Lost Yesterday

Chapter 9

“I didn't say Wednesday,” hissed Rubin Dolomo. “I said don't be surprised if the President's plane crashes Wednesday.”

“You said Wednesday,” said Kathy Bowen. “You told me Wednesday. You said Beatrice said Wednesday.” Kathy Bowen looked around. Her voice was hushed. A glass-and-wire screen separated her from Rubin Dolomo. “I heard you say Wednesday.”

“Even so, why did you call a press conference for Wednesday?”

Rubin glanced to his right. A guard was sitting supposedly too far away to hear. But Rubin did not trust distances. He did not trust guards of any kind. He shivered at the thought of his being in a place like this.

“Beatrice says we will get you out. We have things under way, big things that are going to turn this whole business around. We're not taking it anymore,” said Rubin proudly.

Kathy's face looked like a collapsed balloon. All the energy and verve that had made her smile look like a lit billboard had vanished.

“I can't hold onto my positive course anymore. I'm losing my power. You've got to clear me, you have got to do a clearing of my mind.”

“That's what Beatrice sent me for.”

“I owe everything to the enlightenment. Now I feel I have lost it. I'll lose everything.”

“You own your own temple franchise. You should know how to go through the mind clearances yourself.”

“This is too much. I look around and all I see are bars on one side of my cell and cement on the other. I have a single open bowl for a toilet and a sink. I wouldn't have a closet this small. You've got to help me.”

“All right, what's the feeling you have?”

“I feel I am in jail.”

“In what part of your body is that feeling?”

“It's all over me. I feel trapped. I feel I can't move around.”

“In what part of your body is it strongest?”

“Everywhere.”

“Good. Now how strongly do you feel this?”

“Totally.”

“Is there any part of you that doesn't feel it?”

“My ring. My ring doesn't feel it.”

“Any part of your body?”

“My ears. Yes. My ears. My ears don't feel trapped.”

“Concentrate on your ears. What is the feeling?”

“Freedom. Light. Power.”

“You see, you still have your freedom. It is only your negative mind that tells you you are trapped. Move your arms. Are they free?”

Kathy wiggled her arms. She smiled broadly. She nodded.

“Move your head. Is that free?”

Kathy shook her hair and was almost laughing.

“Free,” she said.

“Your body,” said Rubin.

Kathy jumped up from her seat and shook her body. She was laughing now.

“I've never felt so free. I'm free.” She reached toward Rubin and hit the screen.

“Ignore that,” ordered Rubin quickly. “Ignore it. It's not your wall. Don't make it your wall. Don't make it your prison. It's their wall.”

“Their wall,” said Kathy.

“Their prison,” said Rubin.

“Their prison,” said Kathy.

“They built it. They paid for it. It is their prison.”

“Their prison,” said Kathy.

“Not yours.”

“Not mine.”

“You are free. Your ears understand what the rest of your body forgot. Their problems are theirs. You had made their problems your problems. You had bought into their negativity.”

“Their negativity,” said Kathy.

“You are always free. As long as you can make contact with your ears that remembered your freedom and power, you will always be free. It is they who are in jail.”

“Poor people. I know what it feels like. I feel sorry for them.”

“Them. Right. As long as you know it is they who are in jail and not you, you will be free.”

In her joy, Kathy reached out for Rubin but remembered they were separated by walls that kept the guards and officials prisoners of their own negativity.

She blew him a kiss and as an afterthought added her own observations.

“Do you remember how we learned that there are people who are consumed by negativity and how they bring negative life forces to others? Well, just before my press conference the most negative person I have ever met came as a contestant. Very negative. He was even arguing with the two others. One was one of us, a Powie. Yes, let me transmigrate my mind back to the scene.”

Kathy closed her eyes and pressed fingers to her temples.

“Yes, he was with an Oriental. The Oriental was nice. The girl was nice. He was negative. Yes. And I should have known not to have that press conference with him around. I should have delayed it.”

“You've found the negative force that put you here.”

“Yes,” said Kathy. “He exuded negativity. And I ignored it, and paid the price.”

“Did he have dark eyes?”

“Yes. Yes. I see them. Handsome. High cheekbones.”

“And wrists. What did the wrists look like?”

“Thick. Very thick wrists, almost as though the forearm went right into the hand.”

“Oh,” said Rubin, reaching into his pants for one of the pill packs. He didn't even look. He took two. He took three. He kept taking them until numbness released the panic in his body.

“He wanted to know about help with a witness. He said he had a court case against him.”

