A land without roads…a land of camel trails or yak paths…a land of passes and mighty mountains, a land where the highest peak on earth might be and yet nobody could say for sure whether it was or was not…fantastic, mysterious, remote.
“Beyond Choni,” I said musingly, “that’s the loneliest place on earth, excepting, perhaps, the Antarctic…and even less known.” I looked up at Spurr, for I had seated myself and he was still standing. “What is it you’re after?”
He hesitated, brushing the ash from his cigar, studying the ash as if to read the answer there. Doc Pardee stirred a little and then said quietly, “An idol of gold encrusted with gems. It is in a long-forgotten temple, unknown and lost. Charles Iveson actually saw it.”
“You’re sure of that? It wasn’t just a legend he repeated?”
“He saw it,” Joan said, “and he described it in detail. He even brought home two large diamonds from it. The money from their sale paid for my education.”
“It’s worth a fortune,” Spurr said.
“It belongs in a museum.” Joan spoke almost on top of his words.
Right there was the problem in a nutshell, not to mention that it really belonged to the locals. The communists wouldn’t value a religious artifact but they certainly weren’t going to hand it over to foreign thieves either. None of that was my problem, I intended to have money in the bank before we took off.
“Alright, you said four would go? Who are the others besides you?”
Jonathan Spurr nodded at Pardee. “Doc will go, Joan, and Bob Landes.”
“Joan?” I was surprised. “You want to go into that country?”
She smiled, her eyes bright with excitement. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
“That’s no place for a woman,” I said, “and the less of a load we have, the better. I don’t see any sense in carrying excess baggage.”
“I’m not excess baggage!” she flared angrily. “I can cook, I can shoot, I know first aid, and I’ve flown a plane! I’ll do my part!”
Doc Pardee smiled. “Also,” he said quietly, “she has the location of the temple. The rest of us only know it approximately.”
That settled that. I know better than to argue with a woman when her mind is made up. Besides, she’d be nice to take along. Right then she must have read my mind because she looked at me, her eyes cool and carrying a challenge. “Bob Landes,” she said, “is my fiancé!”
Jonathan Spurr and Pardee were eager to talk about it. Spurr began telling me about the plane, and I listened, then nodded toward Jimmy Pak Lung, who sat quietly by the door. “Jimmy goes along,” I said.
Spurr stopped abruptly. “Nothing doing,” he said, “we can’t afford the weight.”
“You weigh twice what he does,” I said, “so suppose you stay behind? You or this Landes guy?”
His face got red. Jonathan Spurr did not like me. He was not going to like me under any circumstances. “Landes,” he said, “is a fine rifle shot, a skilled woodsman, and a very useful man aside from being Joan’s fiancé. I,” he added grimly, “am running this show…and financing it.”
That I would have bet on. Leave it to the Jonathan Spurrs of this world to have money…no matter what they have to do to get it.
For that matter, I was in no position to speak myself. I suspected myself of some ethics, somewhere along the line. If my methods were not always strictly legal, there was at least a sense of fair play…as long as they played fair with me. But I was not a disciple of the “turn the other cheek” school. In my book it was every man for himself when the playing got rough. I had my own feelings about Jonathan Spurr, and a good hunch that he did not intend to share any more of that gold than he could help. And then he brought up the key consideration.
“How much,” he asked, “will you want for this?”
It made me smile because I knew I was going to hit him where it hurt. “Five thousand,” I said, “in cash and on the line…and twenty percent of the take.”
Jonathan Spurr’s face and neck grew red. For an instant he could not bring himself to speak, or lacked for words. And he was not the only one. Both Joan and Doc Pardee were staring at me as if I were insane.
“Preposterous!” Spurr flared. “Why—!” He stopped, then turned abruptly. “All right! Forget it! We’ll get another man!”
That made me smile. “Spurr,” I said, “you’re a chuckle-headed idiot. You ask a man to risk his life flying almost four thousand miles over enemy country, in danger every minute he’s out of Macao.
