everything was strange. All he remembered from the first time was that the ink felt oily. But now every ridge and pore had its own sense.
Captain Polishuk gave Remo a cloth to clean his hands, but he dropped his mouth and the cloth in amazement. Remo's hands were cleaning themselves. It was as though the skin was alive and collecting the black ink into a stream where it just poured off the fingers.
“Better than cloth. Cloth rubs things into the skin,” said Remo.
Before the television reporters arrived, the desk sergeant said there was a crazy old gook on his way up to see the captain. He had been asking around about someone who sounded like Remo, and the desk sergeant had sent him up.
When the door opened Polishuk saw a frail, old-looking Oriental with wisps of hair and parchment-frail skin.
“I'm busy,” he said.
“No,” said Remo. “The vision.”
“I have come for you,” said Chiun. “I told you I would never leave you.”
“Ed, how can you see the vision?”
“He's no vision,” said Polishuk.
“What's your name?”
“What do you remember last?”
“The star.”
“Of course,” said Chiun. “Come with me. You are mine forever.”
“I don't belong to anyone,” said Remo.
“You belong to who you are. That is why you will come with me.”
“Hey, hold on,” said Polishuk. “I got television reporters coming. He's mine.”
And when Chiun saw the grotesquely fat, meat-smelling man touch Remo's arm, and when he heard the man say such a sacrilege about Remo, who must be saved, he destroyed the man there in the office, breaking him in two, leaving him dead and done with.
“You killed Ed Polishuk,” said Remo.
“Why do you always bother to learn their names?” asked Chiun, and Remo knew he was home. He didn't know who Emperor Smith was or why they had to make amends. He knew there was something he belonged to and that belonged to him, and it was happening now. He left the station house with absolutely no regrets.
The television crew arrived to find Captain Polishuk in a bundle, his hands having smeared a great deal of ink in his last desperate moments.
The investigation would show two things. One, he varied from his normal routine that afternoon to lock himself in his office with a younger man. Second, he appeared to be crazed because he ordered old prints of a dead buddy to be brought to him.
At the FBI office, the prints arrived by messenger after Captain Polishuk was dead.
A report was filed, but the word came back: Polishuk's discovery of a dead man's prints was not so unusual in the last twenty years. Similar prints had been discovered elsewhere, but every time the case was investigated, it was shown the real holder of the prints was dead and buried many years ago.
Unless one was a practicing Christian, one had to admit the dead did not rise again.
Chapter 14
Beatrice Dolomo woke up to see an American aircraft carrier off the eastern side of her island, along with American patrol boats spitting white foam trails behind them, their guns trained on her island and on her.
This was too much. Especially when international terrorists had dared to take credit for obliterating Bayonne, New Jersey.
“We are surrounded, isolated, and ignored. Rubin, I have come to a conclusion,” said Beatrice in the main house of Home Island Lodge, waiting for her breakfast of fried grouper and bananas.
Rubin coughed out the smoke of his first cigarette of the day. It was noon. He had just woken up and taken the cotton out of his ears. He needed the cotton here because the place was filled with Powies now, and one of the ways they showed they had overcome their negativity was by greeting the sun. Since many of them had paid for the course that got them away from “lazy body syndrome,” none of them wanted to show they hadn't overcome that negativity.
Which left Rubin with an island full of chirpy six a.m. lunatics.
Cotton out, phlegm making its way around his lungs, Rubin listened to Beatrice.
“Rubin, I have come to the decision that we are not taking it anymore.”
Rubin nodded. The phlegm came out like a tidal wave. Beatrice turned away in disgust.
“No more nice guys for us. Our only problem is that we've been too soft.”
“Dearest dove,” said Rubin, “I guarantee we will not be ignored after today.”
“Don't play softy.”
“You'll be happy, dear.”
“Can you imagine an entire city destroyed and not a word about the persecution of our beliefs, about poor Kathy Bowen, about us, about me? Me, Rubin. Not a word about me.”
“By tomorrow there won't be a household in America unaware of how you have been mistreated.”
“Television?”
“I promise.”
“A chance to trash that bum President who won't make a deal?”
“You'll have help.”
“You're not just getting my hopes up, are you?”
“The Warriors of Zor are ready.”
“And I'm the queen.”
“Right,” said Rubin.
“But that doesn't make you king.”
“Right, dear.”
“Don't fail me, Rubin,” said Beatrice. “Don't fail our marriage.”
“You said you wanted us to be heard. You didn't say sex, dear,” said Rubin, worried. He looked at his watch. His plan was beginning. He walked down to Pink Beach with his commanders, one of whom fortunately happened to be an engineer.
The beach had a faint pink tinge because of the crushed red coral mingled with the sand. It was most noticeable as the sun broke, coming up from the European side of the world, making the Caribbean blue into a delicate pastel mirror.
A few Bahamians had private homes on the beach. These had been commandeered by his Powies. A rumor had gone around among them that the decrepit middle-aged man with the smoker's hack was Rubin Dolomo himself, which caused some of those who had purchased the “Be Free of Nicotine” course to feel some doubts. This was quickly squashed by the informers, who reported the doubters to the counselors.
Ordinarily the counselors would work out the negative feelings of Powies, but now there was an easier way than tracing back through one's life to find where the negativity deposits were. Several strong men threw those in need of retraining into a small cabin with bars and beat them until they apologized for thinking such thoughts.
The cabin was hot, and in the Caribbean sun it smelled rancid. Even without the beatings the Powies who dared think such seditious thoughts would have changed their minds about the man with the cigarette cough.
Rubin asked the engineer if he thought Pink Beach would do for the landing.
“It depends how fast they'll be going. You might be able to bring it in. But what about them?” asked the engineer, nodding to the patrol boats cruising on the Atlantic side of Harbor Island. Above them Navy tomcat
