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 shore 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.