The crew were mostly Chinese, with a few Sudanese mixed in. The captain was a grey-whiskered Chinese man with atrocious English. He came down to the wharf to negotiate their passage to Bengkulu, a port city on the south coast of Sumatra. The ship would be leaving the following day at noon.
"Well, that's settled, then," said Carter. "Back to the hotel?"
The child approached them just before they reached the hotel. He was young and thin, pre-adolescent, with a ragged turban on his head and sly, mischievous eyes. He came darting through the crowd, a dirty, barefoot scarecrow. One brown hand slipped into Colleen's pocket, and then he raced away, leaping up to cling to the back of a passing truck. In a moment he was gone from sight.
"Filthy little blighter," Carter growled. "Did he steal anything?"
Colleen put her hand in her pocket, trying to remember what she had been carrying there. Her fingers encountered a greasy scrap of paper. Suddenly aware of how many eyes could see her, she withdrew her hand and said, "I don't think so. Let's just go to the hotel."
Not until she was in the small room she shared with Maggie did Colleen take the scrap of paper from her pocket. It was a note, written in pencil in jerky block letters.
Watch out for the man with the red tears. B.
"What's that?" said Maggie, looking up from her unpacking.
"I think it's a warning," Colleen replied. "From Bob, the man who followed us from the wharf. I don't know what it means, though."
They arrived at the ship early and were shown to their cabins. Colleen found herself in a tiny, cramped, airless space that had obviously just been vacated by a ship's officer. There was even a white jacket with epaulettes hanging from a hook behind the door. She set her suitcase on the sagging cot that served as a bed and returned to the deck.
She found the captain jabbering away in broken English to several new arrivals. Three men stood at the top of the gangplank with canvas duffel bags over their shoulders. They looked Javanese, short and swarthy with straight dark hair, and she felt an instinctive dislike for all three of them. There was something in their faces, a knowing, sneering look, a hint of depravity, which put her on edge.
A Chinese crewman was beside her, pushing a mop around, managing to look busy without actually working very hard. Colleen caught his eye and said, "Who are those men?"
"New crew," he said. "Some sailors didn't show up this morning. The captain needs more crew."
Faint alarm bells started to ring in the back of her mind. She moved closer to the captain, and one of the Javanese looked over and grinned when he saw her. There were marks on his cheek, and she advanced until she could see his face clearly. And gasped.
He had three red teardrops tattooed under his left eye.
Watch out for the man with the red tears.
The thought of being trapped on a small ship with these three filled her with dismay. But what could she do? Tell the captain they were members of a nameless cult, worshipping ancient and evil gods, bent on mischief? She would be laughed off of the ship. She frowned, thinking.
Then she stepped forward and tapped the captain on the shoulder. "Excuse me, Captain. I don't think you want to hire these men."
He squinted up at her, chewed his cigar, and finally said, "Why?"
"They were on our last ship," she lied glibly. "The captain kicked them off. For stealing. That's why they're looking for work now. No one else will have them."
Three pairs of Javanese eyes stared at her. Two of the men looked outraged, angry, but the man with the tattooed cheek just smirked.
The captain moved the cigar around in his mouth and barked, "Is this true?"
"Yes," said Colleen.
"No," said one of the sailors in the same breath.
The captain's face reddened. "No good! You get off ship. Get off ship now!"
For a bad moment Colleen thought he was talking to her, but the three Javanese shuffled back, two of them shooting her murderous glares, the tattooed man still wearing his knowing smirk. The captain harangued them in Chinese, waving his arms for emphasis, and they slouched down the gangplank. For a time they stood on the wharf, staring up at the ship, until the captain stood at the rail and shouted at them. Finally they wandered down the wharf and onto the street beyond.
The ship left late, the captain delaying as he tried to find replacement crew. An hour after noon, his missing sailors came running up the wharf, panting out a story about being held by the local police for no good reason, then released at last, without explanation. Colleen shivered despite the broiling tropical heat. It seemed the cult could reach anywhere, subvert anyone.
