Holy Terror

by Warren Murphy

  A sign here, a loose word there, a change in prices somewhere else, and the computer could draw conclusions and put them on Smith’s desk, along with recommended actions.

  The computer silently printed:

  Possible foreign money influx, unsettling prices on Midwest grain exchange. No recommendation.

  It paused. Then:

  Aircraft company near bankruptcy now appears solvent again. Investigate potential ties with Arab oil countries.”

  Such reports moved across his desk all day long. They were the day-to-day essence of his job, Smith reminded himself. The important things. Things that could affect America’s security, its position in the world.

  Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe Remo should get off this Divine Bliss Mission business right away. He may have overreacted in assigning him in the first place.

  Smith looked down at the computer, again silently forming letters under the glass panel:

  Policeman’s slaying in Midwest apparently linked to battle for control of crime syndicate in that part of country. Crime figures have close connections with several United States senators, and certain immigration bills affecting those crime figures have been introduced by those senators.

  Now that was important, Smith thought. Crime had even reached its tentacles into the U.S. Senate. That was a case perhaps for Remo’s talents.

  The computer kept forming letters:

  Suggest pressure upon senators, to get them to lift political protection from mob figures.”

  Probably the right approach, Smith thought. And probably the next assignment for Remo.

  The computer kept printing:

  All praise the Divine Blissful Master. Bliss be his.

  And Smith shuddered.

  · · ·

  And 2700 miles away, across the nation, Martin Mandelbaum was also shuddering, with outrage.

  He would read them the goddam riot act. That was for sure. He would ream them up and he would ream them down. How could they? For Christ’s sake, how could they?

  As he walked along the polished marble floors of San Francisco’s central airport terminal, he got angrier and angrier.

  Who was that fat-faced little punk?

  Along every wall, on every column, on every litter basket, everywhere in his nice clean terminal was a poster of this fat-faced, fruity-looking boy with a half-assed fuzz of a mustache. Who the hell was he?

  Under the color picture were a few lines of type. They read:

  HE IS COMING.

  TUESDAY NIGHT.

  KEZAR STADIUM.

  ALL ARE INVITED.

  ADMISSION FREE.

  Who the hell was HE?

  And how the hell did all these goddam posters get into Martin Mandelbaum’s beautiful, clean airport?

  HE, whoever HE was, had some fine frigging nerve, and the maintenance men who worked under Mandelbaum’s direction were going to hear about it.

  Mandelbaum angrily yanked down one sign from a stone pillar and marched into the corridor that led to his office.

  “Good morning, Mr. Mandelbaum,” said his secretary.

  “Get everybody,” he growled. “Everybody. Broom pushers, toilet scrubbers, wall cleaners, painters, plumbers, everybody. Get’em in the meeting room in five minutes.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Yes, Miss Perkins, fucking everybody.”

  Mandelbaum went into his office, slamming the door behind him. He would ream ass. As he had in World War II as a top sergeant, as he had on his way when he got his first civilian job that put him in charge of two other people, as he had while he worked his way up the bureaucratic ladder, as he had all his life.

  It was just not possible that vandals had sneaked into the airport during the night and plastered it with posters of HE. Mandelbaum looked at the poster in his hand.

  What a stupid-looking creep. Why the hell hadn’t his maintenance men seen them defacing the airport?

  “HE,” Mandelbaum said out loud to the poster, “keep outa my frigging airport.”

  He hacked in the back of his throat and put a glemmy squarely between the eyes of Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor, the Blissful Master, then threw the poster in the waste-paper basket beside his desk, and began pacing up and down, counting to himself the five minutes he had to wait.

  It was worth the wait. It was beautiful. He reamed up and he reamed down. One hundred and forty men sat there in stolid, embarrassed silence as Martin Mandelbaum told them what he thought of their efforts to keep the airport terminal clean, along with a few suggestions concerning the morality of their mothers and the lack of virility of their reputed fathers.

