Next Of Kin td-46 Read online

  "Well, then maybe it's something off the ship."

  The object came to the surface again, dark and shining in the bright reflection of the sun on the ocean.

  "Hank... Hank," she cried low, her fingers clutching her husband's coat in a terrified grip. Mr. Cobb struggled with her while he peered over his glasses at the thing floating on the surface of the water, the dun-colored item where his wife's attention was so desperately riveted.

  "Damn bifocals," he muttered. "Emily, for God's sake, what's the matter?" He turned to her quickly. "You feel all right, don't you, dear?"

  And Mrs. Cobb opened her mouth automatically to assure Mr. Cobb that she was feeling just fine, but at that moment the thing drifted alongside the ship and opened its eyes in its charred skull. Its teeth flashed white, as though belonging to a corpse that had risen from some dank and ancient grave, and its blood trailed behind it in a ribbon. And Emily Cobb shattered the silence on deck with the most horrifying sound she had ever uttered.

  She screamed, rooted to the spot where she stood, as the cruise director turned smiling toward her. She screamed as his smile disintegrated into a hideous grimace and he called for help on his walkie-talkie. She screamed as a tangle of crewmen flooded around her with ropes and a lifeboat and went scurrying down the ladder to sea level. And she screamed when the ship's surgeon appeared, bleary and frantic, to check her pulse and command her husband in boozy tones to take her to their cabin as the crewmen shouted and heaved their blackened cargo into the lifeboat below.

  In her cabin, Mrs. Cobb lay on her small bunk, trying to remember. Her husband's soothing, frightened words washed over her like surf. That terrible burned body, those eyes that opened suddenly like a porcelain doll's...

  On deck, Dr. Matthew Caswell held back a wave of revulsion as the sailors dumped the blackened thing that had once been a man onto a stretcher and followed the doctor into the infirmary. Heat attacks were not uncommon on board cruisers the size of the Coppelia. Strokes, food poisoning, broken arms and legs, even a couple of premature births. But nothing like this. He hoped the captain had already radioed the island police for a boat to take the vile-smelling cadaver in front of him to the morgue before he upchucked his breakfast of two bloody Marys and a beer chaser.

  He set his nurse, retching, to cutting the body's clothes off as he attended to the formalities of confirming death. The first of the formalities was to down half the hip flask he carried. All else were technicalities.

  Even through his whiskey haze, Caswell saw that an autopsy was in order back on the island. Third-degree burns throughout, severe loss of blood, and an amputated leg on top of it all. Newly amputated, too, by the looks of it: Undoubtedly a shark. Long tendrils of flesh hung from the top of the leg near the hip, and the bone had been snapped. The poor fellow had taken a long time to die.

  Holding his breath, Caswell placed his stethoscope against the man's chest, making a mental note to replace the instrument at the next port, along with the hip flask, which was far too small.

  "Wait a minute," he said half to himself.

  "I've found some identification, Doctor."

  "Quiet."

  Oh, no. It couldn't be. It was next to impossible.

  "Call the captain," he ordered. "Tell him to come here."

  But it was true. The doctor rushed frantically to get a proper tourniquet on the leg, then wheeled out an I.V. with a pint of plasma.

  Why me, he moaned inwardly, his hands trembling. Matthew Caswell hadn't operated in years. Of all the places on earth for a dead-serious medical emergency to turn up, why did it have to be here? With him? "I'm sorry," Caswell whispered to the barely breathing remains of the stranger who was fated to die under Dr. Matthew Caswell's unsteady knife. "I'm so terribly sorry, mister. You've been through so much. You deserve better."

  Then a strange thing happened. The burned man on the table opened one blackened eyelid. He held his gaze on the doctor for a long moment before lapsing back into unconsciousness.

  He saw me, the doctor thought. He saw, and he knows what I am. "I was a good surgeon once," Caswell said aloud. Then he ran to the toilet and vomited the entire morning's intake of vodka and beer and rye into the ship's tank.

  The captain entered without knocking, a handsome, efficient-looking man in his forties who was clearly impatient to get rid of the body and continue the cruise. "What is it?" he snapped.

  "This man's alive," Caswell said, spitting into the sink.

  "Oh, Jesus Christ."

