The Mystery of Yamashita's Map

by James McKenzie

  Joe woke up to find that the rest of the group were still asleep. The first thing he did was to glance over at Lisa and was relieved to see her breathing gently, her soft breaths making wisps in the cold night air. He leaned over, tucked the blanket that covered her over her shoulders and began to gather wood for the fire. He looked up and saw the first rays of the sun dancing over the trees, sending scudding waves of light into his eyes. He thought to himself that never before had he experienced a place so beautiful and yet so utterly isolating, where one minute he felt like a king and the next he felt like nothing. He stoked the fire and watched as one by the one the party began to wake.

  When everyone had woken they made their way along the ridge to where Joe had pulled out the tree the night before. He felt that he was being led towards something, but what? All those dreams, what was he being told? His eyes were drawn to a boulder almost completely hidden in the undergrowth. The etchings on the boulder seemed to be some sort of sign pointing to the area where he and Lisa had fallen. An army of insects had been unearthed from the baked soil where the branch had been uprooted. They stood in a circle and examined the hole. It was about as big as a dinner plate and looked as though it might collapse at any minute. The professor moved closer and looked further in. ‘There’s not much there,’ he said. ‘Looks like we might have to move some of the earth and . . . er . . . the rest of our friend here.’

  Joe and Fraser set about digging into the hole with their bare hands and it wasn’t long before the rest of the body, which was nothing but bones and rags, came out of the tunnel entrance. Winthrope kicked at the skeleton with his boot.

  ‘Yes, looks like Imperial Army to me. I’ve seen that uniform before,’ he said, and squatted down to shake some of the dirt away from the scraps of material that still clung to the bones like some eerie woven skin. Winthrope motioned to two of the women and they ran forward, picked up the skeleton and moved it away. Joe and Fraser were grasping at handfuls of earth and passing them through their legs. With each handful the smell got worse. It was clearly the smell of death and stale air. It hit everyone’s noses and turned their stomachs.

  ‘There’s an entrance,’ Joe said, and furiously scrambled at the earth with every last drop of energy he had in his body. After about five minutes of digging, they had fought their way through to a small wooden door set into the ridge. Its surface was covered in earth and insects and the roots of plants that had attached themselves to it over the years. Joe brushed it clean.

  ‘Is there anything on it?’ Lisa asked. Fraser looked at it closely but decided that the door was just a door – a bit damp, a bit dark but just a door. ‘Let’s get it open,’ the professor said, and barged his way through.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Winthrope said. ‘You have no idea what is on the other side. There could be anything. I have heard they booby-trapped all of these tunnels, with bombs, with sharpened staffs, with anything. We’d better be careful.’

  The professor thought for a moment and then agreed wholeheartedly. Quickly Lisa ran into the jungle, to return a few minutes later with a long green vine. She tied one end to the door and carefully walked backwards until she was well out of range. ‘All we need to do now,’ she said, ‘Is pull, then if anything happens we’ll be all the way over here.’

  So Joe, the professor and Fraser grabbed hold of the vine and started to pull. Suddenly there was a crack and the whole door came off its hinges. Moving closer to it they could see that its reverse side had been almost stripped of its surface patina by what looked like fingernail marks; someone had been desperately trying to get out. Gingerly, the professor put his head through the doorway then recoiled sharply. He clutched his throat and clawed at his face, his skin began to turn purple as he gasped for air and his eyes became bloodshot.

  ‘Gas!’ he managed to shout through the pain. ‘Gas, in the tunnel.’

  Joe quickly pulled out a handkerchief and placed it over his face. He then tore a piece of his shirt off, grabbed a water flask from one of the villagers and started to wipe the professor’s face. Gradually, he calmed down. Joe encouraged him to breathe easily until finally the professor lay on the jungle floor looking up at the sky, breathing deeply in and out and feeling the colour return to his face.

  ‘Was that a trap?’ Winthrope asked.

  ‘Could have been,’ the professor said. ‘Or could be just natural gas. There are a lot of bodies in there. We’d better wait a while before we go in there with torches, just in case.’

  The group made masks from their clothing and any other scraps of material they could find and busied themselves while they were waiting by making torches from short thick branches and dry twisted leaves. After an hour or so, the professor once again put his head into the tunnel, this time readying himself for a quick exit if need be. It was not necessary, however, as after thirty seconds of sniffing and breathing he turned round and smiled at the rest of the group. It was OK.

  Slowly and with caution, the group all entered the tunnel. The professor went first, followed by Fraser, then Joe and Lisa, then Winthrope, then the village women. As they moved, each one of them felt the sides of the tunnel with their hands and noticed how cold it was and how it felt like nowhere on earth. About three metres in the light suddenly faded and the professor decided it was time to try to light one of the torches. Joe was passed one by the villagers and he carefully raised a lighter to its end. Thankfully after a few sparks, the torch burst into flames and illuminated the inside of the tunnel and the group could look around them.

