Next Of Kin td-46 Read online

  The Master had seen to it that Jeremiah had not shared their fate. Instead, he had prepared the boy's body to become as lethal as his mind. Together, the combination was to have helped the Master gain the world.

  But death had claimed the Master before the boy came of age, and his murder had gone unavenged. During that time the Dutchman trained and practiced and waited for his twenty-fifth year— the year when, according to the Master, Jeremiah would be ready to undertake the responsibilities of his destiny and come a man into his Master's world.

  "There are only two others on the earth who can match me," the Dutchman roared into the silence of the courtyard. "Two who can match me in strength and skill. And even though I face them before my time, they will be dead before the week is out because they do not possess my mind!" In a rage, he lifted up one of the blocks of wood that had fallen from the straw dummies and hurled it high into the air, over the courtyard wall, beyond the castle grounds, and out of sight.

  "Chiun!" his voice echoed savagely off the stone courtyard walls. "Remo! You have stumbled into my domain to meet your end."

  He was pulled out of the insensate roarings of his mind by the close yapping of a small animal. Already out of control, he turned slowly to see with his madman's eyes a dog darting back and forth in the courtyard, barking bravely at the Dutchman whom all animals feared.

  His eyes automatically trained themselves on the dog. With a yelp, the animal began to run faster and faster around the courtyard, panting, stumbling over its own feet, until it collapsed. Its tongue lolled out in exhaustion.

  The Dutchman tried to pull his mind away from the dog. It belonged to the Asiatic girl, and she was his favorite. But he could no more quell the violent power of his thoughts than he could halt the tide. He felt the thing, the ugly, unwanted thing inside him that had given him no rest since the moment he had discovered it, stir within him. The dog would have to die another horrifying death to add to the Dutchman's long list.

  The thought was emerging on its own, red and blistery, the colors growing brighter... Then the sound of fast, shuffling feet momentarily broke his concentration as the girl, clothed in a white sleeping gown, her black hair flying behind her, dashed into the courtyard and scooped the dog up in her arms. She was whimpering and her hands shook as she picked up the animal, careful not to look at the Dutchman.

  But the thought had already formed. Boils. And suddenly the girl screamed and tore at her clothes in a grotesque frenzy. The white gown hung in tattered strands over her once-perfect body, now covered with seeping sores. The dog scurried into the interior of the castle as the girl clawed at her eyes. Her ragged cries echoed, feeding the Killing Picture in the Dutchman's wild, transfixed eyes.

  It was near the end. The girl's knees buckled and she fell to the earth, still screaming. Then the doorway opened, and the mute stood within its arch, the little dog at his feet.

  "No!" the Dutchman shouted, but the mute would not leave. When would it stop, the horror, the killing, the revulsion at himself? Would he spend the rest of his life killing everyone who dared to come near him? Would he end his days a senseless monster with no will to perform anything but acts of death? With an effort so great that he felt his heart would stop, the Dutchman's feet began to turn. One step, then another, each harder than the last, until he was facing the wall.

  "Go," he whispered hoarsely. The mute ran into the courtyard and lifted the bleeding girl in his arms. Then they fled with the little dog whining beside them through the big oak and iron door leading inside the castle.

  The Dutchman clung to the top of the wall with white-knuckled hands. He could not hang on much longer. Soon he would have to turn back, commanded by the demon inside him, and everything in his way would be obliterated.

  When he heard the soft thump of the door closing, the tension lessened. He felt some strength return to his hands and legs. Jumping high into the air, he vaulted over the wall and ran over the scrub of Devil's Mountain to the sea, where he swam for several miles until his energy began to dissipate.

  Far out in the deep waters of the Atlantic, the demon calmed. The Dutchman turned on his back to see the bright, clean streaks of sunset clouds in the sky. His nostrils filled with the salt fragrance of the sea. His body floated motionless on the waves, soothed and cooled by the water. It would be so easy here, now, to dive to the depths of the sea, attach himself to a rock, and release the life from him that would float to the surface with the air in his lungs and burst in the salt spray. Death would be the most welcome event in his life.

