Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2)

by Christine Kling

  She had missed her scheduled radio connection with Cole due to the fact that she had been shanghaied by Benny and the pirates, and now that the phone was gone she couldn’t email him either. She would continue to try him on the radio and hope that they would be able to connect eventually.

  By sunset on the first day, she was back into her seagoing routine. She had the autopilot steering, the AIS system keeping an eye out for ships, and her various alarms set. She made herself a dinner of canned stew and biscuits, but when she opened the door to Peewee’s cabin, his back was to her and he grunted at her offer of food. That was fine with her, she thought. She hadn’t asked him along on this trip. She set a couple of bottles of water inside the cabin and left him alone.

  The next morning Peewee finally emerged from his bunk with a little color in his cheeks. He said he was hungry, and she was relieved that he didn’t look ready to die on her. In fact, he looked so well rested and fit she wondered if he had been sick at all. He was one remarkably vital ninety-three-year-old man.

  Peewee climbed the stairs and sat on the cockpit seat like a man who knew his way around boats. This morning he had taken off his white long-sleeved shirt, and he was wearing only his white undershirt tucked into his belted khaki trousers. Riley noticed that while his skin was wrinkled, the muscles in his forearms looked mighty firm. Amazing.

  He stuck his face in the companionway opening. “Beautiful day! I see you’ve cleaned things up. Sorry I wasn’t much help. Upset tummy.”

  Riley looked at him and narrowed her eyes. “Irv, if I were the suspicious sort, I might think you faked seasickness just to get out of work and night watches.”

  He opened his eyes in shock. “Me?” Then his mouth stretched wide and she saw most of his too-perfect dentures. “You got any more of that coffee I smell?”

  Riley reached for the thermos she had wedged in the sink. “How do you take it?”

  “Just black, sweetheart.”

  She prepared pancakes for the two of them and since they were sailing on a broad reach and the boat wasn’t heeling too much, she spread a towel on the table in the main salon and served the food below. When they had both finished eating, she stood to clear the table and said, “Irv, it’s time for the truth.”

  “About my seasickness?” He reached up to adjust his hearing aid.

  She set their plates in the sink. “You know what I mean. Who are you really, and what have you gotten me into?”

  He folded his paper napkin in half and wiped his mouth. “I have told you the truth,” he said. “Just not all of it.”

  She retrieved the gold prayer gau from the bowl where she’d left it the night before. “Who was that Hawkes guy and”—she set the gau on the towel in front of him—“why is this ‘trinket’ you gave me so important?”

  Peewee picked it up and pulled off the top. He slid out the documents and separated them into two piles. On one side was the page with all the hieroglyphs and on the other was the maplike document and the one that Cole identified as a Japanese letter.

  “It’s true that Ozzie got this from a Japanese prince, but only this one document was in it.” He pointed to the single page of hieroglyphs. “It turns out it’s sort of a key to some encrypted maps the Japanese left behind.”

  “You knew this when you gave it to me.”

  “Yes. I realized what it was after the war when I took a look at what Ozzie had given me. I decided to stay on in the Philippines. I went to work for some Americans who were looking for Japanese gold. I used that”—he pointed at the paper with the symbols—“and I made my living interpreting maps the Japanese left and selling them information.”

  “And did they call themselves the Enterprise?”

  Peewee’s lips worked furiously over his dentures. “How do you know that name?”

  “Cole. He went on and on about some guy named Andrew Ketcham who was at Corregidor. And another guy named Lansdale. He said they started the Enterprise at the end of the war and they’re still around today. He said the Enterprise used me to find him.”

  He closed his eyes, reached up with both hands, and began to massage his temples. He opened his eyes and said, “You could say that, because I did work for them. But they don’t know about him. Only I do. I haven’t sold them that tidbit of information just yet.”

  “Why not? Did you use me as bait to lure him out of hiding?”

