Waste Not, Want Not td-130

by Warren Murphy

  She expected to find the usual dry details. The KGB collected information on everything from eating habits to shoe size. Wondering if Zatsyrko had given her this file to waste her time, she scanned the first page. It contained information about an old Soviet-era physicist.

  When she checked the man's photograph, which was clipped to the back of the sheet, Anna's mouth tightened. She looked up angrily at Pavel Zatsyrko. Zatsyrko seemed pleased to have finally gotten a rise out of the Institute director.

  "I thought you might find that interesting," he said.

  Anna wasn't listening. She had clicked open her leather purse. She pulled out a small stack of photographs.

  Thumbing through, she found one that she set next to the old KGB photo.

  The man was older now. His jowls sagged, and his dark eyes had puffed into fleshy gray bags. But there was no doubt that it was the same man.

  Anna picked up the folder and flung it at Pavel Zatsyrko. Papers flew everywhere.

  "Idiot!" she snapped. "You drag me down here just so you can strut around and show me how important you are, not even caring that the world is in danger."

  Zatsyrko was surprised by the ferocity in her eyes. "I did not know he was that important to you," Zatsyrko said. "We were lucky to find these files at all. You only gave us the pictures to search for. No names."

  "I did not know his name," Anna retorted. Snatching up the small photograph she had brought with her, she flung it in her purse, snapping the latch viciously.

  "What is he to you?" Zatsyrko asked. "He is just one of our old scientists. Probably retired. We do not even know where he is."

  "I know where he is. And now I must do what I always do. Stop you and idiot men like you from blowing us all up."

  She didn't wait for Zatsyrko to see her out. Spinning on her heel, she marched from the room.

  She took the elevator back upstairs. When a guard saw her marching through a restricted area without an SVR escort, he approached her. Anna chased him away with a glare.

  Hurrying through the halls and out the front doors, she emerged into the Moscow sunlight.

  She found her car on the street where she'd parked it.

  For a moment after she climbed in behind the wheel, she seemed uncertain what to do.

  The Institute had an agent on the ground. They had lost contact, but perhaps that was only temporary. Digging in her purse, she pulled out her cell phone. The photograph-a copy of which she had sent to the SVR for examination-fell out on the seat.

  Anna scooped up the photo. When she saw the man's face once more, she shook her head angrily. "They will kill us all," she hissed.

  Holding the photo in one hand, she used the other to press out Petrovina Bulganin's cell phone number.

  "YOUR KIMONO is ringing," Remo said.

  They were strolling along New Briton's docks. The scenery was truly beautiful. This had been a nicer part of town. Tidy buildings, immaculate pleasure boats, lush vegetation. With the wind at their backs, the smell of rotting garbage was almost bearable.

  Chiun's hand disappeared inside a wide sleeve. When it reappeared he was clutching the ringing cellular phone.

  "I found that, so it's not anyone we know," Remo pointed out. "Maybe you should just toss it in the water."

  "Just because it is someone who does not know you, does not mean that it is someone who does not know me," Chiun sniffed as he snapped open the phone.

  "Here, at least let me answer it for you."

  Chiun pressed a button and the ringing stopped. With a thin smile he raised the phone to his shelllike ear.

  "How did you do that?" Remo asked.

  "Because I do not take stubborn pride in being an ignoramus," Chiun replied superiorly. Into the phone he said, "You have reached the ear of the most gracious Master who once reigned but who is regrettably between honorifics at the moment. Speak. But speak quickly, for these devices have been known to cause ailments of the brain."

  Remo tried to listen but the old man pressed the phone tight to his ear, preventing eavesdropping. He knew something wasn't right when he saw Chiun's face pale.

  "What is it, Little Father?" Remo asked.

  Chiun glanced sharply at his pupil, as if surprised that he was standing there. "Nothing," he insisted, waving Remo back with a bony hand. "A nuisance call." He pressed the phone even tighter to his ear. "I have told you people before not to bother me," he warned. "Your cards of plastic are more worthless than paper money, and I do not care to answer questions about which baby-kissing white male you install as your leader. If you call again, you invite my wrath." His tone turned grave. "And believe me when I say you do not want that."