  "He can't be moved. He'll have to stay here until I can..." The doctor shivered involuntarily. "... Can operate on his leg. Shark damage, and he's got extensive electrical burns. You can see the diamond-shaped pattern on his palms and thigh. It was probably a fence. Also, he's in shock. He'll need skin grafts and a lot of blood..."

  "You're going to operate?" the captain sneered. "Well, that shouldn't take long."

  The doctor ignored him. "I can perform the operation in a few hours, but Ill need a small team from the island, a couple of surgeons and—"

  "Don't make me laugh, Caswell."

  "... And three or four good nurses. And some plasma, at least six pints. They can take him back to the hospital when I'm through."

  The captain smiled indulgently, a cruel smile reserved for rummies and other washouts who tried to sound like they knew what they were doing.

  Well, Caswell thought, I can't say I didn't earn the man's disrespect.

  "How many hours are we talking about?"

  The doctor wiped his forehead with the back of his hand as he helped the nurse assemble his instruments. "I don't know. Three or four, unless he dies. Look, I've got to hurry. Please try to get me some help, Captain."

  "Three or four hours," the captain muttered. "The passengers'll miss half a day in Jamaica."

  "Captain, please. Do as you like, but you must leave now. I've got to scrub."

  The captain turned with a disgusted sigh.

  "I need that team, sir."

  At that moment, Mrs. Hank Cobb sat bolt upright in her bunk, her eyes wide and staring.

  "Lie down, Emily. I told the doctor—"

  "We know that man, Hank," she shrilled.

  "What man? Oh, Emily, not that— that thing down there."

  "Those eyes," she screamed. "Those teeth!"

  "Please, dear—"

  "He's the cook! The ship's cook. He gave me the recipe for that celery seed dressing, don't you remember?"

  Hank Cobb searched his memory. "The cook..."

  Half a city block away, in the ship's infirmary, Alberto Vittorelli was fading back out of his brief episode of consciousness. The black wall of the ship— how did the ship appear? The woman screaming, the bobbing faces all around him, their wet hair plastered to their heads, the gentleman in the white suit moving hurriedly above him now, his expression of worry so deeply graven on his face that it seemed almost comical.

  The antiseptic-smelling white room began to swirl around him. Of course they had come to rescue him. Without Vittorelli, the ship would sail with no sauces. He closed his eyes to the whirling, darkening place, its lone occupant the worried gentleman in white. But the spinning continued inside Vittorelli like a tight, diminishing merry-go-round. The riders on the merry-go-round (Faster! round and round it went, faster and faster!) were the men in the sea with him, their sailor uniforms bright in the dark water, the sailors and the screaming woman and the worried gentleman in white. And at the center of it 'all, so small how, small and disappearing, was another face, cold and commanding, swept by yellow hair, lit by the palest ice-blue eyes, a face he would never forget...

  ?Eight

  The next morning was Sunday. Remo sprang awake to a deafening howl, the thunder of heavy, bewildered footsteps, and the clanking of glasses and ice cubes. He wrapped a towel around himself and headed for the kitchen, but Sidonie intercepted him just outside the bedroom.

  "What you do out there?" the housekeeper accused, her eyes pinched into little black marbles
. "This place a mess."

  "We had visitors last night," Remo said lamely.

  Sidonie craned her neck past him into the bedroom, where Fabienne was groaning awake, her hand held to her throbbing forehead. "Land sake, boy," Sidonie gasped, stepping backward in indignation. "What for you got her in your bed?"

  Remo passed up the obvious explanation in view of the fact that Sidonie was a friend of the girl's, and also because she had to weigh in at over 225 and already had a couple of belts of rum in her. "She's been hurt," he said.

  Sidonie waddled tentatively into the room, her ice cubes tinkling in her glass as she swayed her heavy bulk toward the girl in the bed. When she saw the chain of bruises around Fabienne's throat, she placed her hand over her heart, tossed down the full glass of rum, and waddled menacingly back toward Remo. "You do that, white boy?" she growled.

  "Come on, Sidonie. Why would I do that?"

  She pressed her face close to his, rum fumes invading his nostrils like bayonets. "Maybe underneath that soft white skin, you a mad dog." She lifted an eyebrow.

  "Why don't you ask her?"

  "Maybe she lie?"

