When it felt safe, he opened his hands. The bullet rested in the center of his outstretched palm like a captured bug. It was hot. A protective sheen of palm perspiration protected the skin from searing.
Carelessly Remo tossed the bullet to the ground and forced himself up the remaining steps to the platform. The girl fired a fourth time. Grimly Remo sidestepped the bullet. Moving in, he knocked the gun from her outstretched hand.
"You didn't predict this!" Esther yelled at Kaspar as she retreated to the farthest edge of the platform.
"Quiet, woman," Kaspar barked. His reptilian eyes stared unblinking at the Sinanju Master.
Remo raised his hand to deal a death blow to the girl on the stool, but the girl stared blankly at the distant wall. She didn't seem aware he was standing before her.
Suddenly her hand lashed out, striking Remo in the chest. And while he was shocked that he hadn't read the blow coming, there was no force behind it. The girl had no special training. She was harmless.
Remo placed her hand gently back at her side and,
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lifting her by the shoulders, removed her from the small wooden seat.
"Don't go anywhere," he cautioned the others.
Remo steered the girl over to where he gently sat her down at the top of the rock staircase. He then turned his dark, menacing eyes on Esther and Kaspar.
Smith would be upset if Remo polished off Kaspar, too, but he couldn't leave now. Not a second time. He'd take care of both of them. Let Smith pick up the pieces later.
Esther looked down the sheer drop at the rear of the hillock. It was almost completely vertical for nearly two stories and ended in a final, drastic slope near the rear wall of the chamber. There was a strong chance she wouldn't survive a fall, but if this Remo came anywhere near her, she'd take the chance.
On the other hand, Kaspar seemed unfazed. He merely stared at the thick-wristed man, like a hungry cobra eyeing a rat.
Remo assumed that the yellow smoke was some kind of new drug that doped up whoever was sitting on the stool, making them susceptible to the commands of the Truth Church leaders. It was hardly effective, considering that the victim seemed unable to leave the smoky chamber, but they were probably trying to figure out a way to concentrate the potent yellow smoke.
As he passed the crevice, Remo noticed something that looked like an antique pottery crock sitting on an outcropping of rock.
He peered through the grate that sat above the fissure. It was definitely some kind of container. And
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through the haze of yellow smoke, Remo could see that the contents were glowing.
Without warning, a dense column of yellow smoke—as focused as the high-pressure spray from a fire hose—burst from out of the crevice and slammed Remo in the chest. He staggered, then went reeling.
Esther Clear-Seer's eyes grew wide with shock. "What the hell's going on?" she hissed to Kaspar. "I never saw that before."
Kaspar ignored her. He took a step toward Remo, his black eyes gleeful as he watched the younger man stagger back toward the edge of the hill.
Remo spun around drunkenly on the platform. The voice thundered loudly inside his head. It was the same voice that had come from the young girl, and yet it was different. It was louder now, more masculine. And somehow infinitely more frightening.
It sounded again.
East has met West. The prophecy is fulfilled.
A throbbing pain behind his temples grew intense as the voice spoke. Remo toppled backward, over the lip of the platform. He skidded on his back halfway down the rocky incline, the sharp rock surface tearing viciously at his T-shirt and gouging his flesh.
In spite of the pain, some lucid part of Remo's mind told him that he had inhaled something vile in the smoke.
That something was inside his mind. He felt like a drowning man, and when he looked up he saw the girl, sitting immobile where he had placed her. Her expression as she stared into space was dull and lifeless.
The drug. Whatever had affected the girl was now inside him. Remo charged his lungs with purifying air,
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trying to dispel the force that now raged in his mind, hoping to quell the voice within him.
Kaspar and Esther Clear-Seer now appeared at the top of the staircase behind the girl. Kaspar was grinning maliciously.
The girl sat before them, catatonic. They had made her like this. With his training, Remo knew that he should be able to fight off the effects, but she hadn't had a chance. And all at once something told him that this was the reason for the mysterious kidnappings in Thermopolis. He didn't know if it was the voice that told him or his own instincts; he simply knew it to be true with a perfect inner knowledge.
Remo gritted his teeth and resolved to make the pair of them pay dearly for each missing child.
Save all pity for yourself, Sinanju!
Remo covered his ears in pain. The smoke in the room seemed to be drawing down toward him, surrounding him in a thick yellow fog. He felt an odd tingling sensation in every nerve ending as the sulphur smoke weighed heavier around him.
"Consider yourself fortunate, Mr. Williams," Kaspar called down. "You were predestined to be the strongest of all the vessels of Apollo. Your body will serve as host to the second Delphi, the center of the world." Kaspar took a step down toward Remo. "Together we will change the course of history."
The rotten-egg smell intensified as the yellow smoke thickened around Remo. Something within him was fighting for possession of his body.
"The hell we will," Remo growled, and the voice that rattled up his smoke-filled throat was his own.
Kaspar started, shook his head with disbelief.
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You are mine! the voice inside Remo growled. You will learn to fear, Sinanju. For I will be your teacher!
