Tainted Treasure (China Marine)

by Buzz Harcus

  Suddenly he broke into laughter. Did she know he snores? Does she snore? Does she want the toilet lid put down each time he used the damned toilet? At home it didn’t make a hill of beans—but with a woman, it made a big difference. Would her family accept him? Would his kids accept her? And by the time he got back to Saginaw, he would be a grandfather. Grampa Martin. Grampa Harry. His daughter would give him his first grandchild. He chuckled at the thought of holding a baby.

  Osa. Did she like kids? She was bound to. What about religion? They had never discussed religion. What was her religion? Geez! So damned many thoughts running through his mind.

  He grinned. Osa was very passionate last night, and afterwards, had fallen asleep in his arms. He’d woken her about three-thirty and told her she could stay in his cabin, or sneak back to hers. She’d given him a sleepy smile and rolled over pulling the covers up around her neck. As a precaution, he had set the alarm for five A.M., plenty of time for her to get back to her cabin, shower, and get ready for another busy day.

  Monday morning in the galley and Osa was all smiles as he faced her. With a wink she made sure he had an extra helping of scrambled eggs and two plump sausages.” He returned the wink and continued on through the line.

  “Well, hellooo,” came Bert Kilgrew’s booming voice as he stopped before Osa. “And who might you be?” He offered his best stud smile for her benefit.

  “Osa,” she replied sweetly.

  “I didn‘t know they allowed such beautiful women aboard an ordinary grain carrier,” Bert said taking in her beauty. “I must get to know you better.”

  Osa dropped a large spoon full of scrambled eggs on his tray, sternly saying, “You‘re holding up der line.” Bert looked back behind at the growing line. At seeing the first officer two behind him, he quickly moved on.

  Harry had watched the whole incident, finally deciding the guy was a jerk trying to hit on Osa, but she had done a masterful job of cutting him short. Carrying his food laden tray across the room, he sat down at a table. Bert plopped down at a chair adjacent to Harry‘s, with a perfunctory nod to him, joining two deckhands already seated there.

  To Harry’s surprise, Sigmund was heading toward him with a tray of food. He took a seat next to him. “Good morning, Harry.”

  Harry held up his cup of coffee in acknowledgement, along with a slight nod and somewhat confused smile. “Thought you were on duty.”

  “Captain Andress is on der bridge. He ordered me below to eat. Said Osa had outdone herself again today.” He laughed. “Und how vas your vatch last night vis Mr. Alward?”

  “Good. We got along just fine.” As he answered Sigmund’s question, he couldn’t help but overhear Bert’s loud voice commenting to one of the crew at his table. “That babe behind the counter is built for action. I bet she’s a hot one in bed—”

  Sigmund, too, had heard the remark, and instantly jumped to his feet, even before Harry could react. He tapped firmly on Bert’s shoulder. Bert looked up into the glowering face of the First Officer.

  “Der voman you just spoke about is a lady! She is to be treated as a lady! I don’t vant to hear vun more vord of filth from your mouth. Is dat understood!”

  Bert’s mouth dropped open. What was this guy, a nut case? A broad is a broad. But the anger showing on the First Officer’s face, the crispness in his voice, caused him to re-think the nasty retort he was about to give. Instead, he jumped to his feet, quickly apologizing. “Yeah, sure, mate. Sorry about the comment. I was out of line. Sorry.”

  Again, Harry stopped short of saying something to Bert. If he persisted, he’d clean his clock, that was a given. Maybe Bert had him by twenty pounds, and twenty years, but no one talks to Osa, or about Osa that way, no one!

  However, the biggest surprise was the way Sigmund had immediately jumped to her defense. Yet, as Harry thought back about it, all during the entire voyage across the Pacific to Shanghai and Tsingtao, Sigmund had been her chief defender. How many times had he warned Harry about treating her as a lady. Yeah, Sigmund was her unknowing knight in shining armor.

