White Water td-106 Page 10

  "How's that?" asked Remo.

  "The Ingo Pungo was a factory ship. It plied the high seas catching and processing fish. It made a Pacific crossing from Pusan, harvesting varieties of fish on the way. Many varieties."

  "That's a lot of fish."

  "Yes, of course it is," said Smith. "Master Chiun insisted these fish be delivered alive so as to be as fresh as possible."

  "And it might explain the fish cellar."

  Smith made a curious sound in the back of his throat.

  Remo explained, "Chiun's got the basement set up for what he calls a fish cellar. I never heard of one, have you?"

  "No. But Koreans do salt and pickle fish for winter storage."

  "It also explains why I had to eat duck while Chiun gorged himself on fish-head soup. Not that I'm complaining, but he threatened to deny me fish forever. I can't live on duck. I gotta have fish."

  "Inform Master Chiun I have contacted another fishing concern. The fish clause of the contract will be honored, of course."

  "Don't you feel silly saying 'fish clause'?"

  "I stopped being self-conscious about my dealings with the House of Sinanju back in 1980," said Harold Smith with no trace of humor detectable in his colorless voice. "Go to the Coast Guard station at Cape Cod, Remo. I want that submarine found."

  "If you say so, Smitty. What do I do with this sub if I catch it?"

  "Interrogate the captain and report back to me."

  "After I kill him."

  "Report to me. I will instruct you of his disposition."

  "Forget his disposition," said Remo. "He tried to kill me. I'm the one with the disposition. If I find this guy, I'm going to feed him to the fishes."

  With that, Remo hung up.

  REPLACING THE BLUE receiver in his Folcroft office, Harold Smith addressed his keyboard. He had to make the arrangements with the Coast Guard if Remo was to expect any cooperation.

  As he worked, Harold Smith wondered if this incident could have anything to do with the recent rash of missing fishing boats. There had been a surge in lost commercial-fishing vessels of late. He was aware of it because his ever-trolling system constantly offered up clusters of coincidences or related events for his analysis.

  Smith had dismissed the cluster of lost vessels as occupational hazards of deep-water fishing during these lean times.

  Now he wasn't so certain.

  Chapter 14

  Coast Guard Lieutenant Sandy Heckman didn't want to hear it.

  A swab of a cadet came running up as she made sure the cutter Cayuga was ready to go out. The Cayuga had just returned to the Coast Guard air station at Cape Cod from search-and-rescue duty, and they were knocking the ice off her spidery electronics mast and superstructure while the hundred-and-ten-foot vessel was being refueled.

  "The commander wants to see you in his office."

  "Tell him the sea waits for no man or woman," Sandy retorted.

  "It's important."

  "So is search and rescue."

  And Lieutenant Heckman went back to overseeing preparations to depart. She was in her glory. Unfortunately her glory meant that out there in the cruel ocean, there was a boat in distress.

  This time her name was Santo Fado, an otter trawler out of Innsmouth and missing for thirty-six hours now.

  There had been no distress call. That was a bad sign. The boat hadn't returned to port, nor had it been sighted or spotted adrift.

  A Coast Guard Falcon surveillance jet was criss-crossing the North Atlantic looking for it. But jets can't land on water, so the entire complement of the Coast Guard stations at Cape Cod and Scituate were out there, too. White-hulled cutters and black-hulled buoy tenders and lifeboats and bright orange Jayhawk and Pelican helicopters.

  After a day of around-the-clock searching, nothing had come to light. It didn't look good for the Santo Fado or her crew.

  The cadet came huffing and puffing back, and this time the word was, "Commander is ordering you to the operations building."

  "I'm about to go back out," Sandy protested.

  "Someone else will take your watch. You're needed."

  "God damn his hairy ass."

  "Don't let him hear you say that. Sir."

  "I don't care who hears me say it," Sandy snapped.

  At the operations building, there was a white Falcon jet warming up, the diagonal red stripe of the U.S. Coast Guard on her forward fuselage and stabilizer.

  An orderly said over the climbing engine whine, "You're on drop-master duty. Orders."

  "What the hell is going on?"

  "We have two VIPs. The commander wants to present the guard's prettiest face, I guess."

