Toward what end?
It was a gamble, trusting Howard Morgan to produce a member of the pirate gang. Hell, Remo wasn't even sure there was a pirate gang, at this point, in the sense of one cohesive group that watched the ports and preyed on boats repeatedly. For all he knew, the death of Richard Armitage and the abduction of his wife could just as easily have been a one-time thing, or perpetrated by a loose-knit group that roved among the many islands of the blue Caribbean, killing time here and there between raids, living off the proceeds of their latest depredation until cash ran short again.
Still, there was the tattoo on Pablo Altamira's hand if that meant anything. Not much, Remo decided, as he thought about the countless Latin gang members in North and South America who sported tattoos on their hands. More to the point, while wanna-bes would seldom go so far as getting a tattoo, the marks were seen on many ex-gang members who had left a life of crime behind them, but who never had the inclination or the cash to have the brands removed.
So, he had nothing yet, except a young man without references beyond one dipsy travel agent, who was on the payroll now, for good or ill. If he turned out to be a spotter for the hypothetical buccaneers, so much the better. And if not... well, hiring him would mean that they had blown their chance to act as bait.
It troubled Remo that so much hinged upon his chance meeting with Ethan Humphrey in a bar, some fourteen hours earlier. The old man was eccentric, granted, but his personal enthusiasm for the sea rovers of yesteryear didn't mean he was presently involved in hijacking or worse. If that were true, then it would naturally follow that dragons were slain at Renaissance festivals, while Civil War "recreation" groups would be marching on Atlanta and Gettysburg, armed to the teeth.
Pablo met Chiun, after a fashion, in one of the main cabins, where Chiun had staked himself out, staring at the grainy image on a twenty-inch wallmounted LCD television screen. He wasn't squinting-Remo, in his whole life, had not known a man of any age with keener eyes-but Chiun was leaning forward slightly, hands braced on his knees, as he sat in a modified lotus position.
"What's on, Little Father?" Remo asked him.
"Butt Master," Chiun replied, his tone somehow combining fascination and disgust.
Remo stepped closer, peering at the screen. Three shapely women dressed in leotards stood with their backs to the camera, bent forward at the waist, as if to moon their audience. Their thighs were working, in and out, some kind of bellows action, as if each of them were holding an accordion between her knees. Instead, as Remo finally made out, their legs were clutching strange devices that resembled giant, twisted paper clips.
"Didn't Suzanne Autumns sell those things years ago?" Remo asked. "Isn't she the one who got bonked in the brain when one of her models lost control of the thing and it flew out from between her thighs?"
A moment later Suzanne Autumns herself appeared on-screen, looking twenty years older than she had ten years ago-and not much prettier. A Farrah-style hairdo, as outdated as her acting career, couldn't fully disguise the surgery scars on Autumns's scalp. "Now with rubber Thigh-Grip-Ers, so they're safer than ever!" she recited from a cue card.
"She talks like she has marbles in her mouth," Remo said.
"Butt Master is still better than Pec Man," Chiun informed him solemnly.
"He's right, senor," said Pablo, chiming in for the first time without a pointed invitation to speak. "I've seen the Pec Man ads. They suck big time. And they have Lady Pec Man, too. The things those women do with-"
"I believe we get the picture, Pablo. Thanks for sharing."
If the young man took offense at being interrupted, it did not show on his smiling face. "When shall we start?" he asked Remo.
"Sooner the better," Remo told him. "Right, Chiun?"
The Master Emeritus of Sinanju frowned and said, "Tell him to take us where we'll get decent reception."
Pablo appeared to know his business when it came to casting off and piloting the cabin cruiser out of port. In fact, there wasn't much to handling the cruiser, with its GPS positioning, automated piloting and other electronics that Remo had been instructed not to fiddle with. In fact, he had been keeping the thing under manual control since they took her out. Pablo engaged the electronics as a matter of course and soon had them on their way. Remo glanced at the controls, found all the blips and messages benign enough, as far as he could tell, and left him to it. If the course was not correct, he'd know, electronics or no.
