"There you go," said Remo.
The Coast Guard chopper ferried Remo to the local guard station, where Remo was transferred to a Coast Guard Falcon jet. It took off screaming, and two hours later Remo was deposited at Logan International Airport in Boston.
He took a cab home, thinking that Chiun was either going to be very happy to see him or very angry. Possibly both. It was impossible to predict the Master of Sinanju's moods in advance.
But either way, Remo couldn't wait to see him again. It had been as close to death as he had gotten in a long time, and it felt good to be alive and kicking.
He hoped the Master of Sinanju would feel the same way about things. After all, a mission was just a mission, but Remo was next in line to head the House. How angry could Chiun be?
Chapter 10
She wanted sex. Of course she did. He could tell it from the look on her long face when he walked in the door and from the filmy negligee that would drape a busty blonde wonderfully. But clinging to her scrawny, pale skin, it looked pathetic. Like spiderwebs on a corpse.
He avoided her kiss by striking first. A peck on the cheek, and sensing it would not be enough to avoid the tobacco breath, a second, more careful one on the brow.
She stepped back, spreading the gauzy wings of the negligee.
Lavender, for God's sake. Made her look like a harridan.
"I thought you'd never get home, dear," she cooed.
He wanted to slap her. Tell her to grow up. She was a mother, for Christ's sake. Why couldn't she settle for that? Not these pathetic attempts to rekindle the spark that was long past cooling.
"I had a difficult day," he said guardedly, his eyes going to the closed door of the den.
Her smiling face bobbed into view.
"Then you'll need a long, leisurely ...what?"
"Soak," he said quickly.
"Soak. Yes, have a nice soak. I think I'll join you."
There was no way out. Divorce was out of the question. Without a wife he might as well pack it in. Throw away all hope, all ambition, all thoughts of the future.
"All right," he said, mustering up what passed for marital enthusiasm. "We'll share a soak."
The soak was as sexy as bathing with an Irish wolfhound. With her long face, thin arms and absolute absence of a bust or bottom, she more and more reminded him of an Irish wolfhound, an abysmally hideous canine.
When it was over, she toweled him down lovingly and led him by the hand to the bedroom, where scented candles flamed in glass jars. It was all very bewitching. All the tableau needed was a woman with some meat on her bones.
But he hadn't married her for her flesh, but for her mind, her good breeding, her impeccable character. A respectable wife was one of the inconvenient accoutrements for a man on the move.
He never stopped to think that even sex became boring if one did it often enough in the same two unimaginative positions with absolutely no props or enhancements.
So, once again he went through the motions. Foreplay consisted of a few chaste kisses, a perfunctory back rub and then he mounted her. He wanted to strangle her. Strangling her would have made it exciting for once, and it would have ensured that he'd never have to plumb these unpleasant depths again.
In the moment she gave before his first prodding thrust, he decided the hell with it and took her violently. It was madness, but he was desperate. It had been too long. And he was under such stress at the office, what with the latest Angus Reid polls and all.
To his astonishment, she loved it. She shrieked wildly, then began moaning as he pumped and pumped as if driving a stake through a vampire's heart. That was how it felt. Like driving a stake through the heart of the undead thing that his marriage had become.
Climaxing, she sank her teeth in his shoulder and shuddered uncontrollably.
It wasn't passionate, but as least he had climaxed. For once.
"You came!" she whispered, giving the word a slutty inflection.
"Miracles never cease," he said dryly.
Her smile was a dim porcelain glow in the wan light. "Admit it. It was wonderful."
"Shattering," he said, disengaging.
As he rolled over, she doused the bedroom light and blew the candles out. She was humming. It was some mindless Barry Manilow song he detested.
But at least it was over.
As he waited for sleep to come, he smelled a pungent odor. It was her. But it reminded him of something else. The sexiest smell in the entire world.
The smell of ripped and gutted fish.
It wouldn't let him sleep. He prayed for sleep, but the tuna smell in his nostrils was like scented cotton.
He waited until her snoring filled the room before throwing off the bed covers and digging his feet into his slippers.
He padded into the den and turned on the computer. The paneled walls were adorned with schooner prints. A varnished pine plaque over the monitor had a legend burned into it by a soldering iron: From Sea To Sea.
The system went through its interminable sign-on cycles, and finally he accessed his e-mail via the service.
There was no message from the one who haunted his thoughts. It had been nearly a month. Where was she?
The cellular telephone in his briefcase buzzed. Snapping it open, he lifted it to his face and spoke. "Yes?"
"Commodore."
"Go ahead."
"We had another inconvenient encounter."
"Details, please."
"A U.S. vessel in the Nose. We were conducting routine truffle operations, and the illegal spotted the Hound on his fish-finding sonar. We had to take action."
"Vessel status?"
"Scuttled."