Dark Eye of the Jaguar

by Robert Mitchell

  “How are Father Angelo and Father Joseph?” Sue asked him.

  “Father Angelo is fine, but sore,” Terrence replied. “He is back from the hospital and is resting in the study. We will meet with him shortly. Father Joseph is still asleep. I think it is a result of the drugs they had given to him, but he’s sleeping peacefully. We have had someone by his bed during the night.” He looked at the plates on the table in front of us. “When you’ve finished, would you come along to the study?”

  “Sure,” I said, and, on receiving my answer, he turned and left the room.

  “He seemed a bit cold, a bit distant,” Sue said.

  “You think so?” I asked. “I didn’t notice.”

  It was obvious that Christopher hadn’t restrained himself from telling the rest of the priests about my venturing down into the cellars of the seminary. I hadn’t told Sue and wasn’t going to.

  “Oh well, maybe not,” she replied. “So now there’s nothing stopping us from digging up the chest.”

  “Quiet!” I snapped back.

  “Why?”

  “Because nobody knows that it’s buried,” I whispered.

  “But you told Angelo that we needed some tools. Wouldn’t he presume that the chest was buried somewhere?”

  “Not really. It could be inside the wall of a building, or hidden up in a roof somewhere, or maybe even in a tomb. Maybe they think we have to break into a tomb; there’s plenty of those about.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I’ll be a bit more careful what I say.” She paused. “So when are you going to tell them?”

  “Later this morning, maybe at lunch, provided they agree that we can go tonight.”

  “But what about the Buddhists?” she asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Well,” she said. “We haven’t got any sort of firm agreement from them yet. We want something in writing, surely?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Okay, we won’t tell them until the Buddhists have definitely come on board and we have a firm commitment from them, but I don’t think we’ve got time to get something in writing and signed by whoever their senior guys are.”

  “Fair enough, but what about the agreement that’s supposed to be coming from Rome? Most of the stuff that’s in the chest is probably Jesuit regalia, and that’s where the money is.”

  “Yeah, well,” I replied. “I’d prefer to have that settled and signed before we recover the chest, but I’d also like to get to the chest as soon as possible. We don’t know how resourceful Jackson Lee and his mate are. They won’t be wasting any time getting another group of cut-throats together, and I’d like to beat them to it.”

  “Are you going to tell the priests exactly where it’s buried before we set out?”

  “No, not until we’re actually ready to roll. I’ll tell them it’s near the Temple of Agriculture. I’ll probably tell them that it’s buried somewhere just outside the gates. But we’ll wait until we actually get there before telling them that it’s buried inside near the tree. We’ll keep that little bit of information until the last minute. I don’t really trust all of these Chinese members of staff they have running around everywhere. Any one of them could be a spy for Jackson Lee. I don’t care what Terrence or Christopher reckon.” She nodded her head and took a long mouthful of tea from her cup. “Have you nearly finished that?” I asked.

  “Yes, well, almost.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “Well, finish it and then let’s go and see Angelo.”

  He went to rise from the chair as we entered the study, his arm in a sling. I asked him to stay where he was. Christopher and Terrence were seated in straight-back chairs on either side of him; neither of them looked too pleased with me. I was certain that Christopher had told Terrence about my nocturnal excursion, but I didn’t think he would have told Angelo.

  “How are you feeling after your terrible experience?” Angelo asked.

  “Okay,” I replied. “A couple of hours sleep and a little exercise this morning seemed to have put things to rights.” There was a sharp jab in the ribs from my wife. I didn’t dare turn and look because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face. They would realise what we had been up to and I would be even further down in their estimation. “But,” I continued, “and more to the point, Father Angelo, how are you? You’re the one who took the brunt of the fight.”

  “I am mending. My arm is in some pain, but it is bearable, in the circumstances.”

  “Good,” Sue and I both said together.

  “Good,” he echoed. “Now, the chest. Do you feel up to recovering it? The signed Heads of Agreement that you asked for arrived early this morning, and remained ignored on my desk. You must forgive me.” He reached down to the small table by his feet with his good arm and passed an envelope across. I took it from him, and laid it on my lap. “Don’t you wish to examine it?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

  “I would prefer that you looked at it,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked. “Has anything been changed?” I suddenly had a horrible feeling that the agreement with the Buddhists at fifteen per cent might have changed the Jesuits’ thoughts on the matter.

  “No. It’s just that I would prefer that you were happy with the signatories.”

  “Ah, okay, right.” My pulse rate started to drop back to where it had been.

  I opened the envelope and quickly scanned through the few pages that comprised the document. Everything seemed fine.

  “It’s great,” I said. “It’s just as we agreed.”

  “Ah, good,” he replied. “Well then, the chest.”

  “Yes, the chest,” I echoed. “The sooner we dig it up, the better.”

  “So, it is buried then?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “We thought that it might be. Whereabouts is it?”

  “Not too far away,” I replied.

  “Is it in a public place or a private one?”

  “You’d probably call it a semi-private place. It’s not somewhere we could go and start digging during the day. I think someone would put a stop to us fairly quickly.”

