White Water

The answer never came. There came a sound like shattering glass, followed by the gritty settling of a particles.

It froze time. Anwar Anwar-Sadat started to look up, but his gaze never reached his mistress's masked face. With a savage gesture she kicked Anwar-Sadat and the fisheries minister aside and stepped past them, snarling, "Avert your eyes, supplicants."

Like a black snake uncoiling, her whip slithered to the floor. She snapped it up and demanded in a harsh, shrill voice, "Who is this who invades my domain?"

A squeaky voice returned, "Who is this who demands such answers of us?"

"I am Mistress Kali."

"If you are Mistress Kali," returned the squeaky voice, "then you will recognize my companion, who is sometimes called Shiva the Destroyer."

Hearing that interesting comment, Anwar Anwar-Sadat couldn't help but peek. He turned his head.

Chapter 35

Lieutenant Sandy Heckman had interdiction patrol. They were calling her the heroine of the Battle of Sable Island Banks. There was talk of a promotion.

Now she was in the waters west of the Grand Banks' infamous Nose trying to protect U.S. fishermen as they plundered cod from Canadian waters.

Not that there would be any stopping them.

It would have been simple in the past. Show up in force and seize their vessels. But these fishermen had tasted combat. They had defeated the Canadian Coast Guard. They would not be denied. They wanted to fish, so the orders from Cape Cod were to let them fish. It was, politically speaking, a way to pressure Ottawa into capitulating.

Sandy didn't care about Ottawa. After the skirmish was over, there would be even less fish in the North Atlantic, pushing the stock-rebounding process further into the next century.

The trouble was, the U.S. fishing fleet was firing warning shots at its own Coast Guard.

Keeping a respectful distance, watching the sonar scope because there was nothing more constructive to do, Sandy spotted a familiar metallic underwater contact.

It was chasing a school of flatfish that looked like tilapia, one of the underutilized species that used to be by-catch but was reclassified as edible now.

"Helmsman, stay with this contact."

"Aye, sir."

The Cayuga moved smartly to a southwesterly heading.

Sandy jammed her pugnacious nose to the greenish scope. "It's got to be one of those damn torpedoes again. I want to see what it does and where it goes."

The Cayuga slammed through the heaving swells like a flashing white terrier.

Chapter 36

Remo Williams folded his arms as the Master of Sinanju asked the blond woman in the dominatrix rig if she recognized him.

"I do not," she said, continuing her advance. Snapping her whip back, she let fly.

The whip snaked up and out.

Remo read it coming. To his trained eyes, it wasn't even a blur, just a sluggish, uncoiling serpent of gleaming black leather. It snapped at a lock of his hair. Remo tilted his head. The lock escaped chopping.

The whip came back, and this time she swung it broadside.

Remo stepped in, met the black tentacle halfway and took hold of it. He spun. The whip, still traveling in his grasp, came flying out of its owner's grasp.

Mistress Kali stepped back in shock, looked at his empty hands and his pale features, then she turned a smoldering red under her yellow silk domino mask.

"You dare!"

"We dare all the time," said Remo casually.

"I am Mistress Kali!"

"Like the cat says, 'Big hairy deal.'"

"Defier! I slay you with my scorn."

Kali lunged. Remo reached out and took her by the throat. He squeezed. At once her face reddened, then purpled. Her black-nailed fingers clawed for his face. Remo held her off at arm's length.

"What do you say now, Little Father?" he asked Chiun as Kali tried in vain to claw the skin from his face.

Chiun frowned. "Her strength is only the strength of an ordinary person," he said quietly. "And she possessed but two arms."

"Right. That means she's not Kali."

"I am Kali!" Mistress Kali snapped, taking another swipe at Remo's eyes.

"Butt out. We're talking about another Kali," said Remo.

"I am she! I am the Black One. I am the Mother of all. He who eats, eats by me."

Chiun frowned. "She speaks the words of Kali."

"She's a high-priced hooker. That's all."

Chiun walked around the dominatrix whose shiny black body shook with impotent rage and hate.

"You do not recognize my son Remo?" he asked Mistress Kali.

Kali glared venomously at the Master of Sinanju.

"Look closer, shrieking one. Are his features known to you, you who call yourself by the hated name?" demanded Chiun.

Kali spit at the Master of Sinanju. Chiun evaded the expectoration with a graceful pirouette.

Reaching up, Chiun took her head in one hand and inexorably turned the eyes of Mistress Kali to face Remo. "Look deep. What do you see?" he commanded.

"I see a dead man!" Kali hissed. "Kneel before me or I will gnaw the skin from your bones."

Chiun shook her head. "You do not know my son?"

Kali glared more fiercely. But somewhere deep in her icy blue eyes flickered a different light. "I know..."

"Know what?" asked Remo.

"You..."

"Well, I don't know you," Remo returned.

"Are you certain, Remo?" demanded Chiun.

"Yeah. I'm-- Then Remo looked closer. He realized he wasn't looking at her face, but at the silk and the eyes they framed. Now he looked deeper. "Her eyes. There's something familiar about her eyes."

Chiun's voice grew sharp. "Are you certain?"

"Yeah. The eyes look familiar. But I can't place them."

"Your essence is remembering, not your brain. She is Kali. You must slay her, Remo."

"Let's see her face first," said Remo, releasing her neck. His fingers plucked at the yellow domino mask.

Mistress Kali turned into a tiger. She twisted, squirming, and one hand reached into small of her back.

It came back trailing a long scarf of pure golden silk.

"Remo!" Chiun cried. "Beware her strangling scarf!"

