Roberto was searching his memory of Portuguese for common words that a Frenchman might understand. The languages had many similar roots. It was possible to communicate with these men before something strange transpired. He remembered the French word for cod, amazed that he possessed this knowledge.
"Morue," he said, stumbling over the syllables.
One of the men pointed to the vat of pureeing fish. "Poisson chat," he said in response. His blue smile was rimmed in pink, like a cut mackerel.
"Eh?"
"Poisson chat." The smile widened so the red of his gums and inner lips was grotesque against the blue greasepaint surrounding them.
"Catfish!" Roberto exclaimed. "Yes. Catfish. I understand." But he didn't understand. Why were they speaking of catfish? Catfish were not caught out here in the cold Atlantic. Catfish were freshwater fish. What did they mean by catfish?
Then it hit him. Not catfish. Fish cat. Fish for cats. They were processing cat food. That was what they meant.
A kind of relief settled over Roberto Rezendez's weathered features, and he smiled sheepishly.
That was when two men stepped up and ripped Carlos. Just like that. It happened with stunning suddenness.
Two white-faced men. They strode up, swinging long tuna knives. Both stepped in, and one thrust his blade into Carlos's unsuspecting right side while the other pierced his left. In the belly. Low in the belly. The blades touched one another with a rasping sound-touched deep in the bowels of Roberto Rezendez's eldest son, and he screamed as Carlos screamed. It was a stereo scream.
Manuel joined in, too. A whisking blade separated Manny from his nose. It fell to his feet, perfectly intact. He ran. Or tried to.
Someone gaffed him like a fish. They used a pole with a hook at the end of it, plunging it into his back. Like a fish, Manny fell to the scummy floor and flopped as the harpoon was driven deeper into his helpless body. The point made an awful rasping sound as it scraped living bone.
Roberto Rezendez had both of his case-hardened fists up and was rushing to the defense of his sons, when the two with the long tuna knives drew them out and turned to confront their attacker.
The blades were red with the blood of Carlos. Roberto stared at them in numb disbelief. It was the blood of his son on the blades. His blood. The blood that had flowed through the veins of the Rezendez family for many generations. And here these-these crazed Frenchmen were spilling it as casually as they gutted fish.
Face atwist, Roberto made to seize those blades. They were sharp, but his anger was sharper still. He swore foul oaths his grandfather seldom used. He cursed these butchers when his hard fingers closed over the bloody blades and the white-faced ones whipped them back, leaving blood on Roberto's palms that might have been his sons' or his own. It didn't matter. It was the same blood, and he would shed all of it to avenge his family.
The blades danced and cut the air, shedding scarlet droplets with each twist. The blood spattered Roberto's face. It got in his eyes. They stung. He tasted blood through his set teeth and he grunted out the low Portuguese curses his foes did not understand, could not understand, because all they spoke was doggerel French.
The blades whacked and chipped at Roberto Rezendez as if he were a totem pole being whittled. Except that he bled. As his sons writhed on the floor in their death torments, their lives irredeemably lost, Roberto threw punches and kicks at the white-faced tormentors, who danced in and out of range, claiming pieces of his own flesh.
The end came for Roberto Rezendez as one man feinted, while the other slipped around and, with two expert slices, whacked off a collop of biceps.
The man danced back with the piece of meat that Roberto knew was his flesh balanced on the tip of his red blade. He flicked it back over his shoulder. It landed in the vat, where it made a raspberry blotch that was soon swallowed by the churning puree.
Roberto knew his fate then. He was to be cat food. No one would ever find him. No one would ever know his fate. Nor the fate of his sons. Not Esmerelda, not Esteban. Not the grandchildren who had yet to be born to carry on the Rezendez name.
"Why are you doing this?" Roberto screamed.
The blades found his belly and his throat, and in that last memory, Roberto Rezendez knew how it felt to be a fish taken from its natural environment to be flayed and boned by strange creatures for an alien purpose.
That last knowledge was a very bitter one. He was a man. He stood at the pinnacle of the food chain. It was absurd to be killed to feed the idle cats of the world. Let the cats fish for their own food. Let them eat fish, not Portuguese.
In his last moments of life, they gutted him. He was too weak to resist. The ripping sounds of his parting abdominal muscles were like sailcloth tearing in a gale.
Roberto watched the gray, slippery loops that were his own entrails as they were deposited into the vat of fish offal.
Santa Maria, he prayed. I call upon you to send to earth an avenger. For I have done nothing to deserve this. Nothing but fish.
In his last moment, he wept. Then he was one with the fishes who were, and had always been, his destiny.
Chapter 2
His name was Remo, and he didn't understand the mission.
It was not the usual mission. The usual mission generally came in one of two flavors. Hit a known target. Or infiltrate and discover an unknown target's identity. Then hit him.
Nothing was said about hitting anyone this time out.
That was strange thing number one.
Strange thing number two was the tractor trailer.
Remo was not licensed to drive tractor trailers. Not that he would let that stop him. After all, a tractor trailer was nothing more than an overgrown truck. Remo had driven trucks before. This one was longer and it had a lot more wheels, but it was still just a truck.
The instructions were simple enough. Pick up truck at rendezvous point A, drive it to point B and wait.
"Wait for what?" Remo had asked the lemony voice on the telephone.
"You don't need to know at this time."
"Do I need to know ever?"
"You'll know what to do when the time comes."
"How's that?" asked Remo of Harold Smith, his boss.
"Everything has been arranged. The loading will be done for you. Just drive the shipment."
"Drive it where?"
"Call me en route."
"En route where? North, south, east or west?"
"You cannot drive east of Lubec. You will drive into the Bay of Fundy."
"I feel like driving into the ocean right now," Remo complained.
"Just obey instructions. You cannot go wrong."
"If you say so," said Remo. "Anything else I should know?"
"Yes. How to double clutch."
"I'll ask someone," said Remo, who then went in search of the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun was not at home.
"Must have gone for a walk," muttered Remo. He was going to leave a note, but the single Western-style pen in the house was out of ink. The goose quill and ink stone Chiun used were locked up tight, so Remo simply dropped down to the corner market and called his own house from a pay phone, leaving a message on the machine. It cost him a dime, but he figured it was worth it.
The drive to Maine had one good thing about it. The part of New Hampshire he passed through was very short. Of all the states of the union, Remo liked New Hampshire the least. He had heard about New England Yankees. His boss, Harold Smith, was one. Remo once thought Harold Smith was just a tightass until he visited New Hampshire and realized that Harold Smith was a typical product of New Hampshire-bloodless about everything except money. Smith would rather swallow a nickel than see it roll down a sewer grate.
Once in Maine, Remo began to relax. Maybe it was the fact that trees outnumbered people in Maine. It wasn't that Remo didn't like people. It was that he had to be particular about whom he associated with. Since he was a sanctioned assassin for a supersecret government agency, this was important. It wasn't that Remo had a cover to protect. He had once been Remo Williams, a Newark cop, until his existence had been erased. Now he was just Remo, last name optional. According to his truck driver's license, he was Remo Burton. But that was just in case he was pulled over. He lived simply, did no work except take on missions and tried to lead an ordinary life within those narrow constraints.