by James Thayer
Rose sniffed, "It was a transport pilot's license, issued to Amelia Earhart."
"You actually saw the license?"
She nodded, fingering the envelope flap and stealing a glance at the stack of bills inside.
"Anybody could have made up this little story," Snow said, his hand moving to the envelope.
Rose added quickly, "It was issued May 1, 1930, by the Department of Commerce, Aeronautics Branch. Issued to Amelia M. Earhart, age: thirty-one, weight: 118, height: five feet eight inches, color of hair: blonde, color of eyes: gray."
"Time magazine had all that."
"License number 5716. Time magazine didn't have that."
This was the first indication that he was in Singapore for more than a vacation. His hand retreated from the money. "You saw the license?"
"I held it in my hand long enough to memorize it."
"Because you figured you could someday make some money with the information."
Rose smiled widely and slipped the envelope into her purse. "It looks like I have, haven't I?"
"Not quite yet," Snow countered. "You wrote that you could locate the body. That's part of our deal."
"I never went to the camp."
"Then I want the money back."
"But I can take you there. On Colonel Furusawa's last visit to Singapore before the allies retook the city, he told me that all the prisoners were being marched north up the Peninsula. All those that could walk."
"And Amelia Earhart?"
"She had malaria and couldn't march. Furusawa said she was a spy, so she was shot."
"Her body could be anywhere in the Malay jungle," Snow said.
Rose slowly shook her head. "No, the Colonel said she is buried ten yards north of the camp's icehouse."
"Why would a Japanese colonel tell you that?" Connie inquired.
Rose smiled demurely, "Believe me, Colonel Furusawa would have told me anything."
"How far is the camp?" Snow asked, finishing his tepid beer.
"Across the Johore Strait and twenty miles into the Peninsula near Keluang."
"Can we get there and back by nightfall?"
The transvestite nodded.
Snow rose from the table. "Then we can be on the Pan Am Clipper in the morning."
"I think Howard expects you to spend more than four days in Singapore," Connie said, looking into the street for a trishaw.
"If I get the job done, it's done. Four days or four weeks. Anyway, you know what I always say about Howard Lester." "'
To hell with Lester.'"
"Precisely."
* * * *
Howard Lester's title was unclear, as was the location of his office, the name of his secretary, and the color of his hair. Without doubt, he was in charge of the Central Intelligence Group. At least, Joseph Snow had no doubts. Annette Cordez believed he was the third man in the hierarchy. Snow reported to his store-front office near Georgetown University, but Andrew Jay insisted his office was a drab, three-story walk-up on Rhode Island Avenue.
Lester was a man of infinite contradictions and unanswered questions. His agents could agree on only one facet of his personality: he had a vast capacity to annoy. Every time James Payne visited Lester's office, the discussion was endlessly interrupted by the ringing of the telephone in the next office. When Andrew Jay saw Lester, it was sunflower seeds, eaten continuously during every meeting. Payne had never seen a sunflower seed, and Jay had never heard a telephone ring. And only Snow had seen the tic.
One week before his arrival in Singapore, Joseph Snow had been summoned to Howard Lester's office. Snow had been idle for two months and was eager for the meeting, despite the facial contortions he knew he would witness. The secretary ushered Snow into Lester's office.
“Ah, Joseph, it's been a while," Lester waved him to a chair facing the massive desk. "You've been keeping busy?"
"I've been sitting on my butt for months, as you well know."
"I gave you a few weeks off, thinking you could use the time to adjust to your new family." Lester's seraphic face was broadened by a grin.
One fact about Lester could not be disputed. He had a niece, Connie McDaniels, and Snow had met her in this office three months before. Everyone, it seems, has a relative who wants marriage, and the chief was no exception. Snow had been determined to foil Lester's plan, but he failed. Spectacularly. Connie McDaniels and Joseph Snow were married six weeks after they met. Snow's memory of those six weeks was blurred.
"Your niece's marriage isn't the reason I haven't been getting assignments," Snow said.
