Warren Murphy - Ship Of Death

"I will try to get that team on it. But I can't guarantee it. Without them, I don't know what we'll do," Smith said.

"What'd he say?" Selma asked.

"He can't give any guarantees," Ruth explained.

"Oh," Selma said.

"Doesn't he do a good president?" Ruth asked.

"That's him. I knew I recognized the voice," Selma said.

"Nah," Ruth said.

"It is him," Selma said, shocked.

"Really? Look, Mr. President. Don't you worry. I've traveled. This is the greatest country in the world. Do what you think is right and let them all stew in their own juices."

"If you want to help, madame, hang up," the president said.

"Who's paying for this call?" Ruth asked.

"Honestly, I don't know," the president said.

"Better hang up, sir. Will contact later," Smith said.

"Good luck, you two," said Ruth.

Aboard the UN ship, investigators went through the charred remains of the Lebanese consulate. The bodies remained where they had burned to bone, stiff and brittle with lips burned away so that the skeletons looked as if they smiled.

The investigation team was made up of an American, a Russian, an Englishman, a Chinese, and five Arabs from security.

The Arabs watched each other and everyone else. The Chinese security man watched the Russian and the American watched the Chinese, the Russian and the Arabs. Basically, they stood in the center of the main-consulate waiting room and milled about. This left the Briton to poke around. He found the defenses—even though they had apparently been hastily erected by Pierre Haloub, acting head of the Lebanese mission—perfectly adequate.

No one should have been able to move into the room, overpower all of them, and set them and the offices afire. Yet someone had. Haloub and all his men were dead. How? The Lebanese had been careful men, each one of them a survivor of Beirut, where just waking up in the morning was a significant demonstration of caution and cunning.

Moreover, thought Inspector Wilfred Dawes, formerly of Scotland Yard and now on loan to MI5, it had been this Lebanese consulate that had told the nearby Egyptian consulate that the entire ship was a coffin. Was it possible they had been selected for this death precisely because they knew something? Wasn't it Pierre Haloub who stopped the small-arms fire that morning and isolated that closet with the bloodstains where the terrorists vanished? Had he learned something?

Dawes was not a large man, yet his round stomach and paunchy cheeks made him appear larger than he was. He wore a brown tweed suit with flannel vest and dark tie over white shirt. His graying hair looked as if he precisely parted it with a plumb bob. He called his hair lotion "stickum." He smoked inexpensive tobacco and had every intention of collecting his pension, instead of providing his wife a widow's pension.

By the time he returned to the main room where everyone else was watching each other, he had a reasonably good idea why the Lebanese consulate had been chosen for destruction although he did not know how it was done. The key was the word coffin. It had been spoken by a man familiar with daily death and Haloub had not been the kind to exaggerate. It had also been overheard, which was also quite logical.

The other security men asked Dawes what he had been doing.

"Looking around a bit," Dawes said.

And, by saying this, Inspector Dawes of MI5 had provided the other security men with the first thing they could agree on. Dawes was part of their team and if he wanted to work for the United Nations, he should do so in the proper spirit, namely, stay with everyone else where they could talk things through. While Dawes was meddling about the charred consulate, the security team had come up with a proper solution and they wanted Dawes to be a part of it.

"What solution do we have?" asked Dawes. The room reeked of pungent death by fire, a sweet pork aroma that no one ever forgot having smelled it once.

"Everyone but America says it's the work of Zionists," said the Libyan delegate.

"I see," Dawes said. "And what does America say?"

"America says it's not the work of Zionists."

"I see," Dawes said.

"And what do you say?"

"I abstain," Dawes said.

And he realized that if he were to solve this and publicly allow, anywhere on this ship, that he had solved this crime, he would he as dead as the charred skeletons around him now. It would not be impossible to solve, just dangerous.

He first had to find out when it was decided to transform this vessel from a tanker to a luxury liner, who had done the refurbishing, and a host of similar dull facts, all of which had been lost in the overwhelming glare of publicity. Sometimes, so much light is shed on a subject that one sees only the light and not the subject. So with the Ship of States, Dawes had heard and read and seen so much publicity about it, it came as a small shock to him to realize that he knew almost nothing about it at all.

Inspector Dawes' abstention that day was called "moral cowardice" by the other security men. Dawes shrugged. He had work to do.

CHAPTER FOUR

Before money, death. That was the deal.

Remo saw Chiun nod, ever so slightly, the whisper of white heard scarcely moving, the long fingernails placidly resting in the cradles of the hand. He was sitting in a kimono made of gold threads and jewels laced into silver settings. Remo had never seen the Master of Sinanju wear such a kimono before, not in an entire decade. He had asked Chiun if he too should wear a kimono. He had never bargained before.

"No," Chinn had said. "You are what you are and that is good."

Chiun had also never called Remo good before. But since Remo had returned to the small motor launch tied up in Virginia Beach, Virginia and admitted that he had been stupid, always stupid, serving a country that would no longer fight for itself, Chiun had been calling him worthwhile, superior, and good until Remo longed for the ridicule of old.

"How dare you call yourself stupid and unworthy?" Chiun had demanded when Remo had first returned. Rage seemed to electrify the normally placid body. "You have been given Sinanju. You, among only a few in centuries, know how to use your body the way it was made. You think. You perform. You are superior."

"Nah, you were right, Little Father," Remo had answered. "You cast diamonds into mud. You gave me Sinanju and what the hell was I? Nothing. I was nothing when you started training me. I was nothing. I don't even know my parents. I was raised in an orphanage. Nothing past. Nothing present. Nothing future. Zero times zero equals zero."

Chiun had smiled, the yellowed parchment face showing a private joy.

"Nothing, you say? Worthless, you say? Do you think a Master of Sinanju would be so foolish as to pour an ocean of wisdom into a broken cup? Do you think I, Chiun, cannot judge worth? Are you calling me a fool? Has your despair cast out your reason? Now, you are saying I made a mistake."

"Don't laugh. Just don't frigging laugh," Remo had said, but Chiun's squeaky voice had risen in chuckling joy.

"I made a mistake. I," said Chinn and this amused him like a tinkling toy before a baby. "I, making a wrong decision."

"Nah, you didn't make a wrong decision. They paid your village its tribute and you got paid to teach. Cash and carry. They pay cash, you teach. So you made a right move. The gold has been delivered to Sinanju on time every year and you made a smart move."

Chiun moved his head slowly. "No," he said. "I could have shown you how to move your hands and your feet, but I could never have given you Sinanju if you were not worthy of it. You have learned in a mere decade what others from birth take fifty years to master. By the time you are sixty, you will be as full a Master as any. I say this. How dare you deny it?"