Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2)

by Christine Kling

  November 17, 2012

  When they arrived at the entrance gate to Wat Arun, the old man told Benny he didn’t have any money for the entrance fee, so Benny paid for them both. But he wondered if the old man was lying to him about the girl’s location. Why choose the wat as a meeting place if he didn’t have the money to get in? They walked around the gardens, looked into a few chapels, and Benny even climbed halfway up one of the prang spires to get a better look across the entire compound. The view of the river was great up there, but there was no sign of a young white woman alone. Benny had had enough.

  When he got to the bottom of the stone steps, the old man could probably tell from the look on Benny’s face that he wasn’t happy.

  “I swear this is where she was supposed to meet me,” Peewee said. The side of his face with the scars didn’t move much, while the good side was trying too hard to look believable.

  “You think you are a clever trickster, old man, but you are going to end up dead.”

  “We all will, Benny. But you know what they say, It’s the bad plowman who quarrels with his ox. You want this girl? I can find her for you, but not with you hanging in my shadow and threatening to kill me.”

  “Peewee, I wouldn’t fit in your shadow.”

  “Are all Malay people that literal?” Peewee whacked himself on the side of the head. “What am I thinking? You’re headhunters. It doesn’t get much more literal than that.” His cap had slid down over one eye, and he reached up and centered it on his head.

  “Let’s get out of here, old man. She’s not going to show. It’s almost six o’clock.”

  “I’ve got to drain my lizard.”

  “What did you say?”

  Peewee rolled his eyes. “Aw,” he groaned. “You know, I’ve got to point Percy at the porcelain?” He turned his head sideways and looked at Benny out of the corner of his eye. “I’m going to free Willy?” He shook his head. “Still nothing, huh? How about, can you find me the little boys’ room?”

  “Are you saying you’ve got to take a piss?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “I’m sure there’s a toilet around here somewhere.”

  “Yeah, I saw it up close to the exit. You know, where we saw those two big demon statues? This way.”

  Several vendors had parked their carts around the exit gates. They were selling food and trinkets. Off to one side, a slender man in a broad straw hat led a young elephant around by soft touches to the animal’s ear. Over his shoulder was slung a cloth bag. He reached in and handed out handfuls of elephant food to a group of children. They giggled as the trunk vacuumed up the grain.

  “I’ll be right back,” Peewee said as he hurried past another group of children who were playing a game of tag in and around the bushes. The old man turned and called over his shoulder, “Sometimes at my age, this can take a while, though.”

  Benny followed the old man down the path to the concrete slab outside the latrine. Along the edge of the concrete, a cluster of vendors was selling bottled water and food. One woman had a blue plastic tub filled with eight- to twelve-inch live eels. He recoiled at the sight of the slithering animals. When he was a young boy, Benny had lived in his grandfather’s stilt house on a river in Borneo. His people were the Dayak and he remembered eating fish, but he had no memory of eating anything that looked like these nearly colorless worms. But Benny didn’t remember much of his boyhood. His mother had taken him to the city of Kuching when he was ten years old, and he had fallen in with a group of boys who ran wild in the streets. By the time he was eighteen, he had already killed two men.

  Later, when he was much older, he went back and tried to find his grandfather’s house. There weren’t many Dayak still living on the river. They said his grandfather had died shortly after they left the village. That was when Benny decided it was time to learn more about his heritage.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a child’s scream. Benny turned his head. A little girl lay on the grass and the elephant had his foot on her abdomen. The man in the straw hat was screaming at the beast and pointing at the girl.

  Benny ran over and scooped the child up off the ground. He was surprised at how easy it was to slide her tiny body out from under that big gray foot. It seemed the elephant’s foot had just been hovering over her. He knelt in front of her and brushed off the girl’s dress. She smiled at him and looked as though she expected praise for something. When she turned to look up at the elephant, she reached out her tiny fingers toward the trunk. He saw no fear in her face at all. There were no tears on her cheeks.

  Benny looked up at the man in the straw hat and saw the shadow of a smile on his face, too.

