And with that I slammed the telephone down.
“What is wrong with the food that we have been serving you?” Angelo asked.
“Nothing,” I replied. “It’s fine. I had to tell him something. It was the first thing that came to mind.”
“You have made him angry,” the monk said. “Do you think that he may do Father Joseph some harm?”
“I hope not,” I replied. “I’m just trying to keep him on the back foot.”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“I want him to be guessing. I want us to be calling the shots. Ah, I want us to be making the rules, deciding what and how we’re going to do things.”
“Ah, yes, I see, very good.”
“Is that alright with you, Angelo?” I asked. “Is it okay with the Bishop, and with every other mother’s son who we’ve now allowed to be dragged into this?”
“Yes, my son. It is fine. We shall pray to the Lord for Father Joseph’s safe return. Would you like to eat with us now? We could possibly send for some food from one of the local restaurants for you?”
“Don’t worry, Father,” Sue said. “The food is fine. My overweight husband could do with a bit more of your seminary’s wholesome cooking.”
We ate mainly in silence. All of the talking and planning had been done. It was now up to the Buddhists to find out what they could and then we would plan some more. It might have been still early evening, but I was dog tired. We both were; and retired to our spartan room, to the single beds, and the hard coir-matting mattresses, and to the single wooden cross high up on the wall by the door, where I could see it every time I looked up from the bed. I had been tempted to take it down on more than one occasion. I had reached up for it on our second night, but Sue’s hooded eyebrows had warned me off. It could have been worse. There could have been five or six religious paintings spread around the walls, and a couple of statues of the Madonna and child staring down at me all night. Sue sat on the side of the bed and started removing her shoes.
“Did you ever imagine it would come to this, Ben?” she asked, kicking the one remaining shoe into the corner, then standing up and starting to pace slowly across the room. “I can remember the day you purchased that writing box. Just think what would have happened if I had been more insistent. We’d be at home, doing the things that we normally do. The Church here would be going about its everyday business. Father Joseph would be doing whatever he usually does. And nobody would be any the wiser about whatever might be in that damn chest, that’s if there is even a chest. If the chest disappeared years ago then all this is for nothing. We don’t know what they might have done to Joseph. He could already be dead for all we know.” She stopped her pacing and dropped down into the one chair in the room, hard seat and straight wooden back.
“Yes, he could,” I replied. “But I don’t think so. They might have roughed him up a bit to find out what he knows, but I don’t think they’ll do him any serious harm, at least not yet. They need Joseph in order to get at us. They need him to be able to talk to us in case that becomes necessary. No, he’s okay, for the moment.”
“I hope so, Ben. I’ll never forgive myself if he’s come to any harm.”
“He’ll be all right,” I replied. “And anyway, if I hadn’t bought the writing box, the chest might have been left to lie in the ground for another hundred years, and possibly buried forever by some of the massive urban redevelopment that’s going on here. It’d be lost forever.”
“But if you hadn’t found the letter, and the cross, we’d be safe and sound back home in Brisbane.”
“Back home in Brisbane!” I exclaimed. “Isn’t this more exciting than watching television, or going shopping, or cooking a meal? Just think what you’ll be able to tell your nephews and nieces when we get back home.”
“But just suppose, Ben, that Captain Monty shifted the chest to some safer place the next day. He might even have taken it back to the barracks, or to his camp, or whatever. His fellow officers could’ve found it after he was killed and shared everything out amongst themselves. This could all be for nothing!”
“Suze,” I replied. “We’ve still got the cross and the other pieces. That’s not nothing. And anyway, we’re here. There’s no going back.”
We sat quietly for a minute or two, Sue with a petulant glare in her eyes, and then an idea hit me.
“What you just said stirs up another possibility,” I said quietly.
“What’s that?”
I sat down on the end of my bed and leaned in closer to her, lowering my voice.
“We could maybe go out tomorrow morning, make it appear as though we were sneaking out. We could somehow make certain that Jackson Lee’s men are following. We could dig a hole in some garden or other and pretend that the chest was removed way back at the beginning of the last century, not long after Captain Monty buried it.”
“Why do that?” she asked.
“It might get them off our backs. We could even leave and go back to Australia with our tails between our legs and then return in the next few months and dig the chest up.”
“What, you mean dig it up later on without telling the priests and the monks?” she asked. “Try and fool them as well?”
“No, I wouldn’t go that far. I think we should still keep them in on the deal. We stand to make more money than we’ll ever need from the deal we’ve already agreed, so there’s no need to sideline them.” I reached out and took hold of her left hand. “What do you say?”
She thought for a moment, and then asked: “What about Father Joseph?”
“I think they’d release him once we’d left. They’d have no reason to hold him any longer.”
“What if he could identify them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he couldn’t. There’s at least ten million people living in this city. Those guys would be impossible to find. If they killed a foreign priest there would be hell to pay. No, I think he’ll be okay.”
But I didn’t think he would be okay if we left in those circumstances. Even if he couldn’t recognise their faces, he would have heard them talking to each other. He might have learnt enough to pinpoint who they were, and they couldn’t be certain that he wouldn’t bring them down. Maybe leaving wasn’t such a good idea after all.
