"Shut up, you nosy no-account..."
Pierre gasped. Something was lying on the end table near the sofa. He took a few hesitant steps and picked up the white plastic card that had fallen from the shirt of the dead man when Remo yanked him from the ceiling. "Dis yours?" he asked tentatively.
"Ain't none of your business," Sidonie snapped.
"It is nothing," Chiun said.
"How do you know?" Remo asked, irritated. "We don't even know what it is."
"It the gate-opener," Pierre said softly.
"The gate-opener?"
"It is inconsequential," Chiun said. He pointed Pierre toward the door. "Come again another time. Call first."
"Like maybe next year," Sidonie growled.
"What gate does it open?" Remo asked.
Pierre looked from Remo's face to Chiun's. The old man was tense and angry. "Uh... it not important. Like the man say."
"What gate, Pierre?" Remo glided in front of him, locking into the black man's eyes.
"The gate to the shipyard," Pierre admitted, looking at his shoes. "My cousin had one when he work for the Dutchman a while back. He stick it in the gate, and the fence lose electricity. Dat how you get in the shipyard."
"Does your cousin still work there?" Remo asked.
"Naw. Nobody work there long. The Dutchman don't keep nobody long enough to know nothing. My cousin never even seen the Dutchman. Me neither."
Remo took the card and turned it over in his palm. The shipyard. Everything pointed to the shipyard. And the Dutchman.
"You'd better leave now," Chiun told Pierre. His jaw was clenching.
"Sure thing," Pierre answered with a two-finger salute. "Oh, one more thing, Mr. Remo. My truck. She broke, and—"
"Git!" Sidonie roared. She grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him until his head rolled. "Don't you be bothering the tourists with your cheatin' and lyin'. Git now and don't come back!" She tossed him out the door. He staggered a few feet, regained his balance with a grunt and a hateful backward glance, and headed off.
"What was that about?" Remo asked as he put the card back on the end table.
Sidonie chuckled. "He be bothering everyone on the island to lend him money, but nobody trust Pierre. He never give it back. I throw him out before he try you."
"Oh." It always surprised Remo that money was considered so valuable to most people. He himself had all the money he ever needed, thanks to the good graces of Harold W. Smith, who kept him supplied with cash. Not that he needed much. A man who was officially dead and worked as a government assassin didn't have much use for shiny cars or big homes or a fancy wardrobe. He didn't eat in restaurants, didn't have hobbies, had no family to support. Except for the fact that his physical organism was one of the two best in the world, he was, in worldly matters at least, dead. He had no more use for the money he carried than a corpse in a grave had for credit cards.
He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off two fifties. "Give this to Pierre the next time you see him," he said tonelessly. "I guess he can use it. Here, take a hundred for yourself, too."
"Mr. Remo—"
"Where's Chiun?" The old man had vanished. Remo took a quick look around the house, although he knew Chiun wouldn't be there. He had known about the card, and for some reason he had kept it from Remo. The end table where he had placed the card was empty. Right now the old Oriental would be making his way, swiftly and silently, toward a place where Remo was not invited.
"Take care of the girl," Remo said on his way out the door.
He reached the shipyard in a few minutes at a dead run, passing near a tangled swamp where bamboo grew in tall shoots. The fence surrounding the yard hummed with its charge of deadly high voltage. Chiun was nowhere in sight. Remo doubled back to the swamp, hacked off a long bamboo pole, then carried it back to the fence and vaulted over.
"Chiun," he called.
"I am here," a voice came from the interior of the shipyard. Chiun was standing near some battered truck bodies, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. He said, "Go home, Remo. This is not your affair."
"I just want to know what the hell's going on here. Since we started this so-called vacation, I've been shot at, hung off a cliff, maced, and told to break the arms of a dead man. Now Fabienne's been half strangled, our house is a disaster, and here you are in the middle of a shipyard in a goddamn ceremonial robe. You can't expect me to just turn around now and go home."
Chiun shrugged. "Then stay. But remember. When the time comes, what we will encounter is my business, not yours."
"Maybe," Remo said.
Chiun withdrew one slender hand from his sleeve and swung over the blood-stained door to the refrigerated truck container beside him. He was silent as Remo peered in.
Inside, nine bodies lay sprawled in grotesque positions. Icicles hung from their mouths and eyes, where their last dribblings had frozen, and their shabby clothes lay in stiff folds around them, stuck to the metal walls and floor. The frigid air inside the container smelled like a meat freezer, the stale odors of flesh and steel mixing together as the container's motor whirred unceasingly.
"Did they freeze to death?" Remo asked.
"Look closer. Look at their wounds."
Remo stepped up into the truck and examined the stiff bodies. "This isn't real," he said, his breath turning the ends of his hair white with new frost. "They were all killed in hand-to-hand combat."
"Karate does not kill this way," Chiun said, stepping into the truck. "That is hand-to-hand. So is atemi-waza, aikido, bando and t'ai chi chuan, but those methods were not used on these men."
Remo shook his head. "It's weird. It looks like one of us killed them."
Chiun sniffed. "It could hardly have been I," he said. "Does this look like perfect technique? But the work is of Sinanju."
Remo stared at him for a long moment, incredulous. "You don't think I did it, do you?" he asked finally.
"Emperor Smith thinks you did. Another truck filled with bodies slain in this manner was found in the ocean. He ordered me to kill you. Naturally, I was interested to see more of this work. The style is quite masterful."
"He ordered what?"
"He ordered me to kill you. That is part of my agreement, you know. A contract is a contract."
"But... but I didn't do it," Remo stammered. "I've never even been here before..."
"Stop babbling," Chiun snapped. He jumped off the end of the truck to the ground, his robe billowing. "Of course you didn't do it. This is not the work of a bent elbow. Only one highly skilled in the art of Sinanju could kill this way. A clod could never achieve such skill." He waved Remo out and shut the door.
"Wait till I get my hands on Smith. That C.I.A. looney."
"There is no need for spitefulness," Chiun said calmly. "In this truck is more than enough evidence to vindicate you in Emperor Smith's eyes. That was why I had to come here first."
"First? Before what?"