by John Muir
CHAPTER 29
LOCATING THE VICTIM
Maria Christina Hotel - Day 7
It was after midnight by the time Pater's small group returned to the hotel. The reception staff got up from their floor mattresses behind the counter, where they had been sleeping, to give the room keys. Pater asked for spare coffee, tea, milk and sugar sachets. He knew there would be a long session between the five of them discussing the day’s events.
Seated around Pater's room with their own choice of drinks, Pater told Nilo and Marivic what they saw at the plantation.
Henry told them about the truck and the four wheel drive in the vehicle shed.
"So, they have transport," said Pater. "Perhaps we should have made them u/s."
"Thought you might have wanted that," said Henry. "I cut the radiator hose of the truck and put dirt in the fuel tank. The Patrol has a flat spare tyre as well as the front right tyre. Should be problems with the brakes as well."
Pater grinned. "Nothing obvious then?"
"Not until they drive," answered Henry.
"Nilo, Henry told me about the visit to meet the officer who attended the kidnap scene, and what the officer had seen and guessed had happened. But he said the officer often broke off to speak to you in Visayan. What was he saying?" asked Pater.
Nilo reacted a little embarrassed at being caught out withholding information. "It’s just that the officer didn't want to describe the condition of one of the bodies to Henry. For some reason he thought Henry might have been a relation. The size of Henry and the Japanese, you know."
"Why?"
Nilo looked at Marivic. "Its just that one of the bodies left behind had both arms cut off and the head almost cut in half from the top down."
Marivic drew a loud breath.
"O.K., I get the picture. Doesn't mean anything bad has happened to T.A. though." Pater thought of the blood stained jacket and business cards, and kept that knowledge to himself.
"What now?" asked Rangi.
"If we can't find T.A., we'll grab the Japanese bastard and swap him for T.A. later when we know where he is. Then we'll have to let the kidnappers know we have their real target if we can find out who they are. If we haven't made progress to finding T.A. today, we'll have to find somewhere we can hide out with the Japanese safely tied up."
They all nodded agreement.
"After all we're hardly committing a crime. The bastard's already meant to be kidnapped."
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near Linamon - Day 7
Siti was awake and waiting for her uncle to leave. She was already feeling the yearning in her body.
The uncle sneaked past, again about an hour before sunrise, and immediately Siti made her way through the curtains. She knew she should be feeling embarrassed, but the stranger, though he was conscious the last time she had 'done it', had made her feel so comfortable. It all felt natural and a part of sharing. A togetherness she had never felt before.
She had wanted him many times during the preceding day, especially when she was looking at him, but there was always someone else around.
This time the stranger was laying on his right side. She lay down behind him and cuddled into his back, putting her left arm over him. Again the thought of two spoons came into her mind.
The stranger stirred and then took her hand as he turned over slowly to face her. His hands stroked her hair then her face.
"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" he asked quietly.
"Yes," she replied, already feeling her breath becoming shorter.
His hands moved slowly and softly over her chest. She became amazed at all the sensitive places his hands seemed to find on her. His hands moved further down her body to between her legs.
"Oh yes," she breathed loudly.
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Maria Christina Hotel - Day 7
Pater waited until 9:30 a.m. before phoning Ruben Consuelo at the newspaper office. He had heard unexpectedly from Yamada's office advising that the maximum cash they could raise was P5 million pesos, and even then some of that was being transferred from Manila accounts and would take a few days.
Consuelo was about to phone Pater when the kidnapper phoned. Consuelo passed the information about the cash and the delay to the kidnapper. The kidnapper was annoyed, but would accept the amount as a down-payment. Consuelo told him that he had already arranged for a Catholic priest to deliver the money in exchange for the hostage. But firstly they would have to get the money.
The kidnapper argued, and was about to hang up after saying he would phone again tomorrow. But Consuelo asked him to phone again later in the afternoon so he could keep him up to date about the arrival of the money.
Pater was pleased about that. It might give them another chance to get the kidnapper to show himself, and enable them to follow him. Under the guise of getting proof that the Japanese was still alive, Pater had formulated a plan.
He phoned Nilo's room and told him to gather all his helpers for another practice of the songs. He then sent Henry and Rangi to supervise.
Everything had to be ready to swing into action if they could narrow down T.A's location to a few blocks of the city, or a few barrios in the country.
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near Linamon - Day 7
Since sunrise, both Siti and Zahra had been in to bring T.A. food. Siti had been the most frequent visitor, ensuring that his bottle of boiled water was still full, emptying and rewashing the lidded bucket that he had been given to use as a toilet.