  “Now get out of here,” he finally said. “Get out of here and get down every picture of that fat-faced fucking frog, and if you see anybody else putting up any more of them, call the cops and have the bastards arrested. And if you want to beat the shit out of them first, that’s all right too. Now get out of here.” He looked around and saw his second-in-command, a red-faced, retired Irish cop named Kelly, sitting quietly in a front row seat. “Kelly, you make sure the goddam job is done right.”

  Kelly nodded, and since Mandelbaum’s speech was not exactly calculated to inspire open discussion, the 140 workers silently got to their feet and headed out the door of the big auditorium-style meeting room. In masses they swept through the main terminal building ripping down the pictures of Maharaji Dor.

  “What’ll we do with these?” one man asked.

  “I’ll take them,” Kelly said. “I’ll get rid of them. Don’t rip them. Maybe I can sell them for junk.” He chuckled and began to collect the posters, piled up into his outstretched arms.

  “I’ll get rid of them, boys,” he told the workers who were going through the building like a swarm of ants devouring a scrap of meat. “Don’t leave even a single one. We don’t want the Jew on our backs again, do we?” And he winked.

  And the workers winked back despite the fact that they knew a man who called Mandelbaum “the Jew” behind his back would have no compunctions about calling them “the nigger” or “the spick” or “the wop” behind their backs.

  His arms were full, but the terminal was whiskbroom clean when Kelly, sweating under his load of cardboard posters, walked from the main terminal area toward the back of the building where the workers’ lockers were.

  He set the pile of pictures on a wooden table in the deserted locker room, and with a key opened a tall gray standup locker in the corner.

  The door opened. Taped to the inside of it was a poster of Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor.

  Kelly looked around to see that there was no one else in the locker room, then leaned forward and kissed the picture on the befuzzed lips.

  “Don’t worry, Blissful Master,” he said softly, “the Jew will not prevail against your wonder.”

  He put the piles of posters into the back of the locker very carefully. After Mandelbaum went home, he would return for them and put them back up.

  Just as he had last night.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You surprised me, kid. You didn’t look like the patriotic-American type,” said Remo.

  Joleen Snowy ignored him. She remained kneeling on the ground at the foot of the steps leading from the Air India jet, kissing the blacktop surface, her arms extended full in front of her as in supplication, her butt raised winsomely toward the plane.

  “Oh, wondrous America,” she moaned. “Land of all beauty and bliss.”

  Remo looked at Chiun, who stood beside him.

  “Oh, marvelousness of the West. Oh, repository of that which is good.”

  “See,” said Remo. “A patriot.”

  “Beauteous beneficence. Vessel of purity,” Joleen wailed.

  “I think she overdoes it,” said Chiun. “What about racism? What about Gatewater?”

  “Just details,” Remo said. He grabbed Joleen by her right elbow. “Okay, kid, up and at ’em.”

  She stood up straight, very close to Remo, smiling into his face, and under the silver stri
pe down her forehead and the darkening eye makeup, the face of a very young woman could still be seen. “I just want to thank you for bringing me to this great land.”

  “Well, shucks,” said Remo modestly. “It’s good, all right, but it’s got its faults. Even I’ve got to admit that.”

  “It has no faults,” said Joleen petulantly. “It is all perfect.”

  “Why did you leave then?” asked Remo, steering the girl toward the terminal.

  “I left because the Blissful Master was in India and it was perfect. And now that the Blissful Master is in America…”

  “Right,” Remo concluded with disgust, “America is perfect now.” She had been loose when he found her, she had been loose on the plane, and she was still as loose as a pail of kitties.

  He turned toward Chiun and shrugged. Chiun confided to him: “Anyone who would allow an Ilhibad tribesman out of the hills to defend himself is capable of anything. If the girl is a follower of his, she is defective in the head. She must be watched.”