“You ask him to go into a country where any man is a fool to go unless at great profit, even in peacetime, even when the people are friendly. You won’t find anybody else who is crazy enough to go; furthermore, if you go around talking about it the government here won’t let you take off with gas enough to get you there. They want no trouble with Red China.
“And I might mention this: You won’t find anybody in Macao who knows Choni. If there’s one man in the city who knows of the place, I’ll pay off any bet you’d like to make. And you seem to imagine you can fly in there, pick up this idol, and fly out. You’d better think it over, and think it over a lot.”
So I started for the door, and then hesitated, Jimmy at my elbow. “You’ve exactly five hours to change your mind. I’ll be having dinner at the Hotel Central and you can find me there at that time. Furthermore, I won’t bargain: Five thousand in my hand when the deal is closed…and twenty percent of the take. I’ll pay Jimmy.”
We walked out and closed the door after us. Jimmy chuckled, then shrugged. “Well, it would have been a mean trip, anyway,” he said cheerfully. “We’ll find something else.”
“We won’t need to,” I said. “They’ll meet our terms. You wait and see. Who else could they get?”
He was silent a few minutes, and then he said slowly, “One way they could get it—just one other way. They could go to Shuksan.”
That stopped me. “Petro Shuksan? He’s here?”
Jimmy looked at me seriously. “Yeah, I should have told you. He’s not only here, he’s the biggest operator in town. He’s got a hand in everything.”
Petro Shuksan was a half-caste, half-Portuguese and half-Chinese, and a renegade in any language. He had been, when I first knew him, a petty thief and a runner for a waterfront girl-house. He had graduated from that to smuggling, thieving on a larger scale, and running a house of his own. On one occasion over at the Nine Islands I had slapped him until his nose streamed blood and his lips were smashed. That was for trying to kidnap a girl I knew.
Since that day his hatred for me had been a living and ugly thing, and if he was a big wheel in Macao then I’d better get out of town or kill him, but fast.
“It was the kidnapping,” Jimmy said, “of Dr. Lu. He arranged that, and it was he who notched his ear and received the money. He dealt with the Japanese during the war. He trades with Red China now, and he has great influence with them. If he learns of what is planned he will not hesitate to warn them or to come in himself.”
So there it was. A man like Shuksan could have another man killed by a simple word or gesture. And in Macao it would mean nothing. That he would find whose palms to grease was certain, he would grease them generously. And in my own pocket was a lone ten bucks.
There was no avoiding the issue. Shuksan was the worst enemy I had in the world and the years that had passed would not have dulled that feeling in the least. He would never be satisfied until I had suffered for the beating I’d given him. Every minute I was in Macao was a danger.
“He’ll know, Jack,” Jimmy said. “You’d better stay away from the Central. The place is full of his spies. Get your gear from the hotel and move out to my place. He doesn’t like me but he doesn’t watch me, either.”
“Tonight we go to dinner at the Central,” I told him, “and after that, we’ll see.”
The hours between were not wasted. Jimmy Pak Lung briefed me thoroughly on the events since our old Shanghai days, and we went to look at t
he plane, then stirred around among the dives, talking to this person and that person.
No, Haig hadn’t been seen since the war. Last anyone heard he had been a colonel in the British Army in Burma. Giacomo had remained in Shanghai for the first year of the Japanese occupation and then he had vanished.
“Killed?”
“No” my informant said, “I don’t think so. He went back inland somewhere.”
Everywhere we heard rumor of what went on inside of China. There were purges…rewards were given for denunciation. The call for political purity was being used to repay old grudges…to prevent being denounced by others…to gain favor.
Yet beneath the surface old China went on as it always went on, and I was satisfied that when the present furor was over China would have absorbed communism as it has absorbed all religions and all philosophies. In the end communism would be turned out as they were, as something distinctly Chinese. A hundred years or so of nearly continual war had driven the Chinese to welcome almost any stable government. Chiang had failed in twenty years to bring reform or any real change to the great mass of the people; now they seemed ready to let the Communists try.
