Warren Murphy: Lost Yesterday

And then one day, Drums looked at the pages and pages of testimony stacked on a table in the center of the cabin, and said:

“What's that?”

“Your ticket out of the gas chamber, Drums,” a guard answered. He refused to call him Mr. Drumola.

“Yeah, what gas chamber?”

“The extra-strength gas chamber they'll build just for you if you forget to testify.”

“Hey, no. I'll testify. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to talk about?”

“Me? Nothing. I just work here,” said the guard. “But the U.S. attorney wants you to talk a lot.”

“Sure,” said Drums. “About what?”

When the U.S. attorney heard about Drums's new attitude, he came to the cabin himself and promised Gennaro Drumola that if it were the last thing he ever did on earth, he would make sure Drumola would die in the gas chamber.

“What are you talkin' about?” asked Drumola.

“You're going to die, Drumola.”

“What for?”

“Murder one.”

“Who?”

“The little old lady we have tapes of you killing.”

“What tapes?”

The U.S. attorney stormed out of the little cabin. His case was over. Somehow, some way, someone had reached the turncoat, and now all they had was volumes of testimony that could not be backed up in court by the witness.

He did not know that others were watching the case or that when he filed his report about the sudden bad turn of events, it automatically would be picked up by computer terminals he was unaware of. He did not know that there was an organization specializing in making sure, among other things, that United States justice remained justice.

Remo arrived outside the holding tank and easily moved past the guards in those moments when their bodies said their minds were wandering. It was not the greatest trick to recognize the moment when attention flagged; the body fairly screamed it. There would be a stillness in the person, and then movement. That stillness was when the mind took over.

Remo could also sense distraction. Most people, at least as children, could sense others, but they had been trained out of it; Sinanju had trained this perception back into Remo.

He moved through the forest, aware that the soil had been disturbed and there were strange things in it. He did not know that they were sensors, just that these alien objects were to be avoided. The land told him that. He spotted the cabin in a dense grove of trees. A guard sat in front of the door with a carbine on his lap and a telephone behind him.

Remo moved to the rear of the cabin and found a window that he could open quietly by forcing the wood evenly upward without the slightest jerk. A large man with a belly that heaved with each breath slept on a cot. Drumola.

Remo moved through the open window and across the wood floor. He sat down next to Drumola.

“Good morning, Drums,” he said. “I hear you have a problem with your memory.”

“Wha?” grunted Drumola.

“I'm here to help you remember,” said Remo.

“Good,” said Drums. “You know I just don't remember nothin' anymore. It's like a page has been ripped out of my life. Whack. Out.”

“I'm going to reinsert it,” said Remo. He took Drumola's large hamlike fists and compressed the fingers so that the nerves felt as though they were being pulled out from his hand. Not to disturb the guard, he pressed shut Drums's lips.

The huge body convulsed. The face reddened. The black eyes grew wide with the scream that could not escape his mouth.

“Well, sweetheart, does this remind you of anything?” asked Remo.

Drums convulsed again.

“You may not know it, sweetheart, but we have this down to a science. First the pain. Now the terror. I'd hang you over the side of a building,” said Remo, “but the ground floor isn't that frightening. What about smothering as an alternative? You into that, Drums?”

Remo released the now reddened fingers and slid his own hand under the sweaty bulk of Drumola's back. Like a nurse with a hospital sheet, he turned Drumola, but unlike a nurse he did it in an instant, sending the man spinning upward and then landing on his face. The cabin shook.

“You all right, Drums?” called out the guard.

“Uh-huh,” said Remo.

“Well, don't go flyin' around or nothin', okay?”

And that was it from the guard. Remo forced Drumola's rib cage up toward his chin, not hard enough to separate the ribs, which could puncture the lungs, but with enough force to make Drumola feel as though he were being crushed under a mountain.

“Just a little bit more, Drums, and you are no more,” said Remo. Then he released everything.

Gennaro Drumola quivered and then began crying.

“Shh,” said Remo. “Do you remember now?”

“Anything,” said Drumola.

“What do you remember?”

“What do you want me to remember?”

“Your testimony.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” said Drums. “I did that. I did whatever. I remember whatever.”

“Good. Because if you forget, I'll be back.”

“I swear by my mother's grave, I remember,” said Drums. His anal sphincter had released, so Remo left before the odor got to him.

But the next day, Smith was reaching out for Remo again.

“It didn't hold,” he said. He had come down in person to the Miami Beach apartment. “Are you all right, Remo?”

“Yeah. I'm fine. I'm great.”

“Chiun says you're not correct yet,” said Smith. Chiun sat in a gray presentation kimono, one worn before emperors, a dull color to show that the assassin was there to glorify the emperor and not himself. Sometimes a presentation kimono was bright gold, and Remo asked why that wouldn't be a detraction. Chiun had said that was for the occasions when the assassin's glory added to that of the emperor. Remo always felt, however, that Sinanju Masters wore what they felt like and made up reasons for it afterward.

Smith wore his usual three-piece gray suit and lemon-faced frown.

“You don't understand. When Chiun says I am not ready, it means that I can't do things that a Master of Sinanju can do. It's got nothing to do with the needs of the organization.”

“What can't you do, Remo?”

“I can't harmonize with cosmic forces on a level that is continuous and smooth.”

Chiun nodded. There. Remo had said it. Openly admitted it. Of course, one should never admit anything in front of an emperor, but in this case it served Sinanju well. Remo needed more rest and more retraining.

Smith heard the answer and looked blank. Chiun was nodding and Remo was shrugging, each indicating that he had won an argument that Smith didn't even understand.

“I'm sorry, I don't understand,” said Smith.

“I can move up and down walls. I can put my hand through solid objects, and I can take any dozen men who need to be taken.”

“Not Masters of Sinanju.”

“There's only one of you in the world, Little Father,” said Remo.

“There was the evil Master. What if you should meet him again?”

“I'll call you.”

“That is not being a Master of Sinanju. Our noble emperor Harold W. Smith has paid tribute for the services of a Master of Sinanju and you must perform as a Master. Otherwise you are robbing him. I will not allow it.”

“How am I robbing him if I am working for him, for us, for the organization, instead of resting?”

“By giving insufficient measure.”

“He doesn't even know what I'm talking about when I mention the cosmos.”

“Well, it certainly has affected your performance, Remo, I am sorry to say,” said Smith.

“How can it? When you harmonize with the cosmic forces it only means enhancing your source of energy and balance. If you have enough energy to move up and down buildings, you don't generally need more.”