Remo, as usual, was too slow. Swift as he was, he was too slow. His mind was on her face and the mask over it.

The Master of Sinanju, ever vigilant, shook off his jade fingernail protector and plunged the gleaming nail beneath into Mistress Kali's unprotected throat. It sank in to the tip of the finger and withdrew before anyone could absorb the movement.

Mistress Kali shuddered on her feet. A gasp came from her open harridan mouth. Her eyes flew wide with shock.

She spoke a single breathy, incredulous word. "Remo?"

Then, eyes rolling to whites, she collapsed at their feet.

Remo was holding the domino mask in one hand. For a frozen moment, he stood there, not inhaling, not exhaling. His eyes, dark as the hollows of a skull, went sick.

"What happened? I never touched her," he said.

"I did," said Chiun, who held up the golden tail of silk. "Behold, for she was about to wrap her silken wiles about you."

"Chiun."

"What?"

"Tell me you didn't..."

"I did."

"You killed her," Remo said. His voice shrank with each utterance.

"She was a harlot and a demon in the flesh of a woman."

Remo swallowed. Only then did Chiun see the bone white aspect of his face. With his hollow eyes and his high cheekbones, Remo's face looked like a skull with a paper-thin coating of skin.

"She..."

"What is it, Remo?"

"She..." Remo swallowed hard. He knelt.

Mistress Kali lay in a crumpled heap. Her head rested on one pale, outflung arm, the golden hair covering her face like a feathery broken wing.

Carefully Remo raised the hair, brushing it back.

Chiun looked down, eyes narrowing.

The features showed in profile, showed in death. They were chiseled and firm. One eye lay open in shock. The black lips were parted to show the dead white teeth.

Remo stared at her profile for the longest minute of eternity.

Then, face twisting in pain, Remo looked up. Looked up at the Master of Sinanju. Bitter tears started from his eyes. His voice was a shocked croak. "Chiun. You killed her. You killed Jilda. You killed the mother of my little girl."

And the Master of Sinanju, the force of the truth striking him fully, stepped back as if he'd been dealt a physical blow.

Chapter 37

The sonar's metallic contact led the Cayuga to Stellwagon Bank, a closed fishing area off Massachusetts.

"If that's a torpedo, I'm Davy Jones's favorite hooker," Sandy said grimly. "It's herding those fish. Every time they veer south, it changes course and chases them north. Someone's controlling it."

After an hour of cat and mouse, Sandy got an inkling what that someone was.

A big gray factory ship. It lumbered along on a course generally parallel to their own.

She went up to the flying bridge and used her binoculars.

"Circle that tub," she ordered.

The Cayuga circled the wallowing factory ship until the name appeared on the bow.

Hareng Saur

MONTREAL

"Sparks, inform Cape Cod we have a French-Canadian factory ship in our waters and ask what should be done about it."

"Aye, sir."

As she waited for a reply, Sandy saw something that seemed incredible.

The Cayuga was still in pursuit of the mysterious torpedo.

Suddenly the torpedo accelerated, surfaced and began to home in on the Hareng Saur.

"Looks like our next course of action will be decided for us," she said.

The torpedo, trailing a foamy wake, closed with the gray ship.

Sandy had her glasses trained on the probable point of impact. Amidships of the big boat.

She saw the wake close in. There was no way to avoid a direct hit. The Hareng Saur seemed completely oblivious to the threat. The tiny white figures on her deck were going about their business in a brisk but unpanicked fashion.

At the last possible minute, a panel opened just at the waterline as if to devour the incoming device.

The torpedo struck. Sandy flinched inwardly. But there was no explosion. The torpedo just scooted into the black aperture.

The black port closed up, and all was quiet except for the sudden heaving of fish nets overboard.

"What the hell happened?" the helmsman wondered aloud, coming out of his protective crouch.

"The torpedo herded the fish to the ship," she said. "Damn it. They're chasing our fish into their waters and stealing them. This is environmental piracy on the open seas!"

Chapter 38

Remo stood up. He was trying to compose his features. His shoulders shook. His fists made two mallets of bone.

"Chiun..." His voice was soft, not accusing, but numb with shock. "Chiun, it's Jilda. Jilda's dead."

"I know," said the Master of Sinanju, eyes round and wide.

Remo looked around the room. "If Jilda's here, where's Freya?"

"I do not know. But I vow that I will find for you your daughter, Remo. I will atone for this grave error I have committed."

"That's why I recognized her. It was Jilda. Jilda..."

Remo looked back at the dead woman he had loved many years ago. His eyes seemed to retreat into his skull-like countenance. Then he asked a question. "What was she doing here? Why was she dressed like that?"

The Master of Sinanju surveyed the room. His eyes fell upon two kneeling men, one nude and one not. "They will know," he intoned.

With determined steps Chiun strode up to the cowering pair. "Speak! Why did you kneel before that woman?"

"She was Mistress Kali," Gilbert Houghton said, as if that explained everything.

"I loved her, although to speak the unvarnished truth I only met her just this day," Anwar Anwar-Sadat admitted. "is she truly ...dead?"

"She is no more, popinjay," Chiun said severely.

Remo had joined them. Reaching down, he seized the Egyptian by his collar and dragged him to his feet. His eyes were hot. His voice hotter.

"We're looking for a little girl. Blond. About twelve.

"Thirteen," Chiun corrected. "Golden of hair and blue of eye. Like her mother, who lies here dead. Where is she?"

"I know nothing of any little girl," the Secretary-General of the UN protested.

Remo found the leash with his toe, dug under it and snapped his foot. The free end of the leash whipped into his waiting hand. He tugged hard.

