Prophet Of Doom td-111

by Warren Murphy

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  surprised nobody's accused me of any kidnappings yet."

  "Don't blame me for your incompetence," Kaspar said sharply. "I am not the one who limited your search to Thermopolis. You could have driven a hundred miles in any direction to collect worthy vessels. You chose the route of least resistance available to you. And the ones you have brought me are nearly useless." He indicated the shell of the Forrester girl seated up on the tripod. "The Pythia has predicted that I will not get a week out of this one."

  "A week?" Esther said disappointedly. She thought of how nearly she came to being caught when she picked up Allison Forrester near the coin laundry. A police cruiser had followed her a few blocks, and she was terrified that they'd pull her over and find the unconscious girl slumped on the floorboards. It was a false alarm. But the prospect of being arrested and imprisoned for kidnapping was terrifying. And now she was going to have to go through it all over again in another week.

  "Apollo's emissary needs stronger vessels," Kaspar said. "These you have collected thus far are so weak they are not worthy of the Pythia's essence."

  "What about the one you brought here with you? Why did she last so long?"

  "That vessel was athletic. She had been a gymnast in her previous existence. As such, she was stronger than the ones you are bringing me. Now, if you please..."

  Esther relented. She removed her hand from the door frame, and it dropped leadenly to her side. Once

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  it was free, the tapestry rocked almost imperceptibly back and forth in the dancing torchlight.

  Kaspar lifted the heavy tapestry and started to exit the room, but he paused momentarily. He turned to Esther.

  "You no doubt heard that I am going to Washington next week," he said. "That night, so the Pythia has instructed me, another vessel will be ready for harvesting. She is in Thermopolis, but the Pythia has indicated that she will not be difficult to obtain. I will give you detailed instructions before my departure." He squared his slim shoulders. "Perhaps we will make your job a little easier for you this one time," he said. And with that he vanished behind the tapestry.

  "Don't do me any favors," Esther muttered bitterly.

  Before she, too, left the room, Esther cast one last look up at the girl on the tripod. None of them had been easy to collect, and it only promised to get harder. With a self-pitying sigh, she followed Kaspar out the door.

  On the lips of the Pythia, behind the curling wisps of yellow phosphorescent smoke, something that almost appeared to be a smile followed Esther's retreating form.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It had been ten days since Remo Williams had been dragged back to Folcroft Sanitarium, and he had been suffering from cabin fever nearly as long.

  Smith would have had a fit if Remo strayed into the patient wing of the sanitarium, and so Remo had taken to prowling the empty, antiseptic hallways of the isolation wards of the building where they were staying like a tormented, lost soul.

  There had been long stretches of time in the past when he and Chiun had lived at Folcroft, but Remo had never been comfortable here. He figured it had something to do with the fact that this was the place where he had awakened after he had been tried and executed for a crime he didn't commit and railroaded into working for the secret organization, his previous existence erased from the public record. A little detail like that tended to take the shine off a new environment.

  Remo found the door to his suite of rooms and shoved open the gunmetal gray panel.

  A low, singsongy voice assaulted his ears as soon as he entered. It was the same off-key melody Remo had been forced to listen to for the past ten days.

  "I'm back," Remo announced glumly.

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  Chiun didn't stop humming. If anything, the noises emanating from his mouth and nose had become even louder. He was puttering around his collection of steamer trunks in the far corner of the room, and the silver dragons on the back of his fiery red kimono appeared to leap and cavort with each cheerful toss of his bony shoulders.

  "Glad you missed me," Remo muttered to himself. He had walked to a convenience store in town to pick up a clutch of newspapers. He pulled them out from under his arm, and set them on the bland, hospital-green carpeting.

  He then sank down to the floor and proceeded to spread the papers across the rug in front of him, like a child reading the Sunday funnies. Remo scanned the headlines.

  There were no stories of further kidnappings in Thermopolis.

