The Mystery of Yamashita's Map

by James McKenzie

  Hour after hour they walked, getting wetter and wetter and more and more tired. Each took a turn to lead and the last man always dropped a grey stone on the ground every few steps. Joe was impatient to find Lisa. Whenever he was in front the pace would suddenly quicken, one step would become two and those behind would have a job to keep up. The quick pace, however, meant that more branches were brushed against and more water sent into the air in showers. Once or twice Fraser shouted at him to slow down but Joe could not or would not hear – he just pushed ahead regardless.

  It was Fraser who had taken the front and the pace had slowed down to a sedate walk. Joe was at the back. Suddenly Fraser lifted a hand and stopped dead, almost causing the professor and Joe to crash into his back. Fraser turned and looked at them, his face suffused with a deadly pallor. Fraser’s eyes seemed to dim as he looked at the others and his lids drooped. He bent down, scrambled around in the undergrowth for a second and then stood up, holding out his hand. Slowly he opened his fingers to reveal a clean granite grey stone. The others knew what it meant as soon as they saw it.

  Joe almost fell to his knees with exhaustion and the professor just stood and stared.

  Fraser was the first to speak. ‘We’ve been walking in a circle,’ he said. ‘How could that be? How could we have walked in a circle? We kept the river to our right at all times, how could it be? I can hear it even now.’

  Fraser craned his ears but as he did so he heard many sounds: the sound of the river mixed with the sound of water running from the trees, and the sound of the animals and birds overhead. He was not sure now where the river was. He did not know if it was behind him, in front of him, to the left or to the right. He closed his eyes. The jungle had become one big circus of noise and the sounds he thought he was hearing became lost in a cacophony of other world sounds. What was it that was making them walk round in circles, it shouldn’t happen, they did everything right, is there something preventing them from finding Lisa?

  ‘I don’t know which way the river is now,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t tell which way it is. Professor, how about you? Tell me I’m not the only one.’

  Fraser knew that he should have been following his ears. He knew he had led the other two back on themselves. He knew they blamed him. The professor just shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I was following you,’ he said and slumped down to the ground. Suddenly the jungle seemed a bigger place than they had first imagined. Suddenly the possibility of finding Lisa began to fade. Each of them started to imagine her face and saw it disappearing from view. Suddenly everything had changed.

  In their makeshift shelter, Kono and Tanaka had begun to talk with the corporal. The three men had begun gingerly at first, exchanging glances, then non-committal noises, then brief words until, by the end of the night, they were engaging each other in conversation. Unlike Kono, Tanaka had guessed pretty early on that the corporal was unaware of the end of the war and had also judged that he could use this to his advantage; he also understood that the corporal knew every square inch of the island. ‘Have you seen anyone else arrive?’ Tanaka asked him, to which the corporal nodded.

  ‘Four, one of them was wearing an American cap. I don’t know what they want, but I guessed they were spies. Two were Japanese – one a woman! I have heard they send spies to convince strongholds to surrender. I thought you were spies when I first saw you. That’s why I watched you and did not make contact.’

  Tanaka nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They are spies. They have been sent by the Americans to flush you out. How else would they do it? They know they could not beat you in hand-to-hand fighting so they come to tempt you out with beautiful women.’

  The corporal laughed. ‘What do I want with beautiful women? I only serve Yamashita!’

  Kono went to speak but was stopped in his tracks by a touch on the shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ Tanaka replied. ‘And General Yamashita is very grateful for all you have done.’

  The corporal’s eyes widened suddenly and his face lit up. ‘You have spoken to the general about me?’ he asked. Tanaka nodded. ‘Of course. He is very proud of what you have done here and he asks me to give you his thanks.’ The corporal bowed a generous bow and smiled. ‘But . . . he also gave me orders for you. He said he wanted you to show me where the gold is buried.’ The corporal looked blankly at Tanaka. ‘The gold?’ he replied. ‘Yes, the gold. The gold buried in the mines by Yamashita.

  The gold that you are here to protect, the gold . . .’ The corporal smiled. ‘I know of no gold,’ he said. ‘I was sent here after the general left. I have heard of the gold, but know nothing of it.’

  Tanaka’s heart sank. At least, he thought to himself, he knew the others were here now and he also knew they could be found with the corporal’s knowledge. Why should he muddy his hands digging for the gold when he could wait until the others had found it and dug it out themselves? Tanaka smiled to himself; all he had to do was wait now, wait and watch. He patted the corporal on the back and handed him a cigarette.

