She was too busy watching the girl. It was the first time Esther had heard the girl speak, and the voice filled her with terror.
Of course Zen and Gary told their friends about Ranch Ragnarok.
In a country where new trends in spirituality were eagerly embraced and salvation was the nearest zir-conian crystal away, the idea of paying top dollar for the prophecies of a seemingly strung-out teenage girl was accepted with an alarming readiness.
Over the following winter a trickle of curious high rollers arrived at the Truth Church gates, all referred to Ranch Ragnarok by the ice-cream gurus. Several other New Agey business leaders, who were as ashamed of their success as Zen and Gary but who had nonetheless made small fortunes selling everything from preworn jeans to computers, posed questions to the oracle at Ragnarok. Esther once thought
51
she recognized a United States congressman, but Kaspar had shooed her from the temple and conducted the man's session with the Pythia—as Kaspar now called the girl—in private.
Nearly eight months had passed since Kaspar first arrived at the ranch, and as the money in the Truth Church Foundation swelled from hundreds of thousands to millions, Esther Clear-Seer found her desire to confront him about his occasional lapses of insolence subsiding.
Esther even dismissed her original fear at hearing the voice of Kaspar's young female friend. She convinced herself that the girl's strange, guttural rasp could have been the result of a decade of cigarette smoking. It could even have been bronchial pneumonia. Lord knew, the girl wasn't looking very healthy
of late.
Esther mentioned this to Kaspar as dawn broke one morning after a particularly grueling session with a sports announcer from one of the major television networks.
"Maybe you should have a doctor look at her,"
Esther muttered.
Kaspar was sorting through a stack of papers piled on a bench at the base of the central rock column. He seemed to have gathered a lot of paperwork since the start of this enterprise and he was becoming increasingly engrossed in whatever it was he was collecting.
With an effort he tore his eyes away from the papers before him. He looked up at the girl, still perched on the tripod, though the smoke from the rock fissure had subsided somewhat.
"Why?" Kaspar asked indifferently.
As if on cue, the girl on the stool swooned and
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toppled over. The stool went one way, flipping out of sight down the back of the hill, and the girl did an unintentional somersault before tumbling roughly down the hard rock surface toward them.
Her bloodied, emaciated body landed in a crumpled heap at the feet of Esther Clear-Seer and Mark Kaspar.
Esther recoiled in horror. As the girl's breath became more and more ragged, she saw her increasingly opulent life-style slip away.
All at once the breathing stopped.
Esther crouched over the body. "She's dead," she announced anxiously.
Kaspar couldn't have shown less emotion if Esther had reported swatting a common housefly. He adjusted his bifocals.
"Then you'll just have to find me a fresh virgin," he said blandly.
"Me?" Esther gulped.
"You," Kaspar said, as if that ended the matter.
And he went back to studying his paperwork.
Chapter Four
Harold W. Smith, head of the supersecret government agency CURE, sat stiff-backed on the rickety wooden chair in the living room of Remo Williams's home in Quincy, Massachusetts.
The chair was old and creaked at his every movement but, Smith noted wryly, it wasn't nearly as old and rickety as he felt.
He had headed CURE—the agency set up outside constitutional limits, whose paradoxical mission it was to preserve the document CURE'S very existence flouted—since its inception, and had watched himself grow older and older in the post. Some said the presidency aged a man, but the pressures a President had to bear were nothing compared to the daily strains placed upon the tired, overworked shoulders of Harold W. Smith.
Intermittent humming came from another room. It was a strange, singsong melody with an odd cadence that stopped abruptly, only to begin again. The Master of Sinanju.
Smith squirmed in his chair. He prided himself on his excellent posture, but lately his lower back had been giving him trouble. Altogether it seemed to him that with his congenital heart defect that should have
54
been treated by a pacemaker, recurring ulcers, frequent headaches, his list of physical problems was growing by the day.
Smith tried to sit up straighter in his chair, hoping to alleviate the pressure on his lumbar region.
All at once the humming in the distant room stopped. A moment later Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, head of the most lethal house of assassins ever to grace the face of the earth, padded silently into the room on black sandals.
He was a delicate bird of an elderly Korean attired in a flowing kimono. His wrinkled skin had the consistency of rice paper. His bones looked fragile where they poked out from various joints. Puffs of cloudy white hair decorated his balding head. A wisp of a beard clung to his chin. His fingernails were long and wickedly sharp.
"Remo has returned," Chiun said to Smith.
Chiun had deserted Smith the instant the CURE director had arrived, claiming the need to attend to "other pressing matters" elsewhere in the house. Smith had volunteered his assistance—after all, Remo was not due for some time—but Chiun had quickly declined the offer, claiming that his work, if done in solitude, would bring even greater glory to his kind and gracious emperor. In truth, in the four hours since Smith had arrived, Chiun had been sitting by a back window watching the spring grass grow.
Remo entered the room a minute later.
"I see the gang's all here," he said, glancing at Smith. "What's up, Smitty?"
Smith stood, grateful for the chance to relieve the pressure on his spine. Chiun interposed himself
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between the two men and drew Remo to the far corner
of the room.
"Where have you been?" Chiun demanded in a whisper. "I have been forced to entertain this decrepit white thing for ages." His hazel eyes cast a quick glance at Smith. ' 'Look how he stands. Like a woman in her last, swelling days of pregnancy. Get rid of him soon, Remo, so that we might eat our dinner in peace." With that the Master of Sinanju sent a gracious nod in Smith's direction and moved back closer to settle to a lotus position in the center of the floor.
"Er, is there a problem?" Smith asked uncertainly.
Chiun waved his hand dismissively. "I was rebuking Remo for a previous wrong," he sniffed.
' 'I see,'' Smith said. He retook his seat, and Chiun cast him an impatient glance from narrowed hazel
eyes.
Remo rolled his eyes. ' 'I saw your rental car in the
side lot, Smitty. What's up?"
' 'Remo, do you recall the incident with the Branch t>avidians in Waco, Texas, a few years back?"
Remo grabbed a chair and sat across from Smith. "I remember the headlines at the time," he said. "Feds Fry Wackos In Waco. You should have sent me and Chiun in to take care of business before it got
started."
' 'It was a consideration. Unfortunately you were on another assignment at the time."
"Yeah, it was a real mess," Remo said. "A bunch of peaceniks descending on women and children with tanks. Who would've thought the attorney general would have found time to play general in between lifting weights and initiating cover-ups?"
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"Remo, please," Smith said. His back was sore, his ulcer was acting up and it seemed that he had completely lost the attention of the Master of Sinanju. He wanted nothing more than to return to his office in Rye, New York.