  When he had first heard about the attempted abduction and murder of Candy Clay, as well as the kidnapping of the Forrester girl, Remo had wanted to hop the first flight back to Wyoming. He was annoyed with himself for not looking into the original abductions when he had the chance. But Smith had insisted that Remo stay at Folcroft until the CURE director was able to piece together accounts of the Truth Church Ranch.

  Smith wanted to sift through the bank records of everyone who had visited the ranch, and the computer searches were taking longer than he had anticipated. Smith had also argued, quite logically, that with all the press attention Thermopolis had been getting for the kidnappings in addition to the already choking

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  media coverage of the senatorial race, Remo would not be able to perform his job with anonymity. With much regret Remo had relented.

  So all he could do now was sit and wait.

  And the form the waiting had taken was a daily study of the national papers to see if the media swarm in Thermopolis had diminished.

  Remo was leafing through the entertainment section of one of the New York papers when Chiun's humming abruptly ceased. The Master of Sinanju snapped the bronze latches on a gleaming blue trunk and shuffled happily into the center of the room.

  "Welcome back to the land of the living," Remo commented.

  "I had to be certain nothing was stolen," Chiun said matter-of-factly. "Who knows what manner of thieving imbecile Smith employed to carry my precious trunks from that backward state-that-is-not-a-state. They could have lined their pockets with my most cherished possessions."

  "You've been taking inventory for more than a week," Remo growled. "Every stolen hotel towel and packet of stale oyster crackers accounted for?"

  "If you are asking if the meager possessions of a poor old man, which will bring him joy in the twilight years of his life, have been left undisturbed, the answer is yes," Chiun replied coldly.

  "I'm sorry," Remo said with a sigh. Chiun had barely spoken to him in a week, and Remo hadn't meant to pick a fight with him right now.

  Chiun appeared to accept the apology. He had carefully spread his woven tatami mat on the carpet when their things had first arrived, and Chiun now alighted

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  on it, settling to the floor as gently as a downy feather in a windless room.

  "Is there news from Smith?" he asked.

  "News?" Remo asked, puzzled.

  "On the vessel that will return us to Sinanju."

  Inwardly Remo rolled his eyes. He doubted Smith had even bothered to begin making arrangements with the Navy for their transport back to North Korea. There was going to be hell to pay when that bill finally came due.

  Remo shrugged nonchalantly. "I haven't asked him," he said noncommittally, and turned his eyes back to the newspaper's Ann Landers column.

  Chiun's face grew puzzled. "That is strange," he said. "In the past, he has arranged transport for us on much shorter notice."

  Remo only grunted.

  Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed suspiciously at Remo, but his pupil remained captivated by a male correspondent who was having trouble coping with his female supervisor's amorous advances. Finally Chiun produced a small black remote control device from the folds of his kimono and snapped on the television set in the corner of the room.

  The vacuous heads of two anchorpeople appeared on the screen, and Chiun settled in to watch the videotaped highlights of the day's degeneration of Western civilization.

  Remo pulled
his nose out of the paper. It seemed as if Chiun's interest in the tardy submarine had passed for now. Remo was determined not to get in the middle of anything between their employer and the Master of Sinanju. But there was still a question that

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  begged an answer. Something that Chiun had brushed impatiently aside as immaterial while he had been inspecting the contents of his steamer trunks.

  "Little Father," Remo said, "you never did tell me why we were quitting."

  "Shh, Remo," Chiun urged. "I am busy." Chiun's bright eyes were staring at the bubble-brained anchor-woman on the screen as she traded overwritten ad-libs with her blow-dried coanchor.

  "You've been busy all week," Remo complained. "This decision of yours affects me, too. I think I have a right to know why we're leaving."

  Chiun sighed. He carefully pressed the Mute button—something he wished all whites were fitted with—and turned to face his pupil. Behind him the coanchors silently giggled and quipped their way through terrible stories of flood and famine.

  "You have surmised that our departure is connected in some way to our hasty withdrawal from the military encampment," Chiun said.

  "The thought had crossed my mind," Remo admitted.

