Rembrandt's Ghost (26 page)

There was no sign of life anywhere. The whole bridge section had been crushed and from where she lay Finn could see that the forward hatchway had been sprung and that the cargo crane in the forward section had almost been torn away by the savagery of the storm.

The entire hull sagged in the middle as though her back had been broken. The bow of the
Batavia Queen
had been driven a good thirty feet into the palms and jungle at the edge of the beach. It was a pitiful, unhappy end for any ship, let alone one you knew and cared for. It was almost like the death of a friend.

“Let me see,” said Billy. Finn handed him the binoculars.

“No sign of your friends?” Winchester asked.

“No,” said Finn.

Billy scanned the wreck of the
Batavia Queen
. He lowered the binoculars.

“Could they have survived?” he asked.

“Anything’s possible,” answered Winchester. “The two of you managed it.”

“If the local people got them, where would they have been taken?” Finn asked.

“They have three settlements, all on the far side of the island.”

“Which one would they have been taken to?” Billy asked urgently.

Winchester pointed to a broad craggy hill almost directly across from them. “There’s a river that flows down from that mountain to the sea. Their main village is close to the mouth. I don’t know if it has a name.”

“Do you know how to get there?” Billy asked.

“Well enough to stay away from it.”

“Could you take us there?”

“To find your lost Dutchman?” the man in the goatskins scoffed. “Your friends?”

“To rescue them,” said Billy “What’s wrong with that?”

Winchester reached across and tapped the brass-cased binoculars. “What about these laddies?”

“What laddies?”

“The binoculars are Zeiss Feldstechers. Especially made for the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1942. Admiral Yamamoto had a pair just like them. Those laddies.”

“We’re supposed to worry about a few old castaways from World War Two?” Billy sneered.

“No, you’re supposed to worry about their children,” said the man in the goatskin cap. “The ones with the great bloody swords and the old-fashioned little caps with the flaps in the back. Those are the ones you’re supposed to be worried about.”

“It’s a monster,” said Billy, staring at the massive whale-sized hulk in the mangrove swamp. It was enormous, a four-hundred-foot-long bulbous tube of metal with a tumorlike hump that ran along its upper surface, the huge conning tower partially crumpled. The designation
I-404
was still faintly visible on the side beneath more than fifty years of rust, barnacles, and filth. The entire vessel was covered in a winding tangle of roots and vines.

“That’s where your flag came from,” said Finn.

Winchester nodded. “I’ve done a little investigating. The Japs won’t come near it—some sort of superstition, I suppose.”

They were lying on the grassy edge of a small sandy dune at the far end of the Punchbowl. To their right, below the sandy hummock, was the beach. In front of them was the swamp. Deepeningjungle lay at their back, running in a steep slope into the ridges and hills at the far end of the island. “Enemy territory” as the professor called it.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” murmured Billy. “I didn’t think the Japanese or anyone else had submarines this size during the war.”

“They were the largest ever built before the nuclear ones,” said Winchester. “The Sen Toku 400 class. They didn’t make very many of them, only four or five, I think.” He gestured toward the grotesque-looking wreck. “See that bump that runs along the front? That was to carry airplanes. Three of them, with folded wings. They’re still in there. They were meant for special assignments, blowing up the Panama Canal, carrying high-technology material. I’ve had the occasional fantasy about resurrecting one of the airplanes and flying it out except there’s no one to give me flying lessons.” He laughed harshly. “This one was full of bullion. Probably heading for the German U-boat pens in France. The bullion was to pay for exotic raw materials the Japs were running short of. It wouldn’t have been the first time for a Japanese submarine.”

“Another video you saw on your research ship?” Billy asked.

“Stories my father told me,” said Winchester, shaking his head. “He was an ANZAC… Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. He was a prisonerof war in a camp in Sandakan on the Borneo coast.” The professor peered at Billy from under the sagging brim of his goatskin cap. “World War Two wasn’t all Hitler and Nazis and Pearl Harbor, you know. The people down here were a lot more concerned about Tojo and Yamamoto than they were about the Luftwaffe and Rommel.”

“None of that matters now,” said Finn. “What matters is finding out what happened to our friends.” She stared at the remains of the giant submarine entangled in the bowels of the swamp below them. “How many people do we have to be concerned about?”

“Hard to say,” answered Winchester. “I think the submarine was carrying what my father used to call
Rikusentai
, the Japanese equivalent of Marines. The uniform rags they wear are green, not khaki like the ordinary Jap soldier. There must have been two or three hundred to start with. I have no idea how many survived originally. I’ve never seen more than three or four at any one time, and they don’t seem to have any permanent homes like the Chinese here. They hunt in small groups.”

“How could they possibly have survived?” said Billy.

Winchester shrugged. “By killing. They had more firepower than the locals originally, but not the numbers. They must have raided the Chinese villages for women and for food at first. Now everyonekeeps out of one another’s way.” He lifted his shoulders again. “There’s never been much love lost between the Japanese and the Chinese anyway. They each think the other is inferior and subhuman”—Winchester smiled—“rather like the Americans think of the Muslim races and vice versa.”

“Or what the Brits think of the Australians,” added Finn, defending herself.

“How are they armed?” asked Billy, getting back to the point.

“I’ve found all sorts of rusty old Nambu pistols and Arisaka rifles lying about, but they must have run out of ammunition long ago,” said Winchester. “The only things I’ve actually seen them carrying are ceremonial
katana
swords the officers must have had and old bayonets. Spears, bows, blowguns maybe. The locals have a strange sort of crossbow device I’ve seen once or twice.”

“They hunt?” Finn asked.

