Holy Terror Read online

  Snowy’s last stop was a bar across the street from a railroad yard, where he drank bourbon, struck up a conversation with a drunken off-duty switchman, and finally wound up buying a dozen railroad detonating caps for fifty dollars cash.

  While no report of that transaction reached the police, the first two reports had set them in motion. Two city detectives got a description of Snowy but could not find him registered in any motel, because by now Snowy was in a furnished room under an assumed name, carefully opening shotgun shells and pouring the powder into a plastic bag.

  The detectives dutifully reported their failure to find Snowy. Their report went to the detective commander and was routinely picked up by an FBI messenger. The agent-in-charge of the San Francisco office read the report. Normally, he would have flipped it into an outbasket full of other inconsequential matters. But today was different.

  For the past week, there had been a highest-priority order that any unusual activity in arms buying should be reported cross-channels to the CIA in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The agent-in-charge did not know why; he suspected it had something to do with that guru coming to San Francisco and the CIA wanting to avoid an international incident, but it was no real business of his until someone told him it was a real business of his.

  He picked up the safe line and called Washington.

  · · ·

  A house in Mill Valley, across the bay from San Francisco, resounded with “Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.”

  “In other words, you failed,” said Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor.

  Hunt smiled and shook his head. “In other words, I sized them up. They’re tough, that’s all.”

  “I tell you, man, I’m not going to put my ass in a sling by having any Bliss rally with those two nuts around.”

  For a moment, he looked like a frightened little boy.

  Hunt rose from his chair and put a hand on the fat teenage shoulder. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll be there. If either or both of them come, they’re gone. That’s it.”

  Blaring in the corner of the room was a television set. The announcer’s voice cut into the automatically ignored music of the singing commercial with a bulletin: “Three men wounded in an outbreak of violence at an amusement park. Details at six o’clock.”

  Dor turned to Hunt. “You?” he asked.

  Hunt nodded. “They were bugging me.”

  The Blissful Master looked at Hunt’s cold face for a moment, then smiled. “All systems go, man. We’re gonna bliss ’em to death tomorrow night.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The reports on Elton Snowy’s ammunition purchases were, within hours, on the desk of the high CIA official who had asked for them.

  His name was Cletis Larribee and he was fifty-one years old and a native of Willows Landing, Tennessee, where he had been for many years elder and Sunday deacon and lay preacher and president of the Men’s Club of the Monumental Baptist Church.

  Larribee had failed to distinguish himself with the OSS during World War II and had also failed to distinguish himself during postwar service with the fledgling intelligence operation that was a spinoff of the wartime OSS and would someday grow up to be the CIA. He had further failed to distinguish himself by never getting into any trouble, and this had so distinguished him in latter-day Washington that when the post of number two man at the CIA had opened up, the then president had said, “Put that Bible-thumping characterization omitted in charge. At least we know he won’t expletive deleted up.”

  Cletis Larribee had no intention of expletive deleting up. He wanted to serve America, even if sometimes America did not seem to want serving. It was becoming godless and revolutionary, casting aside old values, with nothing to replace them. Cletis Larribee never cast aside old values without replacing them with something.

  It fell into Larribee’s province to know that the Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor was in the United States to hold a Blissathon, and as he had explained to his superior, “All we need is to have this holy man knocked off in America, what with the state of the world and all,” and that argument had won him the right to get domestic police reports on arms purchases in San Francisco, and now he studied the Elton Snowy reports with deep and growing worry.

  He decided to call a friend of his, a high official in the FBI, for advice, but his friend’s secretary told him that the FBI official was in the hospital. “Oh, no, nothing serious. Routine checkup, that’s all.”

  Larribee telephoned another close friend in the State Department, India desk.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Larribee, but Mr. Volz is in the hospital. No. Nothing serious. Just his usual physical.”