Fisheries Minister Gilbert Houghton was yanked off his hands. "Urrkk," he said.

"What about you?"

"I have seen no little girl and I have been Mistress Kali's slave for many weeks now."

"I am crushed, desolated," said Anwar Anwar-Sadat. "I thought she loved only me. And now she is dead."

"She never loved you. But she scorned me. I was the object of her scorn," Houghton snarled.

"Both of you shut up," Remo ordered. Turning to Chiun, he said, "I'm going to find Freya if I have to tear this place apart brick by brick."

"And I will help," vowed Chiun, girding his skirts.

"But first we deal with these two."

"We are instructed to intimidate, not dispatch these two."

"Accidents happen," Remo growled. "You got that one. I'll take the other."

Remo stood the Canadian fisheries minister up against a wall while Chiun immobilized the UN Secretary-General with a painful twist of the Egyptian's ear.

"You're behind all this?" Remo accused Gilbert Houghton.

"I admit nothing."

"And this is about fish?"

"No comment."

"That's your answer? No comment?"

Gil Houghton gulped like a goldfish. "No comment."

Sweeping his hands out, Remo brought them together with a sudden loud clap. Gilbert Houghton's head happened to be caught between his palms in the thunderous instant Remo's palms came together.

When Remo stepped back, hands returning to his sides, Gil Houghton's head sat on his neck like a sunfish's. Flat with eyes set on opposite sides of what had been a round mammalian skull.

The surprised whites filled with blood, and the pursed lips seemed to be kissing empty air-then he pitched forward, dead.

Remo turned.

The Master of Sinanju had one sandal on the Egyptian's heaving chest. Anwar Anwar-Sadat attempted a protest. Chiun quieted it with a sudden pressure of his foot.

While Anwar Anwar-Sadat unwittingly watched his last breath leave his dry, open mouth, Chiun calmly took hold of his dusky mandibles and lifted his head off his spinal cord.

It came off with a popping suck of a sound like a head off a plastic doll. As simply as that.

Tossing the head in a corner, the Master of Sinanju faced his pupil in expectant silence. His chin lifted.

"It wasn't your fault," Remo said.

Chiun bowed his aged head. "I accept responsibility for my rash actions."

"You were just trying to protect me," Remo said distractedly.

"And I have wounded you deeply, for which I am deeply regretful."

"If we find Freya okay, it will be all right. Let's find Freya. Just find Freya and everything will be forgiven."

Remo's cracking voice told the Master of Sinanju that their future together hinged on finding alive the daughter Remo had lost once and could not bear to lose again.

"I will not fail you, my son," Chiun vowed.

Carefully Remo went over to the splayed body of Jilda of Lakluun and carried it to a stone shelf that ran along one wall. He laid it on the ledge, arranged the leather-clad limbs modestly and touched her gleaming hair briefly.

Then they went in opposite directions.

Under their feet the gurgle and splash of troubled waters came intermittently. The flooring was a continuation of the anteroom floor. It was like a hard black mirror that reflected everything above it, yet it seemed ready to pull them down into an abyss blacker than universal night.

Remo's sensitive ears turned this way and that, hunting sounds.

Somewhere deep in the building he heard a constant clicking. It came in bursts and spurts, yet was steady as a dry hail.

"This way," Remo said, looking for a door.

He found not a door but a narrow niche in a wall behind a heavy wall hanging.

"What do you make of this?" Remo asked, snapping off the hanging.

Chiun examined it. "A passage."

"Too small for a grown-up."

"Perhaps it is meant for a dwarf. Or a child. This was constructed for the use of one who wishes to remain undisturbed."

Remo felt the edge of the stone. "We can chop through this easy."

Chiun indicated the arch over them. "Look, Remo. A keystone. If you break the sides, it will all coming tumbling down."

Remo sniffed the cool air coming from the niche.

"I smell someone in there."

Chiun said, "I, too."

Setting himself, Remo inserted his shoulder into the niche. He drew in his breath, then let it out very deeply until his rib cage all but collapsed. It was still too thick. He blew out more air until his lungs were like two empty balloons.

Then, with infinite care so he didn't break any ribs or crush his own internal organs, Remo insinuated himself into the niche. It was a slow, careful task. His cartilage crackled under the stress. Like a snake he slithered through, getting halfway and concentrating to keep the air from rushing back into his hungry lungs.

Chiun called soft encouragement. "You will succeed because failure is too bitter to taste, my son."

Halfway in, Remo paused, then with a jerk, he threw himself all the way in. He disappeared into the gloom.

Chiun called softly, "Wait!"

But there was no answer.

Quickly the Master of Sinanju expelled all the air from his own lungs and attempted to duplicate the feat of his pupil, whom he had taught many things but not the dangerous technique he had just witnessed.

The best Masters are those who devise their own skills, Chiun thought with a bitter pride.

THE CORRIDOR WASN'T as narrow as the niche entrance, but it wasn't comfortably wide. Remo negotiated it by walking sideways. That put him at a disadvantage if there were traps or snares lying in wait.

Under his feet he sensed vague electrical disturbances. Water purled. But the ebony floor seemed solid.

Abruptly the stone corridor right-angled, and Remo went with it. It opened farther and the ticking, like incessant hail, came more clearly.

For all the world it sounded like someone keying a computer. On second thought Remo decided it sounded like two people at two keyboards.

Well, whoever they were, they had better have some answers to the only important question in his universe ....

Chapter 39

Harold Smith got the word from Cape Cod air station as soon as it was received.

The Cayuga had made contact with a Canadian factory ship, Hareng Saur.

Smith read the name and blinked. He spoke passable French, a relic of his OSS days in France.

