The Arms of Kali td-59

by Warren Murphy

  "I'm sorry, sir. No passengers are permitted to embark at this time," the frazzled stewardess said, turning off the fifteen call buttons Remo had activated.

  "She doesn't want to embark," Remo said. "She wants to get on."

  But the plane was moving away from the terminal. Through the window, Remo saw Ivory stopped by a maintenance man wearing headphones. She looked up at the taxiing plane in despair, then set down the boxes and bags in her arms and waved at the plane. It was a good-humored gesture, the resignation of a victim to one of life's little screw-ups.

  Remo felt worse, hurt and cheated. He had barely known the woman named Ivory, but still he felt that he had known her forever, and now, as quickly as she had entered, she was gone from his life.

  As the plane roared into takeoff, Remo picked up the soft fabric overnight bag Ivory had left under the seat. Perhaps there was some identification in it, he thought. But inside were only a couple of nightgowns, all lace and silk-like her, he thought-and a small bag filled with toiletries that carried the same soft scent he remembered from the brief moment he had held her.

  It was a strange scent, not flowery like most perfumes, but deeper, somehow intoxicating. And for a moment he didn't know if he really liked it, but then he remembered her face, and decided he did.

  But there was no identification in the bag, and sadly he put it back under the seat.

  The plane was up now, barely a hundred feet in the air, but instantly turning west away from Lake Pontchartrain. Remo heard a deep rumbling from beneath the craft, as if it were a large flying bird noisily digesting its dinner. Within a half-second the sound had exploded into a deafening roar. In another second the whole front of the plane had ripped off and shattered into fragments before his eyes. A stewardess screamed, blood pouring from her mouth and ears, then fell backward toward the gaping hole, hit a ragged metal edge, then flew into space, leaving a severed arm behind. Everything loose in the plane fell through the opening. Some seat belts snapped under the strain and gave up their passengers to the gaping maw in the front of the craft.

  The plane was tumbling toward the water. Remo heard someone whimper, "Oh, my God." And he wondered if even God could help them all now.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  It was late and Smith was bone-tired when he reached the ratty Seagull Motel on Penbury Street.

  As he started to enter the building, he heard chanting coming from a nondescript structure almost directly across the street from the motel.

  Chanting?

  Across the street from where Remo had stayed? Smith's fatigue disappeared. His heart racing, he walked across the street, pushed open the door, and stepped inside. The big room was dark. Immediately he was assaulted by the acrid sting of burning incense and the overpowering heat from too many human bodies in an enclosed space.

  The people were young, some of them barely into adolescence, and they were chanting at the top of their voices. The object of their attention was a statue set in a prominent position on a small platform at the front of the room. The chanters bowed frequently to the statue, raised their arms, and whirled around in improvisational ecstasy. It seemed to Harold Smith that every activity the group embraced was singularly useless and undignified.

  He scanned the room thoroughly, then sighed and backed toward the doorway. His weariness returned. A. H. Baynes was not there, and neither was Remo. It had been an idea worth exploring, he told himself, even though it had led, like all his other ideas in this case, to a dead end.

  He was at the door when a strange little Indian man shouted to him. "You. What do you want here?"

  None of the chanters paid any attention to them, and Smith said dryly, "I doubt very much if I want anything here."

  "Then why are you here? You just walk in?"

  "The door was open. I did just walk in."

  "Why did you walk in?" the Indian asked irascibly. "Are you looking for religion?"

  "I'm looking for a man named A. H. Baynes. My name is Smith."

  The Indian took a sharp, startled breath of air. "Baynes?" he squeaked. "No Baynes here. Sorry." He pushed Smith firmly to the door. "You find yourself another church, okay?"

  "There's another man I'm looking for," Smith said. "Tall, with dark hair. He has thick wrists-"

  The Indian pushed him out the door and Smith heard it lock behind him.

  On the other side, Ban Sar Din leaned against the door sweating. Then he pushed his way through the crowd of faithful and went into A. H. Baynes's office in the rear of the ashram.

  "A federal agent was here," he said.

  Baynes looked up, bemused, from behind the desk. "But he's not here anymore, is he?"

  "He was here. Just a few minutes ago, looking for you. Oh, unfortunate star that I was born under . . ."

