Warren Murphy: White Water

She saw the wake close in. There was no way to avoid a direct hit. The Hareng Saur seemed completely oblivious to the threat. The tiny white figures on her deck were going about their business in a brisk but unpanicked fashion.

At the last possible minute, a panel opened just at the waterline as if to devour the incoming device.

The torpedo struck. Sandy flinched inwardly. But there was no explosion. The torpedo just scooted into the black aperture.

The black port closed up, and all was quiet except for the sudden heaving of fish nets overboard.

"What the hell happened?" the helmsman wondered aloud, coming out of his protective crouch.

"The torpedo herded the fish to the ship," she said. "Damn it. They're chasing our fish into their waters and stealing them. This is environmental piracy on the open seas!"

Chapter 38

Remo stood up. He was trying to compose his features. His shoulders shook. His fists made two mallets of bone.

"Chiun..." His voice was soft, not accusing, but numb with shock. "Chiun, it's Jilda. Jilda's dead."

"I know," said the Master of Sinanju, eyes round and wide.

Remo looked around the room. "If Jilda's here, where's Freya?"

"I do not know. But I vow that I will find for you your daughter, Remo. I will atone for this grave error I have committed."

"That's why I recognized her. It was Jilda. Jilda..."

Remo looked back at the dead woman he had loved many years ago. His eyes seemed to retreat into his skull-like countenance. Then he asked a question. "What was she doing here? Why was she dressed like that?"

The Master of Sinanju surveyed the room. His eyes fell upon two kneeling men, one nude and one not. "They will know," he intoned.

With determined steps Chiun strode up to the cowering pair. "Speak! Why did you kneel before that woman?"

"She was Mistress Kali," Gilbert Houghton said, as if that explained everything.

"I loved her, although to speak the unvarnished truth I only met her just this day," Anwar Anwar-Sadat admitted. "is she truly ...dead?"

"She is no more, popinjay," Chiun said severely.

Remo had joined them. Reaching down, he seized the Egyptian by his collar and dragged him to his feet. His eyes were hot. His voice hotter.

"We're looking for a little girl. Blond. About twelve.

"Thirteen," Chiun corrected. "Golden of hair and blue of eye. Like her mother, who lies here dead. Where is she?"

"I know nothing of any little girl," the Secretary-General of the UN protested.

Remo found the leash with his toe, dug under it and snapped his foot. The free end of the leash whipped into his waiting hand. He tugged hard.

Fisheries Minister Gilbert Houghton was yanked off his hands. "Urrkk," he said.

"What about you?"

"I have seen no little girl and I have been Mistress Kali's slave for many weeks now."

"I am crushed, desolated," said Anwar Anwar-Sadat. "I thought she loved only me. And now she is dead."

"She never loved you. But she scorned me. I was the object of her scorn," Houghton snarled.

"Both of you shut up," Remo ordered. Turning to Chiun, he said, "I'm going to find Freya if I have to tear this place apart brick by brick."

"And I will help," vowed Chiun, girding his skirts.

"But first we deal with these two."

"We are instructed to intimidate, not dispatch these two."

"Accidents happen," Remo growled. "You got that one. I'll take the other."

Remo stood the Canadian fisheries minister up against a wall while Chiun immobilized the UN Secretary-General with a painful twist of the Egyptian's ear.

"You're behind all this?" Remo accused Gilbert Houghton.

"I admit nothing."

"And this is about fish?"

"No comment."

"That's your answer? No comment?"

Gil Houghton gulped like a goldfish. "No comment."

Sweeping his hands out, Remo brought them together with a sudden loud clap. Gilbert Houghton's head happened to be caught between his palms in the thunderous instant Remo's palms came together.

When Remo stepped back, hands returning to his sides, Gil Houghton's head sat on his neck like a sunfish's. Flat with eyes set on opposite sides of what had been a round mammalian skull.

The surprised whites filled with blood, and the pursed lips seemed to be kissing empty air-then he pitched forward, dead.

Remo turned.

The Master of Sinanju had one sandal on the Egyptian's heaving chest. Anwar Anwar-Sadat attempted a protest. Chiun quieted it with a sudden pressure of his foot.

While Anwar Anwar-Sadat unwittingly watched his last breath leave his dry, open mouth, Chiun calmly took hold of his dusky mandibles and lifted his head off his spinal cord.

It came off with a popping suck of a sound like a head off a plastic doll. As simply as that.

Tossing the head in a corner, the Master of Sinanju faced his pupil in expectant silence. His chin lifted.

"It wasn't your fault," Remo said.

Chiun bowed his aged head. "I accept responsibility for my rash actions."

"You were just trying to protect me," Remo said distractedly.

"And I have wounded you deeply, for which I am deeply regretful."

"If we find Freya okay, it will be all right. Let's find Freya. Just find Freya and everything will be forgiven."

Remo's cracking voice told the Master of Sinanju that their future together hinged on finding alive the daughter Remo had lost once and could not bear to lose again.

"I will not fail you, my son," Chiun vowed.

Carefully Remo went over to the splayed body of Jilda of Lakluun and carried it to a stone shelf that ran along one wall. He laid it on the ledge, arranged the leather-clad limbs modestly and touched her gleaming hair briefly.

Then they went in opposite directions.

Under their feet the gurgle and splash of troubled waters came intermittently. The flooring was a continuation of the anteroom floor. It was like a hard black mirror that reflected everything above it, yet it seemed ready to pull them down into an abyss blacker than universal night.

Remo's sensitive ears turned this way and that, hunting sounds.

Somewhere deep in the building he heard a constant clicking. It came in bursts and spurts, yet was steady as a dry hail.

"This way," Remo said, looking for a door.

He found not a door but a narrow niche in a wall behind a heavy wall hanging.

"What do you make of this?" Remo asked, snapping off the hanging.

Chiun examined it. "A passage."

"Too small for a grown-up."

"Perhaps it is meant for a dwarf. Or a child. This was constructed for the use of one who wishes to remain undisturbed."

Remo felt the edge of the stone. "We can chop through this easy."

Chiun indicated the arch over them. "Look, Remo. A keystone. If you break the sides, it will all coming tumbling down."

Remo sniffed the cool air coming from the niche.

"I smell someone in there."

Chiun said, "I, too."

Setting himself, Remo inserted his shoulder into the niche. He drew in his breath, then let it out very deeply until his rib cage all but collapsed. It was still too thick. He blew out more air until his lungs were like two empty balloons.

Then, with infinite care so he didn't break any ribs or crush his own internal organs, Remo insinuated himself into the niche. It was a slow, careful task. His cartilage crackled under the stress. Like a snake he slithered through, getting halfway and concentrating to keep the air from rushing back into his hungry lungs.

Chiun called soft encouragement. "You will succeed because failure is too bitter to taste, my son."

Halfway in, Remo paused, then with a jerk, he threw himself all the way in. He disappeared into the gloom.

Chiun called softly, "Wait!"

But there was no answer.

Quickly the Master of Sinanju expelled all the air from his own lungs and attempted to duplicate the feat of his pupil, whom he had taught many things but not the dangerous technique he had just witnessed.