  ‘I think the general will be very pleased with you,’ he said. ‘Very pleased indeed.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  After about half an hour, Joe stood up. ‘OK, so we’ve been walking in circles but we can’t give up the search just like that. We are looking for Lisa after all – we are doing it for her.’ He wrung the water out of the bottom of his shirt and dragged Fraser by the arm. Fraser moaned and shouted but eventually allowed himself to be dragged to his feet. ‘Come on. Come, this time we’ll all listen out for the river. All we need to do is concentrate and we’ll find our way, I’m sure of it. All we need to do is keep a constant course.’ The three men, tired and downcast, made their way again into the jungle, pushing aside large ferns and foliage as they went. The professor was finding it hard going. He let his mind wander to his classroom, to the bright faces of the students and the easy life of the university lecturer. He tripped over a tree root and cursed his luck. Joe kept up a good pace for an hour and then let a reluctant Fraser take the lead. The speed slowed somewhat but with all three men craning their ears every second they kept a good course. They always heard the river. No matter what other noises polluted the air, they always heard the river. Joe saw the clearing up ahead that he had visited the day before. He pointed it out to Fraser and the three men headed for it, bursting through the dense trees to rest in its spacious, empty environment. The professor sighed with relief as he flopped down upon a log which, unbeknownst to him, had held his niece only a few hours before. ‘Do you think we’ll ever find her?’ he asked, pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiping his forehead with it.

  Joe looked at him, not wanting to say no, but unable to say yes. He made to speak but was gripped by a sudden, all-powerful feeling of being watched again. He looked around. Damn this jungle, he thought, there are more eyes here than any street in Hong Kong. The aswang were watching him, their eyes peering out of every leaf, their hot breath steaming in the close air of the jungle. Wherever he went the aswang were there beside him, goading him onwards, taunting him, making him go where he did not want to go. He spoke to no one in particular. ‘I think this jungle is playing with my mind. Every step I take, every time I turn around I think I’m being watched.’ Fraser peered nervously into the undergrowth. ‘Well, if you are paranoid,’ he said, ‘Then I must be too because for the last half an hour I’ve been having the same feeling, as if there are eyes peering at me from behind every tree.’ The professor shuddered. He too had been feeling the same but had failed, or had not dared to mention it. He stroked the three-day-old stubble on his chin and looked up to the tall canopy of the trees. Everything was strange here, he thought to himself, nothing was what it seemed.

  Then from out of the trees there came a great blackness, something unexplainable that flew through the air and hit all three like an explosion. They reeled from the force and fell to the ground, moaning and screaming more from surprise and shock than pain. The world for Joe went black. One momen
t he was standing, staring through the trees, the next he was on his back fighting some invisible enemy. He shouted to the air, ‘The aswang! It’s the aswang!’

  The professor and Fraser, though, realised this was a far more mortal foe. They scrabbled at the net that covered them and tried to free themselves but it was no use. The more they struggled the tighter the net seemed to entwine itself around their limbs and catch itself around their necks and torsos. For ten minutes the three struggled but to no avail – the net had completely covered them. Joe finally opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was the legs of a young woman. They were slender legs, legs that he might have gazed upon with lust once; legs that he might have encountered in a bar in Hong Kong, in one of the back streets where love was cheap and lasted a night if you could pay. Joe followed the line of the legs upwards until he caught sight of a beautiful young girl, about fifteen or sixteen. Her skin was brown and soft and her hair flowed in long waves around her shoulders but she had the hard face of a warrior, the look of someone who had known pain and suffering. Joe implored her to let them go but it was no good. The girl just stared and said nothing. She was joined in time by four or five others, all with the same slender brown legs and hard, almost aggressive look. Joe started to wonder whether this was his idea of paradise or his idea of hell. Each new woman that arrived carried a different and increasingly deadly-looking weapon – a knife at first, then a dagger, then a club, then a spear. Joe gulped. If there was a time to be surrounded by beautiful half-naked women, he thought to himself, this wasn’t it. Beside him, in the net, the professor and Fraser were having similar thoughts. Fraser called out to one of the women, in his best pathetic tone. ‘Hello, hello! Could you free us? We are caught in your net. I’m sure you meant to trap an animal or two but you seemed to have caught us.’ He laughed a little but the women were not laughing. They just looked at him and occasionally jabbed him with a stick. The professor was a little more sedate. He had assumed that this entrapment was no accident. Suddenly it all became clear to him: he remembered the feeling of being watched and the noises in the jungle that seemed a little too human to be anything other than a voyeur.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, but still the women said nothing. They just stared at the bundle of netting and the men struggling on the floor for breath and space. Suddenly the trees parted and Winthrope appeared, looking odd against the green of the jungle. ‘Greetings!’ he intoned. ‘Please relax. You will come to no harm.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Joe asked.

  ‘I will introduce myself presently. For the moment all you need to know is that I am a friend and a friend that intends to make your stay as comfortable as possible.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are,’ Fraser shouted.

  Winthrope laughed. ‘I think you will not be going anywhere until I say so . . . Fraser, isn’t it?’

  Fraser was stopped in his tracks by the mention of his name. He stammered out an incomprehensible sentence before falling into silence amid the netting. The professor, however, was not so easily placated. ‘I wonder if you know you are dealing with Hong Kong citizens,’ he said. ‘We have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, especially by someone who is from Her Majesty’s realm.’

