Cryptozoica

by Mark Ellis

  Honoré shrugged, annoyed by the questions but also intrigued. “That’s what he led me to believe, although he certainly is aware of the history of the Tamtungs and the Cryptozoica debacle. However, I think he—”

  “Shh.” Kavanaugh back-stepped into the shadows, drawing Honoré with him. The touch of the man’s hand on her arm did not feel like he was taking a liberty—instead, she found the pressure of his fingers somehow comforting.

  The three people watched as Aubrey Belleau, followed by Oakshott, marched at an oblique angle past their position down toward the harborside. The small man held the rectangular satphone to his ear, the digital icons glowing eerily in the darkness. They heard him speaking, but he was too far away for his words to be made out.

  Kavanaugh whispered, “We’ll be trailing along to see where’s he going at this time of night. Just to make sure he’s safe, of course. You should go on to bed, Dr. Roxton.”

  Honoré snorted derisively. “No, I don’t think I should. I’m just as curious about my colleague as you two gentlemen.”

  Crowe and Kavanaugh exchanged a swift, questioning glance then Crowe said, “Be quiet, then.”

  “You were the one who made the noise that drew my attention to where you were cowering,” Honoré said dryly.

  A thin smile quirked the corners of Kavanaugh’s mouth. “So we did.”

  The three people moved away from the storefront but were careful to stay within the wedges of shadow. Honoré felt a distant wonder that her overriding emotional reaction to being in the company of the two strange men in an equally strange environment was not apprehension, but was closer to trust.

  The waterfront looked quite different at night than it had during the daytime. When she arrived on Little Tamtung, she had only caught a glimpse of its stilt-legged huts, plank walkways and piers crammed with sampans and brightly painted outrigger fishing boats. At night, the flickering glow of yellow lanterns cast an unearthly illumination over its byways. The moonlight danced in arabesque luminosity from the waves, delicate dabs of white light that shifted with the movement of the sea.

  Only a couple of ships were anchored in the bay—one was a large, majestic-looking junk, its ribbed sails compressed like giant hand fans. A hundred or so yards away a yellow and white sailing yacht rode on the low swells, near the mouth of the channel that led to the open sea. Even with her limited knowledge of seacraft, Honoré admired its trim, streamlined contours. Lights glowed from portholes.

  “That’s a pretty fancy boat,” Kavanaugh murmured.

  “Ship,” corrected Crowe. “The LOA looks like it measures out to be about ninety feet. That makes it a ship.”

  “What’s LOA?” Honoré asked.

  “Length overall,” answered Crowe. “That’s where the distinction between a boat and a ship gets kind of fuzzy.”

  “You don’t know who it belongs to?”

  Kavanaugh shook his head. “No.”

  “What about that big junk?”

  “That’s the Keying, Bai Suzhen’s boat.”

  “Ship,” Crowe said.

  Kavanaugh affected not to have heard the correction. “The sailing yacht must have arrived after Bai Suzhen did or she would have asked us about it.”

  “So you don’t know who comes and goes here?”

  “If we had a harbor-master like we used to,” Kavanaugh said, staring meaningfully at Crowe, “then we would.”

  “What happened to him?” Honoré asked.

  “He quit when the checks stopped coming,” Crowe growled.

  Honoré, Crowe and Kavanaugh continued walking through the maze of the harbor front, crossing a plank runway that led to a short wooden pier. Over the bell-like tinkle of wind chimes, they heard the steady splash of water.

  Coming to a halt between a pair of thick wooden pilings draped with fishnets, they watched as Belleau reached the end of the pier. A twelve-foot long passenger sampan creaked up to it, poled by a bent-backed man in a lampshade wicker hat. Crowe and Kavanaugh recognized the man as Den Lai, the older brother of Chou Lai. He and his brother had divided their family-owned taxi service between land and sea. They knew the sampan had a small three-horse outboard motor clamped to the stern, yet Den hadn’t started it. A green canvas shelter edged with yellow tassels was stretched over an aluminum framework.

  The prow of the boat bumped against the pier and a thin man stood up, leaping lithely from the sampan to the dock. He shook hands with Belleau.

