“You are not supposed to be here,” he continued.
“It’s my bloody boat!” I snapped back. “What the hell do you two think you’re up to? Why don’t you both bugger off before somebody does something they might regret.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, as though not hearing me. “You are one of the other two.”
What other two? What the hell was he talking about? There were three of us; Rick, Henry and me. Who was the odd man out?
“You should be at the Golden Dragon,” he continued. “We saw the three of you go into the Golden Dragon with the Fijian women. I followed you in. You were all sitting up behind the iron fence, all six of you.” He turned to his companion and rattled off a few words in Hindi, then spun to me again, belligerent. “Why did you come back? Where are the others?”
“They’ll be back any minute now,” I replied.
There were a few quick words in Hindi and the one in the T-shirt raced out to the back deck to listen for sounds of the outboard. I should have leapt out of the fo’c’sle and taken my chances then, but my mind was on other things. Why had they followed us to the Dragon?
T-shirt returned and shook his head.
“You are lying,” Baiya said. “Where are they? Tell me!”
“Stuff you!” I tossed back, trying to show that I wasn’t going to be threatened.
He looked straight at me, not saying anything for a full minute, obviously trying to make up his mind, trying to figure out whether I was telling the truth; whether I believed that Rick and Henry would come roaring back over the waves at any second; or whether I was lying.
Baiya made his decision.
“Where is the map?” he asked, this time his manner almost pleasant, no longer concerned about Rick and Henry.
It was my turn to be silent. I glanced from one to the other. The nervous one, the one wearing the grimy T-shirt, wiped a blue-black hand across dry lips and kept turning to listen at the doorway, greasy jet-black hair dangling over a brooding forehead.
“What bloody map?” I snapped back.
His words had jolted me and it was all I could do to stop my voice from cracking.
“The map to the German treasure!” he snarled, the smell of yesterday’s garlic spitting down into the fo’c’sle.
Christ! How the hell did they know about von Luckner; and what map was he talking about? The only map we had was a marine chart of Wakaya I’d had sent up from Brisbane. I hadn’t even bothered to put any marks on it. It wasn’t necessary. I didn’t know exactly where the iron chest was, only that it had to be somewhere along the western side of the island, inside a small bay backed by a cliff, a bay with a pile of rocks on shore, a pile of rocks resembling a begging dog.
Then it came to me in a flash. Henry! It had to be Henry. Henry was the odd man out.
Baiya had said that I was one of the other two; which meant that he already knew one of us – the odd man out – Henry. Henry was the only one to have gone off on his own. Rick had gone to the market with Sai, but he would have mentioned meeting two uglies like this pair.
It must be Henry. These were the two Indians he had been drinking with at La Tropicale, the two nice guys who had driven him back to the Tradewinds, and to whom he had no doubt pointed out the Sally May. The stupid bastard must have told them the whole damn story! The worst part was that they believed him. Christ only knew what he had told them the chest contained. If it was anything like his wishful thinking, it was tales of a chest full of gold sovereigns worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I should have realized that something like this would happen. The stupid bastard wasn’t used to drinking. He didn’t know his limit; particularly when a pair of conniving bastards like these two kept pouring beer down his throat. I could visualize how it had started. Henry would have flashed a few banknotes around and they would have seized on their chance to get him drunk and relieve him of what was still in his pockets; but as the night wore on they would have forgotten about Henry’s few dollars. He wouldn’t have been able to hide his excitement. Henry had to boast; he’d had to talk to somebody about the treasure hunt. Shit!
“Where is it?” Baiya snapped again.
“There is no treasure map!” I replied just as sharply, leaning against one of the bunks and trying to appear sure of myself. “And no treasure. I don’t know what bullshit Henry fed the two of you, but you certainly fell for it, and if you’ve got any sense you’ll rack off now.”
There was a low nasty laugh. They didn’t believe a word of what I was saying. They didn’t want to believe it.
“Come on up here!” Baiya rasped, wiping a sweaty palm down the side of an old brown football jumper two sizes too big for him.
“You come down here,” I threw back at him.
There was a muffled conversation and the torch flashed full into my face once more. T-shirt padded off towards the doorway. I couldn’t see him, but I thought I could hear his footsteps moving out towards the back deck. I had almost made up my mind to try and take Baiya and risk the carving knife that moved menacingly each time he spoke when T-shirt returned and one of our sharp-pointed serrated diving knives joined the carving knife in the trembling torchlight.
“Come up, or we come down and get you!”
His voice was pitching higher, becoming more agitated, more scared. Fear wouldn’t stop them putting a knife into me in the heat of the moment; and fear might make them do something stupid, something I might not live to regret. The fo’c’sle was too cramped; no room to evade a slashing knife-blade; not even enough for a good fist fight; and I was scared too.
I moved back towards the point of the bow, as far away as I could get from the ladder, panic sending a trickle of sweat down the middle of my back. I looked up at the partly open hatch – hopeless; then back towards the ladder. The space between the two sets of bunks was narrow, but not narrow enough to prevent them both coming at me together. Baiya handed the torch to T-shirt and put one bare foot on the ladder. The light beamed full into my eyes once more.
