Lost Yesterday

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 mayor 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.

“I think I remember you. I think I do.”

“Remo. Remo Williams.”

“Right. Yeah. I think. Right. Remo.” And then Ed Polishuk jumped back in his seat.

“Remo, you're dead,” he said. “And what happened to your face? You got a different kind of a nose and mouth. You're dead, Remo. No, you're not dead. You're not Remo.”

“Remember the newsstand you tried to shake down for cigarettes and I threatened to report you, Ed?”

“The dumb-dumbest straighto. Remo. Remo Williams,” yelled Polishuk. And everyone in the bar and grill turned to look. Ed Polishuk hushed his voice.

“What the hell has happened to you, Remo?”

“I don't know. Crazy things. I see this old Oriental in front of me. I speak Korean fluently. I can do things with my body like you wouldn't believe. And you, Ed, you're twenty years older.”

“And you're not. That's the strange part.”

“I know.”

“Remo,” whispered Polishuk, “you died about twenty years ago.”

Remo let go of Polishuk's wrists. He pinched his own arm. He felt it. He knew even more certainly in his breath that he was alive.

“I'm not dead, Ed.”

“I can see that. I see that. Something's going on here.”

“What?”

“I don't know, Remo. I don't know. I remember they electrocuted you. You shot some punk. I thought: Serves him right for being such a straighto. It doesn't pay to be straight, Remo. You never learned that lesson.”

“I don't know what I learned. Have you ever heard of Sinanju?”

“No. But let's get out of here. Hey, you lost weight. And you look younger. You look friggin' younger. How did you do it?”

“I don't know.”

“You were electrocuted, you know. Do you remember the trial? It was,” said Ed, lowering his voice, “the niggers. They run everything now. Newark's gone to hell. Everything's for sale. Niggers.”

“But you were always for sale, Ed. What do you mean, Negroes? You were always for sale. What's that fat envelope in your pocket? So it's not cigarettes now. It's cash.”

“I'm trying to be friendly. I forgot you can't be friendly with a dum dum. So lay off. Niggers steal. I, on the other hand, protect my future retirement. It don't do no good to be honest. What for? For niggers?”

“You weren't even honest when Newark was mostly white.”

“So, look at you, Remo. Look at you. You got shanghaied and railroaded. I knew you didn't shoot that guy in the alley. But they had witnesses up the kazoo. And then the pressure from above. That's what everyone said. The pressure from above. They had to show a white cop could be electrocuted for shooting a black. That's what they had to show.”

“How do you know I didn't do it?”

“Because you never used your gun against regulations. You were impossible as a buddy. I can't believe how young you look. You're dead. I know you're dead.”

Outside on the street, Remo picked up a can from the gutter.

“If I'm dead, how can I do this?” asked Remo, crushing the can.

“Hey, cans are light nowadays. Anyone can crush cans, Remo.”

Remo opened his hand and showed Ed Polishuk a small shining ball.

“You fused the damned thing.”

“I know. I can do that. I found it out on the plane when I tried to fit an ashtray back into its holder. That's nothing. You know the kind of money I could make throwing baseballs for a living?”

In an alley, Remo picked up a rock and threw it at a square marked off for stickball. The rock crunched into the softer red brick like an explosion, making a hole through the wall into a warehouse. They knew it was a warehouse because they saw men looking around inside, startled. The hole was big enough.

“Sheeet,” said Captain Ed Polishuk. “Where did you learn that? Where have you been?”

“I think Sinanju,” said Remo.

“Where's that?”

“I don't know, but I come from there too. Now, how can that be?”

Ed Polishuk told his desk sergeant that he would be busy for the rest of the afternoon. He did not make his normal pickups, partly out of shock but partly because he suspected that indeed this was crazy Straighto Remo Williams, and he would turn in the entire bag route, from whorehouses to bookie joints.

So this day Ed Polishuk was not going to let him out of his sight. In his office, he sent requests to the public-relations division for all newspaper clippings on the police force during the years following Remo's execution.

“I don't remember those,” said Remo.

“Of course you don't. You were dead.”

Remo read the comments about himself. The one that touched him most was from Sister Mary Elizabeth, who remembered Remo as “a good boy.”

He saw that he maintained that he was innocent until the end. But he didn't remember the trial. Was there something that should make his memory stop on one night? Because the last thing he remembered was looking up at the stars. And Polishuk was with him. Patrolman Ed Polishuk was with him.

“I remember thinking I was a star as I looked up. Something really crazy about eternity and who I was,” said Remo.

“You were always crazy, but not like this,” said Polishuk. “You had no feel for poetry, music, taking a little bit of the action which a patrolman deserves on his salary. Nothing.”

“Now, why should my memory end there? Do you see that?”

“What?”

“That Oriental guy. He's speaking Korean.”

“Remo, you're really crazy.”

“Maybe,” said Remo.

“You returned to that one night,” said the Oriental in the language Remo now knew, “because that was the one night you understood, if ever so briefly, who you were, and that was who you were going to be.”