  CHAPTER 10

  Pirates in the South China Sea

  The 1600 to 2000 watch went well. They were well into the East China Sea now heading in a more southerly course. A fair amount of sea traffic was visible. The weather holding good. The good thing about spring Harry thought, was the days were getting longer. Dusk seemed to linger after sunset, and finally fade into night.

  Alward seemed to be settling comfortably into the job of Third Officer. He had been scanning the horizon through the binoculars, sweeping back and forth. “Things are going good,” he said, lowering the binoculars. “I checked the chart. We’re doing good. Fourteen knots. Fair seas.”

  “Aye,” Harry replied. “And fair winds.”

  Alward had stopped a scant four feet from where Harry was at the wheel, when he turned, and in a serious voice, asked, “Do you guys have sufficient fire power on board ship to ward off any potential pirate threat?”

  At Harry’s questioning glance, he quickly added, “Before too long we’ll be sailing into troubled waters populated with some very nasty people. Pirates! There’s been a good number of ships taken over, crews captured, tied up, some killed, some thrown overboard, the ships stolen, some renamed and now hauling cargo for so-called new companies.”

  Harry looked at the man. He was serious. This was the second time he had brought up the subject of pirates. This was the twentieth century. Pirates? During the years he had sailed aboard merchant ships before settling back down in Saginaw, he’d never run into pirates. Pirates? That was the last century.

  Alward gave a serious nod of his head. “I’m not bullshiting you, friend. Pirates are a way of life down in southeast Asia and the south China seas. Take my word for it!” With that, he turned and moved to the front of the bridge. Harry stood quietly not knowing what to think. This time it was best to talk to Captain Andress about pirates when he got off watch.

  “Did you get a chance to go ashore in Qingdao,” Alward asked returning several minutes later, adding with a chuckle, “as a prisoner I didn’t get a chance to walk about town and see the sights.” He laughed harder at his comment.

  “Yeah. I went ashore with Captain Andress and First Officer Helmstrund. We were the guests of Mr. Ma—”

  “Mr. Ma!” Alward spat the name angrily. “He’s the bastard that gave us a rough time, wanted us out of China pronto! You say you were a guest of his? Why that bastard?”

  “I had been stationed in Tsingtao thirty years ago. I knew Mr. Ma back then.”

  “Stationed? Like in service? Navy? Army?”

  “Marine Corps.”

  Alward gave him a somewhat doubtful look. “You? Marine Corps?”

  “Yeah,” Harry chuckled. “Three years. I was a lot skinnier then, but yeah, I was, and still am a Marine. As the saying goes, once a Marine, always a Marine.”

  Alward shrugged. “Once a civilian, always a civilian.” He loosed a harsh chuckle. “I was never interested in the military. I’m what you call a nonconformist. I like to be different . . . do my own thing. It’s been good for me. I learned about life working on cruise ships down in the Caribbean, learned how to hustle dames, learned how to operate ships and before too long was able to work up to captaincy. It’s taken me all over the world.”

  “Any ships this size?” asked Harry.

  Alward thought for a moment, then said, “The Moratoria out of Panama was my biggest. Not quite this size. Scrap iron to Bangkok.”

  “Where’s the ship now?”

  “Who knows. Pirates got it.”

  “Pirates got it?” His comment shocked Harry.

  “Yep. Just like they could get this ship. I’m not joshing you, Martin. It could happen. Just like that!” And he gave a quick snap of his fingers.

  “How’d you get away?”

  “They dumped us in a lifeboat—sixteen of us. But luck was with us, we got picked up in two days.”

  Harry stood at the wheel
pondering the information. He definitely would talk to Captain Andress about pirates now!

  “So what was Qingdao like?” Alward asked, changing the subject back.

  “Okay. A lot of changes in thirty years—”

  “But the old university was still the same, I bet,” Alward interjected.

  “Well, yeah, it hadn’t changed that much physically from being the old Marine Corps compound back to Shantung University. However, a coat of paint can do wonders for old buildings. I even found my old quarters on the second floor of my old barracks building. It felt eerie walking through those hallways again, thinking of the guys you used to serve with. Downright eerie.”