  Kavanaugh squinted, silently cursing the overcast night. The newcomer wasn’t significantly taller than the stunted Englishman but his body was much more proportionate. There was something about the tilt of his head and the way he moved that struck a faint chord of recognition within his memory.

  “Who the hell is that?” Kavanaugh whispered impatiently. “He must have come from that yacht but he didn’t want Den Lai to use the motor.”

  “Afraid of attracting attention?” Crowe inquired, but in such a way as if he already knew the answer.

  “That would be my guess.”

  Honoré sighed in exasperation. “You know, I could just saunter on down there and ask Aubrey who he’s talking to. I’m sure he’d introduce us.”

  Kavanaugh threw her fleeting, appreciative grin. “That would be one way of saving time. But before you do that, I’d like to find out one thing.”

  “Which is what?” Honoré wanted to know.

  “Where his hired man, Oakshott, got himself off to.”

  “Not very far at all, mate,” said a mild tenor voice from the darkness.

  Kavanaugh began to whirl around when pain flared through his lower back. The impact of the straight-arm oi zuki punch drove him forward into a crossbar nailed lengthwise between the two pilings. It splintered beneath his weight and he fell sprawling to the sand.

  Although startled by the sudden violence, Honoré did not cry out. She spun to face to Oakshott, placing the flat of her hands on his chest, pushing him back. “Stop it! What’s wrong with you?”

  In his eagerness to reach Crowe, Oakshott shouldered Honoré aside but the motion threw him slightly off balance. His left arm shot in out a pistoning punch, a duplicate of the one that had knocked Kavanaugh down.

  The blow did not land solidly, the knuckles only grazing Crowe’s right side. Although red hot needles stabbed through his rib cage, Crowe caught Oakshott’s wrist and yanked him forward by his own momentum. He kicked him in the back of his left knee.

  Oakshott’s leg buckled and he went down awkwardly, catching himself by his right hand. Gritting his teeth, Crowe locked the giant’s wrist under his left arm and heaved up on it, hoping to dislocate it at the shoulder.

  Simultaneously, a gasping Kavanaugh rolled to his knees. For a second, he and Oakshott were face-to-face. Then Kavanaugh punched him in the jaw with his right fist. Oakshott grunted and tried to wrest his left arm free of Crowe’s grip and he when he couldn’t, he smashed his free hand into the side of Kavanaugh’s head. The two men traded a flurry of blows, grunting with pain and exertion.

  With each punch, Honoré cried out, “Stop it, you idiots! Stop it!”

  Snarling, Crowe jacked up on Oakshott’s captured arm and drove a knee between his shoulder blades. Kavanaugh staggered to his feet, his head spinning with vertigo, his vision unfocused. Leaning against a piling, he massaged his lower back with one hand.

  “Let him go, Gus,” he said hoarsely.

  Crowe released the man’s arm and stepped back. Oakshott slowly pushed himself to his knees, then to his feet. Grimacing, he worked his shoulder up and down. He turned toward Crowe.

  “You’ve had some training,” he said inanely.

  Breathing hard, Kavanaugh pushed himself away from the piling. “We both have. Want to go again, Francine?”

  Oakshott took a menacing step toward Kavanaugh and Honoré stepped between them.

  “Enough,” she snapped curtly. “That’s quite enough.”

  “With all due respect, mum,” Oakshott muttered, “I don’t w
ork for you.”

  “That you do not,” announced Belleau stridently, jogging down the pier.

  The sampan was still tied at the end of it. They watched the thin man climb back into the boat.

  Honoré stabbed an accusatory finger at Oakshott. “This bipedal Doberman of yours attacked Captain Kavanaugh without provocation. Struck him from behind, in the back.”

  “His back was to me,” declared Oakshott defensively.

  Belleau swept Kavanaugh, Crowe, and Honoré with a challenging stare. “I thought you were going to turn in, Honoré.”

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “My bedtime is not the issue. The actions of your valet or bodyguard or whatever you call him are.”

  “Oakshott was only obeying my orders.”

  “To sandbag anybody he saw in the vicinity?” Kavanaugh demanded, rubbing the hinge of his jaw.

  “Hardly. I instructed him to secure the area so I could conduct a business meeting in relative privacy. His standing orders are always to ensure my safety. He must have thought you presented a threat to it.”

