They rounded the last of the concrete buildings near the main gate of the complex, and Remo was startled to see a perfectly ordinary-looking ranch house jutting out from the cluster of converted warehouses.
It looked like the giant urban cinder-block nightmare that was the rest of the Ragnarok complex was in the act of gobbling up a defenseless western cabin, but upon closer examination Remo realized that the cabin had been constructed after most of the other buildings.
"'Behold the dwelling of God with men, and he will dwell with them,'" Buffy piped up. "That's in chapter twenty-one of Revelations. And this is it." She motioned to the small, rustic ranch home.
"I think the Almighty probably had something other than a six-room, split-entry ranch with attached
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garage in mind when he wrote that," Remo pointed out.
Buffy led them up to the porch and rapped carefully on the heavy oak door. It swung open at her touch.
"Prophetess?" Buffy called as she stepped through the doorway. Remo and Chiun followed.
There was no one in the house proper, but Remo detected the odor of freshly overturned earth and felt the rush of cool air that preceded the smell. Somewhere in the back of the house a tunnel had recently been dug.
There was movement from a rear room, and a beautiful raven-haired woman stepped out into the living room, looking like a cross between Liz Taylor and Imelda Marcos.
The earth smell was strong on her, so she had come up through the tunnel, Remo reasoned. But there was another, stranger odor. Remo sniffed the air. Beneath a thick layer of expensive bath soaps and perfumes, the woman smelled of rotten eggs.
"Your friends are here, Prophetess," Buffy announced respectfully.
Esther Clear-Seer smiled coolly.
"Ah, Mr. Williams. Mr. Chiun. Welcome to your unavoidable destiny."
"You seem surprised, Mr. Williams," Esther Clear-Seer said calmly. She dismissed Buffy Brand with a nod, and the girl backed out dutifully from the house.
Remo and Chiun exchanged narrow glances.
"An assassin doesn't make many friends," Esther speculated. "Would you feel better if I called you Remo?"
"Whatever you call me, it won't be for long," Remo replied flatly, but his eyes, usually as cold and unwavering as a midnight sea, could not mask a spark of confusion.
"Spoken like a true professional," Esther murmured. She turned her attention to Chiun. "But you, Korean, are the truest professional. Master Chiun.
Elder of the House of Sinanju. I feel as if I've come face-to-face with history personified."
Chiun's wrinkled visage was impassive. He deigned not to look at Esther, but stared at the wall beyond.
Esther went on thoughtfully. "You truly are an assassin's assassin, aren't you, Master Chiun? How old were you when you killed your first man?" She passed a hand before her face, as if the movement would erase the words she had just uttered. "You were thirteen," she said. "A boy by any standards, but an infant
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according to your House. He was a Japanese soldier, scrounging for food in your village. He stole. You stumbled upon him. And you slaughtered him like a mongrel dog. Strange how his deathly face appeared in your dreams all those years afterward."
"Chiun?" Remo asked, bewildered. "This true?"
The Master of Sinanju made fists like thorns, his eyes frosty and still.
"It's encouraging that you two hooked up," Esther said to Remo. ' 'You an orphan, Remo. Master Chiun, a maker of orphans. You were meant for each other."
"That's it, lady, you're dogmeat." Remo made a move toward her.
A pipe-stem arm lashed out before Remo like a crossing gate. "Halt, Remo," Chiun commanded.
"Huh?"
Esther laughed. "I'd heed him if I were you, Remo."
"You're not me, sister," he growled. But he didn't move.
"No, that's true," Esther said, drawing close. "But there have been times when you wished you weren't, either."
Remo whirled on the Master of Sinanju. He seemed to have some idea of what was going on. "Chiun, what the hell is this?"
"Examine her hands," Chiun commanded.
Remo did. A powder, the color and consistency of mustard flour, coated Esther Clear-Seer's slender fingers.
"She's as hygenic as one of those goats," Remo said. "So what?"