Hareng Saur sounded vaguely familiar to him. He input the name into his computer and accessed the automatic French-language-conversion program.

Up came the name Red Herring and an etymology of the phrase.

Suspicion flickered across Smith's patrician face. There was no such fish as a red herring. It was a figure of speech. One that was exclusive to English, he saw. There were no red herrings in the French language, real or figurative. Thus, no French-named vessel would be called the Red Herring any more than a French submarine would be christened Proud to be Frogs.

Smith got on the phone with Coast Guard Station Cape Cod just in time to hear a follow-up report straight from the commander there.

"My people say it's releasing some kind of fish chasing torpedo. This is definitely a hostile act," the base commander said.

"I am ordering the Hareng Saur be boarded, detained and searched," said Smith.

"Will do, sir," said the commander, who thought he was talking to Coast Guard area headquarters in Boston.

Smith hung up and returned to his system. A torpedo that herded fish. If such a device existed, perhaps he could discover it on the World Wide Web.

WHEN LIEUTENANT HECKMAN received her orders she said, "What the hell? We can't board a boat that size. They've got us outcrewed. Probably ten to one."

"Maybe we can fake them out," suggested her helmsman.

"How's that?"

"Call in a Coast Guard air strike."

"CG doesn't have air-strike capability."

"Maybe they don't know that."

"Good thinking." Taking up the mike, Sandy began chanting, "Attention, Hareng Saur. This is the CGC Cayuga. You are in violation of the Magnunson Act and are ordered to have to and submit to boarding or be sunk."

There was no answer from the Hareng Saur.

Then the factory ship launched a torpedo.

"What are the chances that a fish-chasing torpedo has a warhead?" Sandy wondered aloud, her eyes on the incoming wake.

"The last one blew up on command," her helmsman reminded.

"That was only a self-destruct charge."

"TNT is TNT!"

"Evasive!" Sandy ordered, then grabbed something solid.

The Cayuga went into extreme evasive maneuvers, and the torpedo ran after it like a hungry dog.

"It's gaining!" the helmsman roared.

"Then turn about and ride into its teeth," Sandy flung back.

"Are you crazy? Sir!"

"Do it!"

As the Cayuga heeled into the teeth of the torpedo, Sandy Heckman manned the sixteen-inch gun mounted on the foredeck and zeroed in on its bubbling nose.

Shells began heaving. The first one sent up a chopping uprush of water. That gave her the range. Her second shot struck just ahead, and the torpedo flashed through the turbulent water unscathed.

"Third time's the charm," muttered Sandy, who fired with careful precision, one eye shut, her pink tongue nipped between her neat white teeth.

The torpedo blew up with a force and a roar that settled the question once and for all. It was an antiship torpedo.

No more torpedoes came out of the Hareng Saur.

Twenty minutes later the skies were full of screaming white Falcon jets.

"Last chance, Hareng Saur!" Sandy warned. "Surrender or sink and swim for it. Last I heard, the water temperature was a relaxing thirty-one degrees."

The white flag was run up, and the rails became packed with sailors with lifted hands and blue faces.

"I'll bet my sea legs those are fleurs-de-lis on their damn faces," Sandy murmured as the Cayuga came alongside the towering gray factory ship.

Chapter 40

Remo came to a door. It was like a frozen sheet of turquoise water. The clicking was coming from the other side. He looked back. No sign of Chiun. But he couldn't wait. The soft pad of sandals came. Chiun was not far behind. Fine. He could catch up.

Remo moved to the door. He saw it was split down the center.

Touching it, he had expected the two panels to part for him like an electric door. There were no handles or buttons. It had to be electrically operated.

But the doors remained firmly shut.

Remo pressed both hands to the panels. He tried to peer in. There was something or someone on the other side. He could hear the unbroken keying.

Using his fingertips, he dug into the seam between the two door halves. He found purchase, and exerted opposing pressure.

The doors came apart like stiff curtains. Remo jammed them into their wall grooves and stepped in before whoever was on the other side could react.

The room was square with brick walls. There was a table. On the table sat two computer monitors side by side. Nearby were other monitors, their screens glowing.

Seated before them, her back to him, was a young woman whose visible hair was a cloud of golden filaments.

Remo froze.

Whoever she was, she seemed oblivious to him. He could see her arms spread out on either side of the oversize chair back. One went to a keyboard attached to the right-hand monitor. The other expertly worked the keyboard of the left-hand monitor.

Two monitors were being worked simultaneously.

Remo could read them both.

The left hand was typing in French.

The right typed something completely different in Cyrillic Russian. Two hands, one mind, simultaneously typing in two languages. Remo felt the hair on his suddenly chilly forearms lift.

Then he noticed the great mound of clay that sat on the desk, looming over the seated figure like a spider weaving a web. It looked like a statue of Kali, but the arms were many and malformed. Some tiny as a baby's arms, others adult sized. Some fingerless. Others fisted in defiance. It gazed down with a heavy face that was twisted and evil.

And with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, Remo asked, "Freya, is that you?"

Both pairs of fingers froze in midword. Leaving off their work, they withdrew, and siowly the sunnyhaired figure in the chair rotated to face him.

Remo's eyes stayed on the crown of hair, then the profile as it came around. As the full features revealed themselves, Remo was caught on the deep brown eyes he had not seen in what seemed like decades.

He swallowed. "Freya?"

She smiled. Her smile was as sunny as her hair. "Hello, Daddy. You found me."

Dropping to one knee, Remo said, "Freya?"

