Jade Rooster

by R. L. Crossland

  Draper opened a thin folder and ran his finger under several lines in one paragraph.

  “Atticaris bought a few. He could fit out a small army, one that liked to fight bandit-style, about now. Filibustering or gunrunning, either way it is troublesome. Darn troublesome.”

  On Draper’s desk was a letter opener. A bolo knife, the kind Hobson knew, that the Moros used in the Philippines. A doped-up Moro took a big round to bring down. Only then could you could take his knife as a souvenir. It occurred to Hobson that Draper might be as dangerous as he was disheveled.

  “Hobson, I think you’d better tell me the whole story all over again, slowly. That man, Atticaris, must have just relished his interview with a representative of the federal government. Seems like we ought to keep on poor Mr. Sabatelli’s good side. Never tell what that ol’ ‘Watch the Pea Carefully’ Sabatelli might turn up.

  “You know,” he mused, “I can understand why we should be taking Jade Rooster seriously. What I can’t figure out is why Sabatelli is devoting so much time to it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After the war, the U.S. Navy had taken over the Spanish naval base and coaling station at Sangley Point, but found these too small and began developing facilities at Subic Bay. Many viewed Cavite—nearer Manila—as difficult to defend, and from time to time, policy makers toyed with withdrawing from Cavite and developing a major base at Olongapo on Subic Bay, but nothing came of it. Olongapo was a backwater, and Cavite and Sangley Point permitted liberty in nearby Manila.

  Pluto’s job was to provide coal to U.S. warships. It spent most of its time in a triangle bounded by Japan, China, and the Philippines. Generally, the Asiatic Fleet summered in China and wintered in the Philippines, but operational requirements could prompt adjustments to that pattern. It had done so recently. From time to time, it went eastward into the Pacific—to the former Spanish possession of Guam, or to Samoa, and even occasionally to Hawaii, for instance—to support a warship making a Pacific crossing. For the most part, Pluto spent its time—like most colliers—extending either a U.S. warship’s radius of action or the time a U.S. a warship could cruise on station. The several colliers of the Asiatic Fleet divided their time among the three corners of the triangle transporting coal originating from the United States, but occasionally from local sources.

  The Russo-Japanese War had underscored the need for coaling stations and colliers as an integral part of the fleet. The Russian Fleet, in its run from the Baltic to the Straits of Tsushima, had been plagued by its inability to find reliable sources of fuel. Political pressure had dried up its sources of fuel. Coal had to be stockpiled in safe places and be brought to the fleet in ships the fleet could rely on.

  The Asiatic Fleet was a vast bureaucratic organism. A recent occurrence in this one corner of Pluto’s operational triangle, the Philippines, stood to have an unsettling influence on Pluto’s routine for some months to come. It would have an unsettling influence on Hobson’s routine in particular and would culminate in another corner of the triangle.

  The occurrence that would affect both Pluto and Hobson saw its genesis months before, during a meeting between the local commanding officers and the admiral. An offhand discussion of fighting spirit aboard the flagship had become heated. “Fighting spirit” was a concept of near-religious significance. The flagship or the “Floating Palace” as it was known, was a worthy forum for such discussions. Its place in Western Pacific naval theology left it somewhat less visited than Mecca, but only slightly less important than Rome.

  During the meeting, the captain of Baltimore had gratuitously observed that the crew of a collier could not be expected to have the proper “attitude or spirit of warriors” in view of their auxiliary status, and so should be excused from certain routine naval tasks. This had prompted a coughing fit by Mr. Wheelwright, captain of Pluto.

  “They all start with the same training and all serve on steel ships and all serve in the same fleet, why should their attitudes be different? How do you measure warrior spirit?” Wheelwright said when all eyes turned to him.

  “Hmmm, yes,” the admiral was in his seventies and getting a bit bored with inventories and discussion of English and Japanese naval developments. The topic sparked his interest. “ A test of spirit, yes. To measure it, how to measure it? A competition, yes, a competition. A challenge. Challenges are always a test of spirit.”

