The Mystery of Yamashita's Map

by James McKenzie

  He was finding it hard to sleep these days. It was too noisy for one thing, this big city; there were too many things going on that he wanted to be a part of. Every time he closed his eyes he would think of something and have to get out of bed, but that wasn’t all. There were the visions. He called them visions but they were dreams, really – strange, weird dreams that seemed to come out of nowhere – that had suddenly started to affect him. Dreams of being trapped, of being in the dark, of smoke and flame and of death. He knew the dreams were leading him somewhere but he didn’t know where. So he drank and he drank heavily. It was barely midday and he had already finished a healthy bottle of bourbon, an American drink if ever there was one. Daddy would be proud! He raised the bottle and gave a toast to the brave boys of the American air force of which his father had been part. ‘Here’s to you, Pops,’ he said to no one and swigged another mouthful, gulping it down, trying not to bring it back up again. He was seated at one of the small stalls that grow like mushrooms about the Hong Kong waterfront. In front of him was a bowl of noodles that he had no intention of eating. Every now and then to appease his stomach he would buy a bowl of noodles and stare at it for a while before taking another sip of bourbon and throwing the whole bowl away. His stomach was fooled for a while and he didn’t have to go through the indignity of actually eating anything. There were some who might argue that Joey Hutchins’ life had hit a point of no return. He drank to keep out what was already inside his head but the more he drank the easier it was to sleep and the more he slept the easier life got. His father had been a US airman and his mother a dancer from China, not an unusual combination of nationalities in modern day Hong Kong but it had left him feeling out of place and alien. He was, it seemed, an alien in a land of aliens. He had wanted, of course, to follow in the old man’s footsteps, dear old dad, the brave US pilot, but since the ever increasing paranoia of Americans in the 1980s, neither country wanted to claim him for their own and he ended up working a small Cessna out of Hong Kong delivering packages to the more remote of the islands.

  That was until his brush with the local law. It had been a tough time. The increased amount of traffic had slowed the flight paths down to the outer islands and besides he had no idea what was in any of the packages he couriered. He just picked them up and delivered them but, as he also knew, everyone hates the mailman. He should have known, though, he should have seen it coming, he had been in enough bars, enough gambling dens, enough dives to smell the smallest, sweetest smelling rat in the world. Money was tight, though, so he had taken the job.

  There were three of them, in big expensive suits, with bulges in their pockets. Each of them wore enough gold to fund a small revolutionary army and had tattoos, in Chinese and English, on their hands, indicating which Chinese gang they were affiliated with. Up until then Joe had made a point of never accepting a job from anyone who smelt of cordite or who had tattoos on a part of their anatomy that couldn’t be covered up by a shirt but, as you already know, money was short.

  It was the smallest of the three men who spoke: ‘How much do you want for taking this over?’

  Joe replied, ‘The usual rate – five hundred dollars.’

  The man slammed a handful of bills on the table. ‘There’s a thousand, do you want to take it on?’

  Joe gulped. OK, he thought, let me weigh up the situation. I have never seen any of these guys before, all of them look as though they have one muscle too many, they are obviously packing guns, they are wearing suits that Trump would die for and they lay double the amount of money on the table. He looked at them again. He felt a trickle of sweat running down his neck. These were the moments his mother had warned him about before she killed herself. These were the type of men she had said his father was – a louse, losers, criminal. But then again so was he. These were the type of men who paid you in dollars and gave you your change in teeth – your own.

  ‘Hell, yes,’ Joe said with a smile. ‘Why not?’

  So, he knew it now. He knew now it had been a ridiculous thing to want to do. Now he had the knowledge, now he had learned because if there was one thing you could say about Joey Hutchins, he learned from his mistakes. Mistakes were like women – it was never a good idea to visit the same one twice. Now it was easy to see he should have said thanks but no thanks and taken a beating. That would have been it, that would have been the end of it and he would still have had his plane. He would never have taken their money; he would never have delivered their parcel. He would never have flown over to some shit-kicking island and he would never have found the Hong Kong police waiting for him as he landed.

  They searched his plane, found what they were looking for and impounded the Cessna ‘for further investigation’. It was only because he had known the arresting officer through a certain acquaintance of his mother’s (who it must be said knew a great many of the arresting officers of the Hong Kong police intimately) that he avoided being slung into jail and forgotten about. It was a bad time to lose the tools of your trade, just as the tourist season meant that the bars were opening. He had a lot of time on his hands and a lot of bars that would help relieve him of the thousand dollars that was burning a hole on his leg. He now also had a couple or three unknown thugs after him, eager to either get their property back or exchange it for one of his arms. He was rather attached to his arms or rather they were rather attached to him. That was when the dreams had started.

