Ship of Death

After Remo resigns from CURE, he and Chiun accept an Iranian contract to protect Iran’s delegation aboard Ship of States, a giant former tanker converted into the United Nations’ floating headquarters. A group using the name Scythian Liberation Front beheads an admiral, the chief translator and other people, placing heads in chapels; Lebanese deputy consul Pierre Haloub suspects a hidden passage network, and MI5 inspector Wilfred Dawes traces that network to construction overages before he is killed. Remo discovers the concealed ship-within-a-ship and surveillance system. Skouratis tells his banker that the vessel was built to surpass rival Aristotle Thebos, who is called Number One by the hidden organization.

Thebos’s biorhythm analyst Oscar Walker cannot predict Remo and is killed. Remo meets Thebos’s daughter Helena, while Smith arrives to investigate the danger but refuses to trust Remo as an Iranian contractor. Thebos publicly renames the vessel Ship of States of the Skouratis Class as a taunt. Smith is beaten after finding men planning to bomb and burn the ship. Skouratis says he had not known of the hidden rooms and joins Remo and Chiun in trying to stop the attack. At Skouratis’s suggestion, Remo and Chiun breach the hull and flood the central compartment to contain fires and blasts, and Remo prevents a lifeboat panic. The Thebos yacht explodes soon afterward. Remo suspects underwater mines because he saw bubbles near the yacht; Skouratis neither admits nor confirms responsibility. Remo declines Skouratis’s offer of employment and says he remains with Smith.