Warren Murphy: Ship Of Death

The British officer cleared his throat again.

"Nevertheless it is our job and duty to protect these people. The world expects every man to do his duty."

Ship of States was now at berth in New York City. Official opening ceremonies would be the following week.

"We have every reason to fear that this ship may become a ship of death. Already, there have been five mysterious deaths during the building of this ship. Five, gentlemen, five," said the Briton with a note of vindication in his voice.

The American raised his hand again and was recognized reluctantly.

"Now that's a pretty big boat," Remo said.

"Ship," said the British officer.

"Whatever," said Remo. "Now if you've got a… ship that size, you've got thousands of people working on it. I mean, you'd have at least a thousand to look after it when it's resting."

"Moored," said the British officer.

"Right," said Remo. "Well, if you take the thousands who built it and everybody who's watching it and you figure only five people were murdered during that time and you look at any big city with that many people, I bet you'd find out that the boat is no more dangerous than any other big city in the world. So, basically, everyone's getting all worked up over a thing that's no more dangerous than anyplace else carrying a bunch of people who won't be missed anyway."

One person laughed at the obvious clarity of the American's truth and this laugh unleashed an explosion of laughter. When it subsided, an American voice apologized for Remo who apparently represented some agency he was not aware of. He called Remo's remarks "unfortunate and counterproductive."

"You're a jerk," said Remo. He rose from his seat and opened the outside door, letting in hallway light. and left. The hallway was packed. A reporter was trying to get to the center of the small mob.

"What happened?" Remo asked him.

"The CIA went berserk in an assassination plot in a bathroom here. Blew up a bathroom."

"How do you know?"

"An informed source," said the reporter. "And I will refuse to reveal his identity, no matter what pressure you bring to bear."

Whistling, Remo left the State Department Building and strolled through the lovely spring afternoon of the nation's capital. Just before sunset, he made a phone call and spoke into a tape recorder. He knew it would be heard shortly after by upstairs. The message Remo left was this:

"Attended the meeting. Found it and, therefore, you a waste of time. I hereby resign. Effective the day before immediately."

For the first time in more than a decade, he was free.

Enough was enough. For ten years, he had worked for CURE, the secret agency that had been formed to protect America against crime. He had seen his function changed from enforcement arm to detective, and he hadn't liked it. He had seen CURE driven even further underground by a Congress intent on destroying the nation's intelligence function, and he hadn't liked it. He found himself getting overseas assignments that the CIA would have handled if it hadn't been crippled by the Congress, and he didn't like it.

Enough was enough, and ten years was too much.

Darkness came upon the nation's capital and Remo felt good walking. He did not want to return to the hotel where Chiun, the Master of Sinanju who was his trainer, would he waiting. He wanted to think first before he approached his teacher who had been right about so many things when he wasn't being incredibly wrong.

Kemo prepared his speech to Chiun. He would be direct. He had been wrong about working for CURE and Chiun had been right. It was time to take their talents somewhere else, where they would be appreciated.

Yet something very deep inside Remo was sad. He did not know if he was leaving America, or if America had left him a long, long time ago, in so many little ways.

CHAPTER THREE

The last British sea captain to suffer beheading died at a little-known sea battle off Jamaica in the early 1700s when Her Majesty's admiral suddenly discovered he was outgunned by Spanish galleons that he was attempting to pirate, and so attempted to negotiate a gentleman's cease-fire.

The Spanish captain swore on a sacred relic that his word was his blood and his soul. The British captain gave the word of an officer and a gentleman. Therefore, both agreed that the British ship would surrender flag and gun and that the Spanish would not seek reprisals under any circumstances.

The British ship, seeing the Spanish admiral so very exposed on the bridge, lobbed a shell there during intense manifestations of religious oaths, and the Spanish proceeded to decapitate every Englishman on the privateer, leaving the captain for last.

A similar ceremony was recreated in New York Harbor aboard the massive, remodeled Ship of States while it stuck out into the bay like a gleaming white peninsula. Exactly twelve hours to the minute after some unidentified American security officer had proved at a secret United Nations security meeting that the vessel, considering its size and population, was no more dangerous than most cities in the world, Adm. Dorsey Plough Hunt was forced to his knees on the bridge of the moored goliath and, staring intently at the base of the computer director wheel, felt a sharp sting at the base of his neck and then felt nothing else. The head rolled.

The neck spurted blood like a red car wash on a sunny Saturday.

A black gloved hand wrote on the picture of the current secretary general of the United Nations, framed in honor on the bridge, the words: FREE SCYTHIA!

The chief translator, organizing the very complicated working shifts for the first United Nations cruise, turned around when he heard footsteps in his supposedly locked room. He saw eight men all dressed in black with faces darkened with night paint.

In English, he asked them what they were doing there. Then in French, then in Russian, then in Arabic, and then, in an international gesture, he threw up his hands and shrugged.

They forced him to his knees while he tried to explain in Swedish that he had no money and was not political and certainly was not anyone who was important enough to give them anything.

He didn't even feel the sting at the back of his neck as a blade made his eyes and brain useless. The head nestled under a chair and the body convulsed and again they used blood to write, this time on the charts of work schedules: SCYTHIAN LIBERATION FRONT.

In the mammoth vessel there were eighteen chapels: mosques serving different Islamic sects, cathedrals for Christians, synagogues for Jewish groups and temples for Buddhists and Hindus. In every area of worship, a head was placed, and on every altar, the word Scythia was written.

The black-clad men worked and cut until the darkest part of early morning, until the blood made some giddy and made some talk to themselves and made others feel light with triumph, reactions common to men who had killed for the first time and had suddenly discovered it was what they had wanted to do all their lives and they had simply never known it until they tried it.

Then the leader called "Mr. Scyth" made his first mistake. He entered the Middle East corridor on one of the ship's passenger decks. Despite pledges made formally at the old United Nations building in New York, the corridor was heavily armed.

The men with machine guns and pistols and small pocket grenades were not called guards but "cultural attachés." The Jordanian cultural attachés had British Webleys and Brens while the Syrian agricultural experts carried Kalishnikovs, the Russian automatic rifle made famous on wall posters where they are held aloft in a fist while the poster proclaims some sort of social improvement to be gained by firing one of the things. Actually, they worked very much like the British and American weapons, hurling pieces of lead into human bodies so voices that might say that cultures had not been improved but merely relabeled could be stilled. If one had enough Kalishnikovs, he could force thousands into the streets to proclaim in marching ranks how happy and free they were.