Remo knelt alongside him.
"Chiun, you say he'll be all right?"
"I didn't say he would be all right. I said he would live. All right is not nasty, lunatic, penny-pinching, unappreciative."
"Okay, Chiun. Okay." Remo removed Smith's left shoe and pressed his thumbs into the arch of the thin man's foot.
Smith groaned.
"Not too much haste," Chiun cautioned. "Slowly."
Remo relaxed the pressure, then began again. Smith's breathing became quicker and more shallow. From deep blood vessels buried inside the foot, Remo could feel the man's heartbeat quicken, speed up.
Smith opened his eyes. He moved his head to look around the room, then groaned.
"It's okay, Smitty. We're here," Remo said.
"Remo, Remo. You have to hurry," Smith gasped.
"No. Don't hurry. Chiun said to go easy."
"No. Must hurry," Smith gasped. "Ship is being blown up. Set afire."
Remo dropped Smith's foot. It bit the floor with a thud that forced Smith to wince. "What?" Remo said.
"Secret passageways in middle of ship. Heard people planning explosions. They caught me."
"How the hell'd you get in there?" Remo asked, remembering how he had sealed the entrance door.
"Used crowbar to open closed door."
"And they were already inside?"
Smith tried to nod and groaned again. There must be another entrance to the passages, Remo realized.
Smith struggled up to a sitting position. "Remo. Go stop that fire. Thousands die. Thousands die. Thousands."
"Will you be all right?"
"Fine. Go."
Remo dashed past Chiun into the passageway and ran at full speed toward the stairs leading to the upper deck. Chiun was at his side.
"I am proud of you, my son," he said.
"Why?"
"For doing the right thing."
"What right thing?" Remo asked.
"Running away. We will get ourselves upstairs and commandeer a small boat and be far from this evil vessel before anything happens."
"Wrong," said Remo. "We are going to dismantle those bombs."
"Then why are we running away from them? The bombs are hidden below us."
"I'm getting us some help," said Remo.
"Who needs help?"
"Good. I'm glad you said that. Chiun, you go down and start taking apart those bombs. I'll be right there."
"Orders, orders, orders," said Chiun, even as he turned and sped down the stairs toward the belly of the ship.
Remo got to the deck just in time to see Aristotle Thebos step hurriedly onto the elevator, close its door and head down below toward the platform where his power launch waited.
The deck was crowded. The seas were smooth and some of the diplomats and their staff had taken a break from the party and come up to the deck for fresh sea air. They were clustered around the Skouratis helicopter.
Remo looked over the side of the ship. Thebos stepped onto the little dock, next to his launch. There were a half dozen men there, carrying attaché eases, waiting for him. The launch was just tying up.
Where had the men with the attaché cases come from?
Remo had no time to worry about that. He moved through the crowd toward the Skouratis helicopter. The crowds of people had hidden it from view. But close up, Remo could see it had been wrecked. Wires were torn, and the motor had been dismantled. Parts were strewn over the wooden deck. Skouratis and Helena looked up from the deck at the pilot who was inspecting the damage. Skouratis had his arm around Helena's shoulders.
She had disobeyed her father and, unless Remo missed his guess, she planned to disobey him even more and spend the night on Skouratis' yacht.
"Greek," Remo said, moving up alongside them.
Skouratis fixed him with a malevolent squint while asking Helena: "You know this person?"
"Ignore him, dear."
"This ship is going to blow, Greek, and it's your doing," said Remo. "Let's go."
Skouratis tried to signal to his guards in the crowd but his right arm wouldn't move. Remo held the elbow in a pincer between his thumb and middle finger.
"Don't yell, don't signal, just move," Remo said. He shoved Skouratis in front of him as if he were a child's push toy on wheels.
Two guards moved toward them. "Tell them it's all right," Remo said.
"It's all right," Skouratis told the two men who moved aside to let them pass.
"What do you mean this ship is going to blow?" asked Skouratis, as Remo pushed him into a hatchway leading to the steps going below.
"What I mean is, your goons have set their bombs and if it goes, you go."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Skouratis said.
"We'll see."
Below, Remo found the broom-closet door pried open, where Smith had used his crowbar. The rip in the inside steel wall had been enlarged by Chiun and Remo pushed Skouratis through the opening.
In the inside passageway, Skouratis looked around in bewilderment. "What is this?" he said.
"What I don't understand is why you'd want to blow up your own ship?" Remo said.
"Damn you, crazy American. I don't know what you're talking about. What the hell is this place?"
"And you don't know?"
"No, I don't. I never built this. This was oil-storage space. It was never changed over when the ship was remodeled. There should be no corridors here, no rooms."
"There are now," said Remo. "Corridors, rooms, computers, closed-circuit TV. And bombs."
Chiun came down the passageway toward them.
"It is very bad," he said, shaking his head.
"What is?" asked Remo.
"I have found some bombs. I have busted them. There are many more."
"Well, we'll bust them all," said Remo.
"And there is gasoline everywhere. Bottles of gasoline, clothes soaked with it, and radio devices everywhere," said Chiun.
"Thebos," Skouratis spat. "That pimp."
