Rembrandt's Ghost Read online

  ‘‘What are you doing?’’

  ‘‘It’s to stop the bleeding,’’ said Khan.

  ‘‘What bleeding?’’

  In a single smooth motion Fu Sheng swept the long bolo knife out of its sheath and brought the razor-sharp blade down onto the man’s hand, cutting through the fingers at the first joint. The little stubs of flesh bounced with the blade and dropped down onto the deck of the salon. White-faced,the man in the boxers stared down at the blood and the remains of his hand. Fu Sheng re-sheathed the bolo and pulled the surgical tubing even tighter. The bleeding from the stubs of the fingers slowed. The blond-haired man looked as though he was going to faint. On the settee the naked woman stared at the ruined hand and the chunks of flesh on the deck and vomited.

  ‘‘It’s a one-ounce gold bar from the Nippon Ginko Bank. Japanese. World War Two vintage. Do you recognize it?’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ answered the man, teeth clenched.

  ‘‘You sold it to a Malay bullion dealer on Labuan named Wei Yang.’’ Labuan was a freeport island a few kilometers off the coast of Brunei.

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Where did you get it?’’

  ‘‘A guy I met . . . in a brothel. Chinese.’’

  ‘‘What was his name?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t ask.’’

  ‘‘Where did he get it?’’

  ‘‘He took it from a boat.’’

  ‘‘What boat?’’

  ‘‘A smuggler. Tried to take him. This guy took them instead.’’

  ‘‘He killed them?’’

  ‘‘Yes. Killed all of them.’’

  ‘‘How many?’’

  ‘‘Five.’’

  ‘‘What kind of boat?’’

  ‘‘Looked like an old pearling lugger. Could have been an old trawler. Hundred tons maybe. Some American turned it into a live-aboard years ago. The smuggler killed him, took it. Fast, big engines. Not enough guns, though.’’ The man with the ruined hand made a deep moaning sound. His face was the color of ash. Shock. He’d pass out in a few minutes.

  ‘‘Did the boat have a name?’’

  ‘‘Pedang Emas.’’

  Gold Sword.

  ‘‘Out of what port?’’

  ‘‘He didn’t say.’’

  ‘‘Zamboanga?’’

  ‘‘Maybe. Maybe it’s a gypsy. No port.’’

  ‘‘Why did he tell you all this?’’

  ‘‘He wanted to sell me the gold bar. He was drunk. Full of himself. Boasting.’’

  ‘‘Where did this happen and when?’’

  ‘‘Two months ago. Kampong Sugut.’’

  A village off the coast in Kudat Province. The east coast on the Sulu Sea. Three nights’ journey in the Black Dragon. The Gold Sword had probably made the lucrative run from Zamboanga carrying anything from drugs to weapons from the Chinese mainland.

  ‘‘Did the Chinaman question the smuggler about the gold bar?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know.’’

  Khan looked up and nodded at Fu Sheng. He unsheathed the bolo and raised it. The man with the mutilated hand winced and jerked away.

  ‘‘Did he ask about the gold bar?’’ Khan repeated.

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘What did the smuggler say?’’

  ‘‘Some story. Stupid story.’’

  ‘‘What story?’’

  ‘‘A man on a raft.’’

  ‘‘What about him?’’

  ‘‘He was wearing a uniform. What was left of one.’’

  ‘‘What kind of uniform?’’

  ‘‘He said Japanese.’’

  ‘‘Japanese?’’

  ‘‘World War Two.’’

  ‘‘And the gold?’’

  ‘‘He offered it to the smuggler if he would take him aboard their boat. He said he had more. The smuggler tortured him. He died before he could tell him where it was from.’’

  ‘‘A crazy story.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, crazy.’’

  ‘‘Kampong Sugut.’’

  ‘‘I told you already.’’

  Khan thought about the currents and the winds, imagining the raft and its occupant. He reached out and picked up the little gold wafer, rubbing the soft metal between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘‘The little girl,’’ said Khan.

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘The little girl who was on this boat.’’

  ‘‘What about her?’’

  ‘‘You raped her, left her and her mother for dead.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, so?’’

  ‘‘What was her name?’’

  ‘‘What are you talking about?’’

  ‘‘Do you even know her name? You rape a child and you have no idea who she was?’’

