Slowly Kaspar trained his penetrating reptilian eyes on her. "Pangs of conscience do not suit you," he said.
"It's not conscience, Kaspar, just simple business sense. This ranch is already the center of all evil as far as those hicks in Thermopolis are concerned. I'm
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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.