"Aaargh," came a scream from behind Snowy. He turned to look. The man anchoring Hunt's left leg had a tent peg driven deep into his right bicep. It seemed as if an artery had been severed. Blood stained the man's white short-sleeved shirt and pulsed out of the wound with each heartbeat. Horrified, the man grasped his right arm with his left hand and staggered to his feet.
At almost the same instant, the grape-sized stone curled off Hunt's fingertips. It whistled through the air, then struck the left eye of the man holding Hunt's right leg. The man shouted and fell back heavily, both hands clutching his face.
Snowy, confused, then angry, turned back and plunged downward with both hands toward Hunt's neck. But both legs and the left arm of the intended victim were now free. He rolled his body to the right. Snowy's hands drove into the dirt. At the same moment, Hunt again filled his right hand with dirt and flipped it upward into the face of the man still holding onto his right arm. The man coughed and gagged and released his grip, and Hunt rolled to the right, curled his legs up and flipped up into a standing position.
The bleeding man was in a state of shock. The man hit by the stone still knelt, both hands over his face. The third man was still trying to cough the dirt from his lungs. Snowy knelt on the ground as if terrorizing an invisible victim. But the victim was behind him, and now he put a foot against Snowy's butt and pushed. Hard. Snowy sprawled face forward into the earth.
"Last time," said Hunt. "I don't know your daughter. If you ever bother me again, you won't live to tell about it."
He brushed himself off and walked away, hoping that his intended victims had not escaped him. Behind him, Elton Snowy looked at Hunt's back, groped in his mind for something to shout, something to say that could show the frustration and rage he felt at that moment. His lips moved. Mentally, he rejected words without knowing he did. Then finally he spoke, more of a hiss than a shout: "Nigger lover."
Ferdinand De Chef Hunt heard the words behind him and laughed.
"Whee," said Chiun.
"Whee," said the pretty blond girl with him.
And "wheeze" went the twin cables holding up their fiberglass bucket as it slowly turned upward on the converted Ferris wheel superstructure.
"Let us spin the bucket," said Chiun, his eyes alight in merry excitement.
"Let us not spin the bucket," said the girl. "They do not allow us to spin the bucket."
"That is not nice of Mr. Disney," said Chiun. "Why does he have this nice bucket and not allow people to spin it?"
"I don't know," said the girl. "There is a sign down there that says do not spin the bucket."
"Oh," said Chiun.
"Oh," said the girl.
"Oh, oh," said Chiun.
"Oh, oh," said the girl.
"Funny, funny, Mr. Disney," said Chiun. "Wheeee," he added.
Finger hooked in the goldfish bowl, Remo waited patiently below for the ride to end. His attention was fixed upward. Behind him stood Ferdinand De Chef Hunt. His pockets held nothing to use as a weapon. He looked on the ground, but it was asphalted and there was not a stone, not even a pebble he could use.
Hunt turned. Behind him was a concession booth, "The Discus Throw." For a dollar, a player got four thin metal plates, and the chance to scale them frisbee-like through a small hole in the back of the tent. Two plates through won a prize, but few won because the plates were not uniform, and a toss that would send one plate through the hole would send another plate flying skyward toward the roof of the tent.
Hunt pulled a clump of bills from his shirt pocket and tossed them on the counter, grabbing three plates in his left hand.
"I want to buy these," he told the operator, who shrugged. The plates cost him ten cents each. Hunt turned and began walking slowly toward Remo, whose eyes were still staring upward. It would be simple. First the white man, and, then, when he came down, the yellow man.
One plate for each. And a spare. No way to miss. He was twelve feet from Remo now. Another step. He was ten feet away.
Up above, Chiun had stopped "wheee"ing. He saw the man move toward Remo. His eyes narrowed into slits. There was something wrong; he could feel it; just as he had felt before that someone was following them. But then the Ferris wheel spun up over the top and the wheel assembly was between Chiun and Remo, and he could see Remo no more.
