The Mystery of Yamashita's Map (27 page)

‘What do you want?’ he asked, but still the women said nothing. They just stared at the bundle of netting and the men struggling on the floor for breath and space. Suddenly the trees parted and Winthrope appeared, looking odd against the green of the jungle. ‘Greetings!’ he intoned. ‘Please relax. You will come to no harm.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ Joe asked.

‘I will introduce myself presently. For the moment all you need to know is that I am a friend and a friend that intends to make your stay as comfortable as possible.’

‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are,’ Fraser shouted.

Winthrope laughed. ‘I think you will not be going anywhere until I say so . . . Fraser, isn’t it?’

Fraser was stopped in his tracks by the mention of his name. He stammered out an incomprehensible sentence before falling into silence amid the netting. The professor, however, was not so easily placated. ‘I wonder if you know you are dealing with Hong Kong citizens,’ he said. ‘We have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, especially by someone who is from Her Majesty’s realm.’

Winthrope laughed again. He threw his head back and revealed a set of blackened and filled teeth and his belly wobbled. ‘Professor, I know all about your brilliant mind. I have heard everything about you – why you are here, where you are going, what you are looking for and, let me tell you this, if you play right by me (which by the way you have very little choice but to do) you will be rewarded with what you came here for. Remember, you are strangers here, my friends, but this is my home.’

Winthrope nodded to the young women and they set about unfastening the net. They then removed each of the three men from its clutches and tied them to wooden stakes that they heaved over their shoulders. Joe, the professor and Fraser were carried, upside down, through the jungle along the exact route that Lisa had the day before. They felt every bump in the trail, every stumble that the women made as they carried them, each scratch from the branches that brushed their faces and the bare skin of their arms and legs.

Winthrope followed along behind, whistling merrily and beating the trees as he passed with a stick. Every now and then he would gently pat the behind of one of the girls that walked along with him, smiling lasciviously. After about half an hour Joe lifted his head up and saw, upside down in the distance, the village. It looked bright and sparkling in the freshness of the morning. There were children running about and women here and there seeing to everyday tasks and duties. Winthrope behind them called out, ‘There she is, men, home, for a while anyway. There can be paradise or there can be hell.’

He swiped at a tree with the stick and sent leaves and branches flying up into the air. Joe wondered what the hell was going to happen to him. The rope that the women had used to tie him to the stake was beginning to bite into his flesh and he felt as if he might pass out at any moment due to the blood rushing to his head; his eyes felt fit to burst and his face was hotter than a frying pan.

Joe took a deep breath and willed himself to carry on. He thought to himself that, still, this was all for Lisa. Once they had released him he would continue his search. He did not care anymore if he found her alive, he would search and search until he found her body if need be. He wanted to do his best for her, to do right by her, he wanted her to know that, wherever she was, he was thinking about her.

Behind him the professor was conversing to his carriers. ‘So, tell me,’ he was saying, ‘Do you speak English? Japanese? Filipino? None of these it would seem. Well, it has been nice to be carried for a while, I must say, especially by such lovely ladies.’

‘Save it for later,’ Winthrope offered. ‘You may need it with these.’

The party made their way through the edge of the clearing and out into the village. Everyone, it seemed, came out to look at the strange procession, to gawp and to stare at the line of weird humanity that passed before their eyes. Some of the women laughed and pointed, at the professor especially; some of them remained silent, but most chatted idly to each other, weighing up the situation with a removed indifference.

Eventually the three men were taken to the biggest hut in the village and dumped, unceremoniously, by the door. Winthrope strolled up to them. ‘Now, gentlemen, let me introduce myself. I am W.G. Winthrope, MD (retired) and I welcome you to my village.’

He spread out his arms and turned around on the spot to highlight the circumference of his land. ‘Here you will be well looked after and you may even come to like it. Of course . . . you cannot stay here forever . . . but your time here will be a pleasant one, I would imagine, that is if . . .’ He paused for a while. ‘You are of use to us.’ He looked the professor over and sniffed at the air dismissively. The professor did not know what that signified but somehow he knew it was not a compliment.

‘I think, perhaps, before we go on we should extricate you from your stakes. Girls, would you?’

Five young women from the crowd that had gathered round ran forward and began to cut Joe, the professor and Fraser away from the stakes upon which they had been carried for the last half an hour.

‘You’ll understand that until we get better acquainted, I cannot permit you to be totally free of your bonds; however that will come later, do not worry.’

Joe rubbed his shins with hands that were still tied together. He noticed the rope had bitten into them so much that blood had pooled on the tops of his boots and begun to run down their sides.

‘I think perhaps we should offer you some refreshments,’ Winthrope said, and snapped his fingers, whereupon a number of women appeared carrying jugs of water and milk, fruit and honeyed chicken. Joe, the professor and Fraser fell upon the food hungrily and started cramming it in their mouths. The women standing around began to laugh as if they had never seen hungry men before. Joe smiled at one and felt a line of grease running down his chin. Fraser nodded to Winthrope to pour some of the milk into a waiting bowl and Winthrope obliged. Fraser lapped greedily, like a dog drinking from a bowl. Every now and then one of the men would let out a belch that sent the crowd into a paroxysm of laughter. They rocked their shoulders and shook their breasts, throwing their mouths open in a display of unadulterated joy that made the professor himself begin to giggle and smile.

