Lost Yesterday td-65

by Warren Murphy

  The President turned from the set.

  “They're murderers and crooks, and I'm going to tell that to the country,” he said. “Dammit. They're getting millions of dollars' worth of free advertising. And we're helpless. I'm more afraid of their formula than I am for those poor passengers. This just complicates things.”

  This time when the Queen of Alarkin phoned she wasn't kept waiting by State Department channels for a half-hour. She was put right through.

  Her demands were simple. Drop the mail-fraud, conspiracy-to-commit-murder, accessory-to-murder-before-the-fact, extortion, and embezzlement charges against Rubin and herself, and the President could be hailed as a peacemaker to the world. Fail, and he would be trashed throughout the nation.

  “Honey,” said the President, “I wasn't elected to make deals with petty con men. You go ahead and trash. No deal. America is not for sale.”

  By evening it seemed as though almost every station had a program on religious intolerance in America. Persecution of Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and Quakers was now made to seem like a mere prelude to the latest in religious intolerance.

  Professor Waldo Hunnicut was on the air again. It was he, after President Sadat was shot, who blamed America and not the fundamentalist Muslims who did the shooting. He blamed America for the massacres by the Khmer Rouge, whom America had once fought, and he now blamed America for the hijacking.

  “I have yet to speak to one president in America who really understands religious freedom.”

  When he tried the same trick with Congress the next day, two representatives cut him short, explaining that he was just another “blame-America-first-for-everything” nut.

  But the media did not investigate his background. Instead they interviewed beautiful Kathy Bowen in jail. Her tones were professionally sweet, her eyes even more innocent than the time she played a saint in an Easter television production.

  “I know that I am in jail because I believe people are good. I wish no harm to come to any innocent person. But is the President innocent when he quarantines the blameless nation of Alarkin because they dare to think people are good? Is the President innocent when powerful American aircraft daily fly over the tiny island, when nuclear warships patrol its beaches? Who is the President that he thinks he has a right to stop goodness with his nuclear evil?”

  No one mentioned Ms. Bowen was in jail on a charge of conspiracy to murder, that she had been caught just the week before in an announcement of the President's death even before his plane went down, and that she undoubtedly was implicated in the murder of an American Air Force colonel and everyone on the plane.

  And alligators in swimming pools were considered past history and not worth mentioning as the story became American arms in support of intolerance.

  One network and newspaper did a combined poll.

  The question was: Should American nuclear weapons support religious intolerance?

  When the answer came in negative, everyone announced the President was slipping.

  One of the hijacked passengers who had been elected spokesman told Americans on breakfast and supper news programs that many of the hostages had developed “a profound sense of empathy with the Poweressence cause.”

  The President called a press conference and outlined the petty and major crimes of the Dolomos, exactly how Poweressence extracted money from people under false pretenses.

  The press conference was followed immediately by commentators pointing out that calling names never helped anyone. The President was labeled reckless and irresponsible, especially when he said the Dolomos were not going to get away with it.

  “I certainly would not want him as my negotiator,” said one commentator who had been released from the cow pens of Harbor Island, now called Alarkin.

  He was the one who led the others in calling Beatrice Dolomo “your Majesty,” saying America had to get over the arrogance of thinking it could decide how people would live.

  “I personally find Poweressence spiritually and emotionally uplifting in ways that Christianity has never been.”

  There were also many interviews at Poweressence temples to explain how Poweressence devotees were suffering for the handful of actions of a few faithful.

  “I do not support hijacking. I support freedom of religion,” said one franchise owner, who also slyly warned that as long as America kept persecuting its religious minorities it should become used to hijackings and oil spills like the Bayonne disaster.

  “Yes, I do believe the Bayonne disaster just as much as the hijacking was the result of America's persecution of religion.”

  In the Oval Office the President gave a single order to Smith.

  “I want your two specialists. I don't care how you go about getting them. Get them.”

  “The organization's system located them in Newark, sir, but after that I don't know where they're going to be. I believe that Remo was the one who kept both of them here, but we can't count on that now.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I don't know if he knows anymore that he's working for us.”

  * * *

  Remo felt it was great to finally meet the image that had been talking to him.

  “All I wanted to do, Little Father, was to go home, but I never knew where that was. Now I know. Sinanju, right?”

  “The most perfect village in the world, where your ancestors came from,” said Chiun.

  They were in an airline terminal, and Chiun had placed his long fingernails under Remo's shirt just under the breastbone to synchronize his breathing, to make his lungs and the pores of his body work in unison so that his bloodstream would reverse the process of absorbing substances and now eject them.

  But Chiun did not think of it in terms of bloodstream, rather as the poetry of the body, as he had learned from the Master before him and as the Master learned from the Master before him, from those first days when Sinanju learned the true powers of the human body and became the sun source of all the martial arts, only to be copied by others over the centuries.