And then the name Shiva came to Remo. He kept hearing how Shiva was the destroyer of worlds, and that one had to die to live as something else. Captain Ed Polishuk thought it sounded like some born-again-Christian group. He also did some detective work for Remo, who wouldn't leave his office.

Sinanju was a town in North Korea on the West Korea Bay. Historically it had a lot to do with the courts of Europe and the Mediterranean and Asia for some reason. They provided advisers of some sort to kings. Remo couldn't remember who or what he would advise. He didn't know how to advise anyone. Yet Sinanju somehow seemed just as strong in him as the orphanage.

Shiva, as it turned out, was some Asian god. So that left him nowhere. But there was something Captain Ed Polishuk could do to help them all get to the bottom of this. He could prove once and for all to the satisfaction of anyone, especially the FBI and the news media which he was ready to call in, that Remo Williams indeed was the same Remo Williams who had been electrocuted in Trenton State Prison. If he could do that, then both the glare of publicity and the good work of the FBI would find out what kind of phony execution went on in Trenton State Prison.

“How are you going to do that?”

“We're cops, right?”

“I thought so,” said Remo.

“Then it's simple. Give me your fingerprints. Do you remember how? Roll the pads over the ink. You can do it with stamp-pad ink,” said Polishuk, pushing a white piece of paper and a pad across his desk. Then he phoned headquarters to get fingerprints.

“I want the fingerprints of Patrolman Remo Williams.”

“We ain't got no Williams, Remo, Captain,” said the fingerprints clerk.

“He'd dead,” said Captain Polishuk.

“What do you want with a dead man's prints?”

“I want 'em,” said Polishuk.

The fingerprints clerk took twenty minutes to find the card. It was from the days when people actually typed out names and identification on typewriters and then stored them on cards, way before computers. Someone had actually written the information in ink. There was no way you could press keys and find this information. It was even dusty.

A patrolman delivered the fingerprints from main headquarters to Polishuk's precinct. Polishuk took them himself at the door, then shut it behind him. He laid them out on his desk and then had Remo make his own print in front of him with the stamp-pad ink on paper.

Captain Polishuk examined the swirls and marks, even the little cut on the forefinger.

“Holy shit. It is you, Remo. It is. It's you.”

“Call the press?”

“Call everyone. Somebody somewhere has really pulled a fast one on this country, and you too, Remo. Welcome back, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Remo.

* * *

In the White House no one was certain what had gone wrong at Harbor Island, but it had gone wrong in the worst possible way.

The military adviser had hit the mainland shore south of the hotels, with the scientists safely behind them. They carried M-16 automatic rifles and hand grenades arid were told that if they had any difficulty, an aircraft carrier would supply fighter bomber support. Their mission was first to capture two American fugitives, then secure permanently a liquid. The formula for it, the scientists would identify.

The advisers sweated heavily in the Bermuda sun, almost suffocating in their waterproof rubber suits. Their air had to pass through three filters before it reached their mouths. They moved slowly, like space walkers.

They secured the main harbor beach and the hotels by 0900. By 1200 they had seized the humpback ridge central to the island and were moving on the resort said to contain the Dolomos.

Each step of the way was reported. The last told the dismal tale.

Half-nude girls shouting “All power to the positives” ran laughing at them. They certainly didn't seem dangerous. The only weapons they had were knitting needles in their hair, and the men weren't looking at their hair.

Then, as if on signal, they all slipped the harmless needles into the rubber suits. No one was reported injured in the invading party, but then, no one bothered to report anything after that. The aircraft carrier made several quick overflights but saw no shooting. There was nothing.

“The needles contained the solution,” said Smith. “That's obvious.”

“You know the power these cult leaders exercise over their followers is enormous,” said the President. “To think girls would get undressed and go out to injure someone just for a spiritual leader. A leader who is a damned fraud, Smith. A fraud. No, we will not give in to him. Now, I know you want to save Chiun for me if you have to. I can live with that. But can we work out something to send him after the Dolomos? Armed soldiers don't even seem to work. We're lost, Smith. You have got to come up with something.”

“Mr. President,” said Smith, taking a small thumbnail-sized box from his gray vest. “I have saved this pill for myself. As you know, if the organization is compromised, I have vowed to destroy the system and take my own life. This I intend to do. There can be no evidence left that our nation once admitted the Constitution could not work on its own.”

“I am aware of that,” said the President.

“The pill is strong enough to kill twenty men instantly. I can cut it in two.”

“You mean you are trusting me to take it on my own if my memory fails? There's a problem there, Smith. I won't remember.”

“No. You won't have to. Write me a note in your own hand reminding me to give you your pill. Address it to me on your stationery. You will in all likelihood not remember what this is all about if the Dolomos get to you with their solution. And if they get to me too, then the note will take care of it.”

“You'll give me the pill then?”

“Yes,” said Smith. He felt his stomach tighten.

“I thought you couldn't kill me. That's why you had to use the older one, the Oriental.”

“I couldn't shoot you. This is different.”

The President called for White House stationery and a pen. Then he dismissed the secretary who brought it.

