“Not what you expected?” he asked, one hand flicking his long dark hair back over his forehead, away from his eyes.
“Ah, no,” I mumbled.
“We were worried that you might have been Chinese,” Sue added sheepishly. For a split second I thought she was going to mention Jackson Lee, but she caught herself just in time.
“No matter,” he replied. “Come in, come in. Sit down. Would you like some tea? I’m afraid there’s no coffee. These hotels almost never provide coffee. It’s much more expensive in China than tea. Only the five-star places have coffee available in the rooms.”
We both declined the tea, and sat on the only two chairs in the room. Father Joseph perched himself on the edge of the bed. He seemed to be nervous, but not nearly as nervous as we were. He knew about us, but we knew virtually nothing about him.
“Okay,” I said, breaking the silence that had grown since his offer of tea. “We got your note.” He nodded. “Now would you please tell us what this is all about?”
“Of course,” he replied. “Well, Father Xavier….”
“Just a moment,” Sue said, interrupting him, “Could we have some identification first.”
“Of course, of course,” he replied. “You must think I’m a bit thick.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some form of Chinese identification folder with his picture on it and some words in English which identified him as a member of the Society of Jesus and then, underneath this, a load of Chinese characters that probably said the same thing.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “But, well, like you said, you don’t look like the typical priest.”
I didn’t have a clue whether the document was genuine or not, but he was such a clean-cut sort of guy that I felt I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“No, Mr Dunlop, your wife was quite correct. This is a most serious business.”
“Please,” I said. “Call me Ben, and my wife’s name is Sue. Do we call you Father Joseph, or just Joseph?”
“Joseph would be fine.”
“Okay, Joseph,” I said. “Can we start at the beginning?”
“Hang on a minute, Ben,” Sue interrupted. I closed my mouth and turned to her.
“Yes?” I said, but she wasn’t looking at me. It was Joseph she was interrupting.
“This note here,” she said to him. “It doesn’t say a thing about the cross. It mentions some relics, some holy relics. What’s that all about?”
He paused before replying. It was less than a second or so, just long enough for him to come up with an answer that would satisfy us, an answer that was not quite the truth. He was hiding something.
“I wasn’t certain whether you would get my note. I didn’t want to mention the cross. My reference to holy relics was just that, a general reference to something you might have.”
There was no sense in pushing the matter. It would come out sooner or later, when he made another slip.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s this note of yours all about? And how the hell, pardon the language, did you know we were here?”
“Well,” he replied. “To answer the second question first, might I say that the Society of Jesus is an order within the Catholic Church, and that the Church has, shall we say, eyes and ears everywhere.” He flicked the hair clear of his eyes again. “We traced your movements back over the past year and soon found that you had been to China. From this we deduced that you had most probably chanced upon the cross during that trip, or that something had happened during that trip to lead you to the cross. One of the members of your tour group, another Catholic, was approached by her local priest and questions were asked. She remembered that you had purchased a large antique box or chest of some sort, and that you’d had a heated discussion with your wife about this.” He smiled then, the left side of his mouth tilting upwards more than the right, a lopsided grin that seemed to make him more priest-like, more trustworthy.
“Who was it?” I asked. “Which bloody woman?”
“Ah, I’m afraid that is confidential.”
“I bet it was that old biddy who was always complaining about everything,” Sue said. “The fat one who stacked her plate at lunch every day before anyone else could even get a look in.”
“Well,” Joseph replied. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
He couldn’t conceal the start of a grin. Father Joseph had been told all about the fat bitch.
“It doesn’t really matter,” I said. “It’s not important. Go on.”
“Well, we then assumed that the cross had been inside the box, possibly in some hidden compartment, and that it had not been left to you by Mrs Dunlop’s aunt as you had said.” He paused, as if expecting one of us to contradict his words, and then continued. “We waited for you to take steps to put the cross up for auction, as you had declined to sell it to us.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Sue interjected. “We just wanted more time to think about it.”
“Yes, well,” he continued pleasantly. “Let’s just say that we surmised that if you wouldn’t sell it to us, you might put it up for auction. We approached all of the major auction houses. We knew that you wouldn’t use a local Brisbane firm. We found that none of the major houses, both in Australia and elsewhere, had received an approach from anyone wanting to sell an antique religious cross. We therefore surmised that perhaps you had learnt where more of the items taken during the Boxer uprising might be located, and that you would wait until you had found these before putting the cross on the market. We further surmised that you would try and locate the dealer who had sold the box to you and would seek answers to some of your questions from him. How am I doing so far?”
“Pretty accurate so far,” I replied several seconds later. “About talking to the dealer, that is.”
“Yes, well,” Joseph continued. “We sought out the dealer and, after many enquiries, managed to locate him. I am sorry to have to tell you that he can shed no light on the history of the box. He purchased it at a market in Tianjin some years ago. And that was all he could tell us.”
“I see,” I said. “Well that would appear to be that, as they say.” I turned to Sue and said: “It looks like we’ve had a wasted journey.”
