Dark Eye of the Jaguar

by Robert Mitchell

  “No, Ms Dunlop,” Christopher replied. “That is not the way of the Church.”

  “Not now it isn’t,” I chipped in. “Maybe we need another Torquemada. He got the Inquisition moving pretty swiftly.”

  “Ben!” Sue hissed at me.

  “Yeah, right, okay.” I was getting frustrated with all this apparent pussyfooting around. “So maybe they’re here in Beijing, and maybe not.”

  “Is it that important?” Christopher asked.

  “Only that it would take them longer to get themselves organised again if they were both in Hong Kong rather than if they were here in Beijing. But then again, with everyone having a mobile phone these days, maybe it doesn’t really make a difference. And anyway, it would probably only take one of them to get a gang organised and be up and running again. If the associate is here in Beijing, that’s all Lee would need.”

  “Well, perhaps we could try and ask them again,” Christopher offered.

  “Not unless you’re prepared to force it out of them like Sue said,” I replied, hoping that he’d had a change of heart.

  Christopher shook his head. If they would let me in with them for ten minutes I’d have all the answers we needed. But that wasn’t going to happen and it was a waste of time to push the matter further. I was certain that one of the men downstairs would be able to give us Lee’s identity. Once we had that we could take Lee out of the picture and recover the chest without any further problems.

  A plan started to form. Two of the Chinese servants had been angry when they had learnt of Angelo being stabbed. They had been more than angry. When they learned of the treatment that these men had made Father Joseph suffer, they would be incensed. I wasn’t certain which of the servants they were. I hadn’t taken much notice at the time, but I thought I would recognise the one who had kicked the knife wielder. If he spoke English then maybe I could get him and the other one, the one who had bashed the knife guy with his fist, to go down and visit these gangsters. Sue’s voice broke my train of thought.

  “I’m so glad that Joseph is all right,” she said. “I was worried that we might’ve brought you people nothing but disaster.” I could see by the drawn look on her face that the trauma she had gone through was starting to take effect. Her words were slowing, and she kept pausing as if trying not to cry. “We don’t even know if the chest is still there,” she continued, a tear falling down her cheek. “All of this trouble could be for nothing. Father Angelo has been stabbed, and Father Joseph, well we don’t know what they’ve done to Father Joseph.”

  “No, Ms Dunlop,” Christopher replied. “If there is a chance, no matter how remote, that the sacred relics can be restored to the Church, then nothin’ that has occurred to date has been in vain.” He reached forward and took both her hands in his. “We must continue, no matter what the consequences may be. Please believe me, ma’am.”

  “Well,” she replied, sniffling. “I don’t know that I agree with you, but if that’s the way you see it, well, then I suppose that’s that.”

  “Don’t worry, Suze,” I said, passing her a tissue from the small packet on the bedside table. “Everything’s going to turn out fine.”

  She turned to me with a look which said that she still had a really bad feeling about the whole situation. I let it lie. There was nothing else to say. Christopher had said it all.

  The matter was now afoot, as the old mystery writers would have said.

  “Come, my children,” Terrence said. “Let us leave this room and the evil that has taken place here. Let us move to the common room for some tea, and wait for Father Joseph.”

  As I moved out through the doorway I took the dressing gown he handed to me, then turned to him and said: “Forget for the moment who you are. Just remember what that man did to Angelo and what he was going to do to Sue. Go down and belt the hell out of him!”

  “If only life were that simple, Ben,” he replied. “We can thank the Lord that it’s not.”

  Father Terrence, I thought to myself, recalling the harsh words and the scream that had broken the silence when he had re-set the man’s shoulder, you are either a liar or a hypocrite. And then I wondered whether there was any possibility that he was quietly intending to go back down to the locked storeroom.

  Twenty minutes later they half-carried Joseph into the room where we had met earlier that evening to make our plans. He was still fairly groggy and unable to stand on his own. He slumped down into one of the chairs, his head lolling to one side, his eyes glazed over. He recognised us, but that was all. He tried to speak but it was gibberish.

  “Just rest, Father,” Terrence said. “Father Angelo will be here momentarily.”

  “Where are the guys the monks caught with him?” I asked Terrence.

  He spoke a few words to one of the staff members and then replied: “They are both locked up at the temple.”

  “Can they possibly escape?” Sue asked, the fear starting to show once more.

  “No, Mrs Dunlop,” he replied. “There is no chance of that.”

  There was a knock on the door and Angelo appeared in the doorway.

  “My son,” he said to Joseph. “It is with great joy that we have you back in our midst.” He walked slowly across and took both of Joseph’s hands in his own, wincing from the pain of his injured arm as he did so. “You should rest now and tell us of your trials later.”

  Joseph mumbled his thanks and tried to stand.

  “No, my son,” Angelo said quietly. “Sit there a while. I shall have some soup brought to you. When you have eaten, you are to retire to your chamber. We shall talk in the morning.” He turned to Sue and me. “I’m afraid that I must go to the hospital now. I need to have some stitches put into this unfortunate arm of mine.”

