So far it hadn't been very successful. The one woman who hadn't tried to jump his bones from a cold start turned out to be gay.
Remo was starting to wonder about Lieutenant Heckman.
Remo wandered over to her at her jump-seat station.
Sandy Heckman was looking down through a port with her eyes clamped to a pair of binoculars. She was scanning the crinkled, greenish gray surface of the Atlantic for fishing boats.
A rust-colored trawler churned a path through the water below. The jet tilted one wing toward the laboring vessel.
Abruptly Sandy snapped a switch and yanked a cabin microphone to her mouth.
"Fishing vessel Sicilian Gold, this is the U.S. Coast Guard. Your vessel is over a closed area in violation of the Magnunson Act. Charges may be filed and your catch seized later. Proceed out of the area immediately."
Grabbing a clipboard, she took down the trawler's name and went back to searching the sea.
"What's the Magnunson Act?" asked Remo.
"A congressional law regulating commercial fishing takings. When it was first enacted back in '76, it stopped foreign fishing vessels-mostly Canadian-from plundering U.S. waters. But Congress got around to making it law too late. The Canadians had made a big dent in the stocks. Now it regulates where our fishermen can go, how long they can go out and how much fish they can take. But most coastal areas are pretty much fished out now."
"It's a big ocean. Can't be that bad."
"It's a crisis. And some of these damn fishermen don't seem to be getting it. This is supposed to be a rescue mission. If I don't get some more rescues under my belt, it's back to buoy tenders for me. Or worse, Alaska and the halibut patrol."
"Halibut patrol?"
"They're scarce, too."
"Mind if I ask you a personal question?" asked Remo.
"I don't date civilians. Sorry."
"That wasn't my question."
"Then what was your question?"
"Are you gay?"
"No!"
"Great!"
"Forget it. I don't date."
"I wasn't asking for a date."
"Good, because you weren't going to get one. Now, will you take a seat? Like I said, this is a search-and-rescue mission. If we happen upon your mystery sub en route, fine. If not, you're just so much supercargo. So kindly shoo."
Suppressing a smile, Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju. "She doesn't want to date me. Isn't that great?"
Chiun nodded sagely. "It is the shark smell."
A flicker of interest crossed Remo's high-cheekboned face. "Little Father, are you telling me that eating shark acts like a female repellent?"
"It is obvious that it does, slow one."
Remo brightened. "No kidding?"
"Truly."
"All I gotta do is keep eating shark, and women will leave me alone?"
"If that is your wish..."
"It's my wish to pick my dates and not vice versa."
"Your desires are your own vice, Remo."
Chiun sat by a port and was examining the open water now. It was cold and choppy and about as inviting as open sewage.
"If you spot that sub, I got dibs on the captain," Remo remarked.
"I will allow you to dispatch him once I have flayed the meat from his bones and fed it to him," Chiun said coldly.
"You sure take your fish seriously these days."
"Have you been to the fishmonger of late?"
"You mean the supermarket. No, you've been doing food buying lately."
"They have been foisting inferior fish upon me. Mealy, unpalatable fishes the like of which I have never before heard, with names like monkfish, cusk and hagfish."
"I hear they're getting popular."
"In the newspaper they are called junk fish. I do not eat junk. I am Reigning Master of Sinanju. You may eat junk, but I will not."
"Good fish are getting scarce."
"Which is why I have prevailed upon Emperor Smith to comb the deepest seas for the sweetest fish so that I may eat as my ancestors have. Sumptuously."
"You eat better than your ancestors, and you know it, Little Father."
"I will not place junk fish into my belly. Did you know that one fishmonger attempted to convince me to eat spiny dogfish? I have never heard of dogfish. It looked suspiciously like shark."
"Dogfish is shark," Sandy called over.
"Eavesdropper," Chiun hissed. "Have you no shame?"
"You're shouting. I can't help but hear you. But what you say is true. The quality of food fish has gotten terrible since they closed Georges Bank."
"What's Georges Bank?" asked Remo.
"We just passed over it. It was the best fishery Of the East Coast. Maybe they'll reopen it in a few years, but right now it's a disaster for our fishermen. A lot were forced out of business. The government has been buying their boats and licenses. But as bad as it is here, it's worse for the Canadian fleets. They've been banned from taking cod from the Grand Banks."
"Where's that?"
"Where we're headed. It's only the richest cod fishery on the planet. It's where they had that turbot war two years ago."
"What turbot war?" asked Chiun.
"Before you answer, what's a turbot?" added Remo.
Lieutenant Sandy Heckman turned in her seat. "Turbot is another name for Greenlandic halibut. The Turbot War was between Canada and Spain."
"Never heard of it," said Remo.
"It wasn't so much a war as an international incident. Spanish fishing trawlers were taking juvenile turbot from the end of the Grand Banks called the Nose. That's where the fishery stuck out past Canada's two-hundred-mile limit into international waters. The Spanish were technically legal, but they were taking fish that swam in and out of the Canadian side of the fishery. Ottawa got pretty hot about it and sent cutters and subs to tear up the Spanish fishing nets. A serious high-seas brouhaha was brewing until the Spanish caved in and hauled up their nets. Since then it's been pretty quiet, although Canada makes a lot of noise about U.S. fishermen taking cod from the U.S. side of the Grand Banks while their own fleets are forbidden to touch them.
They seized a couple of scallopers a while back, but lost their nerve for a showdown. They're making noises about doing something about U.S. fleets taking salmon in the Pacific, but so far it's only cold Canadian air."
"No one owns the sea or the fish in them," sniffed Chiun.
"If the groundfish crisis continues, pretty soon there'll be no more fish to argue over."
Remo looked to the Master of Sinanju. "Do you know about any of this?"
"Of course. Why do you think I am hoarding fish?"
"I'm glad you said 'hoard' and not me."
"Hold it!" said Sandy. "There's something in the water."
She called up to the pilot, "Kilkenny, take us around. I want to check something out."
The Falcon leaned into a slow turn, dropped and was soon skimming the cold, gray, inhospitable waters.
They saw the thing in the water clearly in the fleeting second they passed over it.
"Looks like a body!" Sandy shouted.
"It's a body, all right," said Remo. "Floating facedown."
Sandy got busy on her radio. "Coast Guard cutter Cayuga, this is Coast Guard One requesting assistance at this time. We have a floater at position Delta Five."
They circled the spot for some twenty minutes until a Coast Guard cutter showed up and took on the body.
They watched the procedure, Sandy through her binoculars and Remo and Chiun with their naked eyes.
Divers entered the water and brought it up like a sack of wet, dripping clay.
"Man alive, I never saw a floater with a face so deathly pale," Sandy muttered.
"I have," said Remo.
They looked at him.