JSA: Land Of The Thuggee
By Bruce Wayne
Justice Society of America created by Gardner Fox
Dedicated to ME, who has taught me more about being philosophical than anyone.
DISCLAIMER: Most of the characters portrayed in this story are copyright by DC Comics, an AOL/Time/Warner company. They are used without permission for entertainment without profit by the author.
Chapter 3
Morarji Shastri stood on the rock ledge by the mouth of the cave. His long yellow robe hung loosely on his small scrawny frame. Shastri wore a necklace of small copper skulls and held a pickax with a silver blade. Shastri was a guru, the religious leader of the cult of Kali.
More than two hundred followers had assembled at the foot of the mountain. Most wore ragged clothing. Some were clad only in dhoti, the garment usually associated with Mahatma Gandhi. A few wore long silk jackets and had yellow turbans bound about their heads. One of these men was Ram Sonoka, a rajput, or son of a maharaja.
The congregation looked to Shastri for enlightenment. The little man was the voice of Kali, the prophet of the great goddess. Shastri addressed the crowd in a reedy voice that echoed within the rock walls of the valley. His voice may have seemed comical to one who failed to realize the power Shastri commanded.
"Oh loyal children of Kali!" the prophet cried. "The great mother goddess, greater than Lord Shiva who fathered her. For Kali is all things that are woman and all things that are the universe. She is destruction and she is life. She is birth and she is death. She is the pure virgin and the loyal wife."
"Kali bhai, salam," several Thuggees chanted.
"Bhowani, Kali ah-ka-sha," others added.
"It is good that you praise Kali," Shastri declared. "It is good that you honor the goddess of all things. But actions are needed as well as words, my children. Actions and sacrifice. For we are privileged to be her servants, and we have been born at the time of great evil known as Kaliyuga. Only Kalipuja, the worship and sacrifice to our goddess, can assure us of nirvana when the evil time and our life on this earth have both come to an end."
Shastri waved his silver pickax across the congregation like a magic wand. The followers trembled, for they knew the prophet would now speak of a matter both profound and divine.
"Yet some of you question the word of Kali," Shastri declared. "You hesitate to use the silk scarf that is the instrument we must use to slay the evil ones, the devils who walk like men. For the great Kali is also Surga, the slayer of devils."
He continued, "You know the saga of her victories on earth. Once devils walked the earth and Kali struck them down. The goddess of glory ripped the evil ones to pieces as a lioness would tear a goat apart. Yet every drop of blood gave seed to a new monster. So Kali had to kill the beasts without shedding their foul blood. And Kali defeated the devils of that day. So it is our duty to sacrifice the evil ones of the present in the manner taught to us by Kali."
The congregation bowed solemnly and began to chant, but Shastri demanded silence.
"Perhaps some of you doubt my word as the high priest of Kali," he declared. "Perhaps you do not understand why Kali wants you to sacrifice the Americans and the Europeans, who are pale-skinned demons the color of a bloodless corpse. Kali does not need to justify her law to mortals. If a thing is to be done, it is our duty to do it. If a thing is taboo, it is not our place to ask why."
The congregation uttered a collective murmur. They were obviously dissatisfied with the guru's statement, although none dared openly oppose or criticize Shastri. The prophet once again called for silence.
"However," he began, "Kali understands that doubt is part of human nature. She realizes the weakness of mortal faith, and she shall once again demonstrate the truth of her law. Chopra! Kosti! Bring the infidel so all may see the judgement of Kali with their own eyes!"
Three figures emerged from a tent at the base of the mountain. Chopra and Kosti, two lesser priests under the command of Prophet Shastri, escorted a white man from the tent. Chopra was a large man for an Indian, well fed and muscled. He was a formidable man with heavy eyebrows and a lantern jaw. Chopra's appearance was not deceptive. He was an expert in vajra-musti wrestling, and he could kill with his bare hands.
