Next Of Kin td-46

by Warren Murphy

  "Positively, this has been the most wonderful hour I've spent in— in many years." Her face flickered and darkened for a moment with unwanted memories.

  "At least two years," Remo said.

  "How did you..." She waved the rest of her question away. People talked, especially on the island. "I guess you didn't believe I just like empty houses, did you?"

  "I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

  She shook her head. "Nothing, I'm afraid. It's up to the courts now. Don't bother about my financial ups and downs, Remo. We only have a short time together. Let us enjoy what we can, quoi?" She cocked her head beguilingly. In the moonlight she looked, Remo thought, like a good French postcard.

  "Saisez le jour's what I always say." He pulled her face to his.

  She looked bewildered. "I beg your pardon?"

  "Saisez le—" He cleared his throat. "It's French. I think. Catch the day. Grab the moment. Or maybe it means pass the salt. I never was very good in high school French."

  "Oh." She burst into peals of laughter. "Chéri, your French is wonderful." She kissed him. "Where it matters."

  She climbed out of bed and reached for Remo's hand. "Come with me," she said. "I want to show you something."

  She led him outside, where the warm trade winds were singing through the silhouettes of the palm trees. "It's beautiful," Remo said, because he knew she wanted him to say it.

  "It gets better."

  They walked behind the house, through a bright tropical garden that Fabienne had maintained, past a grove of mango trees, until the sound of slapping water came up at them from whitecaps far below. "This is the best spot on the island," Fabienne said, testing a rock with her foot. The rock gave way and tumbled down the cliff to splash in the sea. "One just has to be careful where one sits." She sat down cross-legged near the cliff, her naked limbs shimmering.

  Remo sat next to her, his arm encircling her shoulders. "One promises to be very careful," he said. "One would not like to slide down this cliff without so much as one's pair of jockey shorts to smooth one's way."

  She laughed. "You're making fun of my accent."

  "I'm crazy about your accent. Among other things."

  She started' to speak, but Remo silenced her. There was something else in the air, a familiar noise.

  "Are there any motorcycle trails around here?"

  "I suppose," she said. "Not in my back yard, surely. Remo..."

  But the sound grew more persistent. "Someone took a potshot at Pierre's truck tonight," he said. "Someone on a dirt bike."

  By then, the presence of the bike was undeniable. "Get behind those trees," Remo said.

  "What will you do?"

  "I'm going to get a better look at him. Go on." He pushed her near the grove of fruit trees that dominated the skyline. Remo walked along the cliff, toward the source of the motorcycle's blast.

  He could see it now, headed straight for him. As the bike approached, a blinding beam from its headlamp focused on Remo. He held up his arms, waving. "Get out of here," he shouted. "This is private property." But the bike kept speeding for him, accelerating as it came closer. When he realized that the biker wasn't going to stop, he sidestepped out of the way as the bike veered dangerously close. Maybe the bullets weren't for Pierre, Remo mused. But who in this place would want...

  Fabienne's scream echoed in the still night as the dirt bike entered the grove of mango trees. The rider had found the girl. Remo raced back while the bike's engine roared in short bursts as it raced around the maze of the grove. He saw Fabienne running out of the trees, followed by the bike a few feet behind. A silhouetted arm on the bike's handlebars raised slowly, a pistol poised at the end of it aiming for the girl.

  Automatically Remo squeezed his eyes shut to help his night vision. Then he picked up a small rock at his feet and hurled it. The rock was smaller than a baseball, but it shattered the gun to fragments in the man's hand. It gave Remo enough time to reach the girl and toss her gently to the ground, out of the way.

  The bike came at them again, circling and buzzing menacingly. Remo waited for it to come near enough to pull the driver off. But even as it drew close and he got a clear picture of the driver's bloated, outlaw's face, the figure in black drew something from his pocket. It sparkled briefly in the dim light, first in the driver's hand, then far into the space between him and the girl. As it flashed inches from her face, Remo saw that it was a steel-tipped mace on a chain. Even lying on the ground wouldn't protect her from a weapon like that.

  Remo charged the bike, but it skittered away.

