by Steve Perry
As he sipped, Mac crawled out of his tent, stood, shook himself like a wet dog trying to get rid of water in his coat. “I thought I smelled coffee. Any plain hot water, by chance?”
Marie smiled. “As it happens, the blue kettle.”
Mac grinned. After he had doused the tea leaves he produced from somewhere with hot water, he said, “I don’t suppose we have cream and sugar?”
Indy shook his head. “Still no kippers, either. Might be able to find a rat to roast if you look hard enough.”
“Ah, yes, next to fresh eggs and sausage, stale tea and roast rat is my favorite breakfast.”
“No rats,” Marie said. “This ground is warded. No animals from the forest will come here.”
Mac sipped at his tea. “And you know this how?”
She shrugged. “I can feel it the same way you can feel the sun on your face. This clearing is aswirl with power. It is old, but still potent. It lies over the ground like a shroud—it hides that which we seek, and it repels at the same time. It must be why Boukman has not found it before.”
“Yeah, I wondered about that,” Indy said. “If he’s been around for so long, surely he must have heard the stories. Wouldn’t he have been curious before now?”
Marie shrugged again. “I cannot say what moves Boukman. He might have discounted the tales because his magic did not reveal anything—he would trust that more than tall stories told around the cooking fires. It might be that the gods or the loa were not ready for him to find it. I cannot say.”
“Well,” Mac said, “we’re here and he doesn’t seem to be at the moment. Best we get searching for our little item. I don’t suppose your—ah—magic can help us?”
“I think not. Whoever laid this spell upon the land was skilled far beyond anything I can do. I can sense it, but I cannot break it.”
“So, we do it the old-fashioned way,” Indy said. “We look for clues, we set a zero point, we lay out a grid.”
“That might take some time,” Marie said. “It’s a pretty large area.”
Indy grinned. “Maybe not. This is what I do. I have a few tricks.”
“I am sure that you have,” she said, matching his smile.
Of a moment, Indy knew there was no need for him to speak about what he had thought he’d dreamed in the night. It had been real. It had been her.
And she had known he was watching . . .
NINETEEN
“SCHNAPPS?” GRUBER OFFERED.
“A bit early, but—I wouldn’t say no,” Schäefer said.
It was half past six in the morning. The two men sat in the doctor’s tent, a walled and floored affair tall enough to stand upright without hitting your head on the roof, if you did so in the middle. It had canvas walls that could be rolled down to reveal mosquito nets that would allow a breeze to flow through, but not insects. Inevitably, some bugs did manage to slip inside, and there hadn’t been any breeze to speak of, save that accompanied by heavy rain. Here, it remained damp, hot, and uncomfortable for any except some native born to it, Gruber reckoned. The chairs were simple folding things, of wood and cotton, and the table of like construction. Serviceable gear, under the circumstances.
In the distance, thunder rumbled softly. Some other part of this miserable and hellish island was being drenched by a storm grown angry in the unabated heat of the night, and now spewing its fury in the morning’s humid light.
Gruber produced a pair of silver cups from his kit and into these poured some of the schnapps. He had brought three bottles, carefully packed to avoid breakage. The locals in Port-au-Prince had assured him it was the best available, but that meant little in this part of the world. This liquor was cheap, likely made from apples or pears, possibly even plums, but certainly not cherries. The best of those brews, sometimes called Kirschwasser, had a refined, complex, delicious taste, and were quite expensive.
Someday, he would drink from such bottles. After the war.
In the New World, they drank peppermint schnapps, a thing that was so vile the very thought of it made Gruber want to shudder.
“Sieg Prachtvoller,” Schäefer said. He raised his cup in salute.
“Yes, glorious victory,” Gruber echoed, lifting his own cup.
Both men downed the liquor in one long swallow. Not great, but at least it wasn’t rum.
Gruber poured two more.
“So, do you think it was the Japanese who collected our man?”
“No, sir. Perhaps they killed him and hid the body, but there is no sign of him with their party, and where else would they keep him? Our scouts say that the Japanese party seems to be short a soldier—they are not sure, the Nipponese could be out in the jungle following the Engländer and Amerikanisch.”
“Perhaps he and our man met and and ran off hand in hand to live in the forest together.”
Schäefer laughed, a full-throated bray. The idea was beyond silly.
The loss of a man meant nothing against their mission. Nor would the loss of them all.
“And you believe that our quarry has reached their destination?”
“Jawohl. Half a kilometer past where they are camped is the sea, according to our outwalkers. It is possible they could turn west and continue that way, but that would make little sense, given the route so far. They have made no moves to pack up their camp this morning.”
“And have our watchers seen anything else useful?”
“Nein.” He sipped at his schnapps. “No ruined temples or anything like that. Of course, it was growing dark when they arrived, and the conditions were not the best for spying. We’ll learn more today.”
Gruber nodded. “Yes. We shall see what is what soon enough. To victory.” He raised his cup.
“To victory!”
Both men upended their cups again.
Yamada, practicing with his wooden sword, saw the scout return to camp. He turned his attention back to his form. One could not allow distractions in one’s practice.