  "Is that so? Well, I can fix that!"

  Marching to the waiting Falcon, she mounted the air-stairs two at a time and thrust herself into the cabin. "Since when am I an airman!" she bellowed in her best fog-piercing voice.

  A hand reached out and slammed her into a seat. Not hard, but very firmly. Sandy sat, very surprised.

  The hatch was hauled up and the cabin closed. Whining, the Falcon moved out onto the main runway and, without any preliminaries, went screaming down its length and into the air.

  Sandy was getting a good look at the VIPs as her bottom got over the shock of the sudden sit-down.

  One was a skinny guy dressed for shooting summertime pool. The other was as old as the hills and dressed for a rousing game of mah-jongg. He looked Chinese, but he wore a turquoise Japanese-style kimono with facing sea horses on his thin chest. Out from his sleeve hems peeked the longest, wickedest fingernails Sandy had seen this side of Fu Manchu.

  "I'm Remo Pike," said the tall white one. "This is Chiun." He showed her a card. It said National Marine Fisheries Service.

  "So."

  "We're looking for a submarine lurking out there."

  "Whose sub?"

  "That's the question of the hour."

  "Isn't this more of a Navy mission?" Sandy demanded.

  "We want this kept quiet."

  "Look, all available CG vessels are on search-and-rescue duty right now. You're diverting important resources from their mission."

  "No problem. While you search for a rescue, we'll look for our sub."

  Sandy eyed the pair with what she hoped was her most skeptical look. "What's NMFS's interest in a submarine?"

  "That's classified," said the one named Remo.

  "All right," she declared, taking a jump seat next to a window. "You do your job and I'll do mine."

  "No problem. The pilot has his orders."

  "I swear, my commander must suffer from myxololus cerebralsis."

  "Isn't that the stuff that regrows hair?"

  "You're thinking of Monoxidil. Myxololus cerebralsis is Whirling Disease. Fish get it sometimes. They lose their orientation and just spin and flop out of control. I'm surprised you don't know that."

  "We are new to the National Marines," said the Asian blandly.

  Sandy said, "Uh-huh," and asked, "Ichthyologists?"

  "That's classified, too," Remo answered quickly.

  Sandy said, "An ichthyologist is a fish expert."

  "We just know subs," explained Remo.

  "I am the fish expert," said Chiun.

  "What's your specialty?"

  "Eating them."

  Sandy looked twice to see if he were joking. His face was a wrinkled map without any humor in it. She decided he was some kind of inscrutable humorist and turned her attention back to the waters below.

  Under her breath she cursed softly and feelingly. "God damn these fucking fishermen."

  "You have the mouth of a fishwife," said the elderly Asian.

  "Keep your opinions to yourself. I have a job to do, and so have you. Like we say, 'You have to go out, but you don't have to come back.'"

  "That the Coast Guard motto?" asked Remo.

  "No. Our motto is Semper Paratus. Always Ready."

  "Be ready to call out if you spot that sub."

  "Like I said, keep out a w
eather eye for your stinking sub and I'll do the same for my pain-in-the-ass fishing boat."

  "You have a salty tongue," said Chiun. "Perhaps you should spare our gracious ears and still it."

  "Stow it," said Sandy. "I spend half my time policing fishermen who are either breaking maritime law or getting their screws caught in foul weather. They've dragged their nets along the ocean floor until it's as barren of life as the moon and won't be satisfied until they've eaten every last fish in the sea."

  "The greedy swine," said Chiun.

  "Damn right," said Sandy, stationing herself beside a port and taking up a clipboard and binoculars.

  Remo took the opposite porthole and hoped the jet didn't have to ditch. The last thing he wanted to do was go for another enforced swim.

  Chapter 15

  Sea gulls swooped and wheeled in the sunless sky. From time to time they dipped and splashed their wingtips against the gray Atlantic, then lifted up again with flapping sardines in their sharp bills.

  And far above them, the Master of Sinanju was counting his grievances.

  "I was promised char," he lamented.

  "Char?"