  They moved through the doors into the main terminal, and as they stepped inside, Joleen let out a wail and pulled away from Remo. Inside the terminal, people turned to see where the scream had come from. They saw a girl in a pink wrap bolt forward into the terminal building, running at top speed, stopping only at a stone column, which she embraced with both arms, and began to deposit kisses upon.

  “Now this is getting silly, Chiun,” said Remo.

  “It is your problem. I wish only to get on the vessel to return to Sinanju, and not be deprived of it by your tricks.”

  “You’re the one who decided not to go,” Remo said, watching the back of Joleen, who was still kissing the column.

  “Only because there was an obligation to meet, and now it is met and I wish to go home. If this were a decent country with people who kept their promises, I would not have to feel this way, but as it is…”

  “Right, right, right, right,” said Remo.

  He walked away to collect Joleen Snowy. She had left the first column and was now embracing a second one. Remo saw what she had been slopping kisses onto. There was a poster on the column showing Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor. Remo shook his head. He looked like a brown toad. A brown toad with a mustache that wasn’t ever going to make it.

  As he drew close to Joleen, he heard her babbling, “O Divine Blissfulness. O Most Perfect Master.” Every word was punctuated with the smack of wet kisses. “Your servant awaits you again, with open body, the vessel upon which you may work your perfect will.”

  “Don’t talk dirty,” said Remo, lifting her by the waist and pulling her from the pillar.

  “Do not make into dirt something that is pure and beautiful and religious. I am his handmaiden.”

  “He looks like he could be a dirty old man,” said Remo, “except he really lacks the character. He looks more like a dirty young boy with fuzz on his lip.”

  Chiun joined them, and Remo steered Joleen Snowy toward the front door of the terminal. “He is the perfect master,” she screeched. “All blissfulness. All peace and love come to those who truly love him. I have been among the chosen.”

  She continued her caterwauling into a taxicab, while Remo was trying to tell the driver their destination.

  “He is bliss. He is beauty. He is power.”

  “She is nuts,” Remo told the driver. “Take us into the city. I’ll tell you where when she runs down.”

  But Joleen would not stop.

  “All bliss. All perfection. All peace. All love,” she shrieked.

  “Cabbie, pull over here,” said Remo. When the cab driver pulled to the curb, Remo leaned toward the front seat so the driver could hear him.

  “Is this noise driving you nuts?” Remo asked.

  The cabbie nodded. “I thought she was like your kid sister or something,” he shouted.

  Remo shook his head and reached into his pocket. He handed forward a fifty dollar bill. “Look. This is a tip in advance. Now how about going into that diner down the block and getting a cup of coffee? Give me five minutes.”

  The cabbie half turned in his seat and looked at Remo carefully. “You’re not thinking of any funny stuff, are you? Just last week, some guys attacked a driver’s meter.”

  “I never attacked a meter in my life,” said Remo. “Come on now. Five minutes.”

  “Do I keep the key?”

  Remo nodded.

  The cabbie looked at the fifty dollar bill in Remo’s hand, shrugged, plucked it from Remo’s fingers, and stuffed it into the pocket of his yellow plaid shirt. “Time for my break anyway.”

  He pushed open the door and walked away from the cab, pocketing the key.

  “All truth. All beauty. All wonder. All marvelousness.”

  “Chiun, would you go for a walk?” asked Remo.

  “I will not. I will not be driven from this cab by the wailing of any banshee. Besides, this neighborhood does not look safe.”

  “All right, Little Father, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Remo turned to Joleen Snowy, still shrieking, and put a hand under her left breast, finding a nerve just between the flesh and the rib cage, and gave it a twitch.

  “Oh, sensitivity, oh perfect, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,” she said.

  “Oh, disgusting,” Chiun said. “You Americans are like horses in a pasture.” His hands seemed not to move, but then he was out of the cab, and the door slammed behind him with a thunk that would do nothing for the door lock’s longevity.

  Alone in the cab with Joleen, Remo said: “You want bliss? I’ll give you bliss.”