  The last words were said as hard threat.

  As Remo's confused frown deepened, Chiun pressed the Phone Off and hastily switched off the ringer.

  "You sure that was a telemarketer?" he asked. "Of course," Chiun sniffed. "Thanks to you always loitering around, that is all that ever calls me these days."

  "Somehow I doubt you were the most popular kid on the assassin's teen chat line before I showed up," Remo deadpanned. "You know, I think I've changed my mind. If that thing works, maybe I should keep it after all." He held out his hand for the phone.

  "It is mine," Chiun insisted. "Find yourself another." The cell phone vanished back inside his robes.

  His tone was a bit too sharp, his face straining a little too hard at being untroubled. The old man kept his eyes dead ahead as he walked.

  From his demeanor alone Remo knew his teacher was keeping something from him. He shrugged. "Oh, well. Wouldn't be the first time," he grumbled to himself as he trailed the old Korean to the parking lot.

  SITTING IN HER CAR outside the SVR building, Anna Chutesov clicked her phone shut.

  Anna had been disturbed by Petrovina Bulganin's earlier phone call. Before being cut off, the agent had mentioned something about having knowledge of Anna's strange amnesia.

  The Institute director had not tried raising Petrovina directly after that, fearing that she and her phone had fallen into the hands of an unknown enemy. But things had just gotten too desperate not to try.

  Anna had no idea who had answered Petrovina Bulganin's cell phone, but it was clearly no longer in the hands of the Institute's agent. No matter. In fact, that was a potential silver lining in this mess. That could be dealt with once the current crisis was past. Assuming the world survived.

  There was only one course of action open to her now.

  Anna hadn't realized that she had been clenching her other hand. She smoothed flat the photo that Petrovina Bulganin had taken in Mayana.

  Glancing one last time at the Vaporizer janitor who didn't seem very interested in his broom, she dropped the photo and the phone in her purse.

  Tossing the car into gear, she peeled out of the parking spot and flew out into the heavy Moscow traffic. In the direction of the airport.

  Chapter 23

  The Jamestown tragedy of 1978 had propelled the People's Sanctum cult to the front pages, sent Americans scurrying for maps to find out just where Mayana was and had put cult leader Jack James-at least for a time-at the top of a shortlist of the most infamous figures of his age. It was the public end to a private journey along a twisted valley where death was mocked and evil embraced.

  Jack James founded the Holy Assembly of God Church in Columbus, Ohio, in the early 1960s. Messianic from the start, he preached a gospel of salvation where he alone was the only bridge between man and God.

  "Survival of the soul," James bellowed to the great unwashed, "comes only from intimate knowledge of this church's blessed teachings!"

  Jack James was fond of sharing this intimate knowledge with his parishioners. Especially the women.

  Jack James always had an eye for the ladies. Jack James also had a mahogany cane with which he punished evil. He found much evil in women. With his "rod of persuasion" he chastised many a wayward sister. In their pain the self-ordained pastor found his greatest pleasure.

  "Th
e sisters exude the alluring scent of carnality!" he exclaimed under the hot lights of his rented auditorium. "The brothers have in them the seed of Satan! The power to corrupt is in all of you! There is darkness in the world and there is light! Who here can say he longs to live in darkness? The light is bright but it does not burn. Come into the light. Forgo the darkness and come to me!"

  He spoke the words not with arrogance but with utter conviction. Jack James was the light. Sadly the lost and pathetic souls of his misguided flock seemed to agree.

  Preaching impending Armageddon to his followers, James managed to fill to capacity his Sunday-afternoon revival meetings. As the money and membership ranks grew, so, too, did James's belief in his own power. Jack James began to see himself not as God's voice on Earth, but as God himself.

  God could not be contained. James began to plot his expansion beyond the borders of Ohio. The catalyst came to him one fateful August day in early 1966.

