Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (9 page)

“Ben and I would be happy to show you.”

The prince looked at the boy, Ben, and the young man smiled for the first time.

“Show me what? You’re not making sense.”

“Lieutenant, imagine a treasure more vast than anything man has ever assembled in one location. Think about so much gold that it would take a navy of ships to remove it.”

Ozzie didn’t say anything.

“It is imperative that I return to the Philippines.”

Reluctantly, Ozzie forced his mind to turn away from the visions the prince’s words had evoked. “Good luck with that. MacArthur kept his promise and he’s pushing your guys out.”

“You are correct when you say this war will be ending soon.”

“And until that happens, you’re gonna be a guest of Uncle Sam.”

The prince shrugged as if to say,
Maybe, or maybe not
. “When the war ends, the smart men will be very rich.” He stared into Ozzie’s eyes once again. “Those not so smart will return home to the same lives they had before the war.”

Ozzie felt the burn crawling back up his throat. He thought about the tiny apartment where his wife lived with their son, little Richie, and the job waiting for him working for his father at the bank. He’d watched his father handling the money of the residents of Newport’s mansions all his life, never making enough of his own to be anywhere near in their league. After all Ozzie had done for
them
in this war, no one was suggesting he’d go home to anything different. He coughed and then swallowed. His gut tensed for the pain he knew was coming.

“I do not have the luxury of time, Lieutenant. I have very important information I need to return to the Philippines.”

Ozzie told himself to snap out of it. This was what he was supposed to be after: information.

“What kind of information?”

The prince lifted both his hands into the air with his fingers spread wide. “Do I have your permission to reach for something in my tunic?”

Ozzie shrugged. He knew the sailors who had brought these prisoners aboard the sub had already patted him down. “Sure. Just take it slow.”

“On my honor, it is not a weapon.”

The prince reached inside his tunic and Ozzie saw him pull apart some small stitches. He reached inside the lining of the upper end of his sleeve and withdrew a small gold cylinder about three inches long. It had caps on both ends. The fine gold filigree work around the tube looked like some sort of Eastern lettering like Hebrew or Arabic. In gold alone, it was worth more than Ozzie made in a year.

So much for the capabilities of the sailors who searched this guy,
he thought.

“What is that?”

“It is called a prayer gau, or prayer box. It was made in Tibet more than one hundred years ago. Their monks would use these to carry small prayers close to their hearts.” The prince held up the gau and showed Ozzie that there were tiny scrolls of paper inside.

“So, I take it that this one doesn’t have prayers in it.”

“You are correct.” The prince flashed his creepy grin again.

“So, what is this? Some kind of coded message?”

“It is the key to a map.”

“What sort of map?”

“It is an encrypted map that represents my work over the last three years.”

“You mean this Golden Lily?”

“Yes, the map shows the locations of all the Golden Lily vaults located in the islands of the Philippines. It is located in Luzon and I know where.”

Chatuchak Weekend Market
Bangkok, Thailand

November 17, 2012

Riley couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “The USS
Bonefish
?” she said, her voice sounding loud after Peewee’s whisper.

Was this one more instance where her father had lied to her? She thought of all the boats he had owned in the many places her family had lived. Whenever the State Department posted him to an embassy close to a body of water, her father always found and purchased some sailing boat and named her
Bonefish
. And now Riley’s own boat carried the same name. Yet her father always swore that he never knew anything about his own father’s time in the Pacific.

Peewee leaned in close, focused his eyes on hers, and said, “
Shhhh
.” He inclined his head toward the customer over her left shoulder and folded both his hands over hers. “Keep this safe. There are others who want it.”

She started to turn her head, but he made that shushing noise again. Then she felt his hot breath on her ear, and she barely heard
him when he said, “Meet me at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha in three hours. When I say so, you run.”

Peewee leaned back in his chair, still watching the customer behind her. Riley wrapped the handkerchief around the heavy metal object and slowly slid it through the zipper on the side of her backpack.

“So how long have you been in Thailand, miss?” Peewee asked in a loud voice.

She slid her right arm through one of the straps. “A little over a month,” she said. “But this is my first trip to Bangkok.”

Peewee stood. “I see. Well, I think it’s time for you to
go
. Now.”

When Riley bolted out of the chair, she turned just enough to get a look at the man who had walked into the stall behind her. The Fu Manchu mustache and gray-streaked hair of the Asian man from the train station coffee shop.

Peewee was surprisingly fast for such an old man.

When the stranger lunged for her, somehow Peewee kicked her empty chair into his path and the mustache man disappeared behind the pile of merchandise in the center of the store. The last she saw of him, Peewee had darted around the fallen man and was headed for the curtain at the back of the shop.

Riley took off, her sandals slapping the asphalt as she dodged around all the shoppers. The crowd seemed to have multiplied threefold in the time she had been talking to Peewee. Her backpack bounced against her side, and she slowed for a moment to get her other arm through its strap. She didn’t have a chance to see whether the strange man had followed her or Peewee, but soon she heard footsteps and people crying out as her pursuer shoved them aside in the aisles behind her.