  ‘‘Screw you.’’

  ‘‘Dia leher,’’ said Khan to Fu Sheng. He grabbed the man and forced his head back, exposing the throat. Khan curled his hand into a fist and punched the man as hard as he could, crushing the small bones and muscles in the larynx and rupturing the thyroid cartilage or Adam’s apple. The man’s throat immediately swelled and closed directly above the trachea, effectively stopping his breathing. His face began to turn blue and he started to struggle as he began suffocating. The girl looked on, horrified.

  ‘‘What’s happening?’’ she screamed. ‘‘What are you doing?’’

  Khan punched the man a second time, breaking his nose and teeth and sending blood flooding down his sinus passages and his throat, drowning him now as well as suffocating him.

  ‘‘Bring him on deck,’’ he said to Fu Sheng in Malay. Khan slid out of the narrow booth and went out into the fresh air again, breathing in the heavy, ripe scent of the river and the jungle. Behind him Fu Sheng dragged the choking, dying man, whose eyes were bulging with terror now, his lungs desperately trying to suck in oxygen through his ruined throat. ‘‘Throw him over the side,’’ said Khan. He reached into the left pocket of his uniform blouse and took out a thin, hand-rolled kerak cigarette, lighting it with a kitchen match. He watched as Fu Sheng pushed the dying man over the side and into the muddy water. The man went under and then rose up again, arms splashing the surface of the water. The man’s face was very dark now and his long hair was plastered wetly across his features. He jerked hard as the first of the huge crocodiles struck him invisibly from below. He made a strangled, screaming noise as the second reptile tore into his midsection, ripping away his legs and groin. The first croc surged upward out on the water, waggling the man’s torso in the air, his intestines squirting out around the immense, gleaming teeth. The man was still alive, head thrown back, his hands flapping weakly as the crocodile twisted away and brought its jaws together, crushing the man’s ribs and chest, then carrying him below the surface.

  ‘‘The story about the Japanese sailor again,’’ said Fu Sheng.

  ‘‘You believe it?’’ Khan asked.

  ‘‘It is the third time we have heard it now.’’

  ‘‘There have been rumors of it for years.’’

  ‘‘He had a place. Kampong Sugut.’’

  ‘‘What do you think, old friend?’’

  ‘‘I think rumors are rumors and facts are facts.’’

  Khan smiled. ‘‘What of old wives’ tales and children’s stories?’’

  ‘‘You mean Naga Pulau?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’ Naga Pulau, Dragon Island, the Isle of Storms, mythological home of Kinabalu and Yamato ne Orochi. The Three Treasures and Kusanagi, the Sacred Sword. The legendary island, wreathed in mist, surrounded by reefs and a thousand wrecks, somewhere lurking in the South China Seas like every sailor’s nightmare nemesis. Perhaps even the origin of the King Kong story or even Jurassic Park.

  Fu Sheng made a snorting sound. ‘‘I think dragons are for video games and white women pretending that they know something of feng shui. I think old wives’ tales are for old wives and children’s stories are for children. I have sailed these seas since I was a boy and have never seen it. T
here is no such place as Naga Pulau.’’

  Khan laughed, puffing on his clove cigarette. ‘‘You are a sour old man.’’

  ‘‘True, but at least I am alive to be that way, unlike our Surfer Dude Bandit friend.’’ Fu Sheng shook his head. ‘‘He was really called that?’’

  ‘‘Apparently so.’’

  ‘‘The Americans are truly a strange race. They are very much like their cartoons on Saturday mornings.’’ Fu Sheng was a long-standing fan of the Animaniacs. He looked down at the fast-flowing muddy river. ‘‘What are we going to do now?’’

  ‘‘We will proceed. I will take Black Dragon to Kampong Sugut. You follow with the sailboat. We will meet there in five days.’’

  ‘‘What about our friends from Amsterdam?’’

  ‘‘We missed our chance once. We will not miss again. Find me the Batavia Queen.’’

  16

  The wardroom of the Batavia Queen was a large, low-ceilinged room, forward of the engine covering and directly below the bridge. Originally intended as the officers’ mess when it was a minesweeper, it had been paneled somewhere along the way in cheap plywood and fitted out with a tuck shop for the whole crew. The deck was painted a bilious green. There were a few booths against the bulkheads and three tables bolted down. Shelves had been placed here and there over the years, some fitted with small appliances like a toaster oven, a microwave, and a giant boom box, others stacked with dry goods and ratty-looking paperbacks or magazines.

