, as in the mind of every president before him who knew about CURE, Remo was no person. He was a tool, a killing machine, and the main reason why CURE had to remain the best-kept secret in the country.

Smith had selected Remo for CURE, but he had not trained him.