Kosti was barely five feet tall, but his slender body was knotted with muscle. The little Indian smiled constantly, as if forever enjoying some great personal joke. The followers of the cult believed this was because Kosti was filled with the joy of spiritual enlightenment. In truth, Kosti was a deranged sadist who smiled because his twisted mind was usually daydreaming about torture and murder. When he was not thinking about such deeds, he was doing them. Kosti had truly found an occupation he loved.
The man who accompanied the two Indians appeared to be frightened. Kosti and Chopra had to shove him forward. His torn white shirt was spotted with crimson and his khaki shorts were soiled. The man's hands were tied behind his back and his mouth was wrapped with white cloth blotched with blood.
"Behold, my children!" Shastri declared. "Before you stands an Englishman. He would try to run from the judgement of Kali, for he knows our goddess is the slayer of evil. When captured, he tried to bite off his own tongue in order to spit blood on the ground to create more British monsters like himself, just like the devils who opposed Kali in the past."
The crowd gasped in amazement at this tale. In fact, the Briton had not bitten his tongue. He no longer had one. Kosti had cut out the man's tongue. That was simply a precaution. A silent man with his hands bound behind his back can only protest accusations by shaking his head.
"Now, my children," Shastri announced. "Behold the goddess Kali!"
An incredible figure appeared at the mouth of the cave. The Thuggees gasped and lowered their heads in prayer. They chanted salutations to Kali and swore their everlasting devotion to the mother goddess.
Seated upon a throne was the goddess Kali. Her face was striped with yellow. The features were fierce. She had cat eyes and a snarling mouth with purple lips. Her hair jutted with black bristles and green serpents were bound about her head. Kali seemed to glide to the edge of the stone ledge, levitating the throne with her.
The goddess had eight arms, long and serpentine, like the tentacles of a squid. Four of her hands were fisted around the handles of knives. Two other fists held fighting hatchets and a seventh hand clutched the shaft of a lance. The eighth and final hand hald a severed human head.
A necklace of yellow skulls hung down to the creature's heavy, full breasts. The figure was bronze and would have appeared to be a statue if it did not move.
But it did move.
The eight arms rose and lowered like a spider in its web. Kali's head moved from side to side, eyes shifting in their metal sockets. Even the severed head in Kali's fist appeared to be alive. Its mouth opened and closed like a puppet and occasionally the disembodied head blinked its eyes.
Kosti and Chopra shoved the Briton into a clearing between the congregation and the tent. The crowd moved away from the two priests and the stranger.
"The judgement of Kali is the ultimate truth," Shastri announced. "See that judgement now!"
Kali's necklace of skulls began to glow. Suddenly, a wide beam of light jetted from the skull at the breasts of the goddess. Like a column of hot steel, the blue-white light descended upon the British prisoner.
He did not burst into flame or melt down to a pile of bones. The Briton simply vanished. His body dissolved. Flesh, blood and bones were annihilated in the twinkling of an eye. A charred spot on the ground was all that remained of the man.
The crowd was stunned by the awesome display of power by their mighty goddess. They dropped to their knees and lowered their foreheads to the ground. The congregation began to chant to Kali, praising her name and asking for the strength and good karma to do her will.
^J^ ^S^ ^A^
Vandal Savage sat in a scoop-backed chair as he watched the "goddess Kali" slide backward along an iron rail in the floor. Two technicians in his employ moved to the rear of the figure and went to work with screwdrivers. They removed the backplate and examined a maze of circuits inside of Kali.
"Is something wrong with it?" Savage frowned. "Everything seemed to work fine during the demonstration."
"Yes, sir," one of the technicians replied, glancing up from the statue. "But this was the first time the laser was used. We just want to check to be certain none of the circuits was damaged in the process."
The immortal master villain replied, "Very good. You are doing a fine job. Please continue."
Savage glanced about at the generators and control panels that lined the rock walls of the room. It had cost him more than two million rupees to build this complex base inside the mountain of Kali. Some of the best engineers and electronics experts in the world had been involved with the project. The international criminal was glad a state-of-the-art air conditioning unit had been included.
