Troubled Waters td-133

by Warren Murphy

How important, he wondered for the tenth time, were the prisoners, really?

  Important enough to Emperor Smith, Chiun decided. He would be upset. As would Remo-and the bigmouthed boy would never let the subject rest. He would go on and on for weeks. Chiun would be in misery. He sighed mentally. He would have to wait. But the waiting wouldn't be wasted time.

  "Your captain wants a special feast," Chiun said, making his voice higher and slightly squeaky.

  "Our cap'n?" parroted the goon behind the crusty eye patch.

  "As I said." Chiun could be obsequious when circumstances called for it, though it would never cease to gall him. "I require some spices."

  "We got salt," said the pirate, swinging at the single wooden shelf in the cooking sty. "And we got pepper."

  "Not enough," Chiun replied, gesturing toward the forest that surrounded the encampment. "I must go and look for other things."

  "Like hell," the pirate snarled. "Nobody tole me nothin' 'bout you leavin' camp. Forget about it, Slant-eyes."

  This time, Chiun imagined reaching deep inside the pirate's chest and ripping out the withered lump of gristle that sufficed him for a heart. Perhaps, on second thought, it would be more instructive to crack open his skull and examine the tiny husk of his brain.

  Both prospects made Chiun smile, an uncharacteristic expression on his ancient face, but the pirate didn't know him well enough to realize that death was near.

  "I cannot argue with such evident intelligence," he said. "No doubt, you will explain to Captain Kidd why his instructions for the wedding feast have been ignored. He will, of course, be sympathetic to your reasoning."

  "You tellin' me the cap' n ordered this?"

  "His excellency's order is for me to fix the ultimate gourmet repast. I have little to work with. Producing a special feast from this miserable larder will demand, at the very least, some distinctive seasonings."

  The pirate tried to wrap his mind around Chiun's statement, which had an awful lot of long words in it, then snorted. "Where in hell you think you're livin', Chinaman? These ain't the goddamn spice islands, for Neptune's sake!"

  "I have some knowledge of these things," Chiun replied. "There is no doubt the jungle, there, will yield surprises for the palate."

  Chiun's watchdog glared at the forest with his one eye, finally turning back to face the Master Emeritus of Sinanju. "I don't like the jungle," he declared.

  "By all means, then, stay here," Chiun offered. "After all, how can I run away?"

  "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" The pirate sneered. "Get me in trouble with the cap'n, jus' so you can go off playin' in the woods. No way you're gettin' off that easy, Slant-eyes."

  "I will be most happy for your company," Chiun suggested, smiling pleasantly.

  The gruff guard actually found himself amused by the tiny Chink codger, who had to be off his rocker. The old fart'd been prisoner here just a day and here he was happy as a clam.

  The pirate might have thought differently if he saw the picture in Chiun's head-a vision of the pirate with his head cranked backward on his shoulders. "How long's this supposed to take?"

  "Not long," Chiun replied. "The sooner I can find what I am looking for, the sooner we come back."

  "I dunno how you think you're gonna find a goddamn thing out there," the pirate groused.

  "Jungles are much the same," Chiun informed his captor. "I have every confidence."

  "Le's get a friggin' move on, then!" the one-eyed pirate growled. "I wanna get back here and stick to business."

  "As you say," Chiun replied. "Your wish is my command."

  CARLOS RAMIREZ WAS A CITY boy at heart, though he had spent his first half-dozen years in the Colombian back country, where he observed the coca trade firsthand. He felt at home with solid ground beneath his feet, and while he owned two yachts himself, employing them for floating orgies on occasion, he was never perfectly at ease once they left the dock behind.

  Ramirez didn't get seasick, exactly, but he always felt as if the deep water beneath his keel was in control, somehow, and he despised the feeling, as he hated anything that made him feel inadequate.

  That afternoon, Ramirez had two boats to think about. He was aboard the Macarena, a sixty-foot luxury craft he had legally purchased in Miami two years earlier, allowing his then-mistress to name it. Iliana said it was "my favorite song from when I was a kid!" This from a girl still three months shy of being able to vote legally in her native Florida. But she was certainly grown-up enough to perform her duties as Ramirez's concubine.

