Warren Murphy - Ship Of Death

"Nope, nope, nope," Remo said. "Don't spoil everything by talking. Now it's all right for an American not to like America. But it's not all right for you. You understand?"

Mahmoud and Ahmed nodded, so fast the hacks of their heads bumped against the wall behind them.

"Good," said Remo. "Now we'll just have to think of some way that you don't forget that. Ever."

Ferenzi Barlooni, the Libyan chief delegate, had had too much champagne. He was asleep on the floor, just inside the door to the Libyan wing, when something pried at his ears, some sound insinuated itself in his head and forced him to wake up.

He did not know how long he'd been sleeping. He squinted his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear it. But the strange sound was still there. The guards. It must be the guards. Well, he would settle that in short order. They would think twice before ever again disturbing an ambassador's sleep.

Angrily, he stalked to the door and flung it open. He looked out into the hallway. His two guards, Ahmed and Mahmoud, were on the floor, sitting against the wall. And they were singing. What kind of drunkenness was this? Guards, singing on duty.

Both men looked up at Barlooni and smiled sheepishly, then returned to their singing.

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mounted majesties,

Above the fruited plain.

America, America…

Except for them, the hallway was empty.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Remo found the storage closet in the passageway near the Lebanese mission, went inside, then didn't know what he was doing there.

He didn't give a doodley-doo about secret passages in the ship. He didn't care if spies drilled holes in the bottom and sank it. He didn't care if the whole damned Iranian delegation drowned, if Smith was swallowed by a whale who suffered heartburn for the rest of its life, or if all the delegates wound up as chum for sharks.

He didn't care. He and Chiun would survive. To hell with everybody else. To hell with Chiun, too, come to think of it.

So why was he in this broom closet, ripping a hole in a steel wall to gain entrance to the secret passages? The only person on the ship who cared about the passages was Smith and Remo didn't work for Smith anymore. He didn't work for the United States anymore.

"I am a Persian," he said to a ripped piece of sheet steel in his right hand. "Hear that? I am a Persian. Could an American rip a piece of steel like this?" he asked, tearing back a large panel of the wall.

"Long live the glorious Peacock throne," Remo said, and tore back another steel panel.

"Three cheers for Reezie Paleezi, Shah of shahs, King of kings, hirer of assassins."

Remo stepped through the rip in the wall and found himself back in the small room in the heart of the ship. It was lit only by a red overhead bulb. Ahead of him was a metal door without a knob, the kind of security door in which one inserted a key and the key itself served as the door handle.

Remo kicked the door off its steel hinge pins.

"To the great glory of Persia, land of history, home of the melon, garden spot of the Far East. Far East? Mideast."

He grabbed the hinged side of the door, and pulled the heavy steel plate into the room and tossed it onto the floor.

"So much for Greek shipbuilders."

The corridor outside the small room was empty. Remo went down it slowly, kicking in each door along the way. All the rooms were empty. The underbelly of the ship was wormed through with passageways and rooms.

In one of the rooms, Remo found a half dozen sleeping bags on the cold metal floor and some open but empty cans of pork and beans.

But where had everyone gone? The last time he had been here, the area was filled with killers, technicians, with men with jobs to do. Now there was nobody.

Midships, Remo found the computer room, metal and gray, smelling of new electrical cable. Next to it was a covered garbage pail filled with sheets of paper and empty cans. Atop the computer panel was a bottle of gin, another bottle of vermouth, and a bottle of pills made out by a London pharmacist to Oscar Walker.

Remo saw a small stack of papers on the side of the console and sat down before the machine to read them.

He saw his name written on the top sheet.

"REMO. Nationality: American." The sheet had room for comments in four categories.

The first category was labeled "Diurnal Rhythms." After it was neatly printed in ink, "None noticeable. Subject operates at peak at all hours." Remo nodded.

The second category was "Biorhythms." A printed comment followed: "None. No apparent critical days. No obvious down periods." Remo nodded again.

The third category was "Physical Characteristics." After it, was written, "Vicious, cruel, violent, extremely dangerous."

"Vicious?" Remo said aloud. "Violent? I'll show you vicious, you son of a hitch." He punched his fist through the face of the computer. The machine sparked and sizzled.

The final category was entitled "Emotional Makeup." The comments read: "Unpredictable, arrogant, abnormally strong response to minor intrusions."

"Minor intrusions," Remo said. "I'll give you a minor intrusion, you bastard." He intruded his hand into the hole he had punched in the computer and pulled out a great handful of wires and transistors. The machine gave an audible sigh and stopped. Remo tore up the sheet with his name on it and glanced at the next. It was Chiun's.

Remo read it aloud. It read exactly the same as Remo's. "Unpredictable, arrogant, abnormally strong response to minor intrusions," he read.

"Right," said Remo. "Right, right, right and right." He carefully folded the analysis of Chiun and put it in his pocket to show Chiun later.

Remo read through the rest of the pages quickly, looking for an analysis of Smith. He was disappointed. There was none, only reports on diplomats Remo had never heard of and did not care about. He threw them all on the floor.

When he got back to the door, he was smiling. "Right. Chiun: arrogant, vicious, nasty, kvetch, carping, petty, insensitive, nasty, conceited and not nice. Now he'll see."

Farther down the corridor, Remo kicked in the door that led to the banks of television monitors, dozens of screens that covered every area of the ship. Remo turned them all on. He caught four orgies in progress, nine drinking bouts, and twenty-two diplomats snoring alone in their beds before he busted the screen of each television monitor, and left the room in a bitter cloud of acrid smoke.

He checked every room. But there was no one left. Except for an occasional sleeping bag or a can of food, there were no supplies, no weapons, nothing left that could give all the rooms and passageways a purpose.

He had found only the TV monitors and a stupid computer that had misread his character entirely. Now Smitty could have a time with that computer, Remo thought. Smith knew computers.

A large circle of the main passageway brought Remo all the way back to the small room with a mop and bucket and the wall through which he had entered. He went back into the maintenance closet, then into the hallway. On his way out, he jammed the closet lock so no one else could enter.

Most of the passageways on the ship were deserted. Guards should have been on duty but the copious overflow from the evening's party must have reached them, and Remo could hear snoring as he passed along the corridors.

On another level near the front of the ship, Remo found what he was looking for. Smith was walking slowly down a passageway, taking a few steps, pausing head down to stare at one of the large diagrams of the ship he held in both hands.

Remo recognized him from behind and came up on him silently and quickly.

"Smitty."

Smith turned. "Hello, Remo. Going for a swim?"

Remo ignored that. "Looking for something?" he asked.