  “Yes and no. The Enterprise is aware of both your efforts on the Surcouf. When I first heard about it I couldn’t believe it. I’d found Richie’s daughter. I never told them that I knew your granddad. As for Cole, time passed and they haven’t had any more trouble from him. He is no longer important. But me—I never believe a man’s dead until there’s a body.”

  “The Surcouf was four years ago, though. Why contact me now?”

  “You know about the Japanese gold in the Philippines. About Golden Lily.”

  She nodded.

  “For years, the Enterprise has had tons of gold sitting in vaults in offshore banks around the world. They couldn’t flood the market for fear the gold might be traced back to the countries of origin. Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, or wherever would demand they return the gold that was stolen from them by the Japanese.”

  “And it should be returned.”

  “Ha! Fat chance now. In the last few years, with the global financial crisis, the price of gold has gone through the roof! These guys ramped up their operation. But they needed to find a way to launder their gold. That’s where Hawkes comes in.”

  “How so?”

  “That’s his thing. He’s a metallurgist. He’s been perfecting this method to defeat gold fingerprinting. The new technology has allowed them to introduce more and more gold into the international market. Combine that with the changes in the laws in the US that have allowed them to channel money into super PACs, and they’re now cleaning out their vaults. And they’ve been pouring money into all their private intelligence and security contractors in the Middle East that hire up all their buddies when they leave government service and want to start making the big bucks.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I’m getting to it. For the last sixty years there have been rumors about the mother lode of all the Japanese sites. I’d gone through all the maps they had, but there was this rumor that the map to the mother lode was still out there.”

  “You’re talking about the Dragon’s Triangle.”

  Peewee smiled. “I knew I was right about you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pointed to the other documents on the table. “These other documents. They were found in the Philippines a few weeks ago. Maybe they point to the Teiyō Maru, so I decided to give it all to you. I’m an old man. I’ve spent my life working for these fools. They haven’t made the world a better place. We’re just as close to Armageddon as ever, probably closer.”

  “That’s what Cole thinks.”

  “Sweetheart, this time, I wanted to get some of the treasure for me. There’s this place in Bangkok where I want to be laid to rest when I die. It costs more than I got. So, I figure I’ll kill two birds, right? Give you your gramps’ gift and you can figure out the map and find the wreck. You two seem pretty good at that.”

  “But you said you were the one who could decipher all these old maps. Why not just tell us where to look?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Listen, all the maps I’ve dealt with were of locations in Luzon. This time it’s a shipwreck. I know bupkes about nautical charts. I knew if I didn’t find this wreck soon, they were gonna kill me anyway. Figured it was time for me and the Enterprise to have a falling out. Time to go into business for myself, and I had a pretty good idea where I could find a treasure-hunting ship and crew.”

  Riley reached for the document Peewee said could be a map to the location of the Teiyō Maru. “I know charts, but this doesn’t look like any nautical chart I’ve ever seen.”


  “Have you got charts of the Philippines aboard?”

  “I have the electronic charts on my iPad.”

  “Then let’s get to work.”

  A Cave in Luzon

  The Philippines

  June 26, 1945

  Ozzie stared into the bright light of the flashlight. He wondered if the prince intended to shoot them all then and there. He closed his eyes and thought about praying, but he didn’t know what to say.

  A high-pitched whistle echoed through the cave and the bare bulbs on the walls came on and illuminated the chamber. A contingent of about a dozen men came running into the cave from the far tunnel. They were a ragtag lot. Some of them bare-chested, others barefoot, some with white headbands sporting the red rising sun emblem. They all wore parts of what had once been Japanese Army uniforms. And they all carried rifles with bayonets attached. The men lined up in formation in front of the prince.

  Either the other chamber was not far or they had been waiting in the darkness for the prince’s signal. The prince issued orders and some of the men collected the weapons from the ground while two of them disappeared down the tunnel in the direction of the submarine.