“You didn't send him to us, did you?”

“No. The press conference came first. Afterward he came up to us and talked a lot about witnesses and things, but then the FBI came and took me away. They arrested me, Rubin. You didn't tell me the right day.” Kathy's voice became tense.

“No. Don't start thinking like that or you'll begin to believe you're trapped in jail, Kathy,” said Rubin.

So the evil one was after them, Rubin realized. He had to tell Beatrice. He had to warn her.

But Beatrice did not care about the evil one. Beatrice had discovered a colossal foul-up in the President's plane plot.

“I know a Powie is turning evidence against us,” said Rubin. “I'm sorry, Beatrice, I should have taken greater precautions when I set up the colonel. But I'm at my limit for Motrin, Valium, and Percodan. I can't take the pressure anymore.”

“Well, you will. Because this foul-up is the end all of foul-ups. This one is unforgivable. I will never forgive. One I can't forgive.”

Rubin did not think of his ears as some positive rung on a ladder of happiness. He thought of their needing to be covered by his palms. But Beatrice slapped his hands away.

Rubin dropped to the floor and curled into a ball.

Beatrice fell on him. She grabbed an ear in her teeth.

“Rubin, you pathetic imbecile. Do you know what you did to me?” she said through teeth clenched on Rubin's ear.

“No, dear,” said Rubin, very careful not to move his head quickly lest he leave a piece of himself in Beatrice's mouth.

“You missed.”

“Missed what?” begged Rubin Dolomo.

“Missed what!” screamed Beatrice, spitting the ear out of her mouth and pushing his head away so she could get up on her feet and deliver a more satisfying kick. “Missed what! Missed what? he asks. Missed him!”

“Who, dear?” begged Rubin, trying to find a stronger part of his body to receive the kicks.

“Who? he asks! Who? he asks! And I married this... this failure. You missed our main enemy. You failed in a Beatrice Dolomo threat.”

“But we've threatened everyone.”

“This one I really wanted,” said Beatrice. “This one is behind everything, every one of our problems.”

* * *

The President's Oval Office was clear of everyone else when Harold W. Smith entered. He had not been listed on the guest sheet; this time was in the official records as a period of rest for the President.

The first thing the President said was:

“I am not giving in to crooks and frauds.”

Smith nodded and sat down without waiting to be invited to do so.

“You're here because America is not for sale. I am not for sale. I will not give in. They may get me. There's a good chance of that. But if the President of the United States caves in to this petty blackmail, then the entire country is for sale.”

“I couldn't agree more, sir,” said Smith. “Apparently they already are pretty familiar with your security system. Though I agree you can't give up, you also can't do business as usual.”

The President took off his jacket and dropped it on his chair. He looked out into the protected garden just outside the Oval Office. No one could see in, a precaution quite necessary in the age of the sniper rifle.

He was not a young man but he had a young spirit, and stamina that would shame men forty years his junior. Ordinarily he was smiling. Now he was mad, but not mad that an attempt had been made on his life. That was part of the job.

The President of the United States was mad because American servicemen had been killed, a senator to whom he had lent his plane so that the man could fly home to his seriously ill wife was dead, and the people he was sure were behind the crash were still playing legal games with him.

“This court system we have is precious, and I wouldn't tamper with it for the world. But sometimes... sometimes...” said the President.

“What makes you sure it was the Dolomos?” asked Smith. “I am aware of the threats made by Kathy Bowen, aware also that she had to know of the plan to destroy you and Air Force One because she announced it ahead of time. I am also aware that a young woman, a Powie, was used to set up Colonel Armbruster. But do you have the clinching evidence that it was the Dolomos themselves?”

“We have the black box,” said the President, referring to the tape recording of the entire flight. “The man who flew that plane into the ground had the mind of a nine-year-old. His mature memory had been wiped out.”

“Like the mailroom people who forget what they were working on.”

“Like the Secret Service men.”

“And this Powie gave Armbruster a letter in a Ziploc bag.”

“Exactly.”

“A letter in the mailroom. A letter to the pilot,” said Smith.

The President nodded.

“So this substance can be transferred on paper. By touch, I imagine. Weren't some of the people who attacked you stricken also by loss of memory?”

The President nodded again.

“What a wonderful way to cover up a trail. Have your hired guns forget everything about who ordered them to do the dirty work.”

“All of these people had Poweressence backgrounds, we found out through investigations.”

“They forgot, of course,” said Smith. “But what about the girl who turned state's evidence?”

“The problem with her was she didn't see the person who gave her the orders.”

