by Peter Corris
Bright suppressed another sniff. 'Not something we want to happen. How about this? Craft was working for the French government. They won't want his dirty deeds to come to light even this late in the piece.'
'Why the French?' Marsha said.
'I picked them out of the hat, just for fun.'
McKinnon pulled fleecy-lined gloves from his pocket. 'Well, I'm glad you think it's fun. I'm rather worried about all this interference, myself. We'll have to watch our steps. You two particularly. Did the cameraman get a shot of the white helicopters?'
'Yes,' Marsha said. 'He got a shot of everything.' She remembered the boy with the diseased nose. 'Everything.'
'Great. Well, I'm off. Anyone want a lift?'
They shook their heads. 'We've got a pile of faxes and telexes to go through,' Marsha said. 'Hoping for something from Zurich. How're things looking for Mongolia?'
'Good for them, bad for us,' McKinnon said. You're an investigative journalist, Bright, and you haven't heard?'
'I've been in bed for three days,' Bright said. 'All I've heard is ringing in my ears.'
'The Mongolians are telling the Chinese and the Russians to get stuffed. Things're a wee bit unsettled.'
'You don't seem to be too agitated,' Marsha said.
'I've just about got Mexico and the States lined up. In this business you grab what you can when you can. Goodnight, children, and take care.'
McKinnon left and Marsha pulled on her coat. 'I'll go out and get some Chinese. Then we can tackle the faxes.'
Bright summoned a grin, although he would have preferred to eat his Chinese in bed with Marsha beside him and the TV on. 'I wonder if they, whoever the hell they are, photocopied the faxes and telexes as well?'
Marsha shook her head. 'I got Betty to file them under Oxfam. Nobody reads a file on Oxfam. There you go. You can start now if you like. Australians are said to like faxes.'
'Who said that?'
'Someone said Australians send more faxes per capita than anyone else in the world.'
'Jesus,' Bright said, 'farewell to the forests. No, I'll wait till you get back. Something to clear the sinuses, eh?'
'Mongolian lamb,' Marsha said.
An hour later Vic read a facsimile sheet and spluttered over his forkful of curried vegetables. 'My god. We've found him.'
'Who?'
Bright picked food off the surface of his fax sheet. 'Randolph Craft. I got a mate of mine to put an advertisement in this legal newsletter he circulates and he got a reply. Here it is. Randolph Craft. He's a solicitor in Hong Kong. Response to your advertisement, blah, blah. Son of Richard Craft . . . much valuable information . . . He wants an air ticket to come to London.'
'Smart guy,' Marsha said. 'Any phone number? We should ring first to feel him out.'
'No phone. Just the fax number.'
'A very smart guy. Well, what do we do?'
Bright wiped his mouth and took a pull on a can of Guinness. It was his first alcohol for three days and tasted wonderful. 'Send him the money for a ticket. Now!'
'Wouldn't you like to go to Hong Kong? Seeing as how there's nothing encouraging from Zurich?'
'That's a thought,' Bright said. He looked again at the fax. 'Imperative we meet in London . . . Poor bugger probably wants to line up his exit papers for 1997.'
'Well?'
'It's amazing how you can serve mankind in this line of work, isn't it? Let's send him the money.'
'Return fare?'
'He doesn't ask for one. I'll suggest it's negotiable according to the value of his information and . . . ah, any evidence he may be able to provide.'
'Bastard,' Marsha said. 'How're your sinuses?'
Bright sniffed. 'Better.'
15
Extract from Walking Across the World, by Basil Craft:
The Gobi Desert resembles nothing so much as another planet, as conventionally imagined by fantasy writers. Its desolation is almost impossible to describe, not because the landscape is without features, but because of an adamantine quality to everything. Nowhere else are stones and earth so hard, wood so unyielding to axe and fire, grass so tough. The very sky looks hard, like a metal canopy overhead.
It goes almost without saying that the people of the Gobi are a unique breed. Whether herders or agriculturists, their physical composition and the texture of their social arrangements reflects the hostile environment they inhabit. Mongolians of the arid lands are without a sense of humour and the sentiment of compassion is unknown to them. Every day is a struggle, a night's warm sleep is a victory and only the strong can expect to be victorious . . .
