I stood and shook both their hands, Terrence’s grip firm; Christopher’s almost limp by comparison. Perhaps I had been wrong about his effect on the girls.
“Have you guys, ah, fellows, been filled in on what’s happening?” I asked.
“We have,” Christopher replied in a southern drawl. “You just lead us to these fellers and we’ll take care of the rest.” I had half expected him to call them critters.
Terrence just nodded, obviously a man of few words.
“Not possible at the moment,” I said. “You’re both too tall and too bloody young to pretend to be me, and if we put you anywhere near Tiananmen Square you’re going to stick out like sore thumbs. Sorry guys. But sit down and maybe you can help us to come up with something.”
“It’s not going very well, is it?” Sue butted in.
“Have you got any better ideas?” I snapped back.
“No.”
“What about the Buddhists?” Terrence said in a soft voice.
“The Buddhists?” I asked.
“Hey, yes!” Sue said before Terrence could add anything further. “They’d be Chinese, wouldn’t they, Angelo?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Most certainly, and there are Buddhist nuns who could take Mrs Dunlop’s place.”
“Well, then,” Sue continued. “Maybe it’s time we brought the monks in. We’ve got to talk to them sometime, and it might as well be now. It’s just as well you told Lee that you’d meet his people this afternoon, Ben, and not sometime this morning. At least we’ve got time to get it all organised.”
“Can you arrange that?” I asked Angelo. “Can you get one of their senior guys, or maybe their head monk, to come and talk to us?”
“I will speak to the Bishop,” he replied, bouncing out of the chair and ignoring my reference to the monks as guys. He was off and out the door, eager to get away and place some of the decision-making on the Bishop’s head.
“If you don’t mind,” Terrence said. “Christopher and I have some secular matters to attend to. Do you mind if we leave?”
I told them both that we’d be fine on our own. I was glad to be free of them. It would give Sue and me a chance to talk.
“What do we tell them?” Sue asked as soon as the door was closed.
“Who? The monks?”
“Yes.”
“As little as possible, I suppose.”
“No,” she replied. “I don’t think so. I think you’ve got to give them most of it, probably everything except the details of where the chest is hidden. You can’t ask them to do this for us without telling them what it’s all about. Would you believe or trust a bunch of Chinamen if they came to you in Brisbane with only half of this tale? And would you then agree to help them do what we’re asking?”
“Hell no. I wouldn’t believe them even if they gave me the whole story.”
“Well then?” she asked.
“Okay, we tell them all of it, except the fact that the chest is buried, and where it’s located. I sure as hell hope it’s still there. There’s going to be one big bunch of people really angry with us if the thing’s long gone.”
“What if the Bishop won’t agree?” she asked.
“Hey, be positive! Just shut up and wait.”
“Yeah, right,” she replied. “There’s no need to get stroppy. I’m only trying to help.”
“Sorry.”
“Okay then.”
Angelo must have had to sell the Bishop really hard, for it was almost half an hour before he returned, but at least he was smiling. “The Bishop has asked two of the senior Buddhist monks to attend on a matter of great importance to both religions. He suggested that they enter our premises through the discreet entrance.”
“The what entrance?” Sue asked.
“We have a means of entering the building which is not public,” he replied. “It means passing through several of the adjoining buildings, but it is most private, and hardly ever used except on special occasions. The Bishop feels that this is one such occasion.”
“So we can use this when we go out to recover the chest?” I said.
“Yes, I believe so, but I will have to check with the Bishop first.”
“How long before they get here?” Sue asked.
“I believe that they are on their way as we speak,” Angelo said. “They will have an audience with the Bishop first, and he will tell them about the chest, and what he believes that it might contain. He will leave it up to you to ask the monks what you require of them. It will be up to their Master to decide as to whether they will accede to your request.”
“It looks like your decision has been made for you, Ben,” Sue said, smiling smugly.
I was annoyed. What we had told the priests was in strict confidence, and now the Bishop was going to blab the whole story to a bunch of Buddhist monks.
“Hey, Angelo!” I snapped. “What right does the Bishop think he has to blab out the details of this deal to these guys?”
“The Bishop has said that Joseph’s well-being comes first and foremost.”
“I told you, Ben,” Sue interjected. “You can’t trust the Church.”
“No you didn’t,” I snapped back. “I told you.”
Angelo just sat there with a startled look on his face.
“Well, anyway,” she said. “We’d already decided to tell the monks everything.”
“Nearly everything,” I reminded her.
“My children,” Angelo said. “Please. We must remember where we are. This is a place of peace, a place of contemplation, of worship. The Bishop is doing what is best for all of us. And, as I said before, our brother Buddhists are not guys, they are monks.”
“Do you think he’ll tell the monks about our financial arrangement?” I asked, ignoring his quiet rebuke.
“I do not know what the Bishop will tell them, but I would think not.”