  I looked up at him and said: “I’m sorry about all of this, Angelo. In some ways I sort of wish that I’d never found the letters in the writing box.”

  “No, my son,” he replied. “The Lord has been watching over us. He has delivered Joseph back into our midst. This injury to my arm is a small penance to pay for his return. We will recover the chest. We will find the sacred relics in the chest and they shall be restored to the Church. I believe that it will be so. I must go now, so I bid you good night, and you too, Fathers. There are only a few hours left of the night. We should all try to get some rest.”

  He nodded his head to Terrence and Joseph. Terrence bowed back, but Joseph’s head just lolled to one side, and then Angelo went out through the doorway with two of the staff in attendance. I didn’t think we should leave just yet, at least not until Joseph had been fed the soup which had now appeared. Five minutes later Christopher entered the room. There was sweat on his brow. I could tell by the look on his face that he hadn’t found out anything from the man, but I asked anyway.

  “No, Ben,” he replied. “He refuses to say a word.”

  I shook my head, the look on my face telling him that I thought he was weak. I was almost at the point of getting angry with him, telling him that the Jesuits of old had had no qualms about torture if it was the only way to get a person to confess his or her sins, real or otherwise.

  “Leave it, Ben,” Sue said quickly, knowing what I probably had in mind. “Leave it until the morning.” She raised herself from the chair and held out her hand. “Come on, bed.”

  We made our way back to the bedroom, making certain that the one single chair in the room was jammed up against the door handle. Sue changed into her pyjamas then climbed in with me and snuggled close.

  “That was quick,” she said a minute or so later.

  “What was quick?” I asked.

  “The way that the gangsters tried to get Joseph out of the hotel and taken somewhere else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, those other guys, the ones who are now locked up in the storeroom.”

  “What about them?” I asked.

  “Well, if nobody had disturbed them.” She paused. “I mean if Angelo and the others hadn’t burst in
like they had, then those men could’ve been with us for half an hour, or even longer, before one of us told them the location of the chest. It would’ve taken them twenty minutes or maybe half an hour to get back to the hotel where they were holding Joseph. Yet it seems like the ones guarding Joseph tried to take him away from the hotel less than a quarter of an hour after they’d broken in.”

  “So?” I replied, having trouble keeping my eyes open, and not really interested in what she was trying to say.

  “Well, how did they know that these guys had been caught?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they had somebody watching the seminary and they saw all the lights go on. Maybe the guys we caught were supposed to telephone. How the hell should I know?”

  “But it could be important,” she mumbled sleepily.

  “For Christ’s sake,” I said quietly. “Go to sleep - unless you’ve got something else on your mind perhaps, something a little more pleasurable?” I reached across and started to fumble with her pyjama pants, my hand sliding up her thigh.

  “You go to sleep!” she said quietly, slapping my hand away. “You’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

  I lay quietly, listening to the sound of her breathing, waiting for it to tell me that she was fast asleep. It seemed to take forever, but must have been only five or ten minutes. It was a battle to keep my own eyes open and several times I nearly succumbed as I waited. I slipped quietly out of bed and dressed. I considered creeping out of the room in my bare feet, but the cold boards and the knowledge that I could be shortly kicking the stuffing out of the one who had done all the talking made me put my shoes on. Steel toe-caps would have been great, but sneakers would have to do.

  The seminary was quiet, deathly so. The passage was completely empty and almost pitch dark, with only a small amount of reflected light coming from around the corner. I had no idea how I would find the room they had been locked up in. All I knew was that it was on a lower floor, which must have meant they were in some sort of cellar. The room we were sleeping in was on the ground floor, as were most of the other bedrooms occupied by the priests. The library and the various reception rooms were two floors up from us. The Bishop seemed to occupy a fair amount of the floor above us. The staff were at the very top of the building.

  I walked to the end of the passage and listened, but there was still no sound. If I wasn’t careful I would find myself lost in the maze of corridors. I had to find a staircase, one going downwards. I crept on.

  I wasn’t prepared to turn the passage lights on. I wasn’t certain where the switches were in any case. Some of the doors on either side of the passage had glass panels above them. If I did manage to find a switch, the light would have shone into the rooms and could wake whoever might have been asleep inside.

  The sound of snoring drifted from one of the rooms on the left hand side and perhaps four or five metres further on. I gave the doorway a wide berth. It was hopeless. And then I remembered what Terrence had said about the front door. He had said that it was always manned by one of the servants who would let the priests in when it was locked. I was fairly certain I could find the front door from our room, so I retraced my steps, almost to where I had started and then took the corridor on the left.

  He was asleep in a deep armchair. I shook him gently and he hardly stirred, so I gave his feet a slight kick and then another, harder this time.

  “Huh?” he said.

  “I need your help,” I replied.

  His answer was totally in Chinese and just as totally unintelligible to me.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked, speaking slowly, whispering, trying to get him to follow suit. His voice had been loud enough to wake the dead.

  “Huh?”

  “English?”