  “An athletic competition?” Baltimore’s skipper, a commander with the full three stripes rather than Wheelwright’s two and a half, smiled slowly.

  Wheelwright saw the trap he had fallen into, but far too late. Baltimore was the cock o’ the fleet; it had taken gold trophies in each of the competitive divisions, boxing, fencing, football, swimming, sailing, and rowing. Baltimore’s crew was almost ten times the size of Pluto’s. Wheelwright tried to make his brain think faster, but he could not see a way to change the directions of the conversation. Control it, he thought, somehow figure an advantage that you have and work it against them before it is too late.

  Wheelwright knew he was in a short-fuzed frame of mind and struggled to maintain his self-control. The list had been circulated of officers ordered to appear before the Naval Examining Board “for examination preliminary to promotion.” He had not expected to be on the list yet, but it reminded him that one of the seven subjects of the examination was ordnance. There was woefully little he would learn about ordnance aboard Pluto. But Pluto was his command, and a basis for his reputation as a naval officer.

  “Pulling boats,” Wheelwright heard the words come out without his conscious desire to say them.

  What advantage did his collier have? Virtually the entire crew spent hours a week loading coal, a slow, backbreaking, arduous undertaking. Not an undertaking requiring great skill, just strength, endurance, and consistency.

  “We’ll beat Baltimore at rowing, on warrior spirit alone. No boat officers, strictly crew, if this is to be a measure of the crews’ warrior spirit.” Wheelwright did not know why he had added this proviso, but it had somehow seemed the right thing to say.

  “And the stakes?” The captain of another protected cruiser thought it prudent to participate. He, too, had sensed the admiral’s boredom.

  The Admiral decided this was his meeting and he was going to take charge. “A warrior’s competition, a navy competition, must have a navy award. Rowers vie for a rooster. That’s the tradition.”

  “We’ve already got a gold rooster,” Baltimore’s captain chimed in. He also had a gold everything else, but he anticipated that this competition was going to lead to an interesting round of off-the-record wagering among the fleet wardrooms.

  “Yes and we have a bronze rooster.” Wheelwright remembered because it was the only athletic award his ship had ever won. Bronze was the metal for awards for ships with smaller crew sizes.

  The Admiral looked around the cabin. The word rooster had triggered a recollection. He fingered some work a jeweler in Hong Kong had done for him as a present for his wife. Feeling a sudden serge of Solomonic wisdom, he said with finality, “Then a jade rooster it will be.”

  Lieutenant Commander Coley Wheelwright was in the in-port stateroom of the captain of Baltimore. The skipper of Baltimore, a commander by grade, was an insufferable old sundowner. His habit of wearing a stopwatch around his neck was well known.

  Now they were to iron out details. The Admiral’s flag lieutenant was serving as a mediator. Baltimore’s captain’s cabin had paintings. The flag lieutenant had never seen paintings on the bulkheads of a ship before, and he was impressed.

  “We have worked out a four-mile course off Shanghai.” He pointed to two points on a chart. “Slack water or with a current running?”

  “Seamanship, this must also be a test of seamanship, we are gauging naval warrior spirit.” Baltimore’s skipper had been advised by his executive officer that collier coalpassers were forged of steel, had bituminous between the
ir ears, were habitually sullen and dirty, and that it was of the greatest importance to do anything to keep the collier boat crew off center. The hell with seamanship, he wanted to throw large chunks of excrement in the game.

  Wheelwright winced since it was going to be useless to argue with a fellow skipper who wore three stripes to his two and a half in front of a mediator who wore only two. Baltimore may have been a second-class cruiser, but she outgunned and outmanned Pluto significantly. He decided to chart a conservative course. The Navy was built upon hierarchy and he had already acted radically in challenging a cruiser skipper.

  “Let’s do it with a current running.”

  “A pulling boat race between Naval Constructor’s Standard Navy cutters…” the flag lieutenant began.