And two hands met his. Their fingers entwined. Remo felt their warmth. Then they constricted like talons of slim, hard bone, and another pair of hands came up from her lap to snap a yellow silk scarf over his head and around his neck.

"You killed my mother!" she shrieked. And the silk scarf jerked left with irresistible force ....

Chapter 41

Harold Smith received the report that the Hareng Saur had been boarded without incident as he was reading through a web site of a Russian company that was offering a device called the Acoustic Fish Concentrator on the international market.

After searching the World Wide Web for everything from "Fish" to "Fisheries" without success, in frustration he had typed in "Torpedo," and it just popped up as if by magic.

Based on old Soviet antisubmarine-warfare technology, and operating by sonic waves, the AFC was alleged to drive fish of some thirty-seven varieties into or from any waters the operator desired. Radio controlled, it was equipped with remote TV cameras to allow for remote control and operations.

In that simple discovery Harold Smith understood perhaps ninety percent of the activities of the Hareng Saur and the Fier D'Etre des Grenouilles. The Canadians were herding food fish from international waters and into their own. From the Santo Fado to the Ingo Pungo, the sinkings of ships were designed to conceal their operation and discourage competition for those same fish. And the blame was to be laid squarely on Quebec.

The whys and hows were clear. Now all that remained was the settling of the whos behind it.

Chapter 42

The Master of Sinanju felt his rib cage pressing against his beating heart and willed his heart to be still.

It was difficult, for it raced. Even with his confidence in his pupil, Remo, it raced.

The sides of the stone niche were like a vise that constrained lungs and heart both from performing their proper functions.

But Remo had shown the Master of Sinanju the way, and as Reigning Master, Chiun could not be defeated by so crude a barrier. Especially when Remo was burdened with the gross rib cage of a Westerner.

But it was not a question of holding the breath or constricting the ribs. His kimono silks were delicate. To rip them was to lose the precious garment. It would be unseemly. So the Master of Sinanju insinuated himself delicately, knowing that once he achieved the other side, there would be no stopping him.

Down the dank corridor came a cry. It was high and shrill. The words, twisted and echoing, were difficult to make out.

The voice was not Remo's voice. A female. A harridan voice, ugly and biting.

Nearly all the way through, Chiun lifted up on his sandaled toes. This straightened his spine, and the elastic cartilage contracted.

Thus straight, he skinned the last few inches inward, preserving his silks and his dignity.

On the other side Chiun drew in a recharging breath. One would be all that was needed, then on fleet feet, he moved down the stone passage, taking the turn when he came to it.

Under his feet he sensed strange charges and disturbances. He paid them no mind. The floor here was solid stone.

After the last turn, his hazel eyes fell upon a brick-walled room illuminated by twin computer terminals of amber.

Remo stood there, his back straight. He was facing a seated person.

With an sharp intake of breath, the Master of Sinanju saw the weaving delicate hands with their banana yellow nails.

And he saw the scarf of yellow silk that was pressed tight to the back of Remo's head.

"No!" he cried, leaping ahead.

His long nails slipped up, under the silk, and with a snap and a snarl it parted.

Remo staggered back. Chiun took fistfuls of his T-shirt and spun him out of the way. Strangely Remo didn't resist. He seemed without will.

"You will not have my son!" Chiun said, taking a careful step forward.

And a voice at once mature and not returned, "You are too late. I own him now."

And though the lines of her white face were twisted and constricted into an unpleasant rictus, the Master of Sinanju saw that the face before him-her four arms waving, two holding the torn ends of the limp yellow scarf-was a face he knew well.

She was older. But there was no mistaking those brown eyes.

Freya, daughter of Remo and Jilda of Lakluun.

And behind her a great monster of clay in the shape of Kali the Devourer.

Every iota of energy called for a death blow. But to kill the demon Kali was to extinguish the life of Remo's only daughter.

His gleaming nails retreating into the sleeves of his kimono, the Master of Sinanju made his face severe. "Congratulations, unclean one. You have selected a host I dare not kill."

"Begone, old man," said the voice that was Freya, but held an echo of age-old evil.

Chiun's eyes went to Remo, standing off to one side, dark eyes stunned, face wavering between conflicting emotions. He was seeing and not seeing at the same time.

Chiun addressed the avatar of Kali. "I cannot kill you, it is true. But that does not mean I cannot subdue you, or cast you out of the innocent host you control."

Freya stood up. Her four arms extended outward, like the hands of a mad clock. She was a young woman, Chiun saw. No longer a child but not quite a woman yet.

"Go while you still stand upright, " she hissed.

Retreating a step, he intoned, "I go. But I take with me my son."

"Go, but leave my father, who I knew would come, but not so soon."

"I will not leave without Remo," Chiun insisted.

"You should ask my father if this pleases him or displeases him, " Freya-Kali suggested, her eyes and lips as venomous as her words.

Chiun turned.

Remo still stood off in the shadows, his eyes mere glints in the hollows of his skull. His face was a thing that couldn't be read.

"My son. Speak to me...."

The words issued, wrapped in quiet pain. "Chiun. It's Freya."

"No. Not Freya who speaks to you. But the spirit of Kali."

"Bull!" Remo spit, snapping to anger. "I don't believe it. Not to Freya. Nobody does that to my daughter."

"Believe. For it is true."

Remo took two halting steps forward. He raised pleading, helpless hands while his eyes turned to avoid the four-armed thing that dominated the room.

"Chiun, I don't understand any of this. Help me."

"There is nothing I can do," the Master of Sinanju said sadly. "I cannot slay this thing with two souls, one innocent, one wicked. For to slay the wicked would bring death to the innocent. She is of your blood and still but a child. Therefore she is inviolate. We must retreat to a place of safety."