Remo relaxed. The ride was slowing down. It would soon be over. Then he sensed movement behind his right shoulder. He turned casually.
Flashing at him, like a flying saucer, was a metal plate. It spun, noiselessly, at his head, directly on a plane with the ground, its hard cutting edge moving straight for his two eyes.
Damn, and here he was with a goldfish bowl that he couldn't let get broken. The best he could do was slip his head to the right. His left arm crooked at the elbow, and then his hand shot forward like a spear. Its hardened fingertips caught the center of the plate just before it buzzed against his head. The plate shuddered, its metal center crumpled, and dropped at Remo's feet.
Now he looked up. Ten feet away, he saw a thin young man holding two more plates. Remo smiled. He had called the Divine Bliss Mission to let them know where he was, just so that anyone sent by the Maharaji Dor would be able to find him.
Hunt smiled and waited as Remo moved another step closer. The fool. By chance, he had gotten his hand up and stopped the first plate. He would not be lucky this time.
Another step by Remo, who was being very careful and moving slowly, so as not to spill any water from the goldfish bowl.
The plate in Hunt's right hand curled back under his left elbow, then shot forward toward Remo's throat. At eight feet it could not miss.
But, damn it, he was lucky again. He caught the edge of the plate, sliding off his left wrist, and the plate spun off its course, down into the asphalt pavement, where it dug a six-inch-long gouge before stopping.
Remo took another step forward. Hunt realized plates would not do. He needed a sturdier weapon, and he had no stomach for hand-to-hand combat. He heard another "whee" from the Flying Bucket.
Time to split.
He looked up. The car carrying the Oriental had reached the bottom point of the ride and was now on its way up again. Hunt's right hand again snaked back under his left elbow and then sent the third plate silently screaming toward the ride. Remo turned to watch, then moved toward the ride. The plate flew toward the car Chiun and Joleen occupied. Its front edge bit through the thin steel cable holding up the right side of the car, hacked through it, before the plate clattered off the side of the car toward the ground.
The car started to drop.
"Wheeee," said Chiun, giggling. His left arm reached up and grabbed the frayed strand of cable. His left toe found a crevice inside the car and hooked itself into it. His right hand grabbed the safety bar. His left hand overhead, and his left foot and right hand below, prevented the car from plunging, and still shouting "wheeee" with all his might, Chiun held the car together as it rode up, around, and over the top of the wheel, with Joleen huddling in panic on her side of the compartment.
"Stop that damned thing," Remo yelled at the operator, who instantly pushed the heavy lever that tossed in the clutch of the motor, then squeezed the hand grip that acted as a brake. When the cars came around, the operator saw the broken cable and the old Oriental holding the car together. Expertly the operator brought the ride to a stop just as Chiun's car reached the wooden boarding platform. Chiun released his left hand grip on the cable. The car dropped four inches and settled against the wooden platform.
Chiun's face was framed in a smile. "Wheeeee," he said. He jumped out of the car. "What a wonderful ride. Do you have my goldfish?"
"Yes, I have it. You all right?"
Chiun smirked and looked toward Joleen, recovering from her shock and rising slowly to her feet.
"Of course, we're all right," he said. "These rides are safe. No one ever gets hurt. Mr. Disney would not let that happen."
Remo turned. The young man had gone. Following him now
would be a waste of time.
Later, outside the carnival, Chiun confided, "There is one thing, Remo, I do not understand."
"What's that?"
"When Mr. Disney shoots the plate at the cable and breaks it, how many people have the control to grip the cable and hold the vehicle together? Do not some fall?"
"No," said Remo, his right index finger hooked into the goldfish bowl. "That's the first thing we Americans learn. How to grab the cable and hold the ride together."
"A very curious thing," said Chiun. "Here you are, a nation of people who cannot talk and cannot run and cannot move well, who eat the flesh of every sort of beast, and yet you can do that."
"It is easy," said Remo.