She told Maggie the story as they steamed along the coast. Maggie said, "That was good thinking. I wouldn't want those villains on board with us." She stared out at the passing sea for a while. "Still," she said eventually, "they know where we're going."
Chapter 2 – Girls of the Night and Men of the Dawn
Bengkulu was a dilapidated shadow of Batavia, baking sleepily in the sun. Less than a hundred miles from the equator, it was hot, humid, and torpid. Fewer than a dozen ships stood at the few wharfs, none much bigger or cleaner than the Angel's Luck. "Here's where things get difficult," Carter declared. "There won't be many ships stopping at our destination. We'll have to charter something."
Our destination. Security had become second nature to all of them. They all knew the name of the island that contained Tanathos. Suderland. They had picked it out after weeks of poring over charts and maps from all over the world. The coastline seemed to match the charred scrap of map they had recovered from a madman's stove. There was a river, too, which made them almost certain. Almost.
If they were wrong, well, it would have been a very long wild goose chase indeed, and one that involved mortal peril. Not that any place was particularly safe. If the cult could reach them in such a random, obscure corner of the world, it could reach them anywhere.
She couldn't have said what they hoped to find at Tanathos. She didn't even know what Tanathos was. An ancient name for the island the Dutch now called Suderland? A lost city, a person or an object that had been hidden there? She had no idea. All they had was the word "Tanathos" and the remnant of a map.
What they did know was that Tanathos was important to the cult, important enough to kill for, and that was enough. They would follow every clue no matter where it led, and do everything in their power to keep from leading the cult to what they so desperately sought.
They drew up their plans in a shabby waterfront hotel, sweating under a listless ceiling fan. Islands in the empty swath of ocean south of Sumatra were few and isolated. They had selected Christmas Island as their decoy. It was a similar distance from Bengkulu, though forty degrees in the wrong direction. They would negotiate with a tramp steamer for passage to Christmas, wait until they were over the horizon, then reveal their true destination.
The Angel's Luck was not available, having a hold half full of pepper already paid for by an agency in Perth. Colleen was just as happy. Whatever ship they found was bound to be an improvement. They would visit every ship in port, Carter declared, and see what could be arranged.
After the stifling heat of the room, the sun-blasted streets were almost a relief. It was late afternoon, which put the sidewalks in shadow. A fair amount of heat still radiated from the streets, but a hint of a breeze made things almost bearable. They set out for the waterfront.
The attack was so smoothly executed that Colleen was in the thick of it before she realized she was in danger. The three of them were walking, keeping close together, staying alert. The streets were much less crowded than Batavia, no more than a dozen people in sight.
A young woman sat on a kerb stone, begging, holding up a wooden bowl as they passed. Then, shedding her air of lethargy, she dropped the bowl, sprang to her feet, snatched the parasol from Maggie's hand, and took off running down the sidewalk.
Colleen reacted without thought, racing after the beggar, her outstretched fingers just inches from the
woman as she rounded a corner.
She didn't recognize the danger, even as car doors swung open and half a dozen men suddenly filled the empty street. Only when she'd raced past the two parked cars, putting the emerging men between her and her friends, did she realize something was wrong.
She slowed, letting the beggar escape with the parasol, and began to turn back. She found herself facing half a dozen men, dishevelled and dirty, their eyes bright with purpose. She froze, measuring distances, wondering if she could dart past them, and her eyes widened as she saw the weapons in their hands. There were no guns, but she saw a machete, several knives, a length of chain and even a hammer. As she hesitated they spread out, blocking the street.
In a moment Carter and Maggie would catch up, and blunder into the thick of them. That would be a disaster. Colleen whirled and fled.
Feet pounded behind her. She sprinted, not looking back, eyes scanning the street ahead. She would take a left turn, she decided, then another left, and get back on the street she'd been on. The beggar woman, parasol tucked under her arm, ran ahead of Colleen, laughing.
Colleen reached the first cross street, turned, and a man's grasping fingers clutched at her sleeve. She didn't react, just kept running, and the sleeve tore away from her dress. Her skirt flapped around her legs, distracting her, and she swore she would never wear a dress again.