  But death was a luxury he could not give himself before his task was completed. He had made a promise to the Master, and he would fulfill it. Remo and Chiun would die first. Then the Dutchman would rest.

  With long, weary strokes, he swam back to shore.

  The mute was waiting for him when he returned to the castle. With his usual stony expression, he prepared the Dutchman his bath and a solitary meal of rice and tea. After he had finished, the Dutchman said, "Thank you, Sanchez." It was the first time he had used the mute's name. Sanchez's expression did not change, but the Dutchman thought he saw, for a brief moment, something like pity flicker in the mute's eyes.

  The Dutchman spoke no more. In sign language, he asked Sanchez to make preparations at the shipyard. He could not allow more incidents to occur in his own home. The straw dummies were not adequate to contain his strength. He needed live victims.

  The mute nodded and left. My power is becoming frightening, the Dutchman thought. Soon I will have to make contact with the young American and the old Oriental, Chiun. The time is coining.

  Soon.

  ?Four

  Pierre came to get Remo in a red Datsun pickup. Its fenders were riddled with dents, and the tailgate clanked open and shut with each bump on the winding dirt roads. Both headlights were smashed.

  "Is this thing safe?" Remo asked.

  "Safest car on de road," Pierre said, his teeth shining brilliant white against the ebony blackness of his skin. He patted the pitted dashboard of the Datsun as it labored up the steep hill roads near the island's west shore. "When Pierre get in accident, he drive away. Other guy— splat." He grinned with homicidal glee.

  "Isn't that illegal?" Remo asked, amused.

  Pierre dismissed the objection. "Not much illegal in the islands," he said. "Killing with gun, that illegal. Squashing with car, that legal." He poked Remo in the ribs. "Good thing for you Pierre got big car, huh?"

  Remo smiled wanly. On his right, far below the cliff road, he spotted an industrial complex surrounded by an electric fence replete with high-voltage signs in English, French, and Dutch. Two television monitors atop high metal poles tracked the area constantly. The entire place was lit with bright floodlights.

  The elaborate security system made the compound seem out of place in its primitive, night-blackened setting. "What's that?" Remo asked, pointing to it.

  "Dat the Soubise shipyards," Pierre said.

  "Soubise? Fabienne's father?"

  "Dat the one. Only Soubise, he dead now. It all belong to the Dutchman now." He whispered the name in a low, mysterious whisper designed more for intrigue than communication.

  "That Dutchman again. Everybody keeps bringing up the Dutchman, like he's some kind of a ghost. Who is this guy, anyway?"

  "Nobody know the Dutchman," Pierre said, his voice that of a master storyteller beginning to spin his tale. "Never see nobody, never go noplace, that one. Some say he the devil himself. Look. Look up there." He skidded the truck to a halt on the steep mountain road, causing the vehicle to shimmy precariously close to the cliff.

  "What's that?" Remo said, squinting through the darkness at a barbaric-looking white fortress on a hill in the distance.

  "Dat the castle where he live, the Dutchman, up on Devil's Mountain."

  "A castle? Must be an eccentric old coot."

  "He just a boy, Mister Remo," Pierre whispered. "Maybe twenty, twenty-five year old. But he the devil, don't doubt that."
>
  Remo was interested. "Sidonie said Old Man Soubise left him all his money."

  "And the shipyard, too. The old man, he see the Dutchman, and he go cuckoo. Dat what happen. Any man what looks on the golden boy of the castle, it too late." His eyes rolled in a broad pantomime of instantaneous madness.

  "Wait a minute, Pierre. That kind of stuffs pure superstition."

  "It true!" Pierre protested. "The Dutchman, he go in disguise to work for Monsieur Soubise as a truck loader. One day he get close to the old man, and bam! Like that, the old man say he a bird and jump off a cliff."

  "Which cliff?"

  "Dis one."