"What's he got to do with it?" asked Remo.
"That's why he's been promoting this ship as mine. He's planning to sink it, and me, too. The Skouratis disaster. That pandering piece of garbage."
He pulled away from Remo who was surprised by the small man's force. Remo took a step toward the ripped wall to head off Skotiratia. But, instead, the Greek stepped farther into the corridor.
"Where are these bombs? This gasoline?" he asked Chiun.
"Down there. Everywhere," said Chiun, gesturing along the corridor with his hand.
Skouratis went down the corridor, running at full speed.
"No pimp in patent-leather pumps will destroy a Skouratis ship," he roared. His voice echoed through the metal-walled passageway as if it were the voice of doom.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Aristotle Thebos stepped hurriedly from the launch onto his yacht Ulysses and took the pair of field glasses that were immediately extended toward his hand.
He leaned over the railing and focused the glasses on Ship of States, moving majestically through the gathering night gloom, dipping, rising, crushing wave and swell under its giant prow.
"How many minutes?" he asked.
One of the six men who clambered onto the yacht from the stern of the launch looked at his wrist-watch.
"Three minutes more," he said.
"And the helicopter will not fly?" asked Thebos. "Are you sure?"
"Not unless they can find a way to fly a helicopter without an engine," the man said.
Thebos laughed and lowered the glasses. He turned to a uniformed officer aboard the yacht.
"Tell Miss Helena to come on deck. It is time she learned that the shipping business is not all polite smiles and whipped-cream cakes."
"Miss Helena, sir?" the man asked.
"Yes."
"Miss Helena has not returned to the yacht. Isn't she with you?" the officer said.
Thebos dropped the field glasses. They bounced on the railing of the yacht, then s
lipped into the cold Atlantic.
"You mean she's still…"
No one answered. Thebos turned away and watched the United Nations ship. His hands gripped the rail like two vises. Only a few minutes more. No time to return for her. His daughter would die before his eyes.
"Too many of them," Skouratis yelled, ripping wires from a cluster of dynamite sticks. "Too many of them." He straightened up and Iooked around. Throughout all the corridors were explosives and fire bombs, each set with individual timing devices. "We can't get them all."
Remo and Chiun were tearing wires, too.
Chiun said, "Remo, we have obligations to think of. It is time we left here."
"Not yet," Remo said.
"If not now, not ever," Chinn said. "This is none of our affair. We have done the best we could for those Persians who do not have television and who consider assassins to be killers."
"Pipe down and keep tearing wires," Remo said. "We're not doing this for any goddamn Persians."
"For whom, then? No one else has contracted with us for our services."
"I'm doing it for me," said Remo, ripping out a string of orange-coated wire that connected a clock to a half dozen taped-together dynamite sticks. "For America."
"For America?" Chiun asked. "The next thing you will tell me we are giving up our lives for the mad Emperor Smith."
"Right. For Smitty, too. Keep working."
"I will never understand you people," Chiun said.
"At least we don't all look alike."
Skouratis stood up. "No use," he said. "They're going to go and we can't get them all in time. They'll just tear this ship out of the water."
In frustration and anger, he pounded his fists on the steel bulkhead separating the passageway in which they stood from the engine compartments. Tears rolled down the furrows in his cheeks. "That swine. That Greekling swine," he said.
Remo could hear it—the first swish of fire. It started with a muffled thump around a twist in the corridor, and he could not see it, but he smelled instantly the acrid gasoline fumes. Then he saw a twist of smoke curling around the wall and down the corridor toward them.
"My ship! My ship!" Skouratis yelled.
"We'd better go," Remo said.
Skouratis shook his head angrily. "No. I stay. My ship." Tears ran down his cheeks in a steady trickle. "I stay."
"There still may be time for us to get out of here," Remo said.
Another muffled whomp shook the steel walls. Another bomb.
"Come on," said Remo.
"Wait," Skouratis said. "We can drown it. Drown it. Smother the explosions and fires."
"Drown it?"
"If we can get water in here, it'll smother everything," Skouratis said.
"Fill the ship with water, it'll sink," Remo said.
"No. It's all compartments. We can flood this and it'll still be safe." He stopped for a second. "Why bother? We can't get water in here in time."
Chiun cackled a laugh. "In an ocean, there is no shortage of water." Another bomb exploded.
The crackling of flames grew louder. The corridor began to turn gray with smoke.
"Where's a wall that has water outside it?" Remo said.
"Over there," Skouratis said. "But we can't…"
"Yes, we can," said Remo. "Show us."
Skouratis ran down the corridor. He was just a little old man in a rumpled gray suit, but he charged into the mist of smoke like Alexander leading his troops into battle.
He stopped at the curve of the corridor and pointed to the thick steel wall. "There. The ocean is right beyond that. But it's three inches thick."
"Steel is steel," said Remo.
"But people are real," said Chiun.
"You better get going to the door to get out of here," Remo told Skouratis. He looked upward and, high overhead, saw a sliding panel that looked like an elevator door. And he realized what it was. From the small dock at water level to which launches tied up, a panel opened to get into the ship. That was how the terrorists boarded the vessel.