  "Oh, good grief," Remo said.

  "Maybe she like it." She smiled wickedly.

  "Sidonie." Fabienne's voice brought the huge woman running. Remo exhaled gratefully.

  "Who do this to you, girl?" she asked, pressing the girl's face into her mammoth bosom. "You tell Sidonie, she going fix his butt good."

  Fabienne coughed to bring her voice above a whisper. "It was the mute, Sidonie. The Dutchman's mute."

  The black woman's eyes closed as she sucked in air noisily. With two fingers she gave the sign of the Evil Eye to ward off demons.

  "You know I'm getting tired of all this crap," Remo said. "Any mention of this Dutchman character around here, and everyone gets scared out of their bloomers. It is to puke."

  "Do not mock him," Sidonie warned. "He hear you. He is the Evil One. He knows."

  "Oh, bull fat," Remo said. "I'm going up to that castle on the mountain today and haul that mute, or whatever he is, down to the police station. And if the Dutchman doesn't like it, I'm going to pop his cork."

  "Do not speak so quickly, Remo." Chiun stood behind him, glittering in a ceremonial robe of teal-blue brocade.

  "See, he know," Sidonie said, gravitating toward Chiun, whom she showered with affectionate pats and clucks. "You look real fine today, Mr. Chiun," she said sweetly. She turned back to Remo, scowling. "This white boy, he come out wearing a towel around them skinny legs, him with a girl in his bed."

  "I wish I could have been spared the sight," Chiun said. "And I'm sorry for the mess Remo made here last night. We were attacked by hoodlums last night. They broke my television."

  "That's a shame, Mr. Chiun. I'll have the place fixed up in no time."

  "Can you replace my television?" he asked hopefully.

  "You just leave it to me. You going to teach that trash what beat up Fabienne a lesson?"

  "Yes. His last lesson," Chiun said coldly.

  There was a loud knocking at the door. "What fool come visiting this time of day?" Sidonie mumbled as she lumbered toward the front entrance.

  "Something special going on today?" Remo asked Chiun, who was arranging the elaborate folds of his ceremonial robe. Chiun shrugged. "You're not going to tell me, are you?" Remo said, fingering the cloth of the kimono.

  "There is no need for you to know."

  Sidonie's loud whisper wafted toward them. "No," she hissed, stomping. "I ain't giving you no hundred dollah. You never give back the last fifty you borrowed."

  "Sidonie, baby," Pierre's smooth voice cooed. "It the truck. She broke. I got to have the money, or I go out of business."

  "Too bad for you, then. You got to go to work now like an honest man."

  "Who goes?" Chiun called.

  "It only Pierre," Sidonie said. "I telling him to leave now. You hear that, boy?"

  Remo and Chiun walked into the living room.

  "Mister Remo." Pierre nodded. "I come to talk to Fabienne, if she here."

  "Hah!" Sidonie grunted. "You come to rob me again."

  Pierre ignored her. "I been most everywhere on the island," he said, "looking for her. I got to give her some bad news."

  "She's here, but she's not feeling well," Remo said. "Maybe you can tell me."

  "Well..." He shuffled his feet. "It not good. I seen her house today. It wrecked. Windows smashed, mud all over the door, everything. Look like somebody get real mad, tear the place up."

  "It must have been the mute," Remo mused.

  Pierre's eyes bulged. "The Dutchman's mute?" he said in a strangled squeak.

  "Shut up, you nosy no-account..."

  Pierre gasped. Something was lying on the end table near the sofa. He took a few hesitant steps and picked up the white plastic card that had fallen from the shirt of the dead man when Remo yanked him from the ceiling. "Dis yours?" he asked tentatively.

  "Ain't none of your business," Sidonie snapped.

  "It is nothing," Chiun said.

  "How do you know?" Remo asked, irritated. "We don't even know what it is."

  "It the gate-opener," Pierre said softly.

  "The gate-opener?"

  "It is inconsequential," Chiun said. He pointed Pierre toward the door. "Come again another time. Call first."

  "Like maybe next year," Sidonie growled.

  "What gate does it open?" Remo asked.

  Pierre looked from Remo's face to Chiun's. The old man was tense and angry. "Uh... it not important. Like the man say."