  A role without much job security, as Iliana learned about by the time she celebrated her eighteenth and final birthday. While Iliana was no more, the Macarena served Ramirez well enough. This day he shared the craft with Fabian Guzman, three crewmen and four soldiers. The second vessel was the Scorpion, a forty-foot speed launch with another two dozen shooters aboard.

  "Carlos?"

  Ramirez turned away from the port rail and found Guzman beside him, full lips curved into a frown. "Still worrying?" Ramirez asked.

  Guzman rolled his massive shoulders in a lazy shrug. "This business with the pirates," he replied. "I keep thinking you would be safer back at home."

  "But for how long?" Ramirez asked. "If there was any doubt in Medellin or Cartagena that I had the capability to deal with locos such as these, how long before I find my enemies attacking me on every side?"

  "If you fear treachery, Carlos-"

  Ramirez leaned in close to Guzman, with their noses almost touching. "I fear nothing, Fabian! Repeat it!"

  "You fear nothing. Si, I understand, Carlos. Forgive me."

  "There is nothing to forgive, my friend. A mere slip of the tongue."

  "As for these soldiers, though..."

  "I want them in reserve, as I've explained," Ramirez said. "There is no reason to believe that Kidd is planning to betray us. Should he entertain such suicidal notions, though, we will have force enough on hand to deal with him."

  "Three dozen guns, Carlos, if you include the two of us."

  "Are you not still a soldier, Fabian?" Ramirez enjoyed the darkening of Guzman's countenance, the way his spine stiffened at the thinly veiled insult.

  "You know I am," his second in command replied, "but they outnumber us two to one, at least."

  "They are as children," said Ramirez. "They are locos, Fabian. You said as much yourself."

  "Locos who aren't afraid to kill," Guzman replied. "They've proved that much. I simply do not trust them, Carlos."

  "A wise decision," said Ramirez. "Trust is difficult to earn among the best of friends. The best of families have traitors in their ranks, as you know well. Strangers like these..."

  He made a vague, dismissive gesture with one hand and turned back toward the rail. The deck shifted beneath his feet, Ramirez stretching out one hand to grip the rail and keep himself from wobbling where he stood. Behind him, Guzman stood with his feet well apart, arms crossed over his chest.

  A backward glance showed him the Scorpion a hundred yards or so behind the Macarena, keeping pace. Most of the gunners were belowdecks, as he had commanded. The Scorpion wouldn't be putting into harbor when they reached the pirate stronghold-not unless and until Ramirez felt he needed reinforcements on the scene. If Kidd or one of his subordinates had any questions about the second vessel, Carlos meant to answer that he needed crewmen for the new boat he was buying from the pirates. It was all they had to know, unless Ramirez had some reason to believe that there was treachery afoot. In which case...

  Carlos wished that he could have his soldiers check their guns again, but logic told him that wouldn't be necessary. They were all professionals and would have seen to their equipment well before they went aboard the yacht. If there was one thing that his soldiers knew about, it was preparing for a fight.

  Ramirez craved a glass of rum, but knew that it wouldn't be wise for him to begin drinking now, with less than two hours to go before he met Kidd and the other buccaneers. There would be liquor flowing
at the camp, he knew, and it was critical that Carlos keep his wits about him every moment that he spent in the presence of those locos.

  Rum could wait. There was no time, at the moment, to mix business with pleasure.

  At the very least, he had another stolen boat to purchase from the buccaneers, blood money changing hands. If there was treachery afoot, as Fabian suspected, then Ramirez would be forced to deal with that, as well. A little killing might even help settle his stomach, after spending so much time at sea.

  The thought made Carlos smile again, with feeling this time.

  Perhaps, after all, it would be an enjoyable day.

  "YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND," said Ethan Humphrey, "what it's like to have a dream come true, when you've been hoping for it-waiting for it-all your life."

  "Some dream," Remo said. He was standing off to one side of the ex-professor, in the cockpit of the Mulligan Stew.

  "It must seem absurd to you, I realize," the old man said.