  Remo felt the fingernails and tried to concentrate, but the clank of coin machines and the smell of passing perfumes bothered him. It was then that he realized the coin machines were at the other end of the airport and his hearing was coming back. The perfumes were faint scents, which meant his smell was coming back.

  His memory came only in pieces, though. He remembered looking at the star, and then he realized it was at that moment in the universe when it was decided what he would become, and his mind remembered it even if he couldn't.

  He remembered Chiun. He remembered the lessons. He remembered thinking so many times that he would die. He remembered hating Chiun, and remembered learning respect, and later knowing and loving the man as the father he never knew.

  He remembered Sinanju, the muddy little village from which came the greatest house of assassins of all time. He remembered to breathe. He tasted the onion-and-garlic essence of the liquid he had touched back in California. He remembered reaching into a tub to save a grown man, acting like a child, who was drowning. He remembered losing control of his skin.

  He was not up to peak. And this had set him back a little farther.

  Some things were still spotty. He knew Sinanju was the village, but his home was not in the place itself but in its teaching. He was raised in the orphanage in Newark. He got that right.

  “Yes, you are Sinanju, Remo,” said Chiun, who was now not a vision anymore. And Remo knew why he could see him when he had forgotten everything else. He could see him because Chiun was within him like any good teacher. And Remo thought Chiun was the greatest teacher the world had ever known.

  “I remember. I am not Korean at all,” said Remo.

  Chiun's fingers stopped. “Don't go that far. You are. Your father was Korean.”

  “Really? I didn't know that. How did you know that?”

  “I will explain it later, but you will see the histories of Sinanju, our histories, and you will understand how you
have been able to know so much.”

  “It's because of your great teaching, Little Father. I think you are the greatest teacher the world has ever known,” Remo said.

  “That too,” said Chiun.

  “Hey, I forgot. I've got to check in. The people I was after got away.”

  “Everyone gets away in America. We don't belong here.”

  “I do, Little Father. That's the problem,” said Remo, who still remembered the contact number for Smith.

  Chapter 15

  Remo was apologetic and Chiun was outraged.

  “Never admit to an emperor you have done wrong,” Chiun said in Korean. But Remo ignored him.

  “What are we all doing in the White House? Isn't this the worst possible contact point? Talk of risking exposure.”

  “Somehow the Dolomos have gotten through to the President. I am afraid they will again. If the President turns into a hostile three-year-old, the whole world can go up. I brought Chiun here for that reason.”

  “Ah, so. That is the excuse he will use to seize the throne,” Chiun said to Remo in Korean, and to Smith in English, “Most wise.”

  “He's not going to take any throne,” Remo answered. “He had you here because he couldn't kill the President himself. He wanted you to do it. Then he would demolish the organization and kill himself.”

  “On the eve of his enthronement?” asked Chiun, so incredulous that he forgot to speak in Korean.

  “I've told you this, you just don't want to know, Little Father,” said Remo.

  “I have since worked out a way to defend against an intrusion of that sort,” said Smith. “The question is, how fit are you?”

  “I'd be vulnerable to that solution.”

  “You stay here. Can you do what is necessary if the President is stricken by the Dolomos?”

  “You mean can I kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure,” said Remo.

  “No problem there?”

  “It's the right move, Smitty.”

  “Yes. I suppose so,” said Smith. “Maybe I'm getting old. I couldn't do it.”

  “He couldn't do anything, the crazy lunatic,” Chiun said in Korean, and in English added, “Benevolence is of course the signal character of a great ruler.”

  “Chiun, with Remo here we can send you. We need to free a group of passengers being held prisoner on an island, and make sure, above all make sure we get control of a formula created by two people, Rubin and Beatrice Dolomo. Get them too while you're at it.”

  “Another stupid shopping list from the lunatic in residence,” Chiun said to Remo in Korean, and in English told Smith, “We fly with the speed of your very words.”

  “No. Remo has to stay here.”

  “Then we shall guard your honor with our lives.”

  “No. I want one to do one thing and the other to do another.”

  “Both shall do both simultaneously and add to your glory in greater power than a single leaf on a single branch.”

  “We have got to have Remo here to do what must be done and you in Harbor Island to do what you must do.”

  “Ah,” said Chiun. “I understand. Remo and I will be off to Harbor Island immediately.”

  “Smitty, he's not going to let me be anywhere alone in my condition. So give up on that plan of splitting us,” said Remo.

  “Why did you say such a thing to Smith?” asked Chiun in Korean, and in the same language Remo answered:

  “Because it's true.”

  “So?”

  “So if we all know what we are doing we don't have to play games.”

  “Treating an emperor properly is not a game. Woe be to the assassin who always tells his emperor the truth.”

  And in English Remo said to Smith:

  “You've got to choose.”

  “All right. I have something worked out here if the President is stricken. Go to Harbor Island. But stay in contact. The phone system there is shaky. We'll give you a communications device that links you with a satellite. This whole thing is going to be tricky. I want control from here. I care about the hostages, I want to get the Dolomos, but that stuff is a nightmare.”