My mouth went dry. I grabbed one of the pillows to ward off the blows. I knew nothing about knife fighting. I wasn’t even a fist fighter, always believing that my legs could get me away from trouble.
“Okay,” I said, knowing that it was useless to stay below. “I’m coming out.”
Maybe I could make a break for the open doorway and then dive into the sea. Maybe my legs could save me yet.
Did they intend to kill me? I didn’t think so; but how would I know? I could give them the chart, show them where the chest might be, and maybe they would go away. Maybe. It was the maybe that kept the tremor on my lips.
They backed away. As I climbed out of the fo’c’sle they moved to the port side of the saloon, Baiya guarding the three steps leading up to the wheelhouse door, and T-shirt the open doorway to the deck.
“Sit!” Baiya ordered, pointing at the bench along the wall behind the table.
I sat.
“Where... is... the... map?” he yelled, his control fast disappearing.
“I don’t know what bloody map you’re talking about!”
“Bullshit, man!”
“There’s no map, Baiya,” I replied.
For some reason it brought a grin to both their faces, lowering the tension for a second or two; and then he snapped.
“Listen, you white bastard! We know the map is here! We know!”
God only knew what Henry had told them, to what extent he had embellished the story.
“I suppose Henry told you about the chest?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible. There was no telling what they might do if I continued to let their tempers rise. My only hope was to stall them until the others returned; but for two hours?
“Ji ha,” was the simple reply, which I took to mean yes.
“What else did he tell you?” I asked.
“Your friend Henry talks a lot when he has had some beers. We know all about the treasure that the German captain left during the war. W
e know all about the gold sovereigns, and the silver, and the diamonds that Hitler never got.”
Well, I thought to myself, at least they had that bit twisted. They probably couldn’t think much past the Second World War. Baiya looked to be a year or two older than me and the other about my age.
“He told us that it is in a bay,” he continued. “At Wakaya. Either you or that other white bastard knows where it is. He said you have it marked on an old map.”
Bloody Henry! Why couldn’t he simply have told them the truth?
“Talkative bugger, wasn’t he,” I said.
There was another flurry of Hindi, and Baiya spun back to me.
“Stop wasting time! Your friends won’t be back for hours.” He reached back with his left hand and drew the sliding door closed. “And do not bother to call out. Nobody will hear you. The noise from the Tradewinds’ band will block out the sounds of your screams.”
I didn’t like the implication of the last word.
“Where is it!” he yelled.
“It’s in the storage hold,” I replied, kicking the bulkhead, trying to give the impression that I had given in. His eyes lit up. “But it won’t do you any good,” I added.
“Why not?”
“Because the chest is in deep water.”
“How deep?”
I had to think fast. These two might know the depths of the water around Wakaya. If I said two hundred feet, they might know that I was lying.
“Seventy to a hundred feet.”
“But he said it was shallow.”
“That’s shallow to us. You’ve seen the diving gear we’ve got out on the back deck.”
He thought for a moment, not certain whether I was lying, and then said: “We can go down that far.”
“How?” I asked. “Free dive?”
“No. We can get diving equipment. We can take yours.”
“You stupid black bastard,” I said, and immediately regretted having said it as T-shirt came lurching across from the wheelhouse steps, the point of the diving knife aimed at my chest.
Baiya yelled at him, bringing him to a halt as he reached the edge of the table. I was up on the seat, my eyes frozen to the point of the blade.
T-shirt moved back to the steps, hatred smouldering from dark eyes.
“Okay,” I said. “You stop calling me a white bastard and I’ll stop calling you .., well, I’ll just call you Baiya. Okay?”
He grinned again. I heaved a sigh of relief. T-shirt continued to stare, his expression unchanged, anger mixed with fear, explosive, unstable.
“Look,” I continued. “This chest you’re talking about was supposed to have been dropped in the water off Wakaya in 1917, during the First World War, not the second. That’s fifty-five bloody years ago. Hell, it could have rusted away to nothing by now! Henry was wrong. He was kidding you along.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what’s in it. Neither does Henry. Nobody does. I had an uncle who was there at the time, and even he didn’t know what was in it.”
“Henry said gold sovereigns and maybe jewels.”
“Henry was dreaming,” I replied. “It could have been full of old German and British currency notes that would be either worthless now or impossible to convert into cash without someone getting suspicious.”
“What do you mean?”
So I explained it in detail and they slowly got the picture.
“And besides,” I went on, “if the chest has rusted through, salt water would have destroyed whatever paper money might have been inside.”
“But,” T-shirt interrupted, his face lighting up at the mention of money. “If it was gold and silver or jewels then it wouldn’t matter. Sea-water wouldn’t harm them. They would still be in the chest, or lying on the sand waiting for us to pick them up.” He turned to Baiya, pleased at having been able to destroy my arguments. “And we can sell gold and silver anywhere.”
“Christ, mate!” I shot out. “Is it worth killing for?”
