by Philip Atlee
Holroyd shook his head. "I don't think so. He's supposed to have several millions in Swiss banks, but he has never used any of it for political purposes,"
"What about his holdings inside Indonesia?"
"He doesn't have any. The Bogor Palace is only one of his perks, as the undisputed leader to freedom. He owns nothing in his own name."
"Has any unexplained treasure been turned up in Indonesia in the past year?"
Holroyd glanced at me. "Yes. Three tons of silver bars were discovered in the basement of Merdeka Palace, in Djakarta, two months ago. They weren't exactly hidden, just stored in canvas bags."
"Ownership?" I asked.
"Unknown," said Holroyd. The bus had stopped and the other tourists were filing off. "I'll get the reports to you as soon as possible."
He got off. I followed him and turned right to admire the arching vermilion torii before the shrine. When Holroyd had had time to clear the area, I left the tourist party and caught a cab. The old man bowed me in and brought tea.
I sipped it and sat waiting for the "earnest money" to arrive.
NINE
AT FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON I WAS STILL waiting. Half an hour later a messenger delivered a sealed envelope to the house. It contained the dossiers I had requested from Holroyd.
I spent another hour memorizing the dossiers. After burning the reports over the embers in the porcelain brazier, I lay back on the tatami and went through them again in my head.
The record on Nogi, the black sumo wrestler, was the shortest. His father had been a Negro sergeant, stationed at the U. S. Air Force Base outside Chitose, Hokkaido, northernmost of the Japanese Islands. His mother had been the sister of a well-known sumo wrestler and was large for a Nipponese woman. She had met the sergeant while taking the hot baths near Chitose, with her family, but no one had ever made a positive identification of the father. It seems he was traveling, as an armed tourist abroad, under the civilian name of Booker Washington. No middle initial.
After abusing the girl, when the eminent sergeant decamped, the family finally simmered down and eventually became enchanted with their large black pearl of a baby. He was admitted to sumo training as an infant. There was nothing unusual in his record, except that he had been a good scholar and had finished two years of university training in Tokyo, general studies, with good grades. Now, because of the islandwide television coverage of sumo, he was becoming a national favorite and had a large following.
This report closed by recording that Nogi. while an undergraduate, had belonged to both the Zengakuren, a far-left student's group, and Soka Gakkai, a militant Buddhist-political party. He had no record of recent activity with either organization.
The background of my erratic pocket-Venus, Katja Arnkloo, was surprising. She was an international swinger of note, and the abbreviated costume and see-through blouse she had been wearing were St. Laurent originals. Born into a wealthy Stockholm family (her father had automobile agencies in six principal Swedish cities), she had been educated in England. France, and Italy, and had a house in San Sebastian, Spain.
The well-endowed little girl had come by that figure naturally. She was a championship swimmer, diver, and had been a member of the Corps de Ballet in the Royal Stockholm Company. Not exclusively devoted to Paris fashions, she often bought off the rack and had driven her own Lotus in international competition. From her record at that, she seemed second only to Stirling Moss's sister. For nearly two years, earlier, she had been an airline stewardess with SAS.
Katja had been busted three times in England for possession of pot but had gotten off with fines. I suspected that was the long arm of Direktor Arnkloo reaching over from Stockholm, but she had done thirty days in a Spanish prison for unnamed political offenses. "Public intemperance," whatever that was. A quantity of LSD had been found by gendarmes in her Nice hotel suite in May of 1965.
Katja was obviously not only with it but slightly ahead of it. That was what made her academic and employment records unusual. She had been an honors student from the University of Lund, in science, and had scored high in political philosophy at the Sorbonne. For several months over three years she had held a responsible position with UNESCO headquarters in Paris, and their file on her was laudatory.
I frowned. If all of it was true, Katja Arnkloo was a classic schizoid case. I was prejudiced, of course, because I had only three points of reference on the shapely little girl: the uninhibited contretemps in the Okura's Emerald Grill, her gleeful usurpation of my bedroom, and her abandoned rope-skipping with the bald Buddhist nuns.
