It was all Jack could do to keep from pulling the trigger. Practical considerations held him back. Not that anyone would hear the silenced shot; and the possibility that anyone knew Kusum had come here was remote. But disposing of the body would be a problem.
And there was still Kolabati to worry about. What had happened to her? Kusum seemed to care too much for his sister to harm her, but any man who could lead a ceremony like the one Jack had seen on that hellship was capable of anything.
“Where is she?” he repeated.
“Out of harm’s way, I assure you,” Kusum said in measured tones. “And out of yours.” A muscle throbbed in his cheek, as if someone were tapping insistently against the inside of his face.
“Where?”
“Safe… as long as I am well and able to return to her.”
Jack didn’t know how much of that to believe, and yet he dared not take it too lightly.
Kusum stood up.
Jack kept the pistol trained on his face. “Stay where you are!”
“I have to go now.”
Kusum turned his back and walked to the door. Jack had to admit the bastard had nerve. He paused there and faced Jack. “But I want to tell you one more thing: I spared your life tonight.”
Incredulous, Jack rose to his feet. “What?” He was tempted to mention the rakoshi but remembered Kolabati’s plea to say nothing of them. Apparently she hadn’t told Kusum that Jack had been on the boat tonight.
“I believe I spoke clearly. You are alive now only because of the service you performed for my family. I now consider that debt paid.”
“There was no debt. It was fee-for-service. You paid the price, I rendered the service. We’ve always been even.”
“That is not the way I choose to see it. However, I am informing you now that all debts are cancelled. And do not follow me. Someone might suffer for that.”
“Where is she?” Jack said, leveling the pistol. “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to shoot you in the right knee. If you still won’t talk, I’ll shoot you in the left knee.”
Jack was quite ready to do what he said, but Kusum made no move to escape. He continued facing him calmly.
“You may begin,” he told Jack. “I have suffered pain before.”
Jack glanced at Kusum’s empty left sleeve, then looked into his eyes and saw the unbreakable will of a fanatic. Kusum would die before uttering a word.
After an interminable silence, Kusum smiled thinly, stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind him. Containing the urge to hurl the .357 against the door, Jack lined up the empty chamber and gently let the hammer down on it. Then he went over and locked the door—but not before giving it a good kick.
Was Kolabati really in some kind of danger, or had Kusum been bluffing? He had a feeling he had been outplayed, but still did not feel he could have risked calling the bluff.
The question was: Where was Kolabati? He would try to trace her tomorrow. Maybe she really was on her way back to Washington. He wished he could be sure.
Jack kicked the door again. Harder.
Chapter Nine
manhattan
tuesday, august 7
1
For I am become death, destroyer of worlds.
The Bhagavad Gita
With a mixture of anger, annoyance, and concern, Jack slammed the phone back into its cradle. For the tenth time this morning he had called Kusum’s apartment and listened to an endless series of rings. He had alternated those calls with others to Washington, D.C. Information had found no listing for Kolabati in the District or in northern Virginia, but a call to Maryland information had turned up a number for a K. Bahkti in Chevy Chase, the fashionable Washington suburb.
There had been no answer there all morning, either. It was only a four-hour drive from here to the Capitol. She had had plenty of time to make it—if she really had left New York. Jack didn’t accept that. Kolabati had struck him as far too independent to knuckle under to her brother.
Visions of Kolabati bound and gagged in a closet somewhere plagued him. She was probably more comfortable than that, but he was sure she was Kusum’s prisoner. It was because of her relationship with Jack that her brother had taken action against her. He felt responsible.
Kolabati… his feelings for her were confused at this point. He cared for her, but he couldn’t say he loved her. She seemed, rather, to be a kindred spirit, one who understood him and accepted—even admired—him for what he was. Augment that with an intense physical attraction and the result was a unique bond that was exhilarating at times. But it wasn’t love.
He had to help her. So why had he spent most of the morning on the phone? Why hadn’t he gone over to the apartment and tried to find her?
Because he had to get over to Sutton Square. Something within had been nudging him in that direction all morning. He wouldn’t fight it. He had learned through experience to obey those nudgings. It wasn’t prescience. Jack didn’t buy ESP or telepathy. The nudgings meant his subconscious mind had made correlations as yet inapparent to his conscious mind and was trying to let him know.
Somewhere in his subconscious, two and two and two had added up to Sutton Place. He should go there today. This morning. Now.
He pulled on some clothes and slipped the Semmerling into its ankle holster. Knowing he probably would need it later in the day, he stuffed his house-breaking kit—a set of lock picks and a thin plastic ruler—into a back pocket and headed for the door.
It felt good to be doing something at last.
2
“Kusum?”
Kolabati heard a rattling down the hall. She pressed an ear against the upper panel of her cabin door. The noise definitely came from the door that led to the deck. Someone was unlocking it. It could only be Kusum.
She prayed he had come to release her.
It had been an endless night, quiet except for faint rustlings from within the depths of the ship. Kolabati knew she was safe, that she was sealed off from the rakoshi; and even if one or more did break free of the cargo areas, the necklace about her throat would protect her from detection. Yet her sleep had been fitful at best. She thought about the awful madness that had completely overtaken her brother; she worried about Jack’ and what Kusum might do to him. Even if her mind had been at peace, sleep would have been difficult. The air had grown thick through the night. The ventilation in the cabin was poor and with the rising of the sun the temperature had risen steadily. It was now like a sauna. She was thirsty. There was a sink in the tiny head attached to her cabin but the water that dribbled from the tap was brackish and musty-smelling.
She twisted the handle on the cabin door as she had done a thousand times since Kusum had locked her in here. It turned but would not open no matter how hard she pulled on it. A close inspection had revealed that Kusum had merely reversed the handle and locking apparatus—the door that was supposed to have locked from the inside now locked from the outside.
The steel door at the end of the hall clanged. Kolabati stepped back as her cabin door swung open. Kusum stood there with a flat box and a large brown paper sack cradled in his arm. His eyes held genuine compassion as he looked at her.
“What have you done to Jack?” she blurted as she saw the look on his face.
“Is that your first concern?” Kusum asked, his face darkening. “Does it matter that he was ready to kill me?”
“I want you both alive!” she said, meaning it.
Kusum seemed somewhat mollified. “We are that—both of us. And Jack will stay that way as long as he does not interfere with me.”