lower hull stayed behind, dismantling itself on the shore.
It was as though someone had driven a large lake into Bayonne, New Jersey. The lake was black and sticky and became a tidal wave that swept up the narrow city into Jersey City. There at the ebbing of its powerful thrust it subsided, looking to hovering aircraft like a plateau of liquid black that suddenly lots its energy and widened into the largest parking lot in history, fouling both the neighboring ports of Elizabeth and New York City.
It was the greatest natural and commercial disaster in history.
Alone in his new White House office, the President of the United States counted the seconds before the advisers, assisted now by scientists, would invade Harbor Island.
* * *
It was a crazy world. Remo heard about the disaster in Bayonne and wondered if Newark policemen were going to be called up to assist. When he was a Newark policeman the Vietnam war was going on. It was a lot of years since then. He was afraid to pick up a newspaper. Everything had changed so much. There had been so many presidents.
And the Oriental face was still in front of him. It was telling him there was no such thing as a president. Didn't he realize that there were only kings using different titles? Remo should know that. Remo should breathe properly. Remo should let his body fight for him. Remo should return to the Oriental. Remo should return to that funny-sounding place, Sinanju.
But Remo had never been in Sinanju. And stranger, still, when he got to the ticket window of the airline he would use to take him back to Newark, he noticed two Orientals having difficulty explaining what they needed. They were from Seoul, South Korea, and they wanted to fly to Phoenix, Arizona, where they had a daughter.
They had difficulty making themselves clear. Remo translated for them. He asked them in Korean where they were going and then he explained to the counter person what they wanted.
“You speak an old formal sort of Korean. In some parts of the north they speak that,” said the man in Korean.
And then Remo realized he knew Korean, knew it like English. The thing was, no one had ever taught him Korean. He didn't remember ever learning it. And then he realized that was the language the vision used.
And he also didn't like the couple's Korean. It was less precise than the language he knew. And for some incredibly strange reason he was thinking of them as foreigners because they spoke that bad Korean.
Koreans were better than others, but not all Koreans. One was only home in Sinanju, he thought. Sinanju? There was that place again.
“Do you know where Sinanju is?” he asked them.
“Sinanju, yes. Way north. No one goes there. No one.”
“Why?”
“We don't know. No one goes there.”
“But why?”
“It's the place no one goes,” said the man. The woman thought her grandfather knew.
“He said it was the place everyone was afraid of.”
“Afraid? They're the nicest people in the world,” said Remo. How did he know that?
“You've been there?”
“No,” said Remo. “Never.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I don't know,” said Remo. “I don't know lots of things. I was born in Newark, I think. I was raised in an orphanage. I went to high school. I played linebacker. I went to Vietnam as a marine. I came back. And then boom. I am in California and I don't know what's going on.”
“Yes, that is how we got here too. Life moves so quickly, yes? We were born in Seoul, Korea, raised, moved to California, boom. Now we see our daughter in Phoenix.”
On the plane back to Newark, Remo heard people talking about the great Bayonne disaster. They said no one knew whether to rebuild the city or scrap it entirely and use it and Jersey City as expanded parking lots for New York.
Someone said it was a terrorist act. Another said they didn't know which terrorist group had done it because a half-dozen had taken credit for it.
“Of course we'll blow them out of the world,” said Remo. “Crazy bastards, admitting something like that, admitting doing something like that to America. They'll never get away with it.”
“They all do,” said another passenger.
“I don't believe it. You're lying.”
Remo wanted to punch the passenger in the mouth. Someone else behind him was saying how America deserved it.
The first thing Remo did when he got to Newark was go into a bar that had a television set. The disaster in Bayonne was a major news stony and announcers were breaking into every program for it.
Remo ordered a whiskey and a beer. Since he had a suitcase full of cash, he ordered the best brand, the one he savored for special occasions. When he lifted the glass the fumes almost made him throw up. He put it back down. He loved that whiskey. Why was his body revolted by it?
And then the vision was talking to him again, about how a body set on the road to perfection rejected all that did not enhance it. Remo found himself ordering rice and water.
The bartender said he didn't serve rice and water and that Remo should shut up and finish his drink or get out of there. The bartender did not bother Remo long because he had a great deal of difficulty prying a whiskey shot glass out of his left nostril.
Remo still didn't know how he had done that, but he was glad he had.
He got control of the television knob and turned it to the station which concentrated on the disaster. A panel of television newscasters was discussing the disaster. And Remo couldn't believe what he heard.
Of the five newsmen, four were talking about what America had done to deserve losing a city. America had sent military advisers into South America. Therefore, because American soldiers fought guerrillas it was only logical that an American city might be destroyed with entire families buried under oil.
America supplied arms to Israel. America supplied arms to Arab governments. Therefore, anyone who didn't like Israel or those governments had a right to kill any American anywhere. Arab experts were brought in. They decried violence against Arabs in America on the one hand, but on the other they told the American viewing audience to expect more of the same evil violence until it provided a more evenhanded approach to the Middle East.
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
“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
“Hey, buddy,” said the barfly in the Newark airport lounge. “Newark
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.
