by Jack Lynch
I slept late the next morning. I had wanted to get an early start, but my body kept telling me something and I’d fallen back to sleep. The phone on the kitchen counter finally woke me at around eleven. It was Ceejay. She wanted to know what the footlocker full of old bricks was all about. I told her to quit being such a snoop. She also said she told Sloe and Morrisey what had happened to me the night before. They wanted to talk to me.
“What for? Nobody hit them.”
“But they’re afraid of what any clients might think if something like that happened during normal office hours.”
I told her I’d be in later. I went in and took a shower then fixed a larger than normal breakfast, and while I was eating that it occurred to me it might not be such a smart idea to stop in at the office after all. I phoned Ceejay back and told her that if I showed up the two guys who beat me up might be right on my heels. She said she’d stall the counselors.
I called the Shank home at Stinson Beach, but nobody answered. I phoned over to Port Costa and spoke briefly with Edward Bowman. I told him about the conversation with Catlin. Bowman was afraid Catlin would refuse to go along.
“Let’s give him a little time to think through his options,” I suggested. “I think he’ll come around in time.”
After that call I went through the San Francisco Yellow Page Directory and found what I was hoping for. The same air freight outfit that had transported Polaski’s footlocker had an office in downtown San Francisco, as well as out at the airport. I considered phoning them, but if my hunch was right, it was something better handled in person. It had occurred to me that Polaski might have had the money and chess pieces shipped out on the same flight. As an additional security measure he could have had the money kept at the airport while the chessmen were taken to the downtown office for pickup. He could have been planning to pick those up while I was getting the footlocker at the airport. If that was valid reasoning then he probably would have had the chess pieces in his name alone. That would call for breezing a little story past the people at the airport office. I tidied up a bit then took a run out to the airport.
The people in the freight office remembered me from the day before. I reminded them that the footlocker had been left to be picked up either by myself or Mr. Polaski. I told them there had been another package coming that was overdue and asked if they would check on it. They checked but couldn’t find anything. A supervisor, a nice, concerned elderly man by the name of Howley got involved in it. I told him it was important. A delay could cost our firm several thousand dollars. I asked if there were another office in the area it might have been shipped to. He got on the phone to San Francisco.
“They’ve got it, Mr. Bragg,” he called over to me with a broad smile. “In the name of the other fellow, Polaski.”
I let my own face light up with relief. “He had to leave town last night. Tell them I’ll pick it up in thirty minutes.”
The articles came in a small cardboard container about the size of a cigar box. I signed for it and drove over to the parking garage at Portsmouth Square, then walked up to an alley off Grant Avenue. The name of my stone man was Minzer. He was either Swiss or German and had come to this country during the troubles in Europe forty years earlier. He spoke with an almost studied accent, like a good actor, which I suspected he was. He occupied a little shop between a fortune cookie bakery and a two-story shirt factory with its windows papered over so you couldn’t watch the banks of sewing machines being operated by recent immigrants who didn’t know English and welcomed the meager salaries they were payed.
Minzer ran what appeared to be a combination watch and hock shop. But he really did a flourishing business with jewelers and artisans throughout the Bay Area, some of the biggest names in that part of the country. He also did a lot of business with the inhabitants of Chinatown. I’d been told that the wealthy citizens of Shanghai and other Chinese mainland ports who fled to this country in the 1950s were the ones who transformed his business from a modest one to quite big time. I’d met him through a buddy who once fashioned Gothic rings and pendants in Sausalito, before he moved to Mexico to paint his heart out.
When I entered the shop the door tripped a bell. I waited at the glass counter in front until Mr. Minzer appeared in the inner doorway. He was a small man with a wizened face and deliberate moves.
“Ah, Peter, come in, come in.”
He waved me on back and I followed him into the work area cluttered with chemical trays and burners and wax and all the alien devices used by people who know the mysteries of shaping and working gems and metal.
He was in the middle of something and went back to it. He sat down at a small workbench and put on a pair of glasses with a small scope attached to one lens. He held a small piece of metal in a pincer and turned it slowly over a low burner.
“And have you come today to buy or to sell, Peter?”
It was a little joke between us. When we’d first met I’d been an exnewspaperman-turned-bartender with a busted marriage and a creviced psyche. He was just a friend of a friend, until I went into the detective business. I’d visited him several times since. He’d always been generous with his time and information. He enjoyed our conversations; he said they leavened his days. And while I had been able to give him a hand one time by busting the heads of a couple of punk extortionists working the street, I’d never had anything to sell, nor enough money to buy.
“Neither one, this time Mr. Minzer. I come for information. But you look busy.”
“I am most times busy. But I can practice my English while doing this one job.”
“That’s fine. I also have something to show you that you might find interesting.”
His eyes darted briefly from the gizmo he held over the small blue flame to the package I carried. He missed very little, and he had a profound curiosity.
“Open your mouth and speak, Peter, before you make an old man twitch.”
I put the package down on a nearby bench and leaned back beside it with my hands in my pockets. “I’ve tumbled onto a funny kind of story, Mr. Minzer. Not the laughing kind of funny, the other one. It’s the sort of yarn you’d suspect somebody had just spun in a barroom one day, yet a lot of people seem to be convinced this one is genuine. They’re taking some pretty big risks over it. At least a couple of men have died in the past few days because of it. And it involved some sort of chess set that’s been out of circulation for a lot of years.”
