“After you’re through playin’ with that over-fed brass pepperbox, you can tear apart that telephone for your re-cre-ation and I want every piece to sparkle like the fine crystal in your Grandma’s parlor.”
Gunnarson gave Crottle a veiled look that implied that events could always change the existing chain of command.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The next day things got complicated and it took all day just to bring up a second gun. It was a matter of keeping the airhose, lifeline and communications lines free and ensuring the diver had enough room to use his tools. Staterooms and passageways on sailing ships were tight to begin with. Gunnarson, in a diving suit, was larger than any sailor the shipwrights had anticipated would walk Jade Roosters decks. Dragging deadweight tins of guns up ladders and down passageways involved a network of rollers, parbuckles, and block and tackle even when they were lightened with buoys and secured to a chain fall from the crane.
Throughout, Hobson worked attentively to take up the slack in Gunnarson’s airhose to keep it from snagging. The tug was secured with four anchors to ensure there would be no sudden strain on that airhose. If the tug moved while Gunnarson was held fast—intertwined among the ladders and hatches—in the wreck of Jade Rooster, something would have to give. The smart money was on the airhose parting.
They had found the Gatling guns, but not the pneumatic dynamite gun.
Atticaris lit a cheroot and enjoyed the breeze in his face.
He had selected the crew, mostly former Royal Navy sailors from Hong Kong. The British were presently allies of the Japanese, so there was little problem with them heading to a Japanese controlled country.
Despite a few setbacks, his affairs were falling into place rather well. The big limey with the auburn beard was a seasoned diver of HMS Lion and no one wanted to get on his bad side.
The business organization was in place, the seeds planted. Right now he was barely in the black. There were expenses, bribes, the ordnance, upfront salaries, the premium costs of transportation, but shortly that would change. The Kempeitai owed him a great deal of money and he had to figure out how to get the money he had collected out of the Philippines. Filibustering might have been an option, but it required an objective and he knew of no great treasury in Asia he could take with a manageable group of freebooters. No, he viewed activities of that sort as reckless. One bullet and a skilled leader, such as himself, disappeared from the picture, regardless of his worth. Armed adventure had its attractions, but staying in the background until the last minute suited his tastes better. Though an arms merchant, Atticaris resented the underlying democratic effluence of his wares. The old saw, “God had made men; Sam Colt had made men equal,” was not to his liking.
Below decks, he could hear the crew playing cards. He could hear ranting that sounded as if it could erupt any minute in a fight to the death, but he knew it would not. There were thumps and thuds. This was a physical bunch.
An equal shot at anything was a dream; it was leveler’s nonsense. Be clever and have the right people like you—that was the key. He had advantages. Why should he desire to be on an equal footing with the common herd? He was clever, educated, and would he be immodest in thinking, daring. He could get people to like him. He’d soon list a Senator’s daughter among his “friends.” Oh, it was so much easier to be charming when you did not care, and the trick here was to persist and be successful.
What was it that Frenchman had said, “Behind every great fortune was a great crime.” Well, his father had started down the right course, but had not quite mastered the trick and had been forced to live out the remainder of his life in hiding. He had sailed with Farragut and written a book, but he never played it right. The insurance company had seen through the phony claim, but had not turned him over to the police. The great crime, he mused, was probably an accumulation of malfeasance culminating in one great wrong.
Atticaris played both sides and kept his nose deftly to the prevailing winds. A man had to be smart. He wondered how many times he could sell that pneumatic dynamite gun and avoid the crossfires. There was something exhilarating about being close to these life-and-death struggles and yet not participating.
His father had talked of a reserved private table at Delmonico’s as the ultimate measure of success. It would not be long now. Soon, he could afford to erect more buffers between himself and the gritty misdeeds, and no one could touch him.
Occasional weeding made the harvest more bountiful and he had done his weeding artfully. There were very few left in Korea who could trace him to their woes. There might be some more weeding ahead. Korean expatriate money would again be drifting from America toward Korea.
