She opened a line to the station cameras and audio feeds and saw the lunatics herded into the basement lockup.
She clicked over to her feed from the presidential beach house, finding Greg Grom in his bedroom. Grom didn't know she had tapped into his home security system. She had watched him perform some very vile deeds in that bedroom-deeds he never admitted to her.
There he was now, performing one of his favorite and most revolting acts with a screeching, sobbing Amelia Powlik. Oh, yes, he loved it when they cried in pain and begged for more in the same breath. Amelia didn't disappoint.
"Did it hurt?" he asked her afterward.
"I thought you'd rip me apart," Amelia whimpered. "How soon until we do it again?"
"I don't know. Maybe never. I have tastier fish to fry." Amelia was clearly hurt by this, but she was an innovator. "I know what would get you interested again, Mr. President."
Dawn had no inclination to view another such display, but she was mesmerized when the plain, unattractive Amelia came out of the bathroom seconds later wearing one of Dawn's very own bikinis. She had to have left it there months ago.
"I am Union Island," Amelia said in a pouty imitation of a Dawn Summens commercial. "Come to me." It was an unflattering imitation.
Greg Grom had not proved to be strong when it came to instant replays in the bedroom, but all of a sudden he was bolt upright and ready for more.
"Dawn!" he barked at Amelia Powlik. "Time for you to get what's coming to you."
"Will it hurt?" Amelia asked in a falsetto voice as she scampered to kneel at Grom's bedside.
"You better believe it will. It's been a long time coming."
Grom was true to his word. He made it painful, and he made it humiliating, and he made the fake Dawn sob. All the while he was violating her he was rattling off an endless litany of petty crimes that had been committed against him by Dawn Summens, and how she would endure endless nights of suffering and degradation as punishment.
When he was done, Amelia Powlik collapsed on the woven rug. "That was magnificent," she gasped finally.
"Wait until I get the real thing," Grom said. "I went easy on you compared to what I'm gonna do to her."
"Ooh, can I watch?"
Grom considered that. "Sure. Why not? Maybe I'll let you have a go at her, too. I'm bound to need a break sometime."
"And what would you like me to do to her?" Amelia asked, raising her head, eyes glinting in the darkness. "Maybe you should demonstrate."
Incredibly, Greg Grom rose to the occasion. Soon he was taking out his anger once again on the Dawn Summens stand-in.
The real Dawn Summens could not tear her eyes away. She had never seen Grom so confident, or so cruel, and she had certainly underestimated his anger.
What if she ended up in that role? One dose of GUTX and Grom would have her, body and mind. She would accept whatever he dished out, and she wouldn't stand a chance of escaping. She wouldn't want to escape.
She watched the performance for hours. By sunrise Amelia was a mess of small wounds and bruises, and she finally passed out from exhaustion. Grom finished off with her anyway and then fell into a dead sleep.
But Dawn watched him still, her plans ripening in her brilliant, devious mind.
It was a desperate plan with no small risk, but she never even considered taking the safest approach-getting off Union Island and never coming back.
This bikini model was fated for greatness, and she would not back down in the face of danger-no matter how terrible the consequences of failure.
Chapter 30
Chiun stood outside the cab and slowly craned his ancient head to take in the entire facade of the faded pink Many Palms Resort. Clearly he wasn't pleased with what he saw.
"This," he said, turning to Remo, who was extracting chests from the overstuffed cab trunk, "is your fault."
"Huh? What?" Remo balanced the chests on his shoulders, "My fault? What is my fault and why is it my fault and why the hell can't it be some other guy's fault this one time?"
"This hotel," Chiun said evenly.
"Finest on the island," piped up the taxi driver.
"That's what you keep telling us," Remo muttered. "It's a frigging dump, but you know what, Chiun, it ain't my hotel."
"You brought us here," Chiun said reasonably.
"American Airlines brought us here."
"It was your investigation that led us to the Caribbean. Again."
"So you think I should have come up with different suspects or what?"
"It's a vacation paradise," the taxi driver enthused.
"Shut up," Remo told him. "You keep telling me to use my head and this time I used my head, and I'm getting nothing but grief for it. From you. From Smitty. From Junior. You think I'm any happier about coming back to the Caribbean? You think I want to spend time in this sleazy little junkyard with a beach?"
"Everybody says that at first," the taxi driver assured them. "I promise-by the time you leave, you'll love it!"
"Didn't I tell you to shut up?" Remo snarled. "You can't blame me for this, Chiun."
"I do."
"Stick it in your ear."
They passed through the front entrance into an open-air lobby with a stone floor and a freshly thatched roof. The walls were open to the beach.
"See?" Remo said. "Not so bad."
"It's ugly," Chiun pronounced with a dismissive wave. Remo went to the front desk, leaving Chiun standing there to wait.
"You wanna see ugly, go look in a mirror." Chiun turned slowly to face the insulting party.
"I like your pretty dress." The comment dripped with sarcasm.
Chiun found himself face-to-face with a bird. A big one. It was a strange and vibrant bluish parrot with a huge beak. Its small, shining black eyes were set in big yellow patches. There were other parrots inhabiting the display of driftwood in the middle of the open air lobby, but they were green and tiny, dwarfed by the macaw. "Don't make trouble," Remo called as he returned.
"Ringing its neck would be no trouble at all," Chiun commented.
"Not from Smitty's point of view."
"Old man wanna prune?" the parrot demanded.
"Who would teach a bird to be impolite?" Chiun asked.
"How should I know?" Remo said.
"I was not asking you." Chiun leaned close to the big parrot. Then leaned closer.
"Halitosis halitosis!" The bird squawked.
"Yellow and blue make a hideous color combination," Chiun told it, moving in even closer.
"Awk!" The bird tried to peck him, but Chiun held its beak in his fingers. The great black eyes rolled and the bird shifted on its driftwood perch.
"Not so long ago, in Rome, the Caesars considered parrots a delicacy," Chiun said.
He released it and the bird scrambled away, trembling. Chiun chuckled.
REMO WAS on the phone as soon as he had settled into the presidential suite at the Many Palms Resort. Settling in consisted of putting down the assortment of eight trunks Chiun had chosen for their short jaunt to the Caribbean, while the old Master himself plopped down in front of the television and began channel-surfing for Spanish-language soap operas.
"I think you sent us to the wrong island, Smitty," Remo declared.
"I doubt it," Harold W. Smith replied curtly.
"This place is a dump. And by place I mean the whole island, including this hotel."
"The Many Palms Resort is supposed to be the finest hotel-"
"Oh, Christ all-mighty, not you, too," Remo said, cutting him off. "Okay, it's not so awful, but it's strictly two-star and that doesn't bode well for the rest of the island."
"You don't know that. The U.S. has invested a half billion to improve the island infrastructure."
"I'll believe it when I see it."
"You're not there to look for evidence of a public works embezzler," Smith reminded him. "You're there to put a stop to the killing."