Chiun held up a restraining hand. He tilted his nose
into the air and sniffed once, all the while watching Esther Clear-Seer through steady, thm-lidded eyes.
"That scent, Remo..."
"I smell it," Remo snapped. "It stinks like an egg-salad-sandwich factory."
"It is sulphur," Chiun explained.
"It is rank," Remo retorted.
"The old man knows," Esther said, pleased at his deduction. "By the way, is it permissible to be seated in the presence of the Master of Sinanju?'' Not waiting for a response, she gathered up the trail of her robes and dropped to a crushed velvet sofa.
Remo had had enough. He meant to flash over to the sofa. He intended to crack every one of Esther's vertebrae one at a time. He planned to crush her skull to powder, do a little jig on the woman's body and then run tear-ass back to Folcroft where Smith and his damn computers would be able to figure out what the hell was going on here.
All this Remo fully intended to do. But when he tried to move, a bony hand on his chest stopped him dead in his tracks and as unmovable as a redwood.
"Quit it, Little Father," Remo said. He tried to move his legs, but they had taken root in the highly polished hardwood floor. His arms, too, hung uselessly at his sides. Only then did Remo realize Chiun's free hand had drifted around to his lower spine. By manipulating the proper pressure points simultaneously, the Master of Sinanju had effectively paralyzed his pupil.
"Come, Remo," Chiun said softly. "We go."
"Go?" Remo said, dumbfounded. "We can't go."
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"Oh, you will leave," Esther said with infuriating certainty.
Remo ignored her. "Now is not the time to give our notice, Chiun. She knows too much. She can blow the whole shooting match. We can't leave her."
Remo strained until beads of perspiration and frustration formed on his forehead, but he failed to move a single millimeter.
"We cannot help by destroying this one," Chiun said, sniffing the air once more. "She is a mere agent of her master."
Esther got back to her feet and strolled over to Remo, standing nose-to-nose with him. The noxious rotten-egg smell clung to her billowy garments.
"Listen to your father," Esther breathed. "The House of Sinanju has reached the end of its cycle in this millennium. It is time for one more powerful than the mortals of your pitiful village to rule the earth. Be frightened, Sinanju, for your every thought, your every action, your every reaction, is known. Your years of glory are near an end." She smiled gleefully. "East has met West, the prophecy is fulfilled."
Her smile rapidly changed to a look of horror as Esther found herself suddenly airborne and sailing backward into her living room.
She slammed full force into the wall over the couch. Her head snapped back, cracking soundly into a wide, gleaming window frame. She crashed painfully to the floor, upending cushions from the couch. Her nose gushed a fountain of bright, sticky blood.
In that flash of time Remo saw the blurry hand of
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the Master of Sinanju—kimono sleeve flapping—as it settled back to Chiun's side.
"Know you this, agent of evil," Chiun intoned. "Sinanju will never be sport for your master's underlings. We acknowledge his presence in the world at this time and will lie in wait for the day when he once again walks among the gods. Until that hour, Sinanju yields."
With that, Chiun whirled the protesting Remo around like a mannequin and propelled him hastily from Ranch Ragnarok.
Once they were gone, Esther pulled herself painfully to her feet. She ripped a handful of tissues from an end-table dispenser and tried to soak up the ceaseless
How of blood that ran from her rapidly swelling nose.
When she heard the footsteps coming down the hallway, she didn't even bother to look up. She knew that sleady, confident tread.
"Aren't you worried they'll come back?" Esther honked.
"They are gone for now," Kaspar said. He eyed her appraisingly. "You performed well."
"Thanks," Esther said snidely. "That's the last lime I take a crash course in your gobbledygook. I think that old fart broke my nose."
"The Master of Sinanju is a formidable opponent," Kaspar agreed. He sat in one of Esther's garish Louis Oiiainrxc chairs.
"What is a Master of Sinanju?" Esther asked.
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"And what was all that assassin crap you made me parrot for them?"