  Ozzie found it interesting that when Prince Masako spoke to the Americans or to Ben, his voice was soft and almost singsong, but when he spoke to his men, he shouted.

  After shouting in Japanese to his men, the prince turned and spoke to the group of American Navy men. “Now we will return to your submarine, and Captain Westbrooke, if you do not want my men to shoot all of you, you will command all your men still on board to surrender. Do you understand?”

  Westbrooke nodded.

  The prince swung his arm through the air, smiled, and said, “After you.”

  Four of the Japanese soldiers moved behind them and prodded them with their bayonets. Ozzie followed along with the others, wondering if the prince was going to honor their agreement.

  When they got close to the original chamber where the sub was docked, their party caught up with the two men the prince had sent ahead. The men were keeping watch on the submarine as well as their two companions, who were being held under guard by an American sailor. The prince sent Ozzie and Westbrooke ahead. Westbrooke nodded at the guard and then ordered all hands on deck. Once the entire crew was mustered, he explained their situation. The Japanese had already killed two of their men, and they still held four of them at gunpoint in the tunnel. He ordered the men to surrender and Prince Masako arrived right on cue.

  The prince told Westbrooke to select half the men to stay on board to keep the submarine running and then to assign the remaining sailors to a work detail. They would start loading the crates onto the submarine.

  “I have no desire to harm any of your men,” Masako said. “But I need this submarine to transport some critical cargo back to Japan. Once we arrive at the home island, you will be held as prisoners of war. However, I will not tolerate any insurrection. Any man who does not follow orders or who attempts to escape will cause one of his fellow sailors to be shot,” the prince said.

  The skipper and Ozzie were among the men who were to stay on board, and they were allowed full run of the boat. They both headed for the captain’s cabin and slid the door closed.

  Westbrooke sat on the bunk and held his head in his hands. “What are we going to do?”

  Ozzie paced two steps, turned, paced two more steps, and turned again.

  “This prince might be saying he’s not going to hurt anyone, but I don’t trust him.”

  Westbrooke looked up. “There’s still the fifty-caliber deck gun and we’ve got the last two torpedoes.”

  “First off,” Ozzie said, “the only torpedoes left are in the stern of the boat—not exactly pointed in the right direction—and second, firing either the fifty-caliber or a torpedo in here would be equally likely to cause a cave-in. We might kill the Japs, but we’d bury ourselves in the process.”

  “You have any better plan?”

  “Let me think about it.” The prince had only told him that he and Ben needed a ride to the Philippines. Ozzie had assumed he would be able to take the prince and Ben ashore in a boat and disappear, leaving the Bonefish free to head on out when he didn’t return and make her way back to Guam. In his wildest dreams he hadn’t figured on them docking inside a cave.

  “You know we outnumber them,” Westbrooke said.

  “Are you sure of that? Who’s to say there aren’t a hundred more of them back in that cave? Like I said, I don’t trust him.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yeah?” Westbrooke said.

  “The Jap officer wants to talk to Lieutenant Riley.”

  Ozzie sighed. “Tell him I’ll be right out.” He turned back to Westbrooke. “I’ll go see what he wants.”

  Ben was waiting for him at the bottom of the gangplank, and he motioned for Ozzie to follow him. Now that the lights were on throughout the caves, walking through the passages was easier. He and Ben made good time. Prince Masako was overseeing the loading of one of the large crates onto a wagon just inside the treasure chamber.

  He turned when Ben spoke to him in Japanese. “Lieutenant. Here you are.”

  “What’s that say on these crates, anyway?”

  The prince and Ben exchanged a look. “I told you. It is the name of the ship that brought them here. It says Teiyō Maru.”

  “No, I mean the letters and numbers—‘UO2.’ What’s that mean?”

  “I cannot tell you all my secrets, Lieutenant.”

  Ozzie started toward the crate, but Ben stepped in front of him and cut him off.

  Then the prince said, “You are wondering if I am going to keep my promise to you.”