“Ben,” she replied. “I don’t think Joseph is that gullible.”
I saw the smile twist across his face, and I could feel mine grow red.
“Thank you, Mrs Dunlop,” he said. “We presumed that you wouldn’t have come here just on the off-chance the dealer would still be at the dirt market, and that, if you found him, and he was willing to talk to you, he would be able to reveal any secrets.”
He got up off the bed and started to pace across the room.
“Go on,” Sue said.
“Yes, of course, but I am getting ahead of myself. We had surmised that, if there were more items to be found, then they would probably be in China, and most likely be hidden somewhere either around Beijing or somewhere between Beijing and Tianjin. The box was purchased by the dealer in Tianjin. As you are no doubt aware, the main area of conflict between the Boxers and the foreign forces took place between Beijing and Tianjin, with most of the fighting occurring in and around Beijing. We knew that if you came to China, then you would be coming to locate not the dealer, but whatever secret location had been revealed by the box, and that location would either be in Beijing or Tianjin.”
“How did you know we were on our way?” I asked.
“There are Catholics working in the Chinese Embassy in Brisbane,” he replied. “And we asked that they keep an eye out for any application by either of you for a visa. You subsequently did this and your application stated that you would be staying at this hotel. I take it that that answers your second question?”
I looked at Sue and she looked at me. We both nodded our heads slowly, almost as if we had just been chastened. And then I remembered that this was a priest and that this was part of his role in society.
“But now we come to the serious part of the matte
r,” he went on.
“Wait a minute,” I said, interrupting him. “What did you intend to do when we arrived?”
“Well, Ben,” he replied. “I must confess that we were just going to follow you and see where you would lead us.”
“And I presume you checked in to the hotel so you could keep a close eye on us,” I said.
“Well, actually,” he replied. “There are two of us staying in the hotel. A member of our household staff was going to follow you. My task, being a westerner, was to try and make friends with you in a day or so and hopefully learn how your quest was going.”
“How would you find that out?” I asked.
“From your manner, your moods. If you were confident of locating whatever is waiting for you, then your mood would be high. You would be in good spirits. You might let something slip, and we would know how close you were.”
It might have happened too. We wouldn’t have taken him for a priest. He would have seemed to be just another tourist staying at the hotel.
“So why have you approached us now?” Sue asked. “Why didn’t you wait and see what we did?”
“Ah, well. That is where the problem has arisen. We know that you are here, but so does someone else. I thought I had made that clear in my note.”
We were well aware of the fact that Jackson Lee knew we were here, but how did Joseph know about Lee?
“How do you know there’s someone else?” she asked.
“We had some people looking out for you at the airport, and they noticed that you were being watched by two men, one standing by the taxi area, and another on a motor-bike. As soon as you left in the taxi, the one near the taxi area ran to the motor-bike and climbed on to the pillion seat. They followed you to the hotel and one of them followed you inside to the foyer. He watched as you checked in. You might have noticed a Chinese man in a dark parka standing next to you when you filled in the forms.” I shook my head. “Our people telephoned me whilst you were on your way here in the taxi. I was instructed to contact you. I put the note under your door as I didn’t want to be seen speaking directly to you.”
“Bloody Jackson Lee,” I said, not realising that I had spoken out loud.
“Who?” Joseph asked.
“Nobody,” I replied. The guy standing next to me at reception must have called Jackson Lee as soon as he knew our room number.
“Who is this person you just mentioned?” he asked again.
“That’s our business,” I replied. “You were saying that you had people watching us at the airport?” I didn’t want him to know about Lee.
“Ah, yes, well, at first our people thought that these others might have been from the Public Security Bureau, but they soon realised that this was not the case.”
“What’s the Public Security Bureau?” I asked, suddenly feeling a chill in the air.
“They are somewhat like your Federal Police in Australia, but with a little more authority, and considerably more power.”
“So,” I replied. “If these others hadn’t turned up, were you just going to follow us and step in if we found the rest of this mythical treasure, or loot, or whatever?”
“Ah, something like that, although we weren’t going to take it from you. We wanted to see whether there might be any other items that had, shall we say, disappeared during the time of the Boxer uprising. First we had to ascertain what it was that you were trying to find. There were other precious items which had been taken from us in those dark days. They were things which have a very small intrinsic value. They are not made of gold or silver, and they are not studded with precious stones, but they are of more value to us than the cross itself.”
“These would be the holy relics you mentioned in your note, I presume?” Sue said. “The ones you sort of lied about a little while ago?”
“Ah, yes. Sorry about that, a bit of a slip of the pen in my hurry to get the note written and slipped under the door. You were only a few kilometres from the hotel when Father Angelo called.”
“Fair enough,” I replied. “So, anyway, what were you going to do if we found these holy relics?”
“Ah, can we call them something else?” He glanced sideways at the door. “Could we just call them, items?”
I nodded my agreement.