She let go of my hand and placed her own over her mouth, yawning.
“I’ll think about it,” she finally replied. “I’m tired.” She yawned again. “I want to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” She moved across to her bed, still fully clothed, and climbed under the blankets.
“It’ll be okay,” I said quietly. “It’ll be fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
But the only reply was the steady sound of her breathing. I changed into some coarse pyjamas that the priests had supplied and lay down on the top of the bed, oblivious to the coldness that was creeping into the room. My mind drifted away to visions of more jewelled crosses and diamond-studded objects heaped up and overflowing from within the chest. And then I closed my eyes and heard and saw nothing else. But it seemed like only minutes later that I was dreaming again, seeing dark figures moving about the dimly lit room, evil faces with wicked gleams in their eyes, a sharp knife, and terrified moans. I could smell the aroma of unwashed bodies, sweat, and tobacco saturated clothes.
I opened my eyes to push the dream away and hands suddenly grabbed me. A putrid-smelling rag was rammed against my face, covering my mouth and nose, and a hand forced the side of my head into the thin pillow. More hands pressed down on my back and I heard the door quietly close.
Eight
I was awake, wide awake, and suddenly terrified. It wasn’t a dream. The moans came from the other bed. In the light of the torch held by one of them I could see Sue’s staring eyes, flicking first from the man who was holding her down, to the knife at her throat, and then to the two others who held me to the bed, one on my back and the other keeping the rag firmly over my mouth.
Apart from the circle of light emanat
ing from the beam of the torch held close to Sue’s face, the rest of the room was in semi-darkness. After a second or two the shape of the three men took form, and then their faces as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. It wasn’t anger that I could see in the eyes of the one who held me down, and it wasn’t hate. It was greed, a lust for something I had and he wanted. I flicked my eyes to the other two, both wearing dark coloured parkas closed up to the chin, one with a scarf of some ragged material wrapped around his throat and covering the lower half of his face.
“Where is gold and silver?” the one holding the rag to my face whispered at me, his voice hoarse, spittle flecking my forehead. “Where they hidden?”
I shook my head, and mumbled through the gag.
“He cut throat!” he snarled, louder this time, pointing at the man holding Sue down.
She struggled against him, kicking her legs up through the blankets. He threw himself on top of her and turned to me, and grinned, sliding one hand beneath the blanket. There was a burst of Chinese from the one holding the rag in my mouth and the other spat out one short sharp sentence and removed his hand.
How the hell had they got into the bedroom? How the hell had they even got into the seminary? I tried to push up off the bed, but they held me down, pushing even harder, powerful wiry fingers cutting into my skin, the thin mattress unyielding, hard against my ribs. I tried to roll and twist, but they were too strong for my meagre efforts. I lay still, hoping that their grip might relax and I could make one final lunge, but it was useless.
In the distance I could hear the sound of a telephone. It rang and rang and then finally went silent as nobody answered it. I didn’t know what time it was, only that it was late, too late for anyone to be up and about and ready to run to our aid. I tried to call out through the gag, but it was no good. My right arm was twisted up behind my back, and then the left.
The one leaning over me turned and spoke quietly to the one holding Sue. The knife moved closer to her throat as he turned it over in his hand, and then he ran the blunt rear edge across her jugular vein. She screamed and he rammed his other hand across her mouth, cutting off most of the sound before it could escape.
“Tell me!” the first one hissed again. “Where gold and silver? Where jade?”
I tried to speak through the gag but it came out as a muffled confusion.
“I take cloth from mouth,” he said into my ear quietly. “You talk loud, he cut wife. Understand? One cut down one side face. Next cut down other side face. Next cut here.” He moved his finger across his throat. “Okay?”
I nodded. The cloth moved an inch or so from my mouth.
“What…, what do you want?” I asked. It was stupid question, but I was trying to gain time. But I knew that time was not the thing that mattered. What mattered was me coming up with a plan to overcome these three thugs. What plan? A plan was useless. There were three of them, and one had a knife to Sue’s throat. There was no plan that would get us free from these three and allow us to race out and along the passage, screaming for help. I tried to think which direction we should run once we got out of the room, and I couldn’t even remember in which direction the priests’ rooms lay. I could feel the perspiration running down the side of my neck. The room was cold, as cold as the faces on the three men. I had read enough about Chinese gangsters to know that life meant very little to them.
No, I had no plan.
All I had was a choice. I could tell them where the chest was buried, or I could keep silent and they would kill Sue. I had no doubt that they would do it. And after they had killed her it would be my turn, but they would take me away and torture me first. I was certain of that. One way or another they were going to get the answer they wanted. But would they kill us even if I told them where the chest was? Maybe. I tried to run the possibilities through my fear-addled brain.