“ 'Dear Harold,'” said Harold W. Smith as the President wrote on the stationery.

“ 'Please do not forget to give me my pill. I always seem to forget it lately and I do need it so much. Thanks.' And then sign it.”

“Here you are. May I see what it looks like?”

“Better not. You'll think about it too much.”

“How do you know?”

“I made the mistake of looking at it once. It sits there in my mind like my grave, sir.”

“Well, now, get the Oriental after them. Tell him he has total freedom.”

“He always does, sir,” said Smith, taking the paper and folding it carefully before he put it in his jacket pocket.

Smith was back in fifteen minutes.

“Sir. I have bad news.”

“Not him. He can't fail. He does things no one else can do.”

“I don't think he's failed in that way, sir. Three hours ago he left. Someone, I think it may have been a secretary, reported that he mentioned something about New Jersey. He wanted to see New Jersey. He has done this only once before, when the treasure of his ancestral house disappeared.”

“Promise him we'll double that treasure.”

“That's how I got him back the first time. I don't know why he has left this time.”

“We're hostage. The whole nation is hostage. We've lost.”

“As of now, sir.”

“We have lost to two petty swindlers. We have been brought to our knees.”

“That's the right place to rise from, sir.”

“Do you have any suggestions?”

“Cut off all access to Harbor Island, now the nation of Alarkin. Make sure no one leaves by ship. It isn't big enough for airplanes. Quarantine the place.”

“Like the plague,” said the President of the United States.

“I think I know where Chiun went. We just might luck out.”

“How?”

“They are strange creatures, the two of them,” said Smith.

* * *

Remo prepared himself for facing the television cameras. So did Captain Polishuk. He had the sample of Remo's old fingerprints and the new ones. He would take Remo's prints again when the television crews arrived and demonstrate both were the same. Then Remo would face the cameras and tell his story.

“But look, don't be crazy. Don't mention you remember me trying to shake down someone for a pack of cigarettes, okay, Remo?”

Remo nodded.

Polishuk phoned the FBI office in Newark.

“Look, I got a crazy thing here. A guy who was supposed to have been executed just walked into my office. And no, he didn't escape from jail. He didn't escape from execution. He was executed. Everyone swore to it, right down to the coroner. I want you to look into it. All right? Oh, by the way, I may say something to a few reporters and such. I'll send over the prints now,” said Polishuk, and hung up.

“They got their own prints in Washington. We'll just send him a set of your new ones.”

The captain had the proper ink, glass, and roller brought up to his office. Remo gave him his right hand. He felt like a criminal doing this. He could feel the ink fill his pores. Strange that he could feel such things, but then, everything was strange. All he remembered from the first time was that the ink felt oily. But now every ridge and pore had its own sense.

Captain Polishuk gave Remo a cloth to clean his hands, but he dropped his mouth and the cloth in amazement. Remo's hands were cleaning themselves. It was as though the skin was alive and collecting the black ink into a stream where it just poured off the fingers.

“Better than cloth. Cloth rubs things into the skin,” said Remo.

Before the television reporters arrived, the desk sergeant said there was a crazy old gook on his way up to see the captain. He had been asking around about someone who sounded like Remo, and the desk sergeant had sent him up.

When the door opened Polishuk saw a frail, old-looking Oriental with wisps of hair and parchment-frail skin.

“I'm busy,” he said.

“No,” said Remo. “The vision.”

“I have come for you,” said Chiun. “I told you I would never leave you.”

“Ed, how can you see the vision?”

“He's no vision,” said Polishuk.

“What's your name?”

“What do you remember last?”

“The star.”

“Of course,” said Chiun. “Come with me. You are mine forever.”

“I don't belong to anyone,” said Remo.

“You belong to who you are. That is why you will come with me.”

“Hey, hold on,” said Polishuk. “I got television reporters coming. He's mine.”

And when Chiun saw the grotesquely fat, meat-smelling man touch Remo's arm, and when he heard the man say such a sacrilege about Remo, who must be saved, he destroyed the man there in the office, breaking him in two, leaving him dead and done with.

“You killed Ed Polishuk,” said Remo.

“Why do you always bother to learn their names?” asked Chiun, and Remo knew he was home. He didn't know who Emperor Smith was or why they had to make amends. He knew there was something he belonged to and that belonged to him, and it was happening now. He left the station house with absolutely no regrets.

The television crew arrived to find Captain Polishuk in a bundle, his hands having smeared a great deal of ink in his last desperate moments.

The investigation would show two things. One, he varied from his normal routine that afternoon to lock himself in his office with a younger man. Second, he appeared to be crazed because he ordered old prints of a dead buddy to be brought to him.

At the FBI office, the prints arrived by messenger after Captain Polishuk was dead.

A report was filed, but the word came back: Polishuk's discovery of a dead man's prints was not so unusual in the last twenty years. Similar prints had been discovered elsewhere, but every time the case was investigated, it was shown the real holder of the prints was dead and buried many years ago.

Unless one was a practicing Christian, one had to admit the dead did not rise again.