  Alward nodded in agreement. “A guy I used to pal around with, he’d been in the Army over in Japan, had a chance to go back to his old post. This was ten years later, said he found his old barracks building, even found the loose floor board under his bunk where he hid his Jap Nambu pistol. He retrieved it, still got it today.” He chuckled. “Did you leave anything behind?”

  “Nope. When I left China, I never looked back,” Harry replied. “Nothing to come back here for. The Nurad? My being aboard is because I needed a job.”

  “Did you get a chance to enjoy any of the night life in Qingdao?”

  “Yeah. I went ashore with the cook, Osa, and we had dinner at the Tivoli—”

  “Good food there,” Alward snapped, then stopped. “At least that’s what I heard via the grapevine,” he hastily added.

  “Yeah. Good food. And then we came back to the ship.” Harry gave a shrug of his shoulders, saying, “and that was it.”

  Something Alward had just said bothered him. Why would he have mentioned the university? How did he know about the university visit? And how did he know about the Tivoli if he’d been in jail? And why the cock-and-bull story about his Army buddy finding his old hidden pistol? Something smelled rotten.

  “Two points to starboard,” ordered Alward stepping to the front of the bridge.

  Just before dark, Captain Andress stepped onto the bridge for his usual nightly wrap-up check. He waved to both, gave a perfunctory salute, and grabbed a coffee cup, filled it, and joined the two. “How goes der vatch, gentlemen?”

  “Good, sir,” Alward said, straightening.

  “Good, sir,” Harry responded.

  “We’re seeing a lot more traffic, Captain,” Alward said. “I think we ought to discuss what should be done in case we meet pirates.” He watched the captain, waiting for his response.

  “Yes . . . pirates,” Captain Andress replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “Dey are a fact of life. I understand pirates are a serious problem down around der Philippine Island and southeast Asian vaters. Ve get members of der crew on deck tomorrow for training about repulsing boarders. You, too, Harry. As a Marine you must be a good fighter.”

  He walked to the front of the bridge and stood silently, thinking, gazing out across the rolling seas, sipping at his coffee. “Yes, I vill talk to der First Officer about dis,” he said after a couple of minutes. “Ve vill take action tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Two Dead Bodies Found at Shantung University

  Professor Shen Wei, administrator of the School of Fine Arts at Shantung University, Qingdao, had listened patiently to the complaints of several students about a foul odor emanating from the fourth floor. In fact, he had personally walked up the steps to the fourth floor and gotten a good whiff of a very foul odor. It came from the storage room.

  The odor was one he knew well, one he had tried to blot from his memory over the last thirty years ever since they had driven the hated, corrupt Nationalist government from China. As a Major in the red brigade, he had fought alongside Mao Tse Tung as they moved ever northward through the rugged mountains and hostile landscape fighting Nationalist troops. His ragtag company of peasants had caught the hated Nationalist soldiers in a trap and slaughtered them by the hundreds. They had left the bodies to rot where each had fallen, food for the birds, beasts and maggots, as they drove ever onward toward their goal to capture Tsingtao. Yes he knew the foul odor. It was death.

  The padlock that should have locked the steel door, now lay on the floor adjacent to the door. Someone had cut it off. He tried the door. Locked. Odd. The door, itself, was locked from the inside. Very odd, indeed! Professor Wei returned to his office and called the campus security, who at the mention of possible death, promptly called the Qingdao police.

  A Lieutenant Lui Chang arrived on the scene shortly after the security police had called. He identified himself as a homicide detective. Chang was about five foot-ten, thin, handsome according to his fellow detectives, black hair slicked back, and wearing a black suit. As he was young looking, he wore horn-rimmed glasses, an affectation that made him appear older.

  Dr. Wei met him in the building lobby. He told him the fourth floor room was merely a storage facility for old files. But, because of the concerns of his students at an offensive odor coming from the room, Dr. Wei had called the campus security office, and with a wave of his hand toward the young detective, said they in turn had called the police.

  Chang’s face was impassive. He was upset that he had been sent. It was most likely dead rats caught in a heat vent. He had been to such incidents before. It would be dead rats. Bah!

