They showed some identification to a uniformed guard, who quickly waved them through the turnstile and pointed them to a ramp thirty feet away.
The foursome went up the ramp, then down stone stairs into the playing surface of Kezar Stadium. They carefully checked the bandstand platform, which had been erected in the center of the stadium, poking around under it. Then, apparently satisfied, they walked across the field and up another ramp that led to locker rooms and a suite of offices.
They passed through a door that read "Absolutely No Admittance" and into a suite of offices. Inside, the pudgy young Indian woman said, "Shit, this is hot," and began to strip off her robe.
When the robe was off, the woman was a woman no longer. Wearing the disguise had been Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor, and now he was resplendent in a white satin suit with pants that were gathered and pufied out from hip to knee, then wrapped tightly about his calves, and a Nehru jacket with a jeweled collar.
He shook himself, as if trying to detach himself from his sticky hotness.
"Hey, you, what's your name?" he shouted to one of the middle-aged Indian men who bore silver stripes down their foreheads. "Go outside and see if you can find that television shmuck. He's supposed to meet us here at twelve."
He turned to go into an inner office. The young American followed. At the doorway, Dor said over his shoulder: "And you, Ferdinand, keep your eyes open for those troublemakers. I don't want to have to leave here in disguise too."
Ferdinand De Chef Hunt smiled. His teeth shone pearly white, as white as the two perfectly round white stones he manipulated in the fingers of his right hand, the two stones, one of which he knew would be blood red before the evening was over.
The inner office was a small, remorselessly air-conditioned room, with only overhead lighting and no windows.
"This'll do," said Dor, plopping himself into a chair behind the large wooden desk.
"I have found him, O Blissful One," came an Indian voice from the door. Dor looked up and saw the Indian man leading in a tweedy young man with bushy red hair and glasses.
"Good, now everybody split. I want to talk to this guy for a while. About tonight."
"Tonight will be a night of beauty, Blissful Master," said the Indian.
"Yeah, sure. Tell me again about the cume potential," he said to the television man. "What can we grab on just one network, live, catching both coasts?"
"We will catch the spirit of all those who seek after truth," the Indian man spoke again.
"Will you get the hell out of here with your drivel? I've got business to talk about. Well?" he said again to the television man.
"Actually, we envision that your program slot will fit neatly into the gap between…"
Hunt smiled again and followed the Indian out of the room, closing the door behind him. Television merchandising did not interest him. Only killing did.
Although the program was not to begin until 8 p.m., the crowd began arriving at 5 o'clock. They were mostly young, mostly hairy, mostly intense, although there were more than a few who smuggled in their own secular bliss devices in paper bags in hip pockets, or in tightly rolled joints stashed into the corners of regular cigarette packs.
Another early arrival carried a bag, but it did not contain bliss. Elton Snowy walked through the entry turnstile and up the steps into the stadium, then downstairs to get as close as possible to the bandstand. In his right arm he carried a large bag, the top of which showed a pile of pieces of fried chicken. Under the chicken was a plastic bag filled with gunpowder, steel filings, and the highly explosive heads of railroad detonating caps.
Snowy moved down the steps toward the first row of seats. Against his left leg he felt the uncomfortable thumping of the .38 caliber pistol he had taped to his leg. He didn't know if a pistol shot would detonate his homemade bomb, but he was going to try it. Unless he found Joleen first. He squeezed his bag grimly, as if resisting an invisible attempt to remove it from him.
Remo, Chiun, and Joleen were late arrivals, it being well after dusk when they entered Kezar Stadium.
Chiun's luggage from San Diego had finally arrived at the San Francisco hotel suite Remo had rented, and Chiun had insisted upon watching his beautiful dramas, which is what he called afternoon television soap operas. He would not hear of leaving before they were over, unless, of course, Remo wanted to take him again to Disneyland and the fun ride in the Flying Bucket.
Since that was the thing Remo wanted to do least in the world, they waited, and it was only after the last TV serial was over that Chiun rose from the floor, his red robe swirling about him, and said: "We will never get to Sinanju by waiting here."
Inside the stadium, they found a madhouse. The crowd was small in comparison to the size of the stadium, only 15,000 people. The Divine Bliss followers sat close in, in the box seats and the infield folding chairs, distinguishable instantly by their pink robes and the look of the zealot in their eyes. But that was only half the crowd. The other half consisted of curiosity seekers, troublemakers, motorcycle gangs, and they roamed the higher reaches of the stadium, mugging the unwary, fighting with each other, and slowly, systematically destroying stadium equipment.
And over all this confusion rose the raucous voices of a singing group, six men and a girl, who were souling their way through old down-home gospel classics, whose lyrics had been revised to substitute Master or Blissful Master for Jesus.
At least one of the parties was delighted. Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor sat in the small office with the television representative, snapping his fingers and saying over and over, "Cool. Cool. That's the way we do it. Cool."
"It reminds me somewhat of Billy Graham," said the earnest young TV man, watching the closed circuit screen that flickered ghostly green in the darkened office.
"Don't knock Billy Graham," said the maharaji. "He's got a nice set. The man's beautiful."
Dor glanced at his watch. "The speakers'll start soon. They're cued for forty-five minutes. Then we start the broadcast, it picks up with my being introduced by one of those nigger Baptists, and then I go on and do my number."
"That's it. That's the schedule," said the TV man.
"Beautiful," said Dor. "You can split now. Go make sure your cameramen take their lens caps off or whatever it is you people do."
Remo left Chiun and Joleen in the playing field section of the stadium to which Chiun's red robes and Joleen's pink sari won them easy admittance. The first speaker was on, a Baptist minister explaining how he had given up false Christianity for the service of a greater good, the work of the Blissful Master. It would have taken very sharp eyes to notice, as the minister waved his arms above his head, that his wrists were faintly scarred.
"That man has been shackled," said Chiun to Joleen.
"He was in Patna," Joleen said, noncommittally.
"Your master is an evil person," said Chiun.
Joleen looked at Chiun and smiled softly. "But he is my master no more. I have a new master." Tenderly she squeezed Chiun's hand, which he flickingly removed from hers.
Meanwhile, Remo made a wrong turn and found himself on the wrong side of the stadium, trying to wend his way along corridors, which generally became boarded over and closed. But all stadiums are alike, and there are always rooms and offices through which one can piece his way to get past roadblocks.
Remo paused in one office to stop a rape, and because he did not have a lot of time, he prevented the rape in the simplest way possible, by rendering the offending instrument harmless.
Then he was back into the corridors, darting into and through offices, and finally he was on the far side of the stadium, trotting along a corridor that led to a ramp that led to the bandstand.