The quarters were certainly more comfortable than Savage had had many times in the distant past. About 50,000 years ago, Vandal Savage was a member of the Blood People, a tribe of Cro-Magnons. He saw his father murdered by Rip Hunter, a time traveler from the 20th century. Hunter had killed Savage's father, thinking him to be Vandal, who Hunter knew would become immortal and be the founder of a secret society that would menace Earth in his own time.
Shortly after murdering the father, Hunter realized his mistake. The son, Vandal Savage, succeeded his father as the leader of the tribe. Later, a strange meteor fell from the sky and seemingly burst into flaming gases over Vandal Savage's head. As time passed, Savage realized that he had become immortal. Savage, for whatever true reason, has embarked on a quest for power that has lasted thousands of years. He has spent centuries securing power, mostly from behind the scenes.
Morarji Shastri entered the control room. The little guru smiled as he patted Kali's bronze head.
"Great show today, wasn't it?" Shastri inquired as he slumped into a chair across from the bearded Vandal Savage. "We made a wonderful impression on the audience, don't you agree?"
"Shouldn't you be with your flock, Shastri?" Savage asked dryly.
"Kosti and Chopra are handling services tonight," Shastri explained. "Simple stuff, really. The followers of Kali chant and chant and call to the goddess all her many names. Eventually they put themselves into a sort of self-induced hypnotic state. The priests start the chants in a steady rhythm with lots repetition, and I put in some revolving lights in the walls to add to the atmosphere. After a while those idiots go into a deep trance that they consider the inner peace of Kali. It's very amusing to watch them put themselves in that zombielike condition and then hear about all the silly hallucinations they experience, which they regard as religious visions."
"It sounds very entertaining, Shastri," the criminal mastermind said with a shrug. "But I'm not laughing about some of the failures by your Thuggees."
"I wish you wouldn't call them that," Shastri remarked. "You see 'Thuggee' comes from the word 'thagna,' which is Hindi for 'deceive.' Thuggees are suppose to be the deceivers, but we know they are really the deceived. Correct?"
"Stop being so pompous with me," Savage snapped. "Last week your followers strangled an American journalist to death in front of his wife, but they let her live."
"I've explained that before, my friend," Shastri sighed. "The children of Kali don't kill for political purposes. They make sacrifices to their noble goddess and slay devils in human form. It's a righteous calling for the sake of Kali, who is mother, wife and virgin all at the same time. Pretty good trick, eh?"
"In my lifetime I've known officials who are whore, saint and father confessor," Savage commented. "Can't you convince the Thuggees that women can be devils when they're Americans and British?"
"Absolutely not," Shastri insisted. "India is a civilized country. True, women and men are not equal here. In many ways, women are considered inferior to men, but they still receive special consideration and respect. Go to the worst sections of any city or town in India. You will find women in dire poverty, surrounded by thieves and cutthroats. Yet, even among the poorest Indian women, most wear some gold earrings or a necklace of gold. And no Indian would ever consider robbing them of this gold. It simply isn't done in my country."
"We can't afford to let witnesses to Thuggee killings walk away and report descriptions to the police," the immortal man told him.
"Not many whites look very closely at Indians," Shastri remarked. "I doubt that most of them could tell us apart."
"Don't put too much faith in that," Savage told him. "And don't forget that not all Europeans and British are white. The Americans are the worst. They have millions of blacks and Asians."
"They should have social controls of ethnic groups," Shastri said. "You know, that's how the caste system got started. The Sanskrit word for caste is 'varna,' which means 'color.' The ancient Aryans used to rule over the black aborigines and the dark Dravidians."
"At least your Thuggees don't have any taboos about killing people of different races," the bearded criminal commented. "Providing they don't lose their nerve like that team last night. They failed to carry out the assassination of that German automobile representative. I thought the Thuggees were suppose to be total fanatics, fearless of death and totally dedicated to serving their holy guru and the goddess Kali."
"They are," Shastri replied. "The team last night did not lose their nerve. While stalking the German in the streets of Calcutta, they encountered a pair of cats fighting in an alley."
"Cats fighting?" The criminal mastermind glared at Shastri. "What did that have to do with carrying out an assassination?"
