Smitty had chosen Chiun, the Master of the ancient House of Sinanju, to transform Remo from an easy-going cop into a smooth, perfect killing machine. All the pieces fit into place. There was little room for error, because error would mean the instantaneous destruction of CURE. If Smith failed to keep CURE secret, his death was sealed in a vial of poison in the basement of Folcroft. If Remo failed, Chiun was instructed to kill him at the moment of Smith's order. If the President failed, he was to pass along the information about CURE's existence to his successor in the White House.
Remo hadn't liked it. He didn't want to train with the irascible old Oriental in the beginning, didn't like the cloak-and-dagger secrecy of Smith and CURE, and he certainly didn't like killing people for a living. America went on, after all, even if there was a lot of crime that went unpunished, even if the Constitution, written for decent men, was manipulated inside out by criminals who preyed on decent men under its full protection. Remo could see no need for CURE.
Then the President of the United States was murdered in cold blood by an assassin's bullet. The man who had conceived of CURE as a last-ditch effort to bring crime under control was himself destroyed by crime, and that was when Remo first understood the importance of CURE.
Remo felt a shadow pass in front of his closed eyelids. He opened them slowly to a vision of two bountiful breasts scantily encased by a purple bikini top.
"You are going to burn here," the owner of the breasts said in a lilting accent.
"What?"
She pressed a spot on his forearm. When she released the pressure, the spot emerged white in a field of hot pink. "The sun," she said, pointing upward. "You will burn the skin. You must go inside, or the sunburn will be very bad."
Remo squinted to get a better look at the girl. She was beautiful, with long auburn hair streaming carelessly from a knot on the top of her head. She had bottle-green eyes that danced mischievously under long black lashes. Her mouth was full and ripe, and she was very tan.
"No bathing suit marks," Remo said flirtatiously. Chiun was a great teacher, but as an after-dinner companion, he was a bust. "You look like an experienced tourist."
"I live here," the girl said. She extended her hand. "My name is Fabienne de la Soubise."
"Remo Williams," he said.
"You are American?"
Remo nodded.
"I am French, but here on the island we are all Sint Maarteners. Welcome." She smiled and gave his hand a squeeze. She started to pull away, but Remo got to his feet before she could let go of him. "Say, as long as we've got so much in common, how about us seeing each other again?"
She took in Remo's body with a discreet glance: the thin lines of his frame, his dancer's legs, the well-shaped meat of his shoulders, the thick wrists. His face was handsome in a masculine way, with its deep-set brown eyes and heavy, straight brows, its high cheekbones and firm mouth and clean jaw. A man's man, to be sure. But a woman's man in bed. "Of course," she said. "Can you come to my house tonight?"
"Tonight? Sure—"
A clatter of pots and pans clanking angrily directed his attention toward the kitchen of the villa, where a fat black woman wearing a red bandana on her head emerged banging a soup pan with a wooden spoon.
"You!" she bellowed, waddling toward them with determination in every step. "I thought you already inside," she said crankily, shaking her head in dismay. "You been out here for more than five hour. You gonna fry. All you white men de same—"
"Hello, Sidonie," the girl said with a smile.
"Fabienne!" She slapped Remo's arm with the spoon. "What you doing talking to a nice island girl like her? Gonna give her fancy mainland ideas, make her leave us." She waddled up to Fabienne and kissed her wetly and noisily on the cheek.
"I've just met Remo. He seems a perfect gentleman."
The housekeeper eyed Remo with a twinkle. "He all right for a white man," she said. Remo pinched her ample hindquarter, and she hit him with the spoon again.
"Hey, if you're going to be running my life for the next two weeks, I demand a cease-fire," Remo said.
"I like to run your life, child. Get you to eat some decent food." She turned to Fabienne and said something that sounded to Remo like "Hee Ho Hee Hee Da Bo Wa Wee Tee No Mee Ha."
Fabienne clucked sympathetically and responded, "Hey He Hah Key Hee Hoo Die Ho Hee Noo."
"Beg pardon?" Remo asked.
"Sidonie says you eat nothing but brown rice and tea."
Remo shuffled half apologetically in the sand. "I don't know. I eat other things. Duck, sometimes. A little fish—"
"Raw he eats it," Sidonie said with disgust. "These fanatical Americans, always with the health food."
Fabienne took Remo's hand again. "And I told her that I cook very good brown rice. I like raw fish, too."
"You do?"
"Come see me tonight. My driver will be here at seven, but take as long as you like," she said.
"Ill be ready at seven." Remo beamed as the girl waved to them both and walked away with the purposeful, athletic stride of a rich girl weaned on tennis and horseback riding.
"Now you go inside," Sidonie said. "The old gentleman, he already in his room, looking at the TV. I got your lunch."
She took Remo to a big wooden table in the kitchen, set before him a bowl of brown rice and a cup of green tea, and poured herself a big tumbler of dark rum as she settled her bulky body on a chair beside him.
"Not bad," Remo said, tasting the rice. Sidonie grunted. "Say, what language were you speaking back there with Fabienne?"
"That Papiamento. The native tongue."
"I thought the native tongue was English."
"Oh, we all speak English. Also French and Dutch, some Spanish. This island so mixed up with all the Europeans come to steal her away from us, they teach us all their languages. So we put them together in Papiamento. It easier— also the white man don't understand."
"The girl's white."
"She different. She be here all her life. Her daddy a fine man, too." She shook her head sadly. "Dead now."
"Recently?" Remo asked.
"Couple of year. First he go cuckoo, then he dead." She polished off the contents of her glass and refilled it with the same fumey liquid. "I work for Monsieur Soubise for many year. During the war, he take me back to Paris with him." She grinned broadly. "Monsieur and Sidonie, we fight for the Resistance."
"Is that where you learned to drink like a sailor?" Remo asked wryly.
Sidonie tapped the rim of her glass. "This pure island rum. Good for the digestion." She hiccupped. "Also it give a good buzz."
With some difficulty Sidonie lifted herself off her chair and waddled around the kitchen, straightening containers and dusting the windowsills. "Anyway, Fabienne, she's a good girl. Always have something nice to say, even now that she lose all her money."
"That's funny," Remo said. "She seemed like a rich girl."
"Oh, her daddy very, very rich. But he go cuckoo." In demonstration she twirled a corkscrew in the air beside her temple. "He change his will, leave everything— the shipyards, everything— to the Dutchman. And Monsieur, he don't even know the Dutchman. Cuckoo."
"Who's the Dutchman?" Remo asked.
Sidonie's eyes narrowed. "He no good," she said. "Live on Devil's Mountain in the old castle. He cuckoo, too."
Remo laughed. "I guess the old monsieur was happy to find a kindred spirit."
"Don't you talk about the Dutchman with Fabienne. It just upset her. He take all her money, and she fighting two year in the court now trying to get it back. She very upset, poor thing."
"She can't be that poor," Remo said consolingly. "She's got a driver."