And such great harvests to come!
The warlord in China was talking about purchases. He wondered if he should play him against some other faction. There had been personal contact between Atticaris and the warlord. For the sake of some conventional sales, he had altered his style. Out of habit, he had handled these sales in a sub rosa manner. Well, perhaps in Shanghai he could operate in a more conventional manner.
In the Philippines, the insurrectionists were financing themselves through piracy. There would be a good deal of hard cash there.
Atticaris foresaw great things for his resilient little business organization. Not that many aboard would live that long, but he prided himself that he selected his men for the traits of self-interest, aggressiveness, and resource. Traits he valued in himself.
He pictured a table at Delmonico’s and smiled and puffed at the cheroot.
“Can’t we just cut a hole in the hull?” Gunnarson asked impatiently as the deck rates unscrewed the helmet and detached it from his diving dress. It had been a cold, cramped dive. Several layers of wool long underwear were soaked from the waist down. The lantern barely cast enough light for the job. Gunnarson resented those on the surface.
“Man alive, it’s all slanticular and plumb ugly down there. And I think I can feel the barque move. Don’t like it, don’t damn well like it.”
The tug was beginning to bob more and that put a strain on the diver and his tenders.
“I don’t care beans what you like or don’t like, just get it done. We ain’t got a stage for you to work from and we’re not supposed to break up the barque.” Crottle was growing tired of Gunnarson. Crottle was bigger than Gunnarson, but older. “Direct orders: no significant damage to the barque, just get the ordnance.”
“Check my hose. It’s awful cold for diving, down there and up here too. Sometimes a diver’s breath con-dens-ates in the hose. Builds up and next thing a chunk of ice seals it up tight. Then you got yourself a dead, cold blue diver.”
Gunnarson struggled forward, muttering and punching the bulkhead.
The sky had a peculiar look, a familiar look that he could not put his finger on. Hobson took it as a bad omen. He had a nagging, distant recollection of experiencing bad weather in this area. His more recent naval experience told him that this was very late in the year for a typhoon and too cold for such a storm to achieve maximum force.
Hobson asked the local fishermen and they each pointed south and declared a typhoon was coming. Hobson told Crottle. Crottle showed the closest thing to fear Hobson had seen, “We have to hurry up.”
Crottle directed various members of the crew to prepare the tug for heavy weather and then turned to Gunnarson. “Mount the second gun, Guns.”
“After the storm, you can get this skinny quartermaster to do it. You’re Moro happy, sir. Ain’t no doped-up Moros ’round here. This ain’t the Philippines.”
Crottle worked his massive hands and his face turned totally expressionless. There were several moments of silence. “You’re a gunner’s mate. Mount the other gun.”
“We’re not at war with the Japanese or the Koreans. I know personal some Koreans who are engagin’ in, what you might call, the opposite of war with me. Yeah, at very close p
roximity.”
Gunnarson had found feminine companionship ashore and he was beginning to chafe at the intensity of the project. He was not happy. He was working for a half-officer off an auxiliary and that officer had him screwed into a schedule so tight he could not breathe. Some of Gunnarson’s hostile energy was dissipated when Gunnarson discovered a skivvy house a few miles down the coast, but that too made him hunger for release. Gunnarson owed Hobson three hundred dollars and it was clear Gunnarson did not like the concept.
“Mount the goddam gun. These Japanese or Koreans, they look like us? They wear uniforms like this? As far as I can tell over here we’re potentially at war with everybody. And I like it that way, so mount the consarned gun. They’re all the enemy until someone with braid or a brain tells me different. And you ain’t got braid, and you ain’t gotta brain. There’s a cannonball there instead. If you had a brain you’d be a snipe.”
His face was darkening and Hobson remembered that he had killed men.
