The Last Monarch td-120

by Warren Murphy

  "Tell us again why this is necessary?" the Earthpeacer asked the secretary when he'd stopped beside them.

  "You know why," Babcock replied. "We've got to make this as authentic as possible." He placed a firm hand on Sunshiny's shoulder. "It's the only way."

  "I know," Sunshiny Ralph said morosely. "It just seems so-so human." He used the word like a curse.

  Babcock couldn't argue the charge. His face reflected deeply somber sympathy. It was an expression identical to his delighted look of a moment before.

  "I feel your pain," Babcock intoned. "But remember, what we do here today we do for a higher cause."

  There were nods among the sniffles. Though most still fought back tears, they sat more proudly, shoulders forced back, chests thrust forward.

  Babcock flashed the men a dyspeptic wince that might have been a smile of encouragement before turning away.

  It was time to deal with more pressing matters. The endless churning water had had a negative effect on his already full bladder. The pressure was too great to ignore any longer.

  Turning from the men, he began to hurry back along the deck. He had taken barely a step before something far above caught his eye. It was framed against the azure sky of the Caribbean.

  He stopped dead.

  On a lone mast high above the giant ship fluttered a green flag. On it was embroidered the familiar dove-and-tree symbol of Earthpeace. Bryce Babcock's sour face collapsed as he watched the flag snap crazily at the sky.

  He wheeled back on the men.

  "What is that still doing up there?" he demanded, jabbing an angry finger mastward.

  "Uh, dude," Sunshiny said, "we thought, you know, fly the colors till the bitter end."

  "That's the first thing that should have gone, you idiots!" Babcock snapped. "Get it down from there! Now!" His baggy eyes suddenly widened. "Oh, no."

  Face sick, the interior secretary glanced down at his trousers. A seeping wet stain was easing over his crotch. As he gasped in anger, warm rivulets began the remorseless trickle down the front of his thigh, dampening the band of his black dress socks.

  "Dammit," he griped. "I knew I should have lined with plastic."

  Shaking the growing wetness from his leg, Bryce Babcock hustled belowdecks on squishy shoes.

  BY ORDER of the interior secretary, the Earthpeace flag was lowered. It was folded reverently and placed in a simple cardboard box in the hold. At the same time, the last white lapel pins were collected.

  Jerry Glover had the honor of bringing the shoebox containing the insignias down below. He hid it behind the former President's cage. Sneaking a peek at the prisoner, he found that the ex-chief executive was still snoring, oblivious to all that was going on around him.

  "You're gonna be in for one mother of a shock when you wake up," Jerry whispered. "This ain't no bourgeois National Review cruise."

  Leaving the old man in the darkness of the damp hold, he hurried back up on deck.

  The catwalk door closed with resounding finality. The noise echoed through the shadowy hold.

  For several long seconds, intense silence filled the rusty belly of the ship. The only sounds were those that filtered through the Grappler's thick hull. Waves crashing. Creaking metal. Muffled shouts. Muted, distant.

  Another sound. Closer. This one originating within the hold itself. So soft was it that it could have been mistaken for background noise.

  A soft, urgent scratching noise. Very faint.

  And this new sound issued from out of the dark cage interior.

  AT THE PUERTO RICO TRENCH, the Grappler made an unexpected course alteration. Instead of turning south for the run to the southernmost tip of Africa, the ship veered northeast, aiming for the wide expanse of the Atlantic.

  Scaffolding was lowered over the sides. Paint strokes removed the last of the Grappler's identifying marks. New identification numbers were stenciled in large white letters on the gunmetal-gray hull.

  The men in the stern were given word to begin the task that had caused them such grief.

  Nets were lowered from heavy steel arms into the churning ocean water.

  Sonar in the helm was quick to locate a school of fish. In a matter of minutes, the dripping nets were hauled back up to the deck, laden with bluefin tuna. The fish were dumped unceremoniously onto the deck.

  Men who had held themselves together until now broke into tears at the sight of the hundreds of fish slopping out around their ankles.