"It was a bad omen," Shastri explained. "The team took it as a sign, a mystical warning that their karma was opposed to carrying out the mission that night. It meant Kali had changed her mind, so the team had to come home instead."
"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Savage said with disgust. "Isn't there anything you can do about such foolishness?"
"My dear sir," Shastri replied, "we are able to manipulate and control the followers of Kali because they are religious extremists, ignorant, gullible and superstitious. These qualities make them ideal clay in our skillful hands, thanks to your technology and my charisma. However, these same qualities make the people fearful of shadows and bad omens and strange patterns of tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. We can't do away with their superstitions and still manipulate them."
"I don't like it," Savage said grimly. "And I'm not certain I can trust you, Shastri. You're only interested in making money."
"And you're only concerned with power. Too bad you are not a religious man or you could run this entire affair without me, my friend."
"You seem to forget you owe me your life," the immortal criminal snapped. "And you're making quite a fortune for a false guru."
"Which reminds me," Shastri said, still smiling. "You owe me five thousand tolas of gold."
"Smuggling that much gold into India isn't easy," Savage stated. "Your government has strict laws concerning bringing gold into the country. We must be careful. The cstoms officials check almost every foreign plane with extra care. Isn't it considered treason for an Indian to receive gold from smugglers? I'm surprised you insist on it for payment."
"It is true that the government once tried to make the possession of imported gold an act of treason," Shastri answered, "but no one in India would obey such a law. Gold has religious significance here. That makes it more important than the laws of men and more valuable than money. Besides, gold is an international form of currency. I know the value of precious metals has slipped a bit, but a man with five thousand tolas of gold will still be very wealthy, regardless of the country he chooses to live in."
"You plan to leave India, Shastri?" Savage asked, raising a thick eyebrow with suspicion.
"Not for a while," the Indian assured him. "But after this affair is over, I may decide to seek a new residence."
"You really are a mercenary," Savage said with contempt.
"I'm glad we've finally begun to understand each other, my friend," Shastri said with amusement.
To be continued ...
By Bruce Wayne
Justice Society of America created by Gardner Fox
Dedicated to ME, who has taught me more about being philosophical than anyone.
DISCLAIMER: Most of the characters portrayed in this story are copyright by DC Comics, an AOL/Time/Warner company. They are used without permission for entertainment without profit by the author.
Chapter 3
Morarji Shastri stood on the rock ledge by the mouth of the cave. His long yellow robe hung loosely on his small scrawny frame. Shastri wore a necklace of small copper skulls and held a pickax with a silver blade. Shastri was a guru, the religious leader of the cult of Kali.
More than two hundred followers had assembled at the foot of the mountain. Most wore ragged clothing. Some were clad only in dhoti, the garment usually associated with Mahatma Gandhi. A few wore long silk jackets and had yellow turbans bound about their heads. One of these men was Ram Sonoka, a rajput, or son of a maharaja.
The congregation looked to Shastri for enlightenment. The little man was the voice of Kali, the prophet of the great goddess. Shastri addressed the crowd in a reedy voice that echoed within the rock walls of the valley. His voice may have seemed comical to one who failed to realize the power Shastri commanded.
"Oh loyal children of Kali!" the prophet cried. "The great mother goddess, greater than Lord Shiva who fathered her. For Kali is all things that are woman and all things that are the universe. She is destruction and she is life. She is birth and she is death. She is the pure virgin and the loyal wife."
"Kali bhai, salam," several Thuggees chanted.
"Bhowani, Kali ah-ka-sha," others added.
"It is good that you praise Kali," Shastri declared. "It is good that you honor the goddess of all things. But actions are needed as well as words, my children. Actions and sacrifice. For we are privileged to be her servants, and we have been born at the time of great evil known as Kaliyuga. Only Kalipuja, the worship and sacrifice to our goddess, can assure us of nirvana when the evil time and our life on this earth have both come to an end."
Shastri waved his silver pickax across the congregation like a magic wand. The followers trembled, for they knew the prophet would now speak of a matter both profound and divine.
