Holy Terror

by Warren Murphy

  “Just because he said they could leave, they just walked down into the valley? Into Patna? Out in the open?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is your Blissful Master that he would tell anyone they could go anywhere they wish? Who is he? How dare he?”

  “He is perfection.”

  “You are faulty of mind and face,” said Chiun. “Bad news he has given us, Remo. Bad news.”

  “What is it, Little Father?”

  “I will tell you later. First settle your business with this roach. Ah, it is sad. An assassin’s work is never done.”

  Remo talked to the priest. As a recent convert to the wisdom of the Blissful Master, Remo explained he had come to hear the truth. And since priests always told the truth, Remo wanted to know the truth about the upcoming event. The big one.

  “Ah, the big one. It will be the biggest,” said the priest. He clapped his hands, and the girls put on their robes and left, the blonde casting a betrayed look at Remo.

  “I saw what you did in the street out there to the gang of toughs,” said the priest. “Even if you have no wealth, we can use your services. We have many people who just give services. We have them in high and important places. We have them in the middle ages and the young ages. You would be surprised to learn who is with us.”

  “Try me,” said Remo.

  “That is secret.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Remo, and he was proven right for with a face squinting in pain, the priest told of all the important people he knew who belonged secretly to the Blissful Master, and Remo remembered every name. There were others too, the priest said, but he did not know their names. Honest and don’t hurt me anymore, I don’t know their names, he told Remo. Nor did he know the exact nature of the big event about to happen, but the Blissful Master was coming to Kezar Stadium in San Francisco.

  Remo said he thought he might have been too harsh. He was going to be reasonable. He would reason with the priest.

  “If you don’t tell me exactly what’s going to happen at that stadium, I’m reasonably going to separate your head from your shoulders.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I swear to God, I don’t know.”

  “Which God?”

  “The real one.”

  Chiun stepped between them, and with hands moving like the flutter of butterflies, dispatched the priest on the neck.

  “He does not know. Do not waste your time. We have work to do.”

  “You didn’t let me finish with him. I told you we’d go to Sinanju afterward. I have my job to do also.”

  “We are not going to Sinanju. That is the sad news. I have other work to do. Older work. Indians have memories like sieves. In four hundred years, they forget everything. Everything. We must delay our return to Sinanju, jewel of the West Korean Bay, pearl of cities, vessel of beauty.”

  “What about the sub?”

  “It can wait. Your country has many ships. There is but one Master of Sinanju, and he must sustain true and previous agreements.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHEN REMO GAVE THE NAMES he had learned of top followers of the Blissful Master to Smith on a closed line at 6:15 p.m., he heard a long silence and thought that the automatic cutoff had been triggered by some eavesdropping device. Then Smith spoke.

  “A few of those people are highly sensitive. More than a few, Remo. Are there any chances that converts can be deprogrammed?”

  “How should I know?” said Remo.

  “You went through their program, didn’t you?”

  “So?”

  “Perhaps in going through the program and not succumbing, you might have some ideas about how some highly sensitive personnel could be deprogrammed.”

  “Drop them from the Empire State Building.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Smith.

  “I need passports for India.”

  “You think that’s your best chance of getting at this thing?”

  “I guess.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Chiun thinks so. For some reason, he’s willing to give up going home for it.”

  “Any word on the big event?”

  “Nothing more. Just Kezar Stadium.”

  “With a few of those converts, if they can’t be deprogrammed, they’re going to have to be…er…retired.”

  “I told you the Empire State Building.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder whether you do have a cruel streak.”

  “You’ve been talking to Chiun.”

  “I’ve been counting bodies.”

  “If you want me to live in peace with the rest of mankind, just say the word, Smitty.”

  “Your passports will be at your hotel.”

  On the flight to Calcutta, Remo heard Chiun mumble something about faulty memories and some people needing reminders. The stewardess asked how they wished their dinner, and Chiun answered in a language Remo had never heard. Chiun explained it was Oriya and that the stewardess was obviously from the people who spoke that language because of the way she wrapped her sari.

  Chiun pointed out that while the crew might call itself Indian, they were really of many different peoples, none of whom had any respect for each other, much less affection. He said it was only whites in America who worried about Indians starving. The different peoples of India were always unconcerned when ill befell others, and since the starving ones were never in government, the government did not really care.

  “When they come to you for food again, you should let them eat their atomic bombs. You fill their bellies to give them the leisure time to call you names, and they use their own money to build bombs. I can understand the Indians. They are venal and vile and have always been and will always be. Know this about India and its people, if you know nothing else. It is the white men who put the thoughts of brotherhood on their tongues, and it has never reached their hearts.”

  “What about Mahatma Gandhi?” said Remo.

  “What about Remo Williams? Would you say Americans have body discipline because of one person? No. The Indians, I can understand. What I do not understand is why you have taken it upon yourself to feed the mouths they would not feed themselves.”

  “I’m not feeding anybody.”

  “Your country. Your country feeds people who break promises,” said Chiun and would speak no more.