  "Arctic char," said Chiun, consulting a ricepaper scroll on his lap. "Twenty weights suitable for salt curing. Char is best eaten dry." His right index finger, capped by a filigreed horn of jade, tapped the slashing Korean characters on the scroll. "Cod and croaker were promised. Pollock and pogy, shad and salmon from both great oceans. Sea bass. Sea bream. Mullet and menhaden. Trout and tilapia. Lemon sole and ling. Swordfish exceeding the length of a tall man."

  "No shark?" asked Remo.

  "Of course not."

  "Good. I hate shark. I never want to eat it again."

  "You smell of shark."

  "That's one reason why I hate it."

  They were over the Atlantic now. The Coast Guard Falcon jet flew low. The pilot paid them no heed, and neither did Coast Guard Lieutenant Sandy Heckman, much to Remo's surprise.

  "You know," he confided to Chiun, "she doesn't seem to be attracted to me."

  "Why should she be? You stink of carrion sango."

  "I showered."

  "Sango exudes from your pores. It is inescapable."

  Remo glanced toward Lieutenant Heckman curiously. So far she hadn't expressed a single ounce of interest in him. That was pretty unusual, especially these days. For almost as long as Remo had been under Chiun's tutelage, he had exerted a powerful effect on women. It had gotten worse in the past year or so-to the point where Remo was fighting them off. Sometimes literally. He'd gotten so tired of it he decided to go with the flow and ask them out first.

  So far it hadn't been very successful. The one woman who hadn't tried to jump his bones from a cold start turned out to be gay.

  Remo was starting to wonder about Lieutenant Heckman.

  Remo wandered over to her at her jump-seat station.

  Sandy Heckman was looking down through a port with her eyes clamped to a pair of binoculars. She was scanning the crinkled, greenish gray surface of the Atlantic for fishing boats.

  A rust-colored trawler churned a path through the water below. The jet tilted one wing toward the laboring vessel.

  Abruptly Sandy snapped a switch and yanked a cabin microphone to her mouth.

  "Fishing vessel Sicilian Gold, this is the U.S. Coast Guard. Your vessel is over a closed area in violation of the Magnunson Act. Charges may be filed and your catch seized later. Proceed out of the area immediately."

  Grabbing a clipboard, she took down the trawler's name and went back to searching the sea.

  "What's the Magnunson Act?" asked Remo.

  "A congressional law regulating commercial fishing takings. When it was first enacted back in '76, it stopped foreign fishing vessels-mostly Canadian-from plundering U.S. waters. But Congress got around to making it law too late. The Canadians had made a big dent in the stocks. Now it regulates where our fishermen can go, how long they can go out and how much fish they can take. But most coastal areas are pretty much fished out now."

  "It's a big ocean. Can't be that bad."

  "It's a crisis. And some of these damn fishermen don't seem to be getting it. This is supposed to be a rescue mission. If I don't get some more rescues under my belt, it's back to buoy tenders for me. Or worse, Alaska and the halibut patrol."

  "Halibut patrol?"

  "They're scarce, too."

  "Mind if I ask you a personal question?" asked Remo.

  "I don't date civilians. Sorry."

  "That wasn't my question."

  "Then what was your question?"

  "Are you gay?"

  "No!"

  "Great!"

  "Forget it. I don't date."

  "I wasn't asking for a date."

  "Good, because you weren't going to get one. Now, will you take a seat? Like I said, this is a search-and-rescue mission. If we happen upon your mystery sub en route, fine. If not, you're just so much supercargo. So kindly shoo."

  Suppressing a smile, Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju. "She doesn't want to date me. Isn't that great?"

  Chiun nodded sagely. "It is the shark smell."

  A flicker of interest crossed Remo's high-cheekboned face. "Little Father, are you telling me that eating shark acts like a female repellent?"

  "It is obvious that it does, slow one."

  Remo brightened. "No kidding?"

  "Truly."

  "All I gotta do is keep eating shark, and women will leave me alone?"

  "If that is your wish..."

  "It's my wish to pick my dates and not vice versa."

  "Your desires are your own vice, Remo."

  Chiun sat by a port and was examining the open water now. It was cold and choppy and about as inviting as open sewage.

  "If you spot that sub, I got dibs on the captain," Remo remarked.