  Three hospitalized friends later, Cletis Larribee began to suspect that something might be wrong. He confided this to his two closest friends at lunch at an inexpensive restaurant outside Washington, D.C. Perhaps the maharaji’s life was in danger, he felt.

  “Nonsense,” said Winthrop Dalton.

  “Double nonsense,” said V. Rodefer Harrow III. “Nothing can imperil the Blissful Master’s plans.”

  “He is truth,” said Dalton.

  “He is perfect truth,” said Harrow, not wishing to be outdone.

  “He is mortal,” said Larribee, “and he can die at the hands of an assassin.”

  “Nonsense,” said Dalton.

  “Double nonsense,” said V. Rodefer Harrow III. “The Master’s security arrangements are like he is. Perfect.”

  “But against an assassin with a bomb?” said Larribee.

  “I am not at liberty to discuss them,” said Dalton, “but the security arrangements are more than adequate. We made them ourselves.” He looked to Harrow for reassurance.

  “Right,” said Harrow. “Made ’em ourselves.” He signaled the waiter to bring another free tray of cellophane-wrapped cheese crackers, one of the reasons he had always liked this restaurant.

  “Maybe I should alert the FBI,” said Larribee.

  “No,” said Dalton. “You should simply follow instructions and be at Kezar Stadium tomorrow night—prepared to show America the right way. Do you have everything you need?”

  Larribee nodded and glanced down at his tan leather briefcase. “I’ve got it all. Cuba. Chile. Suez Canal. Spain. The whole works.”

  “Good,” said Dalton. “When America sees you join with the Blissful Master, all America will flock to his side.”

  “And don’t worry,” said Harrow. “The Blissful Master is protected by God.”

  Larribee smiled. “The Blissful Master is God.”

  Dalton and Harrow looked at him, and after a pause Dalton said, “Yes, he is, isn’t he?”

  And three hundred miles north of Washington, D.C., in a sanitarium on the shores of Long Island Sound, Dr. Harold W. Smith read a sheaf of reports that failed to quell his uneasiness.

  The highly placed people that Remo had named to him as followers of the maharaji had been placed into hospitals, at least until Dor had left the country.

  But there might be more, and Smith had no line on who they were or what they might be planning. Add to that the absolute blank drawn so far on the maharaji’s whereabouts. Add again Remo’s report that someone had tried to kill him that day in San Francisco.

  The sum total was trouble. “The big thing,” whatever it was, was coming, and Smith felt powerless. Not only could he not stop it, he couldn’t even identify it, and right now his only hope was Remo.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The sun was at 12 o’clock high when two Indian men wearing pink robes, a pudgy fat Indian woman in a pink robe and a veil wrapped tightly around her head, and a thin young American man arrived at the back gate of Kezar Stadium.

  They showed some identification to a uniformed guard, who quickly waved them through the turnstile and pointed them to a ramp thirty feet away.

  The foursome went up the ramp, then down stone stairs into the playing surface of Kezar Stadium. They carefully checked the bandstand platform, which had been erected in the center of the stadium
, poking around under it. Then, apparently satisfied, they walked across the field and up another ramp that led to locker rooms and a suite of offices.

  They passed through a door that read “Absolutely No Admittance” and into a suite of offices. Inside, the pudgy young Indian woman said, “Shit, this is hot,” and began to strip off her robe.

  When the robe was off, the woman was a woman no longer. Wearing the disguise had been Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor, and now he was resplendent in a white satin suit with pants that were gathered and puffed out from hip to knee, then wrapped tightly about his calves, and a Nehru jacket with a jeweled collar.

  He shook himself, as if trying to detach himself from his sticky hotness.

  “Hey, you, what’s your name?” he shouted to one of the middle-aged Indian men who bore silver stripes down their foreheads. “Go outside and see if you can find that television shmuck. He’s supposed to meet us here at twelve.”

  He turned to go into an inner office. The young American followed. At the doorway, Dor said over his shoulder: “And you, Ferdinand, keep your eyes open for those troublemakers. I don’t want to have to leave here in disguise too.”

