"He would try to kill you again," Remo said disgustedly. "Can it, Chiun. Let's go." He pulled himself shakily to his feet and limped alongside Chiun.
"He would not be ungrateful and inconsiderate, like some pupils of low talent."
Remo clenched his teeth together. "Look, if you think I'm so inferior to that murdering maniac, why don't you just team up with him and leave me alone?"
Chiun's eyes glistened. "Really? Do you mean that, Remo?" he asked hopefully.
Remo stopped walking. "Sure, if that's what you want. Nobody said you were stuck with me for life." He spoke quietly. Any louder and he might not have been able to control the wobble in his voice.
Hesitantly Chiun smiled, then nodded. "Perhaps I shall speak with him," he said. "I hope you are not offended."
Remo waved him away.
"Very well," Chiun said, obviously pleased. He took a couple of steps backward, away from Remo.
"Chiun?"
"Yes?"
"I did fight with a snake back there. The python."
Chiun smiled. "Of course," he said. "But you are a Master of Sinanju. A snake is but a snake." Chiun turned and walked away toward the castle on Devil's Mountain. He bounced merrily as he walked, his blue ceremonial robe fluttering gaily in the breeze. "Still. Think of it. The Dutchman. Someone trainable, at last. I will remember you fondly, Remo."
"Blow it out your ears, Little Father," Remo said as Chiun walked out of his life.
Remo sat on the ground.
"Trainable," he muttered. Chiun was climbing Devil's Mountain, growing small in the distance. The ingrate. Chiun knew what Remo was going through with that nine-foot people-crusher, and didn't even have a good word for him afterward. And now the old beanbag was skipping straight into the clutches of a madman who was out to kill them both. Just because the Dutchman kept his elbow straight. Well, fine. If that was how Chiun wanted it, that was just fine with Remo. He would sit in his spot by the sea till flowers bloomed out his ears, and after the Dutchman had sprung his inevitable trap on Chiun, Remo would go up to the white castle to pick up the pieces. Fine. Just fine. Absolutely fine.
With a sigh, he stood up and shambled off toward Devil's Mountain. It didn't matter how Chiun felt about him. He needed Remo, whether he knew it or not, and Remo would be there.
?Eleven
Pierre LeFevre drummed his fingers on the antique mahogany arm of the room's lone chair. The starkness of the castle surprised him at first. Each dark chamber he passed through on his way to the Dutchman was as bare and cold as a dungeon, furnished with a dungeon's sparse amenities.
He shifted nervously in his seat, catching the acrid scent of his own fear-soured sweat. Beyond, in a glass-enclosed room visible through a slightly open door, the Dutchman peered through a long white telescope at the shipyard far below. He closed the eyepiece and came into the anteroom where Pierre waited for his reward.
"You were quite right," the Dutchman drawled softly, brushing back his thick blond hair with sensitive hands. "There were two men in the shipyard, although I can't imagine what they were doing there. The trucks don't even have wheels on them, you know." He looked to Pierre to see if he could detect a hint of conspiracy. Did the black man know more than he said? Had the bodies in the truck been found by people other than Remo and Chiun? Had the authorities been notified? But Pierre said nothing and only stared at the carpet. No, the Dutchman decided. He's not with them. He's too scared.
The Dutchman couldn't let him live, of course. He wouldn't tell Pierre that Chiun was, at that moment, climbing alone up Devil's Mountain. He wouldn't reveal that Chiun and Remo had somehow killed all five snakes in the compound. The two of them were cleverer than ever the Master had told the Dutchman. But the old man was alone now. Alone he would do combat with the Dutchman. And alone the old man would die.
The Dutchman held out the scrap of paper on which Pierre had written the address of the villa. "This is where they're staying, you say?"
Pierre tried to speak, but his throat felt as if it were stuffed with cotton. He nodded mutely, his eyes wide and bulging. Lordie, what a mistake. Something was wrong in this place. It was cold here, and too still. It reminded him of old Mr. Potts's mausoleum in the cemetery, where Pierre and his cousin had broken in when they were boys. Cold and stale and motionless, like the Dutchman himself. He was like a ghost, that one, dressed in white and moving and talking, but dead all the same.
Pierre avoided the ice-blue eyes as the Dutchman eased himself languidly toward another door. He walked like a cat, Pierre noticed. Not a sound, not a ripple in the white satin smoking jacket he wore. He gestured with his hands. An olive-skinned servant came in silently carrying a silver tray with a bottle and a glass.
"Sherry, Mr. LeFevre?" the Dutchman asked. "I'm afraid I can't join you, but I'm told it's very good."
"N-n-n-n—" Speech had long since left Pierre.
"No? Very well. I thought it might warm you. After all, it's quite cold outside."
Pierre managed a lopsided grin. Cold? It was eighty-five in the shade.
"Don't you feel it?"
Who was this honky kidding? Good thing the Dutchman wasn't drinking. That boy had to be nuttier than Fabienne's old man was the day he flew off Easter Cliff. Then again, there was a definite chill in the air.
"You're shivering. Would you like a sweater?"
Pierre shook his head emphatically. This nigger cutting out of here like a jet engine, man. He skittered toward the doorway. How he would find his way out of the castle was another story, but... Jesus, it was freezing!
"Before you go, I'd like to pay you for your trouble," the Dutchman said. He reached into the pocket of his smoking jacket and pulled out two hundred-dollar bills. Tentatively, Pierre accepted them. He screamed once, and they dropped fluttering to the floor. They were like slabs of ice. The Dutchman cocked his head, amused, as Pierre bolted down the corridors of the castle.
He rubbed the gooseflesh on his arms as he barreled down one dark hallway after another. His breath came in ghostly clouds. He'd seen movies of people breathing in the cold, their breath misty and white, but this was the Caribbean. Nobody was cold here. That was the deal, wasn't it, God? No money, but no icicles either. Oh, Lordie, he should never have stolen the Jeep. He should never have come to the castle. Him what looks on the golden boy of Devil's Mountain... Mother, he was going to lose his mind, just like old Soubise. Once he got out of this hellhole, he was going to lock himself up in his room for five days with a gallon of Potts Rum, just to make sure he wouldn't, in his madness, go sailing off to outer space.
Far off, he heard the distant creaking of a door. That had to be the front entrance. He remembered the front door to the castle, two huge, medieval slabs bolted together with iron, overlooking a bridge across the castle's moat.
When he reached it, the door stood open. Pierre gasped at the sight outside. An ice storm was blowing with the strength of a hurricane, the shriveled palm trees bent over at 90-degree angles. Their leaves crackled and slapped together, pointing like the fingers of banshees down Devil's Mountain.
"Oh, Lord, no," Pierre whispered. His eyes moistened. He felt the tears harden to ice on his skin. He stepped onto the bridge, squatting low against the terrible wind that seemed to come from the castle looming behind him. A gust of hail pulled up the thin fabric of his shirt and lashed at his back like bullets.
Somewhere down there was the Jeep, but the ice storm was too thick to see beyond his nose. Somewhere was...
Someone was coming.
He could make out a dim outline against the soupy hail. Whoever it was had spotted him.