“Okay, well,” he continued. “We wanted to be able to negotiate with you before anyone else found out about these items, and before you were caught trying to smuggle them out of the country and they were seized by the Chinese Government. Our intention was something like that. We didn’t really have any hard and fast plan.”
“But now these other people have changed things?” I asked.
“Yes. Our people at the airport photographed the two Chinese who were watching you and we were able to ascertain that they were associated with people of a criminal nature, so I decided to come to you, or rather to ask you to come to me, and to bring everything out into the open. Now, tell me, why are you being watched?”
Sue and I were both quiet for a few moments and then Sue asked: “Do you mind if Ben and I have a few words in private please?”
“Not a problem, Mrs Dunlop. Would five minutes be enough?”
“A couple will do it, thanks,” she replied.
“Ah, before I leave,” he said, somewhat timidly. “I have a further confession to make.”
“Yes?” I said.
“We were able to ascertain your email address several days after your second message to us on the collectors’ website, and we were then able to ah, how do you say it.., ah, hack into your Yahoo message bank.”
“You bastards!” Sue snapped at him.
“Why the hell would you do that?” I asked, getting angrier by the minute.
“The answer is simple,” he replied. “The relics. I have told you this in the hope that by my telling you, you will both see it in your hearts to forgive us.”
Sue was still seething, and my mood wasn’t much better, although I could see his point, or rather, the Church’s point. If our situations had been reversed, and I had been able to do so, I would have done the same thing.
“Okay,” I said, shaking my head. “Let’s just leave it for the time being, but it’s something that I won’t forget.”
“Me neither,” Sue muttered through clenched teeth.
“Can you go now?” I said.
We waited until he had left the room and the door was firmly closed.
“What a pack of mongrels!” Sue said as soon as he was gone. “I thought he was going to be our friend.”
“Yeah, but you can’t really blame them. At least he told us. He didn’t have to. He’s been pretty straight with everything else. What do you reckon?”
“Let’s go home, Ben,” she said, gripping my arm. “I’m scared. Let’s forget it. It’s got far too complicated. We can never do this. We can’t get away with it. Jackson Lee is spooky enough, but now there are criminals involved, Chinese criminals! They are bad people. I’ve read about them. The triads are like the mafia!”
“Hey, you’re tired,” I replied quietly. “We both are. Let’s listen to what he has to say. Maybe this Father Joseph is just trying to frighten us. Maybe there wasn’t anyone else watching us. We’ve only got his word. There was nobody in the passage outside our room, and even if what he says is true, so what? We knew Jackson Lee was on to us. We knew we’d have some problems. Maybe it was only Jackson Lee who followed us from the airport, and there aren’t any criminals. It might have been Jackson Lee on the motor-bike, and there was nobody with him. You only saw the one guy. Joseph’s trying to scare us with his mention of the Public Security Bureau. Maybe he’s just blowing this out of all proportion to get us to go along with him. I should have spoken to Jackson Lee when he called. Maybe Lee was just being a smart-alec, trying to show us that he’s a clever son-of-a-bitch.”
“But how did Lee know we were here?”
“Maybe the same way the Jesuits did. All it would take would be a small bribe to one of the clerks at the Chinese visa
office.”
“Ben, just think about it for a minute. We’ve got the Jesuit Church following us, and you know what kind of reputation they had a hundred or more years ago.”
“No. What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, they were a bit fanatical, extremist even.”
“Hey, that was then. And it was at least a hundred, maybe even two hundred years ago. Things have changed. Don’t worry.”
“Maybe so, but we’ve got this Chinaman, this Jackson Lee, this man who employs people to break into other people’s houses and steals bits of jade, to worry about. I tell you, Ben, I just want to go home!”
“Let’s hear him out,” I said, smiling, putting an arm around her. “Let’s listen to what Father Joseph has to say, and then we’ll go out and have a good lunch, play the tourist this afternoon, and sleep on it. It’ll look different in the morning.”
“How could it look any different? We’re being followed by criminals, for God’s sake! If this Father Joseph is just trying to frighten us then he’s doing a damn good job of it!”
“Yeah, but look at the other side of the coin,” I replied, smiling.
“What other side?”
“We’ve got God and the angels on our side.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, but with a hint of a smile, which faded fast as she added: “What do we do? We can’t do this on our own any more, Ben. Surely you can see that!”
“Yes, okay,” I replied. “You’re probably right.”
“I’m glad you finally agree.” She looked at me, waiting for me to say something else, and, when I didn’t, asked: “So, do we go home? We can sell the cross to the Jesuits. The chest is probably long gone anyway.”
“No,” I replied.
“No what? No, the chest is still there, or no we don’t go home?”
“Both,” I replied. “I’m certain that the chest is still there. If it had been found, the Jesuits would already have their bits and pieces. They wouldn’t be interested in us.” She opened her mouth to object and I jumped in before she could speak. “And we’re not going home!” I added, maybe a little more forcefully than was warranted.
Dark Eye of the Jaguar Page 13