Remo had himself dropped off a half block away and didn't approach too closely. His hearing reached out to the little house and noted the sounds of quick movement. Somebody in a hurry, assembling some belongings. Remo forced himself to wait, and minutes later he saw Ethan Humphrey emerge. Humphrey had a green duffel bag in one hand, and he paused long enough to lock the door behind him before he moved to the gate and through it, turned left on the sidewalk and proceeded toward the harbor. Remo fell in step behind him. Humphrey never heard him, never sensed his presence.
Ten minutes later, as they drew closer to the docks, houses gave way to stores. Humphrey knew where he meant to go, and he let nothing slow him, distract him from his course. The jaunty stride, the smile he had been wearing when he left the bungalow, suggested that some kind of pleasure lay in store for him. Remo wondered what it was. His patience was running thin. All he needed was a moment of the pirate lover's time, in which to squeeze him like a toothpaste tube and see what came out.
Humphrey walked down to the marina and moved along one of the piers, out to a smallish cabin cruiser that was clearly years beyond its prime. Remo read the name someone had painted on the transom in italic script.
Mulligan Stew.
Okay, so it didn't have to make sense or fit the old man's personality. Remo doubted whether he had named the boat himself, and who cared if he had? More interesting, by far, were the two men awaiting Humphrey on the deck as he approached.
They didn't look like the role-playing pirates he'd run into that morning. No swords or flintlock pistols were in evidence, no eye patches, peg legs ...and yet, there was a certain air about the men that would have marked them down as criminals in Remo's mind, regardless of the circumstances. From ten yards away he eavesdropped on their conversation and was glad he had decided not to trounce Humphrey the minute the old man emerged from his little house.
They were about to embark on a sail to the pirate's island. Finally his lousy luck was starting to reverse itself.
There was some unpleasantness as Humphrey informed the two roughnecks he needed some supplies and convinced them to fetch the items in the interest of time. It was all a lie; Remo heard it in every syllable the old man uttered. Ethan Humphrey got his way, however, and the other two came down the gangway, moved along the pier with angry strides, passed Remo without seeing him and split up to move in opposite directions as they left the waterfront.
Humphrey had the Mulligan Stew to himself, but he was clearly in no hurry to leave, certainly not without the shipmates he had taken pains to send on some errand that got their blood up. He wouldn't sail without them; Remo was convinced. Whatever the charade Humphrey was playing, it looked more like something he had thought up to amuse himself.
Laugh while you've got a head to laugh with, Remo thought. You never know when somebody might find a good reason to remove it.
Chapter 14
Chiun had cooked rice so many thousands of times in his lifetime he could intuit the readiness of the water by breathing the steam and could sense its doneness by the richness of its aroma.
The man assigned to watch him was a toady with no intellect to speak of, surely nothing that would pass for functional imagination. He had watched Chiun build the fire and put the water on, offering no help as Chiun filled a bucket and brought it back from the stream. It gave Chiun the opportunity to moan and stagger slightly, listing to the right as if the pail were nearly too heavy for him to carry.
Chiun was smiling on the inside, and he made another sound, too quiet for the toady to hear: "Heh-heh-heh."
It said much of his present adversaries, Chiun decided, that they could behold a Master of Sinanju and believe that he was powerless. He was enjoying himself, although such clandestine behavior was well beneath his dignity.
There was just one reason he was willing to go along with it-and it was not because his adopted white son with the bulbous nose asked him to protect Stacy Armitage.
Oh, he would protect her. She would not be tortured or defiled under his watch. But as far as going on a killing spree and sending this bunch of pretenders from centuries past to their deserved graves, that would wait. When Remo came, they could perform the cleaning up. They'd have a better chance of saving all the prisoners on the island with two of them on the job.
But why kill the pirates now? They might serve a purpose still.
If this was the correct island, the place that had been known once as the Island of Many Skulls, it was not a small patch of land. Even a Master of Sinanju would have difficulties finding a treasure that had been buried here-a treasure buried centuries ago. Buried deep. Buried, in fact, by a Master of Sinanju.
If these pirates had some of their history, then maybe they could help him locate the landmarks described in the Sinanju scrolls. The nature of some of those landmarks made it unlikely that they still existed.
Chiun would know soon enough.
He began to add the rice, sifting a handful at a time into the boiling water from a heavy burlap bag the pirates had provided him at his request. The shellfish-peeled and deveined already, piled up in a wooden bowl, within arm's reach-would be the last addition, when the rice was nearly done. Meanwhile, he had time to observe his enemies and find them wanting in the skills that might have saved their worthless lives, once Remo was available to finish them.
It would take time, of course, for Remo to discover where the pirates were. Chiun wasn't precisely sure how that would be accomplished, but he had no doubt that Remo would succeed.
Remo didn't come across as one of great intellect. Or cunning. He wasn't prone to great feats of mental dexterity, or even mediocre ones. Some had even labeled him a simpleton.
But somehow Remo always failed to live up to others' expectations of idiocy. Somehow, like unexpected lightning, the flashes of insight would always come to the young white Reigning Master. Or he would simply worry the thing to death. Or meander aimlessly, so it seemed, into the solution. But the most important thing was that the solution was always reached. Chiun thought that there just might be-and he would never in a thousand generations admit this to Remo or another living soul or even dare notate the thought in the sacred scrolls of Sinanju or even think it too loud for fear some wandering mind reader would happen across it and blurt it out-but there just might be a streak of, well, brilliance to be found in there. Somewhere. If you really looked for it.
Chiun took a wooden ladle and began to stir the rice with lazy, counterclockwise strokes, putting a palsied shake into his hand just for added effect. His watchdog lit a hand-rolled cigarette and started puffing clouds of smoke into the air. He was within arm's reach of Chiun, a killing distance, but it wasn't time to start the deadly dance.
But first, the search.
"YOU'VE BEEN HERE HOW long?" Stacy asked.
The woman who had earlier identified herself as Megan Richards glanced at her companions in the dingy, thatch-roofed hut. Felicia Docherty frowned and shrugged while the other, introduced by Megan as Robin Chatsworth, sat still and said nothing.
"Four, five days," said Megan. "I'm not exactly sure. Time runs together here. You'll find out what I mean."
Stacy was hoping that she wouldn't be among the pirates long enough that she lost track of time, but anything was possible. With Remo gone-not dead, she told herself, please, God, just don't let him be dead-there was no way of knowing how or when she would be rescued from her captors.
"And they killed your boyfriends? Christ, I'm sorry."
"Not exactly boyfriends," Megan said. "It was a shame, though."