  Chiun considered. He stroked his wispy beard thoughtfully. At last he spoke. "Remo, I have never told you the story of the braggart Master Tang."

  Remo was suddenly sorry he had asked for an explanation, realizing that he had inadvertently opened himself up to another Sinanju legend. He had heard these stories countless times in the past. More accurately, he had heard most of the stories. He usually tended to nod off about two minutes into each. If Sinanju legends were nothing else, they were great tranquilizers. Now he would have to sit through an hour's

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  worth of the braggart Master Tang's brush with history.

  "Didn't Tang discover Japan?" Remo asked, wearily.

  "I said he was a braggart, Remo, not an idiot," said Chiun. "Please do not interrupt."

  "I'm all ears," Remo said, resignedly.

  "That is hereditary, Remo. There is nothing I can do about them." He folded his hands in his lap, settling into his role as storyteller. "Before he became known as a braggart, Master Tang suffered a far more ignoble distinction," Chiun began. "Remember, this was well after the time of the previous Master Tang, who was trained by the Master Ti-Sung."

  "Of course," said Remo.

  "Just so you do not confuse the two," Chiun explained. "I know it is difficult sometimes for your mind to focus on more than one thing at a time. Sometimes it has difficulty even with the one thing."

  "Yeah, Chiun," sighed Remo, "We all know how dense I am."

  Chiun continued. "You remember the rotten egg odor that surrounded the woman in that encampment of idiots?"

  "How could I miss it," said Remo. "It smelled like her breakfast was repeating."

  "Master Tang encountered that same odor in the past. It has been so recorded in the Sinanju histories."

  "How do you record a smell?" Remo asked, frowning

  "The tunic of the braggart Tang has been preserved so that all future Masters will recognize the odor and

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  beware. And it is a most deadly future that we are now trying to avoid."

  Because he could sense the deep concern in Chiun's demeanor, and out of respect for his teacher, Remo decided to listen to every last word of the braggart Master Tang legend.

  That determination lasted all of four seconds.

  "Hey, Chiun, look," Remo said, pointing to the television.

  A hunching, intense figure with a pair of giant, thick, black-framed glasses glared out from the screen. An ugly print tie was framed on either side by a pair of bright red suspenders. He wore no suit jacket, and his blue-striped dress shirt, though newly ironed, somehow still appeared wrinkled. His long, avian nose and black eyes gave him the appearance of a rumpled buzzard.

  Remo stood and took a few steps toward the TV.

  He recognized the man as Barry Duke, the cable-TV talk-show host who had inexplicably become a kingmaker two presidential races before, even though he had yet to make anybody king of anything. Duke's star, as well as his ratings, tended to rise dramatically during campaign seasons.

  Beside him sat a slight man in a neatly tailored blue suit. Duke ignored the man at his side and blathered pointlessly at the camera, his mouth snapping open and closed like a gulping fish. The oddness of the spectacle was heightened by the continuation of the television's mute mode.

  Chiun was losing patience with Remo's interruptions.

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  "Remo, your appetite for distraction never ceases to annoy me." He tilted his head to look at the screen.

  A caption glowed beneath the tiny man who sat beside Barry Duke.

  Remo read the name aloud. "Mark Kaspar," he said. "Chiun, isn't that the name Esther Clear-Seer mentioned?"

  He was just turning back to Chiun when he saw something black and shiny fly from the tips of the old man's fingers.

  The thrown remote control impacted the television screen in an explosion of blue-and-orange sparks. Jagged chunks of picture tube crashed to the rug and tiny glass shards from a dozen shattered tubes sprayed from the interior of the set amid a plume of black smoke.

  "Are you nuts!" Remo yelled. He hopped through the mine field of sparks and broken glass and pulled the plug on the television. It continued to spill a cloud of thick, acrid smoke into the room.

  "You were not listening," Chiun said placidly.

  "Dammit, Chiun, what's gotten into you lately?" Remo griped. "I think that was one of the guys we're after."

