Smith reread the message before he touched a match to it and watched the chemically treated paper flash instantly into a small pile of ash.
So there it was. Baynes not only improved just Folks Airlines' stock performance when the killings stopped there, but also moved into position to make a fortune and take over the two other airlines.
It was enough motive for murder, Smith thought, even for mass murder.
It was Baynes.
He swung his legs off the bed and sat up again. There was no time for rest now.
Then he saw something he had not seen before. He walked across the room and fished the object out of a corner. It was a hand, the hand of a statue, made of some kind of fired clay. As Smith turned it around in his own hand, he realized where he had seen that kind of hand before. It was on the statue in the little storefront temple across the street. So Remo had been there. And probably so had Baynes. His Denver neighbor had said he had joined a religious cult, and it would be too much of a coincidence for that ashram not to be Baynes's new headquarters.
He sighed, readjusted the locks on his attache case, and left the room.
When he got to the storefront church, the door was locked. From inside, he could hear voices, but they were muffled and indistinct. He backed off to the curb, looked the building over, but saw no way to enter it from a higher floor. So he walked to the corner and into an alley to see if he could find a back entrance.
A. H. Baynes thought that politics had lost a star performer when he had decided to become a businessman. But there was still time. He was still young and now he owned three airlines, and when he stopped the killings aboard Air Europa and International Mid-America and merged them with just Folks, his stock interests would be worth a quarter of a billion dollars. Not too shabby, and a pretty good campaign fund with which to launch a political career.
It made pleasant thinking, but first he had the crazies to deal with.
He stood alongside the statue of Kali on the raised platform and looked out at the expectant young faces. "She loves you," he said.
And they cheered.
"And I, your chief phansigar, love you too."
"Hail the phansigar," they shouted back.
"The European operation was a total success and Kali is pleased. And I am pleased that my children have returned to this country safe and sound." He tried a warm smile as he nodded to his son, Joshua, standing nearby. "Of course, it's a little late for my daughter to be up, so she's staying with friends. But Joshua is here to be with you other sons and daughters of Kali. Isn't that right, Joshua?"
"Kill for Kali," Joshua said in a dull monotone. "Kill."
The others picked up the word and soon the room throbbed with the chanting. "Kill. Kill for the love of Kali. Kill. Kill."
Baynes raised his hands for silence, but it took several minutes to quiet down the crowd.
"Soon there will be another trip that you will take for Kali," Baynes said. Just then, Baynes saw in a mirror near the door the reflection of a man in steel-rimmed spectacles. He must have come in the rear door because he was standing in the small hallway that led to Baynes's office.
The federal man, he thought.
He turned back to the crowd. "Our path has not been easy, and tonight it grows even more difficult," he said.
The faces of the young people looked up at him questioningly.
"At this moment there is a stranger in our midst. A stranger who seeks to do us harm with lies and hatred for Kali."
Smith heard the words and felt a tightening in his throat. The crowd, unaware of his presence, murmured among themselves. He started to back away. They had not seen him yet; he might still escape.
A hand reached out and grabbed his wrist. He turned and saw the pudgy little Indian man.
"Psst. In here," Ban Sar Din said. He pulled Smith into Baynes's office and locked the steel door behind them.
"He is going to kill you," Ban Sar Din said.
"I gathered that was his intention," Smith said.
"I'm not going to let him kill a federal agent," Ban Sar Din said.
"I never said I was a federal agent," Smith said.
Ban Sar Din slapped his forehead in despair. "Okay, look. I won't argue. Let's just get out of here." Suddenly there was a thumping on the door of the office, and then the thumping took on the rhythm of the chanting voices and the chant was: "Kill for Kali. Kill for Kali. Kill for Kali."
"Maybe withdrawal would be reasonable," Smith said.
"And you'll put in a good word for me with your immigration people?" Ban Sar Din asked. "Remember. I killed no one."
"We'll see," Smith said noncommittally.
The wood around the steel-reinforced door began to squeak ominously under the thudding of many fists. "You got a deal," Ban Sar Din said desperately. He went to the far wall, pressed a button, and a steel panel slid back, opening the room to the back alley. "Quick," he said. He reached the passenger door of the parked Porsche and got in. Smith got in beside him and the Indian started the motor, then peeled away down the alley toward the street.
"Whew," Ban Sar Din said. "That was close." Smith didn't want to hear small talk. "Before, I asked you about the other American. The dark-haired one with thick wrists. Where is he?"
Ban Sar Din turned to glance at Smith. "He's dead," he said.
Smith winced involuntarily. "Dead? Are you sure?"
"I heard Baynes talking," Ban Sar Din said. "That man, Remo?"
"Yes, Remo."
"He was on a plane that took off from the airport a couple of hours ago. It crashed into the lake. I think Baynes put a bomb on it."
Numbly Smith said, "There's no end to his killing, is there?"
"He's crazy," Ban Sar Din said. "He makes the airlines go broke with the murders, and then he buys them. But he doesn't want just money. He wants power, but now the power is too great. He doesn't understand the source of the power."
"The source?" Smith said. "Isn't the source killing?"
"The source is Kali," said Ban Sar Din.
They were two blocks away from the ashram, and Ban Sar Din stopped for a red light. "I don't understand it myself," he said. "The statue was just a piece of junk I bought. But it has power, some kind of power, and I don't-"
They came out of the bushes. They came from behind trees, from beneath the manhole covers in the street. Before the Indian could slam his foot on the accelerator, the Porsche was surrounded by people, dozens of them, male and female, every one of them carrying a yellow rumal.
"Good God," Smith said as they started beating on the car.
They got Ban Sar Din first, smashing through the windows with sticks and rocks, then dragging the little Indian through the splintered glass and beating him until he screamed with the pain.
They beat him repeatedly with bloody rocks and stubs of branches until their faces glistened and their eyes shone wild and hungry, and then Ban Sar Din screamed no more.
Then they came back for Smith.
They opened the door and pulled him out. My attache case, he thought. The lunatics were going to kill him and take the case too. They couldn't do anything with it, of course. The technology of the computer-hookup telephone was probably too sophisticated for any of them. But even if the executive offices at Folcroft Sanitarium caught fire, as they should if Smith failed to make contact within twelve hours, the case would still exist and it might be traced back to Folcroft. And there was a chance, a slim chance, that someone might find out what CURE had once been and the government of the United States would surely topple.