  After a few moments, the girl stood up. "He's gone," she said.

  "I don't think so." Already he heard the change in the engine that signaled a turn. The bike was coming back for them. "Just get down behind that scrub," Remo said. "Stay as well hidden as you can.

  "Okay." She scrambled for the cover of the thin brush growing near the cliff's edge, but her voice became a howl as the earth gave way beneath her and slid like a dead weight with it. She clung to some scrub halfway down the cliff, its nettles digging into her palms. "Remo!" she screamed. "I'm going to fall!"

  And now, the motorcycle was nearly on him.

  "Hold on," Remo said. "I'm coming after you. Hold on." Inching his way down the sheer cliff, he heard the sound of the engine roaring above him. A cascade of small stones and earth loosened by his hands rolled continuously into Remo's eyes. He could taste the dirt. Just as he reached the girl, he heard the dirt bike's engine click off.

  "I'm going to push you up," Remo said. "He's up there, so once you hit ground, just run like hell." He placed one hand around her knee and pushed it upward hard, at an angle so that the girl would land some distance from the boots of the biker immediately above him. There was a thump, and then the frantic running steps of the girl.

  The man above Remo did not move.

  Suddenly Remo felt foolish hanging stark naked from a cliff with an island version of a Hell's Angel towering above him. "Wanna talk, buddy?" Remo asked.

  The biker responded by pulling the steel mace out of his jacket. It whirred to life above his head.

  "Well, if that's the way you want it," Remo said. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

  A half-smile spread across the biker's face as he lowered the whistling, whirling mace toward Remo. Then, with a motion so swift that the mace seemed to be twirling in slow motion, Remo caught the weapon as it was coming for him and yanked himself up to ground level. The propulsion of the mace was such that he landed some distance from the biker, who blinked and sputtered, "Hey, mon, I talk. I talk." Remo came up to him slowly. The man backed away. "No. I say I tell—"

  "Don't!"

  Remo's warning went unheeded and unheard. The biker was already screaming as the loose earth fell below him and cast him bouncing like a rubber ball down the cliff into the whirling waters of the sea.

  Fabienne dragged herself to Remo. "You all right?" he asked.

  "Yes." She was sobbing. "Remo, was he trying to kill me?"

  "Either you or me, sweetheart. We won't know for a while. Anyway, he's gone."

  ?Five

  Alberto Vittorelli, the card read in the dim moonlight at the Soubise shipyard. The Dutchman had turned the lights off when he entered the compound. The place was silent except for the ragged grumbling and snoring of the men his mute, Sanchez, had brought for him. He was surprised when a little dark-haired man scrambled from the pile of insensate drunks in the corner and weaved toward him, thrusting his name embossed on white plastic in front of the Dutchman's face.

  The card offered by the bruised, groggy man was his official identification for Lordon Lines.

  "Do you still work for Lordon?" the Dutchman asked in English. Lordon was an English line whose cruisers regularly docked at Sint Maarten harbor.

  The rumpled fellow held his temples with both hands, as though the Dutchman's voice were deafening. "Scusi?" he asked with some difficulty.

  The Dutchman changed his language to Italian. "
Do you work for the ship?" he asked, pointing to the enormous, light-festooned luxury liner a half-mile out to sea in the harbor.

  "Si, si," the Italian said, brightening. In a torrent of emotion, he explained how he had been rolled in an alley by a group of drunken sailors who left him unconscious after stripping his wallet. "I always carry my identification in my vest pocket for just such an emergency, so that I may reboard the ship."

  He looked around at the grim, bleak shipyard cluttered with metal truck containers standing in utter darkness. In a far corner of the yard, Vittorelli saw the group of men he had been with when he came to consciousness amid their unwashed bodies and alcoholic fumes. The men were bums, filthy, ragged beggars who moaned softly as they shifted their weight in the corner of the shipyard, oblivious to their unusual surroundings. They were a dramatic contrast from the tall, imperious aristocrat who stood before him, fixing him with cold, light eyes.

  "You are from the... authorities, signor?" Vittorelli asked dubiously.

