The boat had cost him thirty-seven thousand dollars—more than Humphrey had paid for his small bachelor’s home, back in Gainesville, when he went to work at U of F. It had wiped out three-quarters of his savings, but it was worth every dime for the freedom it gave him, the means of pursuing his lifelong desire.

  Not that Humphrey could pursue that dream alone, of course. He was too old for that, by far. No pirate he, with years of sea raiding behind him, muscles toned from trimming sails, swabbing decks and hand-to-hand combat. He had missed his chance, spent years in school as both student and teacher, before he ever dreamed that the buccaneers he idealized still existed in a modern world of jet planes, nuclear power and the information superhighway. It had come as a complete surprise, the single greatest shock and thrill of Humphrey’s life.

  He was sailing this day, off to pay a little visit, as it were, but he wasn’t sailing by himself. He knew the way by now—Kidd trusted him with that much, after all that he had done for the seagoing brotherhood—but Humphrey’s strength and health were not what they had been in younger days. Whenever he went off to visit his new friends, Kidd needed warning in advance, and he would send along a man or two for crew and company.

  This morning, waiting for him on the dock, were two of Kidd’s men whom Humphrey recognized, although they hadn’t previously pulled the escort duty. One was Pascoe, a stocky, balding sea dog in his late thirties, who shaved his scalp in defiance of the bare patch on top. He wore a tattoo of a grinning skull and crossbones on his chest, now covered by a denim work shirt with the sleeves cut off to show his burly, sunburned arms. The other was a skeletal rogue with greasy, shoulder-length hair, who called himself Finch. The long scar down his left cheek crinkled when he spoke and when he smiled—the latter event occasioned only by sporadic references to acts of bloodletting.

  “You’re late,” Finch said, as Humphrey came along the pier. The duffel bag he carried as his only luggage was slung across one shoulder.

  “No, I’m not.” Humphrey didn’t consult his wristwatch, knowing he was right on time. Finch always tried to pick an argument with anyone available, and it was best to put him in his place or simply ignore him. At the moment, Humphrey hoped he had done both.

  “Let’s get on with this,” Pascoe said. “We’re burning daylight.”

  Humphrey recognized the line but couldn’t place it. Was it from a John Wayne movie? Never mind. He climbed the gangway, taking his time about it, dispensing with any further pleasantries. The men Kidd sent to chaperon him on these little jaunts weren’t chosen for their winning personalities, nor were they meant to keep him entertained. Kidd never said as much, but Humphrey knew that even after all they’d been through, there was still suspicion in the pirate’s mind, a fear that Humphrey would betray him somehow, change his mind about their mutual arrangement and lead the authorities to Kidd’s lair. In that event, Humphrey knew, his payoff would be a swift death and a tumble overboard to feed the sharks, as befit any traitor.

  But that would never happen, Humphrey knew. He had no intention of betraying Kidd or the others. It had never crossed his mind, in fact. Why should it, when the whole arrangement had been his idea to start with? He had dreamed about this moment all his life, without imagining that it could ever really come to pass. It was a fantasy from childhood, carried over into the adult domain with no good reason to suspect that he would ever have a chance to live it out.

  How many men his age—or any age, for that matter—were ever privileged to truly realize their dreams? It was a first in his experience, and nothing in his life, he knew, would ever be the same again. He had already passed the point of no return, and there could be no turning back.

  Not that he wanted to turn back.

  Again, the possibility had never even crossed his mind.

  “How long have you been waiting?” Humphrey asked, addressing the question to no one in particular.

  “Feels like all damn day,” Finch said.

  “I make it forty minutes,” Pascoe said.

  “So, we’re ahead of schedule then,” Humphrey declared. “Just as well, because there are a few things I forgot.”

  “Such as?” Pascoe sounded suspicious now.

  “Provisions,” Humphrey said. In fact, he had forgotten nothing, but he liked to play games with his escorts, sometimes. Even when he yearned to be on Île de Mort—an interesting name; he gave Kidd credit for the choice—it helped for him to have some measure of control.