  Winthrope laughed again. He threw his head back and revealed a set of blackened and filled teeth and his belly wobbled. ‘Professor, I know all about your brilliant mind. I have heard everything about you – why you are here, where you are going, what you are looking for and, let me tell you this, if you play right by me (which by the way you have very little choice but to do) you will be rewarded with what you came here for. Remember, you are strangers here, my friends, but this is my home.’

  Winthrope nodded to the young women and they set about unfastening the net. They then removed each of the three men from its clutches and tied them to wooden stakes that they heaved over their shoulders. Joe, the professor and Fraser were carried, upside down, through the jungle along the exact route that Lisa had the day before. They felt every bump in the trail, every stumble that the women made as they carried them, each scratch from the branches that brushed their faces and the bare skin of their arms and legs.

  Winthrope followed along behind, whistling merrily and beating the trees as he passed with a stick. Every now and then he would gently pat the behind of one of the girls that walked along with him, smiling lasciviously. After about half an hour Joe lifted his head up and saw, upside down in the distance, the village. It looked bright and sparkling in the freshness of the morning. There were children running about and women here and there seeing to everyday tasks and duties. Winthrope behind them called out, ‘There she is, men, home, for a while anyway. There can be paradise or there can be hell.’

  He swiped at a tree with the stick and sent leaves and branches flying up into the air. Joe wondered what the hell was going to happen to him. The rope that the women had used to tie him to the stake was beginning to bite into his flesh and he felt as if he might pass out at any moment due to the blood rushing to his head; his eyes felt fit to burst and his face was hotter than a frying pan.

  Joe took a deep breath and willed himself to carry on. He thought to himself that, still, this was all for Lisa. Once they had released him he would continue his search. He did not care anymore if he found her alive, he would search and search until he found her body if need be. He wanted to do his best for her, to do right by her, he wanted her to know that, wherever she was, he was thinking about her.

  Behind him the professor was conversing to his carriers. ‘So, tell me,’ he was saying, ‘Do you speak English? Japanese? Filipino? None of these it would seem. Well, it has been nice to be carried for a while, I must say, especially by such lovely ladies.’

  ‘Save it for later,’ Winthrope offered. ‘You may need it with these.’

  The party made their way through the edge of the clearing and out into the village. Everyone, it seemed, came out to look at the strange procession, to gawp and to stare at the line of weird humanity that passed before their eyes. Some of the women laughed and pointed, at the professor especially; some of them remained silent, but most chatted idly to each other, weighing up the situation with a removed indifference.

  Eventually the three men were taken to the biggest hut in the village and dumped, unceremoniously, by the door. Winthrope strolled up to them. ‘Now, gentlemen, let me introduce myself. I am W.G. Winthrope, MD (retired) and I welcome you to my village.’

  He spread out his arms and turned around on the spot to highlight the circumference of his land. ‘Here you will be well looked after and you may even come to like it. Of course . . . you cannot stay here forever . . . but your time here will be a pleasant one, I would imagine, that is if . . .’ He paused for a while. ‘You are of use to us.’ He looked the professor over and sniffed at the air dismissively. The professor did not know what that signified but somehow he knew it was not a compliment.

  ‘I think, perhaps, before we go on we should extricate you from your stakes. Girls, would you?’

  Five young women from the crowd that had gathered round ran forward and began to cut Joe, the professor and Fraser away from the stakes upon which they had been carried for the last half an hour.

  ‘You’ll understand that until we get better acquainted, I cannot permit you to be totally free of your bonds; however that will come later, do not worry.’

  Joe rubbed his shins with hands that were still tied together. He noticed the rope had bitten into them so much that blood had pooled on the tops of his boots and begun to run down their sides.

  ‘I think perhaps we should offer you some refreshments,’ Winthrope said, and snapped his fingers, whereupon a number of women appeared carrying jugs of water and milk, fruit and honeyed chicken. Joe, the professor and Fraser fell upon the food hungrily and started cramming it in their mouths. The women standing around began to laugh as if they had never seen hungry men before. Joe smiled at one and felt a line of grease runnin
g down his chin. Fraser nodded to Winthrope to pour some of the milk into a waiting bowl and Winthrope obliged. Fraser lapped greedily, like a dog drinking from a bowl. Every now and then one of the men would let out a belch that sent the crowd into a paroxysm of laughter. They rocked their shoulders and shook their breasts, throwing their mouths open in a display of unadulterated joy that made the professor himself begin to giggle and smile.

  Joe knocked over the bowl of water with his forehead as he tried to drink out of it, another action that seemed to gain favour with the crowd who, again, laughed long and loud. Joe smiled and when the bowl was righted deliberately knocked it over again to achieve the same results. Each of the women was clamouring for a better place to see the spectacle that had dropped into their village and Joe played up to being the clown. He wriggled his way over to one of the older women and started biting at her toes as if it were the food that now lay strewn over the floor. The woman skipped and danced, trying to get her feet out of the way of Joe’s snapping mouth but the more she moved them the more Joe tried to catch them. If she moved to the left, Joe wriggled that way; if she moved backwards he would shunt forwards, licking at her toes and biting at her ankles.