He didn’t move a muscle or take his eye off the gizmo over the flame. But the tone of his voice changed, to barely more than a whisper.
“What sort of chess set, Peter?”
“I don’t know a great deal about it. But it’s supposed to be worth a small fortune. The pieces are a little larger than found in an ordinary chess set, I’m told. And it’s supposed to be laden with gems. If what I’ve heard is true, it disappeared toward the end of World War Two. Out in Southeast Asia somewhere.”
He didn’t speak for many moments. He continued turning the thing over the blue flame, but now I noticed a vein on his temple was beginning to jump around some. He put down the pincer, finally, lowered the flame and crossed to a side cabinet that contained a rack of books. He started to remove one, then replaced it and took another. He dusted its front jacket with the sleeve of his shirt and plopped it down on the workbench. He paged through it, then paused, turned another page and creased it open.
“Indeed,” he said, “one of the pieces would look something like this.”
I joined him. The book was open to a line etching of a chess piece. The drawing looked like the sort of thing you saw in engineering manuals, with calibrated measurements and what looked like boxed descriptions to one side on various features of the piece. I couldn’t read the writing. It looked like German.
“This might be it, Peter?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never seen one of them. But that is some fancy-looking figurine. What is it, the king?”
“No, Peter, not the king. This is the most common of the lo
t. This is a rendition of a pawn.”
The grunt of the chess set. The foot soldier. The expendable piece, traded and feinted, easy currency. But never had I seen so noble a pawn as represented in the stark drawing in the book. The piece was drawn slightly larger than scale. You could see the finely crafted expression on the figure’s face. It was not a common face, not that of just another statistic. It was a face set and determined. The figure wore medieval battle garb, a studded metal helmet and breastplate, metal cuffs and fittings to protect wrist and elbow. An embossed shield was clutched closely to the body in his left hand. In his right hand was a short, flat, Roman-looking sword held point up, but close to the body. A connective line ran from one of his eyes to a descriptive block of type beside it. Whatever represented the eyes were dark and indeterminate. His right leg was forward of the left. The little figure was in a state of advance.
I am not a great student of warfare, but if ever the curse of soldiering had been raised to a noble status it was reflected in that single pawn. It was a recruiting poster for the ages. The little figure had only to fill its lungs and give a lusty cry in some alien tongue to spring alive on the page.
“Mr. Minzer, that is one hell of a pawn.”
“As you say, Peter. Could this be your chess set?”
“It might be. What’s it made, of?”
“Gems, Peter. And precious metal. Everything man holds dear in modern civilization. Gold and silver in abundance. But it is the matching of stones as eyes, belt buckles, sword hafts, horses’ hooves and a half a hundred other details that would raise this chess set to the status of a national treasure. If it still exists.”
I stood quietly a moment, then told him, “I think it does.”
The older man shivered. It was not at all cold in his little workshop. “Extraordinary,” he whispered. “Extraordinary.”
“Do you have pictures of any of the other pieces?”
“No, not in my books here. But I have seen other drawings. The sensational qualities of the pieces escalate dramatically, commensurate with their value as playing pieces. This one is lowly by comparison. Yet, without the foot soldier there can be no war, therefore no kingdom. The knights—the dashing strike weapon—are marvelous to behold, I have read, their saddlebags heavy with loot from previous campaigns. The bishops, stern and haughty, but robed in the rich and ornate trappings reflecting the wealth of the Church. The rooks, veritable treasure towers. One of the queens, it is said, has her sword sheathed over a girdle of deep, almost raspberry red Russian alexandrite. There is jade in this set, Peter. Brazilian diamonds, I am told. Emeralds from an Incan mine that was successfully hidden from the ravaging Spaniards, rediscovered finally near Moso, in Colombia. These chessmen bear cornflower blue sapphires from the Zanskar range of the Himalayas in Kashmir. They are studded with pigeon blood rubies from Mogok, in upper Burma. Those rubies have twice the value of diamonds, my Peter. There are stones of bewildering variety and value in this set…” His voice trailed off as he stared at the page before him.
“What are its origins?”
He straightened with a sigh. “There is still some mystery as to that. It was not very nice, I understand. It was used, even specifically ordered to specification, as a bargaining agent in the flesh trade. It was used to acquire a new pool of stock for a rather large slave trade throughout certain parts of the Orient. An entire nation of comely people, I have read, were traded away—dissipated—in exchange for this set. I believe a consortium of Lebanese gentlemen were involved. They commissioned the creation of the ultimate temptation.”
“How long ago was this?”
“At least a century ago. That is why it is encrusted with so many gems valued by man today.”
“Who was the last owner?”
“You mean its last legitimate owner? That would be impossible to say or to prove. But one has to question how legitimate its possession ever was, after it came into being. Its whole reason for being smacked of the unsavory, and I doubt if its history ever reflected much else. I know it did change hands more than once, after the Lebanese gentlemen acquired what they sought for it. Even now it is supposed to be in the Orient, if in rather perilous circumstances. And there is a government of formidability that will be vastly disappointed if they learn it is not.”