  “Bullshit,” grunted Crowe. “We were just standing here.”

  “Standing here to spy on me?”

  When neither Crowe nor Kavanaugh responded, Honoré interjected smoothly, “We were taking a walk.”

  Belleau’s eyebrows rose. “The three of you?”

  “The three of us,” Honoré said matter-of-factly. “We saw the lights of that sailing yacht out there and came down for a closer look. That’s all there is to it.”

  Belleau smiled without mirth. “Indeed.”

  Honoré matched his smile with a cold one of her own. “Indeed. I think your Mr. Oakshott owes Captains Kavanaugh and Crowe an apology.”

  Belleau did not reply. He stared unblinkingly at Honoré.

  “That is,” she continued in a silky soft tone, “if you want Captain Kavanaugh to fly us over Big Tamtung tomorrow.”

  Belleau’s eyes narrowed while Kavanaugh’s went wide. “I don’t see that happening,” he said with a studied indifference. “I’ve got kind of a back and jaw-ache. But, if Dr. Belleau ends up holding the mortgage on my chopper, there’s no reason he can’t fly it there himself.”

  Belleau inhaled deeply. “Oakshott, apologize to the gentlemen, that’s a good fellow.”

  The big man’s face did not register any emotion. Inclining his head in a half-nod he intoned, “I apologize. I may have been over-zealous and I hope I did not cause injury.”

  With his tongue, Kavanaugh probed a small laceration on the tender lining of his cheek. “Nothing a couple of shots of hydrogen peroxide mixed with bourbon won’t cure.”

  Belleau turned toward Kavanaugh. “Very well then. May I call upon you in the morning to arrange a flight?”

  “You know my rates?”

  “I fear not.”

  “Two hundred dollars an hour,” answered Kavanaugh. When he saw the anger in the little man’s eyes he added, “Of course, we can work out a flat fee. I’ll still need a damage deposit, of course. My chopper cost over a million dollars.”

  “Of course,” Belleau echoed sibilantly. “Now, if everyone will excuse me, I shall get on with my business.”

  Pivoting on a heel, he stalked back along the pier to the man waiting in the sampan. Eyeing Oakshott, Honoré said quietly, “Perhaps we should all do the same.”

  Oakshott rotated his left arm at the shoulder and winced. “That would be a wise idea, mum.”

  Crowe, Kavanaugh and Honoré walked away from the pier, adopting casual gaits, even though Kavanaugh’s lower back throbbed fiercely. When they were beyond Oakshott’s range of hearing, Honoré murmured, “My, that was unpleasant.”

  Crowe nodded. “Yeah, but we learned that Belleau doesn’t want us to know what he’s really up to…and who he’s up to it with.”

  “Too late for that,” Kavanaugh said. “It must have taken Oakshott’s sucker punch, but I finally recognized the guy he was meeting. I only saw him once, in Sarawak, that’s why I couldn’t place him right off.”

  “Who is it?” Honoré asked.

  “The name wouldn’t mean anything to you,” Kavanaugh answered. “But it will to Bai Suzhen.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  May 12th

  “Jimmy Cao?”

  Kavanaugh nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yeah…the boss of the Ghost Shadows himself.”

  “The vanguard boss. He’s got a couple of years yet before he makes mountain master.”

  “Whatever. It was definitely him I saw meeting with Belleau.”

  Bai Suzhen voiced a sigh, seasoned with an under-the-breath Thai obscenity. She sat in a claw-footed iron bathtub in the center of a small, enclosed garden at the rear of the Phoenix of Beauty. A small path curved to a corner where a mound of smooth stones and bonsai trees created the illusion of a distant mountain range.

  A stream of water flowed down the face of the stones and formed a serpentine-twisting brook. On either side of it stood two small Naga statues, stylized representations of beautiful women whose lower bodies were coiled like those of snakes. Waxed paper screens made a long decorative wall. The outlines of Dang Xo and Pai Chu were visible on the opposite side of the screens.

  The tub in which Bai Suzhen reclined was filled mainly with ice cubes, collected from the bar’s icemaker, and they did little to cover her nudity. Her sleek black hair gleamed like midnight velvet, caught up in an intricate knot at the nape of her slender neck. Although her slanted eyes were closed as if in meditation, Kavanaugh remembered how quickly passion could flame from them, as well as fury.