She was headed back the way she had come, following Soi 3 out to the perimeter Main Road, when she decided it would be smarter to stay inside the crowded market for cover. She darted to her right and followed an aisle lined with clothing boutiques. She pushed her way
through throngs of Thai teenagers clad in skintight jeans and wearing huge sunglasses on the tops of their heads. They were giggling and pushing one another and blocking the aisle.

Riley dropped down onto her hands and knees and dove between the hems of a rack of hanging sundresses. The cloth brushed aside and she emerged on the other side of the rack with a clear space ahead of her. She leapt up and heard a scream. A quick glance over her shoulder showed a young girl, her head hanging forward, glasses gone, dark hair covering her face. The stranger had his arm raised to strike again, and in his hand she saw what looked like a thin yellow stick or bamboo pipe. The other terrified teens were running and screaming, scrambling to get out of his way.

She turned right again at the next intersection and was now heading for the center of the building. At the end of the long aisle, she saw sacks of grain, herbs, and dried fish. She smelled the hot grease and pungent spices and saw the yellow heat lights. Food stalls. Behind her, more screams. She didn’t dare take the time to look.

Going left this time, she found herself among mountains of shiny aluminum pots and tier after tier of plastic bowls and boxes with bright-colored plastic lids. She swerved to avoid a stroller and ran into a tightly balanced display of huge cook pots. The pile caved in and crashed to the ground. An old Thai man wearing a
Notre Dame Irish
T-shirt came running out yelling at her.

Ahead was another restaurant stall with a cooking island out front and a man in a bloody apron hacking at what looked like a chicken carcass with a meat cleaver. Riley dodged around the man and cut through the tables packed with diners. There was a swinging saloon-style door at the back of the stall, and she was certain there had to be a back door. Through the swinging door, she found herself in a packed room with a stove on one side and a dishwashing sink on the other. In between, seven or eight startled people stared at her.

“Out?” she said.

A woman pointed to the curtain that covered the back wall. Riley swept it aside and found herself in a small passageway behind the stalls. When the curtain dropped it was dark back there. The hard concrete wall to her left must be the building exterior. The various booths on her right used this space for storage and to dump their garbage during the day. She felt her way forward. She heard a man shouting behind her, back in the kitchen. She was moving away from the sound, carefully stepping over cardboard boxes and pieces of cellophane packaging, trying not to make any noise yet trying to cover as much ground as possible. Water on the ground soaked her feet, and her toes slid around in her sandals as she climbed over the piles of trash. Her nose told her she was moving away from the cooking stalls.

Then she heard noises behind her. Someone else moving down the passage. She heard crashing and what sounded like cursing as he kicked at the trash blocking his route.

Riley’s eyes were getting more accustomed to the darkness. Her arms reached out in front of her, feeling for obstructions. Pushing aside a bucket and mop, she turned to look over her left shoulder. Her back was to the booths on her right, and it was then she felt arms close around her. There was cloth between her and the person, as well as her backpack. A flap of the heavy fabric fell over her head, blinding her.

The arms yanked her out of the alley into a stall. She coughed and choked on the odor of wet wool. Even through the blanket, she heard the sound change. More noise, distant music. She squirmed and struggled against that strong grip. Swinging her head, she tried to throw off the heavy fabric. Her feet kicked at the ground as she tried to get purchase. It grew harder to breathe and her heart hammered as she beat with all her fury at the body pressed against hers.

Then the arms lifted her feet off the ground and turned her. Something caught against the backs of her knees and she started to fall backward. She landed on her butt but the blanket cushioned her fall.
Before she could try to stand, someone picked up her feet, tucked them inside, pushed down her head, and closed some sort of lid.

The sounds outside were muffled. Riley hated small, tight spaces, and she fought to get her rising panic under control. The smelly wool was suffocating her, and finally she pulled the cover off her head. Slow your breathing, she told herself. Still she couldn’t see anything in the darkness. She felt around, walls and floors of rough-hewn wood. A domed lid. Trying to push up on the lid that held her inside was no good. It wouldn’t budge. She tried pounding on the wood sides, but she couldn’t pull her fist back far enough to make much noise. She was about to start screaming when outside she heard hammering feet and hard breathing.

She froze. A man’s voice was shouting in Thai. A woman was whimpering, then she spoke very fast. Riley heard the man’s voice move from one side of the box to the other, then she heard nothing.

Chatuchak Park
Bangkok, Thailand

November 17, 2012

Benny Salim could not believe his luck. The woman had somehow vanished right in front of him, so he was leaning against a tree in the park smoking a cigarette, thinking about how he was going to pick up the trail again, when the geezer walked out of the market gate into Chatuchak Park not twenty meters away. Benny would not have recognized the old man if he had not been wearing that stupid hat that looked like an army-green tent covered with medals. There were not many men wearing those around Bangkok these days.

He had underestimated the old man earlier. He would not do so again. The old man was walking at a brisk pace across the grass, headed for the underground train station. Benny ground out the butt of his cigarette and fell in behind him. He closed the gap between them with his longer strides and when they were still about one hundred meters from the entrance to the MRT, he grabbed him by the shoulder and spun the old man around.