  “Goddamn it!” The disgust was evident in Finch’s voice. “Go get the damn things, then.”

  “It would save time if you could do it,” Humphrey said. “You know, since I have things to do on board, before we leave.”

  “Well, shit! You go,” Pascoe said to his younger, long-haired shipmate.

  “Why should I—?”

  “It would be quicker,” Humphrey interrupted them, “if you split up the list. Is that all right?”

  Pascoe was visibly suspicious now, while Finch was merely angry over the delay. “You got some kinda list?” he asked, the corners of his mouth turned downward in a scowl.

  “Won’t take a minute,” Humphrey said.

  “No funny business while we’re gone,” the bald rogue cautioned him.

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Humphrey said honestly.

  “All right, let’s have it, then.”

  Humphrey chose wine and cheese, because the shops lay off in opposite directions from the waterfront and would compel his escorts to divide their forces. One more little goad, to keep things interesting, while he got busy stowing items on the boat and made ready to sail.

  It was perfect. Humphrey almost felt like a full-fledged pirate captain himself, manipulating rogues who would have cut his throat in any other circumstances. Granted, it was Kidd’s authority that stayed their hands, not any strength of Humphrey’s, but illusions were like that, devoid of objective reality. And they still made him smile.

  “Don’t dawdle now,” he told the grumbling buccaneers as they went down the gangway to the pier. “We’re burning daylight, yes?”

  It took Remo far too long to cover the ground—make that water—between Fort-de-France and Puerta Plata, on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. On arrival, he had made his first stop at a public phone booth, where he found a home listing for Ethan Humphrey, complete with number and a street address.

  There was no listing for a Cutlass Foundation in Puerta Plata, but the name alone gave Remo a fair idea of what it would entail. An outward cover for his fascination with the pirates of another century, for starters—and beyond that, what? Was Humphrey working on a book, perhaps, that would establish him as the ultimate expert in his chosen, highly specialized field? Or was something more practical involved, perhaps the distribution of loot taken from the private craft his friends were raiding throughout the range of the Lesser Antilles?

  No matter.

  Remo took the phone-book page with the home address listing for Ethan Humphrey, showed it to a cabdriver and soon found himself paying a call on the former professor at his home. The dwelling was a smallish bungalow, a quarter-mile inland, located in a residential district that would pass for middle class by local standards. There were roses and bougainvillea in the yard, behind a low, white-painted wooden fence. No lawn to speak of on the tiny lot, but Remo was more interested in the house. It had smallish windows, trimmed with lacy curtains, and a green door that contrasted nicely with the whitewashed stucco walls. The roof was Spanish tile and well maintained. It could have been an advertisement from Travel & Leisure, a getaway for the man who had everything and needed a place to hide from it on certain special occasions.

  Remo had himself dropped off a half block away and didn’t approach too closely. His hearing reached out to the little house and noted the sounds of quick movement. Somebody in a hurry, assembling some belongings. Remo forced himself to wait, and minutes later he saw Ethan Humphrey emerge. Humphrey had a green duffel bag in one hand, and he paused long enough to lock the door behind him before he moved to the gate and through it, turned left on the sidewalk and proceeded toward the harbor. Remo fell in step behind him. Humphrey never heard him, never sensed his presence.

  Ten minutes later, as they drew closer to the docks, houses gave way to stores. Humphrey knew where he meant to go, and he let nothing slow him, distract him from his course. The jaunty stride, the smile he had been wearing when he left the bungalow, suggested that some kind of pleasure lay in store for him. Remo wondered what it was. His patience was running thin. All he needed was a moment of the pirate lover’s time, in which to squeeze him like a toothpaste tube and see what came out.

  Humphrey walked down to the marina and moved along one of the piers, out to a smallish cabin cruiser that was clearly years beyond its prime. Remo read the name someone had painted on the transom in italic script.

  Mulligan Stew.

