"He die?"
"Not all at once. He fulfilled a contract with a minor Siamese prince and brought back sufficient gold to purchase sufficient dried yellow corbina from another village to carry Sinanju through the winter. That winter Kim began training his successor in earnest. When the next Master of Sinanju was well on his way to Masterhood, Bamboo-hatted Kim burned his unlucky hat-although nothing could consume his poor reputation."
They walked past several markets and shops, disdaining them all. Quincy had a growing Asian population, but Chiun ignored Chinese- and Vietnamese-owned establishments, too.
"You are very quiet," Chiun prompted.
"Okay, catching too many fish is an old problem. But that was just the West Korea Bay. It's a big planet, and most of it's water. That's a lot of fish."
"How many hungry billions are there now?"
"Seven."
"That is a lot of billions."
"There's still more fish."
"Not if the fish live short lives and the billions enjoy long ones."
"I see your point," said Remo.
They turned a corner of Hancock Street onto a side street. Two blocks down they came to the Squantum Fish Market and they went in.
Ignoring the lobsters in aereated tanks, they went to the glass cases where assorted iced fish lay in halves and fillets.
"What is good today?" asked Chiun of the proprietor.
"We have fresh mudfish."
Chiun's hazel eyes went to the trio of dull black fish that might have been made out of old rubber. "I do not like their eyes."
"The cusk is fresh, too."
"I have had cusk. It is a very tough fish."
"You have shark?" asked Remo.
"Sure. One shark steak?"
"Make it two."
While the shark was being weighed, Chiun eyed Remo and asked, "You eat gross fish. Always with you it is heavy slabs of shark and swordfish and tuna. You eat fish like it is beef steak."
"I'm a big eater."
"Carp is a nice fish."
"You can't get it around here. You know that."
"Soon we will have carp in profusion."
"Could be a long wait," Remo reminded him.
Chiun turned his attention back to the fish case. His wrinkled face gathered up in deepening lines of unhappiness. "I was promised carp and I am reduced to deciding between mudfish and lumpfish."
Remo grinned. "Like it or lump it."
Chiun shot him a withering look, then his face brightened. "Do you have turbot?" he asked the proprietor.
"Sure."
"I will take a pound of your best turbot. For I have heard that fierce wars have been waged over its singular taste, yet I have never tasted it before now."
"It's like halibut."
"Halibut is an acceptable fish. It is better than oily mackerel or bony alewife."
Remo was looking down the rows of fish fillets. His eye fell on a bulge-eyed, blubber-lipped blue fish speared by a white plastic sign on which was written a name in green Magic Marker.
"Wolf fish. What's that?"
"It's good."
"Not with that face," growled Remo. His eye fell on a short-bodied reddish fish with very scared eyes.
"Scup?"
"It's real popular down south," said the proprietor, setting Remo's wrapped shark on the counter, then carefully wrapping up Chiun's turbot.
When his shark was rung up, Remo said, "Since when is shark almost ten dollars a pound?"
"Since fish became scarce."
Reluctantly Remo paid the bill. Together he and the Master of Sinanju walked out of the shop.
"This shark ought to last me a few days," Remo said.
"You will cook it yourself," Chiun warned.
"Anything to keep the wenches out of my waters."
BACK AT CASTLE SINANJU, the phone was ringing.
"Hey! Somebody answer that!" Remo shouted as he stepped in.
"It is same man who called before," shouted down Chiun's nameless housekeeper from the top floor.
Dropping his fish on the counter, Remo grabbed up the telephone.
Harold Smith's voice was hoarse and haggard. "We have an urgent situation developing in the North Atlantic."
"What's that?" asked Remo.
"The Coast Guard cutter Cayuga has been detained by Canadian Coast Guard gunboats."
"What did they do wrong?"
"I do not know, but if what I fear is true, the United States is now at war."
"War? War with whom?"
"That is what you must find out. Fly to St. John's, Newfoundland, immediately. The Cayuga is under Canadian tow, and that appears to be their ultimate destination."
"Sure. Once I wolf down a slab of shark."
"Now," said Smith.
"I'll eat it raw on the way. Without shark I doubt if I can make it through the flight."
Chapter 24
Lieutenant Sandy Heckman would never have fallen for it, but the Canadian Coast Guard captain was so damn polite.
She should have known better. She cursed herself a blue streak when she realized how badly she had screwed up, but by then she was in over her head and the bubbles were breaking the surface.
She had dropped off the two crazies from the National Bureau of Fisheries, or whatever it was. And promptly turned around before her commander could stop her.
This was going to be her last patrol. There was no getting around it. She had in the heat of action sunk a foreign sub in open waters. It was selfdefense, but as soon as the gurry hit the screws she knew it was back to halibut patrol off Alaska or worse, stripped of her commission and set adrift among the landsmen.
Either way she wanted one last rescue.
Off New Brunswick she was searching for the missing Jeannie I out of Bar Harbor, Maine, when a Canadian fisheries-patrol boat showed up, its decks thick with green-uniformed inspectors from the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans.
They hailed her in very polite terms. "Can we speak to you a moment, Lieutenant?"
"Is this about the submarine?"
"Again, please?"
Maybe it was the brisk tone of his voice or the natty uniform. But Sandy Heckman fell for it hook, line and sinker. Especially line.
"Never mind. Helmsman, throttle down and prepare to make her fast to the cutter."
"Aye, sir."
She had her misgivings, but their politeness had disarmed her completely. Back in her Pacific days, she used to lull drug runners into letting themselves be boarded by just such casual words, crisply spoken. She had taken a course in being crisp and disarming at the same time. Truthfully she'd rather threaten and, if necessary, fire across their damn bows. But drug smugglers tended to be better armed that the average CG cutter, so she'd learned to do it by the book.
Besides, these guys were Canadians. The last oceangoing power they wanted to screw with was the U.S. of A.
The Canadian patrol boat bumped against the Cayuga and a boarding gangplank was laid between the two vessels. Three fisheries inspectors stepped aboard, flashing diffident smiles and announcing that the Cayuga has being seized in the name of the crown.
"This is about the submarine, isn't it?" Sandy asked in a tight voice.
"I know nothing of that," returned the captain, "but this vessel is coming to St. John's." He pronounced it "St. Jahn's," and Sandy Heckman had to suppress the urge to knock the officer on his polite rear.
"These are international waters," she argued stiffly.
The captain made a show of looking about the gray, heaving ocean. "Oh, I believe you are mistaken. My charts show these to be Canadian waters. You are in our Maritimes, and your boat must be brought in for a safety inspection."
"You have no legal authority to inspect a U.S. vessel," Sandy flared.
"Why don't we leave that to the lawful agencies that govern such things?" the captain said smoothly.
Sandy Heckman dropped one hand to her side arm, and the moment it touched the flap, a bullet whined past her left rear.