  A small pert girl with mahogany skin wearing a pink silk cheongsam stood nearby with an ice bucket. Kavanaugh remembered that her name was Qui. She went to great lengths not make eye contact with him. Birds chirped in the overhanging oleanders. Although the sun was only at mid-point in the morning sky, a heavy, sultry heat had already settled over the island. The glass of iced mint tea Kavanaugh sipped had a stinging aftertaste, but at least it was cold. He pressed the chilled glass to his sweat-pebbled forehead. He wished he could join Bai in the tub, but he figured she would misinterpret his actions.

  Bai Suzhen suddenly sat up with a clinking of ice, leaning forward, wrapping her arms around her knees, resting her chin on her forearms. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Jimmy told me about Belleau two days ago aboard the Bao Ku Chan. Obviously, he was the Englishman’s contact.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Kavanaugh said. “Cao called him last night to let him know he’d arrived.”

  Bai broodily eyed a yellow flower blossom. “The son of a bitch must have been only a couple of hours behind me all along.”

  “Yeah…but why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why is he here?”

  Bai lifted one bare shoulder in a shrug. “To make certain I obey the bidding of United Bamboo and sell my shares to Belleau…and to kill me if I don’t…or maybe kill me even if I do.”

  “He wouldn’t dare.”

  Bai Suzhen chuckled patronizingly. “Even after all this time you still don’t understand the nature of the triads. You still think the triads are criminal gangs, a bunch of professional crooks, like the Mafia in the states.”

  “And they’re not?” Kavanaugh asked, eyebrows crooked an ironic angle.

  “The triads are a political system, but one that’s more powerful and has more influence than any local or national government.”

  “Except the heads of state are gunmen?”

  “Using criminal methods to gain political ends is common everywhere, Jack, but sometimes criminal methods work best to establish law and order. If not for the triads, piracy would’ve taken over this part of the world after the tsunami.”

  Kavanaugh shifted position impatiently, knowing she spoke the truth. The South China Seas had always been prime breeding grounds for pirates. In the wake of the tidal wave tragedies, they swooped in to loot and pillage, robbing both the victims and
the aid organizations. He and Augustus had several run-ins with a group of Indonesian cutthroats led by Sarei ibn-Tom.

  Bai gazed at him intently. “Why is your face bruised?”

  “That man of Belleau’s—Oakshott? We had a disagreement last night.”

  “You were very lucky, then. He is a trained killer.” She touched her right forearm. “I saw his tattoo. He is a club fighter. A very skilled one.”

  “Mouzi says she saw him kill a couple of men in a club in Bangkok.”

  Bai nodded. “Belleau is a very strange Englishman to hire someone like that. He very much wants to own all of the shares of Cryptozoica Enterprises and that very much makes me reluctant to sell out to him.”

  “I didn’t think you had a choice.”

  She smiled slightly. “The white snake of good fortune always has a choice.”

  “If the white snake’s choice is to sell out, I really couldn’t blame her.”

  “I’ve actually been fairly happy here, Jack...certainly far happier than I ever was as a nightclub performer, doing my sexed-up travesty of traditional dances for the tourist trade.”

  “You had your own place…you didn’t have to dance if you didn’t want to.”

  “The White Snake triad really owned it. I was only a name on paperwork and a face and body in the advertisements. But here…”

  Bai leaned back, gazing up at the sky. “Our business did not turn out the way we planned but that didn’t make it a complete failure. Of course, considering what happened to you, I don’t imagine you feel the same way.”

  Kavanaugh said nothing, his fingers reflexively tracing the scar on his face. He glanced away from Bai’s long, smooth body, just in case her mood changed in her characteristically tempestuous way. He looked toward Qui but she dropped her gaze to the ice bucket in her hands.

  “What do you want me to do, Jack?” Bai Suzhen asked bluntly. “Do you want me to sign over the mortgage of the helicopter to you so Belleau won’t hold it? Is that why you’re really here?”

  Kavanaugh gritted his teeth, then relaxed his clenched jaw muscles when the bruised side of his face began to throb. “You know me better than that. I came here only to warn you about Jimmy Cao and Belleau being in collusion.”