  Ferdinand De Chef Hunt smiled. His teeth shone pearly white, as white as the two perfectly round white stones he manipulated in the fingers of his right hand, the two stones, one of which he knew would be blood red before the evening was over.

  The inner office was a small, remorselessly air-conditioned room, with only overhead lighting and no windows.

  “This’ll do,” said Dor, plopping himself into a chair behind the large wooden desk.

  “I have found him, O Blissful One,” came an Indian voice from the door. Dor looked up and saw the Indian man leading in a tweedy young man with bushy red hair and glasses.

  “Good, now everybody split. I want to talk to this guy for a while. About tonight.”

  “Tonight will be a night of beauty, Blissful Master,” said the Indian.

  “Yeah, sure. Tell me again about the cume potential,” he said to the television man. “What can we grab on just one network, live, catching both coasts?”

  “We will catch the spirit of all those who seek after truth,” the Indian man spoke again.

  “Will you get the hell out of here with your drivel? I’ve got business to talk about. Well?” he said again to the television man.

  “Actually, we envision that your program slot will fit neatly into the gap between…”

  Hunt smiled again and followed the Indian out of the room, closing the door behind him. Television merchandising did not interest him. Only killing did.

  Although the program was not to begin until 8 p.m., the crowd began arriving at 5 o’clock. They were mostly young, mostly hairy, mostly intense, although there were more than a few who smuggled in their own secular bliss devices in paper bags in hip pockets, or in tightly rolled joints stashed into the corners of regular cigarette packs.

  Another early arrival carried a bag, but it did not contain bliss. Elton Snowy walked through the entry turnstile and up the steps into the stadium, then downstairs to get as close as possible to the bandstand. In his right arm he carried a large bag, the top of which showed a pile of pieces of fried chicken. Under the chicken was a plastic bag filled with gunpowder, steel filings, and the highly explosive heads of railroad detonating caps.

  Snowy moved down the steps toward the first row of seats. Against his left leg he felt the uncomfortable thumping of the .38 caliber pistol he had taped to his leg. He didn’t know if a pistol shot would detonate his homemade bomb, but he was going to try it. Unless he found Joleen first. He squeezed his bag grimly, as if resisting an invisible attempt to remove it from him.

  Remo, Chiun, and Joleen were late arrivals, it being well after dusk when they entered Kezar Stadium.

  Chiun’s luggage from San Diego had finally arrived at the San Francisco hotel suite Remo had rented, and Chiun had insisted upon watching his beautiful dramas, which is what he called afternoon television soap operas. He would not hear of leaving before they were over, unless, of course, Remo wanted to take him again to Disneyland and the fun ride in the Flying Bucket.

  Since that was the thing Remo wanted to do least in the world, they waited, and it was only after the last TV serial was over that Chiun rose from the floor, his red robe swirling about him, and said: “We will never get to Sinanju by waiting here.”

  Inside the stadium, they found a madhouse. The crowd was small in comparison to the size of the stadium, only 15,000 people. The Divine Bliss followers sat close in, in the box seats and the infield folding chairs, distinguishable instantly by their pink robes and the look of the zealot in their eyes. But that was only half the crowd. The other half consisted of curiosity seekers, troublemakers, motorcycle gangs, and they roamed the higher reaches of the stadium, mugging the unwary, fighting with each other, and slowly, systematically destroying stadium equipment.

  And over all this confusion rose the raucous voices of a singing group, six men and a girl, who were souling their way through old down-home gospel classics, whose lyrics had been revised to substitute Master or Blissful Master for Jesus.

  At least one of the parties was delighted. Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor sat in the small office with the television representative, snapping his fingers and saying over and over, “Cool. Cool. That’s the way we do it. Cool.”

  “It reminds me somewhat of Billy Graham,” said the earnest young TV man, watching the closed circuit screen that flickered ghostly green in the darkened office.

