ething else in
mind.
But first his victims need to be properly terrified. "Do you know what
could happen to you? Hmm? Do you?"
Neither Rudy nor Angelo answers. It is not the sort of question that
really needs answering.
Göring answers it for them by reaching out with his riding crop and
lifting up the curtain. Harsh blue light, reflected from snow, peals into
the coach. Göring shuts his eyes and looks the other way.
They are in the middle of an open area, surrounded by tall barbed wire
fences, filled with long rows of dark barracks. In the center, a tall stack
pours smoke into a white sky. SS troops in greatcoats and jackboots pace
around, blowing into their hands. Just a few yards away from them, on an
adjacent railway siding, a gang of wretches in striped clothing are at work
in, and around, a boxcar, unloading pale cargo. A large number of naked
human bodies have become all frozen together in a solid, tangled mass inside
the boxcar, and the prisoners are at work with axes, bucksaws, and prybars,
dismantling them and throwing the parts onto the ground. Because they are
frozen solid, there is no blood, and so the entire operation is startlingly
clean. The double glazed windows of Göring's coach block sound so
effectively that the impact of a big fire ax on a frozen abdomen comes
through as a nearly imperceptible thud.
One of the prisoners turns towards them, carrying a thigh toward a
wheelbarrow, and risks a direct look at the Reichsmarschall's train. This
prisoner has a pink triangle sewn to the breast of his uniform. The
prisoner's eyes are trying to probe through the window, past the curtain,
trying to make a human connection with someone on the inside of the coach.
Rudy stiffens in panic for a moment, thinking that the prisoner sees him.
Then Göring withdraws the riding crop and the curtain falls. A few moments
later, the train begins to move again.
Rudy looks at his lover. Angelo is sitting frozen, just like one of
those corpses, with his hands over his face.
Göring flicks his crop dismissively. "Get out," he says.
"What?" ask Rudy and Angelo simultaneously.
Göring laughs heartily. "No, no! I don't mean get out of the train! I
mean, Angelo, get out of this coach. I want to talk to Herr Doktor Professor
von Hacklheber in private. You may wait in the parlor car."
Angelo leaves eagerly. Göring waves his crop at a couple of hovering
aides, and they leave too. Göring and Rudy are alone together.
"I am sorry to show you these unpleasant things," Göring says. "I
simply wanted to impress upon you the importance of keeping secrets."
"I can assure the Reichsmarschall that "
Göring shushes him with a wave of the crop. "Don't be tedious. I know
that you have sworn any number of great oaths, and been through all of the
indoctrination concerning secrecy. I have no doubt of your sincerity. But it
is all just words, and not good enough for the work that I wish you to begin
doing for me. To work for me, you must see the thing I have shown you, so
that you can really understand the stakes."
Rudy looks at the floor, takes a deep breath, and forces out the words:
"It would be a great honor to work for you, Reichsmarschall. But since
you have access to so many of the great museums and libraries of Europe,
there is only one small favor I, as a scholar, might humbly request of you."
***
Back in the church basement in Norrsbruck, Sweden, Rudy yells, and
drops a cigarette on the floor, having allowed it to burn down to his
fingers, like a slow fuse, while relating this story. He puts his hand to
his mouth, sucks on the finger briefly, then remembers his manners and
composes himself. "Göring knew a surprising amount about cryptology, and was
aware of my work on the Enigma. He didn't trust the machine. He told me that
he wanted me to come up with the very best cryptosystem in the world, one
that could never be broken he wanted to communicate (he said) with U boats
at sea and with installations in Manila and Tokyo. And so, I came up with
such a system."
"And you handed it over," Bischoff says.
"Yes," Rudy says, and here, for the first time all day, he allows
himself a slight smile. "And it is a reasonably good system, despite the
fact that I crippled it before giving it to Göring."
"Crippled it?" Root asks. "What do you mean?"
"Imagine a new engine for an aeroplane. Imagine it has sixteen
cylinders. It is more powerful than any other engine in the world. Even so,
a mechanic can do certain things very simple things to kill its performance.
Such as pulling out half of the spark plug wires. Or tampering with the
timing. This is an analogy to what I did with Göring's cryptosystem."
"So what went wrong?" Shaftoe asks. "They figured out that you had
crippled it?"
Rudolf von Hacklheber laughs. "Not very likely. Maybe half a dozen
people in the world could figure that out. No, what went wrong was that you
fellows, you Allies, landed in Sicily, and then in Italy, and not long
afterwards, Mussolini was overthrown, the Italians withdrew from the Axis,
and Angelo, like all of the other hundreds of thousands of Italian nationals
living and working in the Reich, fell under suspicion. His services were
badly needed as a test pilot, but his situation was tenuous. He volunteered
for the most dangerous work of all flying the new Messerschmidt prototype,
with the turbine jet engine. This proved his loyalty in the eyes of some.
"Remember that, at the same time, I was decrypting the message traffic
of Detachment 2702. I kept these results to myself, as I no longer felt any
particular loyalty to the Third Reich. There had been a great burst of
activity around the middle of April, and then no messages for a while as if
the detachment had ceased to exist. At exactly the same time, Göring's
people were very active for a few days they were afraid that Bischoff was
going to broadcast the secret of U 553."
"So you know about that?" Bischoff asks.
"Natürlich. U 553 was Göring's treasure ship. Its existence was
supposed to be a secret. When you, Sergeant Shaftoe, turned up on board
Bischoff's U boat, talking about this thing, Göring was very concerned for a
few days. But then everything settled down, and there was no Detachment 2702
traffic through the late spring and early summer. Mussolini was overthrown
in late June. Then the troubles began for me and Angelo. The Wehrmacht was
defeated by the Russians at Kursk absolute proof, for those who needed it,
that the Eastern Front is lost. Since then Göring has redoubled his efforts
to get his gold, jewels, and art out of the country." Rudy looks at
Bischoff. "I am frankly surprised that he has not tried to recruit you."
"Dönitz has," Bischoff admits.
Rudy nods; it all fits.
"During all of this," Rudy continues, "I received only one message
intercept in the Detachment 2702 code. It took my machinery several weeks to
break it. It was a message from Enoch Root, stating that he and Sergeant
Shaftoe were in Norrsbruck, Sweden, and requesting further instructions. I
was aware that Kapitänleutnant Bischoff was also in the same town, and
became interested. I decided that this would be a good place for me and
Angelo to escape to."
"Why!?" Shaftoe says. "Of all the places "
"Enoch and I had never met. But there are certain old family
connections," Rudy says, "and certain shared interests."
Bischoff mutters something in German.
"The connections make a very long story. I would have to write a whole
fucking book," Rudy says irritably.
Bischoff looks only slightly appeased, but Rudy goes on anyway. "It
took us several weeks to make preparations. I packed up the Leibniz Archiv "
"Hold on the what?"
"Certain materials I use in my research. They had been scattered among
many libraries, all over Europe. Göring brought them all together for me it
makes men like him feel powerful, to do these little favors for their
slaves. I departed from Berlin last week, on the pretext of going to
Hannover, to do my Leibniz research. Instead I made my way to Sweden through
channels that were quite involved "
"No shit! How'd you manage that little stunt?" Shaftoe asks.
Rudy looks at Enoch Root as if expecting him to answer the question.
Root shakes his head minutely.
"It would be too tedious to explain here," Rudy says, sounding mildly
annoyed. "I found Enoch. We got a message to Angelo saying that I was safe
here. Angelo then tried to make his escape in the Messerschmidt prototype,
with the results that we have all seen."
A long pause.
"And now, here we are!" says Bobby Shaftoe.
"Here we are," agrees Rudolf von Hacklheber.
"What do you think we should do?" asks Shaftoe.
"I think we should form a secret conspiracy," says Rudolf von
Hacklheber offhandedly, as if proposing to go in together on a fifth of
bourbon. "We should all make our way separately to Manila and, once we
arrive, we should take some, if not all, of the gold that the Nazis and the
Nipponese have been hoarding there."
"What do you want with a shitload of gold?" Bobby asks. "You're already
rich."
"There are many deserving charities," Rudy says, looking significantly
at Root. Root averts his eyes.
There is another long pause.
"I can provide secure lines of communication, which is the sine qua non
of any secret conspiracy," says Rudolf von Hacklheber. "We will use the full
strength, uncrippled version of the same cryptosystem that I invented for
Göring. Bischoff can be our man on the inside, since Dönitz wants him so
badly. Sergeant Shaftoe can be "
"Don't even say it, I already know," says Bobby Shaftoe.
He and Bischoff look at Root, who's sitting on his hands, staring at
Rudy. Looking oddly nervous.
"Enoch the Red, your organization can get us to Manila," von Hacklheber
says.
Shaftoe snorts. "Don't you think the Catholic Church has its hands sort
of full right now?"
"I'm not talking about the Church," Rudy says. "I'm talking about
Societas Eruditorum."
Root freezes.
"Congratulations there, Rudy!" Shaftoe says. "You surprised the padre.
I didn't think it could be done. Now would you mind telling us what the fuck
you're talking about?"
Chapter 59 HOARD
Like a client of one of your less reputable pufferfish sushi chefs,
Randy Waterhouse does not move from his assigned seat for a full ninety
minutes after the jumbo leaves Ninoy Aquino International Airport. A can of
beer is embedded in the core of his spiraled hand. His arm lies on the extra
wide Business Class armrest, a shank on a slab. He does not turn his head,
or turret his eyeballs, even, to look out the window at northern Luzon. All
that's out there is jungle, which has two sets of connotations going for it
now. One is the spooky Tarzan/Stanley & Livingstone/"The horror, the
horror"/natives are restless/Charlie's out there somewhere waiting for us
kind. The second is the more modern and enlightened sort of Jacques
Cousteauian teeming repository of brilliant and endangered species lungs of
the planet kind. Neither really works for Randy anymore, which is why
despite the state of hibernatory torpor he shunted into the moment his ass
impacted on the navy blue leather of the seat, he feels a little spike of
irritation every time one of the other passengers, peering out a window,
pronounces the word "jungle." To him, it is just a shitload of trees now,
trees going on for miles and miles, up the little hilly willies and down the
little hilly willies. It is easy, now, for him to understand tropical
denizens' shockingly frank and blunt craving to drive through this sort of
territory in the largest and widest available bulldozers (the only parts of
his body that move during the first hour and a half of the flight are
certain facial muscles which pull the corners of his mouth back into an
ironic rictus when he imagines what Charlene would think of this it is just
too perfect Randy goes off on a Business Foray and comes back identifying
with people who bulldoze rainforests). Randy wants to bulldoze the jungle,
all of it. Actually, thermonuclear weapons, detonated at a suitable height,
would do the job faster. He needs to rationalize this urge. He will do so,
as soon as he solves the running out of planetary oxygen problem.