  And he did.

  At one end of the street the cabdriver sipped coffee.

  At the other end, Chiun found a store window filled with tape recorders and transistor radios and portable television sets, all of which looked interesting and worth possessing, until he saw they had been made in Japan.

  He forced himself to stay there for exactly 300 seconds, then went back to the cab. He got in the back door and sat next to Remo and Joleen Snowy. He said nothing.

  A few minutes later the cabdriver returned. He glanced with suspicion into the quiet back seat to make sure that Remo had not murdered the screecher.

  Joleen sat quietly between Remo and Chiun. Her only sound was an occasional moan. “Mmmmmmmmm.” She smiled a lot.

  The cabdriver drove off.

  “Mmmmmm. Bliss. Peace. Mmmmmmmm.” Joleen Snowy put her arms about Remo’s neck. “You are a perfect master too.”

  Chiun snickered. Remo looked out the window in disgust.

  Ten minutes later, Remo was in a telephone booth. Across Market Street in San Francisco, a digital clock out side a bank building flashed the hour, minute, and second: 11:59:17.

  Remo was not comfortable with that time; it seemed to him that it was later. He wore no watch, he had not for years, but he did not believe 11:59: now 22.

  Remo dialed the phone, calling a toll-free 800 area code number. On the first ring, Smith answered.

  “Just in time,” he said. “I was about to cut this line for the day.”

  “What time is it?” asked Remo.

  “Twelve-oh-two and fifteen seconds,” he answered.

  “I knew it,” said Remo. “The clock here is wrong.”

  “So of what importance is that? Most clocks are wrong.”

  “Yeah,” said Remo. “I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know how much. I haven’t been that much off time in years.”

  “Maybe it’s jet lag,” said Smith.

  “I don’t have any jet lag, whatever that is,” said Remo.

  “Forget it. Any report?”

  “We’ve been to Patna, but the little toad skipped before we got there.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “San Francisco. His most Blissful Bullshit is having some kind of rally here in a couple of days.”

  “Yes,” said Smith. “I presume that’s ‘the big thing’ we’ve been hearing about.”

  “Guess so. He’s been collecting Bap
tist ministers.”

  “Baptist ministers? What for?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe converts or something. When I find him, I’ll find out. Chiun is on my back. He wants to go to Sinanju right away.”

  “Remo, it’ll have to wait. CURE’s been compromised. Someplace in here we’ve got one of the maharaji’s people.”

  “Why not? He’s got them everywhere. Did you drop all those people off the Empire State Building like I told you to?”

  “No. But they’re all going into hospitals for medical examinations until after the maharaji leaves the country. You said there were other names, other followers, that the man in San Diego didn’t know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “See if you can find out who they are. It’s just a feeling I have, but maybe this ‘big thing’ had something to do with his American followers.”

  “Could be.”

  “Do you need any help?” asked Smith.

  “Well, a brass band might be good to let everybody know that Chiun and I are here. A couple of flamethrower units and a division of artillery, and I think we should be able to handle his eminent fatness. Of course, we don’t need any help. Nothing your computers can give us anyway. What time is it?”

  “Twelve-five and ten seconds.”

  “Dammit, I’m off. See you, Smitty. Stay within your budget.”

  Inside the cab, as Remo walked back toward it, Joleen asked Chiun: “Are you his friend?”

  “I am no one’s friend but my own.”

  “Well, you seem so close.”

  “He is my pupil. He is backward, but we do the best we can, considering. He is more a son than a friend.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If you no longer like a friend, you end friendship. With sons it is different. If you no longer like them, they are still your sons.”

  “That’s right, buddy,” said the cabdriver. “I got one like that. Big lug. All-state football in high school on the team. So I work to put him through school. He gets a scholarship to USC, but is too lazy to make it out of school, and do you think he’ll look for work? Not on your life. He says he’s waiting for a position. He can’t take just any job.”