Lost Yesterday td-65

by Warren Murphy

  Remo ordered a whiskey and a beer. Since he had a suitcase full of cash, he ordered the best brand, the one he savored for special occasions. When he lifted the glass the fumes almost made him throw up. He put it back down. He loved that whiskey. Why was his body revolted by it?

  And then the vision was talking to him again, about how a body set on the road to perfection rejected all that did not enhance it. Remo found himself ordering rice and water.

  The bartender said he didn't serve rice and water and that Remo should shut up and finish his drink or get out of there. The bartender did not bother Remo long because he had a great deal of difficulty prying a whiskey shot glass out of his left nostril.

  Remo still didn't know how he had done that, but he was glad he had.

  He got control of the television knob and turned it to the station which concentrated on the disaster. A panel of television newscasters was discussing the disaster. And Remo couldn't believe what he heard.

  Of the five newsmen, four were talking about what America had done to deserve losing a city. America had sent military advisers into South America. Therefore, because American soldiers fought guerrillas it was only logical that an American city might be destroyed with entire families buried under oil.

  America supplied arms to Israel. America supplied arms to Arab governments. Therefore, anyone who didn't like Israel or those governments had a right to kill any American anywhere. Arab experts were brought in. They decried violence against Arabs in America on the one hand, but on the other they told the American viewing audience to expect more of the same evil violence until it provided a more evenhanded approach to the Middle East.

  Then there was a discussion of how America should change its foreign policy to avoid such incidents in the future. The newscasters then talked about themselves, saying they knew they might face unpopularity because they were bearers of bad news.

  “Bearers of bad news— they are the bad news,” said Remo. “Do the networks know about those guys?”

  “Know about them? They employ them. Those guys make seven figures apiece,” said a man nursing a beer.

  “A million dollars a year to trash America?”

  “If the agent is doing his job.”

  “Aren't they reporters? I didn't think newsmen made that much money. I remember reporters from the Newark Evening News. They didn't make that much.”

  “Hey, buddy,” said the barfly in the Newark airport lounge. “Newark Evening News has been dead for years. Where you been?”

  There were two notes of relief in the abysmal picture coming from the television screen. The President got on to announce emergency aid to the victims, and then he said while there were many groups taking credit for this act of horror, it was still an act of horror. And his message was simply this:

  “They may get away with it today. They may get away with it tomorrow. But there will be a day of reckoning, as surely as the sun rises and justice beats in the hearts of Americans.”

  As soon as the President was off the air, the television reporters came back on to discuss how irresponsible he was, and what little likelihood there was of success, and besides, one man's terrorist was another man's freedom fighter.

  But one commentator, his red hair neatly parted, a cowlick in the back, with precise metal-rimmed glasses and a bow tie, disagreed.

  “No. Freedom fighters and terrorists are not the same thing, and it is not just a point of view, any more than saying a surgeon and Jack the Ripper are the same thing because they both use a knife. When the purpose is to harm innocent civilians, then you are a terrorist. It's that simple.”

  Remo found himself applauding. The whole bar was applauding. Black and white. An announcer immediately stated these were the private views of the commentator and not those of the network and immediately put on someone else with a balancing view. The balancing view was that until all hunger and all injustice everywhere was overcome, Americans should expect with a certain justification to be kidnapped, bombed, burned, drowned in oil, and shot in their sleep.

  This man was a professor of international relations. His name was Waldo Hunnicut. He had once been an ambassador to an Arab country where he used his ambassadorship to attack America's policy in the Middle East, so therefore, according to the announcer, he spoke from a respected position.

  Remo threw the beer glass at the face of Hunnicut and the bar exploded in applause. The television just exploded.

  “How can these guys get away with that crap?” he asked.

  “What can you do? They're all like that on television. You don't have a choice,” said the man next to Remo.

  The vision now told Remo that everything changed but Sinanju.

  “No,” said Remo to the vision. “I love my country.”

  To this the vision got quite angry, said it had given the best years of its life to Remo and Remo was unappreciative, ungrateful, and totally undeserving of all that the vision had given him.

  “What have you given me?”

  “More than I should,” came back the voice, and then he vision wasn't talking to him anymore. The vision was insulted.

  Remo didn't know how one insulted a vision. But then again, he never had a vision before. He was close to where he was raised, close to the orphanage in Newark.

  He took a cab there, and was surprised to see no white people around. He had remembered a mix of everyone, but now there was no mix.

  “How long has Newark been black?” asked Remo.

  “Where you been, boy?” asked the black driver.

  “Away.”

  “Then let me give you some friendly advice. And I do mean friendly. You don't want your ass around here too long.”

  “I'll be all right,” said Remo. How did he know he would be all right? He didn't have a gun. Yet he knew he wasn't in danger, no matter who came after him.

  He smelled the odor of garlic and onions, felt the nauseating oily mixture move out across his pores. Somehow he knew he was now able to hold on, perhaps even get better.

  The orphanage was gone. The block was gone. The neighborhood was gone. It was as though someone had bombed it.