By the time it even occurs to him to lift the beer to his lips, the
heat of his body has gone into it, and his hand has become as chilly and
stiff as an uncooked rolled roast. For that matter, his whole body has
adjourned into some kind of metabolic recess, and his brain is not exactly
purring at high RPM's either. He feels kind of the way he does, sometimes,
the day before he comes down with a total body cold and flu scenario, one of
those crushing viral Tet Offensives that, every few years, swats you out of
the land of the fully living for a week or two. It is as if about three
quarters of his body's resources of nutrients and energy have been diverted
to the task of manufacturing quintillions of viruses. At the currency
exchange window of NAIA, Randy had stood behind a Chinese man who, just
before he stepped back from the window with his money, unloaded a Sneeze of
such titanic force that the rolling pressure wave turbulating outwards from
his raw, flapping facial orifices caused the wall of bulletproof glass
separating him from the moneychangers to flex slightly, so that the
reflection of the Chinese man, Randy behind him, the lobby of NAIA and the
sunlit passenger dropoff lane outside underwent a subtle warpage. The
viruses must have roiled back from the glass, reflected like light, and
enveloped Randy. So maybe Randy is the personal vector of this year's
version of the flu named after some city in East Asia that annually tours
the United States, just barely preceded by rush shipments of flu vaccine. Or
maybe it's Ebola.
Actually, he feels fine. Other than the fact that his mitochondria have
gone on strike, or that his thyroid seems to be failing (perhaps it was
secretly removed by black market organ transplanters? He makes a mental note
to check for new scars in the next mirror) he is not experiencing any viral
symptoms at all.
It is some kind of post stress thing. This is the first time he has
relaxed in a couple of weeks. Not once has he sat down in a bar with a beer,
or put his feet up on a desk, or just collapsed like a decaying corpse in
front of the television set. Now his body is telling him it's payback time.
He does not sleep; he does not feel drowsy at all. Actually, he's been
sleeping rather well. But his body refuses to move for an hour, and then
most of another hour, and to the extent his brain is working at all it can
only chase its tail.
But there is something that he could be doing. This is why laptops were
invented, so that important business persons would not fritter away long
flights relaxing. He can see it right there on the floor in front of him. He
knows he should reach for it. But it would break the spell. He feels as if
water condensed on his skin and froze into a carapace that will shatter as
soon as he moves any part of his body. This is, he realizes, exactly how a
laptop computer must feel when it drops into its power saving mode.
Then a flight attendant is there holding a menu in front of his face
and saying something that jolts him like a cattle prod. He nearly jumps out
of his seat, spills his beer a little, gropes for the menu. Before he can
drop back into his demi coma, he continues the motion and reaches down for
his laptop. The seat next to him is empty and he can put his dinner over
there while he works on the computer.
People around him are watching CNN live, from CNN Center in Atlanta not
a canned thing on tape. According to the plethora of pseudotechnical data
cards jammed into the seatbacks, which Randy is the only person who ever
reads, this plane has some kind of antenna that can keep a lock on a
communications satellite as it flies across the Pacific. Furthermore, it's
two way, so you can even transmit e mail. Randy spends a while familiarizing
himself with the instructions, checks the rates, as if he really gives a
shit how much it costs, then jacks the thing into the anus of his laptop. He
opens up the laptop and checks his e mail. Traffic is low because everyone
in Epiphyte knows he's en route somewhere.
Nevertheless, there are three messages from Kia, Epiphyte's only actual
employee, the administrative assistant for the whole company. Kia works in a
totally alienated, abstracted office in the Springboard Capital corporate
incubator complex in San Mateo. It is some sort of a federal regulation that
nascent high tech companies must not hire pudgy fifty year old support
staff, the way big established companies do. They must hire topologically
enhanced twenty year olds with names that sound like new models of cars.
Since most hackers are white males, their companies are disaster areas when
it comes to diversity, and it follows that all of the diversity must be
concentrated in the one or two employees who are not hackers. In the part of
a federal equal opportunity form where Randy would simply check a box
labeled CAUCASIAN, Kia would have to attach multiple sheets on which her
family tree would be ramified backwards through time ten or twelve
generations until reaching ancestors who could actually be pegged to one
specific ethnic group without glossing anything over, and those ethnic
groups would be intimidatingly hip ones not Swedes, let's say, but Lapps,
and not Chinese but Hakka, and not Spanish but Basque. Instead of doing
this, on her job app for Epiphyte she simply checked "other" and then wrote
in TRANS ETHNIC. In fact, Kia is trans– just about every system of
human categorization, and what she isn't trans– she is post .
Anyway, Kia does a great job (it is part of the unspoken social
contract with these people that they always do an absolutely fantastic job)
and she has sent e mail to Randy notifying him that she has recently fielded
four trans Pacific telephone calls from America Shaftoe, who wants to know
Randy's whereabouts, plans, state of mind, and purity of spirit. Kia has
informed Amy that Randy's on his way to California and has somehow
insinuated, or Amy has somehow figured out, that the purpose of the visit is
NOT BUSINESS. Randy senses a small pane of glass shattering over a
neurological alarm button somewhere. He is in trouble. This is divine
retribution for his having dared to sit still and not do anything for ninety
whole minutes. He uses his word processor to whip out a note explaining to
Amy that he needs to straighten out some paperwork in order to sever the
last clinging tendrils of his dead, dead, dead relationship with Charlene
(which was such a lousy idea to begin with that it causes him to lie awake
at night questioning his own judgment and fitness to live), and that he has
to be in California in order to do it. He faxes the note to Semper Marine in
Manila, and also faxes it to Glory IV in case Amy's out on the water.
He then does something that probably means he's certifiably crazy. He
gets up and strolls up and down the business class aisle on pretext of using
the bathroom, and checks out the people sitting nearby, paying special
attention to their luggage, the stuff they've jammed into the overhead
compartments, the bags under the seats in front of them. He is looking for
anything that might contain a Van Eck phreaking type of antenna. It is a
completely useless thing to do, because just about any type of luggage might
contain such an antenna and he would never know it. Furthermore, any actual
spy who had been planted on this plane to eavesdrop on his computer would
not be sitting there holding up a big antenna and peering at an
oscilloscope. But performing the check (like checking the rates for live
data transmissions to the satellite) is sort of an empty ritual that makes
him feel vaguely responsible and arguably non stupid.
Returning to his seat, he fires up OrdoEmacs, which is a marvelously
paranoid piece of software invented by John Cantrell. Emacs in its normal
form is the hacker's word processor, a text editor that offers little in the
way of fancy formatting capabilities but does the basic job of editing plain
text very well. Your normally cryptographically paranoid hacker would create
files using Emacs and then encrypt them with Ordo later. But if you forget
to encrypt them, or if your laptop gets stolen before you get a chance to,
or your plane crashes and you die but your laptop is sieved out of the muck
by baffled but dogged crash investigators and falls into the hands of
federal authorities, your files can be read. For that matter it is possible
even to find ghostly traces of old bits on a hard drive's sectors even after
the file has been overwritten with new data.
OrdoEmacs, on the other hand, works exactly like regular Emacs, except
that it encrypts everything before writing it out to disk. At no time is
plaintext ever laid down on a disk by OrdoEmacs the only place it exists in
its plain, readable form is in the pixels on the screen, and in the volatile
RAM of the computer, whence it vanishes the moment power is shut down. Not
only that, but it's coupled to a screensaver that uses the little built in
CCD camera in the laptop to check to see if you are actually there. It can't
recognize your face, but it can tell whether or not a vaguely human shaped
form is sitting in front of it, and if that vaguely human shaped form goes
away, even for a fraction of a second, it will drop into a screen saver that
will blank the display and freeze the machine until such time as you type in
a password, or biometrically verify your identity through voice recognition.
Randy opens up a document template that Epiphyte uses for internal
memoranda and begins to lay out certain facts that will be fresh, and no
doubt stimulating, to Avi, Beryl, John, Tom, and Eb.
MY TRIP TO THE JUNGLE
or
THE DRUMS OF THE HUKS
or
GET A LOAD OF THIS
or
HE SQUEEZED MY TESTICLES
or
THE WEIRD TURN PRO
a tale of adventure and discovery in the majestic rain forest of
northern Luzon
by
Randall Lawrence Waterhouse
As I stepped on this unknown middle aged Filipina's feet during an ill
advised ballroom dancing foray, she leaned close to me and uttered some
latitude and longitude figures with a conspicuously large number of
significant digits of precision, implying a maximum positional error on the
order of the size of a dinner plate. Gosh, was I ever curious! Subject
provided these numbers as part of a conversational gambit/thought experiment
concerning the inherent value (as in monetary) of information, a subject
(coincidentally?) of interest to us, the Management Team of Epiphyte(2)
Corp. Examination of high res maps of Luzon indicated that the lat. and
long, in question were in a hilly (let's just go ahead and call it
mountainous) region some 250 km north of Manila. For those of you not
familiar with WW2 history, this area was within the final perimeter
controlled by General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya and conqueror of
Singapore, at the end of that war, when Gen. MacArthur had driven him and
his approx. l0^5 troops out of the populated lowlands. And no, this is not
just a fundamentally irrelevant historical note, as we shall see.
Relayed said data to one Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe (refer to my
exceptionally colorful and readable status reports on cable survey for more
anecdotal material concerning same) who asserted " someone is trying to send
you a message" (note: all cheesy dialog hereinafter is DMS's) and offered
his assistance with a vigor bordering on scary aggressiveness. DMS is
energetic and enterprising to a degree that from time to time leaves certain
persons (e.g. those burdened with a petty fear of death or torture) uneasy
(see my prior speculation as to possibility DMS may have been born with a
redundant Y chromosome) Primary role of Yours Truly became as follows:
source of repetitious and evidently irritating counsels of caution,
restraint, other virtues given a low priority by DMS, who cites his
longevity (which unavoidably exceeds that of Yours Truly as he was born
before me), network of close personal relationships (murky, globe spanning,
reputedly puissant), financial prosperity (commodities, e.g. precious
metals, distributed among many locations DMS declines to reveal) and (as
trump card) the corporeal perfection of his girlfriend (she must carry an
umbrella while out of doors lest her face cause pilots of overflying
commercial airliners to pitch forward, dumb and inert, onto their control
yokes) all as proof that the ideas shared by Yours Truly vis a vis how to
avoid death, dismemberment, etc. need not be given more than the most
cursory attention. Yours Truly's only bargaining chips were appropriately
and ironically enough, information: namely the final few digits of the lat.
and long, which were with held from DMS lest he simply go there himself and
check them out (note: DMS is honest to a fault, and so the concern is not
that DMS might steal or appropriate anything but that situation would get
out of hand, to the extent it ever was in hand to begin with)
Plans were made for a journey ("mission" in DMS parlance) to said lat.
and long. Extra batteries were purchased for the GPS receiver (see attached
expense report). Drinking water, etc. laid in. A jeepney was retained.