  "We are not after anyone," Chiun corrected sternly. "We are currently between clients. Now, sit down, Renfio, so that I might continue the story of Tang in peace."

  "Master Tang can wait," Remo said, stepping carefully through the shattered glass toward the door. "I've got to find a broom and clean this mess up."

  After Remo had gone, Chiun cast a sorrowful eye over the remnants of the television. It was a shame he

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  had been forced to destroy the wonderfully entertaining device, but if he hadn't Remo would have been off on some fool's errand before he had learned all of

  the facts.

  That this Kaspar on the television was the same one the Clear-Seer woman had spoken of, Chiun had no doubt. Even on the small picture screen Chiun had seen the faint trace of yellow on his fingertips.

  The man was obviously Greek. How fitting. All was as it had been foretold.

  Alone in his basement room at Folcroft, Chiun's face was grim. When Remo heard the tale of Master Tang, he would understand.

  "Wow, that-s just amazing," Barry Duke garbled excitedly to his television audience. "You say you're not affiliated in any way with either of the two major

  parties?''

  "I'm totally independent, Barry," Mark Kaspar said proudly. "But that doesn't mean there isn't common ground between the parties. I think everyone can agree on that point." He paused only a second. "Except, of course, the Republicans and Democrats."

  The next five seconds were filled with a frightening sound which emanated from Barry Duke's throat. It sounded like someone had filled a blender with rocks and hit the Puree switch. This was Barry Duke's trademark laugh.

  "You sound like a man running for political office," Duke announced once he had flipped the switch of his jocularity mode to the standby position.

  Mark Kaspar's features grew concerned. "That isn't up to me," he said somberly. "I've got no political

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  aspirations. I don't do things for selfish reasons, which, Barry, I think you'll agree seems to be the motivation behind everyone who gets into the game of politics these days. No, I long for a simpler time. A time when people did things out of love for their country or for their god. I think that can happen again in America, but not without a lot of hard work and many, many sacrifices."

  At this, Kaspar seemed to smile at his own priv
ate joke, and for an instant the reptile beneath almost overtook him. Then his smile broadened and he announced, "To address your comment, Barry, if the American people decided today that I should run for something, obviously I would have to give it serious consideration."

  Barry Duke shuddered visibly at the words. "Oooo," he announced to his audience. "This man sounds serious."

  Kaspar appeared to take the talk-show host's quirky mannerisms irLstride. He was a different man from the one who had^shown up in the Truth Church compound eight months before. On television, Kaspar was uncharacteristically jovial and charismatic. He smiled and joked with Barry Duke and grew serious only when the questions demanded a level of stoicism.

  Eventually the conversation turned to national politics, and Kaspar confided his own view that the leader of the free world should be someone who was able to find qualified individuals to run even the most mundane positions in the federal government. To fail in this, Kaspar felt, was a sure sign of weakness that America couldn't afford to demonstrate in these perilous times.

  "And you think this is the case now?" "Far be it from me to throw stones," Kaspar began, "but we can take our current president as a prime example. He's nominated Guthrie Mudge of MUT as assistant secretary of state. Talk around Capitol Hill is Mudge is a shoe-in for the job." Kaspar leaned forward conspiratorially. "I am guaranteeing you, Barry, that Mudge is not going to get that post. And if the President can't work any magic with the boys on Cap for something as simple as a junior State Department appointment, I worry about the next time he has to sit down and talk tough with the Japanese or Germans, or even the Russians."

  Barry Duke said, "Wow! This man is going out on

  a limb."

  Even Duke, who understood politics about as well as a brick understands quantum physics, knew that Congress wasn't going to fight the President over a nothing appointment like Mudge's. Duke immediately changed the subject. "You're from Wyoming," he informed Kaspar.

  "The Equality State," Kaspar returned proudly, as if he were instrumental in Wyoming's decision the previous century that allowed women the right to vote. "There's a hot Senate race going on out there now," Barry Duke said. "Care to make any prognostications?"