"I want to be away from town," said Chiun.
"So, keep your fingers crossed. I get a bite the first time out, we could be on our way tomorrow."
"I hope TV reception is improved in this forsaken place," Chiun said, then took himself below.
Chapter 7
All harbors smell essentially the same, even if some are worse than others. There is the bracing aroma of the sea, with undertones of rotting seaweed, fish left too long in the sun, the pungent tang of gasoline and motor oil, exhaust and diesel fumes. If there are seafood restaurants close by, their grills and garbage bins add unique smells to assault the senses, luring and repelling new arrivals all at once.
A visitor who wanted to see and smell the city proper had to proceed beyond the waterfront, search out the avenues and byways where the natives spent their daily lives. In Puerta Plata, torn between the tourist trade and simply getting by, that meant a mixture of boutiques, dive shops, trendy cafes and travel agencies with simple restaurants and markets, general stores that catered to the working fishermen and captains who maintained their boats as much through sweat and sheer determination as by any great influx of cash. There were small banks, a neglected library and a maritime museum that had apparently been closed for renovation several years before, with little or no progress logged since then.
Remo was looking for a group of ruthless sea wolves, men who wouldn't shrink from murder, rape or God knew what in the pursuit of pleasure, profit, self-advancement. It wasn't an attitude that anyone in modern-day society would call unique. It was evident every night on television, every morning in the headlines. Only some of the peculiar trappings, as described by Kelly Bauer Armitage, made this group of destructive human animals stand out.
Assuming she was rational, Remo amended. If her pirate story was a product of delusion, post-traumatic stress, whatever, he could well be wasting his precious time.
Still, Smitty and Mark Howard seemed to think there was something to this. Remo was their contracted Reigning Master of Sinanju, and he did what he was told, without ever a word of complaint.
He worked his way inland from the waterfront, paying only cursory attention to the dives that lured rough-and-tumble fishermen or seamen. Such establishments might harbor pirates, it was true, but they wouldn't have drawn the likes of Richard Armitage or his wife, Kelly. Wherever the naive Americans had met their enemies, Remo would bet it hadn't been on the docks.
Where, then?
He made his way through narrow, crowded streets, feeling the eyes of the locals watching him. They would mark him as a gringo with more cash than common sense, he hoped. It was possible that someone would attempt to mug him, but Remo wasn't concerned about a confrontation on the street. He could dispose of any such straightforward opposition swiftly.
Just now, his mind was fixed on other predators, the kind with sense enough to plan ahead, check out a stranger and discover that he had an extremely high-priced boat tied up at the marina. Someone who might try to win his confidence, suggest that his vacation would proceed more smoothly with a native guide, for instance, or some local boys to serve as crew aboard the luxurious Melody.
Of course, such offers might be perfectly legitimate, no more than an attempt to make ends meet by picking up a little extra cash. Remo would have to trust his intuition. Maybe he'd get lucky and a guy would have a peg leg or an eye patch or a parrot on his shoulder.
The first nightclub he tried was the Flamingo, three blocks inland from the waterfront. It was a stylish place, as such things were appraised in struggling Third World ports of call. A twenty-something hostess met him just inside the door, established that he was alone and led him to a booth against one wall, then left him with a thousand-candlepower smile that could have suntanned an albino. Moments later, he was talking to a cocktail waitress in a low-cut peasant blouse and ruffled skirt. She made a point of bending over Remo's table as she took his order for a fruity rum concoction he had never heard off, offering her cleavage almost as a side dish-or an appetizer for delights to come, if he was only man enough to ask.
Instead, he grimaced and let it pass. His drink arrived, and Remo pretended to sip. He listened to the music, made a show of working on his drink until he felt that he had adequately scoped the clientele, deciding there were no apparent buccaneers in sight.
The first club was a warm-up. At his second stop, a flashy place called La Deliciosa, Remo waved off the hostess and found an empty bar stool, ordering another cocktail that was basically chopped fruit deluged in rum. Once more, he pretended to drink it through a stingy straw and, when he was sure no one was looking, reached over the bar and dumped most of the contents in the bartender's sink. The bartender returned a moment later, and Remo tried to engage him in casual conversation.
A purple plastic name tag on the barkeep's shirt declared that he was Pedro, and although he seemed willing enough to talk, a combination of poor English and deficient knowledge kept him from imparting any useful information. Pedro didn't know where local guides or temporary crewmen could be hired, he had only the vaguest knowledge of sport fishing in the area and Remo's passing reference to pirate treasure left the young man with a blank expression on his face, as if he had been asked to give a speech on quantum physics.
Remo had already had enough undercover baloney for one day. He wondered if it was too early to phone Smitty and tell him the trip was a washout.
Then he sensed someone approaching him from behind.
"Excuse me? Sir?"
