Warren Murphy: White Water

The best Masters are those who devise their own skills, Chiun thought with a bitter pride.

THE CORRIDOR WASN'T as narrow as the niche entrance, but it wasn't comfortably wide. Remo negotiated it by walking sideways. That put him at a disadvantage if there were traps or snares lying in wait.

Under his feet he sensed vague electrical disturbances. Water purled. But the ebony floor seemed solid.

Abruptly the stone corridor right-angled, and Remo went with it. It opened farther and the ticking, like incessant hail, came more clearly.

For all the world it sounded like someone keying a computer. On second thought Remo decided it sounded like two people at two keyboards.

Well, whoever they were, they had better have some answers to the only important question in his universe ....

Chapter 39

Harold Smith got the word from Cape Cod air station as soon as it was received.

The Cayuga had made contact with a Canadian factory ship, Hareng Saur.

Smith read the name and blinked. He spoke passable French, a relic of his OSS days in France.

Hareng Saur sounded vaguely familiar to him. He input the name into his computer and accessed the automatic French-language-conversion program.

Up came the name Red Herring and an etymology of the phrase.

Suspicion flickered across Smith's patrician face. There was no such fish as a red herring. It was a figure of speech. One that was exclusive to English, he saw. There were no red herrings in the French language, real or figurative. Thus, no French-named vessel would be called the Red Herring any more than a French submarine would be christened Proud to be Frogs.

Smith got on the phone with Coast Guard Station Cape Cod just in time to hear a follow-up report straight from the commander there.

"My people say it's releasing some kind of fish chasing torpedo. This is definitely a hostile act," the base commander said.

"I am ordering the Hareng Saur be boarded, detained and searched," said Smith.

"Will do, sir," said the commander, who thought he was talking to Coast Guard area headquarters in Boston.

Smith hung up and returned to his system. A torpedo that herded fish. If such a device existed, perhaps he could discover it on the World Wide Web.

WHEN LIEUTENANT HECKMAN received her orders she said, "What the hell? We can't board a boat that size. They've got us outcrewed. Probably ten to one."

"Maybe we can fake them out," suggested her helmsman.

"How's that?"

"Call in a Coast Guard air strike."

"CG doesn't have air-strike capability."

"Maybe they don't know that."

"Good thinking." Taking up the mike, Sandy began chanting, "Attention, Hareng Saur. This is the CGC Cayuga. You are in violation of the Magnunson Act and are ordered to have to and submit to boarding or be sunk."

There was no answer from the Hareng Saur.

Then the factory ship launched a torpedo.

"What are the chances that a fish-chasing torpedo has a warhead?" Sandy wondered aloud, her eyes on the incoming wake.

"The last one blew up on command," her helmsman reminded.

"That was only a self-destruct charge."

"TNT is TNT!"

"Evasive!" Sandy ordered, then grabbed something solid.

The Cayuga went into extreme evasive maneuvers, and the torpedo ran after it like a hungry dog.

"It's gaining!" the helmsman roared.

"Then turn about and ride into its teeth," Sandy flung back.

"Are you crazy? Sir!"

"Do it!"

As the Cayuga heeled into the teeth of the torpedo, Sandy Heckman manned the sixteen-inch gun mounted on the foredeck and zeroed in on its bubbling nose.

Shells began heaving. The first one sent up a chopping uprush of water. That gave her the range. Her second shot struck just ahead, and the torpedo flashed through the turbulent water unscathed.

"Third time's the charm," muttered Sandy, who fired with careful precision, one eye shut, her pink tongue nipped between her neat white teeth.

The torpedo blew up with a force and a roar that settled the question once and for all. It was an antiship torpedo.

No more torpedoes came out of the Hareng Saur.

Twenty minutes later the skies were full of screaming white Falcon jets.

"Last chance, Hareng Saur!" Sandy warned. "Surrender or sink and swim for it. Last I heard, the water temperature was a relaxing thirty-one degrees."

The white flag was run up, and the rails became packed with sailors with lifted hands and blue faces.

"I'll bet my sea legs those are fleurs-de-lis on their damn faces," Sandy murmured as the Cayuga came alongside the towering gray factory ship.

Chapter 40

Remo came to a door. It was like a frozen sheet of turquoise water. The clicking was coming from the other side. He looked back. No sign of Chiun. But he couldn't wait. The soft pad of sandals came. Chiun was not far behind. Fine. He could catch up.

Remo moved to the door. He saw it was split down the center.

Touching it, he had expected the two panels to part for him like an electric door. There were no handles or buttons. It had to be electrically operated.

But the doors remained firmly shut.

Remo pressed both hands to the panels. He tried to peer in. There was something or someone on the other side. He could hear the unbroken keying.

Using his fingertips, he dug into the seam between the two door halves. He found purchase, and exerted opposing pressure.

The doors came apart like stiff curtains. Remo jammed them into their wall grooves and stepped in before whoever was on the other side could react.

The room was square with brick walls. There was a table. On the table sat two computer monitors side by side. Nearby were other monitors, their screens glowing.

Seated before them, her back to him, was a young woman whose visible hair was a cloud of golden filaments.

Remo froze.

Whoever she was, she seemed oblivious to him. He could see her arms spread out on either side of the oversize chair back. One went to a keyboard attached to the right-hand monitor. The other expertly worked the keyboard of the left-hand monitor.

Two monitors were being worked simultaneously.

Remo could read them both.

The left hand was typing in French.

The right typed something completely different in Cyrillic Russian. Two hands, one mind, simultaneously typing in two languages. Remo felt the hair on his suddenly chilly forearms lift.

Then he noticed the great mound of clay that sat on the desk, looming over the seated figure like a spider weaving a web. It looked like a statue of Kali, but the arms were many and malformed. Some tiny as a baby's arms, others adult sized. Some fingerless. Others fisted in defiance. It gazed down with a heavy face that was twisted and evil.

And with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, Remo asked, "Freya, is that you?"

Both pairs of fingers froze in midword. Leaving off their work, they withdrew, and siowly the sunnyhaired figure in the chair rotated to face him.

Remo's eyes stayed on the crown of hair, then the profile as it came around. As the full features revealed themselves, Remo was caught on the deep brown eyes he had not seen in what seemed like decades.

He swallowed. "Freya?"

She smiled. Her smile was as sunny as her hair. "Hello, Daddy. You found me."

Dropping to one knee, Remo said, "Freya?"

And two hands met his. Their fingers entwined. Remo felt their warmth. Then they constricted like talons of slim, hard bone, and another pair of hands came up from her lap to snap a yellow silk scarf over his head and around his neck.

"You killed my mother!" she shrieked. And the silk scarf jerked left with irresistible force ....

Chapter 41

Harold Smith received the report that the Hareng Saur had been boarded without incident as he was reading through a web site of a Russian company that was offering a device called the Acoustic Fish Concentrator on the international market.