T.A. felt embarrassed about that, but there was little he could do. He just hoped if he needed a bowel movement that he would have a long enough period of privacy. He felt better with his limited freedom, only being held by a leg chain.
Each time Siti gave him something, she would 'accidentally' brush him. He was conscious too of the ill-fitting underwear that Omar had given him to replace his own. The replacements were uncomfortably tight.
He was unsure what to think of this physical and sexual attention he was getting from Siti, or even how it started. He was sure that the events of yesterday, when he woke to find her cuddling into him, was not the first time that something had happened between them. Her touching and familiarity with him then was more like that between two people that had had sexual relations before.
He knew he should not have done anything with her this morning. Despite his physical weakness, he enjoyed her touch. Now he was wondering how he could stop without hurting her young, emotional, gentle and caring heart.
More than anything, he needed allies. If he upset Siti by rejecting her, she might turn out to be very vindictive.
He crossed to the window. Because the chain was now on his left leg he found he could stretch further and reach the wooden monsoon shutters which had been closed. The shutters moved freely in their slots and slid back easily despite showing advanced signs of age or wood rot, or both. The narrow sill outside was cratered too from wood rot or the weather, or both.
Looking up, past the tops of the nearby coconut trees, the sky was now grey, not the clear sky that it had been for the previous two days that he could remember. Though the temperature was still warm, at least there was no clammy feeling in the air. No mugginess that made his body wet with sweat and cause his underpants to cling to his skin. Perhaps there was the hint of a breeze that was keeping the atmosphere cooler.
As if acknowledging his thoughts, the branches at the tops of the highest coconut trees moved gently, at first, then swayed a little more as if for emphasis before returning to their stationary posture. T.A. appreciated the brief coolness.
Beneath the thick growth of branches at their high tops, clusters of green coconuts nestled in close to the trunk. The branches above, protecting its fruit like a mother hen settles over a brood of chickens.
The higher trees, T.A. presumed, were the oldest. Below the clusters of green coconuts, the long slim grey trunks of each tree further safeguarded its offspring by pushing its topmost and only branches out of reach of all but the mo
st determined predators. Some tree-tops, he estimated, were the height of a three to five story building.
T.A. wondered if the lack of any other branches on the trunks, other than those at the tops, was by Nature's design, or whether the locals pruned all the other branches. Healed, but indented scars on the trunks could have been made as a result of pruning or as a human foothold to help scaling the tree.
The younger and shorter trees, with no fruit under their tops, had trunks of almost black to dark grey.
Beyond the nearest coconut trees stood a small copse of banana trees. Their long and broad leaves were a contrast to the skinny leaves of the coconut trees.
Some banana leaves were longer than a tall man, and the longest were wider than a full span of a man's arms. While the growth at the tops was broad, lush and green, the lower dying leaves were light brown. Now dejected and rejected by the fresh growth above it, they were curled, dried, torn and twisted as they still hung precariously to the main stem. If there were any fruits growing he could not see them under the thick leaves. The grey light of the grey day, and maybe the distance too, hid their fruit. Some other shallow rooted and less fortunate banana trees had been torn from the ground in a recent typhoon. Dragged away from the main copse, they lay dead and browning.
Beneath and around the banana and coconut trees, ankle to waist high weeds and undergrowth covered the rocks and soil. A single cream coloured village dog sniffed for food scraps around the larger rocks that stood higher than the secondary growth. Unsuccessful at the first clump of rocks, the dog moved to another group of rocks disturbing a hen and her clutch of five young chicks. Without concern or panic the mother hen moved away from the dog, which had ignored them. Perhaps the dog was wise to the village rules. Dogs that killed chickens were soon killed by the villagers.
T.A. had noticed before in previous visits to the Philippines that a truce seemed to exist between the different species of mostly free roaming village animals. Nanny goats were followed by their kids, sows by their tiny piglets, hens by their chickens, all undisturbed by any of the dozens of unowned scavenger dogs. Even the feral cats, though wary and watchful of their natural enemy, the dog, merely padded quickly past the dogs without hearing so much as a growl.
"Err ee err orr," screeched one of the many chestnut and black coloured fighting cocks, leg-tied to stakes or trees.
"Err ee err orr," replied another similarly tied.
Whenever he heard this, T.A. felt like calling out his response, "Happy New Year". It seemed to him that could be what they were calling out to each other.
