Warren Murphy - Ship Of Death

Skouratis looked to Thebos. There was a look of embarrassment on his ruddy, wrinkled face. Thebos nodded and Skouratis stood.

Behind his back, Thebos again gestured to his two men down in the lower seats.

Above the cheers for Skouratis, who stood at the front of the box, waving his arm in greeting to the crowd, came two voices again:

"Down here. Cut the cake! Down here. Cut the cake!"

And it too became a roar. "Down here. Cut the cake!"

With an apology to Helena Thebos, Demosthenes Skouratis waved a reluctant agreement, then turned to walk up the steps leading from the royal box. He paused and gestured to Thebos to accompany him.

Thebos shook his head. "Go," he said. "It is for you, Demo. Go."

As the door opened in the back of the royal box to allow Skouratis to leave, a man with a face like cement leaned inside. Thebos saw him and the man nodded.

Amidst the roar of voices, Thebes whispered to Helena and Remo listened. The secret was focusing the ears the way people focused their eyes. If you could narrow down the angle from which your ears took in sounds, then even a whisper could not be lost in a hubbub of background noise because the background noise was thinned out.

"I knew the shoeshine boy could not resist a birthday cake," Remo heard Thebos say. He saw the Greek look to his daughter for approval, but she was silent.

"You go back to the yacht now," Thebos said. "Then send the launch back for me."

"Father, I want to stay," said Helena.

"I am afraid I do not care what you want to do. You must get back to the yacht. Now. Time is very important."

Helena Thebos looked as if she was going to say something more but changed her mind. Without another word, she stood up, leaned over the railing of the box for a last look at Skouratis who was advancing toward the huge cake, a giant silver knife in his hand, then she walked up the carpeted steps toward the door in the rear of the royal box.

She wasn't going to leave. Remo saw a set in her shoulders, a glint in her eyes, a forward thrust of her chin. She had no intention of being a dutiful daughter and returning to the Thebos yacht.

He got to his feet and followed her out into the passageway. Thebos' guards clustered around her.

"That's not necessary," she spat out. "I can find the way to the deck without you. Stay here."

She pushed through them angrily and stalked off down the corridor. Remo fell into the cluster of guards outside the door to the Thebos box, waiting there, moving in and out through them so no one would notice him or get a fix on who he was, until Helena turned at the end of the passageway.

When Remo saw her again, she was walking down the stairs instead of going up to the deck and to the elevator to the waiting launch.

Helena went down two flights and, with an assurance born of moneyed breeding, pushed her way through clusters of people until she was standing on the level floor of the auditorium, under the overhang of the royal box, hidden from her father's view.

Her eyes were fixed on Skouratis. He looked up from the cake cutting, saw her and smiled, a thick-lipped possessive smile. He waved to her, swinging over his head the giant knife spotted with dots of whipped cream.

Remo came alongside Helena. "I thought he was just a shoeshine boy," he said.

She looked up startled. "It does not concern you."

"Papa's going to be unhappy that you didn't do what he told you."

"I have often made Papa unhappy. I think that after tonight I will make him very unhappy again. Very unhappy."

She kept her eyes on Skouratis and smiled in his direction when their eyes again met.

There was no understanding women, Remo thought. She had hated Skouratis, really hated him. And he was ugly, ugly as a frog. And here she was, mooning and goo-goo eyed, looking at him as if he were the incarnation of Hercules and Achilles together.

"What about last night?" Remo said to her.

"What about it? It meant nothing and you mean nothing. Now will you please leave me alone?"

"Yes. Stop bothering the nice lady," said Chiun from someplace that seemed to be inside Remo's ear. "Things to do on this vessel, always things to do, and I must do them all because you are busy mashing people."

"All right, Chiun. What is it?" Remo said.

"You had better come with me. Your Emperor Smith has been hurt."

"Smitty?"

"Is there any other Emperor Smith that you know?" Chiun asked.

They went through the crowds as if they were not there, Chiun leading the way, Remo moving along with him as if tugged by Chiun's slipstream.

"Where is he?"

"In our room."

"Where did you find him?"

"Hidden in the bowels of the ship."

"The secret passages?"

"If you call them that," Chinn said.

"What were you doing there?"

"I did not choose to watch these animals eat cake tonight. And there are no television dramas, no beautiful stories aboard this ship. And so I thought to find the source of the secret television in our room. Perhaps, I thought, that is where there may be television worth watching. And I found it, a room, hidden in the middle of the ship."

"I know. I've been there. What about Smitty? What happened then?"

"What happened then was terrible," said Chiun.

"Yeah?"

"Terrible."

"Dammit, you already said terrible. What was terrible?"

"What was terrible was that the television was broken. There was this big computer and it had a big television screen on it that tapes are played through. But some lunatic had broken it. Ripped out wires. Broken the screen itself. And the same in another room of television sets. Terrible."

"I know about that. I did it. What about Smith?"

"You did it?"

"Chiun, later we'll talk about television. What about Smith?"

"I found him on the floor in one of those secret rooms. He had been beaten."

"Badly?" asked Remo.

"I would say very badly. It looked as if he had been struck in the head but the striker obviously did not follow through because Smith's head was still intact. There were also marks on his chest and stomach but again the attacker did badly. The skin was not perforated so the force of the blows was inadequate to the task. Yes, I would say he had been beaten very badly."

"Goddammit, Chiun, I'm not interested in a critique of others' styles. I'm interested in Smith. Is he all right?"

"He will live. He is unconscious. I let him remain so because the body needs rest at times like these. I should think you would pay attention when I point out the errors of other people's attacks, since you are so likely to make those same mistakes yourself."

They were outside their room now in the Iranian wing of the ship and Remo slipped past Chiun and into the room where Smith lay, unconscious, on a mat on the floor. Blood trickled down the left side of his face from a head wound. His clothes had been ripped open, either by an attacker or by Chiun, who had been feeling for his iniuries.

Remo knelt alongside him.

"Chiun, you say he'll be all right?"

"I didn't say he would be all right. I said he would live. All right is not nasty, lunatic, penny-pinching, unappreciative."

"Okay, Chiun. Okay." Remo removed Smith's left shoe and pressed his thumbs into the arch of the thin man's foot.

Smith groaned.

"Not too much haste," Chiun cautioned. "Slowly."

Remo relaxed the pressure, then began again. Smith's breathing became quicker and more shallow. From deep blood vessels buried inside the foot, Remo could feel the man's heartbeat quicken, speed up.

Smith opened his eyes. He moved his head to look around the room, then groaned.

"It's okay, Smitty. We're here," Remo said.

"Remo, Remo. You have to hurry," Smith gasped.

"No. Don't hurry. Chiun said to go easy."

"No. Must hurry," Smith gasped. "Ship is being blown up. Set afire."