The Oriental's eyes sparkled but he said only, "It was adequate to demonstrate the proper shifting of weight." He wrapped himself in a red silk kimono with a dragon embroidered on the back. "I will go back to the house now for dry clothing and a cup of tea," he said.
"Okay. I want to try the Flying Wall a couple of times."
"You will perform the exercise ten times, slothful one," Chiun said.
"Ten? That's the hardest dive I've ever seen. Nobody can do that ten times without getting killed."
"Oh? In that case, we shall meet next in paradise. Do not fail to breathe during the curved descent."
"Ten times," Remo muttered as Chiun padded off toward the villa their employer had rented for them.
It was odd that Smith had sent them to Sint Maarten. Smitty had to be the most tight-fisted man in the United States government. Springing for a villa, complete with private beach and housekeeper, was as alien to Harold W. Smith as eating octopus.
Remo shrugged off the thought as he neared the top of the cliff, his fingertips pulling him in toward the wall of stone as his feet slid smoothly upward. At the top, he cleared his mind of all distractions but the memory of Chiun's powerful dive, and took off. His body, more finely tuned than any athlete's, was on automatic now. He glided out toward the sea on the instincts developed through years of training. His arms moved reflexively, feeling for the air pockets, and windmilled slowly backward as he began the slow curve downward. The water touched him softly as he saw, inches below him, a school of angel fish swimming between the craggy reefs of coral that would rip a normal diver to shreds. Like a speedboat he skimmed toward shore, emerging nearly dry.
"I did it! I did it!" Remo exulted.
"Nine more times," came a high, squeaky voice from inside the villa.
* * *
Remo lay in the sun, his eyes closed, the heat of midday warming his muscles. The ten dives had been exhausting enough, but he had performed the exercise four extra times for good measure. Now all he wanted to do was sleep.
His past came back to him in snatches, as it often did when he was on the brink of sleep. His years in the orphanage, his training as a policeman in Newark, the incredible frame-up that caused his arrest for killing a dope pusher he didn't kill, the sensational kangaroo court trial that touted him as an example of police brutality, his days on Death Row...
It had been a lousy life. And then another frame-up, perpetrated by Harold W. Smith, who had masterminded the whole false arrest mess in the first place: the electric chair didn't work. That made it complete. A fake death for a fake crime. Only nobody knew the death was a fraud except for Harold W. Smith, who pulled his weighty strings from a computer console hidden in the recesses of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York; another man who conveniently died shortly after Remo's electrocution; and, after several days of unconsciousness, Remo himself.
All very neat. The President of the United States had wanted a one-man enforcement arm for an illegal organization, CURE, dedicated to fighting crime outside the Constitution, and Smith had delivered Remo: a man with no family ties who was officially dead.
Smitty had chosen Chiun, the Master of the ancient House of Sinanju, to transform Remo from an easy-going cop into a smooth, perfect killing machine. All the pieces fit into place. There was little room for error, because error would mean the instantaneous destruction of CURE. If Smith failed to keep CURE secret, his death was sealed in a vial of poison in the basement of Folcroft. If Remo failed, Chiun was instructed to kill him at the moment of Smith's order. If the President failed, he was to pass along the information about CURE's existence to his successor in the White House.
Remo hadn't liked it. He didn't want to train with the irascible old Oriental in the beginning, didn't like the cloak-and-dagger secrecy of Smith and CURE, and he certainly didn't like killing people for a living. America went on, after all, even if there was a lot of crime that went unpunished, even if the Constitution, written for decent men, was manipulated inside out by criminals who preyed on decent men under its full protection. Remo could see no need for CURE.
Then the President of the United States was murdered in cold blood by an assassin's bullet. The man who had conceived of CURE as a last-ditch effort to bring crime under control was himself destroyed by crime, and that was when Remo first understood the importance of CURE.
Remo felt a shadow pass in front of his closed eyelids. He opened them slowly to a vision of two bountiful breasts scantily encased by a purple bikini top.
"You are going to burn here," the owner of the breasts said in a lilting accent.
"What?"
She pressed a spot on his forearm. When she released the pressure, the spot emerged white in a field of hot pink. "The sun," she said, pointing upward. "You will burn the skin. You must go inside, or the sunburn will be very bad."
Remo squinted to get a better look at the girl. She was beautiful, with long auburn hair streaming carelessly from a knot on the top of her head. She had bottle-green eyes that danced mischievously under long black lashes. Her mouth was full and ripe, and she was very tan.
"No bathing suit marks," Remo said flirtatiously. Chiun was a great teacher, but as an after-dinner companion, he was a bust. "You look like an experienced tourist."
"I live here," the girl said. She extended her hand. "My name is Fabienne de la Soubise."
"Remo Williams," he said.
"You are American?"
Remo nodded.
"I am French, but here on the island we are all Sint Maarteners. Welcome." She smiled and gave his hand a squeeze. She started to pull away, but Remo got to his feet before she could let go of him. "Say, as long as we've got so much in common, how about us seeing each other again?"
She took in Remo's body with a discreet glance: the thin lines of his frame, his dancer's legs, the well-shaped meat of his shoulders, the thick wrists. His face was handsome in a masculine way, with its deep-set brown eyes and heavy, straight brows, its high cheekbones and firm mouth and clean jaw. A man's man, to be sure. But a woman's man in bed. "Of course," she said. "Can you come to my house tonight?"
"Tonight? Sure—"
A clatter of pots and pans clanking angrily directed his attention toward the kitchen of the villa, where a fat black woman wearing a red bandana on her head emerged banging a soup pan with a wooden spoon.
"You!" she bellowed, waddling toward them with determination in every step. "I thought you already inside," she said crankily, shaking her head in dismay. "You been out here for more than five hour. You gonna fry. All you white men de same—"
"Hello, Sidonie," the girl said with a smile.
"Fabienne!" She slapped Remo's arm with the spoon. "What you doing talking to a nice island girl like her? Gonna give her fancy mainland ideas, make her leave us." She waddled up to Fabienne and kissed her wetly and noisily on the cheek.
"I've just met Remo. He seems a perfect gentleman."
The housekeeper eyed Remo with a twinkle. "He all right for a white man," she said. Remo pinched her ample hindquarter, and she hit him with the spoon again.
"Hey, if you're going to be running my life for the next two weeks, I demand a cease-fire," Remo said.
"I like to run your life, child. Get you to eat some decent food." She turned to Fabienne and said something that sounded to Remo like "Hee Ho Hee Hee Da Bo Wa Wee Tee No Mee Ha."
Fabienne clucked sympathetically and responded, "Hey He Hah Key Hee Hoo Die Ho Hee Noo."
"Beg pardon?" Remo asked.
"Sidonie says you eat nothing but brown rice and tea."
Remo shuffled half apologetically in the sand. "I don't know. I eat other things. Duck, sometimes. A little fish—"
"Raw he eats it," Sidonie said with disgust. "These fanatical Americans, always with the health food."
Fabienne took Remo's hand again. "And I told her that I cook very good brown rice. I like raw fish, too."
"You do?"
"Come see me tonight. My driver will be here at seven, but take as long as you like," she said.
"Ill be ready at seven." Remo beamed as the girl waved to them both and walked away with the purposeful, athletic stride of a rich girl weaned on tennis and horseback riding.
"Now you go inside," Sidonie said. "The old gentleman, he already in his room, looking at the TV. I got your lunch."