  He shook his head. How the hell was I going to sort this out? I wanted the servant who had kicked the knife wielder in the chest, either him or the one who had punched the guy. Either one would do. Maybe they were down below acting as guards. Christopher would have wanted someone who wasn’t afraid of these men, someone who would make certain they didn’t escape. Both of those servants had shown that they weren’t afraid. I smiled at the doorman and pretended that I had a knife, and then pretended that I had my hands bound. I bowed my head and stumbled away several steps and then turned back to him, both hands held out, my eyebrows raised in the standard questioning position, and stared at him. He looked at me for a few seconds as if I was stupid and then the penny dropped.

  “Zuifan!” he finally said.

  “Yes, probably,” I replied, waving my hands about. “Where the hell are they?” I asked quietly.

  “Huh?”

  I pointed left and then right and then on the other side of the front door. He finally understood what I was saying, beckoned me to follow, and started back along the way I had just come, talking the whole time. I put my finger to my lips and indicated to him that he should remain silent. We walked back to the first bend, turned left and then he stopped, pointing to a door that I had missed, a fairly ordinary door set into the wall, the kind of door which could lead down to a cellar. He opened it and went to precede me. I indicated that he should return to his post at the front door. He shrugged his shoulders and started shuffling back around the corner, his slippers scuffing along the threadbare carpet. I waited until the sound of his footsteps had faded and then went down the stairs. I could see light coming from below. A voice called out quietly from the source of the light.

  “It’s Ben,” I said quietly. “It’s Ben Dunlop.”

  There were a few more words of Chinese. I reached the bottom of the stairs and walked unsteadily along a short narrow passage. The room at the end of the passage was fully lit and there were two men seated at a table. It was obvious that either one or both had been fast asleep and it was the noise I had made as I had moved down the creaking staircase that had woken them. They both got up from the table.

  “Ni hao,” one said, and I was almost certain he was the one who had kicked the knife wielder in the chest.

  “Hi,” I replied. “Do either of you speak English?”

  There were shakes from both heads. Why didn’t these people learn to speak English? I moved across the room to the locked and bolted door on the far side, and rattled the lock.

  “Key?” I asked. “Where’s the key? Where’s the bloody key?”

  “If you look to your right, Ben,” a voice said from on high. “You will see it lyin’ on the small table over by the wall.”

  For one spilt second I was almost converted. It was as if God had spoken. But the voice hadn’t come from above my head; it had come from the top of the narrow stairway behind me; and I was certain that God hadn’t spoken to Moses with a southern accent. Where the hell had Christopher come from? I turned.

  “Christopher,” I said.

  “What are you doing here, Mr Dunlop?” he asked.

  “I was hoping to do what your religion won’t allow you to do. I was hoping to belt some answers out of these guys.”

  “And how were you goin’ to do that?” he asked.

  “I hadn’t exactly thought it through, but, with the help of your two mates here, I’m certain we could’ve come up with something, a length of knotted rope perhaps?”

  “But you don’t speak Chinese, Mr Dunlop.”

  “The guy who was holding me down and giving all the orders speaks English,” I replied. “I think me and your two mates here could’ve got him to give us some of the information we need.”

  “Mr Dunlop, we gave you our trust. You have ignored that trust. We told you that these men were not to be mistreated. I am disappointed. Where is Mrs Dunlop?”

  “She’s asleep. I crept out. She doesn’t know I’ve gone.”

  “What do you think would happen if she awakes and finds that you’re not there? Don’t you think that she’ll be terrified, after what she went through tonight? She was the one who had a knife held at her throat, not you.”

  It was at that moment
that the guilt hit. I hadn’t considered her situation, her emotional state.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and paused for a moment. “I’m sorry that I left her alone, but I’m not sorry about wanting to come down here and punish these guys. How did you know I was here?”

  “Brother James couldn’t sleep, and was prayin’ in the chapel. He heard you talkin’ to the servant by the front door and came to fetch me.”

  “Oh, I thought he was away?” I said.

  “No, he’s back.”

  “Oh, right,” I replied. If only I had thought about Brother James. He mightn’t have had the same religious objection to taking an eye for an eye.

  “I’ll show you the way back, shall I?” Christopher said. “And we shall speak no more of this matter, sir.”

  Nine

  It was late when Sue and I awoke next morning. It had taken me a while to get to sleep after returning under Christopher’s watchful eye. I kept thinking what would have happened if she had woken up, found me gone, the door unlocked and vulnerable once more. But by morning my thoughts had turned to other things, and Sue was a little more accommodating than she had been the night before.

  “Ben,” she giggled as I climbed into her bed, put my arm around her, and started undoing buttons. “Stop it,” she added half-heartedly, her hand trying to push mine away, but without putting up too much resistance. “We’re in a Jesuit seminary.”

  “No,” I replied. “We’re in a bed in a bedroom. And anyway, how many people do you know who’ve done it in a Jesuit seminary?”

  “But what if one of them comes in?”

  “The chair’s propped against the door.”

  “Oh yes,” she giggled again. “So it is!” And there was no further discussion on the matter.

  There was nobody at the meal table by the time we arrived, they had all long since finished and were no doubt going about their normal religious duties. Father Terrence arrived about five minutes later. Another spy must have told him that we were awake.