  "How did you know he was a fed?" asked Baynes, suddenly more interested. "Did he tell you that?"

  "I knew," the Indian said. The veins in his neck throbbed visibly. "He is of the middle age, with tight lips. He wears steel eyeglasses and he has a briefcase and he says his name is Smith. Of course he is a federal agent."

  Baynes rubbed his chin. "I don't know. It could be anybody."

  "But he was looking for you. And when I told him you weren't here, he wanted the other one."

  "What other one?"

  "The one that the crazies said is supposed to be Kali's lover."

  Baynes stiffened, then relaxed with a smile. "He'll have a hard time finding him," he said.

  "It doesn't matter," Ban Sar Din said, his voice now rising near the panic level. "He'll come back. Maybe next time with the immigration people. I can be deported. And if they find out about you . . ."

  "If they find out what about me?" Baynes asked chreateningly.

  Ban Sar Din flinched at the hint of violence in the man's eyes. It had been growing, a deep malice that had swelled as he had extended his power over the devotees of Kali. Ban Sar Din could not answer. Instead he just shook his head.

  "Damn right, Sardine," Baynes said. "There's nothing for anybody to know about me. Nothing at all. All I do is go to church a lot, and don't you forget it. Now, get out of my way. I've got to go talk to the troops."

  "I'm looking for a man named Remo. Tall, dark hair," Smith told the clerk at the Seagull Motel.

  "Big wrists?" the clerk said. Smith nodded.

  "You're too late. He went out a few hours ago. Tossed some money on the counter and left."

  "Did he say where he was going?" Smith asked.

  "No."

  "Is his room still empty?"

  "Sure. This isn't that kind of place. We rent rooms by the night, not by the hour," the clerk said.

  "I'll take his room," Smith said.

  "It hasn't even been cleaned yet. I got some other rooms."

  "I want his room."

  "All right. Twenty dollars for the night. Payable now."

  Smith paid him, took the key, and went up to the room. The bed had been slept on, not in, but there was nothing to give him a hint of where Remo had gone.

  He sat heavily on the bed, removed his steel-rimmed spectacles, and rubbed his eyes. Just a few hours' sleep. That's all he wanted. Just a couple of hours' sleep. He lay back on the bed in the dingy room, his hands folded across the attache case which he held on his stomach, and the case buzzed.

  Smith dialed the combination which freed the two locks, opened the case, and lifted the telephone. When he received a series of four electronic signals, he put the telephone receiver into a specially designed saddle bracket inside the case. Seconds later, the instrument noiselessly began printing a message which emerged on a long narrow sheet of thermal paper from a slot inside the case.

  There was another sequence of four beeps which indicated the message was over, and Smith replaced the receiver, tore off the paper, and read the message that had come from his computer at Folcroft:

  ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON A. H. BAYNES. TWO DAYS BEFORE FIRST DEATH REPORTED ON INTERNATIONAL MID-AMERICA AIRLINES, BAYNES SOLD S
HORT 100,000 SHARES OF IMAA AT $48 PER SHARE. AFTER DEATHS ON IMAA, STOCK DROPPED TO ONE DOLLAR PER SHARE AND BAYNES COVERED HIS SHORT POSITION. PROFIT TO BAYNES, $4.7 MILLION. DAY BEFORE AIR EUROPA KILLINGS, BAYNES PURCHASED THROUGH BLIND STOCK FUND SIMILAR NUMBER OF SHARES OF AIR EUROPA AND AFTER DEATHS COVERED SHORT POSITION. PROFIT REALIZED, $2.1 MILLION. BAYNES HAS REINVESTED MOST OF PROFITS INTO PURCHASING STOCKS OF BOTH COMPANIES AND NOW HOLDS CONTROLLING INTEREST IN BOTH AIRLINES AS WELL AS MAINTAINING CASH PROFIT OF $1.9 MILLION. END MESSAGE.

  Smith reread the message before he touched a match to it and watched the chemically treated paper flash instantly into a small pile of ash.

  So there it was. Baynes not only improved just Folks Airlines' stock performance when the killings stopped there, but also moved into position to make a fortune and take over the two other airlines.

  It was enough motive for murder, Smith thought, even for mass murder.

  It was Baynes.

  He swung his legs off the bed and sat up again. There was no time for rest now.