  Remo checked again out the window, where the truck teetered near the edge. "Speaking of the cliff, Pierre—"

  "My cousin, he seen it happen," Pierre said stubbornly. "It turn out the old man change his will that day, just before he fly off the cliff saying he's a bird, and he leave everything to the Dutchman. Then, when the Dutchman take over, he put up the electric fence and the TV cameras." With that, the rear of the stopped truck settled noisily into the soft shoulder of the cliff.

  "How are we going to get this tank moving again at this angle?" Remo asked irritably.

  Pierre smiled. "No problem, boss." After a scream of grinding gears, he yanked the truck into reverse and whistled cheerfully as they careened backward down the darkened, one-lane road.

  "Watch it!" Remo yelled. "You don't have any lights. What if somebody's coming the other way?"

  "Oh, don't worry, Mister Remo. This here's big truck. Anybody come in our way, we cream 'em."

  Remo shut his eyes and waited for the inevitable crash. It figured, he thought. More than a decade of the finest physical training on earth, and he was going to be killed at the hands of a lunatic island truck driver.

  After a few minutes of Pierre's reverse roller coaster ride down the mountain, the truck drifted to a halt.

  " 'S'okay, boss," Pierre said with confidence.

  Remo opened his eyes cautiously. Pierre was holding a flashlight to the window. "We back at the bottom. Now we just go up again."

  Before the truck stretched two roads. One was the treacherous, winding climb up the mountain they had just descended with such hellish speed. The other was a straight, gravel-paved, two-lane road leading up the same hill. Pierre switched off the flashlight decisively and punched the truck into gear to begin the tortuous climb up the first road.

  "Wait a second," Remo said. "The other road looked a lot better. Why don't we go that way?"

  The islander shook his head elaborately. "Nuh-huh. No way, suh."

  "Why not? Don't these roads intersect?"

  "Yes," Pierre agreed amiably, bouncing in his seat from the rutted potholes in the road.

  "Then why don't we use the other one, for crying out loud?"

  "Dat road lead to Devil's Mountain. Ain't using it."

  "This is nut-house time," Remo said, exasperated. "You're telling me you won't even drive a truck on a better road just because it happens to lead to the place where this weirdo. Dutchman lives?"

  "Yup," Pierre said, snapping his jaw shut.

  There would be no more discussion of the route after that, Remo knew. He had seen Chiun use the same final gesture often enough. He sat back, accustoming himself to the ordeal of the long drive up the hill, when he heard a sound like the buzzing of insects. "What's that?" he asked.

  "Motorcycle. Dirt bike, maybe. People's got 'em up here, where folks got money."

  "I don't see any lights."

  Pierre shrugged. "Who need lights?"

  Remo sighed. Then the buzzing grew louder, came up beside the truck, and flew ahead.

  "Funny," Pierre said. "I still don't see nothing."

  Remo peered into the darkness. "It's funny, all right." In front of them, the dirt bike slowed down to stay just ahead of the truck. The driver was clad all in black, hiding him in the night. As Remo watched, a black face turned around, and an arm came up holding a pistol.

  "Get down," Remo yelled, pulling Pierre down into his seat as the biker squeezed off two shots into the truck's cabin and took off.

  The bullets left two round o's encased in spider-webbed glass on the passenger side of the windshield.

  "You fast, boss," Pierre said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. "Plenty fast."

  "Got any enemies?" Remo asked.

  "I don't know." Pierre smiled. "Guess so, huh?"

  * * *

  Fabienne's sprawling island ranch house stood nearby in Bilboquet, the Beverly Hills of Sint Maarten. The homes in the area belonged mostly to wealthy foreigners who lived in them a few weeks out of each year, leaving them fully staffed but vacant the rest of the time. Few of the residents were permanent— the founder of the Sint Maarten Bank of Commerce, Mr. Potts, the rum king, whose distilleries dotted the coast, an East Indian merchant-prince whose chain of boutiques catered to tourists looking for "genuine" island fashions, a Japanese importer of Sony electronics and Seiko watches, and a nineteen-year-old American millionaire with a penchant for disco music who, it was reputed, had made his fortune smuggling one single shipment of cocaine into the United States. All in all, the motley group "on the hill," as the natives referred to Bilboquet, were not particularly fascinating to Fabienne de la Soubise.

