Warren Murphy: Last Rites

"Yes."

"Is that a Korean word?"

"No."

Remo looked back down the road he had come. "That was the running of the bulls I just screwed up, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"You're supposed to run ahead of the bulls, not into them."

"Any fool can be trampled. A Master of Sinanju requires a greater test of his grace."

"I think my intelligence was just tested, not my grace."

"And you may be correct, for you lack all graces," spat Chiun.

"What are they saying about me?" Remo asked as the crowd surged drunkenly toward them.

"That you have duende."

"What's that mean?"

"Some say it means grace."

Remo grinned. "I like the Spanish. They recognize quality when they see it."

Chiun didn't return the grin. Instead, he turned away with a swirl of kimono skirts. "Come. We are through here."

"We just got here."

"And now we are leaving."

"But we just got here."

"Pah. I am glad too that my ancestors did not survive to see the town that Pompey's son founded become a den of besotted Christianity."

And they melted into the alleys and byways around the great square, often leaping over the sprawled figures of drunken tourists.

"Where to next?" wondered Remo.

"Hellas."

"What did you say?"

"I said Hellas."

"That's good," said Remo. "For a minute I thought you said we were going to Hell."

"We are not yet going to Hell," said the Master of Sinanju. "For you, however, there may be no difference."

Chapter 6

Remo got off the Olympic Airways plane in Athens, Greece, wearing a T-shirt that read I Ran With The Bulls Of Pamplona, a red baseball cap that sported bull's horns and a fan club consisting of an assortment of Greek stewardesses-along with one cow-eyed steward who ardently tried to interest Remo in an alternative life-style.

Remo ducked into the nearest men's room, which took care of the stewardesses, and locked the lovestruck steward in a toilet stall.

When he emerged again, the stewardesses were singing his praises in a kind of Greek chorus.

"You are so manly," one cooed.

"For an American," another amended.

"Do you like Greek women?" asked a third.

"Greek women," Remo said, "should be neither seen nor heard."

The collection of Greek stewardesses looked at one another with baffled black olive eyes.

"I like women who are hard to get," Remo clarified. "Hard to-"

"Very hard to get," said Remo.

"If we are hard to get, will you seek us out?"

"Only if you're completely out of my sight," promised Remo.

The stewardesses made themselves scarce, and Remo and Chiun sought a cab.

"You are learning," said Chiun as the cab took them away.

"Not what I want to learn. Why are we in Athens?"

"You have your Roman coin?"

"Yep."

"We must find you a Greek coin."

"Why would I want a Greek coin?"

"Because you failed to discern the meaning of the Roman coin."

Remo shrugged and watched the city go past. The driver drove like a maniac. Remo wondered what it was about European capitals that made the taxi drivers drive as if suicidal.

"Where to, guys?" the driver asked, turning his head. His breath filled the back seat with a commingled grape-leaf, onion, olives, lamb and feta-cheese odor.

"Piriaevs," said Chiun.

The driver seemed to know where that was and redoubled his speed, banging around narrow corners like a caroming billiard ball.

He took them to the waterfront smelling of creosote and tar, where small, flat octopuses hung drying on lines like wash. There the Master of Sinanju engaged a seamfaced Greek trawler captain in fluent Greek. Some gold changed hands, and Remo was waved aboard.

"Where are we going this time?" Remo asked once on board.

"You are going sponge diving."

"What are you going to be doing?"

"Hoping you do not take all day because we have to be in Kriti by nightfall."

The trawler was ancient and barnacle encrusted. It muttered out into the brilliant blue Aegean and its many sun-drenched islands.

When they reached an island that stood out from all the others by its crusty gray-and-white streaked homeliness, the boat stopped and dropped anchor.

Chiun faced Remo, saying, "There are sponges below us. You must find the two largest and bring them back."

"Why."

"Because your Master has told you to do this." Remo hesitated. Then, stepping out of his shoes, he somersaulted from a standing position from the aft deck and into the water. He went in like a dolphin, with hardly a splash.

The Greek sea captain happened to be in midblink when Remo left the deck, so to his slow brain and eyes, it was as if Remo had abruptly dwindled into his shoes. He knelt to examine the shoes, found them empty but still warm with the vitality of the man who had stood in them just a moment before. The captain crossed himself fervently.

THE AEGEAN WAS AS BLUE below as it had been above. Remo arrowed through the crystalline water and found the bottom.

A ghost-gray octopus went flowing past, tentacles spread like a flower, two touching the bottom to guide itself along.

It saw Remo with its sleepy, human-looking eyes, went from gray to a livid green in a glimmering and pulled itself into the safety of a broken ceramic pot, so that one near-human eye peered out warily.

Remo swam on. Fish he did not recognize swam and darted by.

The sea bottom was silty, and when he touched it, sediment curled up in brownish obscuring clouds. Remo found a bed of sponges and began picking through them. They were of all sizes and shapes but the largest ones were easily the size of both his hands joined together. He found one he liked and spent a casual five minutes looking for its mate.

Meanwhile, carbon-dioxide bubbles dribbled from one corner of his grim mouth at a rate of one every quarter minute. The lack of oxygen bothered Remo not at all. His training had expanded his lung capacity so that once he charged them, he was good for over an hour underwater. More if he didn't exert himself. Since there was no rush and he knew Chiun would be critical of his choices if he wasn't careful, Remo took his time finding two matching sponges.

"THESE ARE THE BEST you could find?" the Master of Sinanju demanded when Remo's head popped up alongside the fishing boat, hands held high, the sponges upraised for his inspection.

"You saw how long I was down there."

"You were playing."

"I scoured the bottom for the best sponges," Remo insisted. "These are them."

Chiun turned to the boat captain and gave him a withering stare. "You and your greedy kind have taken all the best."

The boat captain shrugged. He was still trying to figure out how Remo had gotten into the water in the first place.

Chiun turned back to Remo. "Take your sorry prizes to that isle and do what has to be done."

"What's that?"

"You will know what the moment you step onto its shore."

Remo turned. The isle was a hump not bigger than a city parking lot. Sea gulls and other ocean birds circled it. Some alighted, paused and flew off again.

They made no attempt to peck or claw its surface for food scraps. Not surprising, Remo saw. There wasn't a shred of vegetation on the thing.

Remo saw why when he reached the place. The water at the edge was gray and scummy, the smell rank. "Wanna throw me my shoes? I think I'm going to need them."

The shoes plopped obligingly into the water, only to sink from sight.

"Damn," said Remo, diving after them.

Putting them on underwater, he surfaced and recovered the sponges, which bobbed in the grayish water. Remo jumped straight out of the water and onto the crusty shore. His feet splashed up grayish-white goo. "What do they call this place?" Remo called back.

"In Greek you would not understand the words. In English it is called Guano Isle."