Concept of jeepney is impossible to convey fully here: a minibus, usually
named after a pop star, Biblical figure, or abstract theological concept,
whose engine & frame come from American, or Nipponese auto company but
whose entire body, seats, upholstery, & encrustations of lurid decor are
locally manufactured by high spirited artisans. Jeepneys are normally made
outside of Manila in towns or barangays (semiautonomous neighborhoods) that
specialize in same; the design, materials, style, etc. of a jeepney reflect
its provenance just as good wine allegedly betrays climate, soil, etc. of
its terroir. Ours was (anomalously) a perfectly monochromatic jeepney mfged.
out of pure stainless steel in the stainless steel fabrication specialized
bgy. of San Pablo, with (unlike normal jeepneys) no colored decorations at
all everything either stainless steel colored or (where use was made of
electric lights) pure piercing halogen white with bluish tinge nicely
complementing hue of stainless steel. Seats in back were stainless steel
benches with surprisingly ergonomic lumbar support capabilities, Name of our
jeepney was THE GRACE OF GOD. Readers of this memo will be disappointed to
know that Bong Bong Gad (sic), designer/owner/driver/proprietor of the
vehicle, anticipated the inevitable "there but for THE GRACE OF GOD go I"
witticism by unloading same on Yours Truly while we were still shaking hands
(Filipinos go in for long handshakes, and the first party to initiate
termination of a handshake usually the non Filipino is invariably left with
a nagging feeling that he is a shithead)
Yours Truly, in discreet one on one mode with DMS, adverted to lack of
windows in the rear (passenger) section of THE GRACE OF GOD as prima facie
evidence that it lacked air conditioning, a technology widely adopted in
Philippine Islands. DMS evinced skepticism as to moral fiber of Yours Truly,
commenced with a series of probing questions aimed at establishing my
commitment to Mission, fiduciary resp. to Epiphyte shareholders, level of
physical & mental vigor, and overall level of "serious" ness (being
"serious" is some kind of umbrella concept strongly correlated with my
fitness to live, to have the privilege of knowing DMS, and to go on dates
with his daughter. This gives me an opening to mention what would normally
be no one's business but my own but which in these circumstances it is
ethically mandated that I disclose, namely, that I am infatuated with
daughter of DMS and that while not exactly reciprocating these feelings at
full strength she finds me sufficiently non loathsome to have dinner with me
from time to time. It has only occurred to me at this very moment that my
pursuit of rel'nship w/the female in question, one America (sic) by name,
would in context of modern U.S. society be classified as SEXUAL HARASSMENT
and that if desired culmination is achieved it might be classified as SEXUAL
ABUSE or RAPE owing to "power imbalance" existing between me and her. Viz,
Yours Truly is on Management Team of Corp that has retained Semper Marine
for large job & provided them with majority of their revenue during last
fiscal year. Anyone with thoughts of summoning federal authorities to
apprehend me upon arrival at SFO & expose my misdeeds & subject me
to public disgrace & compulsory consciousness raising workshops is
advised to acquaint him or herself with the Shaftoes first & to at least
remain open to possibility that Dad's martial prowess in combination with
traditional feelings of psychotic protectiveness toward his female
offspring, combined with Daughter's habit of carrying large Palawan stabbing
weapon known as a kris, and Daughter's overall psychic fierceness &
physical fitness & courage exceeding that of Yours Truly, mitigate any
perceived power imbalance, particularly given that most of our interactions
take place in settings which lend themselves admirably to discreet homicide
& corpse disposal. In other words, I make you aware of this amor stuff
not as confession of personal misdeeds but to make full disclosure of
situation that could influence my judgment vis a vis Semper Marine and
conceivably negatively impact shareholder value, or, much more plausibly,
that could be SEEN as doing so by minority shareholder lawyers who infest
our industry like guinea worms, and used as pretext for legal action).
Back to the question at hand, then. Yours Truly asserted calmly
(feeling that vigorous assertions would be perceived by DMS as defensiveness
& hence a de facto confession of lack of "serious" ness) that (1) a
couple of days' travel in open AC less vehicle through Philippine hinterland
would be a day at the beach, a picnic, a walk in the park, & a sunday
stroll all rolled into one, and (2) furthermore that even if it were the
most hideous torture Yours Truly would gladly undergo it given that the
stakes, for all concerned (incl. Epiphyte shareholders) were so high and
generally Serious. In retrospect, (1) and (2) in close succession seem to
betray some kind of hedging strategy on part of Yours Truly, however at the
time DMS was mollified, formally withdrew previous accusations as to moral
fiber, etc., and divulged that use of jeepney was tactical masterstroke on
his (DMS's) part in that, where we were going, a Merc with smoked glass or
fifty thousand dollar Land Rover, or (by extension) any vehicle with
extravagances such as upholstered seats, windows with glass in them, shock
absorbers dating from post Kennedy assassination era, etc., etc. would only
draw undesired attention to Mission.
America Shaftoe remained in Manila to stay in touch with Mission via
radio & (I supposed) to call in napalm strikes should we find selves
embroiled. Bong Bong Gad & his approx. 12 yr old son/business associate
Fidel occupied front seat. DMS & Yours Truly shared rear (passenger)
section with three mysterious, precisely packed G.I. green duffel bags;
approx. 100 kilos of drinking water in plastic bottles; & two Asian
gentlemen in their 30s or 40s who exhibited stereotypical
inscrutability/impassivity/dignity, etc., etc. during the first four hours
of the journey, which were spent simply trying to drive from center of
Manila to northern outskirts of same. Nationality of these two was not
immediately evident. Many Filipinos are, racially, almost pure Chinese even
though their families have been living here for centuries. Perhaps this
explained strongly Asian features of our traveling companions and (I now had
to assume) business associates.
Proverbial ice was broken as one consequence of pig truck incident
which occurred on four lane highway, narrowed by construction to two,
leading N from Manila. Casual obsvn. of Filipino swine suggests that their
ludicrous, pink, tabloid sized ears function as heat exchangers, as do,
e.g., the tongues of dogs. They are transported in vehicles consisting of
big cage constructed on bed of a straight (as opposed to semiarticulated)
truck. Construction of such vehicles appears to tax local resources to the
point where they are only economical when maximum conceivable number of
swine are packed into confines at all times. Heat buildup ensues. Pigs adapt
by fighting their way to perimeter of cage & hanging ear/heat exchangers
out over the side to flap in the wind of the truck's motion.
The appearance of such a vehicle when approached from behind can be
easily envisioned without further description. Readers who devote a few
moments' consideration to the subject of excreta need not be pounded over
the head vis a vis what flies, sprays, drips, etc. from such vehicles
either. The Pig Truck Incident was a humorous demonstration of applied
hydrodynamics, though since no actual water was involved perhaps
"excretodynamics" or "scatodynamics" might better fit. THE GRACE OF GOD had
been following a representative Pig Truck for some miles in the hopes of
passing it. The sheer quantity of excess body heat radiating from its vast
phased array of flapping pink ears caused several of our drinking water
bottles to achieve full rolling boil and explode. Bong Bong Gad maintained a
respectful distance because of excreta hazards, which in no way simplified
the problem of passing the truck. Tension climbed to a palpable level &
Bong Bong was subjected to steadily increasing stream of good natured
heckling and unsolicited driving advice from passenger area, esp. from DMS
who viewed lingering unwelcome presence of pig truck in our planned
trajectory as personal affront & hence challenge to be overcome w/all
due pluck, vigor, can do spirit, & other qualities known to be possessed
in abundance by DMS.
After some time Bong Bong made his move, using one hand to manipulate
steering wheel and other to time share equally important responsibilities of
shifting gears and depressing the horn button. As we drew alongside the Pig
Truck (which was on my side of the jeepney) the Truck slalomed toward us as
if perhaps swerving around some real or imagined roadside hazard. The
primary horn of THE GRACE OF GOD was apparently going unheard, possibly
because it was competing for audio bandwidth against large numbers of swine
voicing their displeasure in same frequency range. With aplomb normally seen
only among senescent English butlers, Bong Bong reached up with his
horn/gearshift hand and gripped a brilliant stainless steel chain flailing
from ceiling of cab with a stainless steel crucifix on the end of it and
jerked downwards, energizing the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary honking
systems: a trio of tuba sized stainless steel horns mounted to the roof of
THE GRACE OF GOD and collectively drawing so much power that our vehicle's
speed dropped by (I would estimate) ten km/hr as its energies were diverted
into decibel production. A demi hyperbolic swath of agricultural crops
twenty miles long was flattened to the ground by the blast, and, hundreds of
miles north, the Taiwanese government, its collective ears still ringing,
filed a diplomatic protest with the Philippine ambassador. Dead whales and
dolphins washed ashore on the beaches of Luzon for days, and sonar operators
in passing U.S. Navy submarines were sent into early retirement with blood
streaming from their ears.
Terrified by this sound, all of the pigs (I would suppose) voided their
bowels just as the driver of the Pig Truck swerved violently away from us.
Certain first year physics conservation of momentum issues dictated that I
be showered with former pig bowel contents in order to enhance shareholder
value. This was evidently the funniest thing that the two Asian looking
gentlemen had ever seen and rendered them helpless for several minutes. One
of them actually retched from laughing too hard (the first time that our
vehicle's lack of windows came in handy). The other extended his hand and
introduced himself as one Jean Nguyen. This is the French male name "zhohn"
and not the Anglo female name "jeen." Jean Nguyen looked at me expectantly
after telling me his name, as did DMS, as if they were expecting me to get a
fairly obvious joke. Perhaps preoccupied with hygienic issues. I failed to
get it. and they pointed out to me that when "Jean" is pronounced like
"John" and "Nguyen" is pronounced the way a lot of Americans mangle it, the
name sounds arguably like "John Wayne," which is how I was encouraged to
address this Jean Nguyen from that point onwards. It seemed in retrospect
that I was being given an opportunity to have a small chuckle at Jean
Nguyen's expense and thereby to even the scales, in some small but
symbolically important sense, for the pig shit incident. My failure to
exploit this opportunity left everyone feeling mildly uneasy and like they
still owed me one. The other gentle man was introduced as Jackie Woo. He
spoke English with a vaguely East Indian crackle which led me to peg him,
speculatively, as a Malay Peninsula native of Chinese descent, e.g.. from
Singapore or Penang.