“This tug is gonna be ‘all oak and ironbound’ and pretty as a flagship. As far as you an’ Hobson and your differences, as long as I’m in charge and I don’t see anybody whose gonna change that any time soon…” Crottle’s face was still expressionless.
“…and you an’ Hobson are going to be as close as two coats of paint.” He grabbed the front of Gunnarson’s peajacket and lifted him up on to his toes and slammed him into the steel bulkhead. The thu-runk resounded through the boat.
“Logged and noted. Guns?”
“Logged and noted…sir.” Gunnarson responded looking from side to side.
“Am I going to let the funnels go to war with the decks? Damn no. It’s one boat and it’s one crew and it’s one mission and we are going to finish it as one.”
He dropped Gunnarson who brushed off his peajacket with exaggerated arm movements.
One of Baltimore’s seamen spotted it first a few hours after sunrise. A steam yacht longer than the tug and closing at a steady speed. It was threading through the islands, but its objective was clear. It flew no flags.
Crottle watched it close the distance.
“Get Gunnarson on the surface. Everyone else go to general quarters.”
Gunnarson complained in the expected manner, but allowed himself to be hoisted up.
The Gatlings concentrated on the yacht, which was a dark, dark blue that at night would look black.
Hobson viewed it through his binoculars. There were forms under canvas covers that could have been Maxim or Hotchkiss or Gatling guns.
“Fire across their bow.”
The coalpasser on one of the Gatlings fired the gun, producing a graceful set of geysers across the West Sea.
Crottle bellowed through a loud hailer, “United States Navy. We are conducting diving operations. Stand clear. Any approach will be considered hostile. Haven’t blown a boat out of the water in a week, and I’d welcome the target practice.”
It was unlikely that the yacht had heard Crottle over its own engine noises, but the yacht slowed to about two knots.
“Parley. Parley. May we approach in our dory?” yelled a man in earmuffs and an incongruous hard straw boater, also through a loud hailer.
“Stand off three thousand yards minimum. One man rowin’, one man parleyin’. Rower’s mitts never leave the oars, savvy?”
It took them some time to get the boat over. The yacht had a good-sized crew, each one solidly put together. The biggest one rowed.
“Looks like a well-fed Coxey’s Army.” Gunnarson commented
Hobson had no doubt it would be Atticaris, and it was. He wore a sealskin coat and a scarf. The straw boater was on a lanyard. The rower’s peajacket had a British cut and he wore a Player’s Cut beard.
“They armed a salvage tug, did they? What next? So you gentlemen arc going to make it tough for us. We have a few more crew-served weapons than you do, but I suppose you could still exact a price. You have done your duty. Most assuredly you have done your duty.”
He had the rower bring the dory in close to the tug where Crottle was standing with his arms crossed.
When they were only yards away, Atticaris lowered his voice so only Crottle, Hobson, and Gunnarson could hear.
“You got here and dove on Jade Rooster fine. You couldn’t find anything and then a typhoon came up and you busted something critical. You fellows can figure out what, a pump a hose, a faceplate. A thousand dollars Mex to each of you. I’ll be back after the storm passes through. You be gone.
“A thousand Mex?” Gunnarson eyes were bright.
Crottle waved him off. “That’s for everyone of the crew, all fifteen of us?”
Gunnarson smiled.
“You can’t have fifteen on here, twelve maybe.”
“We got fifteen.”
Atticaris voice faltered for a moment. “Okay, fifteen thousand Mex.”
“Got it now? It’s in God We Trust, all others pay cash,” Crottle bantered. “You want cooperation, it’s cash on the barrelhead.”
Atticaris did not respond.
“This bucket can’t keep up steam in a typhoon or whatever we’re gonna get. The barometer’s dropping pretty bejeezus fast. We’ll ride it out at anchor. That’ll be one or two days from now.” Crottle’s face had turned dark and ominous again.