  The Dutchman held down a surge of anger at Sanchez for his blunder. The mute had communicated to him that the night's preparations had been made. He was to have gone to the alleyways and tramp camps of Phillipsburg and Marigot to root out the island's dispossessed for the Dutchman's use. No one missed these men, who would disappear in the night and never return. When the Dutchman finished with them, their corpses were to be loaded into a forty-foot container and hauled out to deep water, where they would sink, forgotten, into the sea.

  Fortunately, the Dutchman did not often require live partners for his practice. The possibility of picking up a victim who would be missed and reported was too great. Killing at the yard was rare, but it was still dangerous.

  The worst had already happened. An American salvage ship had accidentally found a container loaded with bodies from one of the Dutchman's nights at the yard. He thought, when he had first heard the vessel was in the area, of forcing the ship's crew to abandon their search, but he knew Americans. At the slightest interference, they would search harder, thinking someone wanted to prevent them from locating the remains of the Spanish galleon they were after. So he'd kept to himself and they had found the bodies. Fortunately, he had made sure the box was untraceable to the Soubise Harbor Transportation Corporation by altering some invoices in the office. When the island authorities came to question the executives at the yard, they were shown the inventory records indicating that no containers had been lost or stolen, and they had left satisfied.

  But it was not the island authorities who worried the Dutchman. Hours after the container was lifted on board the salvage ship, the Dutchman spotted a fleet of U.S. Army helicopters swarming around the ship. They stayed for some time, then left without questioning anyone on the island. Shortly after the helicopters took off, the salvage ship pulled away from Sint Maarten waters and never returned for the legendary sunken treasure ship. There was no word on the unusual find in any major publication in any language.

  Clearly the United States government was somehow involved, but how? America was one of the few countries on earth that had never laid claim to the island. Someone had sent those helicopters in response to the ship's signal. Someone had hushed up the news. And now, someone might be watching to see if it happened again.

  "What do you do on the ship?" the Dutchman asked Vittorelli. "Are you important?"

  "Important? I?" The Italian spread his hands over his chest. "Signor, I assure you that I am of extreme importance. The ship cannot sail without Alberto. Without my services, Lordon's sauce is like river water. Pah!" He spat ceremoniously, if nervously, at a spot as far away from the coldly majestic Dutchman as he could muster.

  "Do explain yourself," the Dutchman said. "Briefly."

  "Very fast, very fast," Vittorelli whimpered, his hands fluttering like birds' wings at his sides. "Signor, I am the sous-chef in the ship's kitchen. I make the sauces. If I do not return, nine hundred and twelve passengers will sail tomorrow morning, doomed to eight days of dry salad, naked asparagus, and white spaghetti. I beg you, signor. There has been a great mistake."

  There was a mistake, all right. A missing sous-chef wouldn't force Lordon into a full investigation, but it was still risky. He would have to let the man go.

  "My apologies, signor," the Dutchman said. "There has been a rash of vandalism at the shipyard recently, which we believe was instigated by some of our own men. We have brought the suspects here for questioning, so as not to involve the police in our internal affairs. You understand."

  Vittorelli cast a sidelong glance at the disorderly array of drunks at the far end of the yard. "Those are your workers, signor?"

  The Dutchman's eyes grew even colder. "Perhaps you don't understand," he said softly.

  "Si! Si! I understand perfectly, signor. Perfectly." His beet-red face nodded enthusiastically. "I go now, okay?" With trembling hands he reached for his Lordon identification.

  "One more thing, Mr. Vittorelli," the Dutchman said.

  "S-s-si?"

  "You are not to discuss this episode with anyone. Is that clear?"

  "Oh, absolutely."

  "Because if you do, you will never set foot on Sint Maarten again."

  "You will have no difficulty from me, signor. None whatsoever. Con permiso..."

  You groveling little toad, the Dutchman thought.

  Vittorelli jumped involuntarily.

  "Go," the Dutchman commanded, forcing his eyes away from the Italian and toward the darkness over the Atlantic. The killing picture that began deep in the Dutchman's brain and shot out toward the Italian missed its target. Instead, the spark of loathing exploded harmlessly in the night sky, bursting over the sea like a firecracker. As the burning half-thought dissipated, the Dutchman gave a small sigh of relief. He was beginning, with great effort, to control the destructive force inside him.