First day's travel got us across the central Luzon plain (rice and
sugar cane) to the town of San Jose at the foot of the southernmost
extension of the Cordillera Central (trees and bugs). By this point it was
dark, and to my relief, neither DMS nor Bong Bong was eager to brave twisty
Cordillera roads in darkness. We stayed in a guest house. At this point,
having devoted much time to detailed Pig Truck description I will elide
various details concerning San Juan, its inhabitants (of various taxonomic
phyla some of which I had never encountered until that night), the character
building nature of our lodgings and, in particular, their fanciful plumbing
system which was a credit to the imagination, though not the hydrostatic
acumen, of its anonymous creator. It was the kind of hostel that makes a
traveler eager to get an early and explosively sudden start in the morning,
which we did.
A note now about the physical properties of space, as perceived by
human beings imprisoned within bodies of limited physical capabilities. I
have long noticed that space seems to be more compressed, more involuted,
some how psychically LARGER in some places than others. Covering a distance
of three or four miles in the totally open scrublands of central Washington
State is a simple matter, and takes less than an hour on foot. and only a
few minutes if you have some kind of vehicle. Covering the same distance in
Manhattan takes much longer. It's not just that the space in Manhattan is
more physically obstructed (though it definitely is) but that there is some
kind of psychological impact that alters the way you perceive and experience
distance. You cannot see as far, and what you do see is full of people,
buildings, goods, vehicles, and other stuff that it takes your brain some
amount of effort to sort through, to process. Even if you had some kind of
magic carpet that would glide past all of the physical obstructions the
distance would seem much longer, and would take longer to cover, simply
because your mind would have to deal with more stuff.
The same thing is true of a jungle type of environment as opposed to
the plains. Traversing the physical space is basically an ongoing battle
against hundreds of different combatants each one of which is, to a
traveler, an obstruction, a hazard, or both. I.e., no matter which one of
them predominates in a given ten square meter area, you are still screwed,
as far as getting across that ten square meters is concerned. There are
roads through the jungle, but even when they are in good repair they seem
more like bottlenecks than vectors of motion, and they are never in good
repair mudslides, fallen trees, huge chuckholes, and the like block them
every few hundred meters. Also the same perceptual thing is at work here you
can't see more than a few meters in any direction, and inputs, some of
which, like butterflies, are (okay, okay) beautiful. My reason for
mentioning this is that I know that everyone who reads this probably has
multiple maps of Luzon on their wall or in their computer, which, when
consulted, will cause it to seem as if we are dealing with a triflingly
small area, and covering minuscule distances. But you must try not to think
this way and instead imagine that Luzon is effectively as large as, say, the
United States west of the Mississippi. In terms of the time it takes to get
around the place, it is at least that big.
I mention this not out of some impulse to mewl and convince you all of
how strenuously I have worked, but because until you grasp this central fact
of the effectively vast size of this part of the world. you will be
completely unable to believe the dumbfounding facts that I am slowly getting
around to revealing.
We went into the mountains. Around midday, we encountered our first
military roadblock. Distance covered from San Juan was pathetic from
cartographic p.o.v. , but in terms of unexpected hassles creatively
surmounted, wrenchingly difficult decisions made, & pits of despair
climbed out of by the emotional fingernails, should be considered
magnificent achievement on par with any given day of the Lewis & Clark
expedition, (excluding, of course, anomalous days such as their first
encounters with Ursus horribilis & their epic, stocking foot traversal
of Bitterroot Range.) Roadblock was established in the low key Filipino
style: one man in military uniform (U.S. Army castoffs) standing by roadside
smoking & beckoning. We were at a rare wide spot in the road, a place
where oncoming Chicken playing vehicles could pull aside abjectly. Four
members of Army (later pegged by insignia savvy DMS as a first lieutenant, a
sergeant, and two privates) had ensconced selves on parked Humvee type
vehicle w/absurdly long whip antenna clamped to bumper. The privates, armed
with M 16s, stiffly unfolded selves from repose & adopted positions
flanking THE GRACE OF GOD from behind, keeping their weapons pointed vaguely
at the ground, as if more worried about entomological threats than our
little band of travelers. Sergeant was armed with what I first perceived as
L shaped nightstick fashioned from parts scavenged from plumbing aisle of
home improvement store & painted black, but on further examination
proved to be a submachine gun.
Said Sergeant approached Bong Bong Gad's door & conversed with same
in Tagalog. Lieutenant was armed only with sidearm & supervised these
operations from a shaded area near the Humvee, seeming to espouse a hands
off, as opposed to micromanaging, leadership style. This inspection was
limited to the Sergeant peering in through TGOG's glassless windows &
exchanging hearty greetings with DMS (evidently Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo
spoke even less Tagalog than Yours Truly). We were then allowed to proceed,
although I noticed that the lieutenant immediately commenced a radio
transmission. "The sergeant say there are Nice People Around," Bong Bong Gad
explained to me, using a coy local euphemism for NPA, or New People's Army,
a supposedly revolutionary, but evidently somewhat feckless guerilla
organization descended in a direct line from the Hukbalahaps, or Huks, the
fighters who resisted the Nipponese occupation (but not so desultorily) in
WW2.
We then covered an amount of distance equivalent, in terms of Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt, to one more Lewis And Clark Expedition Day, a
convenient unit of distance, danger, perspirational weight loss, poor
sphincter control, wishing you were at home, exasperation, & emotional
toll which I will hereinafter abbreviate as LAC. So after 1 LAC we arrived
at another roadblock similar to the first except that here there was a troop
truck in addition to the Humvee, and some tents pitched, and a pit latrine,
whose odor & appearance suggested a long standing military presence in
this area. A luckless private was made to crawl underneath THE GRACE OF GOD
with a flashlight, inspecting its undercarriage. The three duffel bags were
removed and their contents spread out. I should mention that upon my joining
this expedition in Manila, DMS had gone through my bag with a level of
inquisitiveness annoying at the time, refused to allow me to bring certain
items (such as pharmaceuticals) and transferred remaining items to clear
plastic bags of Ziploc type which were placed in the duffels. Merits of this
highly modular approach now became clear as inspection of our cargo was
wondrously facilitated: duffels were simply upended over tarps spread on
ground & contents inspected by sight through transparent inner bags,
sometimes by feel to check for compositional inhomogeneities. Certain of
these bags contained cartons of American brand tobacco products which as
expected did not make it back into the duffels. Most of my DMS mandated
supply of alkaline AA batteries, which I had thought radically out of
proportion to projected demand, also vanished at this time. We were sent on
our way and after approx. 0.6 LAC (mostly occasioned by need to remove
downed tree from roadway) arrived at a town that appeared seemingly out of
nowhere in jungle valley, astride a river. Slept like a dead man in
startlingly decent guesthouse that night. Woke up next morning & looked
out window to observe large crowd of locals milling around in street below
in their best meshback caps & American basketball t shirts. Descended
stairs to discover DMS in dining room, strategically flanked by Jean Nguyen
& Jackie Woo, at other tables in corners of room, wearing climatically
inappropriate jackets & generally projecting the image of concealed
weapon equipped badass motherfuckers not to be trifled with.
Not wishing to interfere with this psychodrama, Yours Truly took
innocuous position at yet another table, well away from projected gunfire
corridors, accepted coffee from proprietor, declined local delicacies,
negotiated (see expense report) for loan of bowl & spoon, breakfasted
upon Cap'n Crunch & warm UHT milk from duffel bag (former had been
packed into a Ziploc that when fully loaded adopted the distinctive pillow
shape of an individual nugget of Cap'n Crunch, only much larger). Explosive
crunching noises of nuggets caused Yours Truly to feel conspicuous and
Western. Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo had declined all refreshments except
tea, the better to project image of hair trigger alertness & potential
for instantaneous violence, DMS was eating an omelette with approx. diameter
of a Hula Hoop & engaging in one short conversation after another with
locals, who were admitted through front door of building one at a time by
proprietor and allowed to present their cases to DMS as if he were a
traveling magistrate. Between two such interviews, DMS noted my presence in
room & bade me join him. I moved my Cap'n Crunch infrastructure to
corner of table not occupied by omelette & sat with him during the next
couple of dozen interviews, which were conducted in mixture of English and
Tagalog. Crowd in street dwindled gradually as they were interviewed and
then dismissed by DMS.
Subject matter of interviews could be induced by Yours Truly only by
recognizing occasional English words & adopting a basically intuitive
pattern recognition approach not amenable to rational explication here. Most
common keywords: Nippon, the Nipponese, the War, Gold, Treasure,
Excavations, Yamashita, Mass Executions. Emotional tenor of these
conversations consisted of polite but extreme skepticism on part of DMS,
while confronted by desperate need to be believed on part of interviewees.
In the end DMS did not believe any of them as far as I could discern. They
either became obstreperous & had to be shown the door (glancing warily
at Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo) or adopted a wounded & aggrieved
stance. DMS was amused by the former & disgusted by the latter. Yours
Truly mused silently upon inappropriateness of his own presence in this
setting & fondly remembered predictable comforts of home, even of
Manila. Upon completion of breakfast & of interviews, DMS divulged, in
response to my inquiries, that he had been at it for two hours before I had
arrived & that formation of this milling crowd occurs spontaneously
before doors of any lodgings he takes in the Philippines owing to his
reputation as treasure hunter. We had avoided it in San Juan only because he
goes there frequently and has already interviewed everyone in region with
Nipponese War Gold stories found 99.9% of them lacking credibility,
investigating the remaining .1% with occasionally lucrative results.
THE GRACE OF GOD had been washed and buffed by Fidel Gad in
magnificently insouciant gesture of defiance of jungle elements. We
proceeded across river. Racial variations were conspicuous on faces, and in
physiognomies, of townspeople. Philippines were settled by countless
overlapping waves of prehistoric migrants each racially & linguistically
incompatible with the last; this in combination with the spatial involution
phenom. which I have, I think sufficiently belabored by this point, makes
for your basic patchwork of different ethnic groups. The fork in the river
around which this town was nucleated was meeting point of unofficial turfs
of three such different cultures. Lure of bright lights, or even dim,
flickering ones, has drawn thousands down from mountains in recent
generations to establish several distinct barangays. This morning's
interviewees were migrants from the mountains, or their sons or grandsons,
who claimed to have first hand knowledge of sites of Yamashita's hoards, or
to have heard about same from late ancestors.