  "Absurd doesn't quite say it," Remo said. "Try demented."

  "My academic life-my whole life, dammit-has been dedicated to a study of the buccaneers who plied these waters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From childhood onward, they provided me with hours of escapist reading, academic study-in short, pure enjoyment. A reason for living, as it were."

  "All fine and dandy until you start living it out, Professor," Remo said.

  "These men are purists, don't you see that?" Humphrey frowned and shook his head, red faced in a way that had nothing to do with the afternoon heat. His topic clearly moved him in the same way that politics or religion moved other men, to the point of fanaticism and beyond.

  "Pure killers, would that be?" asked Remo. "Pure hijackers? Or maybe it's pure rapists that you had in mind?"

  "Their ethics represent another time, another era," Ethan Humphrey said, apparently unfazed by Remo's comment. "It's unfair to judge them by the standards of the modern era."

  "You've discussed this with their victims, I suppose?"

  A frown creased Humphrey's face. "You see me as a man devoid of sympathy," he said. "No doubt, you find me heartless. But consider this, my friend-the world today is overcrowded. Men lead lives of quiet desperation, in the words of Henry David Thoreau. Are you aware how many innocents are murdered every day in New York, in Chicago, in Los Angeles?"

  "I'd look it up," said Remo, "if I figured it was relevant."

  "But everything is relevant," said Humphrey. "Don't you see? So many sacrificed for nothing, while a handful put their puerile, wasted lives to better use."

  "As fish food?" Remo asked.

  "Sarcasm." Humphrey nodded like a wise man who expected no better from his intellectual inferiors. "I understand that you have difficulty grasping what's at stake here."

  "Lives and property, you mean?" asked Remo. "It's a stretch, all right, but I can just about catch hold of it."

  "I'm speaking of a race, a culture," Humphrey said. "What are a few lives in the balance, when it means the preservation of a cultural tradition?"

  "Maybe you should ask the victims that," said Remo.

  "Victims!" Humphrey spit out the word with a genuine expression of contempt. "Throughout recorded history, the sea wolves had been scrupulous in preying on the wealthy parasites who fatten on the lifeblood of society like ticks or leeches. Who else owns the yachts and other pleasure craft worth stealing? Who else can afford the ransom for a highpriced hostage?"

  "So, if they're rich, you figure they're unfit to live. Is that about the size of it?" asked Remo.

  "The wealthy breed like roaches," Humphrey said. "Look at the Kennedys, for God's sake. You can't swing a dead cat from Hyannis to Miami Beach without hitting some millionaire third-cousin of JFK's grandson. What on Earth do they contribute to society, beyond the weekly crop of tabloid headlines?"

  "So, your pirates are a bunch of Marxist revolutionaries," Remo said. "The Pirate Liberation Army. It's a quirky twist, Professor, but I've got a problem with it."

  "You miss the point. I merely meant to say-"

  "They're killing people for the hell of it," said Remo, interrupting him. "Sometimes they let the women live, I understand, but those who do regret it, when they get to know your noble savages. We also have good reason to believe they're selling boats they steal to narcotraffickers from South America, to help the cocaine trade along. Of course, in your view, I suppose that's just another way of keeping up tradition."

  Humphrey recognized that there would be no winning Remo over to his cause. His jaw was set now, lips compressed into a narrow slit below his nose, eyes fixed on the horizon.

  "They'll be waiting for us," the professor said. "You know that."

  "I'm counting on it."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Never mind," he said. "Just make damn sure that you don't lose your way. I understand the sharks are hungry hereabouts."

  CHIUN SPENT FIVE MINUTES searching for the herbs he wanted. He found them, yanked the tuber out of the ground and into his kimono sleeve while his rather stupid guard was looking bored at a tree, then continued to search.

  "Hey, slow down, would you?" the guard demanded.

  "Do not tell me you cannot keep up with a bent old man such as myself," Chiun chided the guard. The guard huffed along behind him.

  There was indeed a small outcropping jutting from the jungle. It was of a black rock that contained many gaping spherical shelves.