  Supposedly overseen by Bazooki, the steward, the cleaning and operation of the wardroom were actually done on a catch-as-catch-can basis divided among everyone on the twelve-man crew, including Briney Hanson, the captain. Given that fact, it was surprisingly clean and tidy, with an overpowering scent of some sort of industrial-strength cleaner that made Finn Ryan almost gag with the wafting odor of a synthetic pine forest.

  The Queen’s engines droned in a dull, idling hum barely turning over while the ship stood against the fueling wharf in the Jurong Docks area of Singapore Harbor. Through the portholes on the port side, Finn could see across the dark rooftops of the Jurong warehouses to the neon strip of Pioneer Road and beyond it to the Ayer Rajah Expressway. New York might have been the city that never slept, but Singapore was the city that never stopped. It was almost three in the morning and the flow of traffic on the expressway was a never diminishing thunder of engines and blur of headlights. She tried to concentrate on Briney Hanson’s story about the chubby police officer, this Lazlo Aragas, who sounded like something out of an old Humphrey Bogart movie, but her eyes kept drooping with the need for sleep. Hanson had been talking since they’d arrived on board the rusty old freighter and she was still confused.

  It was obvious that Billy was still confused as well, Finn thought. ‘‘So Aragas is after this pirate—this Malay you claim was the one who blew up my boat?’’ he said.

  ‘‘From what I hear, Khan is more of a revolutionarythan a pirate, and if he is a pirate, he’s the Robin Hood sort.’’

  ‘‘Steals from the rich, gives to the poor, you mean?’’ Billy asked.

  Hanson nodded. ‘‘Something like that.’’

  ‘‘Yet he’s got the connections to blow up a boat in Amsterdam and have us kidnapped in London?’’

  Hanson shrugged. ‘‘Apparently,’’ he said. ‘‘And I’m not surprised. If a man in a cave in Afghanistan can blow up the World Trade Center in New York, why not Khan? It’s a small world these days. Paris for lunch, Fiji for the weekend.’’

  ‘‘I suppose you’re right,’’ grunted Billy.

  ‘‘But you think this has more to do with money?’’ Finn asked.

  ‘‘I don’t believe Aragas is simply interested in bringing a pirate to justice.’’

  ‘‘So you believe this story about the Japanese submarine?’’ Billy said, his skepticism obvious in his tone.

  ‘‘I believe that Aragas believes it. Everything about the man smells of greed. If he thinks Khan has found some kind of treasure, he wants his cut, if not the whole thing.’’

  ‘‘What about this CISCO bunch he works for?’’

  ‘‘A private sector of the Singapore Police Force, affiliated with the Singapore Armed Forces and the Coast Guard.’’

  ‘‘Corrupt?’’

  ‘‘Does the pope still eat fish on Fridays?’’

  ‘‘Then you think Aragas is using CISCO to get the treasure for himself?’’

  ‘‘Yes. There might be others in it with him, but he’s the boss.’’

  ‘‘And we’re in the middle.’’

  ‘‘I never should have left Columbus,’’ said Finn, yawning. ‘‘Okay, then where do we go from here?’’

  ‘‘Away from Singapore for one thing. It’s one of the most expensive port facilities in the world. I’d like to be out of here as soon as we’re finished fueling. That’s the last time I’ll be able to fill her bunkers on the Boegart Shipping line of credit.’’ Hanson looked across the wardroom table at Finn and Billy. ‘‘As their new masters, you’ll have that responsibility now. The Queen is still willing and able to work, but freighters run on bunker C and hauling contracts, not pipe dreams and buried treasure.’’

  Billy reached into his jacket, took out his bill-fold, and withdrew a credit card. He dropped it on the table with a metallic clicking sound. It was anodized black with titanium letters and numbers on it.

  Hanson picked up the card and examined it. He tapped it against the table. Definitely not plastic. ‘‘I thought those were just urban legends,’’ he said.

  ‘‘That particular urban legend will pay for your bunker C from now on,’’ said Billy. ‘‘The last place Pieter Boegart was seen was the island of Labuan. Can you get us there?’’