  Vittorelli shrieked at the sight of the spontaneous display in the sky. He ran at top speed toward the high-voltage fence.

  "Stop!" the Dutchman called. "The fence is electrified. I'll let you out."

  But the Italian kept running. With a leap, he plastered himself spread-eagled to the wire fence. The charge took him at once, shaking his limbs ferociously. Sparks bristled around his hair, which stood completely on. end, and smoke smoldered from his shoes as he gurgled strangled sounds.

  The Dutchman kicked him off the fence. Vittorelli's twitching body rolled toward the group of drunks who sat clutching one another in horror as they witnessed his electrocution. The drunks recoiled and scattered, shouting wildly.

  It had all gone out of control. The Dutchman would have to stop them all before their noise brought curious onlookers to the yard. But first he would have to get rid of the source of their fright, the gory mass of flesh that still trembled spasmodically nearby. With one hand, he threw Vittorelli's grisly, burned body high over the fence into the ocean beyond, while he trapped a terrified drifter, now stone sober and surprisingly strong, with the other. When Vittorelli hit the water with a resounding splash, the Dutchman turned to the drifter and silenced him with one lethal blow to the windpipe, then dropped him. He was searching for the nearest scream.

  It came from an old black man who limped toward the office complex. The Dutchman caught him in the solar plexus with his foot, then split his temple open with two fingers. He killed the others cleanly, seeking them out among the trucks and sandbags where they hid, making sure each kill was unique by striking different blows on each frightened, bewildered victim.

  When it was over, he counted the bodies. There were ten, including Vittorelli— the same number Sanchez had brought in earlier. The fragrant tropical air was already beginning to smell of death. The Dutchman opened a refrigerated truck container used for hauling meat and produce, and tossed the bodies inside after removing any personal effects and identification from them. These would be burned in the furnace at the castle.

  He closed -the door to the container, set its dials, and it whirred into action. The sea slapped at the sho
re in peaceful rhythm while the motor of the container chilled its terrible cargo. The box would be carried out to sea soon. As soon as the bodies of Remo and Chiun filled it.

  Outside the compound, the scrub grass stirred with heavy footsteps. The Dutchman pasted himself to the side of the refrigerated box and watched as the figure drew closer. It walked clumsily, as if the person carried a heavy load. At the gate, the figure held something in its hand that glinted like metal in the moonlight. In a moment, the gate slid open. It was Sanchez.

  In his arms was the water-bloated, gray-tinged body of a man in black. Sanchez dropped the body in front of the Dutchman and signaled that he had found him floating between the reefs below the French girl's house.

  The Dutchman pulled back his hand and slapped the mute across the face. "For your ineptitude," he spat. The mute stood, expressionless.

  "Is the American, Remo, dead?" he asked after a moment.

  The mute shook his head.

  So. He would have to take them both at once. It would have been better to kill the young one first, but that was a bad gamble at best. No one knew better than the Dutchman how dangerous this American was. Nearly as dangerous as the old man from Sinanju. He had been counting on the thug who now lay dead at his feet to catch Remo off guard, but he should have known that killing either Remo or Chiun was not a job for an ordinary killer. He would have to do it himself.

  "So be it," he said quietly.

  Sanchez lifted the body into the truck container, already cold with frigid air that frosted the hair and beards of the unlucky drifters inside, and locked the door. At the gate, he slid a metal-striped card into a slot, and the gate opened for them and closed behind them. Two more switches, and the place was once again flooded in bright light. They walked together into the darkness.

  "Has any harm come to the girl?" the Dutchman asked.

  His head down, the mute signaled "No" with his hands.

  After a moment, the Dutchman spoke again. "See that it does."

  The mute nodded and was gone.

  ?Six

  The porch lights of Remo's villa were on. In the near distance, Remo blinked twice when he saw the opened front door. The doorway seemed to be crammed full of people, as though a busy party were in progress, only there was no sound. No music, no bursts of cocktail laughter, nothing but the drone of the cicadas and the chirping of grasshoppers.