“They hunt, and they kill from time to time. Not for sport or as a test of manhood like the old headhunter clans in Borneo and elsewhere in Malaysia and the Philippines. The two groups seem to have made up their culture as they went along. The local Chinese are organized into family units. The Japanese seem to promote complete self-sufficiency, a kind of solitary socialism if you like. I’ve watched small children out hunting with their friends. If one catches something they all share equally. They don’t seem to have specialties, either. Everybody hunts. Everybody cooks. Everyone builds huts, gathers firewood. Men and women alike. Very efficient.”

“You sound as though you’ve studied them carefully,” said Finn.

“I’m a scientist, so it’s in my nature. And it’s a matter of ‘know thy enemy,’ as well. It’s in my best interests to keep track of them, and to keep away from them,” he added pointedly.

“Do they know you’re here?” Billy asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Winchester. “I’ve never had them track me that I know of. As I said I’ve done my best to keep a low profile.”

A breeze blew over the dune, bending the pale dense grasses at the summit and bringing the salt tang of the lagoon to their nostrils. Finn turned and looked out over the huge, lakelike expanse, ringed on every side by the high, jungle-shrouded sloping walls of the ancient volcano. The metal and wood islands of the old ships rose like the skeletons of ancient dinosaurs in the dark, flat water. A few hundred yards out the upended fuselage of Pieter Boegart’s floatplane stood like an immense child’s toy, tossed aside and forgotten.

In the far distance Finn could see the hazy, funnellike entrance to the hidden lagoon. Above her little puffballs of fleecy cloud moved slowly across the bright blue sky. She tried to imagine what the island would look like from a satellite. Winchester was right. A speck in the middle of an empty sea. At best it would look like exactly what it was: the jungle-covered remains of an old volcano with an inner lagoon and a ring of dangerous, protective reefs.

She was pretty sure that people had come here out of curiosity from time to time over the years and she was just as sure what had happened to them. Sailors, desperate for food or water, would have found a way to bring a small boat through the reefs and they would have paid the price once they reached the shore. Kids looking for Leonardo DiCaprio’s beach or the perfect place to scuba, a childless couple sailing around the world—the locals almost surely posted lookouts, and except in the storms like the ones that had brought Winchester and the
Queen
here, they would be aware of any unwelcome visitors. In the end it was the center of a spiderweb and she was trapped in it.

“I wonder how Willem Van Boegart managed to do it,” said Finn. He’d been shipwrecked here exactly the same way as she, Billy, and Winchester. “He was washed up here and he managed to get away again. Not only that, he managed to escape with a fortune.”

“I’m not sure I catch your meaning,” said Billy.

“How did he do it?” Finn asked rhetorically. “The professor says it’s impossible, but Willem managed it four hundred years ago, loaded down with treasure. There must be a way off the island that you don’t know about, Professor. One that the locals are unaware of, as well as the survivors of that submarine down there. It’s the only thing that fits.”

“There is no way,” said Winchester emphatically. “Believe me, my dear, I would have found it by now.”

“Maybe you haven’t looked hard enough,” said Finn.

“Maybe we should put that aside for the moment,” whispered Billy. “We’ve got company.” He gestured with his chin.

Five figures walking in single file were trudging down the beach. The one in front was dressed in a pair of ragged shorts and an equally ragged shirt, salt bleached but still holding a bit of faint green coloration. A Japanese army kepi with a sun flap down the neck was perched on his head. There was an embroidered star on the crown, once red, now pale pink.

He carried a sword freely in his right hand and a bamboo spear in his left, the tip edge with some kind of copper-colored metal that glinted in the sun. His jet-black hair was shaven to the skull. He wore heavy boots and puttees like Winchester’s although his were made of what appeared to be cotton, not goatskin. He was clearly the leader of the group and the forward lookout, his eyes scanning back and forth carefully.

Behind him two more figures carried a heavy-lookingnet on a pole between them. The net looked as though it was closely woven from some kind of coarse string. Probably rattan, Finn thought; she’d seen the stubborn vine growing around lots of the forest and jungle trees they’d passed. A useful crop in a place like this. Both were women dressed in simple sarongs and ragged shirts the same green as the man in front. They wore hats made of broad leaves and they were barefoot and unarmed.

A fifth figure came behind, dressed in a rough patchwork loincloth and carrying a bamboo spear. He appeared to be much younger than the others, barely more than a boy. Across his shoulders on a thin bamboo yoke, he carried the day’s catch— a dozen large fish strung with the bamboo through their gills.

“If they turn up off the beach, we’re toast,” whispered Finn, watching the group approach. Her heart began to pound.

“Then we’re toast,” said Billy, “unless they happen to be going into the swamp over there.”

“Follow me,” said Winchester. He slithered down the backside of the dune and ran toward the mangroves, keeping to the heavy grass and trying his best to avoid open areas of sand where his tracks would show. He paused at the edge of the swamp, gesturing for them to hurry. They ran down the slope of the dune and into the tall grass, not stopping until they reached Winchester, crouching low with his back to the dark, putrid water of the mangroves.

“Down!” Winchester hissed. “Cover yourself with the mud!” He looked at Finn’s flaming hair. “Especially that!” he said.

Finn and Billy did as they were told, following Winchester’s example and dropping full length into the shallow, stinking water. Finn reached both hands into the muck and quickly plastered it into her hair and over her face. Keeping low in the water, and trying not to think about what might be swimming around in the slimy ooze, she raised herself just enough to keep her eyes on the top of the dune. A moment later the little troop appeared, one by one, and marched down the near side of the sandy hummock. They appeared to find some path or trail into the jungle beyond, but suddenly the lead man stopped. He looked around, raising his glance to the canopy of trees just in front of the group, then briefly stared into the swamp.