Remo could feel the smoke that swirled around him begin to seep into his every pore. There was something else, something intangible at the fringes of his mind. It was as if a second consciousness had invaded his very soul. It was vague and indistinct. A phantom presence toying at the periphery of his thoughts.
He could not allow it. He could not let himself fail.
With an overwhelming effort, Remo pushed himself down the rest of the rocky incline. He tumbled to a stop at the base of the hill.
As he pushed himself to his feet, he was vaguely aware of Kaspar's face distorted in shock.
Like a toddler taking its first shaky steps, his legs still oozing blood from open wounds, Remo took a hesitant step forward. He would not let the force within take over his mind.
He staggered to the side door. With a slap the heavy slab of metal sprang open. Beyond, crickets chirped loudly at the midnight sky.
' 'Where are you going?'' Kaspar asked desperately.
Remo shot the small man a keep-away-from-me glance and stumbled drunkenly out into the black Wyoming night.
At the top of the Pythia platform, the flow of yellow smoke ceased, as if exhausted.
Chapter sixteen
"Of course, Mr. Kaspar is deeply troubled by these latest developments. He feels particularly sorry for the children, if the allegations against T. Rex Calhoun are true. But we mustn't lose sight of the fact that, at the moment, they remain just that—allegations." Mike Princippi stifled an urge to grin. The early-morning press conference had brought back in a flood his old political feelings. It felt great to be in the limelight again.
Hands were raised in the sea of reporters at the National Press Building in Washington. Princippi pointed randomly at one.
"Any comment on T. Rex Calhoun's reasons for dropping out of the race for Senate?" the reporter asked.
' 'I know only what you ladies and gentlemen of the press have told me," Princippi lied.
Of course he knew why Calhoun had dropped out. It was a foregone conclusion—once Mark Kaspar had instructed Princippi to leak the molestation story to the Prince's old friends at the New Democracy magazine. Kaspar had supplied the names of the y
oung victims—all now of legal age and more than willing to tell their stories to a press that had ignored them until
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now. Kaspar had also persuaded Calhoun's former psychiatrist to speak to the magazine about the candidate's most private sessions. He didn't ask how Kaspar had convinced the doctor to go public with his story, but he assumed it had something to do with that strange temple at Ranch Ragnarok.
"How did Mr. Kaspar find out about Mr. Calhoun's record?" a reporter inquired.
"Mr. Kaspar has a great many friends. He also has an uncanny ability to size up a person the moment he meets him. Truthfully it's possible that he surmised everything from seeing the man on television, then confirmed his suspicions through his vast network of business and political allies. His ability to get to the heart of things is really quite astounding."
Some in the press scoffed at that observation.
"Any further comments on the State Department confirmation vote today?"
"Just that Mr. Kaspar feels the President's nominee will be defeated," Princippi remarked.
"He has the votes, Mr. Princippi," the congressional reporter from BCN News said blandly.
"Mr. Kaspar feels the President's nominee will be defeated," Princippi repeated.
"Is it possible Mr. Kaspar is mistaken?"
"I have not yet known him to be wrong about anything," Princippi said flatly.
Laughter rippled out at one end of the briefing room, making Princippi glower. Someone muttered that Kaspar's first mistake had been choosing the former governor as a political ally.
"Are there any further questions?" Princippi asked haughtily.
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' 'Will Mr. Kaspar comment on the disappearance of Senator Cole's daughter?" asked the CNN reporter.
The snickering in the room subsided.
Princippi's eyes gleamed craftily as he absorbed this unexpected information.
Without missing a beat, he answered, "Our hearts go out to the Cole family at this troubling time. That's all for now, gentlemen."
As he excused himself from the room, Michael ' 'the Prince" Princippi was deeply troubled by this worrisome news concerning Senator Cole's daughter. If the story broke big, the little bitch could knock his first press conference in ten years off the front pages.
Harold Smith scanned the kidnapping report of Lori Cole with silent concern.
The CURE computers automatically pulled the story off the UPI wire, triggered by the Thermopolis and Truth Church connections.
The Associated Press had been quick to pick up the report and had disseminated a rewritten version of the UPI story to its subscribers. It made all the morning news shows.
With a fresh angle on the Thermopolis kidnappings, it would not be long before the press descended like starving vultures on the sleepy Wyoming town.
Alarming, as well, was the fact that the mysterious player in all of this, Mark Kaspar, had left Washington unexpectedly the previous evening. Smith discovered that Kaspar had taken a late flight from Washington not long before Remo had departed for Wyoming.
On the small black-and-white television in his Fol-croft office, Smith channel-surfed between the
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morning shows, looking for anything, any nuggets concerning Thermopolis or Mark Kaspar, and praying that Remo didn't show up in the background of any on-the-scene reports.
Two major networks carried stories about Kaspar's appearance on television the previous evening. One anchorman described Kaspar as both "charismatic and enigmatic" and alluded to the fact that the "man from Wyoming" was a secret adviser to a great many Washington politicos. He went on to quote a Times/ Mirror poll that had been conducted among "Barry Duke Live" viewers the previous evening that showed seventy-two percent of respondents favored a Kaspar run for public office—with a margin of error of plus or minus two percent.