  "The carnage!" Sunshiny cried. "The viciousness! Oh, the humanity!"

  "Humanity is right," another Earthpeacer blubbered, wiping at his runny nose. "Fish would never kill one another for food. They don't have it in them."

  Sunshiny Ralph steeled himself. "We're supposed to be a fishing boat now. We need to have something in the hold if we're stopped."

  Jerry Glover sniffled, nodding agreement. "This is necessary. For the greater good."

  The men waded into the pile of live fish and began to load them, as gently as possible, into a special metal sluice. The tuna disappeared down the chute, flopping moments later into the hold of the big ship.

  The work went on for only a few minutes. The cries of the men, which had died down after a time, grew frenzied once more when the last of the dumped nets revealed the familiar shape of a large dolphin. The creature was dead.

  Gasps went up all around.

  "Oh, my God!" Sunshiny shrieked. He hopped up and down in front of the dead mammal.

  "This is awful!" Jerry echoed, clutching his own throat.

  Another man dropped to his rear end on the deck, knees pulled to his chin.

  "Greater good ...greater good ...greater good..." he muttered over and over as he rocked back and forth.

  As Sunshiny attempted mouth-to-blowhole resuscitation, buckets of ocean water were hastily brought up in a futile attempt to revive the animal. To no avail.

  The mood went from frantic to funereal. No one seemed to know what to do with the dead creature. A burial at sea seemed the most fitting, but someone argued that this was just a fancy term for dumping the poor creature overboard.

  "These are the geniuses of the deep," Jerry wept. "We can't just chuck it out like garbage."

  "If they're so smart, why do they keep getting caught in nets?" one timid Earthpeacer asked. The rest joined Sunshiny and Jerry in pelting the blasphemer with a dozen flapping, undersize tropical fish.

  Afterward, they wrapped the dolphin's corpse in a spare Earthpeace flag and lowered it gently into the sea.

  There was no joy aboard the transformed Radiant Grappler II after this incident. The dark mood remained with the crew like a stubborn black cloud on the remainder of their uneventful trip across the Atlantic.

  Chapter 16

  The summer sun was dying long and slow across the reddening New York sky. As the afternoon blurred into dusk, a palpable sense of loss seemed to rise with the gloaming-the sort of wistful malaise that began to set in on the last full month before the start of autumn and the winter it presaged.

  A soft breeze off Long Island Sound touched the shadow-smeared leaves of ancient oak and maple. Alone in the drab confines of his Folcroft office, Harold W. Smith noticed neither the sigh of leaf nor the encroaching darkness.

  Fingers moved with perfect efficiency of motion, striking silent keys. Smith was lost in his element. As he surfed the Net, page after electronic page reflected in his owlish glasses.

  For the moment, he had put aside his greater concerns. Even so, while it was not yet an actual crisis, it remained a far worse potential crisis than any he'd ever faced.

  The situation as it was playing out was clearly an unfortunate quirk of fate, rather than part of some deliberate scheme.

  The former President hit his head and regained his memory of CURE. An ecoterrorist group saw the opportunity his hospitalization presented and abducted him. The group ruthlessly seized the moment, oblivious to the damning potential of the information that had surfaced in the ex-President's mind.
r />   A series of unfortunate coincidences. Nothing more.

  Under other circumstances, Smith might have hesitated to use Remo and Chiun against Earthpeace. After all, other agencies would certainly be involved in the search. They would find him eventually. And even if they did not, well, the truth was that, lamentably, ex-Presidents were expendable.

  But the CURE information this President possessed made this situation unique. In having the President, Earthpeace had CURE. Whether they realized it now or not.

  A potentially disastrous situation. Smith had tried for several hours to put it from his mind as he worked, with varying degrees of success. At the moment, as he studied his monitor, concern had been eclipsed by confusion.

  At his keyboard, Smith paused.

  "Odd," he said quietly. So engrossed was he with the information on the computer screen he did not realize he had spoken the word aloud.

  On the monitor buried below the dark surface of the desk was a photograph. Taken from a satellite, it showed the area of the Atlantic where the Earthpeace flagship should now be, given its reported course and likely speed.