  "I will allow you to dispatch him once I have flayed the meat from his bones and fed it to him," Chiun said coldly.

  "You sure take your fish seriously these days."

  "Have you been to the fishmonger of late?"

  "You mean the supermarket. No, you've been doing food buying lately."

  "They have been foisting inferior fish upon me. Mealy, unpalatable fishes the like of which I have never before heard, with names like monkfish, cusk and hagfish."

  "I hear they're getting popular."

  "In the newspaper they are called junk fish. I do not eat junk. I am Reigning Master of Sinanju. You may eat junk, but I will not."

  "Good fish are getting scarce."

  "Which is why I have prevailed upon Emperor Smith to comb the deepest seas for the sweetest fish so that I may eat as my ancestors have. Sumptuously."

  "You eat better than your ancestors, and you know it, Little Father."

  "I will not place junk fish into my belly. Did you know that one fishmonger attempted to convince me to eat spiny dogfish? I have never heard of dogfish. It looked suspiciously like shark."

  "Dogfish is shark," Sandy called over.

  "Eavesdropper," Chiun hissed. "Have you no shame?"

  "You're shouting. I can't help but hear you. But what you say is true. The quality of food fish has gotten terrible since they closed Georges Bank."

  "What's Georges Bank?" asked Remo.

  "We just passed over it. It was the best fishery Of the East Coast. Maybe they'll reopen it in a few years, but right now it's a disaster for our fishermen. A lot were forced out of business. The government has been buying their boats and licenses. But as bad as it is here, it's worse for the Canadian fleets. They've been banned from taking cod from the Grand Banks."

  "Where's that?"

  "Where we're headed. It's only the richest cod fishery on the planet. It's where they had that turbot war two years ago."

  "What turbot war?" asked Chiun.

  "Before you answer, what's a turbot?" added Remo.

  Lieutenant Sandy Heckman turned in her seat. "Turbot is another name for Greenlandic halibut. The Turbot War was betw
een Canada and Spain."

  "Never heard of it," said Remo.

  "It wasn't so much a war as an international incident. Spanish fishing trawlers were taking juvenile turbot from the end of the Grand Banks called the Nose. That's where the fishery stuck out past Canada's two-hundred-mile limit into international waters. The Spanish were technically legal, but they were taking fish that swam in and out of the Canadian side of the fishery. Ottawa got pretty hot about it and sent cutters and subs to tear up the Spanish fishing nets. A serious high-seas brouhaha was brewing until the Spanish caved in and hauled up their nets. Since then it's been pretty quiet, although Canada makes a lot of noise about U.S. fishermen taking cod from the U.S. side of the Grand Banks while their own fleets are forbidden to touch them.

  They seized a couple of scallopers a while back, but lost their nerve for a showdown. They're making noises about doing something about U.S. fleets taking salmon in the Pacific, but so far it's only cold Canadian air."

  "No one owns the sea or the fish in them," sniffed Chiun.

  "If the groundfish crisis continues, pretty soon there'll be no more fish to argue over."

  Remo looked to the Master of Sinanju. "Do you know about any of this?"

  "Of course. Why do you think I am hoarding fish?"

  "I'm glad you said 'hoard' and not me."

  "Hold it!" said Sandy. "There's something in the water."

  She called up to the pilot, "Kilkenny, take us around. I want to check something out."

  The Falcon leaned into a slow turn, dropped and was soon skimming the cold, gray, inhospitable waters.

  They saw the thing in the water clearly in the fleeting second they passed over it.

  "Looks like a body!" Sandy shouted.

  "It's a body, all right," said Remo. "Floating facedown."

  Sandy got busy on her radio. "Coast Guard cutter Cayuga, this is Coast Guard One requesting assistance at this time. We have a floater at position Delta Five."

  They circled the spot for some twenty minutes until a Coast Guard cutter showed up and took on the body.

  They watched the procedure, Sandy through her binoculars and Remo and Chiun with their naked eyes.

  Divers entered the water and brought it up like a sack of wet, dripping clay.

  "Man alive, I never saw a floater with a face so deathly pale," Sandy muttered.

  "I have," said Remo.