And he remembered the sign Chiun had told him to make with his fingers.
Twisting them apart, he managed to approximate the sign.
The short siphon off to one side of Sa Mangsang's mouth blew out an angry rush of water. The hooded eyes seemed to darken in anger. But nothing else happened.
The tentacles drew him closer.
In the last moments before he was to be ripped apart like so much human chum, the voice of the Master of Sinanju came into Remo's head.
"You would do well to remember that Sa Mangsang is also known as Hydra."
Hydra, Hydra, Remo thought. What do I know about the Hydra?
And a second voice came into his head. A voice he knew almost as well as Chiun.
Sister Mary Margaret's voice.
"The Hydra was the fearsome beast, some say a great serpent, some say a dragon, which possessed nine heads. Each time Hercules chopped off a head, another grew back. But Hercules knew the Hydra had an Achilles' heel. And that was its immortal ninth head."
But this thing has only one head, Remo thought. Eight tentacles but one head.
The truth struck Remo in the last ebbing moments of life.
Relaxing, he let the tentacles draw him closer and closer. He closed his eyes. He would not need them for what he had to do. Maybe vision would be a hindrance.
When the water before him was as warm as a sleeping body next to his, Remo drew his hands together. The entwining tentacles reacted spasmodically. They tightened.
And Remo kicked out with both feet at the great monster's brooding head.
A bubbling scream washed over him. Remo's eyes snapped open.
Sa Mangsang was changing color! Furious bands of red and orange were washing over his aquamarine skull. The tentacles, including the loops at his ankles, were alive with moving bands of angry colors, like neon racing through glass tubes.
Then, like great curtains, the hooded lids began to descend over the sleepy orbs.
Tentacles relaxed, let go and fell away as if in death. Remo kicked upward as hard as he could. He had no time to waste. The air was almost exhausted from his lungs. And the rectangular slot above beckoned.
As he arrowed up toward the opening and away from the great arms of Sa Mangsang, Remo looked down. Retracted tentacles curling into tight, perfectly spaced coils about his throne, Sa Mangsang had turned the color of bone. His great orbs were closed. He slept. He might have been dead. He might have been dead a million years.
But he only slept.
Kicking upward with all his ebbing strength, Remo Williams could only think of two things he wanted most in life-oxygen and sleep.
But as he fought to reach the world of men and breathable air, he felt the last bubble of carbon dioxide escape his lips and the entire world began to darken around him.. . .
REMO SNAPPED AWAKE at the bow of the rowboat. He looked around dazedly. "Where the hell am I?"
"With me," said Chiun, folding his hands in his lap.
"But I-" Remo swallowed hard. "A minute ago, I-"
"-escaped Sa Mangsang?"
"Yeah. Did you pull me out of the water?"
"No. You did that."
"I don't remember it."
"Unless you think it was a dream...."
"Dream. Yeah. It was a dream. I fell asleep. I thought I was awake, but I was really asleep. I woke up in my dream but I was still dreaming. I never had that happen to me before."
"If you were dreaming," Chiun asked suddenly, "then why are your clothes wet?"
Remo looked down. His chinos were soaked. His feet were bare. And his T-shirt was missing. "You threw water on me," Remo accused.
"Why would I do that?"
"And you stole my shirt."
"To match your dream?"
"Exactly."
"If it was a dream, how would I know you had lost your shirt to Sa Mangsang's tentacles?"
Remo thought hard. "Maybe I talked in my sleep. Yeah, that's it. I talked in my sleep."
"Possibly."
"What other explanation was there? There's no way an octopus could grow as huge as the nightmare I saw in my dream."
"The Sa Mangsang of your dreams was very large?"
"Titanic."
"And how big were its awesome suckers?"
"Who cares? Big."
Coolly Chiun said, "Show me how big, my son." Remo brought his hands together and made a circle by touching forefingers and thumbs together.
"That big," he insisted.
"That is very large."
"You know it."
"As large as the angry red marks on your naked chest?"
Remo looked down.
Marching across his pale wet chest were livid scarlet circles such as would be left by the sucker pads of a gargantuan octopus.
"You have nothing to say now?" Chiun inquired coolly.
And looking at the luminous squid who slashed the waters all around them, feeding on tiny surface fish, Remo did something rare for a full Master of Sinanju. He trembled from head to foot.
Chapter 15
Dr. Harold W Smith was following his enforcement arm.
The audit trail was very clear. Boston to Madrid. Madrid to Athens. Athens to Cairo and Canada, with many stops in between.
Remo and Chiun were bouncing around the world like two hyperactive rubber balls. But what did it mean? Since they were not on assignment, there was no immediate cause for alarm. But Remo and Chiun, since joining CURE, never raced around without a clear purpose in mind.
They took no vacations as such. Remo had no known relatives to visit. No friends, past present or future. He had only Chiun. And the Master of Sinanju had his village.
But they weren't going to North Korea, it seemed. They had bypassed it in favor of Tokyo. Now they were in Honolulu, according to the audit trail of creditcard expenditures and airline reservations. Smith, who had Remo's many credit cards under fictitious names on his data base, had access to the credit-card companies' minute-by-minute computerized credit-cheek records. The minute Remo booked a flight, it appeared on the airline's worldwide computerized reservation system and could be called up on Smith's Folcroft office computer screen instantly.
Smith wondered if they were on some kind of extended vacation. But that seemed unlikely. They were in the air more than on the ground in most cases. Thus, they could not be sight-seeing, he concluded.
A check of world trouble spots showed no correlation between their travels and global events.
Perhaps this was some old business of the House of Sinanju, Smith reasoned. Yes, that must be it. Something from Chiun's past had called them to trot all over the globe.
He hoped it was nothing serious, that it would not impact on their availability. Smith had long ago realized his two agents were for all practical purposes virtually uncontrollable.
As it was, he had no missions for Remo. As long as Remo wasn't needed, Smith would force himself not to worry about their activities.
But just to be sure, he popped four extrastrength Tums before leaving his office for lunch. It never hurt to anticipate stomach upsets. And where Remo and Chiun were concerned, upsetting news invariably followed.
SMITH DROVE his aging station wagon to nearby Port Chester, and its post office. In the early days of CURE, letters from field informants and others filled the mailbox every week. In these days of E-mail, Smith received fewer and fewer tips through the mail. One trip a week was usually enough. Rarely did a letter from the field lead to a mission for Remo and Chiun.
Old habits die hard. Smith got in line before going to his box. That way he could scan the foyer unobtrusively. There were no suspicious people hanging about. That was one of the reasons Smith picked up his own mail. Post-office boxes were very safe and extremely anonymous. The federal government didn't tolerate loiterers lying in wait at mail boxes for boxholders.