After an exhausting day's travel, the men past the point of exhaustion and even the camels appearing to be wilting, we came to a small stream that trickled through the rocks and spread out far enough to permit a little grey, scrubby vegetation. After the sterility of the country we had passed through this mean marsh appeared like an oasis. Imagination transformed the gnarled, prickly trees into stately date palms and the cracked boulders into elegant marble benches.
We watered and tethered the animals and lit a fire to fend off the night's bone-chilling cold. I was eating when Xa, my servant, approached me. His face was a mask of terror. I asked him what was wrong and he broke into a gabble of which I understood not one word. Presently, three men strode into our camp. They were huge fellows all, bundled up in the woollen garments of the district, their flat faces barely visible among the wrappings.
I greeted them in Chinese which the largest man appeared to understand, although he made no response. He detailed his companions to inspect our belongings and equipment and this I permitted for the moment. They were only three and we were eight and well-armed at that. I could see no weapons about our visitors.
Eventually the leader positioned himself by the fire and proceeded to kick things, cooking implements, blankets and such out of the way. Then he began to remove his clothing. I asked him what he was doing and he grunted briefly to Xa.
'He will not speak to you, sir,' Xa said. 'He does not speak to barbarians.'
I had to suppress a smile. The fellow smelt like a dead dog; his hair, when he took off his leather cap, was a greasy mane hanging to his shoulders and there was dirt encrusted in the folds of his skin.
I stood. The Mongolian and I were of about the same height and build. Xa spoke softly, mortally afraid of both of us. 'He says you have taken his water and grass and must fight him.'
I had the Webley-Scott in my pocket and was confident I could make it a three-shot fight if that was what it came to. The Mongolian, stripped to the waist now, grunted some more.
'He says you must fight him, sir, or his people will kill us all. They await beyond the hill.'
'How many?' I said.
'I dare not ask. Many.'
'What does he mean by fight?'
Xa's voice trembled as he put the question.
'He means to . . . grapple, sir.'
'Wrestling?'
'Yes, sir.'
I'd wrestled since I was a boy. I'd won tournaments at school and university in the sport and had no fear of anyone my own size. I let the blanket drop from my shoulders and unbuttoned my jacket. A harsh sigh escaped from my opponent-to-be's companions and they crowded closer. I tossed the automatic to my brother. 'Take this, Dick,' I said. 'And if he fouls me more than ten times, plug him.'
Dick eyed the other two Mongolians. I knew what he was thinking—there could be knives or pistols concealed in all that wool and leather. 'What if you foul him?' Dick said. 'I wonder what these chaps'll do.'
I took off my shirt. 'That won't be neccessary,' I said.
The fight that followed was the most arduous and fierce I had ever participated in up to that time. The Mongolian was immensely strong and quick. He had a variety of holds, some of which were variations on familiar grips and others which were totally new to me. Reduced to its essence, his major endeavour was to snap my spine and he feinted, held, twisted and strained to achieve this.
I
, on the other hand, intended to subdue and humiliate him. I was evasive, applied the counter to his holds and strove to keep him off-balance. When braced, he was incredibly dangerous, capable of exerting fatal leverage. When unbalanced, he was clumsy and impetuous.
We fought for over an hour. I was tired to begin with after the day's trekking but my strength held. One of my problems was his smell—his armpits and breath were nauseating. As we adjusted to each other's styles I began to have the better of him—pinning him, releasing him and moving him towards a position where I could immobilise him completely. He became enraged and bit my arm, gouged at my eye and finally sank his teeth into the lobe of my right ear. I butted his nose and the blood flowed copiously from both of us.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dick lift the automatic. The Mongolian's thumbs were on my windpipe and I knew that Dick was close to shooting him. I gathered my strength and heaved him off. The sweeping kick at his shins was something I had learned from him (he was a frequent kicker in the early stages before he began to tire). The kick took him by surprise and he collapsed, helpless for a split second. I pounced and applied a perfect headlock such that his eyes bugged from his head. If he moved he would cut off his air supply. Already the grip was draining away the last reserves of his strength. I tightened it. His hand flailed over his shoulders, the black-edged, broken nails clawed the air an inch from my eyes. Then the fight went out of him. He went limp. I held the lock, fearing a ruse, but he was spent.
