White Water td-106

by Warren Murphy

  Sandy didn't care about Ottawa. After the skirmish was over, there would be even less fish in the North Atlantic, pushing the stock-rebounding process further into the next century.

  The trouble was, the U.S. fishing fleet was firing warning shots at its own Coast Guard.

  Keeping a respectful distance, watching the sonar scope because there was nothing more constructive to do, Sandy spotted a familiar metallic underwater contact.

  It was chasing a school of flatfish that looked like tilapia, one of the underutilized species that used to be by-catch but was reclassified as edible now.

  "Helmsman, stay with this contact."

  "Aye, sir."

  The Cayuga moved smartly to a southwesterly heading.

  Sandy jammed her pugnacious nose to the greenish scope. "It's got to be one of those damn torpedoes again. I want to see what it does and where it goes."

  The Cayuga slammed through the heaving swells like a flashing white terrier.

  Chapter 36

  Remo Williams folded his arms as the Master of Sinanju asked the blond woman in the dominatrix rig if she recognized him.

  "I do not," she said, continuing her advance. Snapping her whip back, she let fly.

  The whip snaked up and out.

  Remo read it coming. To his trained eyes, it wasn't even a blur, just a sluggish, uncoiling serpent of gleaming black leather. It snapped at a lock of his hair. Remo tilted his head. The lock escaped chopping.

  The whip came back, and this time she swung it broadside.

  Remo stepped in, met the black tentacle halfway and took hold of it. He spun. The whip, still traveling in his grasp, came flying out of its owner's grasp.

  Mistress Kali stepped back in shock, looked at his empty hands and his pale features, then she turned a smoldering red under her yellow silk domino mask.

  "You dare!"

  "We dare all the time," said Remo casually.

  "I am Mistress Kali!"

  "Like the cat says, 'Big hairy deal.'"

  "Defier! I slay you with my scorn."

  Kali lunged. Remo reached out and took her by the throat. He squeezed. At once her face reddened, then purpled. Her black-nailed fingers clawed for his face. Remo held her off at arm's length.

  "What do you say now, Little Father?" he asked Chiun as Kali tried in vain to claw the skin from his face.

  Chiun frowned. "Her strength is only the strength of an ordinary person," he said quietly. "And she possessed but two arms."

  "Right. That means she's not Kali."

  "I am Kali!" Mistress Kali snapped, taking another swipe at Remo's eyes.

  "Butt out. We're talking about another Kali," said Remo.

  "I am she! I am the Black One. I am the Mother of all. He who eats, eats by me."

  Chiun frowned. "She speaks the words of Kali."

  "She's a high-priced hooker. That's all."

  Chiun walked around the dominatrix whose shiny black body shook with impotent rage and hate.

  "You do not recognize my son Remo?" he asked Mistress Kali.

  Kali glared venomously at the Master of Sinanju.

  "Look closer, shrieking one. Are his features known to you, you who call yourself by the hated name?" demanded Chiun.

  Kali spit at the Master of Sinanju. Chiun evaded the expectoration with a graceful pirouette.

  Reaching up, Chiun took her head in one hand and inexorably turned the eyes of Mistress Kali to face Remo. "Look deep. What do you see?" he commanded.

  "I see a dead man!" Kali hissed. "Kneel before me or I will gnaw the skin from your bones."

  Chiun shook her head. "You do not know my son?"

  Kali glared more fiercely. But somewhere deep in her icy blue eyes flickered a different light. "I know..."

  "Know what?" asked Remo.

  "You..."

  "Well, I don't know you," Remo returned.

  "Are you certain, Remo?" demanded Chiun.

  "Yeah. I'm-- Then Remo looked closer. He realized he wasn't looking at her face, but at the silk and the eyes they framed. Now he looked deeper. "Her eyes. There's something familiar about her eyes."

  Chiun's voice grew sharp. "Are you certain?"

  "Yeah. The eyes look familiar. But I can't place them."

  "Your essence is remembering, not your brain. She is Kali. You must slay her, Remo."

  "Let's see her face first," said Remo, releasing her neck. His fingers plucked at the yellow domino mask.