Remo made fists of stubbornness. "I'm not going anywhere. Not without my daughter."

And the voice of Freya-Kali intoned coldly. "You will remain, flesh of my borrowed flesh. The other must go. "

Chiun regarded Remo without emotion. "Remo, you must make an exceedingly difficult choice. To come with me means safety. To remain is peril beyond anything you can imagine."

Remo's dark eyes flicked to the stunted, four-armed creature draped in yellow silks. "She won't hurt me. She's my daughter," he said.

"She is a thing with four arms and terrible lusts. In her mind you are the lover of her past. She seeks to mate with you. To dance the Tandava."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Remo said hotly.

"The Tandava is the dance that will end the universe and all who dwell in it. You. Me. And your hostage daughter."

"Crap. Look, stop trying to confuse me. I have to stay. I have to work this out."

"Remo..." Chiun began.

"You have your answer," Kali hissed through painted yellow lips. "Now take your life to a safe place and forget all you have seen and heard. For while you dare not lay a hand on my innocent flesh, I can slay you with a glare."

Chiun hesitated. Turning to Remo, he bowed once, very carefully. "I leave."

Remo hesitated. "Maybe that's the way to go," he said uncertainly. "Maybe we can work this out."

Chiun's voice skittered close to fear. "Do not succumb to her charms, my son. Above all do not succumb to her charms."

"For Christ's sake, Chiun. She's my daughter."

"She is your enemy. And she has you in a thrall even I cannot break." And with those sad words, the Master of Sinanju walked backward out of the room, not turning his back on his foe, nor taking his eyes from her hypnotically waving arms.

Once in the corridor, he moved swiftly. Racing to the niche, he prepared himself as before and slipped back into the main chamber. It was easier this time. His silks did not snag.

No sooner had his sandals touched the black flooring than as if touched by magic, they cleared.

And below him the Master of Sinanju saw the reason for the constant purl and mutter of the waters below.

Eyes looked back up at him with dull, hungry expectation.

And as if touched by an invisible hammer, the suddenly transparent floor shattered like glass, and the Master of Sinanju was precipitated into the bitterest waters he ever knew ....

Chapter 43

Sandy Heckman was talking to the captain of the Hareng Saur with the assistance of her pocket French dictionary.

"Either you speak the worst, most mangled French imaginable or you aren't French-Canadian," she accused.

"Up yars" the captain said at last.

"A Newfie! You're a Newfie!"

"I have nathing to say," the captain said "What has begun cannat be stapped naw."

"In that case consider yourself a prisoner of war."

"I cansider myself a hastage to environmental pharisees," the captain spat.

"Consider yourself that, too," said Sandy, who led the search of the ship.

On the upper decks they found what appeared to be a bustling factory ship busily converting freshcaught fish into fillets and blocks designed to be frozen and made into fish sticks. Sandy remembered that the creation of the frozenfish-stick market in the early fifties had begun the pillage of the North Atlantic of cod and, haddock-a market Canadian companies had soon dominated.

When she reached the lower decks, she forgot all about fish sticks.

The door was marked Torpedo Room in English and French. Inside they found two types of torpedoes, explosive and the bullet-headed fish chasers. There were compressed-air tubes to blow them out and recover them again.

The torpedo crew looked at them with blank amazement, then surrendered sullenly at the point of M-16s.

The captain was dragged into the torpedo room and a choice of spilling his guts or being sent through the slime line where fish were gutted en masse on a conveyor belt.

He elected to spill the guts he could most afford to spill. "We call them Truffle Hounds, for the way they send the fish where we want them to go," he said, pointing to three torpedoes sitting in cradles.

"Is this a Quebec operation?" Sandy demanded.

"Da I sound like a damn frag to ya?"

"Not exactly," Sandy admitted. "Who gives you your orders?"

"The cammadare."

"You mean 'commodore'?"

"That is what I have said, cammadare," he said stiffly.

"Canadian navy?"

"Na. Fisheries Minister Gilbert Houghton, who is the bright lad who gathered up all us poor, out-of-work fisherman and gave us back our birthright, which is to fish. That is all we were doing, fishing."

"What about the sunken fishing boats and their lost crews?"

The captain looked as guilty as a lobsterman caught holding someone else's trap. "We were just fallawing arders in this little scrum."

"Scrum? Is that a fish?"

"Na, a scrum is what you call a set-to. We been scrumming with Yank fishermen since before Confederation."

"Well, you can tell it to a UN high commission, or whoever is going to hang your sorry behinds from a rusty yardarm."

"I request palitical asylum!"

"For what?"

"Are ya daft, woman? So I can get back to fishing as soon as passible. For I don't much care if I fish for pharisees or federals. Just so lang as I can fish. It's all I know."

"You fisherman won't be satisfied until you've landed the last pilchard in Paradise."

"Not even then," the captain of the Hareng Saur said solemnly.

Chapter 44

The crystalline shattering sounds penetrated to the room where Remo stood looking with dull, questioning eyes at his daughter.

It had been a long time, almost ten years, Remo realized with a start. The little girl he knew so briefly had changed. Her baby fat was almost gone. Her brilliant eyes were the only link to the innocent face he remembered. But they held a different light now.

Then came the crashing. Remo turned. "What's that?" he asked worriedly.

"The old man has been thwarted. He is angry and is taking his anger out on my temple. It does not matter. He will break some things, then he will depart, never to trouble us again."

"You sure?"

"I am Mistress Kali."

"Jilda said she was Mistress Kali."

