Warren Murphy: Lost Yesterday

Could anyone imagine a Russian plane being hijacked?

Rubin Dolomo watched the large Boeing 707 come down on Pink Beach. That was a show. With surgical precision, the pilot skillfully brought the center of the plane down on the hard-packed sand at the edge of the water, palm trees on one side and open sea on the other, and the belly met the sand as gently as a soap bubble.

It was a bright morning on Harbor Island as Powie guards moved in to relieve Robert Kranz and his quaking partner. The crew was kept on the plane while the passengers were taken to prearranged spots around the island so that if any part of the island were bombed, the passengers would be hit. They were, as Rubin had figured out, “our living sandbags.”

It was noon before the news media arrived by boat from Eleuthera Island, having used political clout to break through the naval quarantine. As soon as it was learned that the Navy was blockading Harbor Island, almost every major commentator was accusing the Navy of suppressing news. Was America at war with a Bahamian island? If so, why wasn't it declared?

The American government did not have a right to hamper the freedom of the press, and the Navy patrol boats were ordered to give way to the throngs of cameramen and reporters.

Rubin was ready for them. He put the television cameramen in old cattle pens and the newspaper reporters in lamb pastures, with the news photographers assigned to goat pens. Anyone leaving the prescribed route was whipped by Powie guards.

One reporter, in an effort to establish the humanity of the Poweressence movement, was lacerated so severely that he passed out. Another Powie threw a glass of water in his face, bringing him to, and immediately it became a story of Powie medical care for the wounded.

When he was ready, Rubin Dolomo called Beatrice.

“It's all yours, precious dove,” he said. “They're going to give you the world.”

* * *

In the White House the President and Smith watched as Beatrice Dolomo spoke live to the American people. Almost every station across the country broke into programming to broadcast the live announcement of the Harbor Island hijacking.

“Good people of America,” said Beatrice Dolomo, her face in even heavier makeup for the cameras. “I have never had anything against the American people. In fact, I am an American. I do not wish to harm the innocent passengers, because we like the passengers. What I seek, and what we all seek, is religious freedom. Today, languishing in American jails are people whose only crime was that they dared to be positive instead of negative. I refer to one who is dear to our hearts. Our good friend Kathy Bowen from Amazing Humanity . What is her crime? What is our crime? We seek only peace and comfort for all of us.”

Beatrice finished reading the prepared statement, smiled especially broadly at a very handsome reporter, and then nodded to Rubin.

Rubin assured everyone that the passengers were safe and feeling better than ever before because some initial Poweressence was being given to them.

“This amazing new form of reaching our ancient power roots has given help to millions, solved sleeping problems, cured eye defects, made success out of failure, and given people a new lease on life. For your free character test that will tell you who you are and how you can be stress-free forever, all you have to do is contact the Poweressence temple in your neighborhood.”

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.