White Water td-106

by Warren Murphy

  Reaching over the side, Remo dipped his fingers. They came back mercurochrome red. He could see the red clearly now. It blended with the black of the night sea. There was a lot of it.

  Standing up, Remo looked all around. Other smells came to his nostrils. Human smells again. He smelled fear-sweat. There was no mistaking that odor, either. Machine smells. Machine oil. Diesel fuel. Other things that he could not identify by scent but that he associated with ships.

  A big ship with a big crew had been on this spot not long before. Remo arrived. But a ship that big should be visible on the water. There was plenty of moonlight.

  As Remo scanned the horizon all around, something went bloop behind him. Turning, he saw nothing but heaving swells.

  Then the blended stink of oil and diesel filled the air.

  He saw it then. A rainbow slick. Something far below had vomited up diesel fuel.

  Stripping off his T-shirt, Remo stood in his chinos as he toed off his shoes.

  Without hesitation he jumped into the frigid Atlantic. It enveloped him like a cold vise. A biological sensor in his nose caused his body temperature to elevate ten degrees. The same natural reflex had been discovered in children who fell into icy ponds and survived because it threw the body into a kind of limited suspended animation, preserving the brain from oxygen starvation.

  Remo's body temperature was now in the danger zone, but the cold of the North Atlantic would counteract the effects of the self-induced fever. Sinanju again.

  Remo's eyes quickly adjusted to the changing light conditions. The red end of the spectrum was filtered out thirty feet down. At sixty, orange vanished.

  At one hundred feet Remo began picking out shapes in the predominantly blue-gray realm. His skin was slick with oil. He hated the sensation, but the coating helped insulate his skin.

  Five hundred feet down in shoal water, he found the Ingo Pungo lying on her side. He read it as a long, dark, night blue hulk, the stern broken open.

  Releasing a solitary carbon dioxide bubble once every thirty seconds, Remo reconnoitered the sunken wreck. There was a hole in its side, he discovered-more by feel than sight. Something had knocked the hole in the thick black hull plates. There were jagged edges pointing inward around a human-sized hole. Other holes had edges that pointed outward. No boiler explosion sank this ship.

  There were bodies floating in the water, some still trailing cloudy, dark filaments. Blood. Already fish were pecking at them.

  There had been no survivors. A finger floated by but Remo ignored it.

  Then, reaching out, he momentarily arrested a body slowly drifting by. The dead face looked back with sightless, oblique eyes. A Korean. Remo let go.

  Holding his position with lazy stabilizing sweeps of his arms, Remo noticed a strange thing. There were a lot of fish. Maybe it was the bodies that drew them. But they seemed to be coming out of the wreck as if it had been their home a long time.

  One swam close, and Remo reached out to catch it. It fought for its freedom and Remo let the fish have it, but not before he had identified it as a coho salmon. A fish native to the Pacific Ocean. What the hell was it doing in the Atlantic? he wondered.

  Moving closer, Remo discovered other Pacific species. In fact, they were almost all Pacific fish. To Remo, who knew fish very well, it was as weird as discovering a Pekinese perched atop a candelabra cactus.

  Returning to the surface, Remo recharged his lungs with air.

  Except for his own lonely craft, the seas were empty.

  Back on board the cigarette boat, Remo rubbed his oily arms dry and diverted body heat to the top of his head. His wet hair began to steam. It was soon merely damp, and before long it would be dry.

  He threw on his dry T-shirt and, as he kicked the engine back into life, he redirected his body heat to his legs, where his pants were sticking to his flesh like a cold, clammy shroud.

  The power boat dug in its stern as it heeled about. Remo lined the nose up with land and let the throttle out.

  Something was very wrong here. And the worst part was he didn't know how much trouble it meant.

  DR. HAROLD W. SMITH was working late. It was one of the occupational hazards of being the head of CURE, the supersecret government agency that lead no official existence. The cover for CURE was Folcroft Sanitarium, a three-story redbrick building perched on the lip of Long Island Sound. Smith's Folcroft duties were no less demanding than his higher responsibility. So he often worked deep into the night.