"Yet some of you question the word of Kali," Shastri declared. "You hesitate to use the silk scarf that is the instrument we must use to slay the evil ones, the devils who walk like men. For the great Kali is also Surga, the slayer of devils."
He continued, "You know the saga of her victories on earth. Once devils walked the earth and Kali struck them down. The goddess of glory ripped the evil ones to pieces as a lioness would tear a goat apart. Yet every drop of blood gave seed to a new monster. So Kali had to kill the beasts without shedding their foul blood. And Kali defeated the devils of that day. So it is our duty to sacrifice the evil ones of the present in the manner taught to us by Kali."
The congregation bowed solemnly and began to chant, but Shastri demanded silence.
"Perhaps some of you doubt my word as the high priest of Kali," he declared. "Perhaps you do not understand why Kali wants you to sacrifice the Americans and the Europeans, who are pale-skinned demons the color of a bloodless corpse. Kali does not need to justify her law to mortals. If a thing is to be done, it is our duty to do it. If a thing is taboo, it is not our place to ask why."
The congregation uttered a collective murmur. They were obviously dissatisfied with the guru's statement, although none dared openly oppose or criticize Shastri. The prophet once again called for silence.
"However," he began, "Kali understands that doubt is part of human nature. She realizes the weakness of mortal faith, and she shall once again demonstrate the truth of her law. Chopra! Kosti! Bring the infidel so all may see the judgement of Kali with their own eyes!"
Three figures emerged from a tent at the base of the mountain. Chopra and Kosti, two lesser priests under the command of Prophet Shastri, escorted a white man from the tent. Chopra was a large man for an Indian, well fed and muscled. He was a formidable man with heavy eyebrows and a lantern jaw. Chopra's appearance was not deceptive. He was an expert in vajra-musti wrestling, and he could kill with his bare hands.
Kosti was barely five feet tall, but his slender body was knotted with muscle. The little Indian smiled constantly, as if forever enjoying some great personal joke. The followers of the cult believed this was because Kosti was filled with the joy of spiritual enlightenment. In truth, Kosti was a deranged sadist who smiled because his twisted mind was usually daydreaming about torture and murder. When he was not thinking about such deeds, he was doing them. Kosti had truly found an occupation he loved.
The man who accompanied the two Indians appeared to be frightened. Kosti and Chopra had to shove him forward. His torn white shirt was spotted with crimson and his khaki shorts were soiled. The man's hands were tied behind his back and his mouth was wrapped with white cloth blotched with blood.
"Behold, my children!" Shastri declared. "Before you stands an Englishman. He would try to run from the judgement of Kali, for he knows our goddess is the slayer of evil. When captured, he tried to bite off his own tongue in order to spit blood on the ground to create more British monsters like himself, just like the devils who opposed Kali in the past."
The crowd gasped in amazement at this tale. In fact, the Briton had not bitten his tongue. He no longer had one. Kosti had cut out the man's tongue. That was simply a precaution. A silent man with his hands bound behind his back can only protest accusations by shaking his head.
"Now, my children," Shastri announced. "Behold the goddess Kali!"
An incredible figure appeared at the mouth of the cave. The Thuggees gasped and lowered their heads in prayer. They chanted salutations to Kali and swore their everlasting devotion to the mother goddess.
Seated upon a throne was the goddess Kali. Her face was striped with yellow. The features were fierce. She had cat eyes and a snarling mouth with purple lips. Her hair jutted with black bristles and green serpents were bound about her head. Kali seemed to glide to the edge of the stone ledge, levitating the throne with her.
The goddess had eight arms, long and serpentine, like the tentacles of a squid. Four of her hands were fisted around the handles of knives. Two other fists held fighting hatchets and a seventh hand clutched the shaft of a lance. The eighth and final hand hald a severed human head.
A necklace of yellow skulls hung down to the creature's heavy, full breasts. The figure was bronze and would have appeared to be a statue if it did not move.
But it did move.