  He could not remember exactly what day it was but it was definitely shortly after the bust. At first he had put them down to the drink. The type of bourbon they sold in the bars around Hong Kong could blind a normal man at thirty paces. Numerous times he had seen shiny faced tourists wandering through the dock with a sign saying ‘Drunk and foreign, please steal from me’ written on their backs or so it seemed to every petty thief and criminal that came their way. Hong Kong bourbon was made of the squeezings of old Kentucky liquor, the dregs that were left behind in the barrels. If Jack Daniels ever rose from the grave and wandered abroad he wanted to stay away from Hong Kong bars lest he end up crying in his sweet Southern whine: ‘What have they done, ma, what have they done to my wonderful brew?’

  Soon, though, the dreams happened whatever state he was in. If he drank harder to forget them, there they were; if he went on the wagon to see if they would stop they would continue right over. It always started the same. The smoke, blue smoke swirling through his head then suddenly he was in blackness, a tunnel, he could barely see his hand in front of his face but he knew he was in a tunnel because of the walls, they bore down on him and threatened to crush him at any moment. He could smell the staleness of air that had been trapped for years and feel the oppressive atmosphere of a place of pain, fear and death. There was only the smoke that seemed to lead him in a direction that he had no choice but to go.

  As he stepped he could feel his feet catching on stones and material but he could still see nothing. He stumbled and reached out to the wall of the tunnel – it was damp and cold. Treading carefully he made his way along the tunnel, running his hand along the wall for stability. Suddenly the wall on one side of him gave way to nothing and he realised he was standing in a large space in the tunnel. There was a presence here; the smoke got thicker around him. It smelt now of burning fires, hot and choking; the smoke got worse as he tried not to breathe it in. He put his hand to his mouth and nose and tried not to breathe but he could feel himself getting woozy. His head began to spin, he began to fall, a strange slow motion fall as if inch by inch, centimetre by centimetre.

  Before he hit the ground he always woke up. He would jolt up, the sweat running down his forehead and into his eyes. He was more scared and lonelier than he had ever been since these dreams had started. There was something in them, an immense sadness that could not be expressed in any other way. Somehow he knew that something terrible had happened, something that had changed the balance of the world forever, something that was unforgivable – but what? He could not say. So he drank, he did not mind telling you if
you asked. If you bought him a drink and asked: ‘Say, Joe, are you a drunk?’ he would look right back at you and nod his head. ‘You know?’ he would say. ‘I am drunker today than I been all my life and that’s saying something.’

  He raised his bottle to the sky and gave a toast to whatever god was looking down on him. ‘Whoever you are up there, can you be sure to fill my bottle and empty my head for the night? Thanks.’

  He drank heavily from the bottle, drained it of its contents and tossed it into the harbour. He looked up. There was a commotion, somewhere in the docks someone was making themselves known. Without looking round Joey Hutchins knew who it was: the guys in the suits who could crack heads for the Chinese Olympic team. Quickly he pushed his way through the crowd that had gathered outside the small café where he had bought his noodles. These places were on the dockside and very often had a back way to the harbour where the owners would unload essentials like rice, flour and illegal relatives.

  He could hear the thugs behind him as he pushed his way to the back. Only this place hadn’t got a back way and unlike most of the shanty buildings round here this was built like the Hoover dam. He looked around him – nothing. Nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. This place must have just recently been taken over; there was very little in the way of weaponry about, just some old chopsticks, a pan and a huge bucket of fish heads that was waiting to go out with the trash.

  Joe heard the thugs outside. They had seen him come – at least that’s what they thought they saw. Without thinking Joe climbed into the bin of fish heads. It stank like nothing he had ever experienced before. As he felt the juice slurping into his shoes, he could feel his stomach turn and he retched slightly as his shoulders hit the wet fish. Their eyes stared at his as he lowered his head under. He was glad he never ate now, he would hate to do this on a full stomach. It was hard to hear in the barrel but he could just make out voices and the scuffing of feet on a damp wooden floor.

  Joe held his breath, more through the smell than any anxiety about being heard. There were voices, sharp and angry. The men stamped on the floor and thumped the walls.

  ‘Are you sure you saw him come in here?’

  ‘Yes, I told you, he pushed past everyone and came in here.’

  ‘These waterfront places all look the same from a distance.’

  ‘It was this one I tell you, the guy out front with the one tooth pointed in here.’

  ‘He could’ve been pointing next door as well.’

  Suddenly the voices stopped and Joe guessed they had spotted the barrel. Quietly but easily audible through the wood and the wet fish heads, Joe heard footsteps inch over to where he was hiding.

  There was silence for a while. Joe could almost hear the cogs in their heads working. Neither of them was blessed with brains, he thought to himself, neither of them was over-endowed in the head department.

  One of them spoke. ‘What do you think?’

  There was a pause. ‘Smells like tuna.’

  Then the sound of a head being slapped with an open palm.

  ‘Is he in there?’

  Joe could feel one of the figures closing in on him.