After covering about 1.6 LACs through jungle (roads, slopes, &
conditions getting worse all the time) we encountered another military
roadblock that had (somewhat incredibly to my mind) been established at a
pass over a ridge, overlooking some rice terraces that had (even more
incredibly) been hacked out of an essentially vertical south facing slope
thousands of years ago by the evidently fearsomely tenacious ancestors of
the locals. Here we were thoroughly searched. My testicles were squeezed at
some length by a sergeant with a pencil mustache, whose motives did not
appear to be sexual, but who simultaneously looked me searchingly in the
eye, awaiting a look of submission or hopelessness on the face of the
squeezed. The others were subjected to the same treatment and probably
endured it with more stoicism than Yours Truly. No lethal weapons were found
attached to any of our scrota, but (surprise!) Jean ("John Wayne") Nguyen
and Jackie Woo were discovered to be armed to the teeth, and DMS somewhat
less so. This is the part where Yours Truly expected to be shot in the nape
of the neck whilst kneeling above a shallow grave, but ironically the
authorities were far more interested in my cache of Cap'n Crunch than the
weaponry sported by my comrades. Negotiations took place between DMS and the
captain in charge of this outpost, in the privacy of a tent. DMS emerged
with a thinner wallet and full clearance to proceed, on the conditions that
(1) all supplies of Cap'n Crunch be donated to the officers' mess, and (2) a
full inventory of weapons and ammo would be taken upon our return &
compared with today's findings to make sure that we were not smuggling arms
to the Nice People Around.
Three days' excruciatingly slow travel, comprising maybe another 10
LACs, awaited us. According to my map and GPS we were circumnavigating a
cluster of active volcanoes that frequently spew out lahars (mud avalanches)
which, when they impact upon ruts in the jungle that I'm here calling roads,
cause logistical problems well into the realm of the absurd. We passed
entire towns that had been buried and abandoned. Church steeples projected
at angles from the grey mud, held up by the same flows that had knocked them
askew. Skulls of goats, dogs, etc. protruded from mud that had hardened
around living animals like concrete. We bedded down nightly at small
settlements after propitiating locals with gifts of penicillin (which
Filipinos use like aspirin), batteries, disposable lighters, & whatever
else had been left to us by the soldiers at the roadblocks. We slept on
benches, floor, roof, or front seats of THE GRACE OF GOD, beneath mosquito
nets.
Finally, when my GPS revealed that we were less than ten km. from our
mysterious destination, a local instructed us to wait in a nearby village.
We remained there for a day & a night resting up and reading books (DMS
is never without a milk crate of techno thrillers) until, at dawn, we were
approached by a trio of very young, short men, one of whom carried an AK 47.
He and his brethren climbed on the roof of THE GRACE OF GOD and we proceeded
into a jungle track so narrow that I would not have pegged it even as a
footpath. A couple of km. into the jungle we reached a point where we spent
more time pushing the jeepney than riding in it. Shortly thereafter we left
Bong Bong and Fidel and one of the duffels behind, the four of us taking
turns humping the two other duffels. I consulted the GPS & verified
that, although we had for a time (alarmingly) moved away from the
Destination, we were now moving toward it again. We were eight thousand
m(eters) away and proceeding at a rate that varied between about five
hundred and a thousand m per hour, depending on whether we were moving
steeply uphill or steeply downhill. It was around noon. Those of you with
even rudimentary math skills will have anticipated that when the sun went
down we were still a few thousand meters away.
The three Filipinos our guides, guards, captors, or whatever they were
wore the obligatory U.S. t shirts which make it so easy, nowadays, to
underestimate cultural differences. They had not yet, however, attained
transethnicity. While in town they were shod in flip flops, but in the
jungle they went barefoot (I have owned pairs of shoes less durable than the
calluses on their feet). They spoke a language that apparently had zero in
common with the Tagalog I'd heard ("Tagalog" is the old name; the government
is ragging on people to call it "Filipina," as if to imply that it is in
some sense a common language of the archipelago, which, as these guys
demonstrated, is not the case). DMS had to converse with them in English. At
one point he gave one a throwaway plastic ballpoint pen and their faces
absolutely lit up. Then we had to scrounge up two more pens for his
companions. It was like Christmas. Progress halted for several minutes while
they marveled at the pens' handy clicking mechanisms and doodled on the
palms of their hands. The American t shirts were, in other words, not worn
as Americans wear them but in the same spirit that the Queen of England wore
the exotic Koh I Noor Diamond on her crown. Not for the first time I was
overtaken by a strong not exactly in Kansas feeling.
We slogged through the inevitable late afternoon thunderstorm and kept
moving into the night. DMS produced U.S. Army MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) from
the duffels, only a couple of weeks past their stenciled expiration dates.
The Filipino men found these nearly as exciting as the ballpoint pen, and
saved the disposable foil trays for later use as roofing material. We
started slogging again. The moon came out, which represented a bit of luck.
I fell down a couple of times and banged myself up on trees, which ended up
being a good thing because it put me into a state of mild shock, dulling the
pain and jacking me up on adrenaline. Our guides, at one point, seemed a
little uncertain as to which way they should go. I took a fix with the GPS
(using the screen's nightlight function) and established that we were no
more than fifty meters away from the destination, almost too small an error
for my GPS to resolve. In any event, it told us roughly which direction to
proceed, and we trudged through the trees for another few moments. The
guides became animated and very cheerful finally they had gotten their
bearings, they knew where we were. I bumped into something heavy, cold, and
immovable that nearly broke my knee. I reached down to touch it, expecting
to find a rock outcropping, but instead felt some thing smooth and metallic.
It seemed to be a stack of smaller units, maybe comparable in size to loaves
of bread. "Is this what we're looking for?" I asked. DMS turned on a battery
powered lantern and whipped the beam around in my direction.
I was instantly blinded by a thigh high stack of gold bars, about a
meter and a half on a side, sitting out in the middle of the jungle,
unmarked and unguarded.
DMS came over and sat down on top of it and lit a cigar. After a while,
we counted the bars and measured them. They are trapezoidal in cross
section, about 10 cm wide and 10 high, and about 40 cm in length. This
enabled us to estimate their mass at about 75 kg. each, which works out to
2,400 troy ounces. Since gold is normally measured in troy ounces and not in
kilograms (!) I'm going to make a wild guess that these bars were intended
to weigh an even 2,500 troy ounces apiece. At current rates ($400/troy oz. )
this means each bar is worth a million dollars. There are 5 layers of bars
in the stack, each layer consisting of 24 bars, and so the value of the
stack is $120 million. Both the mass estimate and the value estimate presume
that the bars are nearly pure gold. I took a rubbing of the stamp from one
of the bars, which bears the mark of the Bank of Singapore. Each bar is
marked with a unique serial number and I copied down as many of those as I
could see.
Then we went back to Manila. All along the way, I tried to imagine the
logistics of getting even a single one of those gold bars from the jungle
out to the nearest bank where it could be turned into something useful, like
cash.
Let me transition to a Q&A format here.
Q: Randy, I get the feeling that you are about to lay out in detail all
of the hassles that would be involved in moving this gold overland, so let's
just cut to the chase and talk about helicopters.
A: There is no place for a helicopter to land. Terrain is extremely
rugged. The nearest sufficiently flat place is about one km. away. It would
have to be cleared. In Vietnam this was accomplished using 'blockbuster"
bombs, but this is probably not an option here. Trees would have to be cut
down, creating a gap in the jungles conspicuous from the air.
Q: Who cares if it's conspicuous? Who's going to see it?
A: As should be obvious from my anecdote, the people who control this
gold have connections in Manila. We may assume that the area is overflown by
the Philippine Air Force regularly, and kept under radar surveillance.
Q: What would be involved in getting the bars to the nearest decent
road?
A: They would have to be carried over the jungle trails I have
described. Each bar weighs as much as a full grown man.
Q: Couldn't they be cut up into smaller pieces?
A: DMS rates it as unlikely that the current owners would permit this.
Q: Is there any chance of smuggling the gold through the military
checkpoints?
A: Obviously not in the case of a mass shipment. The gold weighs a
total of around ten tons, and would require a truck that could not negotiate
most of the roads we saw. Concealing ten tons of goods from the inspectors
at these checkpoints is not possible.
Q: How about smuggling the bars out one at a time?
A: Still very tricky. Might be possible to hike the bars out to an
intermediate point somewhere, melt or chop them down, and somehow secrete
them in the body of a jeepney or other vehicle, then drive the vehicle to
Manila and extract the gold. This operation would have to be repeated a
hundred times. Driving the same vehicle past one of these checkpoints a
hundred (or even two) times would strike them as, to put it mildly, odd.
Even if this were possible there is the payment issue.
Q: What is the payment issue?
A: Obviously the people who control the gold want to be paid for it.
Paying them in more gold, or in precious gems, would be ludicrous. They do
not have bank accounts. They have to be paid in Philippine pesos. Anything
bigger than about a 500 peso note is useless in this area. A 500 peso note
is worth about $20, and so it would be necessary to bring six million of
them into the jungle to perform the transaction. Based on some rudimentary
calculations I have made here using a mechanic's caliper and the contents of
my wallet, the stack of 500 peso notes would be about (please wait while I
switch my calculator over to the "scientific notation" mode) 25,000 inches
high. Or, if you prefer the metric system, something like two thirds of a
kilometer. If you stacked the bills a meter high, you would need six or
seven hundred such stacks, which if jammed close together would cover an
area about three meters on a side. Basically we are talking about a large
Ryder box truck full of money. This would have to be transported into the
middle of the jungle, and obviously, melting down cash and secreting it
inside of a truck is not an option.
Q: Since the military seems to be the big obstacle here, why not simply
cut a deal with them? Let them keep a big cut of the proceeds in exchange
for not hassling us.
A: Because the money would go to the NPA which would use it to buy
weapons for the purpose of killing people in the military.
Q: There must be some way to use the value of this gold to leverage
some kind of extraction operation.
A: The gold is worthless to a bank until it has been assayed. Until
then it is only a blurry Polaroid of a stack of yellow objects in what seems
to be a jungle. In order to perform an assay you need to go into the jungle,
find the gold, bore out a sample, and transport it safely back to a large
city. But this proves nothing. Even if the potential backers believe that
your assay really came from the jungle (i.e., that you did not switch
samples along the way) all they know now is the purity of one end of one bar
in the stack. Basically it is not possible to obtain full value for this
gold until the entire stack has been extracted and taken to a vault where it
can be systematically assayed.
