"This is not the time for new friendship." Chiun's tone was grave, his hazel eyes solemn. "You must rest for a while. You should study the scrolls and practice and nothing more. Scrolls are restful. Practice is restful. Women, as all know, are not restful. They are fickle and frivolous. That one has already vanished."
Remo didn't bother to turn around. "She said she was going to walk along the beach while I talked to you. She'll be back in a while."
"Perhaps the sea will swallow her up."
"I wouldn't get my hopes up," Remo said.
"What good is a friend if you do not heed his advice? Send her away."
"She just got here," Remo said.
"Perfect," Chiun said, nodding to himself as he agreed with himself. "Then she can go away before she gets comfortable. Then you and I can have a good vacation."
Remo could feel it again, that restless impatience building up inside him. The urge to break things for no other reason than to see if the separate pieces were more interesting than the whole thing.
"I'm going for a walk on the beach," Remo said abruptly. "I let you and Smitty con me into coming down here in the first place. Now with Kim here for company, maybe I can have a good time. Just think, Little Father. Maybe we'll find out a new way to counteract the hiding period. You can write it in your histories and the next five thousand years of Sinanju will love you for it."
"Go ahead," Chiun snapped. "Go. No need to tell me where you're going. I'll just sit here by myself. Alone. In the dark. Like some old ripped sock no longer worth the mending."
Remo decided not to point out that it wouldn't be dark for four more hours yet. He called over his shoulder as he walked away: "Whatever makes you happy. And I know that misery usually does."
Chiun's hazel eyes followed Remo until he disappeared around the curve of the white sand beach. He wished that he could make Remo understand, but Remo had not grown up in the village of Sinanju. He had never played the hiding game, never prepared himself for the time when his instincts would have to be stronger than his mind or even his heart. Remo had grown up playing a game called "stickball." Chiun wondered what major challenge of adult life "stickball" prepared you for. Even if you could, as Remo contended, hit the ball four sewers. Whatever that was.
Sighing again, Chiun looked back down at the scroll. There was nothing he could do for Remo, nothing but watch and wait until the hiding time had passed. This was not, Chiun decided, a good vacation at all.
Remo watched as Kim moved toward him, running coltishly through the surf, her dark hair windblown and free, her long shapely legs churning up the shallow water. She looked innocent and tomboyish with her pants rolled up and her shirttail loose and flapping. She looked like the Kim Kiley he remembered from the movies.
"I found this great cave," she called out breathlessly. A few seconds later, she wrapped her arms around Remo's neck, lightly brushed her lips against his and then, tugging at his hand, led him along the beach like a child's toy on a string.
"You've got to see it," she said. "The sun and the water make these crazy beautiful patterns on the ceiling. It's worth the whole trip here, it's so beautiful."
"You ought to give guided tours," said Remo.
"You're getting the first, last and only one. The one with all the personal extras thrown in at no additional charge."
"I like the sound of that," said Remo, who did.
"You'd better," she warned him with a gamin grin. She linked her arm through Remo's and led him over the rocks and along a strip of narrow beach.
"There it is." She pointed toward the back of the deserted cove. The entrance to the cave was a jagged, mouth-shaped opening in the side of a sheer-faced cliff. It seemed to beckon them, to pull them in of its own accord like the gaping hungry maw of some prehistoric predator who, despite the passage of ages, had never lost its appetite.
Chiun found it soothing to talk to someone who not only listened but seemed to hang on his every word. Here at last was a white man who respected age and wisdom. In other words, someone not at all like Remo.
"I saw your friend just a few minutes ago," Reginald Woburn III said when Chiun finished a lengthy speech on ingratitude. "He was walking with a pretty girl toward the caves at the far end of the island."
"What a way to spend a vacation," Chiun sighed. "Walking on the beach with a beautiful woman. If he would only listen to me, we could be having a really good time."
"I only mentioned it because those caves can be pretty dangerous. Very pretty scenery when the tide is out but a real death trap when it starts pouring back in. It's nearly impossible to swim out against the onrushing tide. They lost a couple of tourists there early this season. Found the bodies the next morning, all gray and bloated. Fish ate the eyes out." Reggie's smile broadened as, he listed the details. "Would have put a real crimp in the tourist business if they hadn't taken the bodies and dumped them over on Martinique. The couple was on the Buena Budget Excursion Special and Martinique was their next stop anyway. But they died here."
"An old Korean proverb," Chiun said. "When death speaks, everyone listens."
"But I am worried about your friends," Reggie said.
"Why?" Chiun frowned.
"The tide could trap them in one of those caves," Reggie said, warming to his subject. "They wouldn't realize it until it was too late. They'd be fighting an oncoming wall of water, swimming helplessly, hopelessly against the tide. Holding their breaths until their faces turned color and their lungs burst from the strain. They'd float around for a while, their bodies battering against the rocks. Then the fish would start on them. Nibble here, small bite there. They always seem to go for the eyes first. And then if there's enough blood in the water, they might get sharks. With those big jaws that tear off limbs the way we snap a celery stalk. Then you'd really see action. The sea would turn a dark purple red and be churning. A feeding frenzy." Reggie sighed. Little drops of spittle clung to the corners of his mouth. His heart was thundering as if he were a marathon runner approaching the finish line. He felt a warmth in his groin that even sex couldn't rival. "I can see it all quite clearly. It could very easily happen to your friends."
"That woman is no friend of mine," Chiun snapped.
"What about the man?"
Chiun was thinking. "I suppose a person could get killed that way. If he were truly stupid."
"Then what about your friend?" Reggie said again.
"Remo has his moments," said Chiun. "But even he isn't that stupid."
Chapter Nine
"Am I the most beautiful woman you've ever known?" Kim whispered softly.
She lay snuggled in the crook of Remo's arm, the two of them naked on the warm gritty sand inside the cave, watching the fantastic light show provided by the setting sun as its multicolored rainbow rays were reflected off the clear blue water. It was cool and dry in the cave and the sound of the waves against the distant rocks was better than any soundtrack Hollywood had ever come up with.
After a long silent minute, Kim frowned and poked Remo in the ribs. "That was supposed to be an easy question. And don't you tell me you're thinking about it."
Remo ruffled her dark lustrous hair. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever known," he said.
Kim smiled. "Everybody tells me that."
"Who's everybody?" It was one of those things that Remo wondered about every now and again. How many bodies did it take to make an everybody?
"You know. Everybody. Friends, admirers, agents, producers and directors." She counted them off, one by one, on her long slender fingers. "And of course my thousands of loyal and devoted fans. I get over five hundred letters a week that say they love me."
"You answer them?" Remo was curious. He never got any mail. Even when he was alive, no one wrote to him, and now that he was supposed to be dead, the mail hadn't changed. Chiun had once, by mistake, rented a post-office box in Secaucus, New Jersey, but all the mail that came had been addressed to Chiun and he wouldn't show Remo any of it.