  “What is it exactly?” asked Remo.

  “They're finding out now. The real problem is that some of it won't break down with time.”

  “So bury it.”

  “In what place that won't be near a water system?

  “We’ve got the situation at the Dolomo estate contained, but it is a nightmare if ever they start mass-producing the stuff.”

  “So we should get the stuff first?”

  “I don't know. That's why we want you with the communicator,” said Smith.

  Before they left, Smith wanted to see the President and personally assure him they were going through with this.

  “He's been attacked all over the country. Only the people are with him. He's a stand-up guy and he should know that he's got help.”

  “And of course, while we are there, if he should fall and suffer an accident...?” suggested Chiun.

  “No,” said Smith.

  “Not now, then,” said Chiun.

  In the Oval Office, Remo Williams promised his President that nothing would stop him.

  “I'm an American,” said Remo. “And I don't like to see my country trashed.”

  “No. Just the Dolomos. Don't do anything to the press,” said the President.

  The President kept avoiding Chiun's eyes. Remo guessed that he knew it had been Chiun who was supposed to kill him.

  Chiun saw the President's reaction. This could mean that the lunatic Smith had actually told the current emperor of his plans. Nothing was beyond the insanity of these whites whom Remo continued beyond all reason to serve.

  “For the first time I feel like we are in control of the situation,” said the President.

  “Whites are never in control of the situation. They are the situation.” This, of course, in Korean.

  * * *

  Remo and Chiun entered Harbor Island, now being openly talked of as Alarkin or Free Alarkin or Liberated Alarkin. The people doing the talking were newsmen. Some of them were reporting right from the boat. Remo and Chiun avoided the cameras.

  One announcer talked of how weak Alarkin had made America, how it had exposed not only America's weakness but also America's intolerance of religious minorities to the world.

  “The feeling of many of the hijacked passengers is that while they disagree with hijacking, they have come to learn the pain and persecution suffered by the Powies. They have seen American ships and American guns surround the tiny nation of Alarkin, once Harbor Island. They understand how Poweressence devotees can find themselves in American jails, and they have no wonder that America is a target for those who do not have aircraft carriers or nuclear bombs, but only their own lives. These lives the Powies used in what some in the West might call terrorism. But to the weak and oppressed it is a chance to risk everything against the powerful for the sake of loved ones in American jails. After all, they ask, why not trade one innocent captive for another, and they refer to Kathy Bowen, seized by armed American law-enforcement officers and put behind bars.”

  When the announcer finished, he took off his makeup and looked around for applause.

  Remo looked to Chiun. “That's not reporting, that's propaganda.”

  “Why do you care? I don't understand anything about the crazy whites of your country.”

  “Somebody is supposed to try to tell the truth. These guys color everything.”

  “Who doesn't?” asked Chiun. “If you are dissatisfied with these, hire your own.”

  Even before they reached the dock, two other reporters gave reports to their television cameras on whether the press was a factor in the story. Their conclusion was that the press, considering its handicaps, was doing as well as it could. There was a reporter on the boat who was doing a story for a journalism magazine on criticism of the media, and he was coming to a conclusion that the critics were biased and narrow-m
inded and that the press had done an outstanding job.

  “Am I wrong?” he asked the television newsmen and the reporters.

  They all thought he was basically right.

  “Good, because I am going back with the boat. I don't have to actually go onto the island to get the story if I have it now.”

  “Why are you bothered by such silly things?” asked Chiun. “What is this thing about truth? That you know what is so is the only matter of importance.”

  “But these guys are heard by millions.”

  “Then it is the problem of the millions. You may not remember, but I once told you that to know the truth is enough for any one person. What another knows is his problem.”

  “I don't like to see my country get trashed by its own,” said Remo.

  “I do,” said Chiun. “Your country deserves it. Now, if they were to defame Sinanju, the glorious gem of civilization on the West Korea Bay, then we might take proper action.”

  “Forget it, Little Father. I am well enough that I remember Sinanju. It's a mudhole of a fishing village. I remember now. We had a big fight there once.”

  “You had a fight, I had a glorious homecoming,” said Chiun.

  The boat landed and about twenty young men and women with whips met the American newsmen. Some were herded to the old cow barns. Others were taken to the sheep pasture before they were allowed to interview the hijackers.

  Remo turned on his communicator.

  It was half the size of a loaf of bread and had been designed for absolute simplicity. There were only two buttons to push. Somehow Remo managed to push them four times in combinations that failed to work. He thought that should be impossible. He banged it once. He banged it twice, gently.

  “Working,” came Smith's voice.

  “What do you want first?”

  “Locate that liquid but keep Chiun with you. You know what happened to you last time.”

  “When I do that, what should I do then?”

  “Probably move on the Dolomos and then on the Powies, and that should take care of the hijacked passengers. Let the Marines rescue them.”