Q: Could you maybe just get the gold to some local bank and then sell
it at steep discount, so that the burden of transporting it would be on
someone else's shoulders?
A: DMS relates the tale of one such transaction, in a provincial town
in north Luzon, which was interrupted when local entrepreneurs literally
blew one of the bank's walls off with dynamite, came in, and grabbed both
the gold and the cash that was going to be used to pay for the gold. DMS
asserts he would rather slit his own throat quietly than walk into a small
town bank with anything worth more than a few tens of thousands of dollars.
Q: Is the situation basically impossible then?
A: It is basically impossible.
Q: Then what was the point of the whole exercise?
A: To come full circle to the first thing DMS said. It was to send us a
message.
Q: What is the message?
A: That money is not worth having if you can't spend it.
That certain people have a lot of money that they badly want to spend.
And that if we can give them a way to spend it, through the Crypt, that
these people will be very happy. and conversely that if we screw up they
will be very sad, and that whether they are happy or sad they will be eager
to share these emotions with us, the shareholders and management team of
Epiphyte Corp.
And now I am going to e mail this to all of you and then summon the
flight attendant and demand the array of alcoholic beverages I so richly
deserve. Cheers.
– R
Randall Lawrence Waterhouse
Current meatspace coordinates, hot from the GPS receiver card in my
laptop:
27 degrees, 14.95 minutes N latitude 143 degrees. 17.44 minutes E
longitude
Nearest geographical feature: the Bonin Islands
Chapter 60 ROCKET
Julieta has retreated somewhere far up beyond the Arctic Circle.
Shaftoe has been pursuing her like a dogged Mountie, slogging across the
sexual tundra on frayed snowshoes and leaping heroically from floe to floe.
But she remains about as distant, and about as reachable, as Polaris. She
has spent more time lately with Enoch Root than with him and Root's a
celibate priest or something. Or is he?!
On the few occasions Bobby Shaftoe has actually gotten Julieta to crack
a smile, she has immediately begun to ask difficult questions: Did you have
sex with Glory, Bobby? Did you use a condom? Is it possible that she might
have become pregnant? Can you absolutely rule out the possibility that you
have a child in the Philippines? How old would he or she be right now? Let's
see, you fucked her on Pearl Harbor Day, so the child would have been born
in early September of '42. Your child would be fourteen, fifteen months old
now perhaps just learning to walk! How precious!
It always gives Shaftoe the willies when tough girls like Julieta get
all fluttery and slip into baby talk. At first, he figures it's all a ruse
to keep him at arm's length. This smuggler's daughter, this atheist guerilla
intellectual what does she care about some girl in Manila? Snap out of it,
woman! There's a war on!
Then he comes up with a better explanation: Julieta's pregnant.
The day begins with the sound of a ship's horn in the harbor at
Norrsbruck. The town is a jumble of neat, wide houses packed onto a spur of
rock that sticks out into the Gulf of Bothnia, forming the southern shore of
a slender but deep inlet lined with wharves. Half the town now turns out
beneath an unsettling, turbulent peach and salmon dawn to see this quaint
harbor being deflowered by an inexorable steel phallus. It comes complete
with spirochetes: several score men in black dress uniforms stand on the top
of the thing, lined up neat as stanchions. As the blast of the horn fades
away, echoing back and forth between the stony ridges, it becomes possible
to hear the spirochetes singing: belting out a bawdy German sea chanty which
Bobby Shaftoe last heard during a convoy attack in the Bay of Biscay.
Two other people in Norrsbruck will recognize that tune. Shaftoe looks
for Enoch Root in his church cellar, but he is not present, his bed and lamp
are cold. Maybe the local chapter of Societas Eruditorum holds its meetings
before dawn or maybe he's found another welcoming bed. But trusty old Günter
Bischoff can be seen, leaning out the window of his seaside garret, elbows
in the air and his trusty Zeiss 735 binoculars clamped over his face,
scanning the lines of the invading ship.
The Swedes stand with arms folded for a minute or so, regarding this
apparition. Then they make some kind of collective decision that it does not
exist, that nothing has happened here. They turn their backs, pad grumpily
into their houses, begin to boil coffee. Being neutral is no less strange,
no less fraught with awkward compromises, than being a belligerent. Unlike
most of Europe, they can rest assured that the Germans are not here to
invade them or sink their ships. On the other hand, the vessel's presence is
a violation of their sovereign territory and they ought to run down there
with pitchforks and flintlocks and fight the Huns off. On the third hand,
this boat was probably made out of Swedish iron.
Shaftoe fails, at first, to recognize the German vessel as a U boat
because it is shaped all wrong. A regular U boat is shaped like a surface
vessel, except longer and skinnier. Which is to say it has a sort of V
shaped hull and a flat deck, studded with guns, from which rises a gigantic
conning tower that is covered with junk: ack ack guns, antennas, stanchions,
safety lines, spray shields. The Krauts would put cuckoo clocks up there too
if they had room. As a regular U boat plunges through the waves, thick black
smoke spews from its diesel engines.
This one is just a torpedo as long as a football field. Instead of a
conning tower there's a streamlined bulge on the top, hardly noticeable.
No guns, no antennas, no cuckoo clocks; the whole thing's as smooth as
a river rock. And it's not making smoke or noise, just venting a little bit
of steam. The diesels don't rumble. The fucking thing doesn't even seem to
have diesels. Instead there is a dim whine, like the sound that came out of
Angelo's Messerschmidt.
Shaftoe intercepts Bischoff just as the latter is coming down the steps
of the inn carrying a duffel bag the size of a dead sea lion. He's panting
with exertion, or maybe excitement. "That's the one," he gasps. He sounds
like he's talking to himself, but he's speaking English, so he must be
addressing Shaftoe. "That's the rocket."
"Rocket?"
"Runs on rocket fuel hydrogen peroxide, eighty five percent. Never has
to recharge its verdammt batteries! Clocks twenty eight knots submerged!
That's my baby." He's as fluttery as Julieta.
"Can I help you carry anything?"
"Footlocker upstairs," Bischoff says.
Shaftoe stomps up the narrow staircase to find Bischoff's room stripped
to the bedsprings, and a pile of gold coins on the table, weighing down a
thank you note addressed to the owners. The black locker rests in the middle
of the floor like a child's coffin. A wild hollering noise reaches his ears
through the open window.
Bischoff is down there, heading for the pier beneath his duffel bag,
and his men, up on the rocket, have caught sight of him. The U boat has
launched a dinghy, which is surging towards the pier like a racing scull.
Shaftoe heaves the locker up onto his shoulder and trudges down the
stairs. It reminds him of shipping out, which is what Marines are supposed
to do, and which he has not actually done in a long time. Vicarious
excitement is not as good as the real thing, he finds.
He follows Bischoff's tracks through a film of snow, down the
cobblestone street, and onto the pier. Three men in black scramble out of
the launch, onto the ladder, up to the pier. They salute Bischoff and then
two of them embrace him. Shaftoe's close enough and the salmon light is
bright enough, that he can recognize these two: members of Bischoff's old
crew. The third guy is taller, older, gaunter, grimmer, better dressed, more
highly decorated. All in all, more of a Nazi.
Shaftoe can't believe himself. When he picked up the locker he was just
being considerate to his friend Günter an ink stained retiree with pacifist
leanings. Now, all of a sudden, he's aiding and abetting the enemy! What
would his fellow Marines think of him if they knew?
Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. He is actually participating in the conspiracy
that he, Bischoff, Rudy von Hacklheber, and Enoch Root created in the
basement of that church. He comes to a dead stop and slams the locker down
right there, in the middle of the pier. The Nazi is startled by the noise
and raises his blue eyes in the direction of Shaftoe, who prepares to stare
him down.
Bischoff notices this. He turns towards Shaftoe and shouts something
cheerful in Swedish. Shaftoe has the presence of mind to break eye contact
with the chilly German. He grins and nods back. This conspiracy thing is
going to be a real pain in the ass if it means backing down from casual
fistfights.
A couple of sailors have come up the ladder now to handle Bischoff's
luggage. One of them strides down the pier to get the footlocker. Shaftoe
recognizes him, and he recognizes Shaftoe, at the same moment. Damn! The
guy's surprised, but not unpleasantly so, to see Shaftoe here. Then
something occurs to him and his face freezes up in horror and his eyes dart
sideways, back toward the tall Nazi. Shit! Shaftoe turns his back on all of
this, makes like he's strolling back into town.
"Jens! Jens!" Bischoff hollers, and then says something else in
Swedish. He's running after Shaftoe. Shaftoe keeps his back prudently turned
until Bischoff throws one arm around him with a final "JENS!" Then, sotto
voce, in English: "You have my family's address. If I don't see you in
Manila, let's get in touch after the war." He starts pounding Shaftoe on the
back, pulls some paper money out of his pocket, stuffs it into Shaftoe's
hand.
"Goddamn it, you'll see me there," Shaftoe says. "What is this shit
for?"
"I am tipping the nice Swedish boy who carried my luggage," Bischoff
says.
Shaftoe sucks his teeth and grimaces. He can tell he is not cut out for
this cloak and dagger nonsense. Questions come to his mind, among them How
is that big torpedo full of rocket fuel safer than what you were riding
around in before? but he just says, "Good luck, I guess."
"Godspeed, my friend," Bischoff says. "This will remind you to check
your mail." Then he punches Shaftoe in the shoulder hard enough to raise a
three day welt, turns around, and begins walking towards salt water. Shaftoe
walks towards snow and trees, envying him. The next time he looks at the
harbor, fifteen minutes later, the U boat is gone. Suddenly this town feels
just as cold, empty, and out in the middle of nowhere as it really is.
He's been getting his mail at the Norrsbruck post office, general
delivery. When the place opens up a couple of hours later, Shaftoe's waiting
by the door; venting steam from his nostrils, like he's rocket fuel powered.
He receives a letter from his folks in Wisconsin, and one large envelope,
posted yesterday from somewhere in Norrsbruck, Sweden, bearing no return
address but inscribed in Günter Bischoff's hand.
It is full of notes and documents concerning the new U boat, including
one or two letters personally signed by John Huncock himself. Shaftoe's
German is slightly better than it was before he went on his own U boat ride,
but he still can't follow most of it. He sees a lot of numbers there, a lot
of technical looking stuff.