“How can that be?”

“Poweressence may be all hustle but it is part religious cult. And they have ceremonies. Have you ever read Dolomo's books?” asked the President.

“No,” said Smith.

“Neither have I. But the Secret Service is beginning to. Almost all of the nonsense is in his books. Part of the cult is hearing voices in darknesses, among other things including being able to cure yourself through finding pieces of your body that don't hurt. I don't know how it works, but you are going to have to look into it.”

“We have, somewhat,” said Smith. “We are on their trail, but for another reason. We're after them on this witness program. They have been able to turn witnesses, also by getting them to forget. It's clear now they didn't bribe or threaten. They are using this substance, and this substance, whatever it is, is the danger. I think you have got to change the way you work, Mr. President. That's the first order of business.”

“I am not going to change a damned thing for those two frauds. I won't give in.”

“I am not asking surrender. Just protect yourself while we nail them.”

“I don't know,” said the President. “I hate to give even a change in schedule to those two murderous hustlers. I represent the American people and, dammit, Smith, the American people deserve something better than to have two of those... those whatever they are change the presidency. No.”

“Mr. President, not only can I not guarantee your safety if you don't change things, I can virtually guarantee you are going to lose to those two. Just for a little white, sir, just for a little while. I think you should make it a definite rule that you do not touch any paper, because that seems to be the device they transfer the substance on. I would also suggest you do not allow yourself to shake hands or get close to anyone but your wife,” said Smith. He held up a hand because the President wanted to interrupt.

“Also, sir, I would suggest that you do not use any office cleaned by regular staff. They could leave something around you might touch. I will personally do the cleaning. And if I lose my memory, have someone else you trust do it. Touch nothing. Your touch can destroy you.”

“What about you? What happens if you lose your memory, Smith? Who will run your organization?”

“No one, sir. It was designed that way. It will automatically shut down.”

“And those two, those specialists you use?”

“The Oriental will happily leave this country. He has always wanted to work for an emperor and doesn't understand what we are doing or why we are doing it. I think he is embarrassed that he works for us. So he won't talk. As for the American, he won't talk out of loyalty to the country.”

“Might they sell out? Might they go to some magazine and for money say what they have been doing in the country's name?”

“You mean, can we stop them?”

“Yes. If we have to.”

“The answer is no. We can't. But I know we won't have to. Remo loves this country. I don't know exactly how he thinks anymore, but he loves his country. He's a patriot, sir.”

“Like you, Smith.”

“Thank you, sir. I remember a man we lost a long time ago once said, 'America is worth a life.' I still think so.”

“Good. I've got so much on my mind. I will leave it all to you, Smith. It's your baby. Now, where were we?”

“The connection to the Dolomos.”

“What connection?” said the President.

“Don't move. Don't touch a thing,” said Smith.

“I just momentarily forgot,” said the President.

“Maybe,” said Smith. “You're under my care now. I want you to go to the door to your living quarters. Don't touch it. I will open it. On the other side, slip out of all your clothes. Can you walk to your living quarters in your underwear? Will anyone see you?”

“I hope not. I feel sort of foolish doing this.”

Smith got up from his seat and followed the President's nod to a door. He opened it. The substance might be on the handles. At every step Smith was acutely aware of his mental activity, exactly what he remembered and where he was. Even so, he did not touch the doorknob any more than he had to.

“Use another office while we have this one cleaned. We'll monitor everyone who works in the office. I am going to call the Oriental back from assignment. We were after the Dolomos for other reasons.”

“Don't call off your efforts against them,” said the President.

“I won't. But I want Chiun here. He can sense things routine examinations would miss. I don't know how he does it, but it works.”

“The older one?” asked the President.

“Yes,” said Smith.

“I like him,” said the President.

“He can stop things we can only imagine.”

“We'll have to give him a suit. He can't be around me wearing a kimono without attracting attention.”

“I don't think we could get him to change his clothes, sir,” said Smith. “He really doesn't change much. He probably won't change anything. He doesn't even understand our form of government. He won't accept the fact that some emperor doesn't run the place.”

“Hell,” said the President of the United States, unbuttoning his shirt. “Nobody runs the place. We all hang on for dear life.”

He left his clothes in the Oval Office and walked with as much dignity as he could muster in his underwear through the passage to the presidential apartments.

Smith made sure the Secret Service examined all the clothes and all the objects in them. Then he made sure everyone who touched anything in the office was given an immediate test for memory. Everyone passed.