  But the Grappler wasn't there.

  At best, the Radiant Grappler II wasn't due in Cape Town for another twenty-nine hours. Remo would arrive before that. All any of them could do in the meantime was wait.

  To fill the idle time, Smith had been doing research on the Earthpeace organization. At the same time, he had logged on to a military satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic. Efficient to a fault, Smith wanted to be certain the ship was on schedule. He farmed out the task of actually locating the Grappler to the CIA.

  It was a procedure he had used in the past. Analysts at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, were assigned the job of finding the Earthpeace ship by some unknown superior. Taking a break from his own work, Smith had just checked the satellite images to see if the CIA had made any progress.

  They had not.

  Smith's gray eyes were hooded by his frowning brow as he studied the latest real-time image. There were red circles on the map. Tiny boatslike miniature bathtub toys-threw up frothy wakes of white within the small circles. Some of the vessels were labeled. None was the Grappler.

  "Very odd," Smith said aloud.

  This time, he realized he had spoken the words to his empty office.

  Smith leaned away from the computer. He adjusted his glasses with one hand, even as he tapped the other on his desk.

  They should have found the ship by now. He had issued the order almost two hours ago.

  It was taking far too long. Even by CIA standards. Even if it was traveling at half speed, they should have found the Earthpeace vessel by now.

  Assuming it was where it was supposed to be. A fresh tug of concern.

  Empty belly grumbling, Smith leaned forward, his chair creaking. A scrambled phone line gained him entry to Langley. The young voice that answered was bored, but efficient. A low-level functionary not yet disinterested enough in his work to be indolent. "Imaging analysis."

  "This is General Smith," the CURE director said, using the cover ID that had gained him access to both the military satellite and the CIA. "To whom am I speaking?"

  The voice grew tighter, bored tone fleeing. "Mark Howard, General. I'm afraid you're not going to be happy with what I've got."

  Though he labored to subdue it, Smith's worry deepened.

  "Explain."

  "We've searched the corridor you gave us, but we're coming up empty. There is no ship remotely resembling the Radiant Grappler in Atlantic waters from Antigua to the Cape of Good Hope."

  "Is it possible you are in error?"

  "No, sir," Howard insisted. "The Grappler isn't an ordinary tug. It's as big as a small cruise liner. If she was there, there'd be no missing her."

  "Widen the search parameters," Smith instructed.

  "We have. Three times already. I'm sorry, General, but your boat isn't out there."

  Smith thought of the former U.S. President. Held captive on a phantom ship, lost somewhere in the Atlantic. Even now, he could be speaking to his abductors about CURE.

  "Widen them again," Smith ordered with forced restraint.

  "You know, General, Spacetrack probably followed that ship through the Panama Canal. It might be smarter to review their older satellite photos to get a positive locate on her. Like, say, from six hours ago. If she veered off any other way, we could extrapolate a route from there. Maybe."

  Smith pursed his thin lips. "Do it," he said.

  "The satellite I'm using now is real-time. I'll need current Spacetrack access and the full day's records."

  Smith entered some rapid commands into his computer.

  "The access codes have been sent to your terminal."

  Howard seemed impressed. "That was quick," he said.

  Smith ignored him. "If there is nothing more you require, I will be in touch," he said crisply.

  "General, you should consider another alternative," Mark Howard said quickly before the CURE director had a chance to break the connection.

  "What is that?"

  "It's possible your boat went down."

  In his Folcroft office, Smith's expression remained unchanged.

  "I had already entertained that possibility," he replied as he replaced the phone.

  DEEP IN THE BOWELS of the CIA's Langley headquarters, Mark Howard scowled. The sleek white phone in his hand released a steady hornet's buzz from its earpiece.

  "You're welcome, you old buzzard," he griped. In the privacy of his drab, gray cubicle, he briefly considered dragging his feet on the search. It would be a fairly easy thing to do, considering the work it entailed. The volume of information he'd been given access to by the mysterious General Smith was vast. After a moment's blank hesitation, Mark Howard blinked hard. "Ah, the hell with it," he muttered. "Better to get him off my back fast."