That left my old Harvard type, code name Frank. Groton and Harvard Law. His square handle was Kenneth Bellamy Everett, 29, born in Brookline, Massachusetts. Father was Everard Lytton Everett corporation lawyer working in quiet-money trusts and bequests, full of good deeds, and his mother was Alicia Thurbridge. The bleak genealogy described Frank with frozen precision. For a long time both sides of his family had spoken, but not loudly, to that classic triumvirate: the Cabots, the Lowells, and God. On his mother, the interesting comment was that she had played excellent tennis while young but, when she threatened to become international class, promptly tucked it in. Can't have plebians staring at one's legs, you know, and that's what the important saves mean…
I felt immensely cheered after reflecting on Frank's dossier. He was a pure type and I respected that. Of course that pure type had damned near gotten me killed a few times in the field, but what's the use of developing an aristocracy if you don't venerate them?
Frank was in mint condition, with an impeccable background. Unfortunately these specimens usually come up empty when the pressure goes on. That's why impetuous oafs like me whose heraldry reflects only blotted cadet branches, often limp home with near-fatal wounds.
***
I awakened with a start. Heaved up on one elbow and watched twilight darkening the garden beyond the glass wall. When I called the old man attendant, he came down the hall in a flurry of cotton-socked feet and turned the globular light on. No one had come? He shook his head and I heaved up, got my wallet from the coat hanging behind the shoji screen. Scribbled a note listing the magazines and newspapers I wanted and gave him several thousand yen. He nodded, went rustling down the hall, and I heard the front door close behind him.
I lighted a small cigar, but it tasted like hell, so I crushed it out. The operation seemed to have fallen through. That meant I had to wait to see if it was really off the rails. That is what you do mostly in a stupid business like mine. Wait. For every redeeming second of action, you sit waiting like a lump. And most of the time, if you weren't sitting there waiting, it wouldn't make the slightest goddamned bit of difference. I wondered if my white tigers were all right.
TEN
WHEN THE TELEPHONE EXPLODED IN THE shadowed room behind the screen, I let it ring twice and then answered it.
"Yes?"
"We are sorry the payment has been delayed," said a voice. "Please go out in your garden and wait. And do not leave; we will call you again in an hour."
The line clicked dead. I cradled the instrument and pulled the sliding glass doer open. It was cooler in the garden; the climbing vines and small trees were jeweled by raindrops. The meticulously tended plot was only a few yards across, and I went to sit on the stone bench on the far side.
A car passed along the road behind the wall. Then another, and a group of people went walking by. Talking and laughing. The carbine was across my lap; my fingers were around the trigger guard and the weapon was off safety. Another car came racketing down the narrow road, slowed slightly in passing, and a parcel was tossed over the wall into the garden.
It hit with a soft thud, and I kicked it toward the faint light coming from the room. Knelt with my lighter and looked it over without touching it. A parcel wrapped in oilcloth, sealed with tape, as neat a job as any bank clerk could have done, I put the carbine on safety and tested the little package with its butt. Soft. That doesn't mean anything, either, because the moldabl
e explosives are just as yielding. I backed off as far as I could get, put a single shot through the edge of it, and the garden didn't go up.
Inside the room, under the pale globe light, I unwrapped the parcel and found $40,000, U.S. currency. My bullet had drilled through the outer edge of half of the bank notes, but they were still negotiable. I re-wrapped them as well as I could and shoved the package into my case.
That was the beginning of my packing. It did not take long because I had only one case and I was stowing away my toilet articles when the phone exploded again.
"You received the payment?"
"Yes."
"Good." The voice grunted and went on. "You will proceed to Djakarta tomorrow with the rest of the UNESCO group, sailing from Yokohama at five in the afternoon on the Osaka Maru, OSK Line."
"You'll have to excuse me on the cruise part of the trip," I said. "I quit using surface vessels years ago; I will be flying to Java."