A few moments later, Suzuki approached.
Suzuki stood quietly until Yamada had finished his martial dance. Greetings were offered and returned. Suzuki commented on the excellence of Yamada’s sword work.
Finally, he got to the main business at hand. “Our quarry has arrived at its destination, Yamada-san.”
“Good.”
“Our men will watch them and see what transpires.”
“Also good.”
Suzuki paused, seeming to reflect. “We should perhaps consider what we need to do about . . . the Germans.”
“Our stalwart, round-eyed, pale-skinned, bosom friends?”
Both men grinned at that.
Suzuki said, “Either the Englishman and American will find that which we seek or they won’t. If they do, we will relieve them of it. I believe that the Germans might not be content to allow us to retain possession of the item.”
Yamada nodded. The enemy in your camp, if you had marked him, could be much less of a threat than one outside. At his first wrong move, you could lop off the head of a man in reach.
The Germans were nominally on the same side as the empire, but Yamada trusted them less than the distance he could walk on water. It was not just that they were treacherous, it was that the treaties that kept them joined in this war were worthless. Everybody on both sides knew this. As soon as the Allies were defeated, the Germans would turn on the empire. There was no room in their hearts for little yellow men; their entire philosophy was racist.
Not that Yamada believed for an instant that his own people were kinder to the notion of foreigners. Gaijin—outlanders—were tolerated for many reasons, but no Japanese worth his own sweat believed that any of them were equals. The notion was absurd. Japan’s living god resided in a palace, here on earth—Yamada had seen him more than once. Germany’s god lived in the sky, invisible, and not all of the Deutsch even believed there was a god. They were savages, the Germans. When the Japanese had been creating bonsai and the art of arranging flowers, the Germans had still been pain
ting themselves green and running naked through the countryside like animals.
If a man was your enemy, it was not wrong to stab him in the back if you could—a samurai expected such things. Once it was known where you stood, not only were surprise attacks acceptable, they were smart. A man slain in his bed was less dangerous than one awake with his sword in hand. Honor was sometimes complex, but if a man who knew you were his enemy was not prepared to deal with you, day or night, front or back? That was his failure.
Sooner or later, the empire and the Reich would find themselves at odds. There could be only one world power, and the empire had no intention of ceding the title to pale-skinned barbarians whose culture, such as it was, was crude and wrongheaded. It was not Yamada’s decision to make as to when and where that eventual split would take place, but he knew it would happen, as certain as the sun rose each day.
Here and now, however, he did have a choice. His mission was of the utmost importance. His honor lay in fulfilling his task. Nothing less would do. And nothing and no one could be permitted to stand in the way of his task.
“Once the archaeologists find what we came for, we will take care of the Germans before they can become a problem,” Yamada said.
Suzuki gave him a slow military bow, and a slight smile to go with it. They were of like mind on the subject. The Germans would have to be neutralized in such a way that they could offer no threat to his mission. Killed to a man would do the trick nicely.
Suzuki bowed and left, and Yamada went into his tent. He had a duty to which he needed to attend.
As was his custom when traveling, Yamada now and then took time to write a letter to his wife and children. Often there was no way to send such missives, as was the case now, but eventually, he would find a way to post them, and eventually, such mail would wend its way home. It might take weeks or months, and more than once he had actually arrived home before a letter he had written and sent weeks earlier did, which was amusing, but the nature of the mail during war.
His calligraphy in this case was much less formal, though he did strive to keep his pen’s strokes clean and sharp.
There were constraints—he could not offer any information that if the letter was somehow intercepted by enemies, would give them aid. Thus there were few specifics, save those that would mean nothing to a nonfamily reader, and many generalities that could be taken to mean a hundred things, none of them militarily useful:
My Dear Fujiko—
As I write this, I am in a forest so thick that the sun’s light has difficulty finding me even at noon. The climate here is unlike that of home, and I miss the breezy summer evenings we would be enjoying were I there.
I am fine, in good health, and I hope that you, our daughter Isoko, and our son Jiro are well and happy.
None of the names he used in his letters were the actual names of his family, nor would he use his own for the signature. His wife’s real name was Fukiyo, not Fujiko, and they had played this game for so long that it had become a family joke. Sometimes after dinner, when the sake was warm and flowing and the children abed, she would tease him: “Ah, Hajime, and how is your mistress Fujiko these days . . . ?”
They would laugh at that together.
Eventually, this war would be over, and it was Yamada’s intention to return to his family and cease roaming the world. The constant sound of hammering from the shipyards, dawn to dusk and back again, from all the vessels being frantically built there, that would ease somewhat. Perhaps even be limited to the daytime, so the nights would once again be peaceful. Their house was half an hour’s winding walk from the main construction, but the sound did carry after the sun went down.
The war would end and there would be no more worries about the possibility of Allied planes dropping bombs on the city. They had been lucky in that respect. Even though his home was in a major seaport, and the industrial sites there produced much ordnance and many ships, thus far such attacks had been few. That far south on the China Sea in Kyushu, far from Tokyo, had largely been spared. With luck, it would continue to be safe.