  Lieutenant Chang and Dr. Wei waited outside the fourth floor storage room awaiting workers who were to bring an acetylene torch. Chang agreed the odor was pungent. Rats, for sure, thought Chang unhappily.

  An acetylene torch was brought into play. The brilliant arc cut a neat circle around the location of the door knob. In minutes the workers had knocked the piece of metal away and flung the door wide. The stench was overpowering!

  Several students who had followed Professor Wei and the detective upstairs, screamed at the sight before them. Three girls fainted; two young men turned away and stumbling, ran down the steps puking their guts out. They had seen death, the most horrible kind of death.

  Chang immediately grabbed his handkerchief from his

  Two Dead Bodies Found at Shantung University

  pocket and covered his mouth and nose. But the odor was so powerful it penetrated the cloth. Professor Wei, covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and looked inside the room.

  Two bodies lay before them. Brownish black stains permeated their clothing and spread out across the dusty floor. Beyond the one body they could see the far plaster wall to the left was punctured with many holes, holes of varying sizes, as though a fist had been driven through the wall time and again.

  Both Professor Wei and Detective Chang had stepped into the room for a closer look at the two bodies. “Mr. Ma!” Professor Wei blurted into the handkerchief still held tightly to his mouth and nose, as he recognized the man on the floor with half of his head missing. “That man is Mr. Ma!” he exclaimed pointing toward the man dressed in a black uniform.

  Detective Chang looked at him. “Mr. Ma? The director of the Port Authority?”

  Professor Wei nodded yes. “Mr. Ma was here a week ago,” he said quickly. “No no, I think it was last Friday, with a small delegation of dignitaries. Yes. The Captain of the huge grain carrier down in the harbor that just delivered grain here. It was the Captain, his Second Officer and an American sailor. Mr. Ma was showing them around the building. It seems the American had been in some military organization here thirty years ago, stationed here in Qingdao, in fact housed in this very building.”

  “And this one?” Chang asked indicating the rotting body of the other man, Stan Drezewski. He was still staring upwards through lifeless eyes at the ceiling. Chang noted that this man held a silencer equipped gun in his right hand. He also noted that Mr. Ma held a large knife in his right hand. Very odd.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Chang said as he rushed from the room and down four flights of stairs to an office he had passed as he had entered the building. He spoke sharply to the attractive young woman seated behind a desk. Her fingers, which had been beating a rapid stac
cato beat on the keys of her typewriter, stopped. She looked up at him, astonished, as Chang demanded her telephone. He dialed police headquarters and reported what he had found, and that he needed more help on the scene, and the coroner and crime laboratory personnel as quickly as possible!

  As he spoke, he had caught sight of the bewildered young woman. Very attractive, he thought, high cheekbones, beautiful coal black eyes. He smiled at her. “Thank you, Miss,” he said politely, making amends, handing the phone back to her. She nodded, and rewarded him with a warm smile.

  Within a short time the building was swarming with police officers, more detectives, the coroner and crime laboratory personnel. Chang was on top of it all, giving orders, answering questions, and trying to think through the situation. It appeared to him, at first glance, that Mr. Ma and the other person had simply had a falling out and killed each other. Simple? Perhaps too simple.

  But then, the question arose: why were they here in this building in the first place? Why here? And why had they used a bolt cutter to cut the lock off the steel door to gain access to this particular room? Why had they locked the door from the inside? And why had they punched all those ugly holes in the wall? What was it they were looking for, for it appeared they were certainly looking for something in the room, something that might perhaps be hidden behind the wall. And why had they killed each other? Very baffling.

  Articles from the clothing of the two men was checked by Detective Chang and two other detectives. Chang knew the honorable Mr. Ma, but he was more curious about the other dead man. The man’s wallet indicated his name was Stanley Drezewski. He had a driver’s license from New Jersey, and it listed his home address in Hoboken, New Jersey. There were several large bills—American money—in his wallet, as well as a large amount of Communist yuan. Strange that he would be in the company of such a fine gentleman as Mr. Ma. A baffling case indeed.