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the girl. Kaspar was grinning maliciously.
The girl sat before them, catatonic. They had made her like this. With his
training, Remo knew that he should be able to fight off the effects, but she
hadn't had a chance. And all at once something told him that this was the
reason for the mysterious kidnappings in Thermopolis. He didn't know if it was
the voice that told him or his own instincts; he simply knew it to be true
with a perfect inner knowledge.
Remo gritted his teeth and resolved to make the pair of them pay dearly for
each missing child.
Save all pity for yourself, Sinanju!
Remo covered his ears in pain. The smoke in the room seemed to be drawing down
toward him, surrounding him in a thick yellow fog. He felt an odd tingling
sensation in every nerve ending as the sulphur smoke weighed heavier around
him.
"Consider yourself fortunate, Mr. Williams," Kaspar called down. "You were
predestined to be the strongest of all the vessels of Apollo. Your body will
serve as host to the second Delphi, the center of the world." Kaspar took a
step down toward Remo. "Together we will change the course of history."
The rotten-egg smell intensified as the yellow smoke thickened around Remo.
Something within him was fighting for possession of his body.
"The hell we will," Remo growled, and the voice that rattled up his
smoke-filled throat was his own.
Kaspar started, shook his head with disbelief.
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You are mine! the voice inside Remo growled. You will learn to fear, Sinanju.
For I will be your teacher!
Remo could feel the smoke that swirled around him begin to seep into his every
pore. There was something else, something intangible at the fringes of his
mind. It was as if a second consciousness had invaded his very soul. It was
vague and indistinct. A phantom presence toying at the periphery of his
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thoughts.
He could not allow it. He could not let himself fail.
With an overwhelming effort, Remo pushed himself down the rest of the rocky
incline. He tumbled to a stop at the base of the hill.
As he pushed himself to his feet, he was vaguely aware of Kaspar's face
distorted in shock.
Like a toddler taking its first shaky steps, his legs still oozing blood from
open wounds, Remo took a hesitant step forward. He would not let the force
within take over his mind.
He staggered to the side door. With a slap the heavy slab of metal sprang
open. Beyond, crickets chirped loudly at the midnight sky.
' 'Where are you going?'' Kaspar asked desperately.
Remo shot the small man a keep-away-from-me glance and stumbled drunkenly out
into the black Wyoming night.
At the top of the Pythia platform, the flow of yellow smoke ceased, as if
exhausted.
Chapter sixteen
"Of course, Mr. Kaspar is deeply troubled by these latest developments. He
feels particularly sorry for the children, if the allegations against T. Rex
Calhoun are true. But we mustn't lose sight of the fact that, at the moment,
they remain just that allegations." Mike Princippi stifled an urge to grin.
The early-morning press conference had brought back in a flood his old
political feelings. It felt great to be in the limelight again.
Hands were raised in the sea of reporters at the National Press Building in
Washington. Princippi pointed randomly at one.
"Any comment on T. Rex Calhoun's reasons for dropping out of the race for
Senate?" the reporter asked.
' 'I know only what you ladies and gentlemen of the press have told me,"
Princippi lied.
Of course he knew why Calhoun had dropped out. It was a foregone
conclusion once Mark Kaspar had instructed Princippi to leak the molestation
story to the Prince's old friends at the New Democracy magazine. Kaspar had
supplied the names of the young victims all now of legal age and more than
willing to tell their stories to a press that had ignored them until
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now. Kaspar had also persuaded Calhoun's former psychiatrist to speak to the
magazine about the candidate's most private sessions. He didn't ask how Kaspar
had convinced the doctor to go public with his story, but he assumed it had
something to do with that strange temple at Ranch Ragnarok.
"How did Mr. Kaspar find out about Mr. Calhoun's record?" a reporter
inquired.
"Mr. Kaspar has a great many friends. He also has an uncanny ability to size
up a person the moment he meets him. Truthfully it's possible that he surmised
everything from seeing the man on television, then confirmed his suspicions
through his vast network of business and political allies. His ability to get
to the heart of things is really quite astounding."
Some in the press scoffed at that observation.
"Any further comments on the State Department confirmation vote today?"
"Just that Mr. Kaspar feels the President's nominee will be defeated,"
Princippi remarked.
"He has the votes, Mr. Princippi," the congressional reporter from BCN News
said blandly.
"Mr. Kaspar feels the President's nominee will be defeated," Princippi
repeated.
"Is it possible Mr. Kaspar is mistaken?"
"I have not yet known him to be wrong about anything," Princippi said flatly.
Laughter rippled out at one end of the briefing room, making Princippi glower.
Someone muttered that Kaspar's first mistake had been choosing the former
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governor as a political ally.
"Are there any further questions?" Princippi asked haughtily.
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' 'Will Mr. Kaspar comment on the disappearance of Senator Cole's daughter?"
asked the CNN reporter.
The snickering in the room subsided.
Princippi's eyes gleamed craftily as he absorbed this unexpected information.
Without missing a beat, he answered, "Our hearts go out to the Cole family at
this troubling time. That's all for now, gentlemen."
As he excused himself from the room, Michael ' 'the Prince" Princippi was
deeply troubled by this worrisome news concerning Senator Cole's daughter. If
the story broke big, the little bitch could knock his first press conference
in ten years off the front pages.
Harold Smith scanned the kidnapping report of Lori Cole with silent concern.
The CURE computers automatically pulled the story off the UPI wire, triggered
by the Thermopolis and Truth Church connections.
The Associated Press had been quick to pick up the report and had disseminated
a rewritten version of the UPI story to its subscribers. It made all the
morning news shows.
With a fresh angle on the Thermopolis kidnappings, it would not be long before
the press descended like starving vultures on the sleepy Wyoming town.
Alarming, as well, was the fact that the mysterious player in all of this,
Mark Kaspar, had left Washington unexpectedly the previous evening. Smith
discovered that Kaspar had taken a late flight from Washington not long before
Remo had departed for Wyoming.
On the small black-and-white television in his Fol-croft office, Smith
channel-surfed between the
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morning shows, looking for anything, any nuggets concerning Thermopolis or
Mark Kaspar, and praying that Remo didn't show up in the background of any
on-the-scene reports.
Two major networks carried stories about Kaspar's appearance on television the
previous evening. One anchorman described Kaspar as both "charismatic and
enigmatic" and alluded to the fact that the "man from Wyoming" was a secret
adviser to a great many Washington politicos. He went on to quote a Times/
Mirror poll that had been conducted among "Barry Duke Live" viewers the
previous evening that showed seventy-two percent of respondents favored a
Kaspar run for public office with a margin of error of plus or minus two
percent.
Smith was amazed that people were willing to go on record for or against
someone who had been in the national spotlight for barely one hour. It seemed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]