I was half-turned away when the telephone rang again. I snatched it up and the same voice said, ' Get out of that house quickly! You haven't much time…"
Cradling the phone, I hoisted my case and called the old man. He came padding down the shadowed hall and listened as I asked if there was a back way out of the house. When he nodded, I went to the front door, pulled my flight boots on. and followed him through the kitchen and out the small rear door. As I closed it I could hear the insistence of the telephone slamming through the empty house.
When we approached the gate in the back fence, the old man muttered something I could not understand, wheeled, and went rushing into the back door. That was when the door frame shivered with a roar, and the whole lovely, flimsy house was blown apart. Before I lunged to the ground behind the fence. I saw his thin figure fly back toward me, ripped by the blast.
***
I rode aimlessly in taxis for half an hour, clutching my bag and map case, and finally stepped out in front of the Hotel Dai-Ichi. From a booth off the lobby I called the U.S. Embassy and asked for Holroyd. I had his private number somewhere but had not been able to find it. The Japanese girl on the switchboard singsonged that "Mr. Hawroy" was not there, not available, so I had to cajole my way to the duty officer. I got Burrs home number and called it. From the blaring background noise, when he answered, it sounded like he was promoting quite a blast.
When I commented on this, Holroyd snorted and said the idea was ridiculous. That he was strictly an "old-folks-at-home" type; the random noises I heard were only his daughter practicing on the samisen. This levity faded quickly, however, when I told him about the explosion in the safe house.
After I explained the rest of it, telling about my two calls from the contact, I added that I needed his help because I really did intend to sail with the Osaka Maru. But did not want to board her with the others in the UNESCO party. Instead, I wanted the ship to clear Yokohama harbor without me, and then I would join her by way of the launch that went out to take off her pilot. Could that be done?
"Yes." said Holroyd. "Do you want to go down tonight? To Yokohama, I mean?"
"Yes."
"Where are you?"
"The Dai-Ichi lobby. Baggage with me."
"Don't move," said Holroyd. "I'm on my way."
I hung the receiver up and relaxed, because that's what all the good ones say.
Holroyd picked me up in half an hour and we drove down to Yokohama. That gave us a chance to talk, and I explained that I was hoping my contact would waste some time checking Kemayoren Airport in Djakarta when he found out, or supposed he had. that I had not sailed on the Osaka Marie. The station chief nodded and said he was sorry that young Everett had jammed me up.
I laughed. Answered that Frank had only taken the big-difference drink and made an ass out of himself too near his own chicken coop. Hadn't we both done infinitely worse? Holroyd smiled. What's more, I added, that little Arnkloo girl was a swinger and a provocation. Burt nodded.
"I understand that's true," he said.
"What's more," I added irritably, "I don't like the smell of this thing. Too much money. Who believes that crap about the wonderful mind-changing chemical? Not old Joe. Too much force. Why try to blow up a house under me when all I've got is a smuggling assignment? Maybe a kill would be justified after I had the bullion, but why now?"
"I don't know," said Burt.
When we got to Yokohama, it was raining again. Holroyd delivered me to a native inn and said that a car would pick me up to meet the pilot's launch late in the afternoon. He would arrange things with the proper officials so that I would not be challenged or delayed when I stepped on the cruise ship at sea. We shook hands and he was gone, swinging the car around to make the drive back to Tokyo.
***
Shortly after ten o'clock the next night the launch went pitching through choppy waves, under a moonless sky, to work her way against the towering bulk of the outbound Japanese cruise ship. It was blazing with lights: from the decks and from the long rows of portholes. With the dexterity born of long practice, the launch's crewmen maneuvered her alongside the Jacob's ladder, which looked very frail against the white ship's side. The Osaka Maru was not very old and was about 12,000 gross tons, but she appeared immense from my view in the pitching launch.
My bag went snaking up toward the deck on a light line and, pinpointed in the spotlights pointed downward, I began climbing the swaying steps of the Jacob's ladder. The salt-sprayed side ropes rasped at my palms, and when I got to the lower deck, little white-clad seamen helped me aboard. The pilot being dropped was in full fig-starched whites with a gold-encrusted cap and shoulderboards. After I was aboard, he bowed to me and I to him. Then he went down the ladder like a cat, toward the launch bobbing far below.
