"Now, then," the pirate leader said, "why don't the three of you get down below and have a little rest while we get under way? You'll need your strength tonight, and no mistake."
Chapter 6
The Melody was thirty-five feet long and she should have been called a cabin cruiser, but the term was too crude for a thing of beauty such as she.
Someone with unlimited funds had commissioned her. Whoever that someone was had grown up with money. You had to be very accustomed to large amounts of money to use it in such an understated fashion.
She was an odd combination. Extremely lightweight, high-tensile-strength aeronautic-grade composite alloys were inside. On the outside were handforged decorative rails and hand-laid teak planking. Her bridge had enough computer processing power to run a small nation, but the steering could also be performed on the two-hundred-year-old wheel from a British ship that had run the Indian trade routes. Inside, the carpets were handwoven rugs from Turkey, Iran, China and Peru. Entire walls featured original painted murals and contemporary tapestries.
The DEA had removed whatever could be removed after they confiscated her from her third or fourth owner. It was the Lucky Lady then, and her owner was a yuppie smuggler based at Cocoa Beach who made his last run up from Cartagena in the spring of 1995. His load was worth an estimated fifteen million dollars on the street, but someone near and dear had ratted on him for a payoff in the low five figures. Agents of the DEA were waiting to collect the Lucky Lady, with her owner and his cargo, when he docked at Lauderdale. The boat was confiscated, the cocaine incinerated, and the skipper wound up doing seventeen to thirty-five at Leavenworth, when he refused to "help" himself by rolling over on his source.
That way, at least, he stayed alive, while the Melody received a new name, several coats of paint and went to work for Uncle Sam. The DEA imagined she was theirs, but the Melody was moonlighting this weekend on behalf of CURE.
"I've never been much good with boats," said Remo when he saw the cabin cruiser for the first time, docked at Charleston.
"Skills are learned. You do not fear the water." It was not a question; Remo did not bother answering the old man.
The man was indeed ancient. Chiun, Reigning Master Emeritus of Sinanju, was more than a century old, although Remo would have generously allowed that he didn't appear a day over ninety-seven. He was short and slight, a collection of thin bones under pale parchment skin that seemed so thinned by the ages you could see the blood vessels beneath. The ancient little man was Korean, with a head that was nearly devoid of hair except for yellowing wisps over his ears and on his chin. The skin around his eyes was lined and wrinkled, but the eyes themselves were like glimmering emeralds. They might have been the eyes of a child.
Though Remo Williams himself had the title of Reigning Master of Sinanju, the truth was that Chiun still did quite a bit of reigning.
Chiun was right. Remo didn't fear the water, salt or fresh. Nor did he fear the sea wolves they were hunting-if in fact they actually existed. Still, Remo would have preferred to do his manhunting on land, where he wasn't confined to the cabin cruiser's decks. And he wasn't looking forward to spending several days confined in the boat with an occasionally disagreeable Chiun.
"Be careful!" Chiun barked as Remo set the last of eight trunks on the floor in the vast stateroom Chiun had selected for himself.
"I'm always careful. Besides, I think you forgot to pack anything in this one. It feels empty."
"Leave it alone!" Chiun snapped. "Get out! Go on!"
"Chill, Chiun." Remo left, but not before adding, "Why in the hell do you need eight trunkfuls of stuff?"
By sundown they were ready to depart. Remo could probably have stalled until after the next morning's breakfast of rice, but he saw no point. If they were going, they had best be on their way. He could see his way around Charleston harbor just about as well at night as he could during the day, so it was no more of a challenge in the semidarkness, even for a navigator of his minimal accomplishments. Chiun was standing several feet away on the aft end of the craft, but Remo still heard the old Korean rolling his eyes in disdain.
When they were on the open water and the sun was gone, Chiun turned away from the black water. "I am amazed at your seamanship," he said simply.
Remo didn't reply. For a long time Chiun stood there.
Finally Remo sighed. "Okay, why are you amazed at my seamanship?"
"There are two large rocks in Charleston harbor. It took skillful sailing to bang us against both of them," Chiun explained.
"Stuff it, Little Father."
When they were well at sea, Remo picked out a southward course and kept the lighted coastline on his right, referring to the compass mounted on his console when he felt the need. The cockpit was above decks, situated on the cabin roof beneath an open canopy. Chiun was in the cabin, testing the reception on the Melody's twelve-inch RCA television.
From the sound of his muttering, it was none too promising. Remo would have thought he'd be able to find some sort of programming to suit his tastes, which of late had run to Spanish-language soap operas.
It was four hundred miles from Charleston to Miami, as the seagull flew. Remo topped off the fuel tanks at Easy Eddie's, on Miami Beach. Two hundred more to Nassau, and they put in for the night, Remo intent on following his orders to present a fair facsimile of wealthy tourists on vacation. Shiftless travelers wouldn't be rushing on from one point to the next without a fair amount of shopping, lazing in the sun and soaking up the "local color."
That was pushing it with Chiun along. The Reigning Master Emeritus of Sinanju bore no more resemblance to an average upscale tourist than he did to Li'l Abner, and his patience for such joys as sightseeing or window-shopping was minute. Chiun could draw almost as much attention simply by walking through a basic gift shop as he would by demolishing the place by hand. On the other hand, if he wanted to, he could walk unnoticed into the office of Nassau's prime minister.
Chiun's unique appearance might, in fact, serve their cause. Remo wanted to look helpless without putting on a Rob Me sign, and traveling with Chiun could be the next-best thing. A city boy alone, unarmed, was no real threat to anyone, but team him with an elderly Korean in expensive silk garb, who appeared to have one bony foot across the threshold of Death's door, and the potential odds for easy pickings blasted through the roof.
These so-called pirates didn't operate from Nassau, but they might have spotters in the city, and Remo used the time to role-play as long as his patience allowed. He managed to pack a lot of ugly-American-type behavior into that twenty-minute stint. He bought and wore a loud shirt over his white T-shirt and made a point of spending too much cash on a few trinkets when he could have talked the vendors down to half the asking price. He bought a bottle of Corona and wobbled around with it for a while, pretending to chug some occasionally. He got noticed by the regular street trash, but as far as he could tell nobody showed special interest, and he made his trip back to the Melody without so much as a mugging.
"Like the shirt?" he asked Chiun, who regarded him suspiciously from the deck.
"It is better than the undergarment that is your typical attire," the old Korean said. "If you must wear something brightly colored, why not wear a proper kimono instead of that garish thing? And why do you smell like a brewery?"
"Relax," Remo said. "I haven't gone on a bender or anything. I just carried around a bottle for a while. I didn't even spill any on my hands."
"You still reek of it," Chiun pronounced, adding extra wrinkles to his nose to demonstrate how disagreeable the odor was.
THE RUN TO CAICOS TOOK another day, twelve hours on the water, putting them in port by dusk. Along the way, Remo had kept a lookout for suspicious boats on the horizon, while Chiun remained below, inviting painful and humiliating death to visit all of those involved in manufacturing the yacht's televisions and satellite receiver that vexed him endlessly. They weren't attacked by pirates.