"All fine and dandy until you start living it out, Professor," Remo said.
"These men are purists, don't you see that?" Humphrey frowned and shook his head, red faced in a way that had nothing to do with the afternoon heat. His topic clearly moved him in the same way that politics or religion moved other men, to the point of fanaticism and beyond.
"Pure killers, would that be?" asked Remo. "Pure hijackers? Or maybe it's pure rapists that you had in mind?"
"Their ethics represent another time, another era," Ethan Humphrey said, apparently unfazed by Remo's comment. "It's unfair to judge them by the standards of the modern era."
"You've discussed this with their victims, I suppose?"
A frown creased Humphrey's face. "You see me as a man devoid of sympathy," he said. "No doubt, you find me heartless. But consider this, my friend-the world today is overcrowded. Men lead lives of quiet desperation, in the words of Henry David Thoreau. Are you aware how many innocents are murdered every day in New York, in Chicago, in Los Angeles?"
"I'd look it up," said Remo, "if I figured it was relevant."
"But everything is relevant," said Humphrey. "Don't you see? So many sacrificed for nothing, while a handful put their puerile, wasted lives to better use."
"As fish food?" Remo asked.
"Sarcasm." Humphrey nodded like a wise man who expected no better from his intellectual inferiors. "I understand that you have difficulty grasping what's at stake here."
"Lives and property, you mean?" asked Remo. "It's a stretch, all right, but I can just about catch hold of it."
"I'm speaking of a race, a culture," Humphrey said. "What are a few lives in the balance, when it means the preservation of a cultural tradition?"
"Maybe you should ask the victims that," said Remo.
"Victims!" Humphrey spit out the word with a genuine expression of contempt. "Throughout recorded history, the sea wolves had been scrupulous in preying on the wealthy parasites who fatten on the lifeblood of society like ticks or leeches. Who else owns the yachts and other pleasure craft worth stealing? Who else can afford the ransom for a highpriced hostage?"
"So, if they're rich, you figure they're unfit to live. Is that about the size of it?" asked Remo.
"The wealthy breed like roaches," Humphrey said. "Look at the Kennedys, for God's sake. You can't swing a dead cat from Hyannis to Miami Beach without hitting some millionaire third-cousin of JFK's grandson. What on Earth do they contribute to society, beyond the weekly crop of tabloid headlines?"
"So, your pirates are a bunch of Marxist revolutionaries," Remo said. "The Pirate Liberation Army. It's a quirky twist, Professor, but I've got a problem with it."
"You miss the point. I merely meant to say-"
"They're killing people for the hell of it," said Remo, interrupting him. "Sometimes they let the women live, I understand, but those who do regret it, when they get to know your noble savages. We also have good reason to believe they're selling boats they steal to narcotraffickers from South America, to help the cocaine trade along. Of course, in your view, I suppose that's just another way of keeping up tradition."
Humphrey recognized that there would be no winning Remo over to his cause. His jaw was set now, lips compressed into a narrow slit below his nose, eyes fixed on the horizon.
"They'll be waiting for us," the professor said. "You know that."
"I'm counting on it."
"What does that mean?"
"Never mind," he said. "Just make damn sure that you don't lose your way. I understand the sharks are hungry hereabouts."
CHIUN SPENT FIVE MINUTES searching for the herbs he wanted. He found them, yanked the tuber out of the ground and into his kimono sleeve while his rather stupid guard was looking bored at a tree, then continued to search.
"Hey, slow down, would you?" the guard demanded.
"Do not tell me you cannot keep up with a bent old man such as myself," Chiun chided the guard. The guard huffed along behind him.
There was indeed a small outcropping jutting from the jungle. It was of a black rock that contained many gaping spherical shelves.
Chiun scanned the rock, looking for bone fragments and found none. But that meant nothing. If this was the rock described in the Sinanju scrolls, then its shelves would once have contained the skulls of pirate victims. But that was three hundred years ago, and it was unlikely that they would still be here, where the exposure to the elements would have eaten them away long ago.
"I thought you was looking for spices. This is a rock."
"You are a very smart man," Chiun remarked. "But what I look for is a kind of flavorful spoor found in certain lichens. I see none here-are there any more such escarpments?"
"Any more what?"
Chiun smiled at the guard benignly. "Big rocks."
"Oh. No. Just this one. Everything else is all sand."
"I see," Chiun said with disappointment, but inside he was frolicking with delight. Only one such formation on the island and the description matched that in the histories.
This was the first marker.
He circled to the north side of the rock formation and found, as promised, a small vertical ridge in the rock, at the bottom of which was a small natural rock shelf on which a man could stand, a few inches off the ground. He stepped up onto it, peering at the rock. His guard watched him for a moment, then got bored and looked elsewhere.
Chiun immediately turned and faced out, north, and looked for the Two-Headed Tree.
It was gone. Of course it was gone. There had been only the smallest chance that a tree in these climes would still exist after all this time.
With no two-headed tree, Chiun didn't know in which direction to walk. His treasure hunt was over almost before it had begun.
But not for long. This was just a start, really. There would be other ways, perhaps, of continuing the hunt.
He stepped up to within spitting distance of the daydreaming guard.
"Finished!" he clamored. The pirate jumped off the ground.
"Jee-zus, old man, you trying to get yourself killed!"
"I try to make feast for captain. He be velly angry you not get me back to camp fast." Chiun thought he did a pretty fair imitation of what an American would think an ignorant Chinese would sound like.
"All right, just don't go yelling at me like that anymore, will ya?"
"Velly solly!" Chiun screeched, louder than before.
Chapter 16
"What is it?" Fabian Guzman asked the lookout, eyes narrowed to dark slits as he stared across the sun-dappled water.
"A boat, jefe."
"I can see that, idiot! Give me the glasses!"
He snatched the binoculars and raised them to his eyes, adjusting the focus once he had the boat framed in his viewing field. It was approaching from the west, and while no name was painted on the bow, one glimpse told Guzman that the boat was not official. It wasn't Coast Guard or DEA, not Haitian or Jamaican or Dominican. An older boat, privately owned. Logic dictated that its presence, here and now, had to be coincidence.
And yet...
Suppose that he was wrong-then what? Guzman had been the strong right arm of his amigo, Carlos, for more years than he cared to think about, since they had risen from the mean streets of the barrio in Cartagena to command an empire stretching from Colombia to the United States and Western Europe.
The two of them hadn't survived this long by taking chances, banking on coincidence.
"Shall I fetch Carlos?" the lookout asked, nodding back in the direction of the cabin as he spoke. "You mean Senor Ramirez, eh?"
"Si, jefe." The contrition in the lookout's voice seemed genuine enough. It should have been, considering the penalty that insubordination carried in the family Ramirez and Guzman had built up for themselves.