Lester spread his hands in a gesture of equanimity. "No. I've said this before, Joseph, now that the war in Europe and Asia has ended there is simply less work to be done. Ask Jay or Thompson, they'll tell you they are getting more rest these days, too." Lester's face twitched and Snow cringed.
Lester went on. "I've been inventing make-work assignments for my people. Thompson the Tapper has been over at the cathedral listening to confessions through one of his bugs for two weeks. For the past month, Harvey Lyle has been with Nelson on Two testing RDX chemical fuses. Nelson crimps the fuse, Lyle presses the watch. Nelson crimps, Lyle presses. For a month! You can't complain, especially with what I've got for you today." Another spasm and wink. "It'll involve travel to a sunny climate, not too much work, but it's a chance to get away. A chance to contribute and to earn your money. And there's even a surprise involved. All told, not a bad assignment."
"Out of the country?" Snow asked, already pleased.
"To Singapore. The war is over, the monsoons have passed, and Singapore is once again a very pleasant place to be."
"What needs to be done?"
"Well," Lester cleared his throat and squared several sheets of paper, "you're familiar with Amelia Earhart, of course."
Snow waited.
"Briefly put, her bones have been found near Singapore. I want you to go there and bring them back."
Snow lurched forward in his seat, the scowl already firmly planted. "Bring back some bones? What kind of garbage assignment is that?"
“Joseph, there's a bit more to her story than. . . ."
"Damn it, Howard, I've worked for you for nine years. You've got a file on me a foot thick and it's filled with all sorts of vicious jobs you've had me pull. You've made me a specialist. And now you're going to have me travel to the Far East to fill a coffin?"
Lester held up a hand. "Listen for a minute. You don't know the story on her." Again he tapped the edges of the paper. His pink face darkened. "Amelia Earhart left Oakland on May 20, 1937 on what would've been the first round-the-world flight. She and her navigator flew to Miami, then south to San Juan, Paramaribo, and several other stops, then across the Atlantic to Dakar."
"Everyone knows that."
"Yes, well, she flew east. Gao, Khartoum, Karachi, Calcutta, and so forth. This was in June 1937 when the secret war was heating up. During that month this office learned of a Japanese navy captain who wanted to defect. He was an intelligence officer named Nissho Ito, and he was stationed on Saipan in the Japanese mandate islands, one of Japan's easterly outposts. We let him know that we just couldn't take every defector who comes along, and he would have to prove his worth."
"By producing."
"Exactly. He said he could give us Imperial Navy documents. Contingency plans. All we had to do was get them out."
"And along comes Amelia Earhart and her Electra," Snow said dryly.
"I'll get to that. Remember back nine years, Joseph. Japan was arming herself, marching west, sailing east. We knew nothing about her ambitions and couldn't get any information. The prospect of receiving the documents was exciting, but even more dazzling to us, was the opportunity to have a Japanese intelligence officer working for us. We were salivating."
"And along comes Amelia Earhart and her Electra," Snow repeated.
"Ships were too slow. We had to use a plane. Ito said he and the documents would be at Saipan's south field July 2 and July 3, 1937. No s
ooner, no later. We had no planes with the necessary range. Earhart and Noonan landed in Singpore on June 20, and that's where we convinced her to alter her plans. She continued the flight, but after she took off from Le, New Guinea, rather than fly directly to Howland Island, she turned north. A short side trip to Saipan, touch down, bring out the documents, and take off."
"Only she didn't take off?"
"No. Ito either changed allegiances again or was discovered. So it was all for nothing." Lester's voice was sour.
"How did her body find its way to Singapore?"
"I have no idea. It may mean that she didn't die on Saipan but on the Malay Peninsula at some later date. At best, you could find out when and where she died."
"And at worst, I'll just be escorting a body bag back across the Pacific."
"Joseph, we've never let it be known that Amelia Earhart did anything but run out of fuel in the Pacific. Sure, there are suspicions, but we scoff at them. Truth is, she died from a Japanese bullet, and I think the least we can do is bring her body home."
"A very nice sentiment, Howard, but why can't one of the new people do it?"
