Chiun climbed down onto the reinforced rubber seat in the front of the boat. Remo took to the rear with a paddle.
On the way to shore, they managed to avoid all boat traffic. Remo beached the raft in the rocks north of Tyre. Once they were on land, he grabbed the raft by its slippery rubber skin and tore it apart at the seams. It quickly became a flat yellow stain, washing back out to sea.
The two Masters of Sinanju scurried up the rocks. A sun-bleached road ran parallel to the shore. Side by side, they began the long trek down to the port city of Tyre. The sun beat hot on their faces.
"I know what you were doing back there," Remo commented as they walked along the empty roadway.
The Master of Sinanju was taking in their surroundings. "Isn't it a lovely day?" he said, ignoring Remo.
"Don't change the subject. I finally figured out what that act was you were playing with your pal, the prince of the sea. And why you've been doing the nice-nice thing so much lately."
"Act?" Chiun queried, all innocence. "Do not presume you know everything about me, Remo. I have had a love of the sea ever since my childhood in Sinanju. I was merely engaging in polite conversation with a fellow maritime enthusiast."
"Baloney," Remo said. "You were cozying up to him just to bug me."
"What?" Chiun frowned.
"Don't deny it," Remo cautioned. "I know what the last few days have been all about. You're trying to piss me off. This Abu ben Bubbie bullshit is just the latest installment."
"You are babbling nonsense," Chiun said. "I have always had an abiding love for the sea. It is the pool from which all life sprang."
"Aha! Aha!" Remo exclaimed triumphantly. "You don't believe that, either. Koreans think man was crapped out by some big hairy bear."
"Trust you to reduce the miracle of human creation to an excretory function," Chiun said blandly. "And get it wrong."
"Don't change the subject," Remo countered. "You're being deliberately weird just to annoy me. And I know why. Even though you're claiming you're not, you're ripped at this whole Mr. Chin thing. But everyone you want to go after in Hollywood is already dead, so you're doing the next best thing. You're trying to bug me with all this nice and agreeable malarkey. You wanna put me on edge by making me think that every minute you might explode. Well, it's not gonna work, so you might as well cut it out. You're not bothering me one bit." He clenched his jaw accusingly.
"I do not know which I would prefer this to be a product of," Chiun said, shaking his head, "dementia or stupidity."
"Har-de-har-har. And don't even bother. I'm on to you," Remo announced. He outpaced the Master of Sinanju, marching with angry determination up the road.
Behind him, a barely perceptible smile crinkled the cobweb vellum corners of the old Korean's mouth. The smile remained fixed to his face the rest of the long walk to Tyre.
WHEN THEY GOT to town, Remo decided to find the Earthpeace ship before making his call to Smith. According to the histories of Sinanju, Alexander the Great conquered the ancient city of Tyre by constructing a causeway that extended the mainland to the island on which the city was built. Once they had reached what had once been ancient shore, Remo and Chiun crossed the causeway and found their way to the docks.
It didn't take long to locate the Radiant Grappler II.
The Earthpeace vessel was berthed alongside a flat expanse of concrete. Its huge steel hull loomed high above them. The shadow cast by the Grappler was enormous, stretching across dozens of smaller ships docked nearby.
A single stenciled word on the prow of the ship identified her as the Mykonos.
"If they were trying to disguise it, they should've picked up a couple hundred crates of Renuzit," Remo commented. "The crate stinks like a floating bong."
They took the long gangplank up to the deck. "Blood," Chiun said, the instant his sandals touched metal plating.
Remo was already sniffing the air like a dog on a scent. "This way," he announced.
Taking the lead, Remo stepped across the deck. The two men slipped through an open door that led into a narrow passageway.
The air conditioning was off. In the merciless Lebanon sun, it hadn't taken long for the interior of the boat to become oppressively hot. The warm-blood scent grew stronger the deeper they traveled inside the ship. A spiral staircase at the end of one hall led down another level. Both Masters of Sinanju climbed down to the lower deck.
The blood stench was thick here, intermixed with the stale sweat of old fear.
"It is coming from the hold," Chiun commented gravely.
Remo nodded, his face etched in lines of deep concern.
During their journey through the Grappler's bowels, neither man had sensed even a single, faint human life sign.
After a few labyrinthine turns in the corridors, a final straight passageway brought them to the hold. They spied the bodies from the catwalk.
The Earthpeace crew had been shot. Coagulating blood-a blackish-purple after so many hours-clung to tie-dyed clothes and torn jeans. The human corpses had been dumped onto a pathetically small pile of rotting tuna.
Adding a surreal edge to the grisly tableau, a few of the Earthpeacers had apparently surrendered their hammocks to the largest tuna. The fish swayed ever-so-gently in their final resting places, pennies over their dead eyes.
Remo ignored the bizarre scene. His worried eyes had alighted on the steel zoo cage in the center of the hold.
They took a ladder to the floor.
The stench was powerful. They picked their way past Earthpeace corpses and rotting fish to the solid-metal cage. When he nudged the door open, Remo wasn't sure if he should be relieved or even more concerned.
The cage was empty. Just a few handfuls of hay tossed on the rusting floor.
"Looks like someone else has him," Remo commented, looking up from the empty cage.
Chiun didn't respond. Bent at the waist, he was examining the cage door. Remo was about to ask him what he was looking at when he was distracted by a sound behind them.
A cough. Wet and feeble.
Turning from both Chiun and the cage, he trained his senses on the field of Earthpeace dead, quickly isolating a single, thready heartbeat. Hurrying over, Remo found one of the men near the base of the tuna pile still clinging to life.
Lying in Remo's shadow, Bright Sunshiny Ralph's lip twitched. His eyes fluttered beneath ashen lids. Blood gurgled from a sticky wound in his abdomen.
Remo stooped next to the dying Earthpeacer. "Who did this?" Remo pressed.
Sunshiny's eyes rolled open. They were distant, unfocused.
"Murderers," he gasped. Fresh pain made him wince.
"I gathered," Remo said, with arid urgency. "Who? Who's the murderer?"
Sunshiny sniffed blood. "Us," he wheezed. "All these fish. Our ocean brothers. We murdered them in cold blood." His eyes grew teary. "And even worse, I participated in dolphinicide. I killed Flipper," he wailed.
His life signs were ebbing.
"Who shot you?" Remo insisted.
"Oh. Nossur Aruch," Sunshiny wheezed. "His PIO soldiers." He was fading fast. A final thought seemed to come to him. "Are there dolphins in heaven?" he asked.
Remo nodded tightly. "Three meals a day," he replied.
Sunshiny Ralph carried the look of horror that blossomed on his face over to the afterlife.
Remo left the body, returning to Chiun's side. "Looks like Nossur Aruch's our party crasher," Remo commented to the Master of Sinanju.
"I heard," Chiun replied. He had completed his examination of the cage. His wrinkled face was gathered into a frowning mass.
Remo knew the old man's expression could bode no good.
"Okay, what's the latest bad news?" he asked. "The man imprisoned in this cage has been attempting to escape." He extended a long nail to the side of the door near Remo.
Following Chiun's finger, Remo felt his stomach clench. There were fresh silvery scratch marks all around the lock. Someone had been trying to pick it. The heavy hinges bore similar marks, as if the prisoner had tried to pry the fused bolt. Dumbfounded, Remo stared at the scratches.