The Israel Bond Omnibus (33 page)

“Oh, my brothers! I have good omens for you. Last night a jackal cried on my left, a baboon defecated on my right. They are a sign for us mother Thuggees who have lain asleep for, lo! these past fifty years. Rise again! Take up your strangling cords and kill!

“Kill lest ye be killed yourselves!

Kill for the love of killing!

Kill for the love of Kali!

Kill! Kill! Kill!”

The nun shook. “Israel, who are these people?”

“Thugs. The murder cult of India. They worship Mother Kali, goddess of blood. Look! See their leader? He is about to offer Mother Kali a sacred golden melon in homage. Listen, he’s going to chant the centuries-old ritual to her.”

They strained their ears and caught the thin reedy voice of the high priest kneeling before the idol with the melon in his outstretched palms.

“Here’s another melon, Kali, baby,

Cuddle up and don’t be blue....”

Bond nudged Sister. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They were back in the corridor. There was a guttural cry in Chinese. A guard had observed the sudden burst of light in the corridor and was shouting for reinforcements.

“Into this room.” Bond said. And they pushed open another door.

The sign on the Speaker’s rostrum read:

DON’T BUY POLISH HAMS!

DON’T EAT HUNGARIAN GOULASH!

DON’T LISTEN TO JAPANESE RADIOS!

“Good evening, friends of the Western Colorado Chapter of the Vigilante Defenders. My name is Robert Forrest, the national chairman, your keeper of the flame.” The tall rickety-thin man waved a greeting. He wore a green-and-white Sears seersucker suit, a white shirt with brown stripes, red-and-blue tie with a painting of Trigger, Roy Rogers’ stallion, on the front, Army-Navy Store khaki socks and Father & Son brown brogues.

“It is wonderful to see so many fresh, fine, smiling American faces imbued with the fervor for the Vigilante Defenders’ philosophy of life. You know, I’ve been involved with VD for many years now... I think VD, I sleep with VD, I try to spread VD... and in the course of many travels across our great country, from the towering skyscrapers of New York... ’course some of us have good reason to call it Jew York...” his audience tittered... “to the sunny shores of Californigh-ay, where things are so liberal out there that you can’t even call a spade a spade,”... boisterous laughter and prolonged clapping... “in my travels I’ve noticed the evil fingers of the Communist octopus extending into every American home. Did you know, dear VDers, that many of the toys our blessed tots play with are made by—Marx? Here’s a little truck in my hand...”

“Enough,” said Bond.

“I think so,” Sister agreed.

Back into the corridor. “Let’s try this door.” Bond opened a third; it squeaked loudly. The room was very small. A naked bulb cast a pale yellow light on the shabby walls. Little piles of plaster dotted the floor.

“Oh, you must help me! You must!” A huge, truck driver of a hand was crushing Bond’s throbbing shoulder. “My name is Lawrence Talbot.”

He was a large powerful man with a sad yet appealing type of horse face. He wore a dirty white shirt open at the collar, slacks held up by a knotted rope. He was in his bare feet.

“How can I help you, sir?” said a sympathetic Bond.

“There is a curse on me,” the man said in a morose voice. “Soon the moon will be full...”

“It is now,” Sister said helpfully.

“Oh no!” He sat on his unmade bed, his head in his hands. They heard his muffled voice; saw his shoulders shaking. “I have the mark of the beast upon me. When the moon is full I become one myself and kill! kill! kill!”

“You’d be a hit two doors down. Ever think of becoming a Thug?”

“Don’t laugh at me! You don’t believe me. Nobody believes me,” the anguished man croaked.

“I—uh—rather think I do.” Bond was edging toward the door, Sister’s hand in his. He had seen the man’s finger- and toe-nails growing. “Incidentally, I’ll stop around when you’re feeling better, Mr. Talbot. I’ll give you the address of a fine gypsy woman in Vasaria. Name’s Maleva. She knows about these things. Quick, Sister!”

He pulled her roughly out into the corridor and slammed the door into the face of the man, who had charged off the bed, his bared canines framed in a mask of hair.

“Well, none of these doors has gotten us anywhere.”

“There is another one, Israel. With a gold star on it at the far end.”

