"She doesn't want to embark," Remo said. "She wants to get on."
But the plane was moving away from the terminal. Through the window, Remo saw Ivory stopped by a maintenance man wearing headphones. She looked up at the taxiing plane in despair, then set down the boxes and bags in her arms and waved at the plane. It was a good-humored gesture, the resignation of a victim to one of life's little screw-ups.
Remo felt worse, hurt and cheated. He had barely known the woman named Ivory, but still he felt that he had known her forever, and now, as quickly as she had entered, she was gone from his life.
As the plane roared into takeoff, Remo picked up the soft fabric overnight bag Ivory had left under the seat. Perhaps there was some identification in it, he thought. But inside were only a couple of nightgowns, all lace and silk-like her, he thought-and a small bag filled with toiletries that carried the same soft scent he remembered from the brief moment he had held her.
It was a strange scent, not flowery like most perfumes, but deeper, somehow intoxicating. And for a moment he didn't know if he really liked it, but then he remembered her face, and decided he did.
But there was no identification in the bag, and sadly he put it back under the seat.
The plane was up now, barely a hundred feet in the air, but instantly turning west away from Lake Pontchartrain. Remo heard a deep rumbling from beneath the craft, as if it were a large flying bird noisily digesting its dinner. Within a half-second the sound had exploded into a deafening roar. In another second the whole front of the plane had ripped off and shattered into fragments before his eyes. A stewardess screamed, blood pouring from her mouth and ears, then fell backward toward the gaping hole, hit a ragged metal edge, then flew into space, leaving a severed arm behind. Everything loose in the plane fell through the opening. Some seat belts snapped under the strain and gave up their passengers to the gaping maw in the front of the craft.
The plane was tumbling toward the water. Remo heard someone whimper, "Oh, my God." And he wondered if even God could help them all now.
Chapter Twenty-two
It was late and Smith was bone-tired when he reached the ratty Seagull Motel on Penbury Street.
As he started to enter the building, he heard chanting coming from a nondescript structure almost directly across the street from the motel.
Chanting?
Across the street from where Remo had stayed? Smith's fatigue disappeared. His heart racing, he walked across the street, pushed open the door, and stepped inside. The big room was dark. Immediately he was assaulted by the acrid sting of burning incense and the overpowering heat from too many human bodies in an enclosed space.
The people were young, some of them barely into adolescence, and they were chanting at the top of their voices. The object of their attention was a statue set in a prominent position on a small platform at the front of the room. The chanters bowed frequently to the statue, raised their arms, and whirled around in improvisational ecstasy. It seemed to Harold Smith that every activity the group embraced was singularly useless and undignified.
He scanned the room thoroughly, then sighed and backed toward the doorway. His weariness returned. A. H. Baynes was not there, and neither was Remo. It had been an idea worth exploring, he told himself, even though it had led, like all his other ideas in this case, to a dead end.
He was at the door when a strange little Indian man shouted to him. "You. What do you want here?"
None of the chanters paid any attention to them, and Smith said dryly, "I doubt very much if I want anything here."
"Then why are you here? You just walk in?"
"The door was open. I did just walk in."
"Why did you walk in?" the Indian asked irascibly. "Are you looking for religion?"
"I'm looking for a man named A. H. Baynes. My name is Smith."
The Indian took a sharp, startled breath of air. "Baynes?" he squeaked. "No Baynes here. Sorry." He pushed Smith firmly to the door. "You find yourself another church, okay?"
"There's another man I'm looking for," Smith said. "Tall, with dark hair. He has thick wrists-"
The Indian pushed him out the door and Smith heard it lock behind him.
On the other side, Ban Sar Din leaned against the door sweating. Then he pushed his way through the crowd of faithful and went into A. H. Baynes's office in the rear of the ashram.
"A federal agent was here," he said.
Baynes looked up, bemused, from behind the desk. "But he's not here anymore, is he?"
