Chiun cackled from afar. "Yes, of course. Your elbow is always bent." He hooted with delight. He was going to sleep well tonight, very well indeed. He had the proof he needed now. Emperor Smith was a white fool to think that Remo could have killed the men in the photographs he carried. Now Chiun could confirm Remo's innocence. Smith could compare the results of Remo's attack and see that they were different from those in the picture. The man who slew those unfortunates in the sunken truck did not bend his elbow when he worked. He did not make small mistakes. Only big ones.
His biggest was to forward a letter that should have remained locked in the tomb of the past.
In his room, Chiun rolled out his tatami sleeping mat and prepared for deep rest. He would need it, for tomorrow he would do battle with a ghost.
A ghost more deadly and evil than any man.
?Seven
Mrs. Hank Cobb gave her husband's arm a squeeze as they strolled in the brisk morning air on the second-class deck of the Coppelia. On the island a half-mile away, graceful palms waved good-bye while the ship's mighty foghorn sounded. As usual when leaving port, Mrs. Cobb cried.
"There, there," her husband said, patting her hand paternally, even though his lips betrayed a smile of pleasure and pride. "Not a bad second honeymoon, wouldn't you say, Emily?"
Emily Cobb gently kissed the white-haired, stoop-shouldered man at her side. "Second? I didn't know the first one was over," she said, causing the man she had lived with for twenty-five years to blush like a schoolboy. Together they stood on deck, waving back to the silent palms, their new Sony Trinitron and Swedish Valpox stereo safely crated below.
Near the ship, something bobbed momentarily to the surface before being engulfed again by the waves. "What's that?" Mrs. Cobb asked, pointing to the object.
"A log, I think, or a broken telephone pole," Mr. Cobb answered thoughtfully. "Then again, it couldn't be a telephone pole. I haven't seen any of those here. Come to think of it, I haven't seen any trees that big around in the whole darned Caribbean, have you?"
Mrs. Cobb felt an uneasy wobbling in her stomach. "It... it doesn't really look like a tree," she said hesitantly.
"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—"