  Joe and the professor shuddered. Only they knew that it was exactly what they had seen in their dreams. The walls of the tunnel rose up and met at an apex just above their heads and their surface was covered in small gnarls and pick marks. The floor was uneven and littered with bones that looked as though they might have been scattered by some animal at some point in the past. From the way they had come, a thin shaft of light shone in through the door. From the way that they had to go there was only blackness. Lisa reached out and clutched Joe’s hand. This was what she had wished for, for weeks and now it was here she wished she were somewhere else.

  They continued to walk along the tunnel until they came to an intersection that was being guarded by another dead soldier. Fraser examined him.

  ‘Looks like he’s been shot. Look – there’s a bullet hole in the back of his skull.’

  ‘Possibly killed by his commanding officer,’ the professor said, ‘Who may well have been the remains we met by the door.’

  Joe suddenly said with a start, ‘Professor, look at this! This tunnel looks as though it has been bricked up. Now, why do you think they did that?’

  The professor moved over to where Joe stood and shone a torch over it. ‘To hide something?’ he said and the two looked at each other for a moment. ‘This must have been their last act before they were themselves shut in. Look, the last brick at the top has still to be put in.’

  The professor was right. Towards the top of the tunnel, in amongst the bricks there was a single gap the size of the last one that had yet to be put in its place.

  ‘We can use that as a starting point,’ Joe said, and began to pull at the wall. Fraser darted forward and began to help and together the two of them started to dismantle the wall. They pulled and pulled, occasionally turning round and depositing bricks onto the floor of the tunnel until the wall that blocked their path was nothing but a heap of broken rubble.

  The group made their way through the hole in the wall and found themselves in a large underground room that had a huge stone block in its centre.

  ‘The gold must be inside that block,’ Fraser said to no one.

  He moved closer to the block and gently tapped at it. The professor stepped forward and touched it, feeling nothing. Winthrope did the same and for a while each member of the group had their hands on the block, assessing it, testing it, trying it out. Suddenly there was an explosion and the world seemed to erupt in light. Two of the village women recoiled in horror
as they realised their flesh had been ripped open and their limbs severed by its force.

  ‘Mines!’ Joe shouted and rushed over to the woman who had been thrown back against the wall of the room and sat moaning and dying. ‘Jesus, everyone else watch out.’

  Quickly Winthrope organised for the two women to be taken out of the tunnel by the other villagers although he could see that they would not even make it to the entrance. For a moment the group watched them disappear and it began to dawn on them exactly what they were up against here. This was a place of death and pain, a place from which none of them would escape entirely unscathed.

  Lisa suddenly shouted in excitement. ‘Look – the explosion has blown a hole in the block. There are steps leading downwards. We must be going in the right direction.’

  Joe stopped her from getting closer to the block. ‘You’d better be careful,’ he said, holding her by the arm. ‘I don’t want any more accidents.’

  Carefully the professor stuck his head into the hole and asserted that it was safe for everyone to clamber into the hole and move carefully down the steps. The steps led them downward for only a few metres into another darkened room, this time a lot smaller and a lot colder. Lisa shuddered as she breathed the stale air. Fraser flashed the torch around the room and realised they were surrounded by wooden crates, stacked right up against the ceiling.

  ‘This could be it,’ Fraser said and the professor dropped to his knees. He had never fully believed he would get here – he had thought that this day would never come. He closed his eyes and gave a prayer to whatever God was watching over him at this moment. Winthrope lunged forward and began to scrabble at the boxes with his fingernails. ‘Come on, then!’ he said. ‘This is Yamashita’s gold. Let’s get it and get out of this place.’ Winthrope ripped open the lid of the nearest box and the sight that greeted him took his breath away. As if illuminated by some magical internal radiance the whole room seemed to grow suddenly lighter. Winthrope held his breath for a moment and let the sight sink in but the professor pushed past him. He reached a hand into the box and pulled out a shining gold ingot.

  ‘These bars come from Cambodia,’ the professor said, holding one up to the torch.

  ‘I don’t care where they’ve come from, I know where they’re going,’ Winthrope replied, snatching the ingot back and throwing it into the box with the others.

  ‘These need to go to their rightful owners,’ the professor said, but Winthrope began to pull boxes out from the pile and stack them by the steps.

  ‘Well, you can do what you like with your share, professor, I know what I’m doing with mine.’

  ‘Your share!’ Joe shouted. ‘Who said you had a share! You struck a bargain with us.’

  ‘I’m not greedy,’ Winthrope said. ‘Just an equal share like the rest of you.’