The act of taking on a crewman for a boat the size of the Melody was more to give the passengers some extra leisure time than to preserve their lives at sea.
Some would have called the new addition to their crew a status symbol. Remo preferred to think of him as an investment in success.
The first day out from Puerta Plata they sailed east by southeast, roughly following the coastline, barely keeping it in sight, until they reached the Mong Passage and nosed due south. They had a distant glimpse of Puerto Rico, green on the horizon to their east, or left, but Pablo or his electronics seemed to know where he was going as they passed by the U.S. territory and sailed on, turning east again only when they were well into the Caribbean proper, the vast Atlantic safely behind them.
"Senor Morgan tells me joo are interested in pirates, si?"
"Could be," said Remo. "You know about that kind of thing?"
"Oh, si," said Pablo. "Anyone who grows up round this place knows pirate stories."
Remo noted that the young man didn't mention knowing pirates, and he wasn't sure if that should be a disappointment or relief. He experienced another moment of regret for letting Stacy Armitage aboard the Melody, but he suppressed it quickly, concentrating on the job at hand. That was when he noticed the scampering of small feet coming up to the bridge. Either the Melody had vermin or...
"You can show us where the pirates of old did their business?" Chiun squeaked as his head popped into view and he scampered up top.
It seemed to Remo that their pilot's grin was brighter than it should have been as he replied. "Oh, si, senor. This time manana, next day at the latest, joo see where the pirates lived. I think joo not be disappointed." Was there something in his voice, his eyes, besides the goofy smile? Or was Remo looking for some evidence of guilt and finding it where none in fact existed?
Before the summer afternoon began to fade, Stacy had already passed judgment on the new addition to their crew. "He's dirty," she told Remo as they sunbathed on the forward deck. "I feel it. Everywhere I go, he's watching me."
Remo considered the bikini bottoms she was barely wearing and the bikini top she had discarded entirely, and couldn't resist a smile. Her normal clothing flattered her, of course, but it didn't do justice to the supple body hidden underneath. A blind man would have dropped his pencils on the street corner if Stacy Armitage had passed by close enough for him to smell her sun-warmed, nearly naked skin. "He has good taste," Remo said.
"I'm being serious," she told him. "He may not be the one who set my brother up, but I don't trust him."
Remo had to ask. "Who do you trust?"
"Right now? Myself." She stared at Remo from behind big sunglasses, perhaps attempting to discover if his feelings had been wounded. When he gave no outward sign of injury, she frowned, whether from disappointment or concern, he couldn't say.
"That isn't fair, I guess," she said. "I should trust you."
"Don't be so hasty," Remo said, eyes closed against the sun's glare. "I've been looking at you, too."
She let that pass, but there was just a beat of silence, hesitancy, before she spoke again. "What do you think of him?"
He almost mentioned the tattoo on Pablo's hand, but let it slide. She was keyed up already, and he saw no point in goading her. If she was right about the new addition to their crew, it would be risky pouring any more fuel on the fire of her suspicion. She might say something, do something, that would divert the young man from his plan, either by scuttling it or striking prematurely. On the other hand, if Pablo was entir
ely innocent, Stacy might scare him off with some rash word or deed.
"I think we need to keep an eye on him," Remo stated, "but discreetly. If he has his own agenda, we don't want to spook him, right?"
"I'd like to crack his skull and toss him overboard," she said through clenched teeth, smiling at him all the while.
"That's my department," he reminded her, "and it would ruin any chance we have of finding out if he's connected to the men who killed your brother. Am I right?"
She was about to make a face at him but caught herself, glanced back toward Pablo in the wheelhouse, keeping up her smile. "He's watching me again," said Stacy.
"Good. That ought to keep him suitably distracted for a while, in case he has some kind of mischief on his mind."
"My God, it's true! You men are all alike, with only one thing on your minds."
"I'd say that depends," said Remo.
"Oh? On what?"
