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."Suits me," said Remo, turning to include his "wife" in the exchange."You ready, darling?""As I'll ever be," said Stacy Armitage.Remo spent several minutes showing Pablo around the Melody, from her controls to such essentials as the galley, heads and sleeping quarters.The new member of their crew said little, but Remo had the feeling that he was sizing things up, taking the measure of the multimillion-dollar cabin cruiser and her passengers.Toward what end?It was a gamble, trusting Howard Morgan to produce a member of the pirate gang.Hell, Remo wasn't even sure there was a pirate gang, at this point, in the sense of one cohesive group that watched the ports and preyed on boats repeatedly.For all he knew, the death of Richard Armitage and the abduction of his wife could just as easily have been a one-time thing, or perpetrated by a loose-knit group that roved among the many islands of the blue Caribbean, killing time here and there between raids, living off the proceeds of their latest depredation until cash ran short again.Still, there was the tattoo on Pablo Altamira's hand if that meant anything.Not much, Remo decided, as he thought about the countless Latin gang members Page 53ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlin North and South America who sported tattoos on their hands.More to the point, while wanna-bes would seldom go so far as getting a tattoo, the marks were seen on many ex-gang members who had left a life of crime behind them, but who never had the inclination or the cash to have the brands removed.So, he had nothing yet, except a young man without references beyond one dipsy travel agent, who was on the payroll now, for good or ill.If he turned out to be a spotter for the hypothetical buccaneers, so much the better.And if not.well, hiring him would mean that they had blown their chance to act as bait.It troubled Remo that so much hinged upon his chance meeting with Ethan Humphrey in a bar, some fourteen hours earlier.The old man was eccentric, granted, but his personal enthusiasm for the sea rovers of yesteryear didn't mean he was presently involved in hijacking or worse.If that were true, then it would naturally follow that dragons were slain at Renaissance festivals, while Civil War "recreation" groups would be marching on Atlanta and Gettysburg, armed to the teeth.Pablo met Chiun, after a fashion, in one of the main cabins, where Chiun had staked himself out, staring at the grainy image on a twenty-inch wallmounted LCD television screen.He wasn't squinting-Remo, in his whole life, had not known a man of any age with keener eyes-but Chiun was leaning forward slightly, hands braced on his knees, as he sat in a modified lotus position."What's on, Little Father?" Remo asked him."Butt Master," Chiun replied, his tone somehow combining fascination and disgust.Remo stepped closer, peering at the screen.Three shapely women dressed in leotards stood with their backs to the camera, bent forward at the waist, as if to moon their audience.Their thighs were working, in and out, some kind of bellows action, as if each of them were holding an accordion between her knees.Instead, as Remo finally made out, their legs were clutching strange devices that resembled giant, twisted paper clips."Didn't Suzanne Autumns sell those things years ago?" Remo asked."Isn't she the one who got bonked in the brain when one of her models lost control of the thing and it flew out from between her thighs?"A moment later Suzanne Autumns herself appeared on-screen, looking twenty years older than she had ten years ago-and not much prettier.A Farrah-style hairdo, as outdated as her acting career, couldn't fully disguise the surgery scars on Autumns's scalp."Now with rubber Thigh-Grip-Ers, so they're safer than ever!" she recited from a cue card."She talks like she has marbles in her mouth," Remo said."Butt Master is still better than Pec Man," Chiun informed him solemnly."He's right, senor," said Pablo, chiming in for the first time without a pointed invitation to speak."I've seen the Pec Man ads.They suck big time.And they have Lady Pec Man, too.The things those women do with-""I believe we get the picture, Pablo.Thanks for sharing."If the young man took offense at being interrupted, it did not show on his smiling face."When shall we start?" he asked Remo."Sooner the better," Remo told him."Right, Chiun?"The Master Emeritus of Sinanju frowned and said, "Tell him to take us where we'll get decent reception."Pablo appeared to know his business when it came to casting off and piloting the cabin cruiser out of port.In fact, there wasn't much to handling the cruiser, with its GPS positioning, automated piloting and other electronics that Remo had been instructed not to fiddle with.In fact, he had been keeping the thing under manual control since they took her out.Pablo engaged the electronics as a matter of course and soon had them on their way.Remo glanced at the controls, found all the blips and messages benign enough, as far as he could tell, and left him to it.If the course was not correct, he'd know, electronics or no.The act of taking on a crewman for a boat the size of the Melody was more to give the passengers some extra leisure time than to preserve their lives at Page 54ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlsea.Some would have called the new addition to their crew a status symbol.Remo preferred to think of him as an investment in success.The first day out from Puerta Plata they sailed east by southeast, roughly following the coastline, barely keeping it in sight, until they reached the Mong Passage and nosed due south.They had a distant glimpse of Puerto Rico, green on the horizon to their east, or left, but Pablo or his electronics seemed to know where he was going as they passed by the U.S.territory and sailed on, turning east again only when they were well into the Caribbean proper, the vast Atlantic safely behind them."Senor Morgan tells me joo are interested in pirates, si?""Could be," said Remo."You know about that kind of thing?""Oh, si," said Pablo
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