“But sahib,” Baiya murmured with sarcasm. “We are not going to kill you. All we want is the map, then we smash your engine. If you had not been on board, it would have been easier.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Ji ha. We would have copied your map and got to the treasure before you. You would not have known we had even been on board. Your friend said that you were not going after the treasure for at least another week.” Good old Henry. “But now we have to make certain that you do not come after us, so we damage your engine. Even if you do manage to get your boat repaired in time, and try to take the gold from us, we will call the police. We know who they will believe.”
I knew too. We were the foreigners, the outsiders. The Fiji Government would want the locals to get any credit for finding the chest. We would be lucky if we didn’t wind up in jail, and have the trawler confiscated into the bargain.
There was no way I was going to talk them out of it. The glint of gold was in their eyes, and nothing was going to change that.
Would they merely immobilize the trawler? As far as they were aware there was a hell of a lot of money at stake, money they didn’t want to lose. If we came after it, they might lose it to the government. If I was in their shoes I would be thinking of some way of putting me out of action permanently. I had to get away now, before they had the chart, for once I handed that over, and marked the possible location of the chest, I was as good as dead. Maybe it would be made to look like an accident; maybe I would simply go over the side and never be seen again. It would certainly hold Rick and Henry back for more than the week these two wanted.
I had to raise the alarm. I had to get to shore and warn the others. We had to call the police and get these guys off our backs; but calling in the police would bring the search out into the open and we would probably get nothing for finding the bloody chest, if we did find it; but at least we would have the thrill, and maybe get some of the credit; but we could lose whatever might be inside, and it could be thousands of dollars, or even the hundreds of thousands that Henry had been raving about.
I would sink their dinghy as I jumped over the side, unless I could manage to clamber in and push it way from the trawler before they got to me. I hadn’t heard it come alongside, so it wouldn’t have a motor, and probably only one or two old paddles. If I could get both men out on to the back deck, then I had a chance.
“Where is the map?”
The words snapped into my thoughts.
“It’s down in the storage hold like I said,” I answered, my teeth clamped together, hand pointing back towards the stern.
“Where is that?”
“Beneath us. The hatch is out on the back deck; under the wheelhouse overhang; near where you found the knife.”
But they weren’t stupid.
“You stay here!” Baiya ordered, and moved towards the door. He stopped and turned.
“Get down on the floor!” he snapped.
Damn!
“Come off it,” I said.
“On the floor! Lie down on your face!” The knife was quivering wildly again.
“Okay, okay,” I muttered.
As I went down on my hands I saw him hand the carving knife to T-shirt and take the torch. The door slid open and he was gone. I counted to ten, shifted my weight to my hands, and waited for T-shirt to turn towards the open door as he listened for sounds of Baiya opening the hatch.
But I wasn’t going to be that lucky. Baiya was back at a run. A single glance at the hatch had revealed the padlock.
“Get up!” he rasped, taking the carving knife back from T-shirt, his patience gone. “Where is the key?”
“On a hook in the wheelhouse, near the door. I’ll get it.”
The laugh told me not to be stupid. He nodded to his partner and waited while he found the spare key. I wasn’t going to tell him about the bunch in my trouser pocket, for it had the safe key on it as well. This fiasco had to end before they got as far as the safe.
“Put this around y
our neck,” he said.
It was then that I noticed the short length of rope he had taken from one of the brackets at the base of the mast; a piece of rope with a running loop at one end. I slipped the noose around my neck and he drew it tight. My legs turned to jelly as I realized that there was no maybe about what they were going to do.
“Now... show us this hold!”
They followed me out to the back deck. I raised one hand towards my neck and the noose jerked tight, making me trip.
“Keep your hands down!” he snarled.
We were outside on the port alleyway, facing away from the hotel. There was no use hoping that someone might by chance be looking our way. He let the rope go loose and I breathed easily again.
T-shirt walked around me, keeping well clear as he bent down and undid the lock.
“Lift it,” he said.
I heaved the heavy steel lid up on stiff hinges and laid it over.
Baiya smiled as I motioned for them to go down first, and shook his head. I climbed down, the rope just tight enough to stop me from trying to get my fingers under it, but not tight enough so that I couldn’t breathe. He ordered me over to the far corner, and held the torch on me while T-shirt jumped down into the darkness and faced me with his knife. They were giving me more credit for bravery than I deserved. I didn’t bother to point out that there was a fluorescent light fitted to the deck head.
We gathered in that dank steel vault stinking of grease and fish, dead prawns and old bait. My left elbow nudged a jumble of tools in one of the racks against the bulkhead: crowbars, screwdrivers, chipping hammers, and chisels. I slipped a hand behind my back, feeling for the racks.
“Open the safe!” he spat, his words echoing hollowly as he yanked once more on the cord, pulling me forward and away from the racks, from my hopes of a weapon.
“I haven’t got the key.”
“You lie!” The cord tightened, choking me.
“No,” I gasped. “Rick’s got it. I swear it!”
He passed the end of the cord to T-shirt, then spun and shoved me over on to the top of the pile of rope in the corner; and then leapt at me, one hand gripping my right ear and the other hand, the one holding the carving knife, pushing the point to within an inch of my right eye. I prayed to God he wouldn’t slip.
The Stone Dog Page 10