"He was here. Just a few minutes ago, looking for you. Oh, unfortunate star that I was born under . . ."
"How did you know he was a fed?" asked Baynes, suddenly more interested. "Did he tell you that?"
"I knew," the Indian said. The veins in his neck throbbed visibly. "He is of the middle age, with tight lips. He wears steel eyeglasses and he has a briefcase and he says his name is Smith. Of course he is a federal agent."
Baynes rubbed his chin. "I don't know. It could be anybody."
"But he was looking for you. And when I told him you weren't here, he wanted the other one."
"What other one?"
"The one that the crazies said is supposed to be Kali's lover."
Baynes stiffened, then relaxed with a smile. "He'll have a hard time finding him," he said.
"It doesn't matter," Ban Sar Din said, his voice now rising near the panic level. "He'll come back. Maybe next time with the immigration people. I can be deported. And if they find out about you . . ."
"If they find out what about me?" Baynes asked chreateningly.
Ban Sar Din flinched at the hint of violence in the man's eyes. It had been growing, a deep malice that had swelled as he had extended his power over the devotees of Kali. Ban Sar Din could not answer. Instead he just shook his head.
"Damn right, Sardine," Baynes said. "There's nothing for anybody to know about me. Nothing at all. All I do is go to church a lot, and don't you forget it. Now, get out of my way. I've got to go talk to the troops."
"I'm looking for a man named Remo. Tall, dark hair," Smith told the clerk at the Seagull Motel.
"Big wrists?" the clerk said. Smith nodded.
"You're too late. He went out a few hours ago. Tossed some money on the counter and left."
"Did he say where he was going?" Smith asked.
"No."
"Is his room still empty?"
"Sure. This isn't that kind of place. We rent rooms by the night, not by the hour," the clerk said.
"I'll take his room," Smith said.
"It hasn't even been cleaned yet. I got some other rooms."
"I want his room."
"All right. Twenty dollars for the night. Payable now."
Smith paid him, took the key, and went up to the room. The bed had been slept on, not in, but there was nothing to give him a hint of where Remo had gone.
He sat heavily on the bed, removed his steel-rimmed spectacles, and rubbed his eyes. Just a few hours' sleep. That's all he wanted. Just a couple of hours' sleep. He lay back on the bed in the dingy room, his hands folded across the attache case which he held on his stomach, and the case buzzed.
Smith dialed the combination which freed the two locks, opened the case, and lifted the telephone. When he received a series of four electronic signals, he put the telephone receiver into a specially designed saddle bracket inside the case. Seconds later, the instrument noiselessly began printing a message which emerged on a long narrow sheet of thermal paper from a slot inside the case.
There was another sequence of four beeps which indicated the message was over, and Smith replaced the receiver, tore off the paper, and read the message that had come from his computer at Folcroft:
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON A. H. BAYNES. TWO DAYS BEFORE FIRST DEATH REPORTED ON INTERNATIONAL MID-AMERICA AIRLINES, BAYNES SOLD SHORT 100,000 SHARES OF IMAA AT $48 PER SHARE. AFTER DEATHS ON IMAA, STOCK DROPPED TO ONE DOLLAR PER SHARE AND BAYNES COVERED HIS SHORT POSITION. PROFIT TO BAYNES, $4.7 MILLION. DAY BEFORE AIR EUROPA KILLINGS, BAYNES PURCHASED THROUGH BLIND STOCK FUND SIMILAR NUMBER OF SHARES OF AIR EUROPA AND AFTER DEATHS COVERED SHORT POSITION. PROFIT REALIZED, $2.1 MILLION. BAYNES HAS REINVESTED MOST OF PROFITS INTO PURCHASING STOCKS OF BOTH COMPANIES AND NOW HOLDS CONTROLLING INTEREST IN BOTH AIRLINES AS WELL AS MAINTAINING CASH PROFIT OF $1.9 MILLION. END MESSAGE.