  It was Baltimore’s, skipper’s turn to flush. He opened and closed his mouth. Baltimore had a special racing cutter that was its pride and joy. He had assumed its light weight and fine lines would bring his ship victory. Standard Cutters were barges in comparison.

  “When?”

  For some reason they looked at Wheelwright. He supposed it had something to do with giving a man his last wish before an execution.

  “During the Christmas leave period. That’s the first time we’ll have enough down time around Shanghai to train.”

  “We’d be glad to change the site to Cavite,” Baltimore’s captain offered.

  “No, you have the largest pool of manpower to draw from, we want some time to train up to this.”

  “Train up?” The sundowner smiled broadly.

  The flag lieutenant nodded and set a date for a pulling-boat race between the twelve-oared cutters of a protected second-class cruiser, a ship of the line, and a first-class collier, an auxiliary, to be held in Shanghai harbor in two months.

  “There’ll also be the river current.” The flag lieutenant added.

  The tall man fingered the edge of the executioner’s sword. It was the real thing and would fetch a significant sum in San Francisco. He gave it a swing, then whiffed it several times back and forth, up and down. Too heavy to apply in any other purpose. Horizontal slashes were awkward. The victim had to be stationary for it to do its work properly. This was not a weapon of war, but an instrument of policy enforcement. Weapons of war were far more complex. They all involved trade-offs. If a weapon had a valuable feature, it also had a drawback. He had made a study of these things. It could be said that the study would someday result in a great return on his invested effort, he thought with an inward chuckle.

  This appliance, this artifact, this trinket was a mere diversion. The warlord had given it to him because he liked him.

  In the courtyard below him, he could hear chatter in the Shantung dialect. A washerwoman and a watchman were discussing the event to take place at noon. He was in Chefoo, Shantung Province, within walking distance of the harbor.

  He found that that was the secret, to be clever and have people like you. He knew he was clever, and better yet he was educated, clever with a gilded edge. Getting people to like you was an art that he had studied. His appearance was good, he had been fortunate in his breeding, and he attended to those details of dress and grooming which made a favorable impression. He had been schooled in looking the part and exuding “presence.” As for the matter of personal charm, he found it easier to be charming when he did not care. It was strange how that worked. If you did not care, you could be irreverent, and irreverence and charm often went hand in hand. He did not care about much, but there were a few things.

  He looked out the window and noted the washerwoman was carrying a basket. That set him on a different line of thought.

  He had seen the photos, Brewer and Hoyt and the others. They had failed him. Things had gone wrong and they had paid the price. This would not happen again.

  He did not feel threatened. Questions were being asked, but he knew how to play the edges of the map, confuse the jurisdictions, pit fiefdoms against each other. Bureaucrats went through the motions and soon lost interest. Really what was their incentive? That stout office clerk, Sabatelli, would have other problems on his plate in due course, how could it be otherwise? Jade Rooster would be forgotten. That lower-than-dirt gob he had tagging along, what would he add and how long could the Navy spare him? What did he bring to the investigation anyway? No, time and inertia were on his side.

  The Kempeitai were going through the motions, too. They knew more but were not going to share it with Americans, let alone investigators pursuing an insurance claim. The Kempeitai wanted answers, but for other reasons. How big would the claim be, and what could they do about it? He did not know where Jade Rooster was, what chance did they have?

  He knew the significance of four heads in baskets.

  A runner came up and knocked on the door. The surrey was here. The warlord had two women with him, both shielded from the sun. He knew who they would be and that they were two of the most beautiful women in China that day, in his opinion. One was Asian, one of the Warlord’s wives and the other European. Beside the driver was a battleship of a man whose eyes were always moving. He was the American woman’s bodyguard. Next to the warlord sat a third woman, equally formidable in bulk—a cruiser in company with the battleship—the European woman’s chaperone. If one took the Grand Tour by way of China, one secured a bodyguard and a chaperone. He wondered what a bodyguard and a chaperone could do against a warlord’s army. Probably very little, but the American woman was well connected politically, the daughter of a senator, and the warlord likely had enough concerns without facing an international incident. Raisuli’s taking of Pedicaris and Varley in Morocco were still on everyone’s minds. Foreign armies did not need much of an excuse to go tramping through China these days. The warlord would prefer his domestic armies go tramping to acquire territory. The warlord was from a province in the interior. When he wanted to relax he came to Chefoo or Shanghai.

