Remo grinned. "Like it or lump it."
Chiun shot him a withering look, then his face brightened. "Do you have turbot?" he asked the proprietor.
"Sure."
"I will take a pound of your best turbot. For I have heard that fierce wars have been waged over its singular taste, yet I have never tasted it before now."
"It's like halibut."
"Halibut is an acceptable fish. It is better than oily mackerel or bony alewife."
Remo was looking down the rows of fish fillets. His eye fell on a bulge-eyed, blubber-lipped blue fish speared by a white plastic sign on which was written a name in green Magic Marker.
"Wolf fish. What's that?"
"It's good."
"Not with that face," growled Remo. His eye fell on a short-bodied reddish fish with very scared eyes.
"Scup?"
"It's real popular down south," said the proprietor, setting Remo's wrapped shark on the counter, then carefully wrapping up Chiun's turbot.
When his shark was rung up, Remo said, "Since when is shark almost ten dollars a pound?"
"Since fish became scarce."
Reluctantly Remo paid the bill. Together he and the Master of Sinanju walked out of the shop.
"This shark ought to last me a few days," Remo said.
"You will cook it yourself," Chiun warned.
"Anything to keep the wenches out of my waters."
BACK AT CASTLE SINANJU, the phone was ringing.
"Hey! Somebody answer that!" Remo shouted as he stepped in.
"It is same man who called before," shouted down Chiun's nameless housekeeper from the top floor.
Dropping his fish on the counter, Remo grabbed up the telephone.
Harold Smith's voice was hoarse and haggard. "We have an urgent situation developing in the North Atlantic."
"What's that?" asked Remo.
"The Coast Guard cutter Cayuga has been detained by Canadian Coast Guard gunboats."
"What did they do wrong?"
"I do not know, but if what I fear is true, the United States is now at war."
"War? War with whom?"
"That is what you must find out. Fly to St. John's, Newfoundland, immediately. The Cayuga is under Canadian tow, and that appears to be their ultimate destination."
"Sure. Once I wolf down a slab of shark."
"Now," said Smith.
"I'll eat it raw on the way. Without shark I doubt if I can make it through the flight."
Chapter 24
Lieutenant Sandy Heckman would never have fallen for it, but the Canadian Coast Guard captain was so damn polite.
She should have known better. She cursed herself a blue streak when she realized how badly she had screwed up, but by then she was in over her head and the bubbles were breaking the surface.
She had dropped off the two crazies from the National Bureau of Fisheries, or whatever it was. And promptly turned around before her commander could stop her.
This was going to be her last patrol. There was no getting around it. She had in the heat of action sunk a foreign sub in open waters. It was selfdefense, but as soon as the gurry hit the screws she knew it was back to halibut patrol off Alaska or worse, stripped of her commission and set adrift among the landsmen.
Either way she wanted one last rescue.
Off New Brunswick she was searching for the missing Jeannie I out of Bar Harbor, Maine, when a Canadian fisheries-patrol boat showed up, its decks thick with green-uniformed inspectors from the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans.
They hailed her in very polite terms. "Can we speak to you a moment, Lieutenant?"
"Is this about the submarine?"
"Again, please?"
Maybe it was the brisk tone of his voice or the natty uniform. But Sandy Heckman fell for it hook, line and sinker. Especially line.
"Never mind. Helmsman, throttle down and prepare to make her fast to the cutter."
"Aye, sir."
She had her misgivings, but their politeness had disarmed her completely. Back in her Pacific days, she used to lull drug runners into letting themselves be boarded by just such casual words, crisply spoken. She had taken a course in being crisp and disarming at the same time. Truthfully she'd rather threaten and, if necessary, fire across their damn bows. But drug smugglers tended to be better armed that the average CG cutter, so she'd learned to do it by the book.
Besides, these guys were Canadians. The last oceangoing power they wanted to screw with was the U.S. of A.
The Canadian patrol boat bumped against the Cayuga and a boarding gangplank was laid between the two vessels. Three fisheries inspectors stepped aboard, flashing diffident smiles and announcing that the Cayuga has being seized in the name of the crown.
"This is about the submarine, isn't it?" Sandy asked in a tight voice.