F. Paul Wilson - The Tomb

Jack looked at Kolabati. "Not a bad idea. Had enough of the diplomatic crowd for one night?"

"For more than one night."

"Where shall we go?"

"How about your apartment? Unless you've got a better idea."

Jack could not think of one.

11

Kolabati had spent most of the evening cudgeling her brain for a way to broach the subject to Jack. She had to find out about the durba grass! Where did he learn about it? Did he have any? She had to know!

She settled on the direct approach. As soon as they entered his apartment, she asked:

"Where's the durba grass?"

"Don't have any," Jack said as he took off his tailed coat and hung it on a hanger.

Kolabati glanced around the front room. She didn't see any growing in pots. "You must."

"Really, I don't."

"Then why did you ask me about it on the phone today?"

"I told you—"

"Truth, Jack." She could tell it was going to be hard getting a straight answer out of him. But she had to know. "Please. It's important."

Jack made her wait while he loosened his tie and unbuttoned the winged collar. He seemed glad to be out of it. He looked into her eyes. For a moment she thought he was going to tell her the truth. Instead, he answered her question with one of his own.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Just tell me, Jack."

"Why is it so important?"

She bit her lip. She had to tell him something. "Prepared in certain ways it can be… dangerous."

"Dangerous how?"

"Please, Jack. Just let me see what you've got and I'll tell you if there's anything to worry about."

"Your brother warned me about it, too."

"Did he?" She still could not believe that Kusum was uninvolved in this. Yet he had warned Jack. "What did he say?"

"He mentioned side-effects. 'Undesirable' side-effects. Just what they might be, he didn't say. I was hoping maybe you could—"

" Jack ! Why are you playing games with me?"

She was genuinely concerned for him. Frightened for him. Perhaps that finally got through to him. He stared at her, then shrugged.

"Okay, okay." He went to the giant Victorian breakfront, removed a bottle from a tiny drawer hidden in the carvings, and brought it over to Kolabati. Instinctively, she reached for it. Jack pulled it away and shook his head as he unscrewed the top. "Smell first."

He held it under her nose. At the first whiff, Kolabati thought her knees would fail her. Rakoshi elixir ! She snatched at it but Jack was quicker and held it out of her reach. She had to get it away from him !

"Give that to me, Jack." Her voice was trembling with the terror she felt for him.

"Why?"

Kolabati took a deep breath and began to walk around the room. Think !

"Who gave it to you? And please don't ask me why I want to know. Just answer me."

"All right. Answer: no one."

She glared at him. "I'll rephrase the question. Where did you get it?"

"From the dressing room of an old lady who disappeared between Monday night and Tuesday morning and hasn't been seen or heard from since."

So the elixir was not meant for Jack! He had come by it second-hand. She began to relax.

"Did you drink any?"

"No."

That didn't make sense. A rakosh had come here last night. She was sure of that. The elixir must have drawn it. She shuddered at what might have happened had Jack been here alone.

"You must have."

Jack's brow furrowed. "Oh, yes… I tasted it. Just a drop."

She moved closer, feeling a tightness in her chest. "When?"

"Yesterday."

"And today?"

"Nothing. It's not exactly a soft drink."

Relief. "You must never let a drop of that pass your lips again—or anybody else's for that matter."

"Why not?"

"Flush it down the toilet! Pour it down a sewer! Anything! But don't let any of it get into your system again!''

"What's wrong with it?" Jack was becoming visibly annoyed now. Kolabati knew he wanted answers and she couldn't tell him the truth without his thinking her insane.

"It's a deadly poison," she said off the top of her head. "You were lucky you took only a tiny amount. Any more and you would have—"

"Not true," he said, holding up the still unstoppered bottle. "I had it analyzed today. No toxins in here."

Kolabati cursed herself for not realizing that he'd have it analyzed. How else could he have known it contained durba grass?

"It's poisonous in a different way," she said, improvising poorly, knowing she wasn't going to be believed. If only she could lie like Kusum! She felt tears of frustration fill her eyes. "Oh, Jack, please listen to me! I don't want to see anything happen to you! Trust me!"

"I'll trust you if you'll tell me what's going on. I find this stuff among the possessions of a missing woman and you tell me it's dangerous but you won't say how or why. What's going on?"

"I don't know what's going on! Really. All I can tell you is something awful will happen to anyone who drinks that mixture!"

"Is that so?" Jack looked at the bottle in his hand, then looked at Kolabati. Believe me! Please, believe me ! Without warning, he tipped the bottle up to his mouth. " No !" Kolabati leaped at him, screaming. Too late. She saw his throat move. He had swallowed some. " You idiot !"

She raged at her own foolishness. She was the idiot! She hadn't been thinking clearly. If she had she would have realized the inevitability of what had just happened. Next to her brother, Jack was the most relentlessly uncompromising man she had ever met. Knowing that, what could have made her think he would surrender the elixir without a full explanation as to what it was? Any fool could have foreseen that he would bring matters to a head this way. The very reasons she was attracted to Jack might just have doomed him.

And she was so attracted to him. She learned with an explosive shock the true depth of her feelings when she saw him swallow the rakoshi elixir. She had had more than her share of lovers. They had wandered in and out of her life in Bengal and Europe, and in Washington. But Jack was someone special. He made her feel complete. He had something the others didn't have… a purity—was that the proper word?—that she wanted to make her own. She wanted to be with him, stay with him, keep him for herself.

But first she had to find a way to keep him alive through tonight.

12

The vow was made… the vow must be kept… the vow was made…

Kusum repeated the words over and over in his mind.

He sat in his cabin with his Gita spread out on his lap. He had stopped reading it. The gently rocking ship was silent but for the familiar rustlings from the main hold amidships. He didn't hear them. Thoughts poured through his mind in a wild torrent. That woman he had met tonight, Nellie Paton. He knew her maiden name: Westphalen. A sweet, harmless old woman with a passion for chocolate, worrying about her missing sister, unaware that her sister was far beyond her concern, and that her worry should be reserved for herself. For her days were numbered on the fingers of a single hand. Perhaps a single finger.

And that blond woman, not a Westphalen herself, yet the mother of one. Mother of a child who would soon be the last Westphalen. Mother of a child who must die.

Am I sane?

When he thought of the journey he had embarked upon, the destruction he had already wrought, he shuddered. And he was only half done.

Richard Westphalen had been the first. He had been sacrificed to the rakoshi during Kusum's stay at the London embassy. He remembered dear Richard: the fear-bulged eyes, the crying, the whimpering, the begging as he cringed before the rakoshi and answered in detail every question Kusum put to him about his aunts and daughter in the United States. He remembered how piteously Richard Westphalen had pleaded for his life, offering anything—even his current consort in his place—if only he would be allowed to live.