If I told them what they wanted to know they would have three choices. They could tie us up and leave us. They could take us with them. Or, they could kill us. The only reason they would take us with them would be in case they weren’t certain whether I had told them the truth. But taking us would be difficult. There were two of us and only three of them. We would struggle and the seminary might be alerted. I was certain that if I told them where it was, they would take me with them to make certain, but leave Sue here, with her throat cut. They would know that the priests had no idea where the chest was buried. They would have found out this much from Joseph. Angelo was certain that he wouldn’t have told them anything. I wasn’t so sure. And besides, telling them that the priests didn’t know the chest’s whereabouts would mean that the gangsters would have no reason to kidnap any of the other priests.
The gangsters would know that nobody would be waiting for them when they went to collect the chest. There was the whole of Beijing to choose from, although, if they had thought it through, they would know that it had to be hidden somewhere close to the place where the legations had been back then, or within an easy ride on horseback from there. But even that was a large area. Neither the priests nor the police could watch the entire district surrounding the Forbidden City and hope to spot someone retrieving a chest.
If they left us tied up, we would be released by morning when the priests came to wake us, and then we would be in hot pursuit. They would need time to find the chest. Simply tying us up would not give them the time they would need. There was only one alternative, the third one. This was all going to end right here, right here in this small spartan room with the one wooden cross hanging on the wall by the door. Where was the priests’ Christian god when you needed him?
“Tell him to let my wife go,” I gasped. “Tell him to move the knife away from her. She won’t scream.” I forced my head up, pushing against his strong hands, my eyes finally reaching Sue’s. “Sue,” I said quietly. “Don’t scream. Take it easy and we’ll be all right.”
After an age of ten or fifteen seconds she nodded.
Maybe if I could get her away from the threat of the knife we would be okay. Maybe I could play for time. I glanced down at the watch of the one standing over me and saw that there was no way I could stall them until morning. Morning was still hours away. I had to try and convince them that we would not be a threat. If he moved away from her and let her come to me, and I told them where the chest was, then maybe they would let us go. Maybe. No, I knew there was no maybe. I could see it in his eyes, in the tight slitted eyes of the one who was making the threats, and an identical evil in the eyes of the guy holding the knife to Sue’s throat. He was just waiting for the word. He wanted to spill blood. He needed to spill blood.
The leader rattled off a few quick words in Chinese and the one with the knife moved it from her throat and dropped his hand to his side, but not before snarling back at the one who had spoken, angry at having been made to back off. He kept his other hand firmly on her chest, pinning her to the bed, and then grinned at me as my eyes swept down his arm. His fingers kneaded her left breast and he laughed, only to be hissed at by the leader again. The laugh had broken the quietness of the room.
I looked back at the leader and in the dim light from the torch I thought I could see the handle of the door slowly turning behind his back. I quickly looked away, watching it from the corner of my eye, knowing that it was only a trick of the light, and then I saw it move a quarter of a turn further.
“Why?” I asked, my voice raised higher than when I had first spoken. “Why are you doing this?” And then I spoke a little louder again. “Who are the three of you working for? Are the three of you Jackson Lee’s men? Put the knife down!”
And it was at that moment, as he lashed out and slapped me hard across the face, snapping my head sideways, that the door flew open and the three Jesuit priests rushed into the room: Angelo, Terrence and Christopher. Terrence crashed into the one who had just slapped me, ramming him into the hard packed mattress by my side, then reached forward, grabbed him by both ears, lifted him up, and smashed his head into the wall, once, twice an
d then a third time, and then grabbed one of his arms and flung him across the room. The man screamed as Terrence leapt after him.
Angelo and Christopher had already raced across the room and were tackling the one holding Sue. He had turned as the door had burst open, looked quickly back at Sue, and I could almost hear the thought flash through his mind. But he knew that he had no time to slash her throat. He was up on his feet in an instant, the knife held out in front of him, almost as if taunting them. The knife flashed once and they closed on him. Within that split second of time they had him down on the floor, blood pouring from his nose and a gash across his forehead.
The one who had been holding me down released his grip, his head flicking towards the door and then to his two associates, indecision clear on his face. I spun and snatched hold of his jacket as he made to move away, pulling him down to me again and then grabbed him around the throat and started to squeeze as hard as I could. All the fear and anger of the last few minutes, and the adrenalin they had engendered, giving strength to my fingers as I blocked off his windpipe. I could feel his fists pummelling into my side, and then my head thudded sideways as he crashed a heavy blow into my forehead, but I held on, everything starting to spiral and go out of focus. And then he collapsed and I released my hold. When the mist cleared I could see that my fight was over. Terrence had smashed a fist into the side of his head, knocking him to the floor. I slowly rose up on the bed and looked around the room, at the carnage wrought by the priests.
The leader, the one who had slapped my face, was crouched in one corner, almost unconscious, his eyes dazed. I had thought Father Terrence to be a gentle soul. I had been mistaken. He leant down to the one who had held the knife at Sue’s throat, grabbed him by the arm, gave it a twist that brought a piecing scream from the man, and threw him into the corner with the leader. The one I had nearly throttled crawled across the room to be with his cronies, gasping for breath, one hand at his throat, the other pleading not to be hit again. With four against three, and the sudden ferocity of the onslaught, the fight had gone out of them.
Dark Eye of the Jaguar Page 22