"The man, the moment and the inspiration," he replied.
Her voice turned coy, surprising Remo with the change, under the circumstances. "Would you say that I'm inspiring?" Stacy asked.
"I never thought about it," Remo declared, while pointedly avoiding even the suggestion of a glance in her direction.
"Is that right?" He couldn't tell from Stacy's tone if she was getting angry now, or simply teasing him.
"We're here on business," he reminded her. "Distractions could be fatal."
Remo felt her glaring at him after he had closed his eyes. The heat that radiated from her now had more to do with anger than the tropic sun above, or any fleeting passion that she may have felt. He felt an undeniable attraction to the woman lying nearly naked at his side, but Remo was at this point in his life enjoying the company of a woman who didn't get all aroused by the mere presence of his body chemistry.
It was an odd side effect of his Sinanju training. At first he thought it was the greatest thing in the world how women responded to him. They went gaga. They got all loopy. It got old pretty fast, having any woman you wanted.
Eventually he learned that eating shark meat dampened the effect. That created its own set of problems. Like Chiun behaving as if he had the world's worst BO and the fact that he wasn't all that fond of shark. Later Remo gained some control of the effect himself, but it came and went. It was one of those Sinanju skills that he never quite got full control of.
"How come you aren't getting burned?" Stacy demanded.
Remo shrugged. "I've got Native American blood. They don't burn as easy."
"Because of their skin pigmentation, which you don't show evidence of," she accused.
"I don't know, then."
He smiled at Stacy's muttering, as she rolled over on her stomach, offering her well-oiled backside to the sun. Once again, Remo found himself hoping that Pablo Altamira was one of the pirates they sought. Preoccupation with a raid to come might keep the young Dominican from making any moves on "Mrs. Rubble" that would ultimately lead to trouble on board the Melody.
The last thing Remo needed at the moment was a mutiny inspired by hormones. He had enough to think about, with Chiun still out of sorts about the lack of soap operas and whatever other bugs were up his Emeritus butt these days.
Their first night out of Puerta Plata, Remo sat with Chiun and Stacy at the table in the dining room, which could seat twelve, while Pablo took first watch. Chiun had done the cooking. Stacy seemed a little disappointed by the mound of rice and steamed fish on her plate.
"Everything all right?" asked Remo when his plate was nearly clean and Stacy had begun to eat with visible reluctance.
"Fine," she said. "I'm just not used to so much health food all at once."
"Americans eat garbage," Chiun declared, his chopsticks moving deftly, cleaning up the last few morsels from his plate. "Red meat and entrails. All things fried in pig's fat. Too much sugar, chocolate, grease-all poison to the body. No surprise that you are fat."
Stacy recoiled, as if Chiun had slapped her face or called her by a filthy name. She wore a low-cut cocktail dress that fit her like a second skin, and Remo noticed with amusement that she sucked in her stomach, perhaps unconsciously, as she replied to Chiun. "You think I'm fat?" She sounded horrified.
"I speak of Americans in general," Chiun said offhandedly. "White women feel they need huge breasts and buttocks to attract a man. Of course, white men encourage same, with their attraction to obesity."
"Obesity?"
Stacy resembled an incipient stroke victim. Remo knew better than to step in now. He ate his rice. "White women are beset by too much leisure time," Chiun said, continuing his lecture to a redfaced audience of one. "Watch too much television. Eat too many bonbons, cupcakes, dildos."
"Dildos?"
"He means Ding Dongs," Remo interjected. Chiun made a dismissive gesture with his chopsticks. "Ding Dongs, dildos, it is all the same."
"That's not exactly-"
"Of course, my son is the perfect example of the crude white male."
"Your son?" Stacy squinted at Remo. "He's really your father?"
"Not biologically," Remo explained.
"I'm surprised he is taken with you," Chiun rambled on. "You're one of the rare white women whose proportions have not been exaggerated through surgery or gluttony. Usually Remo likes his women to be balloon breasted."