  ‘He might be right,’ Fraser interjected.

  ‘But he’s been useless the whole way through,’ Joe said. ‘Why the hell does he get a share?’

  Lisa tried to calm him down but it was no use. Joe began to pull back the boxes that Winthrope was stacking. There was sudden animosity in the tunnel and Lisa could feel the temperature begin to rise. She would have been grateful for more warmth, but not this hostility, not here.

  The professor put himself between Winthrope and Joe. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, remember where you are. This is a place of deep sadness. Do not make it more so. There is bargaining to be done later but first we must get this to the outside.’

  Joe and Winthrope agreed and one by one the group hauled the boxes back up the stairs, through the tunnels and out into the open. When all but one of the boxes had been removed Joe stood in the empty room, alone, and a strange sensation came over him. In the dim light of the room he saw shapes appearing. They were barely discernible at first but after a while they began to manifest themselves into recognisable forms. All of a sudden he made out the boy in his dreams.

  ‘You!’ he said to the shape, but it could not hear him. It took him by the arm and led him across the room to where the last box stood. The shape knelt down beside it and beckoned to Joe to push it to one side. As he did so he saw a hole behind it – a hole barely big enough to get his shoulders through but somehow, for some reason, Joe squeezed through.

  As he did so Joe came out into a small alcove that was pitch black. Joe fumbled for his flashlight, and swore to himself in frustration as he rummaged through his rucksack, why did he have to put it at the very bottom. To his immense chagrin the flashlight didn’t work, despite banging it a few times on his palms, as if the impact would suddenly recharge the batteries. He quickly lit a match and saw in front of him the golden Buddha sitting with legs crossed and with its hands placed peacefully on its knees. It was surrounded by crates of gold and jewels, far too much to carry. If there ever was an Aladdin’s cave, then this is what it would look like. Suddenly Joe knew why he had been brought here and he understood the visions in his dreams. He knew everything. He turned, expecting to see the boy who had shown him the way but instead, just caught a slight glimpse of a wisp of energy entering the golden Buddha’s head.

  “Ouch!” the match had burned right down and burned his fingers. In the darkness Joe thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He saw movements, dark shadows floating across the room in front of him. He strained to make out exactly what he was seeing. For all the life of him he thought he could see the shapes of two people and one, well it was like nothing he had ever seen before. If he didn’t know any better it looked like the shapes were struggling in some sort of dark vortex. Suddenly, there was a bright flash of light from behind the wall, sending beams darting through the cave like tiny spears, and then everything went black and still. He lit another match and he could see he was alone in the chamber, the silence only broken by the sounds of the others returning to the room behind him. Joe quickly dragged the Buddha through the hole in the wall and pushed the crate to once more cover the entrance to the hidden vault. The cave was still dark, dark enough to stop anybody noticing where had been.

  The tunnel echoed with voices as the rest of the team arrived, to take one last look, and to make sure they had not left anything of value behind. Joe decided to keep what he had seen a secret, anyway, they had all the gold they could carry. Maybe he could come back later, there was a sinister feeling about the place, and the last thing he wanted was to expose Lisa to anymore danger. That’s what he told himself and that’s what was going to happen. “Hey, look over here.” Joe called out, as if he had just found it. The professor stood and stared in awe at the statue.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘I think it comes from one of the Hong Kong islands, perhaps Lantau. I have a feeling it is from the Po Lin monastery. I don’t know why but . . . I just seem to know. It must have been stolen by the Japanese and brought here.’

  ‘How much is it worth?’ Winthrope asked, but Joe declared suddenly and with venom, ‘It’s not for sale! I’m taking it back.’

  ‘You’re joking! Think of the money you could make.’

  ‘It goes back to Hong Kong!’ Joe shouted.

  ‘Well, what about my share?’

  Joe took Winthrope by the collar and brought their faces close together. ‘You can have whatever you want of the rest,’ he sneered. ‘You can keep my share. I only want this and it goes back to the monastery.’

  ‘Well, if you do, they won’t reward you for it.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘Well,’ Winthrope said with a shrug. ‘It’s your life.’

  Joe began to haul the golden Buddha up the stairs alone until Lisa ran forward, took a corner of the base and helped him. Together they slowly inched it up the stairs, along the tunnel and out into the open air. Once out it looked more beautiful than ever and Joe could not take his eyes from it as they stood it gently on the green of the jungle undergrowth.

  Behind them the others were exiting with the last of the gold. They were sweating and puffing but smiling as they dumped the boxes on the ground near to the Bu
ddha.

  ‘All my life I’ve chased money,’ Joe said. ‘It’s never got me anywhere. I’m still as poor and stupid as I ever was.’

  Lisa laid an arm around his shoulder and rested her head upon it.