It is your basic priceless naval intelligence. Shaftoe wraps the papers
up carefully, sticks them in his pants, begins walking up the beach towards
the Kivistik residence.
It is a long, cold, wet trudge. He has plenty of time to assess his
situation: stuck in a neutral country on the other side of the world from
where he wants to be. Alienated from the Corps. Lumped in with a vague
conspiracy.
Technically speaking, he has been AWOL for several months now. But if
he suddenly turns up at the American Embassy in Stockholm, carrying these
documents, all will be forgiven. So this is his ticket home. And "home" is a
very large country that includes places like Hawaii, which is closer to
Manila than is Norrsbruck, Sweden.
Otto's boat is fresh in from Finland, bobbing on an incoming tide, tied
up to his bird's nest of a jetty. The boat, he knows, is still loaded up
with whatever Finns are exchanging for coffee and bullets at the moment.
Otto himself is sitting in the cabin, drinking coffee naturally, red eyed
and plumb wrung out.
"Where's Julieta?" Shaftoe says. He's starting to worry that she moved
back to Finland or something.
Otto turns a bit greyer every time he drives his tub across the Gulf of
Bothnia. He looks especially grey today. "Did you see that monster?" he
says, then shakes his head in a combination of wonderment, disgust, and
world weariness that can only be attained by hardened Finns. "Those German
bastards!"
"I thought they were protecting you from the Russians."
This elicits a long thunder roll of dark, chortling laughter from Otto.
"Zdrastuytchye, tovarishch!" he finally says.
"Say what?"
"That means, 'Welcome, comrade' in Russian," Otto says. "I have been
practicing it."
"You should be practicing the Pledge of Allegiance," Shaftoe says.
"Soon as we get done taking down the Germans, I figure we'll just kick her
into high gear and beat the Russkies all the way back to Siberia."
More laughter from Otto, who knows naïveté when he sees it, but is not
above finding it charming. "I have buried the German air turbine in
Finland," he says. "I will sell it to the Russians or the Americans whoever
gets there, first."
"Where's Julieta?" Shaftoe asks again. Speaking of naïveté.
"In town," Otto says. "Shopping."
"So you've got cash."
Otto looks seasick. Tomorrow is payday.
Then Shaftoe's going to be on a bus, headed for Stockholm.
Shaftoe sits down across from Otto and they drink coffee and talk about
weather, smuggling, and the relative merits of various small fully automatic
weapons for a while. Actually, what they are talking about is whether
Shaftoe will get paid, and how much.
In the end, Otto issues a guarded promise to pay, provided that Julieta
does not spend all of the money on her "shopping" trip, and provided that
Shaftoe unloads the boat.
So Bobby Shaftoe spends the rest of the day carrying Soviet mortars,
rusty tins of caviar, bricks of black tea from China, Lapp folk art, a
couple of icons, cases of pine flavored Finnish schnapps, coils of vile
sausages, and bundles of pelts up out of the hold of Otto's boat, down the
dock, into the cabin.
Meanwhile, Otto goes into town, and still has not come back long after
night has fallen. Shaftoe sacks out in the cabin, tosses and turns for about
four hours, sleeps for about ten minutes, and then is awakened by a knocking
at the door.
He approaches the door on hands and knees, gets the Suomi machine
pistol out of its hiding place, then crawls to the far end of the cabin and
exits silently through a trap door in the floor. There is ice on the rocks
below, but his bare feet give him enough traction to clamber around and get
a good view of whoever is standing there, pounding on the door.
It is Enoch Root himself, nowhere to be seen this last week or so.
"Yo!" Shaftoe says.
"Bobby," Root says, turning around, "I gather you heard."
"Heard what?"
"That we are in danger."
"Nah," Shaftoe says, "this is just how I always answer the door."
They go into the cabin. Root declines to turn on any lights and keeps
looking out the windows like he's expecting someone. He smells faintly of
Julieta's perfume, a distinctive scent that Otto has been smuggling into
Finland by the fifty five gallon drum. Somehow, Shaftoe is not surprised by
this. He proceeds to make coffee.
"A very complex situation has arisen," Root says.
"I can see that."
Root is startled by this, and looks up blankly at Shaftoe, his eyes
glowing stupidly in the moonlight. You can be the smartest guy in the world,
but when a woman comes into the picture, you're just like any other sap.
"Did you come all this way to tell me that you're fucking Julieta?"
"Oh, no, no, no!" Root says. He stops for a moment, furrows his brow.
"I mean, I am. And I was going to tell you. But that's just the first part
of a more complicated business." Root gets up, shoves hands in pockets,
walks around the cabin again, looking out the windows. "You have any more of
those Finnish guns?"
"In that crate to your left," Shaftoe says. "Why? We gonna have a
shootout?"
"Maybe. Not between you and me! But other visitors may be coming."
"Cops?"
"Worse."
"Finns?" Because Otto has his rivals.
"Worse."
"Who then?" Shaftoe can't imagine worse.
"Germans. German."
"Oh, fuck!" Shaftoe hollers disgustedly. "How can you say they're worse
than Finns?"
Root looks taken aback. "If you're going to tell me that Finns are
worse, pound for pound, than Germans, then I agree with you. But the trouble
with Germans is that they tend to be in communication with millions of other
Germans."
"Okay," Shaftoe mutters.
Root hauls the lid off a crate, pulls out a machine pistol, checks the
chamber, aims the barrel at the moon, peers through it like a telescope. "In
any case, some Germans are coming to kill you."
"Why?"
"Because you know too much about certain things."
"What certain things? Günter and his new submarine?"
"Yes."
"And how, may I ask, do you know this? It has something to do with the
fact that you're fucking Julieta, right?" Shaftoe continues. He's bored
rather than pissed off. This whole Sweden thing is old and tired to him now.
He belongs in the Philippines. Anything that doesn't get him closer to the
Philippines just irritates him.
"Right." Root heaves a sigh. "She thinks highly of you, Bobby, but
after she saw that picture of your girlfriend "
"Snap out of it! She doesn't give a shit about you or me. She just
wants to have all of the good parts of being a Finn without the bad parts."
"What are the bad parts?"
"Having to live in Finland," Shaftoe says. "So she has to marry someone
with a good passport. Which nowadays means American or British. You might
have noticed that she didn't fuck Günter."
Root looks a little queasy.
"Well, maybe she did then," Shaftoe says, heaving a sigh. "Shit!" Root
has rooted an ammo clip out of another crate and figured out how to affix it
to the Suomi. He says, "You probably know that the Germans have a tacit
arrangement with the Swedes."
"What does 'tacit' mean?"
"Let's just say they have an arrangement."
"The Swedes are neutral, but they let the Krauts push them around."
"Yes. Otto has to deal with Germans at each end of his smuggling route,
in Sweden and in Finland, and he has to deal with their navy when he's out
on the water."
"I'm aware that the fucking Germans are all over Europe."
"Well, to make a long story short, the local Germans have prevailed
upon Otto to betray you," Root says.
"Did he?"
"Yes. He did betray you."
"Okay. Keep talking, I'm listening to you," Shaftoe says. He begins to
mount a ladder up into the attic, but then he thought better of it.
"I guess you could say he repented," Root says.
"Spoken like a true man of the cloth," Shaftoe mutters. He's into the
attic now, crawling on hands and knees over the rafters. He stops and sparks
up his Zippo. Most of its light is absorbed by a dark green slab: a crude
wooden crate with Cryllic letters stenciled on it.
Root's voice is filtering up from below: "He came to, uh, the place
where Julieta and I, uh, were."
Were fucking. "Get me the crowbar," Shaftoe shouts. "It's in Otto's
toolbox, under the table."
A minute later, the crowbar rises up through the hatch, like the head
of a cobra emerging from a basket. Shaftoe grabs it and begins assaulting
the crate.
"Otto was torn. He had to do what he did, or the German could have shut
down his livelihood. But he respects you. He couldn't bear it. He had to
talk to someone. So he came to us, and told Julieta what he had done.
Julieta understood."
"She understood!?"
"But she also was horrified at the same time."
"That is truly heartwarming."
"Um, at that point, the Kivistiks broke out the schnapps and began to
discuss the situation. In Finnish."
"I understand," Shaftoe says. Give those Finns a grim, stark, bleak
moral dilemma and a bottle of schnapps and you could pretty much forget
about them for forty eight hours. "Thanks for having the guts to come out
here."
"Julieta will understand."
"That's not what I mean."
"Oh, I don't think Otto would hurt me.
"No, I mean "
"Oh!" Root exclaims. "No, I had to tell you about Julieta sooner or
later "
"No, goddamn it, I mean the Germans."
"Oh. Well, I didn't even begin to think about them until I was almost
here. It was not courage so much as a lack of foresight."
Shaftoe's pretty good at foresight. "Take this." He hands down a heavy
steel tube of coffee can diameter, a few feet long. "It's heavy," he adds,
as Root's knees buckle.
"What is it?"
"A Soviet hundred and twenty millimeter mortar," Shaftoe says. "Oh."
Root remains silent for a while, as he lays the mortar down on the table.
When he speaks again, his voice sounds different. "I didn't realize Otto had
this kind of stuff."
"The lethal radius of this bitch is a good sixty feet," Shaftoe says.
He is hauling mortar bombs out of the crate and stacking them next to the
hatch. "Or maybe it's meters, I can't remember." The bombs look like fat
footballs with tailfins on one end.
"Feet, meters . . . the distinction is important," Root says. "Maybe
it's overkill. But we have to get back to Norrsbruck and take care of
Julieta."
"What do you mean, take care of her?" Root says warily.
"Marry her."
"What?"
"One of us has to marry her, and fast. I don't know about you, but I
kind of like her, and it'd be a shame if she spent the rest of her life
sucking Russian dick at gunpoint," Shaftoe says. "Besides, she might be
pregnant with one of our kids. Yours, mine, or Günter's."
"We, the conspiracy, have an obligation to look after our offspring,"
Root agrees. "We could establish a trust fund for them in London."
"There should be plenty of money for that," Shaftoe agrees. "But I
can't marry her, because I have to be available to marry Glory when I get to
Manila."
"Rudy can't do it," Root says.
"Because he's a fag?"
"No, they marry women all the time," Root says. "He can't do it because
he's German, and what's she going to do with a German passport?"
"It would not be savvy exactly," Shaftoe agrees.
"That leaves me," Root says. "I'll marry her, and she'll have a British
passport. Best in the world."
"Huh," Shaftoe says, "how does that square with your being a celibate
monk or priest or whatever the fuck you supposedly are?"