  The Sound was a bejeweled carpet of anthracite at Smith's back as he trolled the Internet from his desk. The desk was as black as the Sound. Its wide glass top was like obsidian. Set under the glass so that its luminous amber screen canted up to face hum, was the monitor that connected to the Folcroft Four-a set of powerful mainframes hidden in the sleepy sanitarium's basement.

  Smith was a spare man whose color might have been bleached out of him by virtue of the tedium of his job. There was nothing glamorous about running CURE. Smith did it from his Spartan office unsuspected by his employees, who thought of him as a hard-nosed, tight-fisted, anally retentive bureaucratic paper shuffler-which he was. And stubbornly proud of it.

  Smith was tracking the progress of the Ingo Pungo on his screen. The ship was equipped with the global positioning system transponder beacon carried by many modern vessels. It beamed a constant signal up to orbiting satellites, which sent its position back to earth stations. Smith had accessed the network and was looking at a real-time schematic of the Ingo Pungo's current position.

  The blipping green light was fifteen nautical miles off Lubec, Maine, in the Bay of Fundy. It had stopped dead in the water precisely where it should. This was good.

  If Remo held up his end, he should rendezvous shortly, and Harold Smith could go home to his bed and his understanding wife, Maude.

  Time passed, and the Ingo Pungo remained in place. The off-loading was probably going slowly. Or perhaps there was weather. Smith punched up a real-time feed from the National Weather Service.

  There were no storms in that part of the Bay of Fundy. He frowned, his grayish face like that of a corpse wearing rimless glasses in a failed attempt to look natural. Smith resembled nothing more than a third-generation New England banker teetering on the creaky edge of retirement. In fact, Smith was well past retirement age, but as long as America had a need for CURE, he could not retire. Except in death.

  Smith was monitoring news feeds on a window on one corner of his screen when the blue contact desk telephone rang, startling him into action.

  Smith scooped it up.

  "Hail, O Emperor! What word?" cried a high, squeaky voice.

  "None."

  "The hour has come and gone," said the voice of Chiun, the Reigning Master of Sinanju.

  "Remo ran into difficulties. But the ship is on station."

  "Of course. It is manned by Koreans. They would not dare be tardy. Unlike my adopted son, who would sink to any low embarrassment."

  "I expect the cargo transfer is going on right now," Smith said.

  "I should have overseen it myself. But if I cannot trust Remo to accomplish a simple exchange, how can I place the future of my House in his clumsy, thumb-fingered hands?"

  "I will let you know when I hear from him, Master Chiun," said Harold Smith, terminating the call.

  The blue phone rang again so fast Smith thought the Master of Sinanju had hit Redial.

  It was Remo this time. He sounded cold. And Remo never sounded cold.

  "Smith. Bad news."

  "You failed to make the rendezvous?"

  "I made it. The ship made it, too."

  Smith squeezed the blue handset. "Then what is wrong?"

  "I found it on the bottom of the ocean. It sunk with all hands," Remo told him somberly.

  "How can you be certain it sunk?"

  "I found blood in the water and an oil slick. I can add two and two, so I went down and found a ship. Ingo Pungo was on the stern-what was left of it."

  "Yo
u are certain that the ship was the Ingo Pungo?"

  "I can read. I can also tell a Korean from a Japanese at ten paces. There were Korean bodies floating around the wreck. Looks like no survivors."

  "It had just reached the rendezvous point. What could have befallen the ship in that short a time?" Smith said in a deeply disturbed voice.

  "I'm no expert, but I'd say it was torpedoed. There was a hole in the starboard side as big as a Buick. The metal was punched inward."

  "Who would torpedo a cargo ship?"

  "Who would know about it?" countered Remo.

  "No one other than you, Chiun and I."

  "And the crew," Remo corrected.

  "Yes, of course, the crew."

  "Loose lips sink ships. Could be somebody talked."

  "That is unlikely," Smith said testily. "This particular cargo would not attract pirates."

  "Who said anything about pirates? And just what was the cargo?"

  "Unsalvageable," said Smith. "We must start over. Stand by. I must speak with Master Chiun."