"I allowed her to think she was. For to manipulate my supplicants I needed a surrogate. I bent her to my will, made her think the thoughts I wished her to think and only those thoughts. She made an excellent domina, for in dominating, she had submitted her will to my own. "

"She's dead," Remo said hollowly.

"She no longer matters, any more than a puppet matters. Any more than our temporary, mortal flesh matters. "

"She was your mother! What's wrong with you?"

"l have achieved the thing l have planned for these long years. Do you not remember, Remo, the last time we met?"

"Sure. It was in Sinanju. You were a little girl then."

"No, you fool! Do not address my host. Speak to Mistress Kali, who has yearned for you for aeons. "

A hand reached up to touch Remo's face. Remo recoiled.

"Red One, remember me with your ageless soul, not with your mortal mind .... Separated we have been drawn together again. Apart, we will rejoin. Two, we shall fuse into one ...."

"Get away from me! I don't want to talk to you. I want to talk to Freya."

"I am she and she is me. We are one. Soon you will be one with Shiva, who is my consort .... "

"I'm not Shiva."

"You do not remember the last time, in Arabia? We danced the Tandava but were thwarted. You slew my last host. "

Remo frowned. His memories of that time were vague. He had put most of them out of his mind ....

"I will not make the mistake I made then," Kali went on. "We inhabit temples of mere meat and bone. It is time to step out of them. To step free into our true bodies .... " Her yellow-nailed hands began to wave and gesture provocatively before his hurt eyes. "When you possess four arms as do I, our lovemaking will be exquisite .... "

Her hands touched his chest and crept up to his throat. They felt cold. Alien. Inhuman.

In that moment Remo let out a bellow of fear and confusion.

And somewhere in that scream of pure pain, he heard the Master of Sinanju call out his name.

CHIUN, REIGNING MASTER of Sinanju, floated in warm water, his face a tight web of wrinkles.

About him the waters roiled.

The flat-headed body of Gilbert Houghton was the center of a boiling of tiny, voracious needle-toothed fish. They nipped and ripped at his dead flesh. In death his arms flopped with such abandon as to seem alive.

Nearby, in the pool that was fast turning pink and then scarlet with blood, the scheming Copt, Anwar Anwar-Sadat was likewise being denuded of all flesh.

Attacked from all sides, his separated head bobbed and rolled, the face turning ceilingward and back again in mad denial of its fate.

And as the feeding frenzy grew to a boil, the Master of Sinanju lifted his long-nailed fingers to spear and flay any and all of the meat-eating fish who dared approach.

But as many nails as he possessed, there were still more fish. And in the room of doom existed only walls and no floor.

Opening his bitter mouth, he called out his pupil's name.

REMO MOVED into reverse before the yellow talons found his throat.

A screech trailed after him as he went down the narrow corridor, a human blur, but he blocked it out.

Coming to the niche, he saw a vertical slice of bubbling red water and saw the Master of Sinanju floating, surrounded by arrowing bone white fish like tiny attack dogs snapping at anything they could.

Without slowing, Remo hit the niche with raised fists. Brick shattered and tumbled.

Remo dived through the rubble and into the water as the reverberant thunder of collapsing stone and mortar filled the building. Only then did he remember the Master of Sinanju's warning of a keystone. By then it was too late.

"Hang on, Little Father!"

Striking the water cleanly, Remo came up with two fistfuls of squirming fish. He squeezed. The fish extruded their innards from both ends. Dropping them, he grabbed two more.

Immediately, living fish attacked the helpless dead.

Chiun switched tactics and followed suit.

Together they squeezed, impaled, kicked and stunned any fish that dared approach with bared needle teeth.

Hungry as they were, the fish got the message. The survivors concentrated on the bodies of Canadian Minister of Fisheries Gilbert Houghton and UN Secretary-General Anwar Anwar-Sadat, which fast became floating lengths of raw, red bone that continued to be pecked at even as the voracious fish nipped and stripped them of cartilage.

"Piranha," said Remo.

"I would not eat a fish that eats me," Chiun said dismissively.

Then, still treading water, they looked at the niche. It was a tumble of broken stones. Settling dust made a film on the agitated water.

"Freya..." Remo whispered. "Don't tell me I've killed you ...."

IT TOOK TWO HOURS but they carefully heaved stone and brick until they uncovered the brick chamber in which Freya, daughter of Remo, had reached out to work the will of Kali, goddess of death.

A motionless fall of golden hair spilled out from under a tumble of rock.

Remo froze.

Beside him Chiun said, "Kali's final trap, my son. Even in victory, she has handed you bitter defeat."

Remo reached down and heaved up a stone. It went tumbling away. He threw off another. The air was choked with disturbed mortar dust.

When he exposed the body of his daughter, he gently turned it over. Placing one ear to her heart, he listened, his eyes squeezed almost shut. The tears starting. The pain only beginning.

Yet he heard a beat.

Parting her mouth, he wiped off the ghastly yellow lipstick and blew in an urgent breath. The chest inflated, then fell. Remo blew another breath. He got the same result.

"You can't die on me," Remo said, his voice twisting and churning. "You can't. I won't let you."

"The spirit of Kali has abandoned her," Chiun intoned. "Accept that blessing and mourn."

"Like hell," Remo snarled. "I'm not giving up. I'm not giving up. Come on, baby. Breathe. I can hear your heart beating. Breathe for Daddy. Breathe and I'll take you away from all this. Open your eyes and I'll take you to a safe place where no one will ever harm you. I swear. I swear I will."

And in his arms, his daughter gave a sharp little gasp. Dusty air was drawn into her open mouth and nostrils.

"Remo!" Chiun squeaked. "Look! She struggles. Her brave lungs crave air!"