Still, the only real test was to have human hands run over everything in the office. It might have been that a minute amount was secreted on something, so minute that it might have been entirely rubbed off by the President. But on what? And how would they deliver it?

Smith sighed as he looked around the office, wondering who or what had entered it to deliver the substance. He looked at the American flag and the presidential flag. He looked at the office he had known of since childhood. He had always been taught such respect for it and he had always treated it with that respect.

It struck Harold W. Smith hard that he had told his first lie to a president of the United States right in this office.

Chiun was not going to be brought in here solely to protect him. Because if the President could not be protected, Harold Smith had a duty to his country and the human race to assassinate his President as quickly and as surely as possible.

If a person regressed to childhood, as the plane's black box indicated, then what would happen to America if the President succumbed to that? What would happen to the ship of state with a child running it, one who could trigger a nuclear holocaust in one angry fit?

Smith resolved that at the first sure sign of childish behavior, the President would have to die. Smith could not take chances. He looked at the Oval Office one last time, shook his head, and left.

It had been so long since he had been ordered to start the organization by a now-dead president, so long and so many deaths ago. It had not been planned as a permanent thing. He was to help America get through the chaos an analyst saw coming. That was in the early sixties. The chaos came. It went, somewhat, and the organization was still here, now adding the President of the United States to its hit list.

Harold W. Smith said a silent prayer as he prepared to set up his own office out of the way of normal traffic and very close to the President, a man of exceptional integrity and courage. But that had nothing to do with whether he would die. He was going to die if he should appear to be stricken by that substance. Thereafter when Harold W. Smith asked the President how he felt, he really would be asking if he was going to have to kill the President that day.

In California, Remo got a strange response when he reached Smith. He knew immediately that Smith was in danger.

“One, I am not at normal home base now, Remo. Two, I want you to get some things straight before you put Chiun on.”

Remo had found a street phone that worked after six failed to respond to quarters, nickels, or dimes. He knew Smith preferred street phones, because while they appeared more public, they gave less of a stationary target to anyone for bugging purposes. And Smith's own electronics could clean the line, as he called the process, from his end.

So here was Remo watching skateboarders zip through palm trees and Rolls-Royces form caravans as he made an absolutely safe phone call on Rodeo Drive. Chiun stood nearby, glancing every now and then at a jewelry display in a window. He had been on the alert for movie stars ever since he thought he saw one of the actresses from the soap operas he used to watch so faithfully. Chiun had stopped watching when violence replaced the romance. He did not approve of violence in shows.

He placed his delicate hands inside his kimono and surveyed the passing Hollywood scene. It did not, of course, get his approval. Remo watched him out of the corner of his eye.

“What's the problem?” asked Remo.

“We might be close to end game.”

“We've been compromised?” asked Remo. He knew that if there should be any chance of exposure of the organization, it could be ruinous for the nation it hoped to serve. So everything was planned to self-destruct. This included Smith's taking of his own life. Smith would do it, too. Once it had been arranged for Remo to die, but Smith gave that up early on when it began to seem impossible to kill him. Instead, he trusted in Remo's lasting good feelings for his country, and a promise just to leave. Remo did not tell this to Chiun because he knew Chiun might do something to take down the organization. The only thing holding Chiun in America was Remo, whom he called his investment and the future of Sinanju.

Remo knew that with all the new dictators and tyrants in the world, Chiun was thirsting for an opportunity to align Sinanju with one of them.

“Remo. It's the new Dark Age coming. Let's not miss it,” he had said.

“I am against Dark Ages,” Remo had answered. “Just to kill someone for a few more bars of gold to be held in a house somewhere for centuries doesn't make sense to me. I love my country. I love America.”

Chiun had almost wept at that remark.

“You work. You train. You give the very best of yourself, and look. Look at what you get in return. Lunacy. Disrespect. Nonsense. A despot is the best employer an assassin can have. Someday you will appreciate that.”

Sometimes, but not often and not for long, Remo began to think Chiun might be right. But not really. It remained the one great difference between them. And as Remo listened to Smith, he reminded himself to remind Smith where Chiun stood.

“If we are not compromised, why is it end game?” asked Remo.

“I can't explain that now. But you will know why if it should happen. I want a promise from you, Remo. I want you to agree that if it is all over, you and Chiun will never work in America again. Can I get that promise?”

“I don't want to leave America,” said Remo.

“You must. It's almost been a full-time job, covering for you, making sure people don't put together all those strange deaths you and Chiun have left behind.”

“Why should I have to leave if I served the country so well?”