  James had spotted an attractive young woman in the fourth row of one of his services. When it was over, he directed some of his followers to bring the girl to him.

  As his flock was driving home, hearts filled with hope of eternal salvation, Jack James was ushering the young girl into his trailer and thinking positively impure thoughts.

  She was stunning, this wicked child of Eve's sin. A college student who had stopped by the revival meeting on a whim, the young girl was bubbling with energy and enthusiasm. Her hair was bleached blond and pulled back in a coarse ponytail, tied with a yellow ribbon. The fresh, full womanhood of her chest threatened to burst buttons on her tight yellow blouse.

  James smiled in the trailer, which was parked in the shade of an elm tree near a softly gurgling brook. "Sit, child," he beckoned, patting the edge of his bed. "There are no chairs." He shrugged apologetically.

  "I never heard a sermon like yours before," the girl said. "I was brought up boring Episcopalian. That's what Daddy is. Mom was Jewish. At least she was before they got married. We're not supposed to mention it because of Daddy's job, although I don't think he needs to worry about it like you used to have to. But, oh, maybe I shouldn't have said it to you. I guess I shouldn't worry though, you being a man of God and all."

  James's smile faded ever so slightly. "I am not a man of God," he said dully.

  "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong? Maybe I should go." She started to stand.

  "No, no," Jack James said. He pressed her shoulder, coaxing her to sit back on the bed. "We're fine."

  His sermon had touched her. He could see it in her eyes. He could always tell from their eyes. She sat perched on the bed, a bright-eyed, guileless child who would be more than willing to do anything for the leader of the Holy Assembly of God Church. Jack James excused himself to the trailer's small bathroom in order to change. When he returned a minute later he was stark naked. He held his hands behind his back.

  "Oh, my goodness," the shocked girl said, eyeing the excitement of the preacher who was definitely not boring Episcopalian. "Oh, my God," she gasped when he brought his hands out from behind his back.

  "Wicked child takes my name in vain," James said. "Wicked child must be punished."

  Jack James held a mahogany cane-his rod of persuasion-high in the air. The girl screamed. She fell off the bed and scrambled for the door. Jack James spun around her, breathing her fear, savoring the pain.

  James brought the cane down across her leg. The girl had been twisting the doorknob. With a shriek she let it go, falling to the floor.

  "Wicked child tempts the flesh to sin," James sang.

  A crack to the side of the head. Light blinding bright in her eyes, she tumbled under the small table in the trailer's kitchenette.

  She was crying now. A gash bled from her temple. "Please." She tried to crawl to the door.

  "Wicked child pleads for mercy," Jack James announced. He was sweating profusely now. Panting with excitement. "But mercy is God's to give. Today, God says-"

  He brought the cane back one more time. Frothy white spittle sprayed from the corner of his mouth. Swing, crack.

  The girl slumped face-first to the floor. "No," the almighty Jack James concluded.

  His excitement spent, he left the dead girl on the floor and went in to take a shower. Later, under cover of darkness, he dumped the body in a shallow grave in some woods and rolled her car into a lake.

  The story might have ended there for James had he not learned the identity of the young girl who had suffered the ultimate punishment of the wicked temptress. He saw it in the newspaper a few days after the incident. Front page, with accompanying picture.

  It turned out that the young college girl was the only child of an Ohio senator who was part of the old Democratic machine. He had powerful friends on both sides of the law. The body had been found and the father was out for blood.

  Jack James was not a fool. The day he saw the newspaper photo of that wicked, smiling temptress was the day he realized it was time to seek out sunnier pastures. Four days after the story broke, the Holy Assembly of God Church was renting a storefront in downtown San Francisco.