I followed my bag down a companionway, up three flights of stairs with swinging music getting louder, and was met by a steward and two assistants. All in spotless white uniforms. The hallway underfoot was covered by vermilion carpeting, and I was ushered into an elaborate stateroom, which was an exact replica of a Japanese room. Except that it was air-conditioned and the toilet throne was in the bathroom. In their own houses the civilized Japanese never allow such things.
I showered everybody with yen, instructed the steward not to tell anyone, inclusive, that I had come aboard. He nodded and all three of them withdrew. When the door was secured, I prowled around the stateroom, found a small refrigerator under the bar, and broke a bottle of Black Jack Daniels out of my case. Had a drink, cut off the air conditioning, and opened all four portholes in the stateroom proper and the other two in the bathroom. The sea air, whipped off the heaving troughs of black waves below, smelled fine.
Kicking off my flight boots, I settled down at the small bar. From its stool, after all but the bathroom fights were cut off, I could see Pacific waves tilting to the edge of the night. There was no land horizon anywhere.
At two in the morning the band in the grand salon had stopped playing and at three I put on a raincoat and walked out of the stateroom. Went down the cushioned aisle and stepped out onto the deck. Took a deep breath of air. I had lied to that unknown fellow on the phone. I know of no joy greater, here below, than to prowl the deck of a ship when she is out of sight of land, with no horizons visible.
For the duration of the voyage, I stayed in my stateroom by day and prowled the ship only after midnight. By judicious application of dollars to the steward and his helpers I learned that Harvard Frank was on board and a constant companion of Katja Arnkloo. He was a certified member of the UNESCO group and was to be my assistant in Public Relations. This information angered me further, but I did not contact any members of the UNESCO team.
When we anchored in Tanjung Priok, port for Djakarta, I let the official party disembark. The steward told me that they were to be escorted by an honor guard to the Hotel Duta Indonesia, with a big banquet that night. All the highest officials of Indonesia would be there, he announced proudly, perhaps even Bung Karno.
I waited until the ship was cleared of pa
ssengers, caught a cab to Kemayoren Airport, and in two hours was on a Garuda flight to Djokjakarta. Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Hatta met me in a black Mercedes sedan, and I was soon installed inside a suite inside the eight-foot-thick walls of the rajah's kraton. From my deep-set masonry windows, I could see the immense courtyard and as I drifted into sleep under the mosquito net I could smell the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine.
ELEVEN
THE NEXT AFTERNOON COLONEL HATTA and I had a short audience with the owner of the huge palace, the hereditary Sultan of Djokjakarta, Hamengkubuono the Ninth. He was a slender and urbane man, dressed in English country-type clothes of tropic weight, and expressed his delight that we had come to restore the grandeur of Borobodur. As we lounged around the tea table spread under the tremendous war-ingin tree in the courtyard I listened to his comments on the ancient shrine and decided that he was neither as lissome as he seemed nor as polite as his speech indicated.
He looked like rawhide to me; nothing stirred behind his dark eyes. He told us that Borobodur was the most impressive remaining monument of the Shailendra Dynasty. That it was a mountain enclosed within a terraced building that was a thousand years old. In arrangement it was a portrait in stone of the Mahayana Buddhist cosmic system. The ruin had four galleries and thirty-six corners, all covered by stupas, or inverted chalices, which contained statues of the Buddha. The walls were covered by intricately carved bas-reliefs, but unfortunately the foundations were of a porous volcanic stone that was crumbling rapidly.
The great shrine had been restored once before, added the Rajah. In 1907 by an engineer named Van Erp.
In late afternoon Hatta and I toured the shrine, escorted by four officials of the rajah's court. All the buildup had not prepared me for the incredibly detailed battlements of the place. It arose from the rice plains of central Java like some incredible apparition from a child's dream. As we toured its slopes and galleries we soon saw how advanced its decay was. The northern half had already been fenced off and seemed ready to collapse.