I cannot say for certain when I shall return, but I hope it is in time to see the flowers in our garden still in bloom.
Those would be the hydrangeas, which ran to pinks and whites in their garden. The Chinese tallow trees would have already lost their flowers, and the acrid, waxy seeds would be turning dark and almost ready to be made into oil, which was great for cooking fish and tempura. Perhaps the cherry trees would bear more fruit this year, as well. If he were home by fall, he would know.
Our mission is proceeding well, and I anticipate success. I hope that this letter finds you and our children and your parents well. I look forward to our meeting with much pleasure. Your loving husband . . .
Yamada signed the letter “Hanshiro,” the false name he had selected for himself. Another source of humor—when his wife would tease him about his “mistress,” he would draw himself up to an indignant pose and say, “Oh, my mistress? What of your lover, Hanshiro, eh? A young and strong man, is he?”
He set the letter aside for the ink to dry. When that was done, he would fold it carefully and address it—no specifics connected to him there, either, of course. There was a military address in Tokyo to which all such letters went, and a record there showing where they were to be forwarded. Eventually, his posts would make their way south, away from the clutter of Tokyo to his more peaceful and beautiful city made from wood and silk at the southern end of the beautiful land of Japan.
To his wonderful home in Nagasaki . . .
TWENTY
WHEN THE ANGLE of the morning light was as good as it was apt to get, Indy stretched out on the mossy ground, his left cheek touching it. He closed his right eye and scanned the ground using his left eye, looking . . .
“What is he doing?” Batiste asked.
Mac said, “Searching for innies or outies—dips or bumps. At ground level, with the light at an angle, the smallest distortion in the surface will be visible. Something buried for a century might have caused the dirt to settle. Or perhaps a hundred years might not be enough for a slight mound to flatten out. People always leave traces unless they are trying very hard to avoid it.”
Indy got up, moved a few feet to the north, and lay back down again. With his eye only an inch or so above the moss carpet, he shifted his gaze slowly back and forth as if reaching out and sweeping crumbs from a tabletop.
He moved for a third observation. Nothing . . . nothing—wait, there—
“Mac, move west, twenty paces, then north about three.”
Mac stepped off the distance.
“A little more . . . right there, mark it.”
Mac pulled out a small pocketknife, opened it, and bent to stick it into the soft ground. He was perhaps ten yards away from the northern edge of the clearing.
Indy stood, brushed himself off. He looked at Marie.
“A slight declivity,” he said. “Now we dig.”
Batiste nodded at a couple of his men.
“No,” Indy said, “Mac and I will have to do it.”
Batiste looked at him.
Indy said, “Tell them, Mac.”
Mac explained. “There is a certain amount of . . . finesse required. One cannot simply thrust a shovel into the ground and risk damaging a priceless artifact. It’s more like . . . peeling an onion than digging a latrine.”
Batiste shrugged. No skin off his nose.
Using the folding shovels, Indy and Mac outlined a square patch about five feet on a side. Carefully, they scraped the moss from the area, revealing the bare and damp ground beneath it. Both of them stood back and observed the result carefully.
“Now what?” Marie asked.
“We are looking for differences in color, texture, any bits that seem as if they don’t belong.”
“And what do you see?”
Indy shrugged. “Plain old jungle dirt. Humus. All the same.”
Indy and Mac bent to their task again, using the shovels as sc
rapers rather than diggers. After half an hour, they had another layer of soil exposed, a couple of inches deeper.
The color was somewhat lighter. Indy, in professorial mode, didn’t wait for the question, but delivered the lecture:
“Soil is formed by many things,” he said. “It’s a combination of climate, whatever animals or plants or bacteria are around, the slope of the land, what the underlying parent material might be—clay, rock, sand, and so forth. And time, of course. It can take a few thousand years to build up. The Russians have done a lot of work on the subject—Dokuchaev’s text is the old standard. Jenny’s most recent book, Factors of Soil Formation, takes it to another level. Milne uses the term topo-sequence.”
Marie nodded.
Batiste looked at him as if he were speaking gibberish.
Mac said, “Dirt is made from the rock or clay and whatever lands on it and rots.”
Batiste laughed. “Lot of big words to say what everybody knows.”
Indy grinned. “That, my friend, is science in a nutshell.”
Mac said, “We’ve removed about a hundred years’ of topsoil, give or take. We will keep doing it this way until we find something or become convinced there is nothing there to find.”
“That could take a while,” Batiste allowed.
“Yeah. But that’s how it’s done.”
The man shrugged.
After two hours of patient scraping, they were down a foot and a half.
“I think we’ve come a cropper,” Mac said.
Indy nodded.
Marie didn’t understand. “But surely they would have buried it deeper,” she said.
“Yeah, but when you dig a hole and then fill it back up with the same dirt, there are usually signs of mixing in the earth. It’s hard to put it back exactly the same way—some of the newer material gets put lower, some of the older winds up closer to the surface. If there were layers of dirt that were completely different colors—red, blue, green—and you dug, piled up the loose soil, and then tried to shovel it back into a hole, it would be almost impossible to do it so that somebody who knew how to look couldn’t tell.”