“Shuksan,” I commented later to Jimmy, “would take them, but good. He’d keep it all for himself.”
“But do they know that?”
No, they did not, that was the rub. And Shuksan was a glib talker, just the sort who would know how to handle Jonathan Spurr.
Nevertheless, I went ahead with my planning and thinking the thing out. Of course, it was no trick to realize the main problem was the matter of gasoline. The plane could not fly there and back without refueling, and there was no gas that I knew of in Choni.
“Jim,” I said, “remember that field outside of Takwan? I wonder if it could still be used?”
Pak Lung shrugged. “Could be. I was in there once—it was in ’46. It had been deserted for months, then.” He started to get up. “I could find out. I know a guy…he was a Nationalist flyer. He deserted to the Reds, didn’t like them and got out. He’s in town.”
“See him, then meet me at the Central for dinner…at eight.” He sauntered to the door, a slim, shabby young man in a soiled drill suit. “And ask him what he knows about Meitsang.”
Jimmy was curious. He looked at me, quick and interested. “In the Min Shans? What’s there?”
“You ask him; don’t volunteer anything. If he knows anything, he’ll talk. Just get him to tell you about it.”
Jimmy Pak Lung went out and I sat there alone in his room. And when a man is alone there is no reason to kid himself. I was a sap, of course. I was a worse sap than Jonathan Spurr, because I knew better. The Red Chinese were eager to lay hands on any American illegally in the country. A spy trial would fit into their propaganda program very nicely right now.
In another sense, it hinted of disloyalty to even make the effort, for it could deal the USA a political blow. Wryly, I reflected on what would be said. The fact that I had a reputation could give the State Department their out. I’d fought for cash in China before…and I’d been a smuggler. And they could drop the whole thing—Spurr, Joan, and Doc—under my cover.
On the other hand, and this I considered seriously, I might learn a good deal. I’d been an Army man, and renegade or not, I was a Yank. Maybe I was out to make a fast buck, but not at the expense of my own country. I might find out a great deal if I got out safely. If…
It depended on so many things. Leaving here would be the first one, for the town was full of spies. All planes departing in that direction would be reported. If we were sighted flying inland they would send fighters after us. If there was any hitch in our refueling we would be dead ducks, and as for getting out again…The whole operation was insanity.
Who was I to talk? Sitting here with ten dollars in my pocket and a dinner ahead of me that would cost at least that. If they failed to show and talk business I was a goner. This had to go through.
The room had grown dark as I sat there thinking. Starting to rise, I stopped suddenly. There was a man loitering outside, staring at the building.
Relaxing in the chair, looking out the window, I watched him. He hesitated, lighted a cigarette, then leaned against a lamppost.
This was it then: Shuksan was suspicious. Or was it somebody else? For some other reason?
My eyes strayed to the dial of my watch—it was past seven and time to be moving. When he turned his eyes from the window I came out of the depths of the chair and slid into my shoulder holster, then my coat. There was a back door to the alley….I turned that way, searched the alley with care, then stepped out into the night.
Flattened against the building, I waited. Nothing moved. I went to the end of the alley, looked around and saw nothing. And then I stepped out into the open street and walked quietly away. And I was smiling.
This was my backyard….I was home again….The street smelled of ancient fish, of dust, and the remembrance of heat, but I was back….This was Macao….This was living.
COMMENTS: This fragment is related to “China King,” the story fragment that you will read next. That is not to say this one was written first, but they probably were created within a few years of each other. Mentioned here is the “tribute silk” caper that makes up the backstory of “China King.” Both stories have a foundation in the era of chaos that reigned in the Far East before and after World War II.