He opened and closed his fist three times which I took to be a signal for surrender. I released him and stepped back, keeping a wary eye on his hands and feet. Earlier he had thrown handfuls of sand and even launched a series of leaping, twisting kicks the like of which I had never seen before. But he was a beaten man. He lay on the ground, caked with blood and dust, gasping for air. I stood over him with my chest heaving. I doubt that I was any more attractive a sight . . .
We travelled with Yhurr, my erstwhile opponent and the leader of the band, for several weeks. The Mongolians were moving their goats and horses to pasture at the edge of the desert where they intended to stay for the summer. Incredible as it seems, while in the presence of these nomads, I began to see life in the desert that I had not seen before.
The country itself did not change, but suddenly there were cranes, eagles and hawks in the hard blue sky and wild camels and donkeys and fast-moving marmots on the hard, dry earth. When we parted company with the Mongolians the landscape became barren again. This seems remarkable and I have no explanation for it. A series of photographs, taken by Richard, however, confirms it . . .
When Bright first laid eyes on Randolph Craft he thought he was one of the largest men he had ever seen. Everything about him was massive—bald head, shoulders, barrel chest and meaty thighs. Standing in the doorway of his room in the Regent Palace hotel, he appeared to fill the space to overflowing. He wore a white shirt and tie and the trousers of a dark suit—all well-tailored to accommodate his enormous bulk.
'Mr Craft? I'm delighted to meet you. I'm Vic Bright.'
Bright started to scale Craft down from the minute he shook hands with him. Craft's hand was small and soft. A high, squeaky voice continued the reduction process. 'Mr Bright. It's my pleasure. Please come in.'
The room was small and basic—single bed, built-in cupboard, hand basin, easy chair. A briefcase, several loose papers and a thin-spined book with an old-fashioned binding sat on the small writing desk under the window. Craft gestured for Bright to take the easy chair while he lowered his bulk onto the fragile chair drawn up beside the table. He overflowed it and the chair creaked alarmingly.
'First, I must thank you for your response to my message. As you can imagine, the opportunity to visit Britain and make some arrangements was most welcome at this time.'
'Happy to help,' Bright said. He was unsure of where and how to start. The only thing Craft-like about the man sitting in front of him was his size. The high voice was precisely accented—upper-class British with a touch of something else, a lilt that suggested he spoke another language much of the time.
'I perceive that you are perplexed, Mr Bright. Let me open the proceedings. Here is a copy of my birth registration.'
Bright examined the document. It certified that Randolph Richard Craft was born in the Crown colony of Hong Kong on 10 October 1942. His father's name was given as Richard Craft, a British national, and his mother as Xian Zu Famat, Mongolian.
'You are a journalist, Mr Bright, and I am a lawyer. Our professions teach us to both respect and distrust documents, is it not so?'
Bright nodded.
'I fear that the document you hold is not to be trusted in all particulars.'
'Please explain.'
'I believe I am the son not of Richard Craft but of Basil Craft, the man in whom you are principally interested.'
'I'm interested in both of them, Mr Craft, and it doesn't surprise me that things are not what they seem in your own case. Nothing in this story has turned out to be what it seemed when I began.'
Craft lifted one eyebrow. The action transformed his face. It suddenly looked more Western and Bright imagined he could see a trace of the craggy Craft features. Then the chimera vanished, before he could envisage the bristling moustache and the jutting jaw. 'I will be fascinated to hear about it. I know almost nothing about the Craft brothers beyond what my mother told me.'
'I don't really understand,' Bright said. 'You say there's some doubt about your paternity. Surely your mother would have . . .'
Craft put his hand on the faded binding of the thin book. 'It's a long and complicated story, Mr Bright. Don't you think we should go somewhere and talk about it. As you can see perhaps, I am a man who likes to eat and drink.'