"Err ee err orr," again.
"Torka, torka, torka, torka." This was the turkeys which had a different response.
T.A., surprised, leaned further out the window and looked along the narrow and badly broken asphalt lane for the source of the new and different sound that he had not heard for a long time. It was a sound that used to bring a laugh that he loved to hear from a woman he had once loved.
"Err ee err orr," then, Torka, torka, torka, torka,” came again.
Memories of another time and place, of both good times and bad, came flooding back. It was a sound he had not heard since his last visit to Apuao Grande. He tried to quickly put the faded painful memories to the back of his mind, but they would not stay there. The scenes he was looking at, the sounds he was hearing, he had shared them all before with a woman he hoped, and believed, he was going to have a long future with. Then his heart felt like it had been smashed in the chest with a sledge hammer when he caught his special lady in bed with someone else.
"Err ee err orr," again from the fighting cocks.
"Torka, torka, torka, torka," responded again.
T.A. could not prevent his grin now on seeing the two turkeys in the distance. The male, tail spread proudly, strutted protectively between his smaller turkey mistress and a leg-tied fighting cock.
Too soon the turkeys had moved into distant undergrowth and out of his sight. The cocks settled back into their "Happy New Year," calls to each other.
T.A. moved back from the window and sat on his floor tarpaulin bed. Staring out the window at the grey sky, perhaps it was only reflecting the sense of despair and loss he had begun to feel all over again. Both the sky and his emotions were grey. The outside scene and his thoughts had put him into a trance.
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The sudden touch of a hand on his shoulder snapped his mind back to the present. He did not look at the hand, instead turning his head expecting to see Siti. Instead it was Omar.
"Are you feeling a little dispirited?"
T.A. paused for a few seconds. "Yeah. Something like that."
Omar tossed something onto his lap. "Recognise this?"
T.A. picked it up. He didn't need to examine it closely. "This is my money pouch. Where did you find it?"
Omar handed him a pen and some paper. "Can you sign your name?"
T.A. gripped the pen and was about to sign. "I nearly signed my name automatically, I couldn't remember it except for the T.A. part."
Omar then handed him two credit cards. "And these? Will they help?"
"God. That's my name, Cholmodelly-Tapper. Yes. Only it’s pronounced Chumley-Tapper." T.A. put the cards down and made his signature, instinctive from many years of use, on the paper.
"Gee, now I remember why I ever only let people call me T.A.. I hate the name Cholmodelly-Tapper. Just like you did, all the people, not just in Asian countries mis-pronounce it." Then he handed the signed paper back to Omar.
"Check how that compares to the credit cards," said T.A. almost smugly.
Omar compared the credit card signatures to that on the paper. "Looks like you are who you say you are."
"Well you can let me go now then."
"It's not quite that simple. It gives us a problem. It gives me an even bigger problem."
"Why?"
"You were meant to be the Japanese. Salim thought he was holding him for ransom. Therefore the only reason you are alive is because the ransom he thought he was going to get for the Japanese has not yet been paid. Salim was going to kill him after he got the money. But we haven't got the Japanese, we've got you. So Salim won't get any money."
"I'm not rich."
"That's not what I mean. Nobody bothered with disguises because the Japanese was going to be killed. If he was dead he could never identify anyone. Our problem is that because we are Muslim, the AFP will use any excuse to kill every member of our families as collaborating with the kidnappers if they even get a hint of who is involved. If they discovered that the kidnappers were from this barrio, then not many people from around here would be left alive by the time they were finished."
"This is my life you’re talking about," said T.A. hoping there was nothing in his voice that sounded like a whine or a pleading for his life. Though he knew that was what he was in fact doing.
"No. It's about my life. The lives of my wife and children. The lives of Salim and his daughters. The lives of my sisters, brothers, their wives and husbands, their children. They will all be put to the sword. Your life therefore means nothing to us. The life and death of the Japanese at least meant a final reckoning and payment for all the pains his forbears inflicted on our families."
T.A. felt his heart sink and was conscious that he had let his head drop so as he was looking at the floor.
"I don't want to kill you, My worry is that Salim will, as soon as he finds out you are not the Japanese. If you want to live for a while longer, then you must be the Japanese. If Salim returns, you can be conscious, but you must never speak. Your brain must have been so damaged from the beating you got that you have lost your memory and the power of speech. Perhaps a vacant staring into space. That all might keep you alive for a while."
Head still down and feeling deeply despondent, T.A. felt his head nod affirmatively.
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