"Congratulations, you've just been complimented," Remo said.
"That was a compliment?"
"As good as Chiun gives."
"Of course, the other extreme is just as repulsive," Chiun said. "Those emaciated, bloodless females who feel the way to attract a man is to look like a starving mongrel waif. I cannot understand where this attraction comes from. Starvation is not enticing. In fact, the starvation of the villagers of Sinanju-"
"Little Father?" Remo said.
"So does this character think I'm fat or not?"
There was a dead silence. Remo said, "She's talking about you, Chiun."
"I am not a character. I am Chiun. Young woman, you are reasonably proportioned for your race."
"Thank you," Stacy Armitage said, satisfied. "But your hips are too narrow," Chiun added.
"My hips are just fine!"
"They will constrict your birth canal."
"What?" She almost screeched.
"I assume you plan to coerce Remo into giving you his seed, but I must warn you that his offspring will give you a difficult birthing."
Stacy sputtered. No words would come. She looked at Remo for help, and he became very interested in the bland scraps of steamed fish on his plate. "I am out of here!" she blurted finally.
"One look at Remo's grotesquely huge skull should be warning aplenty," Chiun pointed out helpfully. "Would you attempt to pass an offspring with a head proportioned like his?"
She made a final furious sound and slammed the hand-hewed oak door behind her.
"Terrific," Remo muttered. "You couldn't have saved that for another time?"
"She clearly was not being too observant, or she would have come to this realization on her own. Your head is quite the monstrosity, my son."
"You might consider cutting her some slack, if not me," Remo said. "I'll go and try to calm her down. Pablo needs his dinner, while you're at it."
"So, I am a servant's servant now?"
Remo knew it was hopeless. Rising from the alcove where he sat, he followed Stacy topside, found her standing at the starboard rail, arms crossed, lips set in a thin, angry slash.
"You all right?" Remo asked.
"Obviously not," she snapped. "I'm lazy and obese from sitting on my ass all day and eating dildos. Not to mention my inadequate birth canal."
"Chiun has trouble with the language sometimes," Remo lied.
"Is that my problem?" Stacy asked him. "Is there any reason you can think of why I ought to take the heat because he has a thing about white women?"
"Welcome to my world. He dislikes whites in general," said Remo. "In fact, he dislikes virtually all races, creeds and natio
nalities."
"Except Koreans?"
"He pretty much despises Koreans, too, although less than everybody else."
"Does he even like his own villagers?"
"Not so much."
Stacy turned to face him, leaning on the rail provocatively. "So, as one persecuted honky to another, do you think I'm obese?"
"What difference does it make?" asked Remo suspiciously.
She frowned, a pouty look that had a feel of having been rehearsed about it. "Hey, we're man and wife, remember? Even if it's just for little Pablo's sake. A husband ought to show some interest, don't you think?"
She glanced up toward the flying bridge, then back at Remo.
"Strictly for the mission?" Remo asked her.
"Absolutely."
"Well, in that case..." Remo leaned in close enough that he could smell a hint of peppermint on Stacy's breath and wondered where it came from. "Why don't you go on ahead," he urged. "I want to have a word with Pablo."
"Don't be long."
He watched her go and had a fair idea what he was passing up. Already having second thoughts, he didn't intend to complicate the situation by engaging in a shipboard romance or even just a lusty romp.
He went aft, climbed the ladder to the flying bridge and met their pilot with a smile. "My turn," he said. "You've earned a good night's sleep."
"If you are sure?"
"I'm sure," said Remo. "See you in the morning."
Was there something devious behind the young man's smile as he made way for Remo at the console, or was that simply imagination working overtime? Remo could not be sure, but he was positive about one thing: if there were pirates waiting for them in the darkness, up ahead, he didn't want the new man at the helm.
Besides, he had schemes of his own to carry out. Carefully, so as not to touch any of the helm electronics, he lifted the satellite phone and dialed home. Dialing home consisted of leaning on the 1 key until somebody answered.
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