They were not fast enough.
Hands had his ankles, his arms, and he knew his throat was next. He felt his legs still going through the motions of running, but he was not going where he wanted to go. He was being carried to the base of that statue, which apparently was a new one, because it had more arms now than when he bought it. This was religion out of control, he thought, and somebody ought to do something about it.
"Kali. Kali." The chants began, first as two screams, then as drumrolls, and the feet began hitting the floor and the whole ashram building shook with the chant of Kali. Kali the divine. Kali the death giver. Kali the invincible, goddess of death.
The floor shook underneath his back from the stomping, and his fingers grew numb because his wrists were being held so tightly. He could smell the floor wax and feel the fingertips of young worshipers dig into his ankles.
The chant continued: "Kali. Kali."
It occurred to Ban Sar Din at that moment that if he heard the chants and smelled the floor wax and felt the pounding of feet, he was still alive. And if there was one thing he knew about the cult of Kali, it was that they never did the chanting before a death. It was always after a death had occurred. Of course, he did not know all that much about the cult. He had only bought the statue and given the white kids some Indian names.
Ban Sar Din felt something funny on the soles of his feet. At first it tickled.
"Please don't torture me," he cried out. "Have mercy."
"It's kissing," said the phansigar from Indianapolis. Bar Sar Din opened his eyes. He saw lots of yellow hair near his feet.
"Head north," he said.
"It is so. It is ever so," said the yellow-haired girl. "He does not have the rumal."
"If you say so," said Ban Sar Din.
"We were told you wouldn't," she said.
"Who told you? Get him out of here, whoever he is," said Ban Sar Din. "What does he know?"
They were all looking down at him. He pulled his feet away from the yellow-haired girl and rose. He pulled his upper tunic tighter around his body.
"Do you have the rumal for us?" asked one youth.
"Why do you ask?"
"Tell us you don't. Please," said the blond girl. Tears of joy filled her eyes.
"All right. Since you asked, I don't. Now, step back. Holy men don't like to be crowded."
"Kali the grand. Kali the eternal. Kali victorious," chanted three young men. Their feet began stomping on the wooden floor of the ashram.
"Right," said Ban Sar Din. "I am going to get another rumal. I knew that this time I shouldn't bring one."
"She told us. And we knew," said Holly Rodan.
"Only the Holy One should predict and know," said Ban Sar Din as he looked around at the cult members. No one seemed to object, so he repeated it with more force. "Only one should predict."
"She did. She did," repeated Holly Rodan. "She said that two must be brought before Her. He who has not the rumal will be the Holy One, the leader. And that one is you."
"And the one who has the rumal?" Ban Sar Din asked.
"He will be Her lover. And we will send him to Her in death," Holly Rodan said. "And that one is not you," she said. The blond-haired girl smiled at Ban Dar Sin. "Do you not wonder who that one is?"
"The Holy One never wonders," Ban Sar Din said, wondering what she was talking about.
"Did you not notice that we are now fewer?" Holly Rodan asked him.
The pudgy Indian looked around. There were two faces missing. What had happened to them? Probably they took off for some other wacko cult.
"Here today, gone tomorrow," he said. "Lots of people leave for fly-by-night cults, and we are well rid of them. We just have to make sure that they don't leave with the offerings in the rumals. Kali needs our offerings. It's part of our faith, faith of our fathers, now and certainly through November," he said, thinking of the disconnect notice of the electricity.
"No. They did not leave. They were faithful. They tasted death. It was beautiful. Never have we seen death so strong, death so quick, death so powerful," said Holly Rodan.
"Wait a minute. You mean we lost people to death?" asked Ban Sar Din.
"Long live death. Long live Kali," said the girl. "We have met the great one, the one She wants. We have met Her lover. And we will bring him to Her and he will be carrying the rumal."
Ban Sar Din took the yellow handkerchief that was shoved into his hands and left to go back into his office. Over the edge, he thought. They had gone over the edge. It was one thing to kill for some statue with too many arms, but to talk about bringing Her some lover to die for Her, well, that was just too much. He broke out in a sweat when he realized that he had been only a yellow handkerchief away from being the one.
The pudgy pickpocket was thinking of packing and leaving when he opened the rumal and noticed the very thick roll of green bills. There was twenty-three hundred dollars in cash. There were four rings. Were they combining robberies now? Then he noticed that all the rings were for large fingers. There was a gold Rolex watch with a diamond-studded sweep second hand. There was a lapis-lazuli cocaine case with goldinlaid initials, TVW, and a pearl-handled automatic pistol.
The reverend. They had killed the Reverend Tee Vee Walker.
Ban Sar Din would have run if he hadn't counted the bills again. Over two thousand dollars. And inside the roll of bills was an airline ticket.
He thought at first that it was one of the just Folks cheapo tickets, but this was a first-class round-trip ticket to Stockholm, Sweden. Inside was a note with perfumed stationery. It read: "From your grateful congregation to the Reverend Tee Vee Walker."
On the inside of the ticket was another handwriting, much rougher and less refined. Ban Sar Din guessed that it was Reverend Walker's own writing. He had apparently jotted down something he didn't want to miss in Stockholm: "Madame Olga's House of One Thousand Pleasures."
Ban Sar Din looked at the ticket for a long time. He could use it to flee, but something told him not to. Some inner voice said the ticket was a gift and an opportunity, not to be wasted.
He wrapped the ticket in one of the old rumals with the Kali picture on it, the ones you couldn't buy for a decent price anymore, and went out into the ashram and placed it in one of the statue's many hands. The followers would know what to do.
Three days later, the rumal came back with $4,383.47. Plus jewelry. Real jewelry. And Ban Sar Din learned a new lesson about economic success. You had to spend money to make money.
No more consumer flights. No more semischeduled airlines. From now on, first-class flights.
He called just Folks Airlines and canceled his special year-round consumer fare with the free-use-of-the-bathroom option and the offseason three a.m. Anchorage to Tallahassee fare and told them where to send the refund.
Number 109.
Comedienne Beatrice Bixby found someone who really thought she was funny. She found him next to her in first class headed to Stockholm, Sweden. He was not interested in her body or her fame or her money. He really gave Beatrice what she had always sought on the stage, approval. Everything she said was either brilliant or hysterically funny.
"I'm not that funny," she said, not meaning a word of it. She was as funny as she had always dreamed of being. When the young man invited her to stop off at a little restaurant and then later suggested they go someplace quiet, and then asked a simple favor about a handkerchief, she said:
"Of course. And if it's going around my neck, you can put diamonds in the handkerchief too." She waited for the laugh.
But he wasn't laughing anymore. And soon, neither was she.
Chapter Seven
Dr. Harold W. Smith got the one answer he had always feared from Remo. It was two letters, one word, and the word was "No."
He had gotten a secure telephone hookup to call Remo from the CURE headquarters, which were hidden behind the large brick walls that surrounded Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. It had been many years ago that Remo had been brought to the sanitarium from the morgue of the prison and nursed back to life and to health and then to something more. He had been chosen by Smith because all the tests had shown that Remo's basic character would not let him fail to serve his country.