A sudden stitch in her side made her stagger, and urgent fingers touched her back, trying to grab the fabric. A spurt of panic let her pull away, but the muscles of her abdomen were clenching and she knew she was losing this desperate race.
She was on a side street, nearly empty, no one in sight but an elderly man slumped sideways in front of a seedy tavern. He would be no help at all, unless she could get her pursuers to trip over him. Not having a better idea, she veered toward the man. His eyes went wide a moment before she leaped over his outstretched legs and sailed into the gloomy interior of the tavern.
She nearly fell as she landed. The floor was greasy, the boards uneven and liberally sprinkled with peanut shells. She stumbled, reeling against the bar, accidentally shoving a sailor off of a stool. She pushed off of the bar with her hands, lunging sideways through the smoke-laced gloom. She could see her pursuers in the corner of her eye, spilling through the doorway, slipping in the peanut shells, stumbling against each other.
She saw the rest of the bar in a series of quick impressions. The bartender, a fat man with a round face ringed in grey whiskers, his mouth a round dark cavity as he gaped in astonishment. Three men in striped shirts huddled around a table, hands curling protectively around the mugs in front of them. A swordfish, stuffed and mounted above the bar. A staircase along the side wall.
She leaped for the staircase. One of her pursuers moved to intercept her. He was going to beat her to the base of the staircase, so she sprang at the railing. Sheer terror gave her the strength to leap and pull herself up so that she cleared the railing eight feet above the floor. Her feet crashed down on a step and she turned. A man was charging up the steps toward her, a knife held low in his fist, and she lashed out with her foot. She kicked straight forward, and he ran up and into her swinging foot. She slammed her foot into his chest and he flew back, crashing onto his back at the base of the staircase. An instant later, two of his cohorts trampled him as they charged up the stairs.
Colleen fled upward. She rounded a corner and found herself in a dark corridor with doors on either side. The doors looked flimsy, and she didn't waste time fiddling with knobs. She just threw her shoulder at the nearest door and it crashed inward.
Something caught her feet and she stumbled, sprawling across a rag rug. She glanced at her feet. She'd tripped over a pair of trousers, discarded on the floor. Black leather boots, socks, and a sequined dress also littered the floor. She stood.
A bed filled most of the little room. A slim Chinese woman was in the bed, surprise giving way to outrage on her heavily-made-up face. A man was with her. Colleen had a quick impression of broad shoulders, a crude snake tattoo that wound across his chest, a stubble-covered chin and a mocking grin. Then she scrambled past the bed and flung the window open.
She was only on the second floor, but the ground sloped steeply toward the waterfront, and she found herself looking down on a rubble-strewn alley more than twenty feet below. She stepped onto the window frame, clinging to the open window panels for balance, and looked up.
The roof made a two-foot overhang. She could see the bottom edge of an eavestrough beyond that. There was no way of telling how strong it was, and no time to find out. Feet crunched on the floor behind her, she heard a sardonic voice say, "Careful of my pants," and she stood on the window sill, leaned out, caught the edge of the eavestrough with her hands, and stepped into space.
She hung there, legs swinging, and the thought flashed through her mind that anyone walking below would be able to see up her dress. With her life hanging in the balance that thought was so absurd that she started to giggle.
Brown-faced men crowded the window, three of them, leaning out to reach for her. Fingers brushed her dress and she started moving hand over hand along the roof's edge, avoiding them. Just in time; the eavestrough was beginning to bend under her weight. It was metal, tin by the look of it, and not designed to support the weight of a full-grown adult. Each time she paused the metal began to bend out and down, forcing her to keep moving.
A Javanese sprang out the window, grabbing the eavestrough, but it had bent so badly under her weight that he couldn't hold on. He clung frantically, kicking his legs. He lost his grip with one hand, let out a frightened wail, then caught the trough farther away from her, where it was still unbent.