The eight arms rose and lowered like a spider in its web. Kali's head moved from side to side, eyes shifting in their metal sockets. Even the severed head in Kali's fist appeared to be alive. Its mouth opened and closed like a puppet and occasionally the disembodied head blinked its eyes.
Kosti and Chopra shoved the Briton into a clearing between the congregation and the tent. The crowd moved away from the two priests and the stranger.
"The judgement of Kali is the ultimate truth," Shastri announced. "See that judgement now!"
Kali's necklace of skulls began to glow. Suddenly, a wide beam of light jetted from the skull at the breasts of the goddess. Like a column of hot steel, the blue-white light descended upon the British prisoner.
He did not burst into flame or melt down to a pile of bones. The Briton simply vanished. His body dissolved. Flesh, blood and bones were annihilated in the twinkling of an eye. A charred spot on the ground was all that remained of the man.
The crowd was stunned by the awesome display of power by their mighty goddess. They dropped to their knees and lowered their foreheads to the ground. The congregation began to chant to Kali, praising her name and asking for the strength and good karma to do her will.
^J^ ^S^ ^A^
Vandal Savage sat in a scoop-backed chair as he watched the "goddess Kali" slide backward along an iron rail in the floor. Two technicians in his employ moved to the rear of the figure and went to work with screwdrivers. They removed the backplate and examined a maze of circuits inside of Kali.
"Is something wrong with it?" Savage frowned. "Everything seemed to work fine during the demonstration."
"Yes, sir," one of the technicians replied, glancing up from the statue. "But this was the first time the laser was used. We just want to check to be certain none of the circuits was damaged in the process."
The immortal master villain replied, "Very good. You are doing a fine job. Please continue."
Savage glanced about at the generators and control panels that lined the rock walls of the room. It had cost him more than two million rupees to build this complex base inside the mountain of Kali. Some of the best engineers and electronics experts in the world had been involved with the project. The international criminal was glad a state-of-the-art air conditioning unit had been included.
The quarters were certainly more comfortable than Savage had had many times in the distant past. About 50,000 years ago, Vandal Savage was a member of the Blood People, a tribe of Cro-Magnons. He saw his father murdered by Rip Hunter, a time traveler from the 20th century. Hunter had killed Savage's father, thinking him to be Vandal, who Hunter knew would become immortal and be the founder of a secret society that would menace Earth in his own time.
Shortly after murdering the father, Hunter realized his mistake. The son, Vandal Savage, succeeded his father as the leader of the tribe. Later, a strange meteor fell from the sky and seemingly burst into flaming gases over Vandal Savage's head. As time passed, Savage realized that he had become immortal. Savage, for whatever true reason, has embarked on a quest for power that has lasted thousands of years. He has spent centuries securing power, mostly from behind the scenes.
Morarji Shastri entered the control room. The little guru smiled as he patted Kali's bronze head.
"Great show today, wasn't it?" Shastri inquired as he slumped into a chair across from the bearded Vandal Savage. "We made a wonderful impression on the audience, don't you agree?"
"Shouldn't you be with your flock, Shastri?" Savage asked dryly.
"Kosti and Chopra are handling services tonight," Shastri explained. "Simple stuff, really. The followers of Kali chant and chant and call to the goddess all her many names. Eventually they put themselves into a sort of self-induced hypnotic state. The priests start the chants in a steady rhythm with lots repetition, and I put in some revolving lights in the walls to add to the atmosphere. After a while those idiots go into a deep trance that they consider the inner peace of Kali. It's very amusing to watch them put themselves in that zombielike condition and then hear about all the silly hallucinations they experience, which they regard as religious visions."
"It sounds very entertaining, Shastri," the criminal mastermind said with a shrug. "But I'm not laughing about some of the failures by your Thuggees."
"I wish you wouldn't call them that," Shastri remarked. "You see 'Thuggee' comes from the word 'thagna,' which is Hindi for 'deceive.' Thuggees are suppose to be the deceivers, but we know they are really the deceived. Correct?"
"Stop being so pompous with me," Savage snapped. "Last week your followers strangled an American journalist to death in front of his wife, but they let her live."
