The federal man, he thought.
He turned back to the crowd. "Our path has not been easy, and tonight it grows even more difficult," he said.
The faces of the young people looked up at him questioningly.
"At this moment there is a stranger in our midst. A stranger who seeks to do us harm with lies and hatred for Kali."
Smith heard the words and felt a tightening in his throat. The crowd, unaware of his presence, murmured among themselves. He started to back away. They had not seen him yet; he might still escape.
A hand reached out and grabbed his wrist. He turned and saw the pudgy little Indian man.
"Psst. In here," Ban Sar Din said. He pulled Smith into Baynes's office and locked the steel door behind them.
"He is going to kill you," Ban Sar Din said.
"I gathered that was his intention," Smith said.
"I'm not going to let him kill a federal agent," Ban Sar Din said.
"I never said I was a federal agent," Smith said.
Ban Sar Din slapped his forehead in despair. "Okay, look. I won't argue. Let's just get out of here." Suddenly there was a thumping on the door of the office, and then the thumping took on the rhythm of the chanting voices and the chant was: "Kill for Kali. Kill for Kali. Kill for Kali."
"Maybe withdrawal would be reasonable," Smith said.
"And you'll put in a good word for me with your immigration people?" Ban Sar Din asked. "Remember. I killed no one."
"We'll see," Smith said noncommittally.
The wood around the steel-reinforced door began to squeak ominously under the thudding of many fists. "You got a deal," Ban Sar Din said desperately. He went to the far wall, pressed a button, and a steel panel slid back, opening the room to the back alley. "Quick," he said. He reached the passenger door of the parked Porsche and got in. Smith got in beside him and the Indian started the motor, then peeled away down the alley toward the street.
"Whew," Ban Sar Din said. "That was close." Smith didn't want to hear small talk. "Before, I asked you about the other American. The dark-haired one with thick wrists. Where is he?"
Ban Sar Din turned to glance at Smith. "He's dead," he said.
Smith winced involuntarily. "Dead? Are you sure?"
"I heard Baynes talking," Ban Sar Din said. "That man, Remo?"
"Yes, Remo."
"He was on a plane that took off from the airport a couple of hours ago. It crashed into the lake. I think Baynes put a bomb on it."
Numbly Smith said, "There's no end to his killing, is there?"
"He's crazy," Ban Sar Din said. "He makes the airlines go broke with the murders, and then he buys them. But he doesn't want just money. He wants power, but now the power is too great. He doesn't understand the source of the power."
"The source?" Smith said. "Isn't the source killing?"
"The source is Kali," said Ban Sar Din.
They were two blocks away from the ashram, and Ban Sar Din stopped for a red light. "I don't understand it myself," he said. "The statue was just a piece of junk I bought. But it has power, some kind of power, and I don't-"
They came out of the bushes. They came from behind trees, from beneath the manhole covers in the street. Before the Indian could slam his foot on the accelerator, the Porsche was surrounded by people, dozens of them, male and female, every one of them carrying a yellow rumal.
"Good God," Smith said as they started beating on the car.
They got Ban Sar Din first, smashing through the windows with sticks and rocks, then dragging the little Indian through the splintered glass and beating him until he screamed with the pain.
They beat him repeatedly with bloody rocks and stubs of branches until their faces glistened and their eyes shone wild and hungry, and then Ban Sar Din screamed no more.
Then they came back for Smith.
They opened the door and pulled him out. My attache case, he thought. The lunatics were going to kill him and take the case too. They couldn't do anything with it, of course. The technology of the computer-hookup telephone was probably too sophisticated for any of them. But even if the executive offices at Folcroft Sanitarium caught fire, as they should if Smith failed to make contact within twelve hours, the case would still exist and it might be traced back to Folcroft. And there was a chance, a slim chance, that someone might find out what CURE had once been and the government of the United States would surely topple.
"The case," he called out as the first blow from a stick staggered him.
There were rocks and fists and clumps of hard dirt too, before someone finally said, "What about the case?"
It was the young boy, the one Smith had seen in the ashram. He picked up the attache case off the street. "Hold it, hold it," he said softly to the attackers as he walked through the crowd. "Let's just see what's going on." He extended the case to Smith as if to give it to him. "Here's your case. What's in it?"
But as Smith reached for it, the young boy yanked it back and kicked Smith in the shoulder.
"Important papers, maybe? Or just a little black book with hookers' names in it?" The boy laughed.
"Don't open it. Please," Smith pleaded. Open it, you little bastard.
"Why not?" the boy said. He stood over Smith with his legs apart. His expression bore the unmistakable mark of someone who enjoyed looking down at people. In that instant Smith knew that the boy was A. H. Baynes's son.
"Please don't. Don't," Smith said. "Don't open it." He closed his eyes and tried not to think of it. Joshua Baynes propped the case against the over turned Porsche, just as Smith knew he would. He manipulated the clasps in the usual way, just as Smith knew he would, and the explosives set into the hinges of the case went off with their predictable fireballs. Afterward, the boy lay on the street with black formless stumps where his head and hands had been and the case was gone, an unrecognizable lump of melted plastic and metal.
The body of the car had shielded Smith from the blast, but now he felt a yellow kerchief looped around his neck. He barely minded it. Now I can die, he thought. CURE will die too, but the United States will live.
On his right lay Ban Sar Din's body, little more than a mound of exposed flesh awash in blood. A stone smashed against one of Smith's legs and he flinched. It would be a hard death, as hard as the Indian's had been. Maybe all deaths were hard, he thought. But his was long overdue and his only regret was that he had not been able to report in that A. H. Baynes and this crazed cult were behind the airline murders. But someone else would find out; someone else would stop them. It wouldn't be Remo; Remo was dead, as Smith soon would be. And without Remo, there would be no reason for Chiun to stay in the country. He would return to America, find that his disciple had been killed in a plane crash, and return to his life in his Korean village. Maybe, Smith thought, maybe someday there would be another CURE. Maybe someday, when things got bad enough and America's back was pressed against the wall hard enough, some President would stand up and say: Dammit, we're fighting back. The thought gave him some comfort as, with shaking fingers, he tried to breathe deepy and evenly to control the pain that coursed through his body.
It was time. He reached for the white capsule in his vest pocket, the pill that promised a death fragrant with almonds. He rolled over onto his stomach and popped the pill into his mouth, just as the rumal tightened around his neck.
Then there was a scream. Just one. Before Smith could register the fact that the beating on his body had suddenly stopped, he was being jerked to his feet. He choked, and the poison capsule lodged in his throat. Then he felt himself sailing in free flight. He landed belly-first in an empty lot and spat out the cyanide capsule whole. He lay there staring at the white plastic cylinder for a moment, until his senses awakened again and he turned to see what had happened to his attackers.
There were bodies strewn all over the street, and while a dozen still stood, something seemed to be whirling in their midst, something turquoise that moved so fast there did not appear to be any substance behind the movement.
One by one the young killers dropped, until only one was left, a woman, and she fled. There, on the street, surrounded by bodies, stood Chiun. He folded his hands inside his turquoise brocade robe and walked slowly toward Smith.
"Chiun," acknowledged Smith.
"I am really disappointed in you, Emperor," Chiun said. His voice sounded like bacon sizzling.