  Then he saw something he had not seen before. He walked across the room and fished the object out of a corner. It was a hand, the hand of a statue, made of some kind of fired clay. As Smith turned it around in his own hand, he realized where he had seen that kind of hand before. It was on the statue in the little storefront temple across the street. So Remo had been there. And probably so had Baynes. His Denver neighbor had said he had joined a religious cult, and it would be too much of a coincidence for that ashram not to be Baynes's new headquarters.

  He sighed, readjusted the locks on his attache case, and left the room.

  When he got to the storefront church, the door was locked. From inside, he could hear voices, but they were muffled and indistinct. He backed off to the curb, looked the building over, but saw no way to enter it from a higher floor. So he walked to the corner and into an alley to see if he could find a back entrance.

  A. H. Baynes thought that politics had lost a star performer when he had decided to become a businessman. But there was still time. He was still young and now he owned three airlines, and when he stopped the killings aboard Air Europa and International Mid-America and merged them with just Folks, his stock interests would be worth a quarter of a billion dollars. Not too shabby, and a pretty good campaign fund with which to launch a political career.

  It made pleasant thinking, but first he had the crazies to deal with.

  He stood alongside the statue of Kali on the raised platform and looked out at the expectant young faces. "She loves you," he said.

  And they cheered.

  "And I, your chief phansigar, love you too."

  "Hail the phansigar," they shouted back.

  "The European operation was a total success and Kali is pleased. And I am pleased that my children have returned to this country safe and sound." He tried a warm smile as he nodded to his son, Joshua, standing nearby. "Of course, it's a little late for my daughter to be up, so she's staying with friends. But Joshua is here to be with you other sons and daughters of Kali. Isn't that right, Joshua?"

  "Kill for Kali," Joshua said in a dull monotone. "Kill."

  The others picked up the word and soon the room throbbed with the chanting. "Kill. Kill for the love of Kali. Kill. Kill."

  Baynes raised his hands for silence, but it took several minutes to quiet down the crowd.

  "Soon there will be another trip that you will take for Kali," Baynes said. Just then, Baynes saw in a mirror near the door the reflection of a man in steel-rimmed spectacles. He must have come in the rear door because he was standing in the small hallway that led to Baynes's office.

  The federal man, he thought.

  He turned back to the crowd. "Our path has not been easy, and tonight it grows even more difficult," he said.

  The faces of the young people looked up at him questioningly.

  "At this moment there is a stranger in our midst. A stranger who seeks to do us harm with lies and hatred for Kali."

  Smith heard the words and felt a tightening in his throat. The crowd, unaware of his presence, murmured among themselves. He started to back away. They had not seen him yet; he might still escape.

  A hand reached out and grabbed his wrist. He turned and saw the pudgy little Indian man.

  "Psst. In here," Ban Sar Din said. He pulled Smith into Baynes's office and locked the steel door behind them.

  "He is going to kill you," Ban Sar Din said.

  "I gathered that was his intention," Smith said.

  "I'm not going to let him kill a federal agent," Ban Sar Din said.

  "I never said I was a federal agent," Smith said.

  Ban Sar Din slapped his forehead in despair. "Okay, look. I won't argue. Let's just get out of here." Suddenly there was a thumping on the door of the office, and then the thumping took on the rhythm of the chanting voices and the chant was: "Kill for Kali. Kill for Kali. Kill for Kali."

  "Maybe withdrawal would be reasonable," Smith said.

  "And you'll put in a good word for me with your immigration people?" Ban Sar Din asked. "Remember. I killed no one."

  "We'll see," Smith said noncommittally.

  The wood around the steel-reinforced door began to squeak ominously under the thudding of many fists. "You got a deal," Ban Sar Din said desperately. He went to the far wall, pressed a button, and a steel panel slid back, opening the room to the back alley. "Quick," he said. He reached the passenger door of the parked Porsche and got in. Smith got in beside him and the Indian started the motor, then peeled away down the alley toward the street.

  "Whew," Ban Sar Din said. "That was close." Smith didn't want to hear small talk. "Before, I asked you about the other American. The dark-haired one with thick wrists. Where is he?"

  Ban Sar Din turned to glance at Smith. "He's dead," he said.

  Smith winced involuntarily. "Dead? Are you sure?"