“Who is that?”
“China. Perhaps even you know this part of the story, or a portion of it. Are you a patriot, Peter?”
“As much as the next man, I suppose. Why?”
“Have you heard of the Awa Maru?”
“No. What’s that got to do with being patriotic?”
“How about the Queenfish?”
“The name itself means nothing, but it has a familiar ring.”
“Yes. Your American submarines during World War Two, Peter, at least many of them, were named after fish. The Queenfish was one. The Awa Maru was one of her victims. The Queenfish sank the Awa Maru in the Sea of China in the spring of nineteen forty-five. Your submarines sank enormous Japanese tonnage in that war, but perhaps never so valuable a ship as the Awa Maru. She was a treasure ship, steaming back to Japan with holds bulging with booty plundered from Asia in years past. I have read that at today’s prices, the cargo of the ship was worth in excess of one billion dollars. It carried thousands of tons of tin, platinum, tungsten and lead. It carried titanium, uncut diamonds, art treasures and gold coins. Even now China is undersea mining it, it is believed. Removing the tin.”
He stubbed the page of the book before him. “This little fellow and his mates were supposed to be a part of that treasure. But they could have been removed from the Awa Maru before she sailed, I suppose. It would not be the same as trying to sneak ashore with a chest of gold coins. Very transportable, a chess set.”
“You say the ship was sunk in the spring. Do you remember the month?”
“Not for certain. It is easily researched, but April sounds about right.”
“Nearly four months before the end of the war. Time enough for it to have traveled south, to where the people I know might have gotten their hands on it.”
“Peter,” said Mr. Minzer, clasping his hands, “that package you carry. Is that what you wanted to show me?”
“Maybe, Mr. Minzer. I haven’t opened it yet.”
“It is maybe connected in some way to the conversation we are having?”
“It could be.”
“And beneath your rowdy jacket you carry a large gun. I have come to recognize such things. Wait one minute, please.”
He bustled into the front of the shop, locked the front door and hung up a sign in the window. He came back into the work area and closed the curtain across the doorway, rubbing his hands. “Why don’t we just see what you carry there, Peter?”
He went to his workbench and sat down, waiting patiently like a well-mannered child at the Christmas tree. I took out a pocket knife and slit the wrapping on the carton. The package felt heavier to me now that Mr. Minzer had told me what it might contain. I unwrapped the carton and opened it. The objects were couched in crumpled pages from a racing form. They were individually wrapped in tissue paper. There were four of them. I lifted out the smallest and handed it to Mr. Minzer.
“But Peter, don’t you want…”
“No, Mr. Minzer. You do it.”
He nodded his appreciation and gently removed the tissue paper.
“Here, what is this?” he asked, holding up the blackened object.
“They were purposely covered to hide their value.”
“Ah, of course. Maybe it is the Japanese version of your—what was it you people shipped your weapons in, the preservative, Vaseline?”
“Cosmoline.”
“Yes, perhaps a Japanese Cosmoline.”
“I’ve been told it’s just plain friction tape. Weathered and frayed over the years.”
Mr. Minzer held the object close to the light and grunted. “What a curious idea. But of course. I can see it now.”
He began picking away at the co
vering with tools from his bench. From time to time he would hold it briefly over the low burner flame. He was very delicate, very careful with it. He put it down and went to another shelf, this one holding his chemicals. He took down two bottles and poured some from each of them into a deep, narrow tray. He swirled the liquids briefly then used a small forceps to dip the object into the solution. He let it rest for several moments, then took an old toothbrush from a drawer and gently scrubbed the object in its chemical bath.
“Dear God,” he murmured. “It is true.”
He removed the piece and shook it over the tray. By now even I could make it out. It was a pawn, the perfect likeness of the etching in the book. Only it was hard to tell that right away. The etching was in black and white. The object Mr. Minzer held twinkled and gleamed in the light, sparkling from the colored stones rimming the piece’s shield and the gems embedded in a dozen other places on the figure.
“Dear God,” the old man murmured again, turning to carry it over to a sink in the corner. He rinsed it thoroughly under the tap, then patted it dry with a cloth towel and returned it to the workbench, murmuring to himself. He put it on a little stone pedestal and bent low over it, studying it through his scope, picking it here and there with a jeweler’s probe. “It is all true. The stones are authentic. The gold, the silver inlays, the craftsmanship. It is from the Mediterranean Chess Set.”
“Mediterranean?”
“Its place of origin. It is how we identify it. Does any other gem smith know it exists? That it has surfaced?”
“I’m not sure. Probably not.”
His hand with the probe was beginning to tremble now. It was something I’d never seen him do before. He looked up.
“God bless you, Peter, for giving me the opportunity to see this, but it is danger. It is very high risk and great danger.”
I just stared at the small, grim-featured warrior. It was so appropriate, somehow. In the conversations I’d had with Bowman and Catlin, the chess set had been an abstract concept. I never really understood what we all were talking about. Seeing a part of it for real was something I hadn’t been prepared for. It radiated a raw power.