"I've explained that before, my friend," Shastri sighed. "The children of Kali don't kill for political purposes. They make sacrifices to their noble goddess and slay devils in human form. It's a righteous calling for the sake of Kali, who is mother, wife and virgin all at the same time. Pretty good trick, eh?"
"In my lifetime I've known officials who are whore, saint and father confessor," Savage commented. "Can't you convince the Thuggees that women can be devils when they're Americans and British?"
"Absolutely not," Shastri insisted. "India is a civilized country. True, women and men are not equal here. In many ways, women are considered inferior to men, but they still receive special consideration and respect. Go to the worst sections of any city or town in India. You will find women in dire poverty, surrounded by thieves and cutthroats. Yet, even among the poorest Indian women, most wear some gold earrings or a necklace of gold. And no Indian would ever consider robbing them of this gold. It simply isn't done in my country."
"We can't afford to let witnesses to Thuggee killings walk away and report descriptions to the police," the immortal man told him.
"Not many whites look very closely at Indians," Shastri remarked. "I doubt that most of them could tell us apart."
"Don't put too much faith in that," Savage told him. "And don't forget that not all Europeans and British are white. The Americans are the worst. They have millions of blacks and Asians."
"They should have social controls of ethnic groups," Shastri said. "You know, that's how the caste system got started. The Sanskrit word for caste is 'varna,' which means 'color.' The ancient Aryans used to rule over the black aborigines and the dark Dravidians."
"At least your Thuggees don't have any taboos about killing people of different races," the bearded criminal commented. "Providing they don't lose their nerve like that team last night. They failed to carry out the assassination of that German automobile representative. I thought the Thuggees were suppose to be total fanatics, fearless of death and totally dedicated to serving their holy guru and the goddess Kali."
"They are," Shastri replied. "The team last night did not lose their nerve. While stalking the German in the streets of Calcutta, they encountered a pair of cats fighting in an alley."
"Cats fighting?" The criminal mastermind glared at Shastri. "What did that have to do with carrying out an assassination?"
"It was a bad omen," Shastri explained. "The team took it as a sign, a mystical warning that their karma was opposed to carrying out the mission that night. It meant Kali had changed her mind, so the team had to come home instead."
"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Savage said with disgust. "Isn't there anything you can do about such foolishness?"
"My dear sir," Shastri replied, "we are able to manipulate and control the followers of Kali because they are religious extremists, ignorant, gullible and superstitious. These qualities make them ideal clay in our skillful hands, thanks to your technology and my charisma. However, these same qualities make the people fearful of shadows and bad omens and strange patterns of tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. We can't do away with their superstitions and still manipulate them."
"I don't like it," Savage said grimly. "And I'm not certain I can trust you, Shastri. You're only interested in making money."
"And you're only concerned with power. Too bad you are not a religious man or you could run this entire affair without me, my friend."
"You seem to forget you owe me your life," the immortal criminal snapped. "And you're making quite a fortune for a false guru."
"Which reminds me," Shastri said, still smiling. "You owe me five thousand tolas of gold."
"Smuggling that much gold into India isn't easy," Savage stated. "Your government has strict laws concerning bringing gold into the country. We must be careful. The cstoms officials check almost every foreign plane with extra care. Isn't it considered treason for an Indian to receive gold from smugglers? I'm surprised you insist on it for payment."
"It is true that the government once tried to make the possession of imported gold an act of treason," Shastri answered, "but no one in India would obey such a law. Gold has religious significance here. That makes it more important than the laws of men and more valuable than money. Besides, gold is an international form of currency. I know the value of precious metals has slipped a bit, but a man with five thousand tolas of gold will still be very wealthy, regardless of the country he chooses to live in."
"You plan to leave India, Shastri?" Savage asked, raising a thick eyebrow with suspicion.
"Not for a while," the Indian assured him. "But after this affair is over, I may decide to seek a new residence."
"You really are a mercenary," Savage said with contempt.
"I'm glad we've finally begun to understand each other, my friend," Shastri said with amusement.
To be continued ...