“You leave then, we’ll pay you, provided you turn over any ordnance you’ve pulled up. Remember we have more guns and better guns than you and maybe a little range, so don’t start thinking too much. The U.S. government hasn’t got any official beef with me and I want to keep it that way if I can. You’re in a part of the world that reveres harmony and I prefer economic resolutions.”
“We keep these two Gatlings?”
“Oh, are those mine? Nice pieces. Personally I’d prefer a Lewis or a Hotchkiss, there a bit more advanced.” The canvas cover was now off one of his guns on the yacht. “Okay by me.”
“Say, the Japanese going to let you parade around with that boat?”
“We have an understanding.”
“Hmmm. Wouldn’t think these pieces of hardware were for them. Don’t they care?”
“That’s my business.”
“You got that much silver on that nice, gussied-up yard boat of yours? That—what do they call ’em—yacht?”
“What we don’t have, we can get.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“We’re going for it, right, Mr. Crottle?” Gunnarson leaned into Crottle as the dory withdrew.
“No.”
“No, what are you afraid Hobson’s not going to go along with the drill?”
Crottle looked around, collared Hobson and Gunnarson and shoved them into the pilothouse.
“Get this very straight, Gunnarson. I ain’t afraid of nothin’.” Only half Crottle’s attention was on Gunnarson, he was considering his options. “Now I know what the Navy can do to you, Guns, for what you’re thinking. Well, settle your agitated little mind. Don’t worry ’bout the Navy, you just worry ’bout me.”
“There’s a chief tried to keep me from doing my duty back at Olongapo, an’ he couldn’t take a hint either. They still ain’t found him yet.”
Hobson remained quiet. He thought there was a dangerous glint in Gunnarson’s eye.
“You think that guy can afford to pay fifteen thousand Mex for a bunch of guns? They may be worth it to him, but he doesn’t have that much on him and I made him think about this coming storm. Maybe the storm’ll put us on the rocks and do his work for him.”
Gunnarson wore the surly look of a man cheated and defeated.
Crottle was buying time. He had no idea how he was going to deal with Atticaris. Crottle sent Hobson and Gunnarson ashore in the tug’s wherry. Crottle knew about Hobson’s earlier expedition to Korea and about the New Hwarang. He sent Hobson, rowing, with orders to find the mudang at Chindo. Gunnarson he sent
ashore with orders to keep his mouth shut, get drunk, and visit his lady friend. Perhaps there was a Korean solution to their problem.
Gunnarson grumbled, but did not argue. Crottle was very convincing and Crottle wanted Gunnarson nowhere near the rest of the crew, for the time being.
The swell kept building.
After dropping Gunnarson off with the tug’s wherry, Hobson labored at his oars most of the rest of the day and part of the night to Chindo. The contorted rock formations of the numerous small island presented obstacles and served as reference points. Hobson had never approached Chindo from seaward. He found the same villager and ended up waiting in the same field. A fisherman again led him up the mountain to the turret-girthed great white birch, this time through a few inches of snow.
The wind had picked up, and the clouds were slashing at the moon.
The mudang approached him and again held both his hands. She looked particularly radiant and he wished he had known her when she was young.
“You are dressed like a foreigner now.”
“Yes. I am a foreigner.”
“No.”
“I have a message for Mr. Kim.”
“Mr. Kim?”
She laughed. “Maybe you are a foreigner. That’s all you give me? No generational name, no first name, no province, no village, no age?”
“Mr. Kim of the New Hwarang.”
Her mouth became a tight, grim line.
“I have never heard of this, this New Hwarang. The hwarang died out long ago, they are only ghosts, spirits, shadows of the Shilla Kingdom, now.”
He studied her face for any trace of irony. Her veiled eyes revealed nothing.
“Time is very important. Tell him the meegook behind the beheadings is on a western steam boat, a blue-hulled yacht, somewhere in the islands west of Chindo or perhaps at Mokp’o. He wears a strange straw hat, earmuffs, and a sealskin coat.”
Jade Rooster Page 20