  “Is it deep?”

  “I don’t think so. The letter that Captain Jenkinson-Smythe wrote to his wife said that he took the chest from the cart that it was being transported on, carried it to this place, together with a spade of some sort, and then buried it while his men remained some distance away and out of sight.” I looked at Sue for confirmation. She nodded. “He wouldn’t have had a great deal of time, so no, I don’t think it’ll be very deep. He obviously intended to come back and get the chest a few days later, but, sadly, he was killed before he could do so.”

  “Is it possible that the site has been built over?” Christopher asked.

  “Not unless it was very recent,” I replied.

  “Have you been there since you found the letter?” Angelo asked. “We wondered whether you might have asked the driver of the taxi that brought you in from the airport to take you past this place.”

  “No. Actually the thought never crossed my mind. We were going to go out and have a look as soon as we checked into the hotel, but Father Joseph put a stop to that.”

  “And it was just as well that he did,” Sue interjected.

  “Right,” I said. “So we haven’t been there, but we looked at the area using Google Earth on the computer. The place where Captain Monty buried the chest seems to look the same as it would have looked back when he dug the hole, although our Google Earth program is a few years out of date and the picture is pretty blurry when you get down close to the ground. Something might have happened to the area in the last few years, but I’m pretty certain that this place wouldn’t have been touched.”

  “What Ben means,” Sue added. “Is that the place where Captain Monty said he buried the chest is probably still in the same condition it was in at the time of the Boxer rebellion. However all of the buildings around this small area would have been replac
ed since then.”

  “Why hasn’t this particular area been replaced by other buildings?” Terrence asked.

  “Because it’s not the sort of area that gets redeveloped very often,” Sue replied. “At least not in the last fifty years or so.”

  The temple had obviously survived the Cultural Revolution of the nineteen sixties, when Mao’s Red Guard were rampaging through the countryside, destroying anything that was old. There would have been every chance of it being torn down back then, but, for some reason unbeknown to us, even though the Jesuits would have said that it was God’s will, the temple had not been touched. The Chinese Government had turned full circle since then, restoring and repairing every old building which still existed. And in some cases they were re-building those that had disappeared completely. Tourism had taken hold of the country. There was money to be made from ancient monuments

  The three priests looked at each other and I could almost hear the thoughts going through their minds. But even if they came to the conclusion that it might be hidden within a religious or other historical site, there were too many to choose from.

  “Will you tell us exactly where it is buried?” Angelo asked.

  “No, I replied.”

  “Is it that you don’t trust us?”

  “Oh, I trust you, and I trust Joseph, Terrence and Christopher, and the Bishop of course.” Actually, I wouldn’t trust the Bishop an inch. “But where a treasure of this magnitude is involved, I don’t trust anybody else. I don’t want there to be a chance of anyone overhearing anything we say. I turned to Sue. “Right, Suze?”

  “I go along with Ben,” she replied. “We’ll tell you when we’re ready to go out and recover the chest. We’re not intending to be rude. I know we probably sound like it, especially after all the help you’ve given us. But we just think it’s safer, that’s all. If Joseph had known that it was buried, and where it was buried, they might have got that information out of him. We don’t know what the drugs they gave to him did to his mind. We don’t know what control they had over him. It’s just best this way.”

  “Actually,” Angelo replied. “I think that I agree with you. The less people who are aware of the location of the chest, the safer it will remain. Would it be acceptable if we go tonight, provided that Father Joseph is feeling up to the excitement?”

  “That would suit us fine,” I replied. “What time?”

  “Some time between midnight and dawn would probably be satisfactory.”

  “Sounds good,” I replied.

  Father Joseph was up and about just before lunch. The long sleep had done him the world of good. The Chinese medicine the priests had dosed him with, probably some form of tranquillizer, had given him the deep sleep that he needed to rid himself of the trauma of his capture and incarceration. It wouldn’t have been an easy situation to be in. He had seen the faces of most of them, and that in itself meant they probably would have slit his throat and tossed his body into the river once they had the answers they needed from either Sue or me.

  “Ah, Ben, Sue,” he said in a quiet voice. “I hear that you had troubles of your own.”

  “Yes,” I replied, and then proceeded to give my version of events, because I was certain that Angelo and the other two priests would have watered down their parts in the episode.

  “So,” he said when I had finished. “Are you ready for tonight’s adventure? Hopefully we have seen the last of Jackson Lee and his associate.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Sue replied. “How many of us are going?”

  “Us?” I said. “You’re not going!”

  “Yes I am,” she replied. “I’m not staying back here while you guys have all the fun. I’m going to be there when the chest breaks the surface. I want to watch your face when you open the lid!”

  “You’re staying!” I said again. “This is not going to be fun! Jackson Lee and his partner are still out there somewhere.”

  “Jackson Lee’s probably still in Hong Kong, and his partner’s no use now we’ve grabbed his gang!”

  “How do you know Lee’s in Hong Kong,” I snapped back. “In any case, Hong Kong’s only a short plane ride away.”