  Windows were smashed. Pipes were left hanging out of buildings where someone had tried to remove them. Graffiti littered the walls. Rats and garbage covered alleys.

  Four black toughs ambled up to him, all wearing jackets indicating they were from some organization called the Righteous Skulls. They demanded tribute from him for standing on their sidewalk. They wanted to know what was in the briefcase.

  Remo did not attempt to reach a dialogue of understanding. He slapped the teeth out of the one closest to him, sending the slash of white across the ebony countenance, sailing like Chiclets clattering lightly across the sidewalk. The smile was gone.

  “I don't like to be threatened,” said Remo.

  Three swore they weren't threatening, and the fourth was nodding as he looked for his teeth. He had heard they could be replaced by modern medicine.

  “What happened to the orphanage here?”

  “Gone, man, can't you see?”

  “And Sister Mary Elizabeth. Any of you heard of her? Or Coach Walsh at Weequaic High School? Any of you heard of them?”

  They hadn't.

  “Okay. Sorry about the teeth. I didn't know I hit that hard,” said Remo, opening the suitcase and giving each young hood a hundred dollars.

  “That's a lot of bread there, man. You'd better watch out. You want some muscle to wear?”

  “I don't need muscles,” said Remo. Now, that was absurd. Of course he needed his muscles. But then there was the vision again telling him muscles weren't man's strength. It was his mind that made power.

  “I thought you weren't talking to me,” Remo said to the vision. The toughs stared at the crazy man talking to himself.

  “I want to keep you alive, not company,” said the vision. And then the vision went on about bad habits, a lifetime of bad habits Remo had acquired growing up with whites.

  Whites, tho
ught Remo. That was funny, he could have sworn he was white.

  He did not know it, but he was heading for the one place that might force Harold W. Smith to disband the organization, the one place he had always avoided when he had his full memory. If Harold W. Smith had known about Remo's direction, he might have taken the little cyanide capsule he always carried with him, and before swallowing it, put all the organization's vast computer network into self-destruct. Because Remo, without a memory, was going to open up the secret of his own murder.

  Chapter 13

  Harold W. Smith, who dealt with disasters daily, had a formula. He would have been dead by now if he didn't know how to handle them, and the organization would have collapsed in the first week.

  The secret to handling a disaster was not to run from it or wildly run to it. The way to handle the enormity was to first number it. A number gave a sense of proportion. If you were going to die in a week, that was a tragedy. But if the entire world was going to be destroyed in an afternoon, that was a greater tragedy.

  Harold W. Smith had placed the President's viability as number one, just because he had such power under his control. But the danger of the amnesia formula was a close second. An entire city was gone, undoubtedly because of the Dolomos and the formula. The scientific reports got worse every day, it seemed. Sometimes the formula for some strange reason would lose power. Other times it would increase in potency.

  And then came Remo, and the destruction of the organization if he, and it, should be compromised. The question that presented itself to Harold W. Smith at this time was that if the country were in danger of being destroyed, what difference would it make if the knowledge of its secret organization were exposed? Wouldn't it be better for Smith to stay alive and help?

  It was a time to search his own motives. The desire to live was always there, no matter how old a person got. If he and the organization were gone, then the idea that a constitutional democracy could work would still exist. The President could always surrender to the Dolomos to buy time. But he could not surrender the idea of a constitutional democracy. If that were gone, it would be gone forever. There would be calls for a police state when things got too chaotic, a return to the force employed by Remo and Chiun, but this time openly.

  It was a hard decision, but Harold W. Smith was used to making hard decisions. If they were compromised, he decided, he would still take his own life and destroy his computer network, which made the organization.

  As he was labeling the disasters, it struck him that if Remo remembered the phone number, what else did he remember? Did he remember being framed so that he could be publicly executed, thus removing his fingerprints from any files anywhere, removing the idea of the man? Did he remember getting that plastic surgery on his face? Did he remember he was once a Newark cop? And if he were to return to his old precinct, would anyone recognize a dead man?

  What if they began to look into a state execution that failed? And would this dead man with the new face be recognized in hundreds of places where he had operated in his extraordinary manner? The whole disaster was ready to go the moment Remo returned to where he used to work. If he returned there. Only Chiun might know what Remo's mind and body would do now. Smith had to find out. He went to the small room provided for him in the White House.

  Smith never knew when Chiun slept. He never slept at the same hour, and he had seen him and Remo stay awake for longer periods than the human mind was supposed to be able to tolerate.

  He knocked on Chiun's door.

  “Is it time?”

  “No, Master of Sinanju. I would like to speak to you.”

  “Enter.”

  Chiun sat in a lotus position in dark gray robes, his long fingernails concealed under the folds of the cloth.

  “May I sit down?”

  “An emperor need not ask,” said Chiun.

  “I want to know how much of Remo's training is in his mind.”

  “O gracious one, you have never asked about training in Remo before. Is something wrong?”

  “You had said he was not up to peak.”

  “He is more than adequate for the minor tasks he has been assigned.”