  “Yeah, when you started shooting my men, I did start to wonder.”

  “They are no longer your men. You are a free man and a rich man now. Follow me.”

  Ozzie considered protesting, but decided to wait and see how the prince intended to play this out. He followed the two of them into the passage on the far side of the treasure chamber. After a half hour of fast walking, they entered another chamber not as large as either of the others. There were no stalagmites—it looked as though the Japanese had removed them to level the floor—and the stream bed that had flowed along one wall of the treasure chamber seemed to have almost dried up or gone underground here. The dirt floor was covered with cots, equipment, tables, boxes of ammunition, and clothing. Three men stood at a table where they were working with wires and batteries and what Ozzie recognized from his work with the OSS in Europe as blocks of plastic explosive material. Aside from those working, a few men were resting on the cots. They all looked up when the prince entered. They all quickly stood at attention and bowed from the waist. No one said a word.

  Off on one side of the chamber, a tent had been erected enclosing an area about twenty feet square. Ben lifted a flap to open the door and Prince Masako entered. Ozzie followed.

  Inside were two cots, a table and a writing desk with paper, writing instruments, and a small lamp with a fringed shade. On the table he saw books, candles, and a square of what looked like white silk fabric.

  The prince turned to Ozzie. “I spoke to my men and the news from here in the Philippines is not good. We must leave this place soon and close this chamber quickly. I will not be returning to this country for some time. In a few hours, the sun will rise, and I would like you to help Ben find his way safely home to his father’s farm near Tuguegarao. Then you will be free to join the American soldiers. Will you do that for me?”

  “We had a deal, Prince.”

  “Yes, and I will pay you before you leave. But now, before you leave on this long journey, Ben will take you to eat some food and rest until daybreak.”

  “Okay,” Ozzie said, though he wasn’t sure the Jap food would be any good for his stomach.

  “Before you go, though, I must ask you for your sodium bicarbonate. I will return it to you before you go.”

  It was a strange request, but Ozzie did
n’t see any reason to refuse. He reached into his pocket and handed over the bottle.

  He and Ben ate some plain white rice and boiled fish, and then Ozzie stretched out on a cot. He didn’t sleep, though. He kept thinking about what the prince had said about closing up the cave and what he’d seen those men building back there. Somehow, he had to figure out how to find his way back here—before they set off those explosives and buried the entrance to the cave for good.

  One of the Jap sailors shook his shoulder. Maybe he had just dozed off. Ozzie got up and saw Ben standing with the prince outside the tent. The sailor who had awakened him motioned for him to go join them.

  On the far side of this third chamber there was another passageway, and Ozzie followed them out that way. Shortly they took a much narrower route that branched off to the right. There were no electric lights in this tunnel and both the prince and Ben switched on flashlights. After about fifty yards, they came to a narrow opening, and Ozzie was surprised to see daylight filtering in through the bushes that concealed the entrance.

  Ben held the bushes aside and they stepped out into a small clearing on the side of a mountain. An old man was stirring a pot hung over an open fire while another chopped vegetables on a table. High trees shaded the clearing and protected them from being spotted by passing planes.

  Ben walked over to the table and collected a heavy backpack. He opened the flap and pulled out a burlap sack the size of a grocery bag and handed it to the prince. Masako turned to Ozzie.

  “As promised, you are now free to go. Ben is going to lead you out to the road.” He held the burlap bag out to Ozzie. “This is the payment I promised you. There is more than a kilo of gold in here as well as diamonds and rubies.”

  “Thank you.” Ozzie shook the prince’s hand. He should’ve been glad to be getting away with his life—he wasn’t sure the others would—not to mention the gold, but Ozzie had got into this whole thing with the bigger goal in mind. “There is one more thing, though, Prince Masako. On the sub you spoke about the maps to all the other Golden Lily treasure sites. You said you had to come back to get them. What happened with that? Where are those maps?”