  “Is this some kind of game?” he asked them in Thai.

  The man in the straw hat shrugged and looked away. Benny realized the man was looking in the direction of the toilet.

  He jumped to his feet and started to run.

  Chao Phraya Express

  Bangkok, Thailand

  November 17, 2012

  The woman who had sold her a ticket on the Chao Phraya Express boat had looked at the address on the card and told her to get off at stop number thirteen. As the boat churned its way upriver, Riley found a seat and pulled out her phone. She had a good connection, so she checked her email and was happy to see a note from Billy telling her everything was fine with her boat and offering any other help she might need. Then she pulled up a web browser window and went to her blog page and logged in with the password tombolo. It was her habit to post the latitude and longitude of her position, but whenever she was off the boat, she posted her address for the night. After she’d typed the date and the information for Napa Place into a new comment post, a familiar window popped up with a message written in Thai. She couldn’t read it, but it had happened once before, so she knew it said she had nearly used up the data she had purchased. She would need to find a Wi-Fi connection soon to access the website where instructions for purchasing more were written in English.

  The crowd on the ferry was mostly Thai with the usual smattering of young Caucasian backpackers, girls in long skirts or wide-legged cotton pants, and guys with their beards, braids, and dreadlocks. None of them were paying her any undue attention, nor did anyone look out of place. The backpackers all headed for the exit at the back of the boat as they approached her stop.

  Riley followed the crowd through an alleyway to the street, Thanon Phra Arthit, where traffic was bumper-to-bumper, tourists jostled with Thai hustlers for sidewalk space, and the many lighted signs for hostels, hotels, travel agencies, and restaurants lit the street despite the gathering dusk. The smell of curry and grilling meats mixed with exhaust fumes. Riley stepped into the doorway of a clothing shop and pretended to admire a dress in the window as she scanned the street. She was certain no one had followed her from the temple to the river ferry, but in this crowd, it would be much more difficult to tell if anyone was watching her. Again, she saw no one, but now that she was aware of the skill of this guy, she kept checking every few minutes.

  Her directions were to cross the street here and go right for several blocks. The Napa Place was on a side street barely wide enough for a small car. A sign directed her up the one hundred yards or so off the main street to the narrow door to the hotel. To the left just inside the entry the wall was covered with a honeycomb of little cubbyholes, several of which were filled with shoes. Riley removed her sandals, placed them inside her backpack, and passed through into the lobby. The reception desk was at the back. Through a pair of French doors to her right, she saw a lovely open courtyard with tables scattered among the greenery and a stone fountain with a Buddha head on the far wall.

  The petite woman behind the desk gave her a wai and said “Sawadee ka.” Riley returned the greeting and made arrangements for a room for the night. She was disappointed to learn there was no Wi-Fi in the rooms, only in the common areas, so after freshening up, she grabbed her backpack that held her phone and wallet, and returned downstairs to order dinner
and use the Internet access in the restaurant.

  After ordering her food, and purchasing more data minutes to keep her iPhone working, the first thing on her list was to learn more about the USS Bonefish. Between Wikipedia and several sites maintained by naval historians, she discovered there had been two subs with that name. The one she was interested in was a Gato-class diesel-electric submarine 319 feet long. Peewee had said that her grandfather supposedly arrived in the Philippines in 1945, but what Riley learned was that the Bonefish was in San Diego for a refit in the early part of that year. Then it went on a war patrol in the South China Sea, and from May onward was involved in something called Operation Barney.

  The Bonefish entered the Sea of Japan in June 1945, along with eight other American subs, but they had been in training on how to use the relatively new invention of sonar in Guam before that. The wolfpack of subs sank a whole bunch of unsuspecting enemy ships inside what the Japanese thought were protected waters, but when they rendezvoused at the end of the month up near the Strait of La Pérouse, the Bonefish was a no-show. The eight other subs waited as long as they dared, then they returned to Guam, and the Bonefish was declared missing and presumed lost.