  “Don’t knock Billy Graham,” said the maharaji. “He’s got a nice set. The man’s beautiful.”

  Dor glanced at his watch. “The speakers’ll start soon. They’re cued for forty-five minutes. Then we start the broadcast, it picks up with my being introduced by one of those nigger Baptists, and then I go on and do my number.”

  “That’s it. That’s the schedule,” said the TV man.

  “Beautiful,” said Dor. “You can split now. Go make sure your cameramen take their lens caps off or whatever it is you people do.”

  Remo left Chiun and Joleen in the playing field section of the stadium to which Chiun’s red robes and Joleen’s pink sari won them easy admittance. The first speaker was on, a Baptist minister explaining how he had given up false Christianity for the service of a greater good, the work of the Blissful Master. It would have taken very sharp eyes to notice, as the minister waved his arms above his head, that his wrists were faintly scarred.

  “That man has been shackled,” said Chiun to Joleen.

  “He was in Patna,” Joleen said, noncommittally.

  “Your master is an evil person,” said Chiun.

  Joleen looked at Chiun and smiled softly. “But he is my master no more. I have a new master.” Tenderly she squeezed Chiun’s hand, which he flickingly removed from hers.

  Meanwhile, Remo made a wrong turn and found himself on the wrong side of the stadium, trying to wend his way along corridors, which generally became boarded over and closed. But all stadiums are alike, and there are always rooms and offices through which one can piece his way to get past roadblocks.

  Remo paused in one office to stop a rape, and because he did not have a lot of time, he prevented the rape in the simplest way possible, by rendering the offending instrument harmless.

  Then he was back into the corridors, darting into and through offices, and finally he was on the far side of the stadium, trotting along a corridor that led to a ramp that led to the bandstand.

  He turned the corner. Ahead of him he saw a door marked “Absolutely No Admittance” and two burly men in pink robes standing in front of it with arms folded.

  Remo approached the men.

  “Hi, fellas,” he said. “Nice day, wasn’t it?”

  They did not speak.

  “A perfect day,” said Remo. “For bananafish.”

  They remained silent, not deigning to look at him.

  “All right, boys, move aside,” said Remo. “I’ve got to t
alk to the swami.”

  A sharp voice came from behind Remo. “First me,” and Remo turned and saw the young American from the carnival.

  “Oh, yeah, you,” Remo said. “Did you bring your plates?”

  “I won’t need them,” said Ferdinand De Chef Hunt, moving a few steps closer, until only fifteen feet separated him and Remo.

  Inside the closed door, Maharaji Dor checked his watch again, looked at the monitor, and saw the network symbol flash on. Time to go. At these rates, he couldn’t afford to waste any time.

  He stuck his head through the door into the next office, where Winthrop Dalton and V. Rodefer Harrow III sat with Cletis Larribee.

  “Everything ready here?” he said.

  “Yes, Blissful Master,” said Dalton.

  Larribee nodded.

  “Okay. I’m going out now. You be in the wings in ten minutes.”

  Dor went back into the office, closed the door, and went through the other door onto a private ramp that led up into a dugout in the infield.

  Hunt took the two small stones from his pocket as he faced Remo.

  “Plates. Now stones,” said Remo. “When do you graduate to pies?”

  Hunt only smiled. He positioned the two stones carefully on his palm and fingertips. It was as his grandfather had shown him. The old man had described it to young Ferdinand in terms of animals, but now Hunt knew the old man was talking about people.

  “There are some animals that are different from others,” the old man had told him. “They’re stronger. They’re faster. Sometimes they’re smarter.”

  “And how do you bring them down?” the young boy had asked.

  “You do it by using their own powers against them.” The old man had stood up and gestured toward the woods. “Did you see him?”

  “Who?” asked the boy.

  “There’s a wild boar out there. Tough, fast, mean and smart. He knows we’re here, and he’s just waiting for us to move on so he can move on.”