Lester's voice firmed. "The new people no longer work here. Nothing for them to do, so I let them go. I'm trying not to have the same thing happen to my experienced operatives. Put shortly, I've nothing else for you to do. So you're going to Singapore." The tic violently compressed his face. Before each session, Snow swore he would ignore it, but at each successive meeting, it galled him even more.
"Then to Singapore it is," he managed evenly.
"I haven't mentioned the most rewarding aspect of this assignment," Lester said. "There won't be a great deal of work involved, so why don't you take Connie with you? Once in a while we can allow a family junket for a senior operative."
"Well," Snow paused, thrown off-balance by this unprecedented gesture. "That puts Amelia Earhart's bones in a different light."
"I thought it would," Lester smiled. "Put the bones in a box, arrange for their shipment, then forget them and have a good time. Hawaii is enroute, you know."
* * * *
The Dusun tribesman swung his parang in easy cadence with his short steps. Each arc of the heavy sheath knife left a swath of cleared jungle and a flurry of green fragments. He wore a pair of cotton shorts, stained through with perspiration and flecked with bits of orchid petals and liverworts that had fallen victim to his blade. A sangkok kept the foliage from tangling his dark hair. He hummed a shrill accompaniment to his rhythmic parang, a tune legend said guided the blade unerringly to its mark.
The Peninsula highway was a hundred yards behind them, and they were walking on what the Dusun promised was the Leper Colony road, more recently called the Penal Colony road. Snow could occasionally feel vehicle ruts under his feet, but the road had been almost completely reclaimed by Malaysia's kerangas jungle. Plank buttressed trees had begun to grow in the tracks, and smooth-barked Borneo camphors were shooting up toward the jungle canopy a hundred feet above them. At work were the liana, the insidious bush ropes which twist around a tree trunk, climb to the canopy, then descend to the green floor to climb another, choking the jungle. The air was humid and dead, trapped under the jungle roof and sickeningly perfumed by wild orchids. A nest of wa-wa's heard the swish of the parang, and these long-tail monkeys began an eery wail, competing with the screeching cicadas. The harsh, hidden sounds of the jungle moved with them.
Snow stumbled over a milkwort vine and cursed under his breath. His eyes were almost useless, confused by patches of brilliant sunlight dappling the obscure jungle floor. Despite her four-inch heels, Rose negotiated the treacherous path with far more skill than either Snow or his wife. She held her satin dress close to her knees, her purse under one arm, while using the other to brush away ferns. She was a graceful counterpoint to the murky, perilous jungle.
Connie followed Rose's path. Snow had argued against her coming, but he had known she would stubbornly insist on joining them. It was against her nature to wait in a hotel room, to be idle. She strained to push aside a vine, then stumbled to one knee. Snow helped her up, and regretted allowing her to accompany them.
"How much further?" Snow asked, struggling to pull his foot from a putrescent sinkhole.
Rose spoke in Sarawak dialect, and the guide grunted an answer without halting the mesmerizing motion of his blade. "He's not sure, but the village pĕnghulu told him it was a thousand cuts of the parang."
"How many cuts has he taken?"
Rose conversed again with the Dusun, then said, "He doesn't know. He can't count that high."
For the first time in fifteen minutes, the Dusun's blade stopped. He looked above, then pointed. The jungle had thinned and large blisters of sunlight broke through the canopy.
Rose said, "This is the camp."
Snow turned a full circle. "It's still jungle, I don't see any buildings."
The tribesman's face twisted with concentration as he stared into the foliage. His mouth broke into a golden, gapped grin as he stabbed the parang at the vines. Snow saw only vines and ferns and trunks. He screwed up his eyes, allowing them to focus on a distance not yet visible.
The Dusun was right. Barely discernible through the undergrowth was a whitewashed hut sagging under the weight of bush ropes and moss. The Malay began again with the blade, eager to confirm his find and collect his fee.
The wood-plank building was no larger than a Malay thatch home, and it had once been well tended. The whitewash had only recently begun to crack, rotted by the jungle's perpetual midsummer. The windowsills were still peacock blue, a color achingly out of place in the undergrowth. The door was solid teak, and the brass handle, once bright with the rubbings of a thousand hands, was now weathered to a dull patina. The hut was succumbing to the persistent pressure of the tropics. Banyan roots were loosening the foundation, and epiphytic ferns were eating into the roof. The footpath to the door had been completely overgrown.
