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* Title : #028 : SHIP OF DEATH *

* Series : The Destroyer *

* Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *

* Location : Gillian Archives *

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INTRODUCTION

It was the early 1960s and America was in trouble. Crime was getting out of hand, engulfing the country, forcing it surely toward either anarchy or dictatorship.

So a young president of the United States made a brave decision, and CURE was born. CURE was a supersecret agency, set up to save the Constitution by working outside it to fight the rising tide of crime. And, to head this agency that only he in government would know about, the president selected Dr. Harold W. Smith, a tight-lipped New Englander who had served in the OSS and the CIA.

CURE had everything: money, manpower, and a free hand. And still it failed. It needed something more. It needed a killer arm to mete out its own brand of justice.

So Remo Williams, a young, Newark policeman, was framed for a murder he did not commit, sent to an electric chair that did not work, and woke up working for CURE. Remo's training was put in the hands of Chiun, a tiny, aged Korean from the North Korean village of Sinanju. For centuries, Sinanju had provided the world with assassins and Chiun was the latest Master of Sinanju.

Chiun, the Master of all the Oriental killing arts, taught Remo to kill.

At first it was just a job for Remo. But as the years went on and the training went on, it became more than a job and he became more than a man. He became a Master of Sinanju himself, a troubled man torn between his Western heritage and his Eastern training.

And the bodies piled up.

CHAPTER ONE

She was big.

From even the first thought of her in the mind of Demosthenes Skouratig, she was big. There had never been one bigger.