Warren Murphy: Next Of Kin

The Dutchman staggered off his feet and disappeared backward into the storm. In the mist a fluttering sigh began and died.

Soon the soughing of the wind ebbed. The dead leaves that had been coloring the sky black settled to the ground, and twilight returned in its electric blueness. Far away, a tree frog began singing, and others took up the chant.

"Chiun?" Remo called.

The old man stood near a broken Ackee tree. Slowly he raised his arm to point toward the cliff side of Devil's Mountain. Across a jagged boulder was draped the broken body of the Dutchman. Remo and Chiun went toward him.

The explosion happened before they reached him. The earth shook, and a double blast burst from the castle in a curtain of flame. Fire poured out of its narrow slit windows. Women screamed.

A second explosion rocked the castle to its foundations. Huge slabs of stone tumbled to the ground as the white turrets crumbled, leaving clouds of dust and fire in their wake.

Chiun took hold of Remo's arm, his long fingernails digging into his skin. "Listen," he said, drawing Remo toward the Dutchman.

The young man's eyes were open and weeping, tears mixed with blood dropping red onto the rock where he lay as Nuihc's castle disintegrated before him. "I have failed," he croaked. "Nuihc, this is your vengeance." Then his head dropped. He made no other movement. Thin streams of blood coursed from his wounds down the gray stone, forming small pools around him. On the peak, the fire raged unabated, washing the Dutchman's body in a bright glow.

"How young he is," Chiun whispered. He picked up his robe and dabbed at the cuts on Remo's cheek. "Come. We must look after you now."

Then, in the orange aura from the blaze in the castle, they saw a line of figures marching toward them, their outlines wavy and rippled in the heat. At the head of the line lumbered a wide female figure who shouted commands at the others.

"Buge-toi, putain! Move it. You best be putting them buns to work getting you down this hill, else they gonna burn like de pork rind. Ha, ha," Sidonie cackled gleefully as she forced her charges down the hill.

Chiun peered at the strange parade. All of the figures were women in various stages of undress. Some were draped in sheets or towels; others picked their way down the hill clad only in diaphanous nightgowns. One of them, a proud redheaded Amazon, strutted apart from the group wearing a black garter belt, opera hose, and spike heels.

"That woman in front," Chiun began, pointing to the black drill sergeant in a ruffled skirt and bandana. "She looks like..."

"Who else," Remo finished, watching Sidonie wield the iron pipe she had brought to Remo's rescue earlier. She circled it over her head, threatening the girls behind her as she commanded them downward.

"Hey, Mr. Remo, Mr. Chiun," she bellowed. "Lookee what I got for you. Get going, girlie. You ain't laying around sucking up bonbons no more." Behind her, the girls grumbled and muttered in French. "Taisez-vous!" she shrieked, prodding one of the girls in the stomach with the pipe. "Soyez tranquille! Shut your mouth or I shut it good, hear?"

In silence the girls fell in near Remo and Chiun. From the rear of the line, a little terrier scrambled forward, stopping to beg at Sidonie's feet.

"Who are those people?" Chiun asked.

Sidonie picked up the dog and slung him onto her shoulder. "They the Dutchman's women," she said. "Sinners, all of them. Prob'ly pretty good at it, too, by the looks of them," she added with a wink. "I take them out of the castle after I sabotage the furnace."

"You what?" Remo asked, looking up at the flaming ruin on the hill.

"I take the gasoline tank what was in the Jeep Pierre stole. I drag it into the basement, I throw it in the furnace. Boom."

"You made the boom," Chiun acknowledged.

"Bomb," said Remo.

"I be in the French Resistance, remember?"

"And the Dutchman thought it was Nuihc's vengeance," Remo said.

Fabienne and another woman, who was strangely swathed in veils of sooty white gauze, came limping from the direction of the castle. "Remo, Remo!" Fabienne called, waving wildly. Her dirt-streaked face was happier than Remo had ever seen it as she jumped into his arms, sending shooting pains from Remo's fractured ribs.

"It's all right," Remo said over her loud apologies. "It's only my chest."

The woman in white reached over with a visible effort and took the dog Sidonie held out to her. The terrier whined and tried to lick the woman's scarred face beneath her veil.

"Adrianna will testify that the Dutchman used some kind of— how you say— hypno— hypno—"

"Hypnosis."

"Yes. He hurt many people, Remo." She took the hand of the veiled Asian girl. "Adrianna was nearly blinded. She thinks also that the Dutchman killed people in the shipyard. Perhaps if the police investigate—"

"They will. And they'll find plenty of bodies. You won't have any trouble getting your father's business back. You're rich, Fabienne."

She kissed him, but a shadow of worry passed over her face. "Will the Dutchman go to prison on Sint Maarten? You know, he's very clever. He may escape."

"He's not going anywhere, Fabienne." He turned toward the jagged rock where the Dutchman had fallen. "He's d—"

The blood-spattered rock was bare.

?Eighteen

He was crawling, wounded and bleeding, down the cliff side of Devil's Mountain, heading for a cluster of fishing boats below. His blond hair bobbed in the twilight as the Dutchman struggled to free a small dinghy while holding his smashed shoulder in place.

"Take these persons to the police," Chiun told Sidonie. "But do not mention Remo or me."

"I get it," Sidonie said. "I knew you wasn't no tourists." Yelling happily, she bullied the girls toward the road leading to Marigot.

The Dutchman wobbled in the small boat. With his good arm, he pulled out the throttle to start the outboard motor. It coughed twice, then purred.

Remo touched his broken ribs. They wouldn't stand up to a descent down a cliff. There was only one way to catch the Dutchman, and that would have to be done perfectly or not at all. "What the hell," Remo said out loud. He'd done it perfectly twenty-four times in a row. He might as well press his luck. He stepped back a few paces and ran off the cliff to begin the Flying Wall. Arms outstretched, he soared over the Dutchman's dinghy, shifting his weight to land alongside it. Painless, he thought as he skimmed on top of the water like a sea bird. The Dutchman watched him with grim resignation.

The boat circled crazily when Remo grabbed hold of it, still traveling fast from the momentum of his dive.

"Just felt like dropping in," Remo said.

The Dutchman stomped on his fingers.

"Is that any way to treat the guy who thought he killed you?"

"Go back to shore," the Dutchman said.

"Sorry, kid. There's a nice girl on the island who doesn't want you running around loose. Not to mention a truckload of dead men who aren't that crazy about you, either."

The Dutchman kicked hard at Remo's head. When he moved out of the way, the Dutchman shoved the throttle up full and sped away. Remo caught up to the boat in two strokes, dove, and caught hold of the outboard's whirling propeller with his hands. Underwater, he heard the motor clink and die.

"Looks like you're staying," Remo said, tossing the propeller into the boat with a clang.

For a moment the Dutchman looked at him with disgust, but his attention was drawn further out to sea. Two deep lines settled between his eyes as he held out his hand to Remo.

"What? So friendly? I thought you were the last of the bluebloods. No handshakes with the proles."

"Get in," he said urgently.

A gray fin followed in Remo's wake as the Dutchman pulled him aboard. Remo did an unconscious doubletake when he saw the shark's form passing near the boat.