  ‘‘I’ll lay in a course now.’’ Hanson grinned, dropping the card back onto the table.

  The journey took them a little more than three days, moving through the Singapore Straits and the Api Passage, then following the mangrove line of Borneo’s west coast northward on a track that would eventually have taken them back to Bataan and Manila. The weather was clear and fine, the hot sun burning down on the old ship, making the rusty deck plates and the bulkheads too hot to touch with a bare hand or foot. The air-conditioning units were set into a constant roaring symphony that played in concert with the throbbing engines, the gentle pounding of the sea against the hull, and the dissonant clanging of Run-Run McSeveney’s monkey wrench against some stubborn piece of machinery as well as the constant, inventive, and multinational cadence of his swearing.

  Finn used the time to roam the ship, looking into every corner from the steering gear platform in the stern to the paint and lamp room in the bow and everything in between, all of it strangely intoxicating and exciting as though she’d been born to live in an environment of the smells of the sea, hot oil, and old rope. She got to know the crew, helping McSeveney lubricate his precious engines, catching fish on a long line over the side with Toshi Minimoto, the Japanese cook, which she then helped him prepare in the cramped little galley behind the deckhouse and listened to Elisha Santoro describing the geography of the places they could see no more than a mile or two away along the coast.

  Billy spent most of his time on the bridge with Hanson, trying to get a feel for the complexities of what it was like skippering an old-fashioned tramp steamer like the Batavia Queen. He quickly learned that it wasn’t like sailing in the Thames or even across the English Channel. Here there were a dozen different kinds of channel markers and danger buoys in colors that came in stripes, diamonds, and quarters and shapes like cones, circles, spars dolphins, and spindles—each shape, color, and combination having a different meaning.

  ‘‘It’s worse than driving a bloody car or piloting an airplane.’’

  ‘‘And it’s different wherever you go. There’s supposed to be a unified system but the Malays, the Brunei, the Vietnamese. and the Chinese all have their own little variations.’’

  Worse than the buoys and ocean signals were th
e unseen dangers of reef shoals and what Hanson called ‘‘foul ground,’’ visible only at low tide. Between Singapore and Labuan, there were almost a thousand islands, twice that many almost invisibleatolls, and ten times as many shoals. To make matters worse, the Palawan Passage, as it was called, was one of the most heavily used in the world. Given the size and inertia of the ships involved, it was roughly equivalent to driving in Los Angeles rush-hour traffic and doing it without traffic lights or exit ramps.

  The physical dangers ranged from the hidden rocks at Badas Kepulauan to the widespread shoals beyond Telok Tambelan. Even the terminology was strange and confusing. A malang was a reef, or a shoal, but so was a napu. A cape was a tandjong; a smooth sea was tenang. Sawang was a narrows, selatan was south, and sungai was a river. A tukoh was a sunken rock; a trumbu was a reef that dried. Tjeck was a shallows and terumbu was a connecting channel.

  ‘‘And most of the time, you need to know the words in Dutch as well, because some of the best charts are the old Dutch ones,’’ laughed Hanson. ‘‘Keeps you on your toes, believe me.’’

  Labuan, derived from the Malay word for ‘‘anchorage,’’ is a thirty-square-mile island of low jungle that looks like the ponderous three-toed footprint of some giant Godzilla-like dinosaur with all three toes pointing to the tiny kingdom of Brunei on the mainland. In between the second and third toes is a deepwater harbor and a town of seventy thousand that was once called Victoria back in the days of the white rajahs but was now called, somewhat less romantically, Bandar Labuan, or Labuan City. Originally used as a naval base against pirates and then as a location for the Singapore-Hong Kong Telegraph cable, Labuan was never much more than a colonial backwater.

  When it joined the Malay Federation in the eighties, some attempt was made to encourage Labuan as a center for offshore banking, a freeport, and a petroleum center, but nothing really worked and by and large the small population seems to prefer it that way. Qualified technical personnel working in the petroleum refinery and at the huge government shipyards live in neat, subsidized high-rise accommodation in the center of the town along with a scattering of tourist hotels, while the unskilled laborers and their families live in the shacks on stilts of the kampung ayer, or water villages, on the far side of the harbor on the shore of the island’s middle ‘‘toe.’’