  Okay, so it didn’t have to make sense or fit the old man’s personality. Remo doubted whether he had named the boat himself, and who cared if he had? More interesting, by far, were the two men awaiting Humphrey on the deck as he approached.

  They didn’t look like the role-playing pirates he’d run into that morning. No swords or flintlock pistols were in evidence, no eye patches, peg legs…and yet, there was a certain air about the men that would have marked them down as criminals in Remo’s mind, regardless of the circumstances. From ten yards away he eavesdropped on their conversation and was glad he had decided not to trounce Humphrey the minute the old man emerged from his little house.

  They were about to embark on a sail to the pirate’s island. Finally his lousy luck was starting to reverse itself.

  There was some unpleasantness as Humphrey informed the two roughnecks he needed some supplies and convinced them to fetch the items in the interest of time. It was all a lie; Remo heard it in every syllable the old man uttered. Ethan Humphrey got his way, however, and the other two came down the gangway, moved along the pier with angry strides, passed Remo without seeing him and split up to move in opposite directions as they left the waterfront.

  Humphrey had the Mulligan Stew to himself, but he was clearly in no hurry to leave, certainly not without the shipmates he had taken pains to send on some errand that got their blood up. He wouldn’t sail without them; Remo was convinced. Whatever the charade Humphrey was playing, it looked more like something he had thought up to amuse himself.

  Laugh while you’ve got a head to laugh with, Remo thought. You never know when somebody might find a good reason to remove it.

  Chapter 14

  Chiun had cooked rice so many thousands of times in his lifetime he could intuit the readiness of the water by breathing the steam and could sense its doneness by the richness of its aroma.

  The man assigned to watch him was a toady with no intellect to speak of, surely nothing that would pass for functional imagination. He had watched Chiun build the fire and put the water on, offering no help as Chiun filled a bucket and brought it back from the stream. It gave Chiun the opportunity to moan and stagger slightly, listing to the right as if the pail were nearly too heavy for him to carry.

  Chiun was smiling on the inside, and he made another sound, too quiet for the toady to hear: “Heh-heh-heh.”

  It said much of his present adversaries, Chiun decided, that they could behold a Master of Sinanju and believe that he was powerless. He was enjoying himself, although such clandestine behavior was well beneath his dignity.

  There was just one reason he was willing to go along with it—and it was not because his adopted white son with the bulbous nose asked him to protect Stacy Armitage.

  Oh, he would protect her. She would not be tortured or defiled under his watch. But as far as going on a killing spree and sending this bunch of pretenders from centuries past to their deserved graves, that would wait. When Remo came, they could perform the cleaning up. They’d have a better chance of saving all the prisoners on the island with two of them on the job.

  But why kill the pirates now? They might serve a purpose still.

  If this was the correct island, the place that had been known once as the Island of Many Skulls, it was not a small patch of land. Even a Master of Sinanju would have difficulties finding a treasure that had been buried here—a treasure buried centuries ago. Buried deep. Buried, in fact, by a Master of Sinanju.

  If these pirates had some of their history, then maybe they could help him locate the landmarks described in the Sinanju scrolls. The nature of some of those landmarks made it unlikely that they still existed.

  Chiun would know soon enough.

  He began to add the rice, sifting a handful at a time into the boiling water from a heavy burlap bag the pirates had provided him at his request. The shellfish—peeled and deveined already, piled up in a wooden bowl, within arm’s reach—would be the last addition, when the rice was nearly done. Meanwhile, he had time to observe his enemies and find them wanting in the skills that might have saved their worthless lives, once Remo was available to finish them.

  It would take time, of course, for Remo to discover where the pirates were. Chiun wasn’t precisely sure how that would be accomplished, but he had no doubt that Remo would succeed.

  Remo didn’t come across as one of great intellect. Or cunning. He wasn’t prone to great feats of mental dexterity, or even mediocre ones. Some had even labeled him a simpleton.