They approached it cautiously. Bond’s heart pounded as he saw the sign. Journey’s end!

“ROTTEN ROGER COLFAX.”

And underneath: “Society for Promulgating Every Conceivable Type Of Rottenness.”

Israel Bond let a sneer curl his lips. “Sister, you’re looking at the bloodiest fool who ever walked down the pike. I let my romantically-febrile imagination lead me down the garden path. I am guilty of ignoring the obvious for the fanciful.”

He put his ear to the door.

“... payable in cash or equivalent value in diamonds, Premier Chou. Our organization will see to it that the American geologists are constantly harassed. Killed, if need be. Thus, the way will be paved for your People’s Republic of China to be greeted with open arms. You are agreed to these terms? Capital! This is Rotten Roger Colfax—”

“Signing off for the last time.” Bond spoke his gritty sentence as he walked through the door. “The game is up, Nochum.”

“Bond!”

Sister shrilled, “It’s Pablito! What have you done with him, you horrible little man?” She raced to the side of a little boy in raggedy sweater and shorts, whose dried tearstains had formed tributaries on his dirty pinched cheeks. She took a letter opener from Nochum’s Allandale mahogany desk, worked it behind the boy’s back. “You’re free now, little angel,” she wept as the strands fell to the floor.

Bond’s gray eyes held a gleam of menacing amusement “Nochum, you are no dummy—literally.”

Nochum Spector bit his lip, then raised it in a pout of contempt. “That’s correct, Mr. Super-Jew with the low-grade wit that everybody’s supposed to turn cart wheels for. I had you fooled real good. By now you’ve guessed that the Vi Teh Minh men placed a replica of me in the pit. I was in the lead; so I simply rode behind a bush, made a few heart-rending noises and they did the rest.”

“Yes, they did. They murdered two of your countrymen.”

“Hacks! Third-raters! Water boys! They must always perish when they get in a great man’s way, Oy Oy Seven. You were my real target; you’ve always been. But I see that your angel has been sitting on your shoulder again, you lucky, bumbling, overrated, thickskulled—”

“Why, Nochum? Just for the record.”

“Why? Remember what you once said to me—‘Stay in the playpen. This game’s for big boys.’ Well, I sure as hell played it like a big boy, Israel Bond. I organized the world’s most diabolical terror organization with the help of that wacked-up Chink and his gadgets. I, little bitty Nochum Spector, the forgotten nephew of the great M., the old broad with the wisdom of the ages and that
fahkokteh
chicken soup. Do you know what it meant to be the nephew of M.? How the big shots in M 33 and 1/3, including yourself, laughed at ‘poor little Nochum, helpless little Nochum... he’ll never get anywhere... he’ll ride to his pay check on his
tanteh’s
I. J. Fox coattails.’ But I fooled you all. Even though I never got the glory assignments and the booze ’n’ broads that go with ‘em, I wasn’t wasting my time. ‘Poor little Nochum’ was listening, learning and, one day, betraying. Small jobs at first... little tips here and there to Jordan or Syria for a few hundred pounds... then I branched out big in Russia, stung the comrades for a million rubles. Now the Red Chinese are coming through with twenty million
sunyatsens
. And with my Chink No. 2 and his bugs and the wonton bomb I’ll make the world grovel at my feet!”

“I could kick myself—”

“I wish the hell you would,” snarled Nochum, that baby face puckered into an abhorrent glare.

“I overheard your name mentioned, thought you to be dead and concluded the terror organization in question was spelled S-P-E-C-T-R-E. When I referred to that name in my interesting dialogues with Dr. Nu he naturally thought I was referring to
his
affiliation with the Society for Promulgating Every Conceivable Type Of Rottenness. Incidentally, what colossal conceit, Nochum! Surely you must have known one of your old section mates would figure out those initials someday.”

“By then it would have been too late to matter.”

“It’s all over now, little man with big dreams.”

“Not yet!” And Nochum shot through the floor!

“A chute!” Bond cried. “And here on the desk... a button! The little bastard pressed it while waxing so eloquently. God knows where he is now. We’ve got to get up to the convent and warn the folks. There’s an attack coming. They’ll be wiped out in the morning!”