  Chiun scanned the rock, looking for bone fragments and found none. But that meant nothing. If this was the rock described in the Sinanju scrolls, then its shelves would once have contained the skulls of pirate victims. But that was three hundred years ago, and it was unlikely that they would still be here, where the exposure to the elements would have eaten them away long ago.

  "I thought you was looking for spices. This is a rock."

  "You are a very smart man," Chiun remarked. "But what I look for is a kind of flavorful spoor found in certain lichens. I see none here-are there any more such escarpments?"

  "Any more what?"

  Chiun smiled at the guard benignly. "Big rocks."

  "Oh. No. Just this one. Everything else is all sand."

  "I see," Chiun said with disappointment, but inside he was frolicking with delight. Only one such formation on the island and the description matched that in the histories.

  This was the first marker.

  He circled to the north side of the rock formation and found, as promised, a small vertical ridge in the rock, at the bottom of which was a small natural rock shelf on which a man could stand, a few inches off the ground. He stepped up onto it, peering at the rock. His guard watched him for a moment, then got bored and looked elsewhere.

  Chiun immediately turned and faced out, north, and looked for the Two-Headed Tree.

  It was gone. Of course it was gone. There had been only the smallest chance that a tree in these climes would still exist after all this time.

  With no two-headed tree, Chiun didn't know in which direction to walk. His treasure hunt was over almost before it had begun.

  But not for long. This was just a start, really. There would be other ways, perhaps, of continuing the hunt.

  He stepped up to within spitting distance of the daydreaming guard.

  "Finished!" he clamored. The pirate jumped off the ground.

  "Jee-zus, old man, you trying to get yourself killed!"

  "I try to make feast for captain. He be velly angry you not get me back to camp fast." Chiun thought he did a pretty fair imitation of what an American would think an ignorant Chinese would sound like.

  "All right, just don't go yelling at me like that anymore, will ya?"

  "Velly solly!" Chiun screeched, louder than before.

  Chapter 16

  "What is it?" Fabian Guzman asked the lookout, eyes narrowed to dark slits as he stared across the sun-dappled water.

  "A boat, jefe."

  "I can see that, idiot! Give me the glasses!"

&n
bsp; He snatched the binoculars and raised them to his eyes, adjusting the focus once he had the boat framed in his viewing field. It was approaching from the west, and while no name was painted on the bow, one glimpse told Guzman that the boat was not official. It wasn't Coast Guard or DEA, not Haitian or Jamaican or Dominican. An older boat, privately owned. Logic dictated that its presence, here and now, had to be coincidence.

  And yet...

  Suppose that he was wrong-then what? Guzman had been the strong right arm of his amigo, Carlos, for more years than he cared to think about, since they had risen from the mean streets of the barrio in Cartagena to command an empire stretching from Colombia to the United States and Western Europe.

  The two of them hadn't survived this long by taking chances, banking on coincidence.

  "Shall I fetch Carlos?" the lookout asked, nodding back in the direction of the cabin as he spoke. "You mean Senor Ramirez, eh?"

  "Si, jefe." The contrition in the lookout's voice seemed genuine enough. It should have been, considering the penalty that insubordination carried in the family Ramirez and Guzman had built up for themselves.

  "Stay here," he told the lookout. "If that vessel should change course or try to overtake us, let me know immediately. Is that understood?"

  "Si, jefe! "

  Guzman left him standing at the rail and moved back toward the flying bridge with long, determined strides. He climbed the ladder swiftly, ignoring the helmsman as he reached out for the radio, adjusted the frequency and hailed the Scorpion. Another moment, and recognized the voice of the Scorpion's first mate, a stone-cold killer named Armand Sifuentes.

  "We have company," Guzman announced without preamble.

  "I see them," said Armand. "What should we do?"

  "Take three men in the motor launch," Guzman replied. "Be careful. Use whatever means you must to get aboard."

  "And then?" Sifuentes almost chuckled as he asked the question. There could be no doubt about what Guzman had in mind for those aboard the aging cabin cruiser.

  "Do what must be done," Guzman replied. "No witnesses."

  "My pleasure," said Armand Sifuentes, sounding very much as if he meant exactly that.