  Here in Chefoo both he and the warlord played it straight arrow. The warlord was his friend and his business was direct. He could not stay for long, even as conveniently out of the way as Chefoo was for him. He had matters to attend to elsewhere, matters he cared about. He would not be charming where they were concerned. Yes, it was a revelation; charm and concern were rarely compatible. It was a matter of straightening out relationships and removing hindrances. What he wanted required efficiency, not size, nor flash, but a type of discipline.

  The American woman wore a wide-brimmed straw hat with flowers and a cream-collared, high-necked blouse with leg o’ mutton sleeves. She had that haughty look reminiscent of a Gibson girl and he though he had detected the glimmer of a derringer above her high-button shoe as she shifted restlessly in the surrey. Did anyone trust anyone out here?

  He put on a Western jacket and hat and descended the stairs. As he left the door he saw a wicker basket stowed in the boot of the surrey.

  They were going to watch an official beheading, and the warlord had thoughtfully packed a picnic lunch. It was surprising how many uses a basket could be put to in the Realm of the Golden Dragon.

  Pluto was on a mooring off Sangley Point and her cutter bobbed at the bottom of a rope ladder suspended from the strong back, a large beam that paralleled her port side.

  “Don’t worry about your elbows. Everyone gets self-conscious about their elbow placement when they begin rowing. Forget it, just row. We’ll attend to the proper style and grace accorded manly naval maneuvers later.” Hobson commented. Merchant barques and gunrunning were distant concepts.

  Hobson had a book on rowing he had been lent. He read it just before each practice so he had something authoritative to say. He’d rowed dories and had some Navy training in double-banked rowing, but you had to say wise things if you were going to be the coach. It was his charge. The ensign had a dozen reports and forms to complete and had looked at the crew and despaired. Hobson encouraged him to complete his reports aboard Pluto and leave the rowing
to him.

  In the coxswain’s seat was the Cabin Cook Second Class “Tiger” Cheng. Hobson believed he had been scientific in recruiting him. Cheng was the captain’s cook and by osmosis carried the captain’s presence. He’d figured Tiger had one of the best strength-to-weight ratios on Pluto. Cheng was indispensable and his loud deep voice and high level of animation assured that he would never be overlooked in a crowd. Everyone on the ship knew he was the essential go-between with the overseas Chinese in the Philippines and Japan, and with the Shanghai Chinese. Additionally, he maintained a store of Eight Diagram seasickness pills and postcards and fans and umbrellas for the benefit of the crew.

  Tiger had been a coalpasser on Nanshan, one of Dewey’s two colliers, at Manila Bay. He had been one of the considerable numbers of Chinese in Dewey’s Fleet that day. In the intervening years, he had signed on with the regular Navy and become a cook, though cook was an inadequate title. As further evidence of his indispensability, he doubled as the ship’s bugler.

  Tiger was an adventurer in the Chinese tradition of the Three-Jewel Admiral who had explored the Asian Seas. A Marco Polo in reverse, he was a translator not so much of words as of missions. He, like so many Chinese sailors, could never make a complete break with the ancestors by sailing too far. Yet the Manchu world was collapsing around him, these were uncertain times, and he must go where his ship and his luck took him.

  There had been grumbling whether cooks and stewards were really part of the Navy, but no one had the nerve to go toe to toe with Cheng who was all of five foot tall and about 115 pounds. He was one of those small men who did not know how to back down and who gave ground to no one.