  Mistress Kali turned into a tiger. She twisted, squirming, and one hand reached into small of her back.

  It came back trailing a long scarf of pure golden silk.

  "Remo!" Chiun cried. "Beware her strangling scarf!"

  Remo, as usual, was too slow. Swift as he was, he was too slow. His mind was on her face and the mask over it.

  The Master of Sinanju, ever vigilant, shook off his jade fingernail protector and plunged the gleaming nail beneath into Mistress Kali's unprotected throat. It sank in to the tip of the finger and withdrew before anyone could absorb the movement.

  Mistress Kali shuddered on her feet. A gasp came from her open harridan mouth. Her eyes flew wide with shock.

  She spoke a single breathy, incredulous word. "Remo?"

  Then, eyes rolling to whites, she collapsed at their feet.

  Remo was holding the domino mask in one hand. For a frozen moment, he stood there, not inhaling, not exhaling. His eyes, dark as the hollows of a skull, went sick.

  "What happened? I never touched her," he said.

  "I did," said Chiun, who held up the golden tail of silk. "Behold, for she was about to wrap her silken wiles about you."

  "Chiun."

  "What?"

  "Tell me you didn't..."

  "I did."

  "You killed her," Remo said. His voice shrank with each utterance.

  "She was a harlot and a demon in the flesh of a woman."

  Remo swallowed. Only then did Chiun see the bone white aspect of his face. With his hollow eyes and his high cheekbones, Remo's face looked like a skull with a paper-thin coating of skin.

  "She..."

  "What is it, Remo?"

  "She..." Remo swallowed hard. He knelt.

  Mistress Kali lay in a crumpled heap. Her head rested on one pale, outflung arm, the golden hair covering her face like a feathery broken wing.

  Carefully Remo raised the hair, brushing it back.

  Chiun looked down, eyes narrowing.

  The features showed in profile, showed in death. They were chiseled and firm. One eye lay open in shock. The black lips were parted to show the dead white teeth.

  Remo stared at her profile for the longest minute of eternity.

  Then, face twisting in pain, Remo looked up. Looked up at the Master of Sinanju. Bitter tears started from his eyes. His voice was a shocked croak. "Chiun. You killed her. You killed Jilda. You killed the mother of my little girl."

  And the Master of Sinanju, the force of the truth striking him fully, stepped back as if he'd been dealt a physical blow.

  Chapter 37

  The sonar's metallic contact led the Cayuga to Stellwagon Bank, a closed fishing area off Massachusetts.

  "If that's a torpedo, I'm Davy Jones's favorite hooker," Sandy said grimly. "It's herding those fish. Every time they veer south, it changes course and chases them north. Someone's controlling it."

  After an hour of cat and mouse, Sandy got an inkling what that someone was.

  A big gray factory ship. It lumbered along on a course generally parallel to their own.

  She went up to the flying bridge and used her binoculars.

  "Circle that tub," she ordered.

  The Cayuga circled the wallowing factory ship until the name appeared on the bow.

  Hareng Saur

  MONTREAL

  "Sparks, inform Cape Cod we have a French-Canadian factory ship in our waters and ask what should be done about it."

  "Aye, sir."

  As she waited for a reply, Sandy saw something t
hat seemed incredible.

  The Cayuga was still in pursuit of the mysterious torpedo.

  Suddenly the torpedo accelerated, surfaced and began to home in on the Hareng Saur.

  "Looks like our next course of action will be decided for us," she said.

  The torpedo, trailing a foamy wake, closed with the gray ship.

  Sandy had her glasses trained on the probable point of impact. Amidships of the big boat.

  She saw the wake close in. There was no way to avoid a direct hit. The Hareng Saur seemed completely oblivious to the threat. The tiny white figures on her deck were going about their business in a brisk but unpanicked fashion.

  At the last possible minute, a panel opened just at the waterline as if to devour the incoming device.

  The torpedo struck. Sandy flinched inwardly. But there was no explosion. The torpedo just scooted into the black aperture.

  The black port closed up, and all was quiet except for the sudden heaving of fish nets overboard.

  "What the hell happened?" the helmsman wondered aloud, coming out of his protective crouch.