  "But you don't know where-"

  Hanging up, Smith dialed Master Chiun's Massachusetts number.

  The Master of Sinanju picked up the phone immediately.

  "What news?" he squeaked.

  "There has been an accident."

  "If Remo has failed me, I will have his ears!" Chiun screamed.

  "It is not Remo's fault. He reached the rendezvous zone only to find the Ingo Pungo had gone to the bottom. He believes it was torpedoed."

  "What lunatic would torpedo such a worthy vessel as the Ingo Pungo?"

  "That is what I am wondering. Who knew of the vessel's mission?"

  "You. I. But not Remo."

  "This is not random," Smith said firmly.

  "And the consequences of this act of piracy will not be random, either," Chiun said in a thin voice. "I will have satisfaction."

  "I will make new arrangements, Master Chiun."

  "That goes without saying. The satisfaction I seek is in the form of heads. Many heads. Staring sightlessly at eternity."

  "This matter bears looking into, I agree. But we must not call attention to ourselves."

  "I will leave the details to you, O Emperor. Just so long as I have my cargo and my heads."

  Smith depressed the switch hook, shifted the receiver to his other ear and keyed a few strokes on the capacity keyboard on his desktop.

  Instantly the line began ringing. Remo's unhappy voice came on.

  "How'd you get back to me? I'm at a pay phone."

  "It is a simple computer program."

  "But this pay phone doesn't accept incoming calls."

  "Override program."

  "If AT ds out about this, you're looking at hard time in Leavenworth," Remo muttered.

  "Master Chiun is very unhappy with the way this has turned out."

  "I'll bet. You told him it wasn't my fault?"

  "Of course," said Smith.

  "Good. So, what was lost?"

  "That is no longer important. I am making other arrangements. But in the meantime I need answers to the Ingo Pungo's fate."

  "It sunk. What more do you need to know?"

  "Who sunk it and why," said Smith crisply.

  "Beats me."

  "Take the boat out again. See what you can find."

  "It's a big ocean."

  "And the longer you delay, the farther away the attacking vessel will get."

  "Okay, but only if you put in a good word with Chiun for me. I don't want any of the blame for this. I made the drop point on time. More or less."

  "Of course," said Smith, hanging up.

  He returned to his screen. The blinking green light that was the Ingo Pungo continued relaying its position to orbiting navigation satellites. Before long the batteries would go dead or seawater would get into the electronics and the signal would die.

  In the meanwhile it was like a ghost calling out to the world of the living from its watery grave.

  Chapter 5

  Anwar Anwar-Sadat was enjoying his insomnia.

  As Secretary-General of the United Nations, Anwar Anwar-Sadat had been experiencing more than his share of sleepless nights of late. Things were not going well for his grand scheme to subsume sovereign nations under UN control. It was very distressing. He had expected backlashes. All manner of backlashes. This was why he had tread so very carefully in the early phases.

  Not many months ago his office polar-projection map of the globe was checkerboarded in blue. Blue for UN blue. Blue for nations enjoying UN oversight and occupations. It was the golden age for United Nations influence upon the nations of the world. Or a blue age.

  Anwar-Sadat much preferred to think of it as a blue age.

  But now the blue tide was receding. UNPROFOR-the United Nations Protection Force-had been discredited in the former Yugoslavia. Now the uneasy truces were under NATO control. His loyal blue berets had been replaced by the so-called Implementation Force, or IFOR. True, UN forces currently occupied Haiti, but Haiti was a nothing in geopolitical terms. Not even a factor. In fact, when painted blue on the UN maps, it tended to disappear into the blue of the Caribbean Sea, itself a watery nothing.

  Haiti was a useless beachhead. It would not advance the cause of the global supernation that Anwar Anwar-Sadat envisioned in his One World of the future.

  It was after the debacle in the former Yugoslavia, now a jigsaw comprised of shattered Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia, that the sleepless nights began to steal Anwar Anwar-Sadat's all-important sleep.

  No pills would help. Not Sominex. Not Nytol. Not Excedrin PM. Not the new thing called melatonin. Nothing.