We sat and twiddled our thumbs for another half an hour as I watched the hands of my watch move around the dial. Finally, the door opened. Two monks dressed in saffron robes, heads shaven, faces grave and hands clasped together, entered with the Bishop. He introduced them and left. The taller of the two spoke fairly good English and I related the entire story to him, leaving out only the location of the chest, and the fact that it was buried. No doubt I was repeating everything that the Bishop had already told them, but it could only help our bona fides. I waited while he translated my words to the other monk, and then told them what I wanted them to do. And I told them that Sue and I wanted half the value of anything in the chest that belonged to the Buddhist temple. I apologised for selling the three pieces of jade. When I had finished they retired to the far corner of the room and spoke quietly to each other. The one I had spoken with took out his mobile phone and made a short call, and then they both came and sat down again. Somehow the mobile phone had seemed out of place in the hands of this saffron-robed monk.
“Mr Dunlop, we are capable of doing what you ask,” the taller one said. “But whether the Master allows us to do so, well, we will have to wait and see. Time is very short. We will talk now, and plan now, and then we will put the plan to the Master. If he agrees, the plan will proceed.”
“Great!” I replied.
“But,” he continued. “We will not pay you one half of the value of anything which is ours and which was stolen from the custody of the Church by the bandits who slaughtered the Jesuit priests.”
“Hey!” Sue shouted, jumping out of her chair. “We discovered the location of the chest! If Ben hadn’t found the letter from Captain Monty, none of us would be here now, and your bits and pieces would probably just rot completely away in another hundred years’ time!”
“Please, Mrs Dunlop,” he replied. “I said that we would not pay you one half of the value. We are a poor order of monks. We can not afford the sum of money that you would be asking.”
“You won’t be poor once you have your bits and pieces returned,” Sue threw back.
“No, Mrs Dunlop,” he repl
ied. “We will not be poor. We will be rich indeed. But we would be unable to sell these riches in order to pay you. It would not be allowed for us to do so. The precious religious items must be returned and retained by the temple. And please, Mrs Dunlop, they are not bits and pieces; they are part of the heritage of our faith. They are religious icons.”
“Okay,” Sue replied. “I’m sorry. But what sort of arrangement can we come to?”
“We will say a prayer for you in the temple for the next thousand years; a prayer for you each day whilst you are still on this earth, and a prayer for you during each new incarnation.”
“Not good enough,” I butted in. “We require cash. We can exchange cash for whatever we need in this life. I’m not worried about the next.”
“But,” he replied. “It would appear that without our assistance, you will never succeed in recovering the chest, so we would therefore appear to be at a stalemate.”
“We can leave Beijing tonight,” Sue replied. “We can go back to Brisbane, find some support, some backers, maybe even amongst the Chinese community, and then come back in five years and recover the chest.”
“But someone else might find it in the meantime,” he said. “And then it would be lost to you, to us, and to the Church.”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “And a bulldozer might demolish the place where it’s hidden this very afternoon, and crush the chest and its contents into a tangled powdered mess.”
It made him pause. He turned to his brother monk and they had a few quiet words with each other in what I presumed was a dialect that Angelo couldn’t understand. Then he turned back to us and said: “I am prepared to ask the Master to consider paying you a reward of ten per cent of the antiquity value of each one of our religious icons that are recovered.”
“Make it twenty per cent,” I said.
“I will see if the Master will agree to fifteen per cent,” he replied.
It was no use arguing further. I was certain that the offer would be cut back to the ten per cent in any case.
“Who will value these icons?” Sue asked.
“I would think Christie’s in Hong Kong would be acceptable to us.”
I looked at Sue. She gave the slightest nod. There wasn’t time to argue further in any case. We had to go for the chest now. If we had left and gone home to Brisbane we would have had Jackson Lee on our backs until such time as we did eventually recover the chest. And if we delayed even an hour further, it would give the Jesuits the chance to renegotiate the figure they had promised to pay us.
“Okay,” I said. “Put it to your superior and get back to us, and hurry. We don’t have a lot of time. If he doesn’t agree, then the deal is off and we go back home.” I passed him my parka and Sue handed her coat to the other one. He said that he’d have no problem finding a suitable umbrella.
There was a shaking of hands, and then hands clasped in front giving blessings, and then they were gone, presumably back out through the discreet entrance. But before they had gone, a digital camera had been produced and they had taken several pictures of both of us, as well as measuring our heights.
“What do you think, Angelo?” I asked when they had gone. “You know these people. Are they going to do it?”
“I believe so, although I am surprised that they have agreed to suggest to the Master that they should pay monies to you. Perhaps they may have some wealthy benefactors after all.”
“Do you think they might refuse to pay later?” Sue asked him. “If they agree to the ten or fifteen per cent, that is.”
“Oh, no,” Angelo replied. “If they say that they will pay, then they will pay, right down to the last fen, to the last cent. It would be a matter of honour.”
It wasn’t honour that was the matter, it was the waiting. The three of us sat and waited for either the telephone to ring or for someone to burst in with news of some sort or other. But it was none of these. It was the Bishop who quietly entered the room two and a half hours later. He spoke in whispers to Angelo for a minute or so, smiled at us, and left the room, shutting the door softly.
“Well?” Sue said, sitting right out on the edge of her seat, directing the question at Angelo.