Root says, "I'm supposed to be celibate "
"But you're not," Shaftoe reminds him.
"But God's forgiveness is infinite," Root fires back, winning the
point. "So, as I was saying, I'm supposed to be celibate but that doesn't
mean I can't get married. As long as I don't consummate the marriage."
"But if you don't consummate it, it doesn't count!"
"But the only person, besides me, who will know that we didn't
consummate it, is Julieta."
"God will know," Shaftoe says.
"God doesn't issue passports," Root says.
"What about the church? They'll kick you out."
"Maybe I deserve to be kicked out."
"So let me get this straight," Shaftoe says, "when you really were
fucking Julieta, you said you weren't and so you were able to remain a
priest. Now you're going to marry her and not fuck her and say that you are.
"
"If you're trying to say that my relationship with the Church is very
complicated, I already knew that, Bobby."
"Let's go, then," Shaftoe says.
Shaftoe and Root haul the mortar and a boxload of bombs down onto the
beach, where they can take cover behind a stone retaining wall a good five
feet high. But the surf makes it impossible to hear anything, so Root goes
up and hides in the trees along the road, and leaves Shaftoe to fiddle with
the Soviet mortar.
There turns out to be not much fiddling necessary. An unlettered tundra
farmer with bilateral frostbite could get this thing up and running in ten
minutes. If he'd stayed up late the night before celebrating the fulfillment
of the last five year plan with a jug of wood alcohol maybe fifteen minutes.
Shaftoe consults the instructions. It does not matter that these are
printed in Russian, because they are made for illiterates anyway. A series
of parabolas is plotted out, the mortar supporting one leg and exploding
Germans supporting the opposite. Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of
shoes and he'll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the
shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he
turns into Thomas Fucking Edison. Shaftoe scans the terrain, picks out his
killing zone, then climbs up and paces off the distance, assuming one meter
per pace.
He's back down on the beach, adjusting the tube's angle, when he's
startled by a bulky form vaulting over the wall, so close it almost knocks
him down. Root's breathing fast. "Germans," he says, "coming in from the
main road."
"How do you know they're Germans? Maybe it's Otto."
"The engines sound like diesels. Huns love diesels."
"How many engines?"
"Probably two."
Root turns out to be right on the money. Two large black Mercedes issue
from the forest, like bad ideas emerging from the dim mind of a green
lieutenant. Their headlights are not illuminated. Each stops and then sits
there for a moment, then the doors open quietly, Germans climb out and stand
up. Several of them are wearing long black leather coats. Several are
carrying those keen submachine guns that are the trade mark of German
infantry, and the envy of Yanks and Tommies, who must go burdened with
primeval hunting rifles.
This is the moment, then. Nazis are right over there and it is the job
of Bobby Shaftoe, and to a lesser degree Enoch Root, to kill them all. Not
just a job but a moral requisite, because they are the living avatars of
Satan, who publicly acknowledge being just as bad and vicious as they really
are. It is a world, and a situation, to which Shaftoe and a lot of other
people are perfectly adapted. He heaves a bomb up out of the box, introduces
it to the muzzle of the fat tube, lets it go, and plugs his ears.
The mortar coughs like a kettledrum. The Germans look towards them. An
officer's monocle glints in the moonlight. A total of eight Germans have
gotten out of the cars. Three of them must be combat veterans because they
are down on their stomachs in a microsecond. The trench coated officers
remain standing, as do a couple of civilian clad goons, who immediately open
fire in their general direction with their submachine guns. This makes a lot
of noise but only impresses Shaftoe insofar as it is an impressive display
of stupidity. The bullets sail far over their heads. Before they have had
time to pepper the Gulf of Bothnia, the mortar bomb has exploded.
Shaftoe peeks over the top of the seawall. As he more or less expected,
all of the people who were standing up are now draped over the nearest
Mercedes, having been bodily lifted off their feet and flung sideways by a
moving curtain of shrapnel. But two of the survivors the veterans are belly
crawling towards Otto's cabin, whose thick log walls look extremely
reassuring in these circumstances. The third survivor is blasting away with
his submachine gun, but he has no idea where they are.
The ground is convex in a way that makes it hard to see those belly
crawling Germans. Shaftoe fires a couple more mortar rounds without much
effect. He hears the two Germans kicking down the door to Otto's cabin.
Since it is only a one room cabin, this would be a fine moment to be
armed with grenades. But Shaftoe has none, and he doesn't really want to
blow the place up anyway. "Why don't you kill the one German up there," he
tells Root, and then heads down the beach, hugging the seawall in case the
Germans are looking out the windows.
Indeed, when he's almost there the Germans smash the windows out and
begin firing in the direction of Enoch Root. Shaftoe creeps underneath the
cabin, opens the trap door, and emerges into the center of the room. The
Germans are standing there with their backs to him. He fires his Suomi into
their backs until they stop moving. Then he drags them over to the trapdoor
and dumps them down onto the beach so they won't bleed all over the floor.
The next high tide will carry them away, and with any luck they'll wash
ashore on the Fatherland in a couple weeks.
It is silent now, the way it's supposed to be at an isolated cabin by
the sea. But that doesn't mean anything. Shaftoe makes his way carefully up
into the trees and circles around behind the action, surveying the killing
zone from above. The one German is still crawling around on his elbows,
trying to figure out what's going on. Shaftoe kills him. Then he makes his
way down to the beach and finds Enoch Root bleeding into the sand. He has
taken a bullet just under the collarbone and there is a lot of blood, both
from the wound and from Root's mouth, when ever he exhales.
"I feel like I'm going to die," he says.
"Good," Shaftoe says, "that means you probably won't."
One of the Mercedes automobiles is still functional, though it has a
number of shrapnel holes and a flat tire. Shaftoe jacks it up and swaps in a
surviving tire from the other Mercedes, then drags Root over and gets him
laid out in the backseat. He drives into Norrsbruck, fast. The Mercedes is a
really great car and he wants to drive it all the way to Finland, Russia,
Siberia, down through China maybe stop for a little sushi in Shanghai then
on down through Siam and then Malaya, whence he could hop a sea gypsy's boat
to Manila, find Glory, and
The ensuing erotic reverie is cut short by the voice of Enoch Root,
bubbling through blood, or something. "Go to the church."
"Now padre, this is no time to be trying to convert me into a religious
nut. You take it easy."
"No, go now. Take me."
"What, so you can make your peace with god? Hell, Rev, you ain't gonna
die. I'll take you to the doctor's. You can go to church later."
Root drifts off into a coma, mumbling something about cigars.
Shaftoe ignores these ravings, burns rubber into Norrsbruck, and wakes
up the doctor. Then he goes and finds Otto and Julieta and takes them over
to the doctor's office. Finally, he goes round to the church and wakes up
the minister.
When they get back to the clinic, Rudolf von Hacklheber's arguing with
the doctor: Rudy (who's apparently speaking on behalf of Enoch, who can
hardly even talk) wants Enoch's wedding to Julieta to happen now, in case
Enoch dies on the table. Shaftoe is startled by how bad the patient suddenly
looks. But remembering what he and Enoch talked about earlier, he weighs in
on Rudy's side, and insists that marriage must come before surgery.
Otto produces a diamond ring literally out of his asshole he carries
valuables around in a polished metal tube shoved up his rectum and Shaftoe
serves as best man, uneasily holding that ring, still hot from Otto. Root's
too weak to thread it over Julieta's finger and so Rudy guides his hands. A
nurse serves as bridesmaid. Julieta and Enoch are joined in holy matrimony.
Root utters the words of the oath one at a time, pausing after each one to
cough blood into a stainless steel bowl. Shaftoe gets all choked up, and
actually sniffles.
The doctor etherizes Root, opens his chest, and goes in to repair the
damage. Combat surgery isn't his metier, and so he makes a few mistakes and
generally does a great job of keeping the tension level high. Some major
artery gives way, and it's necessary for Shaftoe and the minister to go out
and yank Swedes off the streets and persuade them to donate blood. Rudy is
nowhere to be found, and Shaftoe suspects for a few minutes that he has
blown town. But then suddenly he shows up at Root's bedside holding an
ancient Cuban cigar box, Spanish words all over it.
When Enoch Root dies, the only other people in the room are Rudolf von
Hacklheber, Bobby Shaftoe, and the Swedish doctor.
The doctor checks his watch, then steps out of the room.
Rudy reaches out and closes Enoch's eyes, then stands there with his
hand on the late padre's face, and looks at Shaftoe. "Go," he says, "and
make sure that the doctor files the death certificate."
In war, it happens pretty frequently that one of your buddies dies, and
you have to go right back into action, and save the waterworks for later.
"Right," Shaftoe says, and leaves the room.
The doctor's sitting in his little office, umlaut studded diplomas all
over the walls, filling out the death certificate. A skeleton dangles in one
corner. Bobby Shaftoe stands at attention on the opposite flank, he and the
skeleton sort of triangulating on the doctor and watching him scrawl out the
date and time of Enoch Root's demise.
When the doctor's finished, he leans back in his chair and rubs his
eyes.
"Can I buy you a cup of coffee?" asks Bobby Shaftoe.
"Thank you," says the doctor.
The young bride and her father are sprawled blearily in the doctor's
waiting room. Shaftoe offers to buy them coffee too. They leave Rudy to keep
watch over the body of their late friend and coconspirator, and walk down
the high street of Norrsbruck. Swedish people are beginning to come out of
their houses. They look exactly like American midwesterners, and Shaftoe's
always startled when they fail to speak English.
The doctor stops in at the courthouse to drop off the death
certificate. Otto and Julieta go on ahead to the cafe. Bobby Shaftoe loiters
outside, staring back up the street. After a minute or two he sees Rudy poke
his head out the door of the doctor's office and look one way, then the
other. He pulls his head back inside for a moment. Then he and another man
walk out of the office. The other man is wrapped in a blanket that covers
even his head. They climb into the Mercedes, Blanket Man lies down in the
back seat, and Rudy drives off in the direction of his cottage.
Bobby Shaftoe sits down in the cafe with the Finns.
"Later today I'm gonna get into that fucking Mercedes and drive into
Stockholm like a fucking bat out of hell," Shaftoe says. Though the Finns
will never appreciate it, he has chosen the "bat out of hell" phrase for a
good reason. He understands, now, why he has thought of himself as a dead
man ever since Guadalcanal. "Anyway, I hope y'all have a nice boat ride."
"Boat ride?" Otto says innocently.
"I gave you up to the Germans, just like you did to me," Shaftoe lies.
"You bastard!