Vic, who had fined down in Morocco and lost more weight as a result of his influenza bout, was enjoying the sensation of loose waistbands and the sight of his hollowed cheeks when he shaved. He quailed at the thought of a gargantuan lunch with this mountain of flesh. But he feigned enthusiasm and insisted on the meal being put on the film's expense account. Randolph Craft didn't resist. He locked the book and some other papers away in the briefcase and they went down to the lobby where he put the bag in a safety locker.
'I'm in your hands, Mr Bright,' he said. 'This is your city, although you're an Australian by birth unless I miss my guess.'
'Sydney.'
'We get many Sydneysiders in Hong Kong.'
'You get a few at Oxford too.'
'Testing me, Mr Bright? Yes, I knew some Australians up at Oxford. Good chaps mostly.'
'A bit overfond of the beer, so Briggsy says.'
They were out in Piccadilly now. Craft threw back his head and let out a high-pitched whinny of laughter, causing several people to turn and stare at him. 'Briggsy, yes indeed. Mr Briggs, head porter. I perceive that you are a true investigative reporter, Mr Bright.'
'Smart. What d'you want to eat?'
Craft sprang a surprise by chosing a Bengali curry house in Rupert Street. They ordered San Miguel beer and Vic talked while the big man picked his way through the menu, ordering a huge number and variety of dishes. He told Craft about Walking Across the World and its strange obscurity and went on to describe the progress of the research. He omitted mention of the break-ins at the production office and Abdullah Hamil's indictment of Basil Craft. The waiter arrived with some of the food before he had finished talking. He paused until the food was on the table and the waiter had left.
Craft tucked a napkin in over his precisely knotted club tie. 'Do you really think the waiter is going to reveal details of the project to the competition, Bright?'
'Habit.' Bright drank some beer and spooned some meat and rice into his bowl. 'That's about it, Mr Craft. Now . . .'
'Call me Randolph.'
'Not Randy?'
Craft smiled. 'Mr Briggs told you about the American did he? Upstart. Let's eat a little first, then I'll give it to you chapter and verse.'
Bright picked at the foo
d while Craft ate steadily through meat, vegetables, rice, chapattis and side-dishes. Bright nursed his beer while the big man ordered the small bottles two at a time. When he had reduced the food to a few crumbs and puddles he sat back and poured a full glass.
'My mother was Mongolian. She was born in the Gobi Desert. She was a member of a small group of nomadic herdsmen, very conservative, traditional people. They kept away from the towns and tried to live as their forebears had done for centuries. Her mother died when she was young, leaving her father with two sons and two daughters. The father, my grandfather, apparently quarrelled with the leader of the band, a man named Yhurr, and he and his family lived a sort of pariah existence, in touch with some members of Yhurr's group but not part of it.
'At some time in 1941 Yhurr fell in with an expedition led by an Englishman, Basil Craft. The expedition and Yhurr's tribe travelled together for some weeks. In this time the antagonism between my grandfather and Yhurr intensified. My mother, who was only twelve years old at the time, was not sure of the reasons, but she surmised that her father was opposed to any contact with the outsiders. There may have been other reasons. In the end, Yhurr, aided by Basil Craft, murdered my grandfather and his sons. Yhurr sold my mother and her sister to Basil Craft and he took them with him when he left Mongolia.
'As I say, my mother was twelve, her sister was one year older. They were both pregnant to Basil Craft when they arrived in Hong Kong early in 1942. My cousin and I were born within a few days of each other. He, apparently, was a beautiful child—obviously Eurasian, with a harmonious blend of the races in his face and form. I was born with a deformed foot and pure Mongolian features. I was not a pretty specimen as a baby, as I am not a pretty specimen as a man. Basil Craft abandoned my mother and me and took my aunt and cousin away with him. Where, I do not know.
'Perhaps you can imagine the feelings of a young girl, primitive and illiterate, alone in a foreign city with an infant and no support of any kind. The world was in turmoil. My mother was looking at some rather grim options—prostitution, disease, starvation or deportation to a Soviet satellite where the suspicion of anyone who had ever ventured beyond the borders amounted to a sentence of death.'