"It does not matter now," Kaspar said thinly.
"Bull—"
Kaspar shot her a controlling glance.
Esther let the matter drop. She tested her bloody nose with a clean tissue. The crimson flow had slowed.
Kaspar paused briefly, watching as Esther heaved the scattered cushions back on the sofa.
"The latest oracles appear to have drained the current mortal vessel."
Esther glared up at him through tearing, blurry eyes. "Don't even think it," she snarled.
"The appearance of the Sinanju masters was disturbing to Apollo's emissary. He vented his agitation through the Pythia."
"I am not doing a kidnapping a day for you, Kaspar!" Esther railed. "No matter how good the money is." Esther gathered up her bloody tissues in a damp wad and fell back onto the couch. ' 'Tell him to count to ten before he vents next time." She massaged her temples gently with pale, tapering fingertips.
"It might not be immediately necessary," Kaspar said, knowing full well that the latest vessel would not last the week. He brushed the crease of his dress pants casually. "The Pythia has indicated that there might be a new investment opportunity for you," he added slyly.
Esther considered his words. She dropped the gory wad on the end table. At last she spoke. "I make no promises," she said dully.
Kaspar smiled. For her the money was everything.
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She would gather more vessels for his master. The Pythia had foreseen it.
To Esther, he said, "You have done well so far. Our master is pleased."
"He ought to be." She pinched her nose gingerly and winced at the pain. "I've got to get some ice on this," she said morosely. Then she got up and headed for the kitchen.
"I have to go away on business in a few days," Kaspar called after her. "Will you be able to handle things in my absence?"
Esther came out holding a dish towel clinking with ice cubes to the injured bridge of her nose. "I was handling church affairs long before you showed up, Kaspar," she snapped.
"Of course," he demurred. "It was not my intention to insult. It is just that, in dealing with our master, there are matters with which you might not be wholly familiar."
"Wholly familiar, please," she mocked. "I've seen you do it a hundred times," she said. "Kill a goat, hatch a prophecy. How hard can it be?"
"How hard, indeed?" Kaspar smiled an infuriating, tight-lipped smile. He stood to go. ' 'If we have guests, you will escort them to me?" he said unnecessarily.
"With bells on," Esther muttered. She screwed her eyes shut, trying to blot out the image of the annoying little Greek.
"In that case, good night." He headed for the door.
"Good night," Esther murmured.
After he had gone, she fumbled the makeshift ice bag back onto her nose, wincing at a flash of new pain.
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As the soothing ice numbed the stinging, she wondered briefly who this Master of Sinanju was and why Kaspar had refused to meet with him himself. For Esther's part, she hoped she'd see him again. She'd see to it that the old man wouldn't land another cheap shot on her holy person.
In the meantime, she would have to secure Kaspar's continued investment advice by supplying virgin number two.
Chapter Nine
The last rays of the dying sun had burned away in streaks of orange brilliance across the gently undulating surface of Long Island Sound, and Harold W. Smith had completely failed to notice.
To some the setting sun was a grand testament to nature's awesome design, but to Smith it was nothing more than the inevitable rotation of the planet on its axis.
Harold Smith felt that it was foolish to be awed by something that happened 365 times a year—366 times during leap year, because whoever had come up with the twenty-four-hour day had produced a flawed model.
And so the sun had set, the shadows in Smith's office elongating slowly to envelop the sparsely furnished room, while Harold Smith continued to sit hunched over his desk oblivious to, what was for most, the completion of yet another life-affirming day.
Smith typed with swift, precise pecks at the touch-sensitive computer keyboard at the edge of his desk. The computer screen, buried beneath the glossy black surface of the desktop, as was the keyboard, shed a weird amber glow upon his pallid features.
He was repeating a procedure Smith thought he had
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used for the final time only a few short days before. And while he monitored his progress on the angled computer screen, one nagging question continually tugged at the back of his mind.
What was Moss Monroe's business with the Truth Church?