  The customs man at Delhi noticed that the series of passports that Remo and Chiun used was often used by the CIA. He also noticed that the two had no luggage.

  “India will not suffer imperialistic intrusion within her bosom,” the customs man said.

  “Ten rupees,” said Remo.

  “But India will always welcome her friends,” said the customs man. “And don’t pay more than two rupees for any Indian woman. You can buy one for eight. Complete. Own her. Use her for fertilizer when you’re tired of her. What is the purpose of your visit?”

  “Enlightenment from the Blissful Master at Patna.”

  “You can get enlightenment here in Delhi. What sort of enlightenment are you chaps looking for?”

  “The Blissful Master.”

  “He’s been doing a bangup business lately,” said the customs man. “Bangup.”

  Transportation to Patna was an old Packard that apparently hadn’t been tuned since it left the states. Remo knew Chiun was still bothered about something because he spoke little during the two days’ journey. When the driver held out his hand for payment, Chiun muttered something about faulty memories and slapped the hand away. When Remo started peeling off some bills, Chiun forbade it.

  The driver jumped out of the car and began yelling. People with dusty feet and tired brown faces formed behind the driver. They became a crowd. The driver, encouraged by his support, changed his shouting into a harangue. Chiun translated:

  “He says we have come to steal food from his mouth. He says foreigners still think they can do anything in India they want. He says we have much money on us, and it would serve us right if he took all of it,
sharing it with his new-found friends. Have you heard enough, Remo?”

  “Yes,” said Remo.

  “Good,” said Chiun, and with barely a flick of his right wrist, he dropped the man in the dust of the streets of Patna. The new Indian Coalition of Patna vanished in the dust and hot sun. The man was alone, his 1947 Packard chugging in neutral, his cares behind him.

  Chiun pointed to a large white cement wall with wooden doors.

  “There,” he said.

  “How do you know?” asked Remo.

  “Do you see those carvings in the wooden door?”

  “Like the silver lines on the foreheads?”

  “Correct. It means this house or palace, or if it is on a person, that person, is protected by a certain tribe, the Ilhibad.”

  “I see,” said Remo.

  “That is a lie. They can protect no one in the valley and they know it.”

  Chiun marched to the high wooden door. His white fringed head barely touched the lowest heavy metal bolt on the door.

  “Hear ye, hear ye, O you worms of the mountainside. A Master of Sinanju has come to remind you of your word to a master of our house that you would stay in the mountains to which he banished you. Oh, you vile bugs, fluttering in your trepidation.”

  With a short flat slap at the wood, Chiun produced a booming thud.

  “Come out, I wish to remind you of your promise. Come, wriggling worms.”

  He turned from the door and smiled. He nodded for Remo to follow. “Sometimes I’m eloquent,” he said. “They will now all cluster at that door with their weapons, bodies giving other bodies courage. They will not have enough courage to open the door, just to stand there. I know these people. I was taught of them as a small boy, just as I try to teach you. Fortunately, I was a good pupil. I have not been as fortunate in my pupils as my instructor was.”

  The wall butted into a large outcropping, and they climbed. Not like other climbers did they climb, but with a steady moving upward as if going along on a level. At the top of the wall, they saw a turbaned head. It was looking toward the courtyard. They could smell the fragrant aromas of spicy stews cooking in the kitchens of the Blissful Master’s Palace. Chiun smiled at Remo once more as they ascended the wall. The turbaned one held a submachine gun at the ready, but it was pointing down into the courtyard, where a cluster of other turbaned men crouched, their weapons at the ready, all pointing to the door.

  “See. I know them. I know their minds,” said Chiun. The wall guard turned, startled to hear a voice, and when he saw Chiun, his mouth opened, and he shrieked.

  “Eeyah.” His pink robes spread moisture at his loins, and the gun shook in his hands.

  Remo saw the finger tighten on the trigger, but the awesome hands of the Master of Sinanju had the turban and were unraveling it. Then, with a looping snap, they made it a noose around the neck, and with this noose, spun the guard in two slow circles, releasing him in an arc down into the courtyard.

  Into a window beneath a large golden dome Chiun moved, with Remo following. Pinging bullets picked outside at the thick wall as they moved from window to window. Then the bullets stopped, and it was so quiet Remo could almost hear Chiun’s footsteps on the tile floors. Remo looked down into the courtyard. The tribesmen were conferring.

  Chiun moved to the center of a high window and stood there with arms folded.

  “Watch this,” said Chiun. “I knew it would be such.”

  One man knelt over the twisted body of the guard who had been on the wall. He examined the neck.

  “Are you the one?” called out the man kneeling over the body.

  “If I come down to where you crawl, O worm of the mountain, I will show you I am the one.”

  The men conferred again with arms waving, voices chopping at one another.

  Remo couldn’t see a decision being made, but obviously they had reached a conclusion. It was not so much a run to the door as a scramble. Men couldn’t run in a crowd. They clawed and banged at the gate and grabbed for the bars, and like ants assaulting a huge, dark vertical crumb, they managed to move one giant door out into the street of Patna. Through this door they ran, some with weapons, some without.

