"And if that isn't a fleur-de-lis on his face, I'll eat the next shark I see."
"Glutton," sniffed Chiun.
THERE WERE three strange things about the body when it was taken off the cutter at the Coast Guard station at Scituate.
First it was completely nude, and as blue as a human body could get. The blue was from exposure.
The corpse's face was the white of chalk, and spread over the dead man's features was a livid blue fleur-de-lis put on with what looked like clown greasepaint. The nose was completely blue, as were the lips. The upper and lower spears of the design touched hairline and chin, respectively. The wings curved over the cheekbones in perfect symmetry.
Clenched between the man's teeth was something thin and black. With a pair of pliers, Lieutenant Heckman extracted the thing. It turned out to be the tail of a small gray fish without a head.
"This is damn weird," she was saying.
"Nothing weird about a guy trying to stay alive as long as he can," Remo remarked.
Sandy looked at him dubiously.
"He was adrift in the water. Naturally he'd eat whatever he could catch to keep himself alive," said Remo.
"Nice theory. But unless he had stainless-steel teeth, it won't float. A knife cut off this fish's head."
"Open up his stomach, and I'll bet you find the fish head," Remo said.
"At least he did not stoop to shark," Chiun said aridly.
When they turned the body over to look for wounds, they discovered the third weird thing. It was definitely the weirdest of the three weird things.
There was a gray fish tail projecting from the bluish crack of the dead man's rear end.
"I have seen some pretty odd things, but I have never seen that," Sandy muttered.
"Maybe the fish tried to eat him and got stuck," said Remo in a voice that suggested he wasn't exactly embracing the theory.
"That's a turbot, if I know my fish. They aren't flesh eaters, and I don't see how, left to his own devices, one could cram his head into a human rectum."
"What other way could it have happened?"
"Two. The guy was queer for fish or someone jammed it up in there."
"Why would anyone do that?" asked Remo.
"Your guess," said Sandy, "is as good as mine."
"My guess is the fish tried to eat him and got stuck."
The Master of Sinanju reached out with delicate fingers and took the fish by the tail. He pulled. With an ugly sucking sound, the fish came loose. So did a cloud of gases that mixed the stink of blocked bowels and decomposition.
Everyone retreated several yards, Chiun still holding the fish. He lifted it so everyone could see. It was a small, putrid, gray fish with bulging eyes and nothing appetizing about it.
"Whatever it is," Remo said, "it's no prize."
"Halibut," said Chiun.
"Turbot," amended Sandy.
"If you say so," said Remo, holding his nose.
Everyone saw the fish's throat had been cut, making a pinkish smile under its gaping mouth. Chiun then tossed it so it landed on the body with a light smack.
"Someone cut this fish's throat and stuck it in," Sandy said slowly. "Probably the same someone who cut off the other turbot's head and stuck it in his mouth. This is not good."
"Not for the fish anyway," said Remo.
"Not good for anyone. This is a message. The question is from who and to whom?"
Remo looked at her skeptically.
"Look, the turbot is the symbol of Canada's victory over Spain and other high-seas poachers. This dead guy has callused claws for hands. That tells me he's a fisherman."
"So what's the design on his face mean?" asked Remo.
"Beats the living pooh out of me."
"It is the symbol of Frankish kings," said Chiun. He gestured across the room to the bluish corpse.
"Come again?" asked Sandy.
"The French. This man is French."
"The French don't fish these waters. They're mostly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence."
"Nevertheless, this man wears the mark of the French."
"Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe the French have marked him," suggested Remo.
Sandy Heckman shook her sun-bleached head. "Wouldn't be the French. French-Canadian more than likely. Though Quebec hasn't much of a deepwater fleet."
"Maybe we should kick this upstairs to our boss."
"Do it quick. I've still got to locate the Santo Fado."
AT FOLCROFT SANITARIUM, Harold Smith listened patiently and digested every morsel of information. At the end of Remo's recitation, he frowned so deeply Remo thought he heard his dry skin crackle. It was probably only line noise.
"Something is very wrong here," he said in his astringent, lemony voice.
"So what do you want us to do about it?"
"I will have identification of the body expedited on this end. I want the search for that submarine to go forward. There is something very wrong in the North Atlantic. And we must get to the bottom of it."
"In a manner of speaking," Remo said dryly.
"I am attempting to locate it by satellite. Remain in close touch at all times."
Hanging up, Remo turned to Sandy Heckman and said, "We gotta sweep for that submarine. Orders from on high."
"Okay, let's go," she said, grabbing her helmet. "Maybe we'll find that missing trawler while we're at it."
When they left the operations building, they found the white Falcon jet had taken off without them.
"There goes my damn rescue," Sandy fumed.
Remo looked at her. "What rescue? The guy's dead."
"We don't know that's him. And if it is, there's still his boat to be found." Her eyes fell on an idle Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter. She started for it at a dead run.
"Pilot, we need a lift to the Cayuga."
"She's at sea."
"That'll save us some travel time," Sandy said, climbing aboard. "Hope you can handle a deck landing."
"It'll be my first."
"Mine, too," she said grimly as Remo and Chiun climbed aboard and the Jayhawk's main rotor started to scream.
Chapter 16
The Jayhawk pilot did an excellent job of dropping the bright orange rescue helicopter onto the pitching helipad. The Coast Guard cutter Cayuga came to a dead stop to accommodate it but immediately got underway again, so the chopper pilot had to take off from a moving deck. After a couple of false stabs, he got out and hung his head over the cutter's rail until his stomach was completely empty.
When he finally took off, it was without a hitch.
On deck the Master of Sinanju continued to enumerate his grievances. "Yono," he lamented, his hazel eyes bleak as the surrounding seas.
"What's yono?" asked Remo out of boredom rather than real interest.
"Salmon."
"Never cared for it much."
"It is better than skate."
"Anything tastes better than skate ...."
"I was promised salmon of all kinds. The sockeye. Coho. Chinook. And pink and golden."
"All salmon tastes pretty much the same to me."
Chiun squeezed his eyes with a mixture of pain and yearning. "Orange roughy. I was promised orange roughy."
"Never heard of orange roughy. Is it anything like red herring?"
"I have never heard of red herring. I will see that red herring goes into the next contract."
Remo smiled. "You do that, Little Father."
"Orange roughy. Red snapper. Yellowtail flounder. Bluefin tuna. Gray sole. Black crappie."
"Don't forget purple smoothie."
"Yes, purple smoothie. And redfish and sablefish and bluegill and amberjack and striped bass and rainbow trout. And exotic mahimahi," continued Chiun in a plaintive voice.
"Isn't that porpoise?" asked Remo.
"Dolphin-fish," corrected Lieutenant Sandy Heckman. She had just emerged from belowdecks. A vivid orange Mustang survival suit encased her blue flight suit, its multiple pockets full of flares and other mariner's emergency equipment. A side arm slapped her thigh. "We're approaching the longitude and latitude of your phantom submarine."