"This isn't the icehouse," Rose said without entering the hut.
"They had ice here?" Connie asked, running her palm across her brow, leaving the same amount of moisture as was swept away. She was breathing with difficulty. The sulfurous, sweet air seemed to congeal about the nostrils.
Rose smiled tolerantly, "An icehouse is a camp's punishment block. A prison within a prison."
"Are there other buildings here?" Snow asked, about ready to surrender to the mosquitos. His hand slapped the back of his neck in a last, futile effort.
"At least twenty others. We just can't see them. With the blue paint and the door, this looks like my Colonel Furusawa's office. The icehouse should be thirty paces west of here."
Rose spoke to the Dusun, who began again to sweep away through the green maze. The jungle had been far less successful redeeming the icehouse. The foundation must have been buried deep, for it was still solid. Vines had grown up the side and wrapped around the bars that covered the window. The flatiron door had rusted through near the hinges. The corrugated tin roof turned the torrid Malay sun inward. Confinement in the icehouse had been a sentence of death.
"Her body is behind this building," Rose whispered, as if afraid the jungle would overhear her revealing its secrets. She high-stepped a cluster of poppy blooms at the icehouse corner, then measured ten steps into the brush. "This is it."
"You seem pretty sure of this spot," Snow said as he pulled a hand hoe from his belt.
"She was buried where she fell. Colonel Furusawa took great delight in telling me how he marched her around to the rear of the icehouse, but not far enough away so that the shot would be lost on the other prisoners. He forced a couple of Australian flyers to bury her."
Snow began gingerly swatting the ground with the hoe. "Why was Earhart moved here from Saipan, interned for most of the war, only to be shot?"
"My colonel only told stories he enjoyed. That must not have been one of them." She picked at her silk hose, then pouted, "I've ruined my stockings, and you would not believe what I had to do to earn
these."
"Joseph," Connie said, kneeling to help, "you're only scratching at the ground. Let's dig them up and leave. The jungle is closing in on me."
The greenery covered the jungle floor with a thick matting. Snow borrowed the Dusun's parang to tear at the liana and the twisters. He put his back to it, aware as Connie said that the Malay jungle was silently approaching them, as it had swarmed over the camp buildings to reclaim them. He could sense the banyan roots descending from the canopy and the orchids turning their blossoms in his direction, seeking him out. The giant leeches had scented him and were inexorably inching toward him.
The earth was wet, heavy humus that crumbled before the hoe. Snow's hands were so damp he had to regrip after every few strikes. He swung fiercely, aware the jungle had made its first inroads on rationality.
The hoe struck something solid, a sharp smack that was out of place in the jungle. With only an instant's hesitation, he dug his hand into the dirt, gripped and pulled.
It was her ilium, the uppermost section of the hipbone. The jungle's accelerated decay had begun to eat into the calcium, giving the bone a chalk softness. Snow bit his lip as he pulled the ilium from the rotting cloth, what once must have been khaki shorts. Decayed strands of ligament held the thighbone in place, and when it emerged like a growing thing from the shorts, he quickly dropped it all. Swallowing rapidly against the bile rising in his throat, he murmured. "I can't handle these one by one. Open the bag and I'll rake them in."
As Connie held open the canvas sack, Snow straddled the pit and sank the hoe blade again and again into the body's remnants, shoveling them toward his wife who turned away, unable to look into the hole. Rose stood well away, covering her mouth with a white-gloved hand, eyes fixed on the body bag.
The roots were unwilling to give up their find, and several times Snow knelt into the pit to pull free a bone from the grasping tubers. They gripped the skull with tenacity, and he had to peel back roots from the eye sockets and teeth, almost gagging as he pushed the skull into the body bag. For several minutes, Snow prodded the ground with the hoe handle, then unable to disguise his urgency, he said, "I think we got it all. Let's go."