  “Well, anyway,” she shot back. “There’s only the two of them!”

  “We don’t know that either,” I said. “We don’t know what connections he’s got. For all we know it might have only taken him a few hours to grab a few more guys.” I pointed my finger at her. She understood my moods. She knew that in most things her way was normally the way we would choose, but she also knew that every now and then a certain point would be reached when I would not budge, and it was my way or none at all.

  “If you won’t let me go tonight,” she replied, pushing me that little bit further. “I’ll just have to tell Joseph where the chest is and ask him to take me there right now so that we can all be certain that the area hasn’t been affected by any development during the last two or three years. I’m certain that’s one thing we’d all like to know before we creep out once it gets dark.” She was smiling, but I also knew her moods and couldn’t be certain that she might just do what she was threatening.

  “Okay, okay,” I finally agreed. “But you’ve got to promise that you’ll stick close to me and Father Terrence, probably closer to Terrence than to me. After seeing what he did to that guy with the knife, I think he’d do a much better job of looking after you than I would. In fact, you’d better stick close to both Terrence and Christopher.” I looked across at Christopher and noticed that his annoyance of my earlier behaviour seemed to have eased a little. Sue nodded her acceptance.

  “I don’t want a nod,” I said. “I want your word.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll promise to keep close to them both, but I think you’re being a bit melodramatic.”

  “I sincerely hope that you are right, Mrs Dunlop,” Angelo said. “But your husband is quite correct. We must prepare for the worst and pray for the best.”

  “What time do you think we should go?” Terrence asked.

  “I don’t really know,” I replied. “This is your city. You’d know better than I would as to when the city finally goes to sleep.”

  “It doesn’t, but perhaps two in the morning?” he replied. It had been just about that time the previous night when the thugs had broken into our room. I hoped it wasn’t an omen, but I wasn’t going to say anything.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “Although I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep between now and then.”

  “Are any of the monks coming along?” Sue asked.

  “Yes,” Angelo replied. “It will be a party of nine. There will be Father Joseph as well as Fathers Christopher and Terrence, and yourself and Ben, from the Society, and there will be four of the monks, the four who rescued Father Joseph from those evil men. Do you think that will be enough, Ben?”

  “It should be,” I said. “It should only need one person to do the digging, although if the ground is too hard we might need someone to use a crowbar while another person moves the soil away. If Jackson Lee somehow turns up with his partner and one or two remaining henchmen, it’ll be his three or four against our eight.”

  “Nine,” Sue said.

  “Nine?” I replied.

  “Yes, nine. You’ve forgotten me.”

  “I’m not counting you. If there’s any sort of a confrontation, I want you to keep right out of it, okay?”

  She simply nodded her head, and this time I didn’t bother to take it any further. She might be headstrong, but she knew there were limits that should not be exceeded.

  “Do you think that there’s any chance of that?” Father Angelo asked, “Do you think that there might be a confrontation?”

  “It’s a possibility we’ve got to be prepared for,” I replied. “We don’t really know how many men he has at his disposal. The quicker we get this over and done with, the better.”

  “Can you still not tell us where the chest is buried?” Joseph asked.

  “No,” I rep
lied. “Although….” I paused and looked at Sue. She nodded her head in acquiescence. “Okay,” I continued. “What I can tell you is that it’s buried by a tree in a sort of garden.”

  “A garden?” he replied.

  “Well, like a garden, but not really a garden. There’s a wall around it. We might have to climb over.”

  “It’s all very mysterious,” he replied. “I’ve been praying these past few days that the chest will be there, and that the boxes holding the relics will be there, and that the relics are untouched. It would be sacrilegious if they’ve fallen into unclean hands.”

  “They’ll be there,” I said. “Believe it. They will be there.”

  “I pray to the Lord that it is so,” Joseph replied.

  “You don’t seem so worried about the other pieces of the Church’s regalia,” Sue said to him.

  “Oh, I am worried, but regalia can be crafted again. The new pieces would not be the same, however it could be done. But the sacred relics had been held by us for such a long time. They were our sacred trust and can not be replaced.”

  “How long were they held by the Church before they were stolen?” I asked.

  He turned to Angelo and a look passed between them. “Oh, many centuries,” he said. “Many centuries.”

  “I think that you should both rest now,” Angelo said. “We will be spending the afternoon in prayer and in contemplation. You are free to join us, but I believe, from the conversation that I had with you earlier concerning your thoughts on our Lord, that you probably would not care to do so.” He wasn’t being condemning, merely practical.

  “No Father,” I said. “I’ll leave the praying to you.”

  The evening meal was a quiet one. Those at the table had their own separate thoughts. I was thinking of the huge amounts of money that might soon come our way. Sue would be thinking of the money, but she would also be thinking of home, that the way would soon be open for us to return there, back to the quiet leafy avenue with the Brisbane River flowing peacefully on the far side of the houses across the street, huge gum trees reaching upwards from its bank, their many spreading branches swinging in a gentle breeze.