He started swinging his legs, and she realized he was going to climb onto the roof. That would give him a huge advantage, and terror gave her the strength to copy him, swinging her body and finally hooking a heel in the trough.
She moved her hands farther apart, dividing her weight among two hands and a foot, and the trough bent much more slowly. Watching the Javanese for pointers, she hooked her other foot in the trough, scrabbled at the roof tiles with one hand, and finally rolled onto the roof.
She got to her feet, saw the Javanese man already up. He pulled a knife from his belt and Colleen fled upward to the ridge of the roof. She retreated along the ridgepole, and he followed. She thought about facing him, fighting him, but another man was already rolling onto the roof behind him.
She retreated to the end of the roof. The ground was a terrifying distance below, the next roof too far to jump. She turned back to the Javanese, watched the sunlight glint on the knife in his hand. There was confidence and cruelty in his smile, and she smiled back and ran straight at him, heedless of her balance.
His smile slipped, he retreated instinctively, and then he stopped, crouching, holding the knife low in his fist. Colleen stopped her charge an inch or less out of knife range, spun, and sprinted for the end of the roof. She reached the end of the ridgepole in five terrifying steps. She kicked off, spent a glorious, awful instant flying through space, then slammed chest-first against the end of the next rooftop.
The air whooshed out of her lungs and she clutched with numb fingers at the peak of the roof. Her legs flailed in the air, she started to slide backward, and then her fingers hooked the tiles lining the end of the roof. She got a leg up, hung for a moment resting, then pulled herself onto the sloping end of the roof. She still hadn't managed to inhale, but she forced herself to her feet and scrambled up to the ridgepole.
She stared across the gap at the knife-wielding Javanese on the roof of the tavern. He gathered himself to jump, took a couple of hesitant steps, then faltered. She had a tremendous tactical advantage. If he jumped and clutched the roof like Colleen had done, she could kick him off and send him plunging to the ground.
A window opened on the gable end of the tavern. A man leaned out, the unshaven man with the snake tattoo. Another man crowded the window with him, a young black man with bright silver hoop earr
ings. The tattooed man still wore his sardonic grin. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called, "Better keep moving, girl. The rest of them are going around."
The paralysis in her lungs lifted and she took a shuddering breath. She thanked the man with an ironic salute, turned, and trotted along the ridgepole.
She found a fire escape at the far end of the building, but she could hear the echo of feet clambering up the steps below. It was a wider gap to the next building, but the next roof was a bit lower, and flat. Colleen backed up, took a running start, and leaped into space.
She landed on her feet, pain stabbing her ankles, and her momentum sent her tumbling forward. She scraped her hand on the rough concrete of the rooftop, did a clumsy forward roll, and somehow came back up onto her feet. Her ankles hurt, but they seemed functional. She kept running.
A thud sounded behind her, then another. She glanced back, seeing a pair of Javanese men picking themselves up and giving pursuit. She raced to the end of the roof and peered down.
A first-floor roof was a dozen or so feet below. She knelt, grabbed the edge of the roof in front of her, lowered herself as far as she could reach, and let go. She sprawled backward as she landed, distantly aware that she was destroying her dress, and scrambled up.
She hadn't taken more than half a dozen steps when a loud thump came from right behind her, and the roof trembled. One of her pursuers had jumped from the roof above. She dashed forward, reaching the edge of the roof in a few quick steps.
A truck was parked directly below. The open box of the truck was filled with something that gleamed in the sunlight. There wasn't time to figure out what it was. She jumped, bracing herself for impact, and landed sprawling on a soft, yielding surface.
It took her a moment to figure out what she'd landed on. The truck was full of fish. She grabbed the side of the box and flung herself out, landing on her feet in the street.
Running feet slapped the pavement all around her, and the truck rocked as someone leaped into the back. Colleen ran, exhausted and terrified, and excited shouts went up from the men behind her as they spotted her. The mouth of an alley opened on her left and she ran that way, plunging into gloom as the buildings blocked the late-afternoon sun. The shadows hid the trap. The alley ended in a blank brick wall.
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