And he remembered the small gang of people who got off Thebos' launch onto the dock, but when the elevator reached the main deck, only Thebos and his daughter were on it. The rest were Thebos' demolitions men and they had gone into this secret part of the ship through the panel, to plant their bombs and fire devices.
Remo nodded. Later he would take care of Thebos.
A bomb exploded behind them. The concussion pushed Remo toward the wall. "Get out of here," he yelled to Skouratis. Alongside Remo, Chiun ran his fingertips over the wall.
"It is just steel," he said confidently. "Now!"
Like pistons, his and Remo's fists thrust forward against the steel wall, hittirig it not in unison, but in a steady sequence of blows, each only milliseconds behind the last blow. The blows went into the core of the metal as vibrations and, as the steel vibrated to each blow, another blow shattered those vibrations and set up different stresses inside the steel. The metal creaked, as if groaning in pain. Remo heard Skouratis' steps moving out of the corridor.
The blows of their hands—left, right, left, right—continued against the wall and, under the press of muscle and bone, the steel turned mushy and brittle and chips of it flew off, and finally Chiun spun on his feet and drove forward with his right fingertips.
His hand bit through the steel as if it were a slice of American white bread and his hand was out into the cold Atlantic, and when he withdrew his hand, green seawater poured in through the hole.
Remo and Chiun each grabbed one side of the rip in the steel and twisted it back, as if it were the top of a sardine can. The water's flow erupted into the compartment with the whoosh of a giant fire hose and the pressure pushed Remo and Chiun back against the far wall.
Chiun said, "We go now."
"Right on, Little Father," said Remo. The two men ran and the flow of water lapped around their ankles as they moved toward the exit. Behind them, around them, they heard the muffled thump of explosions, but then they were through the huge rip in the wall leading to the maintenance closet. With their hands, they pulled the torn metal back to almost close up the hole, then escaped out into the corridor where they again sealed the closet door.
The corridors were filled with people, running in both directions in panic. Diplomats trampled each other, bodyguards fled ignoring their responsibilities to protect anyone else.
"See what happens when you hire cheap help?" Chiun said,
"Let's go up top," Remo said.
On the main deck, they found Demosthenes Skouratis talking to the ship's first officer. He gestured with his finger and, while Skouratis wore no uniform, the first officer understood the voice of command.
"After everybody is out of the central wing, then seal off all bulkheads leading into other sections of the ship."
"That will allow the central wing to fill with water," the officer said.
"That's where we want it kept. The ship will float. Now! Hurry!"
Skouratis saw Remo and Chiun. He was spun around as two diplomats pushed roughly by him, racing toward the lifeboats at the stem of the vessel. Chiun tripped the two men who skidded on their faces.
"I don't know how you succeeded," said Skouratis, "but I owe my ship to you."
The sounds of battle came from the stern of the boat. Men in formal dress, bodyguards in business suits, women in long gowns fought and clawed with each other, trying to struggle into the lifeboats.
"Look at them," Skouratis said. "Like ants, they flee in panic. And they run the world."
"Most men live lives of ants," Chiun said. "The only world they run is the world of ants. Real men run their own lives."
"You are very wise, old man," Skouratis said.
Below their feet, they could feel the muffled thump of more explosions. Remo felt someone at his shoulder and turned to see Smith. The blood on his face had dried in a smear.
"What happened?" Smith said.
"It's all right, Smitty. The ship's safe."
He looked up as a pistol shot resounded, a small pop in the open ocean. At the stern of the boat, the Indian delegate had gotten his hands on a gun and had just shot a Cambodian delegate. He was now ripping a life jacket from the corpse. Two women screamed.
"Just a minute," Remo said to Skouratis. "I gotta go straighten this out."
"How will he do that?" Skouratis asked Chiun, as Remo strolled toward the stern of the ship. "There are many men there."
Chiun shook his head. "No. There are many ants there. There is only one man. That is Remo."
As Skouratis watched, Remo strolled into the swarm of men fighting over life jackets and battling each other for the lifeboats. Skouratis felt as if he were watching a child stack wooden blocks as he saw the seething mob slowly form up into straight lines, and their voices lower.
As Remo came back toward Skouratis and Chiun, there was a sound that washed over the deck from the men at the stern. It was a song. They were singing.
God bless America,
Land that I love…
"I won't ask you how you did that," Skouratis told Remo.
"Just my native charm, I guess."
The first officer joined them. "Everything is secure, Mr. Skouratis."
"Good," the Greek said. "You have done well. You are a good sailor." He pronounced the word with the reverence usually reserved for speaking God's name.
"Thank you, sir." The young officer's face flushed with warmth and pride.
Suddenly, a pair of arms were thrown around Skouratis' neck from behind.
"Oh, Demo. I was so worried." It was Helena. She tried to kiss Skouratis. He turned and pushed her away.
"Your father is a pimp," he said. His voice dripped hatred.
"I am not my father."
"No. But you are a Thebos. And the slime that runs in his veins runs in yours. That pimp tried to destroy this vessel."
"I didn't… I don't…"
She stood there as a supplicant in her white gown, her hands raised gently near her hips, looking for solace but finding none in Skouratis' eyes.
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