Snowy's next stop was another sporting goods store at the farthest end of Market Street, where the street dissolves into a maze of crossing streets and highways and trolley tracks, seemingly always under repair. There he purchased a .38 caliber revolver and ammunition, again paid cash, again signed a register, and again, a clerk, noting the set to his jaw, waited until the man had left and then called the police department.
Snowy's last stop was a bar across the street from a railroad yard, where he drank bourbon, struck up a conversation with a drunken off-duty switchman, and finally wound up buying a dozen railroad detonating caps for fifty dollars cash.
While no report of that transaction reached the police, the first two reports had set them in motion. Two city detectives got a description of Snowy but could not find him registered in any motel, because by now Snowy was in a furnished room under an assumed name, carefully opening shotgun shells and pouring the powder into a plastic bag.
The detectives dutifully reported their failure to find Snowy. Their report went to the detective commander and was routinely picked up by an FBI messenger. The agent-in-charge of the San Francisco office read the report. Normally, he would have flipped it into an outbasket full of other inconsequential matters. But today was different.
For the past week, there had been a highest-priority order that any unusual activity in arms buying should be reported cross-channels to the CIA in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The agent-in-charge did not know why; he suspected it had something to do with that guru coming to San Francisco and the CIA wanting to avoid an international incident, but it was no real business of his until someone told him it was a real business of his.
He picked up the safe line and called Washington.
A house in Mill Valley, across the bay from San Francisco, resounded with "Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping."
"In other words, you failed," said Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor.
Hunt smiled and shook his head. "In other words, I sized them up. They're tough, that's all."
"I tell you, man, I'm not going to put my ass in a sling by having any Bliss rally with those two nuts around."
For a moment, he looked like a frightened little boy.
Hunt rose from his chair and put a hand on the fat teenage shoulder. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I'll be there. If either or both of them come, they're gone. That's it."
Blaring in the corner of the room was a television set. The announcer's voice cut into the automatically ignored music of the singing commercial with a bulletin: "Three men wounded in an outbreak of violence at an amusement park. Details at six o'clock."
Dor turned to Hunt. "You?" he asked.
Hunt nodded. "They were bugging me."
The Blissful Master looked at Hunt's cold face for a moment, then smiled. "All systems go, man. We're gonna bliss 'em to death tomorrow night."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The reports on Elton Snowy's ammunition purchases were, within hours, on the desk of the high CIA official who had asked for them.
His name was Cletis Larribee and he was fifty-one years old and a native of Willows Landing, Tennessee, where he had been for many years elder and Sunday deacon and lay preacher and president of the Men's Club of the Monumental Baptist Church.
Larribee had failed to distinguish himself with the OSS during World War II and had also failed to distinguish himself during postwar service with the fledgling intelligence operation that was a spinoff of the wartime OSS and would someday grow up to be the CIA. He had further failed to distinguish himself by never getting into any trouble, and this had so distinguished him in latter-day Washington that when the post of number two man at the CIA had opened up, the then president had said, "Put that Bible-thumping characterization omitted in charge. At least we know he won't expletive deleted up."
Cletis Larribee had no intention of expletive deleting up. He wanted to serve America, even if sometimes America did not seem to want serving. It was becoming godless and revolutionary, casting aside old values, with nothing to replace them. Cletis Larribee never cast aside old values without replacing them with something.
It fell into Larribee's province to know that the Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor was in the United States to hold a Blissathon, and as he had explained to his superior, "All we need is to have this holy man knocked off in America, what with the state of the world and all," and that argument had won him the right to get domestic police reports on arms purchases in San Francisco, and now he studied the Elton Snowy reports with deep and growing worry.
He decided to call a friend of his, a high official in the FBI, for advice, but his friend's secretary told him that the FBI official was in the hospital. "Oh, no, nothing serious. Routine checkup, that's all."
Larribee telephoned another close friend in the State Department, India desk.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Larribee, but Mr. Volz is in the hospital. No. Nothing serious. Just his usual physical."
Three hospitalized friends later, Cletis Larribee began to suspect that something might be wrong. He confided this to his two closest friends at lunch at an inexpensive restaurant outside Washington, D.C. Perhaps the maharaji's life was in danger, he felt.
"Nonsense," said Winthrop Dalton.
"Double nonsense," said V. Rodefer Harrow III. "Nothing can imperil the Blissful Master's plans."
"He is truth," said Dalton.
"He is perfect truth," said Harrow, not wishing to be outdone.
"He is mortal," said Larribee, "and he can die at the hands of an assassin."
"Nonsense," said Dalton.
"Double nonsense," said V. Rodefer Harrow III. "The Master's security arrangements are like he is. Perfect."
"But against an assassin with a bomb?" said Larribee.
"I am not at liberty to discuss them," said Dalton, "but the security arrangements are more than adequate. We made them ourselves." He looked to Harrow for reassurance.
"Right," said Harrow. "Made 'em ourselves." He signaled the waiter to bring another free tray of cellophane-wrapped cheese crackers, one of the reasons he had always liked this restaurant.
"Maybe I should alert the FBI," said Larribee.
"No," said Dalton. "You should simply follow instructions and be at Kezar Stadium tomorrow night—prepared to show America the right way. Do you have everything you need?"
Larribee nodded and glanced down at his tan leather briefcase. "I've got it all. Cuba. Chile. Suez Canal. Spain. The whole works."
"Good," said Dalton. "When America sees you join with the Blissful Master, all America will flock to his side."
"And don't worry," said Harrow. "The Blissful Master is protected by God."
Larribee smiled. "The Blissful Master is God."
Dalton and Harrow looked at him, and after a pause Dalton said, "Yes, he is, isn't he?"
And three hundred miles north of Washington, D.C., in a sanitarium on the shores of Long Island Sound, Dr. Harold W. Smith read a sheaf of reports that failed to quell his uneasiness.
The highly placed people that Remo had named to him as followers of the maharaji had been placed into hospitals, at least until Dor had left the country.
But there might be more, and Smith had no line on who they were or what they might be planning. Add to that the absolute blank drawn so far on the maharaji's whereabouts. Add again Remo's report that someone had tried to kill him that day in San Francisco.
The sum total was trouble. The "big thing," whatever it was, was coming, and Smith felt powerless. Not only could he not stop it, he couldn't even identify it, and right now his only hope was Remo.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The sun was at 12 o'clock high when two Indian men wearing pink robes, a pudgy fat Indian woman in a pink robe and a veil wrapped tightly around her head, and a thin young American man arrived at the back gate of Kezar Stadium.