"I will consider this," said Anwar Anwar-Sadat. "Now, about our dinner engagement..."
"I will dine upon the hams of your rump if you fail to achieve my goals," Mistress Kali spit.
"What exactly are your goals?" Anwar Anwar-Sadat asked.
"To plunge the world into the Red Abyss."
"I am not familiar with the Red Abyss, is it near the Black Hole of Calcutta?"
The answer never came. There came a sound like shattering glass, followed by the gritty settling of a particles.
It froze time. Anwar Anwar-Sadat started to look up, but his gaze never reached his mistress's masked face. With a savage gesture she kicked Anwar-Sadat and the fisheries minister aside and stepped past them, snarling, "Avert your eyes, supplicants."
Like a black snake uncoiling, her whip slithered to the floor. She snapped it up and demanded in a harsh, shrill voice, "Who is this who invades my domain?"
A squeaky voice returned, "Who is this who demands such answers of us?"
"I am Mistress Kali."
"If you are Mistress Kali," returned the squeaky voice, "then you will recognize my companion, who is sometimes called Shiva the Destroyer."
Hearing that interesting comment, Anwar Anwar-Sadat couldn't help but peek. He turned his head.
Chapter 35
Lieutenant Sandy Heckman had interdiction patrol. They were calling her the heroine of the Battle of Sable Island Banks. There was talk of a promotion.
Now she was in the waters west of the Grand Banks' infamous Nose trying to protect U.S. fishermen as they plundered cod from Canadian waters.
Not that there would be any stopping them.
It would have been simple in the past. Show up in force and seize their vessels. But these fishermen had tasted combat. They had defeated the Canadian Coast Guard. They would not be denied. They wanted to fish, so the orders from Cape Cod were to let them fish. It was, politically speaking, a way to pressure Ottawa into capitulating.
Sandy didn't care about Ottawa. After the skirmish was over, there would be even less fish in the North Atlantic, pushing the stock-rebounding process further into the next century.
The trouble was, the U.S. fishing fleet was firing warning shots at its own Coast Guard.
Keeping a respectful distance, watching the sonar scope because there was nothing more constructive to do, Sandy spotted a familiar metallic underwater contact.
It was chasing a school of flatfish that looked like tilapia, one of the underutilized species that used to be by-catch but was reclassified as edible now.
"Helmsman, stay with this contact."
"Aye, sir."
The Cayuga moved smartly to a southwesterly heading.
Sandy jammed her pugnacious nose to the greenish scope. "It's got to be one of those damn torpedoes again. I want to see what it does and where it goes."
The Cayuga slammed through the heaving swells like a flashing white terrier.
Chapter 36
Remo Williams folded his arms as the Master of Sinanju asked the blond woman in the dominatrix rig if she recognized him.
"I do not," she said, continuing her advance. Snapping her whip back, she let fly.
The whip snaked up and out.
Remo read it coming. To his trained eyes, it wasn't even a blur, just a sluggish, uncoiling serpent of gleaming black leather. It snapped at a lock of his hair. Remo tilted his head. The lock escaped chopping.
The whip came back, and this time she swung it broadside.
Remo stepped in, met the black tentacle halfway and took hold of it. He spun. The whip, still traveling in his grasp, came flying out of its owner's grasp.
Mistress Kali stepped back in shock, looked at his empty hands and his pale features, then she turned a smoldering red under her yellow silk domino mask.
"You dare!"
"We dare all the time," said Remo casually.
"I am Mistress Kali!"
"Like the cat says, 'Big hairy deal.'"
"Defier! I slay you with my scorn."
Kali lunged. Remo reached out and took her by the throat. He squeezed. At once her face reddened, then purpled. Her black-nailed fingers clawed for his face. Remo held her off at arm's length.
"What do you say now, Little Father?" he asked Chiun as Kali tried in vain to claw the skin from his face.
Chiun frowned. "Her strength is only the strength of an ordinary person," he said quietly. "And she possessed but two arms."
"Right. That means she's not Kali."
"I am Kali!" Mistress Kali snapped, taking another swipe at Remo's eyes.
"Butt out. We're talking about another Kali," said Remo.
"I am she! I am the Black One. I am the Mother of all. He who eats, eats by me."
Chiun frowned. "She speaks the words of Kali."
"She's a high-priced hooker. That's all."
Chiun walked around the dominatrix whose shiny black body shook with impotent rage and hate.
"You do not recognize my son Remo?" he asked Mistress Kali.
Kali glared venomously at the Master of Sinanju.
"Look closer, shrieking one. Are his features known to you, you who call yourself by the hated name?" demanded Chiun.
Kali spit at the Master of Sinanju. Chiun evaded the expectoration with a graceful pirouette.
Reaching up, Chiun took her head in one hand and inexorably turned the eyes of Mistress Kali to face Remo. "Look deep. What do you see?" he commanded.
"I see a dead man!" Kali hissed. "Kneel before me or I will gnaw the skin from your bones."
Chiun shook her head. "You do not know my son?"
Kali glared more fiercely. But somewhere deep in her icy blue eyes flickered a different light. "I know..."
"Know what?" asked Remo.
"You..."
"Well, I don't know you," Remo returned.
"Are you certain, Remo?" demanded Chiun.
"Yeah. I'm-- Then Remo looked closer. He realized he wasn't looking at her face, but at the silk and the eyes they framed. Now he looked deeper. "Her eyes. There's something familiar about her eyes."
Chiun's voice grew sharp. "Are you certain?"
"Yeah. The eyes look familiar. But I can't place them."
"Your essence is remembering, not your brain. She is Kali. You must slay her, Remo."
"Let's see her face first," said Remo, releasing her neck. His fingers plucked at the yellow domino mask.
Mistress Kali turned into a tiger. She twisted, squirming, and one hand reached into small of her back.
It came back trailing a long scarf of pure golden silk.
"Remo!" Chiun cried. "Beware her strangling scarf!"
Remo, as usual, was too slow. Swift as he was, he was too slow. His mind was on her face and the mask over it.
The Master of Sinanju, ever vigilant, shook off his jade fingernail protector and plunged the gleaming nail beneath into Mistress Kali's unprotected throat. It sank in to the tip of the finger and withdrew before anyone could absorb the movement.
Mistress Kali shuddered on her feet. A gasp came from her open harridan mouth. Her eyes flew wide with shock.
She spoke a single breathy, incredulous word. "Remo?"
Then, eyes rolling to whites, she collapsed at their feet.
Remo was holding the domino mask in one hand. For a frozen moment, he stood there, not inhaling, not exhaling. His eyes, dark as the hollows of a skull, went sick.
"What happened? I never touched her," he said.
"I did," said Chiun, who held up the golden tail of silk. "Behold, for she was about to wrap her silken wiles about you."
"Chiun."
"What?"
"Tell me you didn't..."
"I did."
"You killed her," Remo said. His voice shrank with each utterance.
"She was a harlot and a demon in the flesh of a woman."
Remo swallowed. Only then did Chiun see the bone white aspect of his face. With his hollow eyes and his high cheekbones, Remo's face looked like a skull with a paper-thin coating of skin.