As part of his preliminary research into suspected illegal activities on the part of Esther Clear-Seer, Smith had executed a background check on the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth weeks ago. It was during this search that he learned of the purchasing and stockpiling of armaments on the grounds of the sprawling ranch complex, and of the lavish lifestyle the self-proclaimed Divine Prophetess enjoyed on the backs of her shorn flock.
Even with that evidence in hand, Smith remained leery of committing CURE'S resources to the destruction of the Truth Church. The public memory of the Branch Davidian fiasco was too fresh, and at the time of that siege Smith was concerned the federal government was involving itself in a quagmire of sticky constitutional issues it had no business testing. To this day Smith felt America had sat in their living rooms and calmly watched the violation of the First and Second Amendments and, quite probably, the Fourth and Fifth, as the fires in Waco raged.
Smith believed to the very core of his rock-ribbed, patrician soul that the Davidian leader was delusional, and that those who followed him were doomed dupes. But there was no law against religious cupidity or blind, unswerving acceptance of a madman's ravings. In the end the Davidians had simply fallen victim to a different kind of zealotry.
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It was this frame of mind that had Smith willing to shelve the potential problem near Thermopolis earlier in the year. Only recently, after learning of FBI interest in the ranch and of the disappearance of one of their operatives, had Smith reexamined the situation.
As Smith's knobby fingers tapped remorselessly along the desk's edge, the mute computer keyboard lit up like a patchy pale fireworks finale.
What was Moss Monroe's interest? he wondered.
A red alarm light in the upper left-hand corner of the screen began blinking.
Smith had hacked into the files of the Thermopolis First State Bank, and now the computer was demanding the proper access code.
At this, as at each subsequent level of the system, Smith repeated the codes that had gained him admittance once before.
It took but a moment to access the account files of the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth and its head, Esther Clear-Seer.
Smith's brow furrowed as he scanned the information. Nominal changes since the previous check. In fact, there was too little change. Nothing had been taken out of either account in more than a week, and even then it was only a pittance. He reviewed the computerized records. Up until eight months before, there had been a constant cash flow in and out of both accounts. Understandable, considering the funds required to run
a complex the size of Ranch Ragnarok.
Smith pursed his thin, bloodless lips.
If these accounts were now dormant...
Smith pecked rapidly at the keyboard, calling up a
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listing of all accounts controlled by either Esther Clear-Seer or the Truth Church.
It took only three seconds for the computer to respond. There was only one other account, opened at the precise time the other two had been virtually abandoned.
It was an ancillary account in the name of the Truth Church Foundation. The account was wholly separate from the main church account, which was part of the reason Smith had missed it until now.
He cursed inwardly, remonstrating himself for allowing his advancing years to taint the methodical manner with which he approached a problem. Not too many years ago it would have been routine for him to examine the bank files thoroughly the second time through. As it was, he had settled for the two known accounts on his reexamination of the records, and then he was largely concerned with the earlier weapons and explosives purchases. Whatever the reason, it had simply never occurred to him to check for a new account.
For the man who virtually pioneered the discipline of forensic accounting, it was an unforgivable lapse. Age was taking its toll.
Smith read the first few lines detailing the Truth Church Foundation account transactions, then stopped before he came to the first withdrawal.
Smith removed his rimless glasses and blinked several times, as if his vision had suddenly become blurry.
Once he had replaced the glasses, he checked the screen again.
There was no mistaking the figure glowing in amber. The funds of the Truth Church had exploded into the millions of dollars in a matter of two short months.
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Urgently Smith traced the numbered record of the first major deposit.
He had the answer in a matter of seconds. Zen and Gary, the ice-cream kings of New England, had dropped a quarter million dollars into the Truth Church coffers. Their bank kept digitized photocopies of all canceled checks. Smith called up the record of this particular transaction. He was presented with a color image of a garish check. In the lower left, on the memo line, someone had scrawled, "Prophecy."
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