“It has started,” he said. “The monks are gradually moving in to Tiananmen Square at this very moment. They will be there well before Jackson Lee’s men arrive. The two who have been selected to take your place are being schooled in what they must say, or rather, what they must not say.”
“So, the monks have agreed to help then?” Sue asked.
“Yes, most certainly,” Angelo replied.
“And the fifteen per cent?” she continued. “Have they agreed to pay that as well?”
“Yes. It has all been agreed.”
“Is there any way we can go with them to Tiananmen Square and watch?” I asked.
“It would not be wise,” he said quietly.
“No,” I replied. “I suppose not.”
And again there was nothing to do but wait. One o’clock came and went, and then two o’clock. The phone hadn’t rung. The whole building was quiet. There was nothing to do. I tried reading, but the magazines were all of a religious nature. There was a television set, but every channel was in Chinese. I drank three cups of coffee and two of tea, light-coloured and weak, but oddly refreshing. And none of these things made time go any faster.
It was two-thirty before we had any news. The door opened quietly and the same two monks entered the room, smiles on their faces.
“What happened?” Sue asked the one who had previously done all the talking.
“It was as you said it would be,” he replied. “Our two young novices waited by the ticket office, their faces turned towards the wall. At ten minutes past one o’clock they were approached by a Chinese man. He called Mr Dunlop’s name, and tapped our young monk on the shoulder when he did not reply. The novice turned and did what he had been told to do, which was to look confused, and then he walked away with the young nun. Our brother monks then followed this one man. He met up with two other men, and then shortly after, a third and a fourth. One of them made a telephone call. By this time one of our monks, dressed as a beggar, had moved up very close and he listened to the conversation. The man with the telephone told the person that he was speaking to that you had not appeared. He did not tell the person that he had approached the wrong people. I think that was a mistake on his part.”
“Where did they go after that?” I asked.
“They had two cars parked a short distance away. Two of our people followed them on motorcycles. They are at an old hotel in West Beijing. It is a place used by couples for short times, most disreputable.”
“And just the place where a person could be held without too many questions being asked,” I said. “But how can we find out whether Father Joseph is definitely being held there. I wouldn’t like to have the police raid the place only to find out that they had him somewhere else and were only using the hotel as a place to sleep.”
“We have thought of a way,” the monk replied. “Because it is a place of low repute, we can have access. We can send some people into the hotel who would appear as though they are trying to save the morality of the women who work there. We do this from time to time. If we can persuade some of the women to leave this place and come with us, we might be able to find out from them whether a man is being held in the hotel against his will. It could be that one or more of these daitu, these gangsters, have spent time with some of the women. Men will often open their thoughts at such a time.”
“When can you do this?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” he replied. “I don’t think that we can do it any earlier. Time is not something which may be used hastily. We must let these men rest. We must let their minds turn to other thoughts, and let them drop their guard. They might become suspicious if our people moved in straight away. They will be watching for strangers in the area.”
“Is that alright with you, Angelo?” I asked. “Will Bishop Petro agree to let Jose
ph remain in the hands of these thugs for another night?”
“The fate of Father Joseph is with the Lord. He will be released when the Lord allows, but I will speak with the Bishop in any case.”
We all looked at each other. There was nothing further to discuss. I went to rise and then Sue asked: “How come we haven’t heard from Jackson Lee? He must be pretty annoyed.”
As if that had been the signal, the telephone rang. I picked it up, and answered. It was the same uncultured voice as the first call we had received in the seminary. Where was Jackson Lee?
“Mister Dunlop, you continue be source of great trouble. Our people at Forbidden City.” I signalled to the Buddhist monk that he should put his ear close to mine and listen in. “He look for you but you not arrive. He got money in briefcase, ready for exchanging.” The monk moved his head from mine and shook it, mouthing that none of the men had been carrying a case. “How can we do friendly business if you not co-operate?”
“We decided that it was not a good place to meet,” I replied. “The place is too open. We were worried that as soon as we checked that the money was all there and handed over the key and the bank authorisations, another one of your guys could’ve grabbed the case and hurtled off through the crowd.”
“Mister Dunlop, you think we got no money! You think we got no honour! Maybe for million dollar, but not for ten thousand dollar.”
“Well, if it wouldn’t be one of your men, anyone who spotted the case full of money might do it. We need somewhere quieter, somewhere like the hotel where we were staying for instance. Do you know where the Jianguo Hotel is?”
“Yes, that be okay. I meet you there very short time, okay?”
“No,” I replied, and then tried to come up with some reason that would convince him that we weren’t just trying to play for time. “Sue’s come down with a fever,” I said after a pause. I hoped that he hadn’t read anything into it. “The priests have got some sort of doctor with her now. I think it’s something she ate. The food in this place is not real good. And the strain that’s she’s been going through hasn’t helped. Father Joseph was fetching her migraine tablets when you kidnapped him, and that hasn’t bloody helped either, in fact it’s all your bloody fault! Give me a call tomorrow.”
Dark Eye of the Jaguar Page 21