Then there was a discussion of how America should change its foreign policy to avoid such incidents in the future. The newscasters then talked about themselves, saying they knew they might face unpopularity because they were bearers of bad news.
“Bearers of bad news— they are the bad news,” said Remo. “Do the networks know about those guys?”
“Know about them? They employ them. Those guys make seven figures apiece,” said a man nursing a beer.
“A million dollars a year to trash America?”
“If the agent is doing his job.”
“Aren't they reporters? I didn't think newsmen made that much money. I remember reporters from the Newark Evening News. They didn't make that much.”
“Hey, buddy,” said the barfly in the Newark airport lounge. “Newark Evening News has been dead for years. Where you been?”
There were two notes of relief in the abysmal picture coming from the television screen. The President got on to announce emergency aid to the victims, and then he said while there were many groups taking credit for this act of horror, it was still an act of horror. And his message was simply this:
“They may get away with it today. They may get away with it tomorrow. But there will be a day of reckoning, as surely as the sun rises and justice beats in the hearts of Americans.”
As soon as the President was off the air, the television reporters came back on to discuss how irresponsible he was, and what little likelihood there was of success, and besides, one man's terrorist was another man's freedom fighter.
But one commentator, his red hair neatly parted, a cowlick in the back, with precise metal-rimmed glasses and a bow tie, disagreed.
“No. Freedom fighters and terrorists are not the same thing, and it is not just a point of view, any more than saying a surgeon and Jack the Ripper are the same thing because they both use a knife. When the purpose is to harm innocent civilians, then you are a terrorist. It's that simple.”
Remo found himself applauding. The whole bar was applauding. Black and white. An announcer immediately stated these were the private views of the commentator and not those of the network and immediately put on someone else with a balancing view. The balancing view was that until all hunger and all injustice everywhere was overcome, Americans should expect with a certain justification to be kidnapped, bombed, burned, drowned in oil, and shot in their sleep.
This man was a professor of international relations. His name was Waldo Hunnicut. He had once been an ambassador to an Arab country where he used his ambassadorship to attack America's policy in the Middle East, so therefore, according to the announcer, he spoke from a respected position.
Remo threw the beer glass at the face of Hunnicut and the bar exploded in applause. The television just exploded.
“How can these guys get away with that crap?” he asked.
“What can you do? They're all like that on television. You don't have a choice,” said the man next to Remo.
The vision now told Remo that everything changed but Sinanju.
“No,” said Remo to the vision. “I love my country.”
To this the vision got quite angry, said it had given the best years of its life to Remo and Remo was unappreciative, ungrateful, and totally undeserving of all that the vision had given him.
“What have you given me?”
“More than I should,” came back the voice, and then he vision wasn't talking to him anymore. The vision was insulted.
Remo didn't know how one insulted a vision. But then again, he never had a vision before. He was close to where he was raised, close to the orphanage in Newark.
He took a cab there, and was surprised to see no white people around. He had remembered a mix of everyone, but now there was no mix.
“How long has Newark been black?” asked Remo.
“Where you been, boy?” asked the black driver.
“Away.”
“Then let me give you some friendly advice. And I do mean friendly. You don't want your ass around here too long.”
“I'll be all right,” said Remo. How did he know he would be all right? He didn't have a gun. Yet he knew he wasn't in danger, no matter who came after him.
He smelled the odor of garlic and onions, felt the nauseating oily mixture move out across his pores. Somehow he knew he was now able to hold on, perhaps even get better.
The orphanage was gone. The block was gone. The neighborhood was gone. It was as though someone had bombed it.
Windows were smashed. Pipes were left hanging out of buildings where someone had tried to remove them. Graffiti littered the walls. Rats and garbage covered alleys.
Four black toughs ambled up to him, all wearing jackets indicating they were from some organization called the Righteous Skulls. They demanded tribute from him for standing on their sidewalk. They wanted to know what was in the briefcase.
Remo did not attempt to reach a dialogue of understanding. He slapped the teeth out of the one closest to him, sending the slash of white across the ebony countenance, sailing like Chiclets clattering lightly across the sidewalk. The smile was gone.
“I don't like to be threatened,” said Remo.
Three swore they weren't threatening, and the fourth was nodding as he looked for his teeth. He had heard they could be replaced by modern medicine.
“What happened to the orphanage here?”
“Gone, man, can't you see?”
“And Sister Mary Elizabeth. Any of you heard of her? Or Coach Walsh at Weequaic High School? Any of you heard of them?”
They hadn't.
“Okay. Sorry about the teeth. I didn't know I hit that hard,” said Remo, opening the suitcase and giving each young hood a hundred dollars.
“That's a lot of bread there, man. You'd better watch out. You want some muscle to wear?”
“I don't need muscles,” said Remo. Now, that was absurd. Of course he needed his muscles. But then there was the vision again telling him muscles weren't man's strength. It was his mind that made power.
“I thought you weren't talking to me,” Remo said to the vision. The toughs stared at the crazy man talking to himself.
“I want to keep you alive, not company,” said the vision. And then the vision went on about bad habits, a lifetime of bad habits Remo had acquired growing up with whites.
Whites, thought Remo. That was funny, he could have sworn he was white.
He did not know it, but he was heading for the one place that might force Harold W. Smith to disband the organization, the one place he had always avoided when he had his full memory. If Harold W. Smith had known about Remo's direction, he might have taken the little cyanide capsule he always carried with him, and before swallowing it, put all the organization's vast computer network into self-destruct. Because Remo, without a memory, was going to open up the secret of his own murder.
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.