  But somehow Remo always failed to live up to others’ expectations of idiocy. Somehow, like unexpected lightning, the flashes of insight would always come to the young white Reigning Master. Or he would simply worry the thing to death. Or meander aimlessly, so it seemed, into the solution. But the most important thing was that the solution was always reached. Chiun thought that there just might be—and he would never in a thousand generations admit this to Remo or another living soul or even dare notate the thought in the sacred scrolls of Sinanju or even think it too loud for fear some wandering mind reader would happen across it and blurt it out—but there just might be a streak of, well, brilliance to be found in there. Somewhere. If you really looked for it.

  Chiun took a wooden ladle and began to stir the rice with lazy, counterclockwise strokes, putting a palsied shake into his hand just for added effect. His watchdog lit a hand-rolled cigarette and started puffing clouds of smoke into the air. He was within arm’s reach of Chiun, a killing distance, but it wasn’t time to start the deadly dance.

  But first, the search.

  “You’ve been here how long?” Stacy asked.

  The woman who had earlier identified herself as Megan Richards glanced at her companions in the dingy, thatch-roofed hut. Felicia Docherty frowned and shrugged while the other, introduced by Megan as Robin Chatsworth, sat still and said nothing.

  “Four, five days,” said Megan. “I’m not exactly sure. Time runs together here. You’ll find out what I mean.”

  Stacy was hoping that she wouldn’t be among the pirates long enough that she lost track of time, but anything was possible. With Remo gone—not dead, she told herself, please, God, just don’t let him be dead—there was no way of knowing how or when she would be rescued from her captors.

  “And they killed your boyfriends? Christ, I’m sorry.”

  “Not exactly boyfriends,” Megan said. “It was a shame, though.”

  Megan Richards didn’t sound as if it were a shame, but Stacy knew that people dealt with grief in varied ways. Or maybe there had been no more between these women and the dead men than casual sex. Less than that, perhaps, if they had just been “friends.” Such things were not unknown.

  “And what about your boat?” asked Stacy. “What was it, again?”

  “The Salomé,” Felicia Docherty put in. “Is that some kind of Arab name, or what?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Stacy said. “Did you have anybody else on board?”

  “Like who? You mean a chaperon?” Megan was close to laughter, but it sounded more like hysteria in the making than any real vestige of humor.

  “No,” said Stacy. “I was wondering if you had hired a guide, or anyone to help you with the boat along the way.”

  Meg and Felicia shook their heads as one, while Robin sat and stared. “Nothing like that,” Felicia said. “The guys knew all about that stuff, okay? We didn’t have the room, besides, and who wants witnesses?”

  To what? Stacy was on the verge of asking, but she checked herself. She knew what the young woman meant, and what she had in mind. A college fling was easily forgotten, but it might come back to haunt you if your parents heard about it. From a stranger, for example, who had watched and listened, maybe asking you for money that would keep him quiet in the days and weeks ahead. Trust no one, if you didn’t know them going back to grade school.

  But it hadn’t saved these three. Not even close. Their young men of the moment had been killed, three more lives wasted in addition to God knew how many that had gone before, and from the evidence before her, Stacy knew these three had suffered in captivity. The faded shirts and baggy, twice-patched pants they wore weren’t the clothes they had been captured in; she would have bet her life on that. And from the bruises on their skin, the shadows underneath their eyes, the silence Robin held before her like a shield, Stacy was sure the men who stole their clothes had taken much, much more, as well.

  “Do you have any idea where we are?” Felicia asked.

  “Not really,” Stacy said. “They kept us down below after they took the Melody.”

  “That’s not much better than the Salomé,” said Megan. “Jeez, where do they get these names for boats?”

  “Who’s the old man?” Felicia asked before Stacy had time to answer Megan’s question.

  Stacy wondered how much she should tell these strangers, and decided there was little they could do to help her, even less that they could do to help Chiun.

  “He was my husband’s friend,” she said, preserving the fiction for what it was worth. “They’ve known each other from when Remo was a boy.”