  After the war, Japanese records showed an anti-submarine attack on June 18 in an area called Toyama Wan, where the Bonefish had last been seen. During the attack, a great many depth charges were dropped and finally some wood chips and oil came to the surface. The Japanese claimed to have destroyed an enemy submarine, and the US Navy, she read, then recorded that as the attack which sank the USS Bonefish.

  The USS Bonefish had never gone anywhere near the Philippines in 1945.

  Aboard the USS Bonefish

  Sea of Japan

  June 19, 1945

  Ozzie’s watch ended at 0400. He stopped outside the wardroom when he saw Colonel Miyata sitting ramrod straight in front of a cup of tea.

  “Can’t sleep, Colonel?” he said.

  When the man looked up, the round lenses in his glasses reflected the overhead lighting. The opaque lenses made him look blind. “I was hoping to speak to you.”

  “Stick around a minute,” Ozzie said.

  He walked to his cabin and looked fore and aft before stepping inside. There was no privacy in a submarine. In the forward torpedo room, fourteen men slept over and around the sixteen torpedoes. Here in officers’ country, curtains served as cabin doors. At least all the men he saw were sleeping, and with engine noise no one would overhear a conversation. Ozzie woke Lieutenant Flores, who rubbed his face, then staggered off to hit the latrine before going topsides for his watch. For the moment, Ozzie had the tiny cabin to himself.

  He returned to the wardroom and tapped Colonel Miyata on the shoulder. “You can bring your tea if you want.” He tipped his head toward the officers’ quarters forward.

  If anyone saw them, no one would think it odd that the OSS man was trying to buddy up with the Jap prisoner.

  When he got to his cabin, he turned and motioned for Colonel Miyata to enter. The Japanese prince looked around for somewhere to sit, then perched on the edge of the bunk Flores had just exited.

  Ozzie closed the curtain. The heavy cloth blocked some of the noise from outside the cabin.

  He stood and looked down at the strange man in the white uniform. Lieutenant JG Harold Oswald Riley was at a crossroads, and he knew it. Even for him. In the last five years with the OSS, he had killed, even tortured men to death. He had decided what information would be passed on to his military higher-ups, and what would be subverted. His world had long ago stopped being a place of black and white, right and wrong.

  He thought back to their last day before departing Guam. The skipper assembled the ship’s company and read to them from the Articles for the Government of the Navy. The words outlined the penalties for such offenses as disobedience, attending to an enemy, desertion, mutiny. The penalty? Death. Ozzie had restrained himself from chuckling at the time. If that were the case, he thought, he’d be dead several times over.

  But this? Making this kind of a deal with Hirohito’s cousin? Even for him, this was big.

  But this war had taught him over and over that the life of one man weighed little in the broad view. Ozzie was certain the men he ultimately answered to would be very interested in Golden Lily, and if he played this right, Ozzie could please them and enrich himself in the process.

  “So Colonel Miyata, you want to get to the Philippines and you want this submarine to take you there.”

  The colonel’s mouth stretched wide in a toothy grin. “You Americans are so direct. Yes. This is correct.”

  “And how do you propose I go about this?”

  “I won’t tell you your business, Lieutenant. I think you will come up with something. Especially if the reward is great.”

  “What kind of reward are you talking about?”

  The man reached into the pocket of his jacket and brought out the gold prayer gau. “I told you that this contains the key to the map of all the Golden Lily locations. I can offer you gold and jewels.”

  “You’ll give me that gold tube with the key in it if I figure out a way to turn this sub around and take you to the Philippines?”

  Again the grin. “No, Lieutenant. But I will give you more gold than you have ever seen.”

  “I’d be committing mutiny—at least.”

  “General MacArthur has taken Manila. Yamashita cannot hold out forever in the mountains of northern Luzon. I know this. I hold the key, but the only complete map of Golden Lily is there in Luzon. My men are waiting for my return. I will pay you very well for this service. When we arrive, you can go ashore with me and when you rejoin the American Army in the Philippines, you can say you were taken prisoner.”