  The move to California, though abrupt, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. In a state where tradition was yesterday and deeply held religious beliefs were last week, it seemed that everyone was looking to buy into the next fad. Church membership flourished. Over the course of the next eight years, James's church-eventually rechristened the People's Sanctum-enrolled tens of thousands of new members. The public face of the People's Sanctum was a church concerned with the plight of the poor. Food and clothing drives, free beds to indigents and church-sponsored soup kitchens were all part of the church's intensive antipoverty drive. Because of all his good works, Jack James was even appointed chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority.

  The success of Jack James seemed divinely inspired.

  His delusions had only grown more firmly entrenched over time. There were no lucid moments. James was now God on Earth. The one eternal, omniscient Deity, come to lead his sheep to his own version of eternal salvation.

  And since he was omnipotent God, it came as a shock when everything he had built collapsed from beneath his feet.

  He had dodged the charges for years. In the end it took only one betrayer.

  A young woman who had barely survived a personal audience with James came forward. She had scars that were the kind that couldn't be seen and the other kind that could. She showed the latter on the evening news.

  "Outrageous," said a church spokesman. "Unfounded," the same spokesman insisted when another woman told a newspaper an identical story. Soon more former cult members were coming forward. A trickle became a rising flood.

  There were allegations of extortion, encouragement of sexual promiscuity and enforcement of discipline among church disciples through blackmail and beatings. One man who came forward knew where some of the bodies had been buried. Literally.

  Fortunately for Jack James, he had been warned ahead of time by an acolyte in the media. There was nothing else he could do but flee.

  America was no longer safe. Luckily he had purchased several hundred acres of land in the Mayanan jungle a few years earlier. He had hoped to put it to agricultural use-primarily for growing coca plants. The land became haven to Jack James and the six-hundred-odd People's Sanctum members who fled with him from California.

  Life in Mayana proved difficult. There weren't the same creature comforts as back in America.

  To discourage disloyalty among his remaining cult members, Jamestown-as the property became known-was cut off from the outside world. To break the spirits of his followers, James worked cult members fourteen or more hours a day. As punishment, food and water were often withheld.

  There was no longer any need to hide his peccadilloes behind a socially acceptable mask. James roamed the fields of Jamestown administering beatings to men and women chosen completely at random.

  Over the years he had let a few close acolytes in on the extralegal aspects of the ch
urch. There were twelve in all. In Mayana these apostles became his own private security force. They would serve his every whim and, when necessary, dispose of the bodies afterward.

  Jack James might have ruled for the rest of his natural days in the hell that was Jamestown and died a forgotten old maniac in the jungles of Mayana if not for a lone man. He wasn't even very important in the grand scheme of things. Just a run-of-the-mill California congressman.

  In November of 1978, word came of an impending visit by Congressman Lenny Rand. Some of his constituents who had relatives in Jamestown were demanding the congressman do something to get their loved ones home. The congressman had decided to plead the case for Jack James's extradition to authorities in New Briton. But first he wanted to take a fact-finding tour of Jamestown. The congressman would be there in less than a day.

  James's paranoia reached critical mass. The visiting congressman was an agent of Satan. He was in league with the demons who had driven James from his comfortable home in California. He was cohort to the Ohio senator whose Bathsheba daughter had tempted the flesh of Jack James so many years ago. His world was coming apart. The forces of evil were aligning to destroy Jack James.

  The almighty Jack James refused to let Satan win again.

  He had no troops to speak of. Jamestown could not survive an attack by America. His security forces were few in number. The regular cult members were starving, emaciated shells. But God was nothing if not resourceful.

  When Congressman Rand arrived in Jamestown, he and his party were greeted by the security farces of Jack James. They were slaughtered to a man. James himself beat the congressman's skull in with the rod of persuasion.

  That was step one.

  After the massacre, stainless-steel vats of the children's fruit drink Kook-Aid were brought forward. The wasted members of the Jamestown cult were lined up. James's personal security men stood behind folding tables, ladling out paper cups to passing cult members.

  The first few people who drank James's special brew quickly discovered there was more than just flavored sugar water in their cups. Stomachs convulsed. Chests heaved. Faces contorting in final agony, the men and women collapsed to the muddy ground of the compound.