Warren Murphy: The Arms of Kali

"He's dead, isn't he?" the stewardess said. "He's dead."

The boy's mouth opened and then a flood of water and bile came pouring out. The boy gasped and sucked up a huge mouthful of air.

"Not anymore," Remo answered her. "He'll be all right. Take him with you."

He handed the boy to the stewardess, who wrapped her arms about him, then took a seat-cushion between her hands and slid out smoothly into the water.

She was a good one, Remo thought, moving toward the back of the plane. She deserved a medal.

The water now was above his waist and he knew that in only a few minutes this section of the fuselage would go under the lake waters.

The six people still in their seats were unconscious, and a mere glance told Remo that their injuries were more serious than he was able to deal with.

He couldn't let them drown.

He remembered the emergency kits he often saw in the rear of plane compartments, and he went under the water to the very tail of the plane, where he found a large metal container. It was closed and locked, but he ripped off the metal top and felt vinyl under his hands. As he brought it closer to his face, he could see that it was an inflatable raft.

He surfaced again.

The water in the cabin had risen another foot.

He pulled the control on the raft and it began to hiss and expand. Remo moved it toward the jagged opening of the fuselage and pushed it out into the waters of the lake. Then one at a time he came back for the passengers and carried them out and placed them in the raft. He had just gotten the last one on the bright yellow float when he turned and saw the silver section of the plane tip once, as if making a final bow, and then slide down under the water.

He heard the sound of boat motors racing across the water toward them. Fifty feet away he saw the stewardess, still clinging grimly to her life preserver and to the young boy, and he pushed the raft over to her.

When he tried to take the boy from her, she tightened her grip around his body until Remo said, "It's me. It's all right." She recognized him and released the boy, and Remo put him in the raft.

"You're a helluva lady," Remo said, and then he let himself slide under the water and propelled himself toward the shoreline. He didn't want to be "rescued," and he didn't want to be interviewed, and he didn't want to be seen. Perhaps it would serve his purposes best if A. H. Baynes was allowed to think that Remo had died as planned.

He swam away from the large cluster of people standing on the shore, manning emergency lights and playing them on the faces of the survivors a few hundred yards out into the lake. When he was sure that no one could see him and he was out of the ring of lights, he walked slowly onto dry ground.

And couldn't believe his eyes.

There stood Ivory. Her white suit was rumpled and her face looked tense and anxious. "Oh, Remo," she said, and ran into his arms. "Somehow I knew," she said.

He kissed her and immediately felt a rush of triumph flood over him. This is why I'm alive, he thought. And all the guilt and self-recriminations about the people who had died because of him retreated to a remote area of his mind. He was alive and Ivory had come back for him. "How did you know?" he asked.

"I didn't. I just hoped, and then there was the crash and I came running here and somehow I knew that this would be the spot."

"That's one plane I'm glad you missed," Remo said, holding her close to him. "Come on, let's get out of here before the crowds arrive."

"You're wringing wet," she said. "You'll freeze."

"Don't worry about it," he said.

He took the first car he found in the parking lot. The driver had left the keys under the front seat, and as he drove from the airport, slowly, past the police emergency lines that had been set up to control sightseer traffic, he turned to her and said, "I have to tell you something about the statue."

"Statue?" Her expression was bewildered.

"The statue you were looking for in New Orleans. I know where it is."

"What? Why didn't ... ?"

"Too long a story for now," he said. "But I'm going back there, and when I'm done, well, then you can have the statue."

"Doesn't the owner have something to say about this?"

Remo wanted to tell her that no one could own Kali, but he stopped himself. Ivory had a hard enough time believing that he had somehow survived the plane crash. Anything more might drive her away in fright. Instead, he just reached over and touched her knee.

"I don't understand it," she said, and he knew what she meant.

"Neither do I," he said. "I hardly know you, but . . ." He couldn't finish.

"Maybe we knew each other in a previous life," she said with a smile.

"Don't tell me you grew up in Newark too," Remo said.

"No. I grew up in Sri Lanka. An old family. But I studied in Switzerland and Paris. Did you ... ?" Remo shook his head. "I don't think our backgrounds have much in common. Time out. Where's Sri Lanka, anyway?"

"It's near India. It used to be called Ceylon."

"Ceylon?" He stared at her so long that he nearly veered off the road.

"You have been in my country?" -she asked.

"No. I've just got the jitters, that's all. Ivory, about that statue."

"Yes?"

"Every time I looked at it, I saw another face over the statue's. I'm sure it was your face. But it was sad and it was crying."

"Is this flattery? Telling me I look like a two-thousand-year-old statue?"

"It wasn't the statue," Remo said. "That's what I'm saying. There was another face behind it, or over it, just hovering there. Your face. I . . . Oh, forget it."

She smoothed his hand. "Are you all right, Remo?"

"Fine. Just forget I mentioned the statue and the face, okay?"

"Okay," she whispered, and kissed him softly on the cheek.

But he could not forget it. The face hovering behind Kali's stone visage had been Ivory's, absolutely, unmistakably.

She was the Weeping Woman.

Chapter Twenty-four

A five-foot-tall box sat in the corner of A. H. Baynes's office, but Holly Rodan did not even glance at it as she dragged herself into the ashram. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her voice caught and broke. "He got away," she gasped.

"Ban Sar Din?"

"No. He's dead. The one that Kali wanted us to kill, the one with the briefcase. He got away."

A. H. Baynes looked up as she said, "And all our people are dead."

"Josh too?" Baynes asked. "My son?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "All of them. I'm the only one who escaped. It was terrible. That awful man had help. This Oriental creature jumped in to save him and it was just brutal and vicious what he did to our people."

Baynes was holding a pencil as he sat behind his desk. The pencil had not moved since Holly had told him of his son's death, but now he tossed it onto the desk blotter and stood up.

"It's time to move on then," he said. "We can't stay here anymore."

"But where will we go?" she asked tearfully.

"Kali has provided," he said. "I have a bunch of Air Asia tickets. What would you think about a place like, say, Hong Kong?"

Her eyes twinkled through her tears. "Hong Kong? Really?"

"Why not. You use those tickets and we'll set up a new temple, a bigger one, in Hong Kong. And we'll start all over again."

"Will we kill some more?" she asked hesitantly.

"Of course," Baynes said.

"That will please Kali," Holly said.

"And what pleases Kali pleases me," he said.

"I know that, Phansigar." She frowned. "But you can't be chief phansigar anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because Ban Sar Din, the Holy One, is dead. That makes you the new Holy One."

"Good. Then you'll be the new chief phansigar," he said, and checked the cash in his wallet.

"Me? A female phansigar? I-"

"Why not? Kali understands. She was the very first feminist," he said, and he had to hold back the laughter when Holly Rodan nodded sincerely in agreement.