  So Anwar Anwar-Sadat had had a computer terminal installed in his Manhattan high-rise apartment and taught himself to turn it on and manipulate its complex commands, whereas before, various functionaries performed that duty during working hours.

  Anwar-Sadat was too private a man to allow a staff functionary to remain on call during his leisure hours. So he learned to use the mouse and a simple program called Bob and in time became quite proficient in manipulating them both.

  In time he became truly glad to have expended the effort to master the computer.

  Thanks to Mistress Kali.

  The Secretary-General had never met Mistress Kali, but that day was approaching. She had promised him so. Promised many times. Twice they had agreed to rendezvous. But the first time Mistress Kali had canceled. The second time it was UN business that had interfered.

  The delays only made Anwar Anwar-Sadat itch with a mighty itching for the golden day he would at last meet his golden goddess.

  He knew she was a goddess because she had told him so.

  "Please describe yourself to me," Anwar had written those many weeks ago.

  "I am golden of hair, and my eyes are as green as the Nile. When I walk, I am like a desert wind sighing through date palms. I am the wind and the palms both. My breath is warm, and my hips are supple and sway lyrically when I move."

  "You sound ...enticing," Anwar had typed, feeling a strange warmth he had not felt since he was a young man back in Cairo.

  "I am a goddess in womanly form," Mistress Kali had replied.

  And Anwar had believed. For who would lie about such a thing?

  "Are you ...voluptuous?" he typed.

  "My shape is very pleasing. My features are delectable. My skin, flawless."

  In those few words, Anwar wove a mental image that had yet to be modified by photographs or videotape. Left to his own imagination, he took the vague description of a blond-haired green-eyed enchantress and filled in the blanks with the woman of his dreams.

  Since he had created most of the mental image, of course he fell in love with it. Mistress Kali was the personification of his deepest longings, the embodiment of his most denied desires.

  "I worship you, Mistress Kali."

  "I exist to be worshiped."

  "Am I your only worshiper?" he typed, fear in his heart.

  "You h
ave the opportunity to earn that distinction, my Anwar."

  "Command me," Anwar found himself typing.

  "You must prove yourself worthy of my commands, my Anwar."

  With that, Mistress Kali had signed off for three days. Three tedious, hateful days in which his e-mail address and his real-time computer-chat calls were haughtily ignored. Three endlessly sleepless nights in which he tossed and turned, thinking the worst. She had died. She had fallen in love with another. She was married and her husband had discovered her infidelity. For three nights he could not tear his eyes from the always-running blue computer screen with its burning white letters.

  When on the fourth day an e-mail message popped up on the screen, Anwar leaped for the terminal.

  The letter was brief, to the point, but pregnant with meaning: "Did you miss me?"

  His reply was even briefer. "Damnably so."

  "We should chat."

  Eagerly Anwar Anwar-Sadat logged on to the chat line they used when their difficult schedules coincided.

  "Where have you been?" he demanded.

  "Away. But I am back."

  "I thought the worst."

  "Never fear. There will always be a place for you in my life, my darling."

  Anwar's heart thumped. It was the first time she had used an endearment.

  "My Pharaohess..." he replied, his eyes misting over.

  "So how has been your life, Anwar?"

  "Difficult. Things do not go well."

  And he poured out his woes and ambitions and frustrations, divulging more about his schemes and goals than even his most trusted Coptic aides were told.

  To his utter dumbfoundment, her replies were intelligent, insightful and very much on target.

  "What is it you do that gives you such a mind?" Anwar Anwar-Sadat demanded.

  "I am Everywoman. You need know no more."

  "I ache to know all about you."

  "Woman is mystery. Once you know all, I will cease to attract you."

  Anwar Anwar-Sadat had to be satisfied with riddles. And he was. For a time. Nightly he told her of his day. And each night she advised him on the day to come.

  One day he lamented the receding blue tide that was the seven continents.

  "I cannot control the nations of the world. They are like mischievous children. If only they would cede some control to me. I could solve many of the world's problems. But the blue nations are reverting to green. In Bosnia my UNPROFOR has given way to a NATO thing called IFOR. If the tides continue to ebb, the only blue that will remain will be the seven seas."