"Another thing. Did you see someone following you in the park? A thin, young man?"
"No," said Remo. "I didn't see anybody."
"Typical," said Chiun. "You never notice anything. Don't drop the goldfish."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Although he fled the amusement park, Hunt had a smile on his face that would have been hard to ascribe to failure.
The young American had been able to block the plates, and Hunt would no longer call it luck. So this Remo was exceptional. So? So it did not matter. Hunt had been warned years before by his grandfather that there were some such people.
In recollection now, it seemed as if his grandfather had been trying to prepare him for the life of the assassin, but that too was immaterial. What was important was that his grandfather had told him of the way to deal with people who had physical skills that were out of the ordinary. A simple technique, but foolproof. Next time, there would be no swift hands blocking plates.
Hunt smiled again as he drove out toward the lower edge of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. He knew how he would handle this Remo the next time they met, and he looked forward to the meeting.
Meanwhile, Elton Snowy had other things on his mind.
He stood at the counter of the sporting goods store on Market Street.
"I want a gross of shells. Double O buck."
"A gross?" asked the clerk, smiling faintly.
"A gross. That's one hundred forty and four."
"Yes, sir. Big hunting trip, eh?"
"You might say that," said Snowy. He paid cash and angrily signed his real name and address to the register kept in the gun department. The clerk noted the name as Snowy left the shop, then, recalling the look of grim anger on the big man's red face, walked toward the telephone.
Snowy's next stop was another sporting goods store at the farthest end of Market Street, where the street dissolves into a maze of crossing streets and highways and trolley tracks, seemingly always under repair. There he purchased a .38 caliber revolver and ammunition, again paid cash, again signed a register, and again, a clerk, noting the set to his jaw, waited until the man had left and then called the police department.
Snowy's last stop was a bar across the street from a railroad yard, where he drank bourbon, struck up a conversation with a drunken off-duty switchman, and finally wound up buying a dozen railroad detonating caps for fifty dollars cash.
While no report of that transaction reached the police, the first two reports had set them in motion. Two city detectives got a description of Snowy but could not find him registered in any motel, because by now Snowy was in a furnished room under an assumed name, carefully opening shotgun shells and pouring the powder into a plastic bag.
The detectives dutifully reported their failure to find Snowy. Their report went to the detective commander and was routinely picked up by an FBI messenger. The agent-in-charge of the San Francisco office read the report. Normally, he would have flipped it into an outbasket full of other inconsequential matters. But today was different.
For the past week, there had been a highest-priority order that any unusual activity in arms buying should be reported cross-channels to the CIA in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The agent-in-charge did not know why; he suspected it had something to do with that guru coming to San Francisco and the CIA wanting to avoid an international incident, but it was no real business of his until someone told him it was a real business of his.
He picked up the safe line and called Washington.
A house in Mill Valley, across the bay from San Francisco, resounded with "Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping."
"In other words, you failed," said Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor.
Hunt smiled and shook his head. "In other words, I sized them up. They're tough, that's all."
"I tell you, man, I'm not going to put my ass in a sling by having any Bliss rally with those two nuts around."
For a moment, he looked like a frightened little boy.
Hunt rose from his chair and put a hand on the fat teenage shoulder. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I'll be there. If either or both of them come, they're gone. That's it."
Blaring in the corner of the room was a television set. The announcer's voice cut into the automatically ignored music of the singing commercial with a bulletin: "Three men wounded in an outbreak of violence at an amusement park. Details at six o'clock."
Dor turned to Hunt. "You?" he asked.
Hunt nodded. "They were bugging me."
The Blissful Master looked at Hunt's cold face for a moment, then smiled. "All systems go, man. We're gonna bliss 'em to death tomorrow night."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The reports on Elton Snowy's ammunition purchases were, within hours, on the desk of the high CIA official who had asked for them.
