Warren Murphy: Ship Of Death

"We don't use that sort of stuff. Thanks anyhow," said Remo.

"I have much correspondence," said Chiun. "She will be used."

"Who do you write to?"

"Many people write to me," said Chiun, and it was time for silence because he was about to use the television set from the Shah for the first time.

"An emperor," said Chiun, "knows how to treat an assassin. In America, Smith was so ashamed he bade us work in secret. What disgrace. See now, Remo, the way that civilized people respect the House of Sinanju?"

Going up on deck was like taking a subway through New York City. You knew you would eventually get where you were going but you weren't sure how. Security men with badges from different nations crowded the elevators to the decks. The men in the elevator with Remo sported an assortment of rifles, submachine guns and pistols that could fill a small armory.

"I see you're Iranian security," said a thin man with a very cumbersome pistol that looked like a shotgun with a grip. Remo couldn't place his accent.

"Yeah," said Remo. He wore the Iranian badge with his identification picture on a black tee shirt. He wore his usual loafers and gray slacks.

"You don't carry a weapon?" the man asked.

"Right," said Remo.

"A bit dangerous, no?"

"What?" asked Remo.

"Not carrying a weapon."

"No," said Remo.

"You don't sound Iranian."

"I studied language arts in Newark, New Jersey."

"You don't look Iranian," the man said.

"That helped in Newark."

"I know a faster way to the deck. Want to take it?"

"All right," said Remo. The man was quite interested in the Iranian consulate's new security system.

"You're supposed to have something nobody else has."

"Really?" said Remo.

"Yes. Ambassador Zarudi was boasting about it. Everyone is talking about the new Iranian security system. They say it's the best in the world."

"You don't say," said Remo. The elevator door opened to a corridor that looked decorated in nineteenth-century-American galvanized pipe. The other corridors Remo had seen were done with tapestries and rugs and lush indirect lighting, glistening off polished teak and mahogany. Even the floor here was bare rubber.

It absorbed the other man's footsteps so that he walked soundlessly. Remo had not made a sound when walking for the last ten years. He could run through a corridor of Rice Krispies softer than a Kleenex dropping on a pillow. It was the way you moved, not the speed. But this ugly gray floor seemed designed to smother the clumsy clop and press of the average walk.

Pink and blue and black strips ran along the gray walls. It was obviously a repair corridor of some sort hut there was no plumbing here. The strips Remo recognized as one of the newer forms of wiring. Yet why was the wiring exposed and not the plumbing? Remo's conclusion about these contradictory facts was that he did not care all that much.

"I don't see the deck," Remo said.

"We're coming to it."

"When?" said Remo.

"Soon," said the man. "Don't raise your voice."

"Suffocate," said Remo loudly and began to sing.

"I asked you once nicely," said the man. The heavy-barreled pistol came out of the holster.

"You didn't fall down on your knees when you asked. Where's the deck?"

"You will keep quiet," said the man.

"And if I don't you're going to shoot that thing? That's stupid."

"This has a silencer," said the man. "It's not really a shotgun, you know."

"No kidding," said Remo, snapping it out of the man's hands so quickly that the man was pulling his trigger finger through the air where the trigger had once been. Remo held the pistol in his palm and tried to tell where the silencer was. He used to know guns fairly well but he thought this must be a new model. He flipped the pistol back to the thin man and as the man's arms went up to catch it. Remo snapped a forefinger into the man's belly button. The floor absorbed the sound of falling bodies also. The man moaned softly.

Remo walked the strange corridors looking for an exit. He passed a room that had one full wall filled with television sets, all on, receiving pictures of what was going on in the conference halls, staterooms and even the bedrooms.

A handful of men were clustered around a set labeled "Swedish Embassy." Remo peeked over a shoulder to see what was going on. A man and a girl were fornicating in a bed. He used to like those things but when a person became one with his body, everything else became natural. It was no more interesting than watching a flower grow. On another television set, red lights blinked and everyone turned to it. Remo saw the man he had knocked out being helped up.

"He's faster than we thought," came the man's voice over the television screen.. "I didn't even see his hands."

"Didn't you get off a shot?" asked one of the men helping him up.

"I didn't see his hands. My gun was in his hands before I could pull the trigger. It's incredible. You don't see the hands."

"Number One won't like this."

"Fuck Number One. You don't see the hands."

Remo watched the man regain his breath and take a tentative step. The whole ship apparently was monitored. He left that room just as someone demanded to know who was responsible for the breach of security. "You've got to stop watching the bedrooms. This will not be tolerated," the man said. His accent was German.

"It wasn't my shift," said someone else. The accent was French.

"The area has been violated. Full alert."

Remo expected to hear sirens or gongs but only lights flashed. The groups seemed well organized because they rushed in silence and everyone knew where to go. It was this movement, this rapid taking of stations without a multitude of dramatic orders that for the first time made Remo suspicious.

He did not know about lights or concealed corridors or flooring that let clumsy people walk in silence. But he did know about how people moved, singly and together. These people had been training for more than a year. The ship had only just been launched and the group of security experts he had met in Washington would have been shooting each other by now. It wasn't any one big thing that told Remo this, just small things: the way people didn't bump going through doorways; the way they knew someone was coming past them without looking. It was simply normally clumsy people being unclumsy in a group. All their guns had silencers. Some carried long-bladed knives.

And there was something else Remo noticed. These people had been trained in separate groups and brought together on this ship just recently. No one recognized that Remo did not belong there, undoubtedly the result of two things: many faces were strange to each of them and their feelings of absolute security within the corridors negated any fear. He would be discovered soon, he knew, because he would be the only person in this warren who did not have a place.

Remo imitated the clumsy run of the others, plopping his feet down until he heard, "That's him," and on those words, he unleashed. Low and smooth, legs appearing slow but only as the vehicle upon which the body force moved. Bullets coming out of silencer barrels made clumping noises against the walls. Remo went into a threesome like a bullet through butter. He left one without a thorax. He snap-turned into a large room. A man sat with his back to Remo at a computer console that covered an entire wall. No exit.

They were setting up two rifles at the entrance when Remo came out through it. Going back to the elevator was out because he would never find it; in the twists and turns all the corridors looked alike.

He needed some help finding an exit. He closed on a young man with a fresh face and a long-bladed knife that he swung like a slow baseball bat. He rolled the young man onto the floor and his forefinger worked against the nerve routes leading to the skull.