“Because you're like me. You love it, Remo. That's why.”

“You mean I'll be an exile?”

“Yes,” said Smith.

“I don't know.”

“Yes you do, I think.”

“All right. But don't end the game for a silly reason.”

“Did you think I would?” asked Smith.

“No,” said Remo.

“All right. I am going to speak to Chiun. I want him with me at the White House. Now, I don't want any grand entrances with fourteen steamer trunks or pages announcing the arrival of the emperor's assassin. I want it sub-rosa. I want it secret. You are going to have to tell him how to enter. Tell him just to ask for Route Officer Nine. It's part of a system of clearances for entrance to the White House.”

“It's the one that isn't cleared, isn't it?” asked Remo.

“Exactly. I want no one to see him enter.”

“You seem especially interested that no one sees him this time.”

“Not especially,” said Smith. “It's just that I get the drift from Chiun that he feels he doesn't get proper attention.”

“But he's always felt like that. Why is it special now?” asked Remo.

“You'll find out.”

“I think I know. And I hope I won't,” said Remo. “Are you not using me because you think I am not at peak?”

“No,” said Smith.

“Then why not?”

“Because you might not be able to go through with it. You are a patriot, for all your Sinanju presence. That's what you are. Chiun would have no trouble with this particular assignment.”

Chiun watched Hollywood go by, occasionally glancing at the price of a mere string of diamonds in the window. It was an exorbitant price, but the diamonds were nothing compared to the treasure of Sinanju which was stolen while Remo was foolishly trying to save his country. Gold lasted. Countries did not.

But of course, try reasoning with someone whom whites had brought up.

“Smitty wants to talk to you,” said Remo.

“More nonsense?”

“No,” said Remo. And when Chiun was close enough to hear a whisper, he said:

“He wants you at the White House. He's there. I'll tell you how to enter.”

“At last, he makes his move toward the throne,” said Chiun. Smith had tried even Chiun's patience, he had been so slow at taking the proper course toward being recognized as the true emperor of this land.

“Hail, O gracious Emperor, your servant stands here to glorify your name,” said Chiun.

“Is Remo all right? Can he function at moving on the target people I've set out for him?”

“He is attuned to the very wind, O gracious Majesty.”

“Well, you said a few days ago that he was not up to what you considered correct. Has he recovered?”

“Your voice heals the ill.”

“Then I can count on him without you?”

“More important, you can count on me without him,” said Chiun. “Your reign will be the glory of your nation, the star by which future generations guide their very hopes.”

“Level with me. What can't Remo do?” asked Smith.

“He cannot do what the Master does, but he can do everything else. Anything you need him for he can do.”

“All right. Put on Remo.”

Chiun returned the phone to Remo with a glowing report.

“The emperor has come to his senses.”

And then Remo was sure. For some reason the President was going to die.

“Is it definite, what you're calling Chiun in for?”

“No. Not definite in the least. Not definite, Remo. We're facing something far more difficult to deal with than anything in the past. I believe the Dolomos are behind it. It's what is making those witnesses forget. They really did forget.”

“Then it wasn't that I had lost something.”

“No. There is a substance that creates forms of amnesia. It regresses people. I think it can be transferred through the skin. There are drugs that can do that. I want you to get it from the Dolomos. I am sure those petty little hucksters are behind it.”

“What should I do when I get it?”

“Be very careful with it. Make sure it doesn't touch you.”

“Not a problem with me or Chiun. Things can't touch us if we don't want,” said Remo.

“Good,” said Smith.

Remo hung up. Chiun was beaming.

“Well, I can't say I wish you luck, because I think I know what you are going to do.”

“At last Smith is going to make his move on the emperor. I must admit, Remo. I had misjudged him. I had thought he was insane.”

“You've got to enter quietly. With no fanfare, through a special route.”

“I will be the stealth of yesterday's midnight. Don't look so glum. Don't look so sad. We will help Smith reign in glory, or if he proves to be as truly insane as I have thought, we will help his successor reign in glory.”

“I thought Sinanju never betrayed an employer.”

“No one has ever complained about how we do business.”

“No one's been left, Little Father. The histories are lies.”

“A man without history is not a man. All histories do not have to be true, but they have to be histories. You will see. I am right here, as I have been right before.”

Remo did not tell Chiun that when he killed the President Smith would not take his job, but take his own life. And then they would both have to leave the country. Nor did Chiun bother to tell either Smith or Remo the one thing Remo had not regained in training: the ability to control the outer layers of his skin.