Smith was amazed that people were willing to go on record for or against someone who had been in the national spotlight for barely one hour. It seemed that in the new electronic frontier of politics, Americans were willing to commit themselves to any candidate or issue on the strength of hardly any information at all.
When the news segment ended, the newsman joked with the morning show's weatherman and perky co-anchor about Kaspar's prediction of failure for the President's State Department nominee that morning. He opined Kaspar had about as much of a chance of being correct as the weatherman had of growing hair. The weatherman, an overweight, middle-aged man swathed in a flaming red sarong and high heels, burst into tears.
As the weatherman blubbered and pulled the giant fruit-garnished hat from atop his bald pate, the fire-
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engine red phone on Smith's desk began to ring. Smith switched the television off, shaking his head slowly. The older he got, the less the CURE director found he understood modern American culture.
Smith picked up the hot line to the White House.
"Yes, Mr. President."
"What in God's name is going on out in Wyoming, Smith?" the President demanded, his hoarse voice angry-Smith sat up rigidly in his cracked leather chair. "I beg your pardon, sir?'' he asked.
"Calhoun dropped out of the race," the President began. "That means an even weaker opposition candidate going up against Cole in the fall. I have no complaints there. I'm running roughshod over Congress just as it is. But now I'm hearing Cole might bail out over this kidnapping thing. I want you and your people to get the hell involved in this thing. This smells of someone tampering with a senatorial campaign. We can't have that, unless it's my party doing the tampering."
Smith considered. Did he dare tell the President that CURE was already involved, at least on the periphery of what was happening in Wyoming? After a moment's consideration, during which he kept the leader of the free world on hold like some telephone salesman, Smith decided that it would be best for all concerned if the President was kept in the dark.
He cleared his throat before speaking.
"Mr. President, may I remind you that it is against the organization's charter to involve itself in domestic politics?"
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"I know that, Smith. But, dammit, this crosses party
lines."
"That may be, sir. But with Calhoun no longer in the picture, if the status quo is maintained, no party has a clear advantage. I cannot use our resources to ensure a Cole run."
"I don't think you have the full picture, Smith," the President said tersely. "You know about this Mark Kaspar?"
"I am aware of him."
"Well, I just got off the phone with the minority and majority leaders in the House. It seems Kaspar has done an end run around me on this State Department appointment. They're voting in ten minutes, and I've just been informed that my shoo-in is going to
lose."
Smith pursed his lips. "Really." He tried to force indifference into his voice, but interest silvered his lemony tone.
"At least the members of my own party had the decency to let me know they were turning on me," the President went on bitterly. "The House Minority Whip hinted that Kaspar prodded Princippi to use political leverage against him and a bunch of the others." The President sighed. "I wish I knew what it was, because I'd sure as hell use it now," he added.
Smith's mind leaped to the Zen and Gary check with the word "prophecy" scrawled on the memo line. He turned his attention back to the matter at hand.
' 'I sympathize, Mr. President. But as I said, CURE cannot become embroiled in a domestic political situation. If there is something else...?"
"No," the President said levelly. "But you might
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want to keep an eye on Kaspar. At the rate things are going now, when you pick up this phone in a couple of years, he might be the one on this end of the line."
The President hung up.
Smith slowly replaced his own receiver.
Mark Kaspar. The enigmatic little man seemed to be at the center of everything swirling around the Church of the Abso
lute and Incontrovertible Truth. And now the field was being cleared for a run for the Wyoming Senate seat.
As Smith worked to isolate a dozen separate trains of thought, his computer screen began to flash a silent amber signal.
The Folcroft system had picked up something relevant to the events unfolding in Thermopolis. It was just a stroke of luck that half an hour before, upon learning of the abduction of Jackson Cole's daughter, Smith had included the disappearances of the other young girls within the search parameters of the CURE computers.
As he read the information on his buried computer screen, Smith's leaden pallor grew darker with something almost bordering on excitement.
One of the kidnapping victims had been recovered one hundred miles away from Thermopolis in the dense woods of Hot Springs State Park.
And she was alive....
Chapter Seventeen
The chatter of human voices pushed slowly into his consciousness.
Remo opened his eyes. The room was small and sparsely furnished. He was lying on a single bed beneath a set of long, tightly closed Venetian blinds.
There was another bed, still made, next to his own. Beyond that was a simple dresser, a chair and a console television. The set was on and was the source of the muted conversation that had awakened him.
The morris chair before the television was occupied.
Remo sat up, swinging his legs around to the floor. Despite a slight feeling of dizziness, the strange sensation he had experienced at Ranch Ragnarok seemed to have passed.
The person in the chair sensed Remo's movement and quietly shut the television set off.
"Welcome back to the land of the living."
Remo ignored the speaker, noticing for the first time the items atop the bureau. A bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a torn-open package of gauze and two spools of white adhesive tape. A small tin trash barrel beside the bureau overflowed with bloodstained rags.
He looked down. He wore only his shorts. His bare thighs were bound with tape and gauze. In the center
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