  "What gate, Pierre?" Remo glided in front of him, locking into the black man's eyes.

  "The gate to the shipyard," Pierre admitted, looking at his shoes. "My cousin had one when he work for the Dutchman a while back. He stick it in the gate, and the fence lose electricity. Dat how you get in the shipyard."

  "Does your cousin still work there?" Remo asked.

  "Naw. Nobody work there long. The Dutchman don't keep nobody long enough to know nothing. My cousin never even seen the Dutchman. Me neither."

  Remo took the card and turned it over in his palm. The shipyard. Everything pointed to the shipyard. And the Dutchman.

  "You'd better leave now," Chiun told Pierre. His jaw was clenching.

  "Sure thing," Pierre answered with a two-finger salute. "Oh, one more thing, Mr. Remo. My truck. She broke, and—"

  "Git!" Sidonie roared. She grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him until his head rolled. "Don't you be bothering the tourists with your cheatin' and lyin'. Git now and don't come back!" She tossed him out the door. He staggered a few feet, regained his balance with a grunt and a hateful backward glance, and headed off.

  "What was that about?" Remo asked as he put the card back on the end table.

  Sidonie chuckled. "He be bothering everyone on the island to lend him money, but nobody trust Pierre. He never give it back. I throw him out before he try you."

  "Oh." It always surprised Remo that money was considered so valuable to most people. He himself had all the money he ever needed, thanks to the good graces of Harold W. Smith, who kept him supplied with cash. Not that he needed much. A man who was officially dead and worked as a government assassin didn't have much use for shiny cars or big homes or a fancy wardrobe. He didn't eat in restaurants, didn't have hobbies, had no family to support. Except for the fact that his physical organism was one of the two best in the world, he was, in worldly matters at least, dead. He had no more use for the money he carried than a corpse in a grave had for credit cards.

  He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off two fifties. "Give this to Pierre the next time you see him," he said tonelessly. "I guess he can use it. Here, take a hundred for yourself, too."

  "Mr. Remo—"

  "Where's Chiun?" The old man had vanished. Remo took a quick look around the house, although he knew Chiun wouldn't be there. He had known about the card, and for some reason he had kept it from Remo. The end table where
he had placed the card was empty. Right now the old Oriental would be making his way, swiftly and silently, toward a place where Remo was not invited.

  "Take care of the girl," Remo said on his way out the door.

  He reached the shipyard in a few minutes at a dead run, passing near a tangled swamp where bamboo grew in tall shoots. The fence surrounding the yard hummed with its charge of deadly high voltage. Chiun was nowhere in sight. Remo doubled back to the swamp, hacked off a long bamboo pole, then carried it back to the fence and vaulted over.

  "Chiun," he called.

  "I am here," a voice came from the interior of the shipyard. Chiun was standing near some battered truck bodies, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. He said, "Go home, Remo. This is not your affair."

  "I just want to know what the hell's going on here. Since we started this so-called vacation, I've been shot at, hung off a cliff, maced, and told to break the arms of a dead man. Now Fabienne's been half strangled, our house is a disaster, and here you are in the middle of a shipyard in a goddamn ceremonial robe. You can't expect me to just turn around now and go home."

  Chiun shrugged. "Then stay. But remember. When the time comes, what we will encounter is my business, not yours."

  "Maybe," Remo said.

  Chiun withdrew one slender hand from his sleeve and swung over the blood-stained door to the refrigerated truck container beside him. He was silent as Remo peered in.

  Inside, nine bodies lay sprawled in grotesque positions. Icicles hung from their mouths and eyes, where their last dribblings had frozen, and their shabby clothes lay in stiff folds around them, stuck to the metal walls and floor. The frigid air inside the container smelled like a meat freezer, the stale odors of flesh and steel mixing together as the container's motor whirred unceasingly.

  "Did they freeze to death?" Remo asked.

  "Look closer. Look at their wounds."

  Remo stepped up into the truck and examined the stiff bodies. "This isn't real," he said, his breath turning the ends of his hair white with new frost. "They were all killed in hand-to-hand combat."

  "Karate does not kill this way," Chiun said, stepping into the truck. "That is hand-to-hand. So is atemi-waza, aikido, bando and t'ai chi chuan, but those methods were not used on these men."