Ethel stood up and called over her shoulder. "He's over here."
"Who is?" mumbled Remo.
"You are," Ethel replied.
The Maine State troopers surrounded Remo with their hands on their side arms. They looked unhappy, the way men look when they've spent a cold night on a long stakeout.
"Get up, sir," one said formally. "You are under arrest."
"For what?"
"Suspicion of smuggling."
"Smuggling what?"
"You tell us."
Remo got up, shivered one last time energetically and cracked a weak grin. "The only thing I'm smuggling is shark meat."
"Where is this contraband?" the second trooper demanded.
"In my stomach."
Nobody looked very amused.
Because it was the easiest way to go and it meant warmth and probably dry clothes, Remo allowed himself to be taken to the local state police barracks. He was issued a hot shower and blue prisoner denims. He took them in that order.
"We know you're a bad guy," a trooper told Remo in the interrogation room after Remo had gotten dry.
"Wrong. I'm a good guy."
"You're a smuggler. Ethel said so. She's well liked around here."
"You know, I thought she had an honest face."
"She does. Why do you think she turned you in?"
"Good point," said Remo. "I want my one phone call."
"We need your name and address first."
"Sure. Remo Mako." He gave a Trenton, New Jersey, address.
"That a house or apartment?"
"House," said Remo. "Definitely a house."
"Any statement you care to make at this time will be counted in your favor."
"Thanks. My statement is I want to call my lawyer."
A clerical head poked into the interrogation room. "You don't have to. He's already on the horn, demanding to speak to you."
"His name Smith?" asked Remo, who was not about to fall for some trick and lose out on his lawful call.
"Ay-yah. And you must get into a lot of this kind of trouble if he knows where you are so quick."
REMO TOOK THE CALL in private.
"What took you so long, Smitty?"
"Your Remo Mako alias is not on my list of approved cover names. When it went out on lawenforcement wires, my system spit out the fact that the address you gave was that of the Trenton State Prison death house. That told me it was you being held in the Lubec barracks on suspicion of smuggling."
"Good catch."
"What happened, Remo?"
Dr. Harold W. Smith was grimly silent after Remo told him what had happened.
"You can spring me the polite way or I can spring myself," Remo told him.
"We need to do this quietly."
"Don't take long, or I'll take matters into my own hands," Remo warned.
Remo knew he was on his way home when he heard the helicopter rotors beating his way.
The chopper settled on the back lawn, where he could see it from his holding cell. It was a big orange-and-white Jayhawk rescue helicopter with the Coast Guard anchor-and-flotation-ring crest in red-and-white striping on the tail.
Coast Guardsmen in crisp whites came running out, holding their service caps against the rotor wash.
In less than ten minutes Remo was being processed out.
"You might have informed us you were with the Coast Guard," the arresting officer told Remo as he searched his pockets for the handcuff key.
Remo handed over the handcuffs, still locked tight, and said, "Lost my ID in the water. Would you have taken my word for it?"
"No," the trooper admitted.
"There you go," said Remo.
The Coast Guard chopper ferried Remo to the local guard station, where Remo was transferred to a Coast Guard Falcon jet. It took off screaming, and two hours later Remo was deposited at Logan International Airport in Boston.
He took a cab home, thinking that Chiun was either going to be very happy to see him or very angry. Possibly both. It was impossible to predict the Master of Sinanju's moods in advance.
But either way, Remo couldn't wait to see him again. It had been as close to death as he had gotten in a long time, and it felt good to be alive and kicking.
He hoped the Master of Sinanju would feel the same way about things. After all, a mission was just a mission, but Remo was next in line to head the House. How angry could Chiun be?
Chapter 10
She wanted sex. Of course she did. He could tell it from the look on her long face when he walked in the door and from the filmy negligee that would drape a busty blonde wonderfully. But clinging to her scrawny, pale skin, it looked pathetic. Like spiderwebs on a corpse.
He avoided her kiss by striking first. A peck on the cheek, and sensing it would not be enough to avoid the tobacco breath, a second, more careful one on the brow.
She stepped back, spreading the gauzy wings of the negligee.
Lavender, for God's sake. Made her look like a harridan.
"I thought you'd never get home, dear," she cooed.
He wanted to slap her. Tell her to grow up. She was a mother, for Christ's sake. Why couldn't she settle for that? Not these pathetic attempts to rekindle the spark that was long past cooling.
"I had a difficult day," he said guardedly, his eyes going to the closed door of the den.
Her smiling face bobbed into view.
"Then you'll need a long, leisurely ...what?"
"Soak," he said quickly.
"Soak. Yes, have a nice soak. I think I'll join you."
There was no way out. Divorce was out of the question. Without a wife he might as well pack it in. Throw away all hope, all ambition, all thoughts of the future.
"All right," he said, mustering up what passed for marital enthusiasm. "We'll share a soak."
The soak was as sexy as bathing with an Irish wolfhound. With her long face, thin arms and absolute absence of a bust or bottom, she more and more reminded him of an Irish wolfhound, an abysmally hideous canine.
When it was over, she toweled him down lovingly and led him by the hand to the bedroom, where scented candles flamed in glass jars. It was all very bewitching. All the tableau needed was a woman with some meat on her bones.
But he hadn't married her for her flesh, but for her mind, her good breeding, her impeccable character. A respectable wife was one of the inconvenient accoutrements for a man on the move.
He never stopped to think that even sex became boring if one did it often enough in the same two unimaginative positions with absolutely no props or enhancements.
So, once again he went through the motions. Foreplay consisted of a few chaste kisses, a perfunctory back rub and then he mounted her. He wanted to strangle her. Strangling her would have made it exciting for once, and it would have ensured that he'd never have to plumb these unpleasant depths again.
In the moment she gave before his first prodding thrust, he decided the hell with it and took her violently. It was madness, but he was desperate. It had been too long. And he was under such stress at the office, what with the latest Angus Reid polls and all.
To his astonishment, she loved it. She shrieked wildly, then began moaning as he pumped and pumped as if driving a stake through a vampire's heart. That was how it felt. Like driving a stake through the heart of the undead thing that his marriage had become.
Climaxing, she sank her teeth in his shoulder and shuddered uncontrollably.
It wasn't passionate, but as least he had climaxed. For once.
"You came!" she whispered, giving the word a slutty inflection.
"Miracles never cease," he said dryly.
Her smile was a dim porcelain glow in the wan light. "Admit it. It was wonderful."
"Shattering," he said, disengaging.
As he rolled over, she doused the bedroom light and blew the candles out. She was humming. It was some mindless Barry Manilow song he detested.
But at least it was over.