  "The torpedo herded the fish to the ship," she said. "Damn it. They're chasing our fish into their waters and stealing them. This is environmental piracy on the open seas!"

  Chapter 38

  Remo stood up. He was trying to compose his features. His shoulders shook. His fists made two mallets of bone.

  "Chiun..." His voice was soft, not accusing, but numb with shock. "Chiun, it's Jilda. Jilda's dead."

  "I know," said the Master of Sinanju, eyes round and wide.

  Remo looked around the room. "If Jilda's here, where's Freya?"

  "I do not know. But I vow that I will find for you your daughter, Remo. I will atone for this grave error I have committed."

  "That's why I recognized her. It was Jilda. Jilda..."

  Remo looked back at the dead woman he had loved many years ago. His eyes seemed to retreat into his skull-like countenance. Then he asked a question. "What was she doing here? Why was she dressed like that?"

  The Master of Sinanju surveyed the room. His eyes fell upon two kneeling men, one nude and one not. "They will know," he intoned.

  With determined steps Chiun strode up to the cowering pair. "Speak! Why did you kneel before that woman?"

  "She was Mistress Kali," Gilbert Houghton said, as if that explained everything.

  "I loved her, although to speak the unvarnished truth I only met her just this day," Anwar Anwar-Sadat admitted. "is she truly ...dead?"

  "She is no more, popinjay," Chiun said severely.

  Remo had joined them. Reaching down, he seized the Egyptian by his collar and dragged him to his feet. His eyes were hot. His voice hotter.

  "We're looking for a little girl. Blond. About twelve.

  "Thirteen," Chiun corrected. "Golden of hair and blue of eye. Like her mother, who lies here dead. Where is she?"

  "I know nothing of any little girl," the Secretary-General of the UN protested.

  Remo found the leash with his toe, dug under it and snapped his foot. The free end of the leash whipped into his waiting hand. He tugged hard.

  Fisheries Minister Gilbert Houghton was yanked off his hands. "Urrkk," he said.

  "What about you?"

  "I have seen no little girl and I have been Mistress Kali's slave for many weeks now."

  "I am crushed, desolated," said Anwar Anwar-Sadat. "I thought she loved only me. And now she is dead."

  "She never loved you. But she scorned me. I was the object of her scorn," Houghton snarled.

  "Both of you shut up," Remo ordered. Turning to Chiun, he said, "I'm going to find Freya if I have to tear this place apart brick by brick."

  "And I will help," vowed Chiun, girding his skirts.

  "But first we deal with these two."

  "We are instructed to intimidate, not dispatch these two."

  "Accidents happen," Remo growled. "You got that one. I'll take the other."

  Remo stood the Canadian fisheries minister up against a wall while Chiun immobilized the UN Secretary-General with a painful twist of the Egyptian's ear.

  "You're behind all this?" Remo accused Gilbert Houghton.

  "I admit nothing."

  "And this is about fish?"

  "No comment."

  "That's your answer? No comment?"

  Gil Houghton gulped like a goldfish. "No comment."

  Sweeping his hands out, Remo brought them together with a sudden loud clap. Gilbert Houghton's head happened to be caught between his palms in the thunderous instant Remo's palms came together.

  When Remo stepped back, hands returning to his sides, Gil Houghton's head sat on his neck like a sunfish's. Flat with eyes set on opposite sides of what had been a round mammalian skull.

  The surprised whites filled with blood, and the pursed lips seemed to be kissing empty air-then he pitched forward, dead.

  Remo turned.

  The Master of Sinanju had one sandal on the Egyptian's heaving chest. Anwar Anwar-Sadat attempted a protest. Chiun quieted it with a sudden pressure of his foot.

  While Anwar Anwar-Sadat unwittingly watched his last breath leave his dry, open mouth, Chiun calmly took hold of his dusky mandibles and lifted his head off his spinal cord.

  It came off with a popping suck of a sound like a head off a plastic doll. As simply as that.

  Tossing the head in a corner, the Master of Sinanju faced his pupil in expectant silence. His chin lifted.

  "It wasn't your fault," Remo said.