  Rubbing his tired eyes, he turned back to his worn keyboard.

  Chapter 17

  On the flight from San Francisco International Airport, Chiun took his usual seat on the left-hand side of the plane above the wing. Remo settled in next to him. Only when they were safely in the air and Chiun was thoroughly convinced that the wing wasn't going to fall off did the old man turn away from the window. His face was disturbingly calm.

  The sunlight that glinted off the fuselage streamed through the small window, surrounding the old Korean's vellum-draped skull with an almost ethereal nimbus.

  It was the halo effect that did it for Remo. The damnably serene expression on the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled puss didn't help.

  "You know you don't have to keep this up," he snapped, annoyed.

  "Keep what up?" Chiun asked blandly.

  "This phony tranquil front."

  Chiun regarded his pupil with hooded hazel eyes. "I am going to take a nap. Please wake me if you intend to make sense."

  "Don't pretend you don't know what I mean. I know for a fact you're ticked as all hell about this movie thing. The only thing keeping you from splattering all over this cabin is the fact that you don't have anyone left to disembowel. You're this close to blowing your top."

  "Will you be comforted, Remo, if I tell you my top is secure?"

  "Tell it to the seagulls," Remo said. He shook his head resignedly. "I just wish you'd get it over with already. This waiting for you to erupt is driving me nuts."

  "Your feeble grip on sanity notwithstanding, I am truly not upset. I have implored the gods to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change that which I am able and wisdom to see the difference."

  In spite of himself, Remo snorted. "Where'd you pick that one up?"

  Chiun raised a haughty eyebrow. "I do not pick up. Remember, I am a writer."

  "Well, you didn't write that. That's an AA prayer."

  "Is it?" the old Korean asked vaguely. He settled back in his seat. "They probably stole it from me. Doubtless the rum-soaked walls of Triple-A offices throughout this fetid nation are
adorned with my poignant words. Credited to Mr. Chin, of course."

  Chiun closed his eyes, indicating that he was through speaking. He folded his hands neatly across his belly. After a moment he was fast asleep.

  Remo watched the Master of Sinanju's calm, rhythmic breathing. It was as if he didn't have a care in the world.

  It was irritating to Remo. He knew Chiun was pissed, yet Chiun wasn't displaying any signs of being pissed. And that had the practical effect of pissing Remo off.

  "No matter what you say, I still think you're upset, you old faker," he whispered to Chiun's softly sleeping form.

  "Think quieter," Chiun squeaked.

  IT HAD TAKEN several hours, but he'd finally found her.

  The contours were right, and it was certainly the right size. Mark Howard had enlarged the image just to confirm.

  He copied the photo to a ROM disc and brought it down to a screening room. Once he'd doused the lights and displayed the image against the white wall, he'd removed all doubt.

  The Radiant Grappler II.

  Alone in the shadows of the small room, Howard compared the computer-enhanced image to the file photos he'd dragged up from the CIA archives. It didn't quite match.

  By the looks of it, the vessel had undergone some modifications to make it look like an innocent fishing boat. A waste of time. The ship was so distinctive, there was no mistaking it, no matter what was done to its exterior.

  "You can't paint stripes on a cow and call it a zebra," Howard whispered in the darkness of the empty room.

  The cosmetic alterations weren't the only odd thing about the Grappler.

  Howard glanced at the longitude and latitude displayed at the bottom of the picture. On the screen, the enlarged numbers were three inches high. Unless the pilot was high or a complete idiot-both possible, given the Earthpeace rolls-the vessel had deliberately changed course. No simple navigational error could possibly put the ship five thousand miles away from where it was supposed to be.

  Flipping on the lights, he popped the disc from the CD-ROM drive.

  Howard left the room, returning to the seclusion of his cubicle. The phone rang the instant he sat in his swivel chair.

  "Imaging analysis," he said, tucking the receiver between ear and shoulder. The smaller satellite image of the Grappler was still on his monitor.