  “I am curious,” said Smith. He sat down. “If, as you say, I am an emperor, then I show an emperor's curiosity in my most valued servant, the great Master of Sinanju.”

  “The President hasn't died by accident?” asked Chiun, suddenly horrified.

  “No,” said Smith. “I wish to know how much training is in the mind.”

  “It is all in the mind,” said Chiun.

  “Then if a substance reaches the brain, Remo could forget everything.”

  “I did not say his training was in the brain.”

  “You said mind.”

  “The brain is part of the mind. But the mind is what the body knows and remembers, the mind is the receptacle for the person, and the person is beyond it. Even the first breath of an infant is the mind.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I couldn't be clearer,” said Chiun.

  “Suppose Remo were to succumb to this potion we are seeking that takes away memory. How much of your training would remain?”

  “That which is not in the brain, but in the mind is the receptacle for what is him. Do you understand?” said Chiun. He had spoken slowly so Smith could not miss the obvious.

  “No. Let me be more specific. Before you started to train Remo, he was a policeman in Newark, New Jersey. Might he forget that? What would he remember?”

  “He would remember everything he needs, but he would not know all he remembers,” said Chiun. “Now, is it time for you to become rightful emperor, and for Sinanju to embark publicly upon your glory?”

  “No. Not yet. Is there any chance that Remo would return to his old neighborhood if he were afflicted with this memory loss?”

  “That depends upon what neighborhood he was raised in.”

  “Why?”

  “Because some meridians of the universe affect his mind more strongly than others. He is Sinanju.”

  “Newark, New Jersey.”

  “The one afterward is the state, yes?”

  “New Jersey is the state.”

  “And he was a form of constabulary there?”

  “Yes, he was a policeman. Would that matter?”

  “Everything matters,” said Chiun, which was not a lie. But he was counting on Smith hearing it wrong, like most Westerners heard things wrong.

  Everything did matter. But that Remo had been a policeman in this Newark, New Jersey, did not matter to his mind at all. Smith had told Chiun all he had to for Chiun to know what was really going on.

  And what Chiun knew, and Smith did not, was that the world was always filled with emperors and tyrants and kings and what the Americans called presidents. They were everywhere. But there was only one Remo. And he was Chiun's. And Chiun would never let him go.

  * * *

  Captain Edwin Polishuk was two weeks away from retirement, and counting the days and minutes as he had once counted the years and months and days and minutes, when a nightmare happened to him. It happened when he went into Tullio's, a restaurant-bar that featured extra-thick roast-beef sandwiches. Captain Polishuk not only never paid his bill, but the owner left him a tip.

  The owner left the tip in a white envelope every week as he had been doing since Polishuk had taken over the precinct. Then Captain Polishuk would normally move on to other establishments in his precinct and at the end of the day meet his own payroll to his own men who did his special favors. Perhaps it was really disguised self-hatred, but Captain Ed Polishuk took enormous pleasure in turning young police recruits into bagmen like himself.

  The honest cops were given the worst assignments. Polishuk was as notorious in Newark, New Jersey, as he was safe. Ed Polishuk knew where to spread the money, and if he didn't, he always managed to buy the right information to keep himself safe. He had been up on charges three times and gotten off three times, despite the roaring anger of the m
ayor and half the City Council. Ed Polishuk was the cop no one could get.

  But on this Friday, with the roast beef dripping rich brown gravy on the crisp white Italian bread, he was to pay for it all. He didn't even get a chance to take the first bite.

  “Ed? Is that you? Ed?”

  A young man in his late twenties, thirty at most, with thick wrists, was holding back Polishuk's hands. There were few things more enjoyable in the world than Tullio's roast beef.

  “My name is Captain Polishuk.”

  “Yeah. Ed. Ed. That's you. Hey, you shouldn't be eating at Tullio's. It's a numbers drop. They're going to raid it next week. No. Not next week. I got trouble with time, Ed. Is that really you? I can't believe it. You put on thirty pounds. Your face is sagging, but that's you, Ed Polishuk.”

  “Son, I don't know who you are, but if you don't let go of my hands, I'm going to put you through the wall.”

  “You can't do that. Your arteries are clogged. You can't move well enough.”

  Ed Polishuk took his two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle and flesh and yanked down his hands.

  They didn't yank. The sandwich went into his lap, but his hands didn't yank. For all practical purposes he had done a chin-up on someone's outstretched hands across a table, and only Ed Polishuk's shoulders moved. They moved with great strain. He had wrenched them.

  “Who are you?” asked Captain Polishuk.

  “Ed. We were on the same beat. Remember? We walked. Foot patrolmen. You always called me 'Straighto Dum Dum.'”

  “I called a lot of guys 'Straighto Dum Dum,'” said Polishuk.

  “Yeah, but remember the psych tests everyone was taking and I scored a 'compulsive patriot' or something? Remember that? You said you would have thought Dum Dum would have been the best in the country. I wouldn't even take a free pack of cigarettes.”

  Ed Polishuk looked at the guy in front of him. There was something about the face he remembered. The dark eyes and high cheekbones reminded him of someone. But the rest of the face was that of a stranger.