Louis often had his protagonists express a litany of odd jobs and experiences. This was always a general refelection of his own life and varied employment history but in a few cases, this being one of them, the list held even greater resonance. Occasionally, Dad mysteriously suggested that he returned to the Far East after his first trip in the mid-1920s. Supposedly, a few of the details mentioned in this story—jumping ship with forty cents in his pocket, a fight in the ring for some quick money, inside knowledge of the fake arms sale that ended with the con man’s head being impaled on a pipe driven into the gravel of a Shanghai parking lot—were events from his life. The latter incident is more specifically described in the short story “A Friend of the General.” In my opinion, the jury is still out regarding the veracity of these tales. What is more likely true is the story about the fight between the British seamen and the Chinese river pirates. I know that Dad was in Shanghai for four days and that story sounds like something that might well have happened along the Huangpu waterfront.
A few of the people and places mentioned here might be familiar to the soldiers and sailors of the time. “The Trenches” was a tough neighborhood of dope dens, gambling houses, and brothels outside the control of the Europeans who ran the International Settlement, or Treaty Port, of Shanghai. Del Monte’s was a popular nightclub in Shanghai, as was the Lido Gardens ballroom. Notoriously—or perhaps mythically—beautiful White Russian women (the “Whites” fled Russia to avoid the “Reds,” or Communists, after the revolution of 1917) were paid to dance with the male clientele at many of the clubs. Sikh bodyguards from India were hired to chaperone these girls, and “taxi dancers” were, supposedly, only there to dance. Of course, the White Russian women of Shanghai were also some of its most legendary prostitutes, so the rules may not have been as cut and dried as all that.
Lee Christmas, Tracy Richardson, Edward “Tex” O’Reilly, Francis “One-Arm” Sutton, and Rafael de Nogales were all famous mercenary soldiers, though not all in the same part of the world or at the same time. Frans August Larson was a missionary and explorer who managed to travel through some very remote parts of China, Mongolia, and Siberia. Most notably, James Brooke became the first “White Rajah” of Sarawak (an area of North Borneo) when he was given the territory by the Sultan of Brunei for his help in putting down piracy and a rebellion. The Brooke family ruled Sarawak from 1841 until conditions during and following World War II forced them to cede the country completely to Great Britain. All were Europeans who sold their abilities, often violent ones, in the hinterlands of Asia and Latin America.
“Haig” is not just a charact
er in this fragment, but a man Louis claimed to have known, a British intelligence officer in China who had become a Buddhist and was an opium addict. There is a good deal of crossover between potentially real and totally fictional versions of this man, some of which occur elsewhere in this volume. While I have done my best to separate what is true from what is not, there is no way to tell how much truth, or fiction, there is to many of these stories.
From references in the text this seems to have been written in the early 1950s, when the Chinese Communists were still solidifying their hold on the western sections of the country. Louis did spend some time in China prior to World War II and his brother was there right afterward as part of Ambassador Patrick Hurley’s mission just before the Communists took over in 1949.
It is interesting, in light of all the Red Scare paranoia of the time, the horrific drama of China’s Great Leap Forward, and then the Cultural Revolution, to see that Louis’s predictions about Red China have turned out to be, at least so far, correct:
…I was satisfied that when the present furor was over China would have absorbed communism as it has absorbed all religions and all philosophies. In the end communism would be turned out as they were, as something distinctly Chinese.
Dad had great confidence that China would emerge from its Communist period in a manner that was both prosperous and fundamentally Chinese. He didn’t think the totalitarian idealism of communism stood a chance in the long run when compared with the Chinese interest in doing business with the rest of the world.
* * *
CHINA KING
* * *
The Beginning of a Crime Story
When I opened the door he was sitting there with a gun in his hand. He was a lean and evil man with a scar on his cheek that had not been there when I saw him last and the stench of unwashed clothes about him. There was another scar on his upper lip which I had reason to remember. My fist put it there in a brawl on a ship’s deck one hot night off the mangrove coast.
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 36