  Her father, Henri, had built the house on the hill only when his wife had deemed intolerable the old stone mansion near the shipyard, where his family had lived for four generations. The three acres on Bilboquet separated them from their jet-setting neighbors, but not enough for Henri or his offspring Fabienne, who had inherited his temperament as well as his features. Fabienne had grown up loving the island and the big ships full of blustering, rough-talking seamen with whom her father did business. When the first surge of tourism came, her mother reveled in their new-found social life with its glittering parties and expensive European shops. Of course, her mother would explain, those were the real people, the wealthy nobs who sailed their party yachts to the island for a stay of a month or more, not to be confused with the late-coming honeymooners and week vacationers who arrived via package flights to stay at the newly built Holiday Inns. Fabienne didn't care. She liked the islanders much more than the tourists— real or otherwise— and had learned their tongue early from her father.

  When her mother left them both to fly back to Paris, her father had taken her desertion hard. He spent interminable hours at the shipyard office, building an even greater fortune than he had inherited, which was reflected in the magnificent furnishings of the house in Bilboquet, although he rarely saw it: Louix XV dining chairs; twin waist-high Ming Dynasty vases of translucent green; an enormous eight-by-four-foot table carved from a single California redwood, shipped from America; a silk divan from Napoleon's sitting room at Fontainbleau, restuffed with eiderdown. He had wanted Fabienne's life to be as luxurious and patrician as his own was lonely and overworked.

  Thank God for the furniture. Selling it had kept her alive, she thought as she strung a small gold loop through her ear. They were the last earrings she had left. Henri would roll over in his grave if he saw the state in which he had left his only child after his inexplicable bout with lunacy, which ended his own life and gave everything his family had worked for 200 years to a strange young man no one on the island had ever known except by the most outlandish rumors. She had sued the occupant of the Castle, whatever his name was, for a return of her legacy, but even at best, legal proceedings moved with elephantine slowness on the island, never mind when no one could be found who was willing to serve court papers on the man. She had tried herself, but was effectively driven away each time by his servant, a small, menacing-looking man with an arsenal of hand-to-hand weapons strung in his belt and whose only sounds were the eerie moans of someone who'd suffered irreparable damage to his voice mechanism. She would try again. There was nothing else to do.

  The bell rang, and a smile spread across her face as she walked through the rambling house to the front door, once answered only by serv
ants. These were bad times, she knew, but there were bright spots even now. Like the young man behind the door.

  Remo smiled almost shyly as she took his hand and led him past the vestibule into the living room. His smile turned to surprise as he looked around. She laughed; she had become used to the small embarrassments of her rare guests.

  "I didn't say I could entertain you in style," she said as she led him to one of the two cushions in the room, the only furniture apart from a brace of candles on a ceramic dish on the floor.

  "I know you won't believe it, but this is exactly the style I'm used to," Remo said.

  She laughed, a big, hearty, uninhibited guffaw. "That's the nicest thing you could have said." Her green eyes caught the sparkle of the candles. She took his land. "I've chilled some champagne," she said. "Found it in the cellar."

  Remo placed his hand on her hair, found a pin, and removed it. The cascade tumbled over her shoulders, nestling between her breasts. Remo pulled her close to him and kissed her. She responded eagerly, holding him as her lips parted to feel the smooth pressure of his tongue.

  "I don't feel like drinking," Remo said.

  She kissed him again. "Maybe we can think of another activity."

  She responded to Remo's tender, expert lovemaking with the zeal of a woman who'd sworn off sex for years, only to rediscover it with more joy than she had ever felt. When they were finished, they held each other in a riot of tangled, damp sheets on Fabienne's bed, the only piece of furniture left in the room.

  Remo stroked her face, now shiny and contentedly drowsy. "I'm glad we're here together," he said.

  She nuzzled her face close to his chest. "Monsieur Remo Williams," she said very close to him, "you are possibly the best lover in the world."

  "Possibly?" Remo snorted in mock indignation. "Not positively?"