  The gold alone was tempting, but the opportunity to get his hands on that map and the key, that was what would make the operation worth it. There would be casualties, yes, but one thing he’d learned in this war was that life was cheap.

  Once Colonel Miyata had slipped out the curtain and headed back to his bunk, Ozzie opened the compartment where he kept his things and pulled out a small canvas satchel. Inside were his sidearm in its holster, his one-time pad for encoding messages to be sent to headquarters, a pocketknife, cigarettes and matches, extra pencils, and, inside a metal box, his suicide pill. It was a small glass ampoule coated in rubber so that he could hold it in his cheek without fear of it breaking. In the event that capture was imminent, he was to crush the glass with his teeth. With all that he knew, his orders were to avoid capture by the Japanese at all cost.

  Just before 0500 hours on June 19, Ozzie opened that box for the first time. He slipped the capsule into his pocket and headed for the radio room.

  Napa Place

  Bangkok, Thailand

  November 17, 2012

  When her meal arrived, Riley set her research aside and slipped her phone into the backpack hanging on her chair. She wanted to savor the enormous prawns in green curry sauce served with rice and an icy Singha beer. She thanked the young girl who was the only one working there and doing an excellent job of handling the entire dining room on her own. Riley’s table was in the corner close to the kitchen door, but in a spot where she could have her back to the wall and keep her eye on everyone who entered. Thus far, she had not seen anyone questionable—most of the other diners were tourists—and she turned her attention to her meal. She had grown to love Thai food in the months since she had arrived, and she found the food at this small hotel restaurant was as good as any she had tasted in Phuket.

  While she ate, she tried to sort through what she had learned about the Bonefish and what it meant. She supposed it was possible that during that March to May patrol in the South China Sea, the sub had detoured to the Philippines. But suppose it hadn’t. Suppose Peewee or Irv or whoever he was, was lying to her. She certainly needed to consider the possibility and then, the question was, what was his motivation? He had given her an object that certainly appeared to be made of several ounces of solid gold
. That’s not something you’d hand over without a very good reason. The object contained some kind of odd scrolls inside that were not the typical contents for a Tibetan prayer gau. They were not in the Tibetan language, but rather appeared to be in some kind of code.

  She and Cole had dealt with codes four years earlier when they were searching for the submarine Surcouf, but that certainly didn’t make them cryptologists. But it was a connection, so she needed to think it through. Who knew about that? Obviously Theo—Cole’s first mate—did, but he had disappeared as effectively as Cole. When Riley saw him last in Cherbourg, he told her he had become the head man for Full Fathom Five Maritime Explorations and the captain of the Shadow Chaser, formerly Cole’s boat. Six months later, when Riley tried to contact Theo again, the organization had folded, and the boat was no longer listed as a federally documented boat.

  So, if all the talk about the Bonefish was just a ruse to bring her to Bangkok, and what Peewee really wanted was to get someone to crack this code, why choose her? Where was the connection from Peewee to Riley the code breaker?

  Riley’s thoughts were brought back to the present when she saw movement in the hotel lobby. Though the lighting wasn’t terrific, she recognized the peaked military cap on the short man’s head. Peewee passed through the French doors and marched across the dining room to her table. Without a word, he pulled out a chair and sat next to her.

  “So how did you find me?” she asked.

  “Back at the market, I noticed a business card stuffed in a pocket of your backpack. I could read the name. Easy enough to find the address.”

  “You sure get around for an old guy in his nineties.”

  “I work at it, sweetheart.”

  “What were you doing at Wat Arun with that man—”

  He interrupted her. “So you saw us. Listen. We don’t have much time. The item I gave you earlier. I need it back.”

  “What?”

  “Please.” He rubbed his hands on his pants legs under the table as though to dry off wet palms. “Don’t ask questions. I’m doing this to protect you. That man you saw me with? He is very dangerous. I didn’t realize I would lead him to you, but I should have known. He’s a hell of a tracker. I’m sorry.” As soon as he stopped talking, his lips and tongue started working at his teeth.