  “Where are they going?” asked Remo.

  “Home. Where they belong. And where they will stay this time. Now we can go to Sinanju. I did not wish to return home, leaving untidiness out in the world. I must confess, if the previous Master had done his job properly, none of this would have been necessary. But we will not discuss that. Done is done and rightly done, it is forever.”

  “This an old contract for a hit or something?”

  “You demean the assassin’s art. You Americanize it.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ve got business too. We are employed by Smith, and an emperor’s command, as you recently said, is holy.”

  “When it is a proper command. Emperors can be the most dangerous and impossible of all people because their artificial power deprives them of the constraints normal men use to make their way properly in the world.”

  But Remo was not listening. He was down the hall, moving from room to room. The chambers were deserted. The large rooms were deserted. The kitchens were deserted but for pots bubbling on wood fires. The palace had central air conditioning but old wood-burning fires. There was indirect lighting but windows made of blown glass, as if modern machinery was yet to be. There was incense in sticks and triangular cubes, all with the bumps of the handmade process. And then there was the computer room. Did nothing run without computers nowadays? He found cells, some with dried blood on leg shackles. There was a hospital. Old brass beds and modern cardiovascular devices. There was a bump under a blanket in one bed, and Remo could smell its condition. The sweet, nauseating smell of the long-dead filled his nostrils, and if he stayed longer it would, as the stench of death always did, fill his clothes. It was the smell that didn’t wear off you right away.

  Remo pulled back the sheets. A middle-aged Caucasian, about five-feet-ten, dead at least a day. The corpse had released its bowels and had begun to swell. The skin had burst around the handcuffs. A brown blood-dried cross had been drawn near the right hand, which was now a caked pink and brown ball. On the floor, Remo found a gold emblem with a silver stripe on it, and pocketed it.

  Remo resumed breathing when he left the room. Down the hall he heard crying. In an alcove with the picture of the fat-faced kid surrounded by flowers, a blonde girl sobbed into her cupped hands.

  “Who are you?” asked Remo.

  “I am one who was not worthy to accompany the Blissful Master. My life is shattered fragments. Oh, blissful, blissful, Blissful Master.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Left for glory.”

  “Let’s try this again, honey. What is your name? First and last. And specifically, what place did the Blissful Master go to?”

  “Joleen Snowy. He went to America.”

  “Good. Where in America?”

  “To Kezar Stadium.”

  “Which seat?” said Remo, who felt he was getting lucky.

  “No seat. He will be the center of it. It’s ‘the big thing’ that’s coming.”

  “Beautiful. What big thing?”

  “The third proof of his truth.”

  “Which is what?”

  “That he grows.”

  “What’s he going to do when he grows?”

  “Prove he is in truth the truth.”

  “And we were doing so well too,” said Remo.

  “Oh, where will I find another master?” sobbed Joleen.

  Down the corridor, a bowl cupped in his hands, came Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, and Remo thought of ways to tell him he would not be going home right away. He would have to be diplomatic.

  “What’s in the bowl, Little Father?”

  “My first good meal since I was home.”

  “Better enjoy it,” said Remo diplomatically. “You’re not getting another for a long time.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ferdinand De
Chef Hunt crumpled the paper from his mid-morning Danish and flipped it over his left shoulder into a wastepaper basket three desks behind him. He knew it always gave his co-workers a little thrill to see a man know where something was without looking. Anything to distract the other analysts from the big board at the end of the room that blinked out the baleful truth about activity on the New York Stock Exchange.

  As the stocks had plummeted, Hunt, a drug industry specialist and customers’ man, in the New Orleans office of Dalton, Harrow, Petersen and Smith, member New York Stock Exchange, had found himself finding new euphemisms for the word “depression.” The market was fluttering before flight, the market was experiencing a technical adjustment, the market was building a lower foundation for a more solid climb.

  Into the second year of this depression, while government officials were debating whether the country was headed for a “recession,” Ferdinand De Chef Hunt tried little levities when asked his opinion on the drug market.

  “Take them intravenously,” he would say.

  “Heh, heh,” his customers would say and somehow didn’t phone back.

  So on this morning, in what he calculated was the last month of his career in the stock market—a career that had taken the family estate in Plaquemens County into its third mortgage, the property having been free and clear since 1732 under a grant from the House of Bourbon—Ferdinand De Chef Hunt chose to pop papers up in high arcs behind his back into little wastebaskets.

  He was twenty-eight years old, darkly handsome, and with the million-dollar inheritance left him by his mother four years ago, a self-made broke.

  “Better not do that,” said a customers’ man behind him. “Dalton and Harrow themselves are here.”

  “In New Orleans?”

  “Yeah, they got here real early. Locked themselves in the boss’s private office, sent out for a personnel file, saw the boss for a couple of hours, then nothing.”

  “They’re closing down the New Orleans operation,” Hunt said.

  “They can’t. We’re one of their more successful offices.”

  “Which means we’re going broke slower than the others. Watch, you’ll see. We’re going under. I’m only sorry it didn’t happen a few years ago when I still had money for lunch.”