The voice was native-born American, with traces of New England clinging stubbornly to life beneath a Southern accent picked up in adulthood. Remo swiveled on his stool and faced a trim man in his middle sixties, iron-gray hair receding from a high, aristocratic forehead that was deeply tanned, like the remainder of his face, from years of regular exposure to the tropic sun. The stranger's blue eyes had a sparkle to them as they peered through steel-rimmed spectacles, and his lips curled in a smile that was both tentative and self-assured.
"Forgive me for intruding, please," the stranger said, "but I could not help overhearing that you're interested in pirates."
"Well..."
"I suppose you'd say the subject is a kind of personal obsession. May I join you, Mr....?"
"Rubble. Remo Rubble. Sure. Have a seat."
"Ethan Humphrey," said the older man, immediately shifting to the empty stool on Remo's left. His handshake was not limp, exactly, but there was no hidden strength behind it. Remo pegged him as a bookworm, maybe retired from teaching or some other sedentary occupation, probably a bachelor, spending his retirement on what passed for an adventure in his relatively cloistered life. He reminded Remo of Harold W. Smith.
"I can't decide if you're from Maine or Massachusetts," Remo said.
His new acquaintance blinked, taken off guard, then cracked a smile. "Oh, yes, I see. The accent, yes? It's Massachusetts, actually, although I thought I'd lost it during fifteen years of teaching at the University of Florida, in Gainesville."
"Teaching what?" asked Remo.
"History, of course-whence springs my interest in the buccaneers of the Caribbean. You're interested in treasure, I believe you said?"
"Well, not commercially," said Remo, "but I'm down here on vacation, checking out the islands, mostly killing time. I thought it might be interesting to spice the trip up with a look around the seamy side of history, you know?"
"Indeed I do," said Humphrey, with a smile that put expensive dentures on display. "And you've come to the right place, I assure you. Not Puerta Plata specifically, but Hispaniola and environs. Do you know much about pirates, Mr. Rubble?"
Remo flashed a sheepish smile and shook his head. "A little Treasure Island and some Errol Flynn wraps it up," he said, feigning embarrassment.
"In that case," Humphrey told him, "you're in for a treat. The West Indies were notorious as a haven for pirates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, you know. John Avery had the protection of the British governor in the Bahamas, raiding French and Spanish shipping from Martinique all the way to Madagascar and the Red Sea, circa 1695, before he disappeared out east. His crew was ultimately hanged in England, when they tried to do without official blessings, but the captain simply vanished. Howell Davis was another buccaneer who sailed from Martinique, but came to grief when he abandoned piracy to join the slave trade. There were even female pirates, though you seldom read about them in the common histories. Anne Bonney and Mary Read both sailed with Calico Jack Rackham, fighting tooth and nail beside male members of the crew when there were galleons to be looted, but women's lib only went so far. When they were tried for piracy in 1720, both women claimed that they were pregnant, which officially precluded them from being hanged."
"Fascinating," Remo said, although it was only interesting. Barely.
"Of course, no buccaneer who ever plied these waters could compare with Morgan," Humphrey said, continuing his impromptu lecture. "In 1670, Sir Henry led an outlaw fleet consisting of thirty-six ships and some two thousand men, raiding from Jamaica all the way to Central America, where he sacked the Spanish garrison at Panama and installed himself as the warlord in residence. That bit of banditry got him knighted in England and earned him a posting as lieutenant governor of Jamaica."
"So crime does pay," said Remo.
"Oh, indeed it does, my friend, in certain circumstances." Humphrey flashed the dentures again, then flagged down Pedro to order a refill on his vodka Collins.
"What about today?" Remo asked. "Are there any pirates still around the neighborhood?"
"Today?" The ex-professor seemed amused. "I shouldn't think so, Mr. Rubble. We're discussing history, you understand, and none too recent history, at that. There are such activities in the present day, of course... ."
"That's what I mean," said Remo, stopping short of slurring words that would have made him incoherent. "Anythin' can happen, and it usually does."
"That's from Walt Disney, I believe," said Ethan Humphrey.
"What's the difference?" Remo challenged. "Just as long as you know what I'm talkin' 'bout."
"I seem to follow you so far," said Humphrey, leaning closer, hanging on his every word.
"An' all I'm sayin' is, that if the pirates used to make a killing in the old days, wha's to stop 'em doing the same thing right now?"
"Well." Humphrey frowned and cleared his throat, as if preparing to impart a lecture. "There are more laws, of course, where few or none existed in the past. Technology has changed, allowing naval units and the Coast Guard to pursue potential miscreants from distances that would have made a roundup hopeless in the old days. As for the killing side of modern-day technology, you have a range of craft and weapons that would slaughter any old-style pirates in the area today."
"That's just supposing that they hung on to the old ways, am I right?" asked Remo.
"It would be scandalous!" Humphrey proclaimed, as if Remo had dared suggest his favorite daughter might turn out to be a mindless slut. In fact, he didn't seem embarrassed by the notion of surviving pirate bands, but rather by the notion that they might adopt newfangled methods for themselves, in place of raiding as their great-great-great-grandfathers had conducted their attacks two centuries before.