  ‘If he is,’ the voice said, ‘I don’t want him. Maybe you’re right; maybe he did go next door.’

  There was a scuffling of feet and Joe heard the men barge their way out of the small space. He sighed with relief and breathed deeply again. All of sudden he remembered where he was and coughed as the thick smell of the fish hit the back of his throat. He fought his way out of the barrel and stood, soaking on the floor of the hut. His clothes were covered in fish guts and fish brains but he felt as if he had achieved something, something that he didn’t think was possible anymore – he’d outwitted someone. OK, so that someone was two rather dim hoods who were after his blood but he had still done it. He had proved to himself that he could still do it.

  ‘Let’s celebrate,’ he said aloud to no one and jangled the change in his pocket for effect.

  Chapter Three

  Fraser had come along for the ride. The window was open and the Hong Kong highway was fresh and clear. The professor, Lisa and Fraser were travelling to Ap Lei Chau. Lisa had phoned the police but all they could say was there may have been someone by the name of Amichi living on the island, but they could not disclose any information. Lisa had had contact with these small provincial police forces before and knew very well that memories could be freshened up with money, especially if she gave it to them. They loved a pretty girl in distress. Right now, however, most of that was forgotten as she drove along the road to the Ap Lei Chau Bridge which would take them over the bay to the island. Fraser and the professor were in the back and the latter was giving an enlightening speech to the former about rock formations in certain parts of Europe. Fraser gazed out of the window with a glazed look upon his face; he was obviously regretting coming on the trip at all. The trip to the bridge took about half an hour but all the while Lisa looked in her rear view mirror every second or so. She was taking no chances; any minute she expected to see a car following her or someone by the roadside brandishing a gun. She could not quite believe she was doing these things. One day she was a quiet research student at a reasonable-sized university, the next she was running from god knew who. She was reminded of that old Chinese curse, ‘May you have an interesting life’.

  The bridge was clear at this time of day and the car sped across it, the wheels making rattling sounds on the grates at either end. As she crossed it Lisa thought to herself how beautiful it looked; the sea was so blue and calm, just the white tips of the waves betraying any kind of movement at all. She thought to herself that she would rather be nowhere else on earth than this city with its mixture of high-rises and fishing boats, the traditional with the modern. Ap Lei Chau is a strange island to visit. It was a fishing village before the first opium war and lies to the south west of Hong Kong, next to Aberdeen harbour. It formed part of the Treaty of Nanking when the British took over Hong Kong in 1841 but was always the ugly sister to the larger island. It is a place where someone, anyone, could easily disappear if they wanted to. Its main inhabitants live in two large estates filled with state-built houses that served to house the homeless after the great fire of Aberdeen harbour. It is, however, its own world when it needs to be: surrounded by water, you can drive from one end to the other in less than half an hour. Lisa stopped off at the police station. She left Fraser and the professor in the car while she went inside. The professor was still talking about the minutiae of European rock striation. His eyes lit up as he talked of the various strata of the rocks he had seen in Italy and France – of course, as he told Fraser, they are so similar and so startlingly different. Fraser lit a cigarette. It was going to be long trip. He had taken time off from work to help Lisa. He didn’t know what it was about her, perhaps it was her stupidly consistent devotion to her obviously crazy uncle, but he liked to be in her company. She had a sort of strength to her character that he had never found in girls back home in England. He nodded politely and opened a window to flick ash onto the road. He had noticed something: there were no other cars about. He thought how, even here in this tiny little island, it was odd not to have any cars about at all. It was almost as if some great sadness had descended over the place, as if some event had taken place that had robbed the island of its life. Lisa came out of the station and walked around the car to the open window. Fraser thought how good she looked with the morning sunlight glancing off her skin and the sea breeze moving her hair. She stood with her hands on her hips like an angry schoolgirl in mid tantrum. ‘No luck,’ she said. ‘They say they’ve never heard of Amichi.’

  ‘Did you give them money?’ Fraser asked.

  ‘Of course, but someone else is obviously giving them more.’

  ‘You think someone else got here first?’ ‘Well, when was the last time you heard of a Hong Kong cop not accepting a bribe?’

  ‘When someone else was bribing him more.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Thin
gs were not as bad now, but there were still elements of the police who wouldn’t shy away from earning some extra income through less than honest circumstances.

  ‘Where are the bad cops when you need them?’ she pondered.

  Lisa looked out across the island. It had an end of the world quality about it, the end of the line at least. This was a place that existed outside of time and normal society, a place that could swallow you up if you were not careful and never let you go. It was green but lifeless. The growing things on it seemed to do so out of spite. They were challenging the ground not to allow them, the dead dry ground full of salt from the sea. ‘We’ll have to look around,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to drive still?’

  Fraser looked across at the professor. ‘Hmm, perhaps you’d better let me,’ he said and opened the door of the car.