"I see, I see," Remo said, bringing her pale face up to his.

Silently, grimly, he performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until he had breathed life back into the body of his only daughter. Her eyelids fluttered briefly, showing butterfly glimpses of the most beautiful eyes Remo had ever seen.

She murmured a soft "Daddy..."

"I'm here, baby."

Then she drifted off into recuperative sleep.

Without a word Remo Williams carried his Freya out of the building, over a path of broken stone where red bone floated and piranha darted for the last scraps of food.

He said nothing. Trailing after the Master of Sinanju was a silent ghost.

The RCMP car still waited for them. Remo dragged the Mountie from the trunk and placed Freya in the back seat.

Then he went back in for the body of Jilda of Lakluun while the Master of Sinanju stood guard, removing it from its protecting shelf.

No word passed between them all the way to the airport. None needed to. Both knew their destination.

There was a little trouble getting the sleeping Freya onto the Air Canada flight. Eventually airport security ran out of functioning Mounties, and the plane was cleared to depart.

IN THE SONORAN DESERT near Yuma, Arizona, Sunny Joe Roam, Chief of the Sun On Jo tribe, raced to meet the flight carrying his son, Remo. He got a flat and was in the middle of changing it when a Jeep Cherokee came roaring up the dusty trail and screeched to a halt.

He wasn't surprised to see his son, Remo, and the Master of Sinanju in the front seat. He stood up, all seven feet of lanky, sunburned rawhide.

"Howdy," he said in his taciturn way.

"Hail, cousin of my blood," said Chiun.

"Sorry I couldn't meet you at the airport. You can see the reason why."

"Got a favor to ask," said Remo, stepping out.

"Last time you asked me to do you a favor, you dumped off your no-account son."

"How's he doing?" Remo asked.

"He can ride, rope and chase white girls, but so far he isn't fit for much else. Still hurting in his soul, I reckon."

Remo got out and opened the back door. Out came a girl with the sunniest hair Sunny Joe Roam had ever seen.

"Well, this is his little sister," said Remo.

Sunny Joe took off his Stetson and wiped his rugged brow of sweat and surprise.

"You're a regular Johnny Appleseed in your way, aren't you, Remo?"

"I need to hide her," Remo said anxiously.

"For how long?"

"Don't know."

Sunny Joe hesitated.

Chiun spoke up, his voice grave. "She has endured things best left unsaid."

Sunny Joe looked at the girl with the deep brown eyes and at Remo. "Tell you what," he said at last, "I'm getting along in my years. You fix that flat for me and it's a deal."

They shook hands on it.

And while Remo changed the flat, Sunny Joe bent over his granddaughter. "What's your name, golden hair?"

She looked up at him with growing wonder. "Freya."

"What the heck kind of name is that?"

"Her mother named her," said Remo.

"Where is she?"

"Wrapped in a sheet in the trunk."

"Well, I guess we're about to have us a family reunion and a funeral all in one."

Turning to Chiun, Sunny Joe asked, "Should I be asking what all this is about?"

His eye going to Remo, busy at the tire, Chiun said quietly, "No. Do not ask. Do not ask ever."

THE BURIAL WAS SIMPLE. Words were spoken over a sandy grave in the shadow of Red Ghost Butte, and it was done. No marker was erected. No tears shed. There was too much shock for tears. Tears would come later. The sun went down on a profound silence of their souls, making the candelabra cactus cast long, streaky shadows of surrender.

After it was over, Remo went out into the red sandstone desert alone, and everyone understood they were not to follow.

THREE DAYS LATER, Remo returned, his face burned redder than Chiun had ever seen it.

Freya was letting her older brother, Winner, show her how to Indian-wrestle. Winner was burned red, and his hair was a paler, sun-faded version of Freya's golden locks. Otherwise they looked nothing alike.

"He's only half trying," Remo said to Chiun.

Chiun nodded.

A moment later Freya had Winner on his back and cursing the open sky.

Remo cracked a grin that was half amusement and half satisfaction. "I knew they'd get along."

"Only you, Remo Williams, would sire a son even a slip of a girl can best," Chiun sniffed.

"Maybe I had a daughter that just can't be beat. Looks to me like there's more Sun On Jo blood in her than him."

Chiun made a disapproving face, but his hazel eyes shone with veiled pride.

"Any sign of Kali while I was away?"

"No. The demon's spirit has found another vessel, from there to torment us another hour in a distant day."

"Been in touch with Smith?"

Chiun nodded. "The godless Canadians have sued for peace."

Remo looked away from the sight of Freya bending Winner's thumb out of joint. Winner howled. His ostrich-skin boot heels were beating the desert floor in agony.

"How'd that happen?"

"I informed Emperor Smith of the fates of the Copt and his fishmongering Canadian confederate. Smith informed the Eagle Throne, and the President shared this with the Lord of Canada. This was sufficient to chill Canadian lusts for war and fish. The seas are quiet once more now that good fishermen are not being hectored into greed."

"Good. I plan on staying here a little while and catching up on my kids."

"And I will dwell on my errors, which have wounded you deeply, my son," Chiun said dispiritedly.

"I buried the past out in the desert, Chiun. It's behind me. Forget about it. I loved Jilda a long time ago, but it wasn't supposed to be. Our lives didn't fit together. That's why she must have taken Freya to Canada. She thought it would be safer there and we'd probably never cross paths."

A warm desert breeze caught the wispy beard at the Master of Sinanju's chin. He nodded. "We will speak of this no more, then," he whispered.

And Remo went off to disentangle his children before one of them got his cocky bones bent into pretzels.