"That's one plane I'm glad you missed," Remo said, holding her close to him. "Come on, let's get out of here before the crowds arrive."
"You're wringing wet," she said. "You'll freeze."
"Don't worry about it," he said.
He took the first car he found in the parking lot. The driver had left the keys under the front seat, and as he drove from the airport, slowly, past the police emergency lines that had been set up to control sightseer traffic, he turned to her and said, "I have to tell you something about the statue."
"Statue?" Her expression was bewildered.
"The statue you were looking for in New Orleans. I know where it is."
"What? Why didn't ... ?"
"Too long a story for now," he said. "But I'm going back there, and when I'm done, well, then you can have the statue."
"Doesn't the owner have something to say about this?"
Remo wanted to tell her that no one could own Kali, but he stopped himself. Ivory had a hard enough time believing that he had somehow survived the plane crash. Anything more might drive her away in fright. Instead, he just reached over and touched her knee.
"I don't understand it," she said, and he knew what she meant.
"Neither do I," he said. "I hardly know you, but . . ." He couldn't finish.
"Maybe we knew each other in a previous life," she said with a smile.
"Don't tell me you grew up in Newark too," Remo said.
"No. I grew up in Sri Lanka. An old family. But I studied in Switzerland and Paris. Did you ... ?" Remo shook his head. "I don't think our backgrounds have much in common. Time out. Where's Sri Lanka, anyway?"
"It's near India. It used to be called Ceylon."
"Ceylon?" He stared at her so long that he nearly veered off the road.
"You have been in my country?" -she asked.
"No. I've just got the jitters, that's all. Ivory, about that statue."
"Yes?"
"Every time I looked at it, I saw another face over the statue's. I'm sure it was your face. But it was sad and it was crying."
"Is this flattery? Telling me I look like a two-thousand-year-old statue?"
"It wasn't the statue," Remo said. "That's what I'm saying. There was another face behind it, or over it, just hovering there. Your face. I . . . Oh, forget it."
She smoothed his hand. "Are you all right, Remo?"
"Fine. Just forget I mentioned the statue and the face, okay?"
"Okay," she whispered, and kissed him softly on the cheek.
But he could not forget it. The face hovering behind Kali's stone visage had been Ivory's, absolutely, unmistakably.
She was the Weeping Woman.
Chapter Twenty-four
A five-foot-tall box sat in the corner of A. H. Baynes's office, but Holly Rodan did not even glance at it as she dragged herself into the ashram. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her voice caught and broke. "He got away," she gasped.
"Ban Sar Din?"
"No. He's dead. The one that Kali wanted us to kill, the one with the briefcase. He got away."
A. H. Baynes looked up as she said, "And all our people are dead."
"Josh too?" Baynes asked. "My son?"
"I'm sorry," she said. "All of them. I'm the only one who escaped. It was terrible. That awful man had help. This Oriental creature jumped in to save him and it was just brutal and vicious what he did to our people."
Baynes was holding a pencil as he sat behind his desk. The pencil had not moved since Holly had told him of his son's death, but now he tossed it onto the desk blotter and stood up.
"It's time to move on then," he said. "We can't stay here anymore."
"But where will we go?" she asked tearfully.
"Kali has provided," he said. "I have a bunch of Air Asia tickets. What would you think about a place like, say, Hong Kong?"
Her eyes twinkled through her tears. "Hong Kong? Really?"
"Why not. You use those tickets and we'll set up a new temple, a bigger one, in Hong Kong. And we'll start all over again."
"Will we kill some more?" she asked hesitantly.
"Of course," Baynes said.
"That will please Kali," Holly said.
"And what pleases Kali pleases me," he said.
"I know that, Phansigar." She frowned. "But you can't be chief phansigar anymore."
"Why not?"
"Because Ban Sar Din, the Holy One, is dead. That makes you the new Holy One."
"Good. Then you'll be the new chief phansigar," he said, and checked the cash in his wallet.