His name was Cletis Larribee and he was fifty-one years old and a native of Willows Landing, Tennessee, where he had been for many years elder and Sunday deacon and lay preacher and president of the Men's Club of the Monumental Baptist Church.
Larribee had failed to distinguish himself with the OSS during World War II and had also failed to distinguish himself during postwar service with the fledgling intelligence operation that was a spinoff of the wartime OSS and would someday grow up to be the CIA. He had further failed to distinguish himself by never getting into any trouble, and this had so distinguished him in latter-day Washington that when the post of number two man at the CIA had opened up, the then president had said, "Put that Bible-thumping characterization omitted in charge. At least we know he won't expletive deleted up."
Cletis Larribee had no intention of expletive deleting up. He wanted to serve America, even if sometimes America did not seem to want serving. It was becoming godless and revolutionary, casting aside old values, with nothing to replace them. Cletis Larribee never cast aside old values without replacing them with something.
It fell into Larribee's province to know that the Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor was in the United States to hold a Blissathon, and as he had explained to his superior, "All we need is to have this holy man knocked off in America, what with the state of the world and all," and that argument had won him the right to get domestic police reports on arms purchases in San Francisco, and now he studied the Elton Snowy reports with deep and growing worry.
He decided to call a friend of his, a high official in the FBI, for advice, but his friend's secretary told him that the FBI official was in the hospital. "Oh, no, nothing serious. Routine checkup, that's all."
Larribee telephoned another close friend in the State Department, India desk.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Larribee, but Mr. Volz is in the hospital. No. Nothing serious. Just his usual physical."
Three hospitalized friends later, Cletis Larribee began to suspect that something might be wrong. He confided this to his two closest friends at lunch at an inexpensive restaurant outside Washington, D.C. Perhaps the maharaji's life was in danger, he felt.
"Nonsense," said Winthrop Dalton.
"Double nonsense," said V. Rodefer Harrow III. "Nothing can imperil the Blissful Master's plans."
"He is truth," said Dalton.
"He is perfect truth," said Harrow, not wishing to be outdone.
"He is mortal," said Larribee, "and he can die at the ha
nds of an assassin."
"Nonsense," said Dalton.
"Double nonsense," said V. Rodefer Harrow III. "The Master's security arrangements are like he is. Perfect."
"But against an assassin with a bomb?" said Larribee.
"I am not at liberty to discuss them," said Dalton, "but the security arrangements are more than adequate. We made them ourselves." He looked to Harrow for reassurance.
"Right," said Harrow. "Made 'em ourselves." He signaled the waiter to bring another free tray of cellophane-wrapped cheese crackers, one of the reasons he had always liked this restaurant.
"Maybe I should alert the FBI," said Larribee.
"No," said Dalton. "You should simply follow instructions and be at Kezar Stadium tomorrow night—prepared to show America the right way. Do you have everything you need?"
Larribee nodded and glanced down at his tan leather briefcase. "I've got it all. Cuba. Chile. Suez Canal. Spain. The whole works."
"Good," said Dalton. "When America sees you join with the Blissful Master, all America will flock to his side."
"And don't worry," said Harrow. "The Blissful Master is protected by God."
Larribee smiled. "The Blissful Master is God."
Dalton and Harrow looked at him, and after a pause Dalton said, "Yes, he is, isn't he?"
And three hundred miles north of Washington, D.C., in a sanitarium on the shores of Long Island Sound, Dr. Harold W. Smith read a sheaf of reports that failed to quell his uneasiness.
The highly placed people that Remo had named to him as followers of the maharaji had been placed into hospitals, at least until Dor had left the country.
But there might be more, and Smith had no line on who they were or what they might be planning. Add to that the absolute blank drawn so far on the maharaji's whereabouts. Add again Remo's report that someone had tried to kill him that day in San Francisco.
The sum total was trouble. The "big thing," whatever it was, was coming, and Smith felt powerless. Not only could he not stop it, he couldn't even identify it, and right now his only hope was Remo.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Holy Terror td-19 Page 13