  "I heard Baynes talking," Ban Sar Din said. "That man, Remo?"

  "Yes, Remo."

  "He was on a plane that took off from the airport a couple of hours ago. It crashed into the lake. I think Baynes put a bomb on it."

  Numbly Smith said, "There's no end to his killing, is there?"

  "He's crazy," Ban Sar Din said. "He makes the airlines go broke with the murders, and then he buys them. But he doesn't want just money. He wants power, but now the power is too great. He doesn't understand the source of the power."

  "The source?" Smith said. "Isn't the source killing?"

  "The source is Kali," said Ban Sar Din.

  They were two blocks away from the ashram, and Ban Sar Din stopped for a red light. "I don't understand it myself," he said. "The statue was just a piece of junk I bought. But it has power, some kind of power, and I don't-"

  They came out of the bushes. They came from behind trees, from beneath the manhole covers in the street. Before the Indian could slam his foot on the accelerator, the Porsche was surrounded by people, dozens of them, male and female, every one of them carrying a yellow rumal.

  "Good God," Smith said as they started beating on the car.

  They got Ban Sar Din first, smashing through the windows with sticks and rocks, then dragging the little Indian through the splintered glass and beating him until he screamed with the pain.

  They beat him repeatedly with bloody rocks and stubs of branches until their faces glistened and their eyes shone wild and hungry, and then Ban Sar Din screamed no more.

  Then they came back for Smith.

  They opened the door and pulled him out. My attache case, he thought. The lunatics were going to kill him and take the case too. They couldn't do anything with it, of course. The technology of the computer-hookup telephone was probably too sophisticated for any of them. But even if the executive offices at Folcroft Sanitarium caught fire, as they should if Smith failed to make contact within twelve hours, the case would still exist and it might be traced back to Folcroft. And there was a chance, a slim chance, that someone might find out what CURE had once been a
nd the government of the United States would surely topple.

  "The case," he called out as the first blow from a stick staggered him.

  There were rocks and fists and clumps of hard dirt too, before someone finally said, "What about the case?"

  It was the young boy, the one Smith had seen in the ashram. He picked up the attache case off the street. "Hold it, hold it," he said softly to the attackers as he walked through the crowd. "Let's just see what's going on." He extended the case to Smith as if to give it to him. "Here's your case. What's in it?"

  But as Smith reached for it, the young boy yanked it back and kicked Smith in the shoulder.

  "Important papers, maybe? Or just a little black book with hookers' names in it?" The boy laughed.

  "Don't open it. Please," Smith pleaded. Open it, you little bastard.

  "Why not?" the boy said. He stood over Smith with his legs apart. His expression bore the unmistakable mark of someone who enjoyed looking down at people. In that instant Smith knew that the boy was A. H. Baynes's son.

  "Please don't. Don't," Smith said. "Don't open it." He closed his eyes and tried not to think of it. Joshua Baynes propped the case against the over turned Porsche, just as Smith knew he would. He manipulated the clasps in the usual way, just as Smith knew he would, and the explosives set into the hinges of the case went off with their predictable fireballs. Afterward, the boy lay on the street with black formless stumps where his head and hands had been and the case was gone, an unrecognizable lump of melted plastic and metal.

  The body of the car had shielded Smith from the blast, but now he felt a yellow kerchief looped around his neck. He barely minded it. Now I can die, he thought. CURE will die too, but the United States will live.

  On his right lay Ban Sar Din's body, little more than a mound of exposed flesh awash in blood. A stone smashed against one of Smith's legs and he flinched. It would be a hard death, as hard as the Indian's had been. Maybe all deaths were hard, he thought. But his was long overdue and his only regret was that he had not been able to report in that A. H. Baynes and this crazed cult were behind the airline murders. But someone else would find out; someone else would stop them. It wouldn't be Remo; Remo was dead, as Smith soon would be. And without Remo, there would be no reason for Chiun to stay in the country. He would return to America, find that his disciple had been killed in a plane crash, and return to his life in his Korean village. Maybe, Smith thought, maybe someday there would be another CURE. Maybe someday, when things got bad enough and America's back was pressed against the wall hard enough, some President would stand up and say: Dammit, we're fighting back. The thought gave him some comfort as, with shaking fingers, he tried to breathe deepy and evenly to control the pain that coursed through his body.