  Chiun bowed his aged head. "I accept responsibility for my rash actions."

  "You were just trying to protect me," Remo said distractedly.

  "And I have wounded you deeply, for which I am deeply regretful."

  "If we find Freya okay, it will be all right. Let's find Freya. Just find Freya and everything will be forgiven."

  Remo's cracking voice told the Master of Sinanju that their future together hinged on finding alive the daughter Remo had lost once and could not bear to lose again.

  "I will not fail you, my son," Chiun vowed.

  Carefully Remo went over to the splayed body of Jilda of Lakluun and carried it to a stone shelf that ran along one wall. He laid it on the ledge, arranged the leather-clad limbs modestly and touched her gleaming hair briefly.

  Then they went in opposite directions.

  Under their feet the gurgle and splash of troubled waters came intermittently. The flooring was a continuation of the anteroom floor. It was like a hard black mirror that reflected everything above it, yet it seemed ready to pull them down into an abyss blacker than universal night.

  Remo's sensitive ears turned this way and that, hunting sounds.

  Somewhere deep in the building he heard a constant clicking. It came in bursts and spurts, yet was steady as a dry hail.

  "This way," Remo said, looking for a door.

  He found not a door but a narrow niche in a wall behind a heavy wall hanging.

  "What do you make of this?" Remo asked, snapping off the hanging.

  Chiun examined it. "A passage."

  "Too small for a grown-up."

  "Perhaps it is meant for a dwarf. Or a child. This was constructed for the use of one who wishes to remain undisturbed."

  Remo felt the edge of the stone. "We can chop through this easy."

  Chiun indicated the arch over them. "Look, Remo. A keystone. If you break the sides, it will all coming tumbling down."

  Remo sniffed the cool air coming from the niche.

  "I smell someone in there."

  Chiun said, "I, too."

  Setting himself, Remo inserted his shoulder into the niche. He drew in his breath, then let it out very deeply until his rib cage all but collapsed. It was still too thick. He blew out more air until his lungs were like two empty balloons.

  Then, with infinite care so he didn't break any ribs or crush his own internal organs, Remo insinuated himself into the niche. It was a slow, careful task. His cartilage crackled unde
r the stress. Like a snake he slithered through, getting halfway and concentrating to keep the air from rushing back into his hungry lungs.

  Chiun called soft encouragement. "You will succeed because failure is too bitter to taste, my son."

  Halfway in, Remo paused, then with a jerk, he threw himself all the way in. He disappeared into the gloom.

  Chiun called softly, "Wait!"

  But there was no answer.

  Quickly the Master of Sinanju expelled all the air from his own lungs and attempted to duplicate the feat of his pupil, whom he had taught many things but not the dangerous technique he had just witnessed.

  The best Masters are those who devise their own skills, Chiun thought with a bitter pride.

  THE CORRIDOR WASN'T as narrow as the niche entrance, but it wasn't comfortably wide. Remo negotiated it by walking sideways. That put him at a disadvantage if there were traps or snares lying in wait.

  Under his feet he sensed vague electrical disturbances. Water purled. But the ebony floor seemed solid.

  Abruptly the stone corridor right-angled, and Remo went with it. It opened farther and the ticking, like incessant hail, came more clearly.

  For all the world it sounded like someone keying a computer. On second thought Remo decided it sounded like two people at two keyboards.

  Well, whoever they were, they had better have some answers to the only important question in his universe ....

  Chapter 39

  Harold Smith got the word from Cape Cod air station as soon as it was received.

  The Cayuga had made contact with a Canadian factory ship, Hareng Saur.

  Smith read the name and blinked. He spoke passable French, a relic of his OSS days in France.

  Hareng Saur sounded vaguely familiar to him. He input the name into his computer and accessed the automatic French-language-conversion program.

  Up came the name Red Herring and an etymology of the phrase.

  Suspicion flickered across Smith's patrician face. There was no such fish as a red herring. It was a figure of speech. One that was exclusive to English, he saw. There were no red herrings in the French language, real or figurative. Thus, no French-named vessel would be called the Red Herring any more than a French submarine would be christened Proud to be Frogs.