Warren Murphy: Lost Yesterday

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.