Joe knocked over the bowl of water with his forehead as he tried to drink out of it, another action that seemed to gain favour with the crowd who, again, laughed long and loud. Joe smiled and when the bowl was righted deliberately knocked it over again to achieve the same results. Each of the women was clamouring for a better place to see the spectacle that had dropped into their village and Joe played up to being the clown. He wriggled his way over to one of the older women and started biting at her toes as if it were the food that now lay strewn over the floor. The woman skipped and danced, trying to get her feet out of the way of Joe’s snapping mouth but the more she moved them the more Joe tried to catch them. If she moved to the left, Joe wriggled that way; if she moved backwards he would shunt forwards, licking at her toes and biting at her ankles.

After a while, the entire crowd, including Winthrope, was laughing and shaking in a raucous way. Joe wriggled on his belly like a snake to entertain them and made noises like a pig that made the women hop and skip in delight. Every now and then one of the women would summon up the courage to move forward and would offer a naked foot to Joe who would try to butt it or to gnaw at it with his flashing teeth. The woman screamed with laughter, clearly enjoying the joking attention of this man who seemed so young and fresh compared to the others.

Fraser and the professor sat together smiling but trying their best not to join in the frivolity. They were too busy trying to work out why they had been brought there and why Winthrope had insisted that they were tied. Fraser whispered in the professor’s ear. ‘What is this all about?’

But the professor just shrugged and rolled his eyes. There was nothing in his textbooks about any of this and he was content to let Joe take the lead where women were concerned. Joe larked and played a little more, pulling himself up on all fours and moving around the circle with difficulty. He would nose the legs of the women who stood at the front, pushing his head up against their shins until they lifted each leg with a hoot of laughter. He liked to be the centre of attention, especially the attention of young, pretty girls. He moved from girl to girl, butting their knees, pretending to bite their shins until, eventually, he came to a pair of legs that were different. Where the others had been a deep brown, these were lighter; where the others had been hard and rough, these were soft and smooth, and where the others had been excited and jumpy these were still.

Joe followed the line of the legs up until eventually he came to a face that he recognised. ‘Lisa!’ he exclaimed. ‘What . . . the . . . ?’

He could barely form the words that came out of his mouth. He wasn’t sure whether this was due to the surprise of seeing her, the happiness of finding her or the guilt that the look on her face made him feel. He smiled the best smile he could manage.

‘It’s nice to see you’re missing me,’ she said, and crossed her arms. Joe felt lower than he had ever felt. Lisa looked across at the professor and Fraser and gave a huge smile. She skipped over Joe and crossed over the circle to where they sat.

‘We thought you were lost,’ the professor said. ‘We were looking for you. Joe was out all day yesterday trying to find you. We were captured by these – who are these people, Lisa?’

‘I‘ll tell you everything, later, uncle. You have to know, though, you will be all right . . .’ She looked at him. ‘Well, I think you will be.’

Fraser piped up. ‘I don’t suppose you will be able to get us out of these ropes, would you, Lisa? They hurt. I think I’m losing the feeling in my hands.’

Lisa shook her head. ‘They’ve only just let me out of mine. They don’t allow strangers to wander the village alone. You’ll understand why later on when they explain why you’re here.’

The professor looked imploringly at her. ‘Why are we here Lisa? Has it got something to do with the gold?’

Lisa hushed him and looked around suspiciously. ‘You’d do well to forget the gold for a while, uncle, and concentrate on getting out of here.’

‘That’s if we can,’ said Fraser.

Lisa laughed. ‘Oh, I think the problem will be wanting to.’

She felt a tapping on her back and turned to see Joe smiling at her, his face covered in the dirt from the floor. Lisa stood, pushed her way through the crowd and disappeared into Winthrope’s hut. Joe looked longingly at her, then back at the professor, who could only offer a shrug in explanation. Winthrope beside him clapped his hands together and the circle of women closed in around the three men. They were taken roughly by the hands and led to a hut that was being built in the middle of the village.

It was then that Fraser started noticing that none of the villagers were men. At first he had not thought about it but as time went on he slowly began to realise that, other than Winthrope and the few small boys he saw running about, the only three men were himself, Joe and the professor. He tried to get the latter alone to mention this but it was proving difficult. The women had prepared small beds for the men in the sunshine, so they could sit and watch the building of their hut. Some of the girls mopped the professor’s brow or rubbed Joe hands until they could feel themselves being lulled into a deep sleep. Beside them, however, Fraser was vigilant. He began to take a keen interest in what was happening around him.

He noticed that Winthrope seemed to control the operation. Everything he wanted, the girls would run and get for him. Whether it was food, water or just company they seemed eager to get him everything he desired. He wondered what relationship he was to them. He was obviously English, from some part of the south, he guessed, so what was he doing here? What hold did he have over these women?

One of the older women sidled up to his bed and sat beside him. Fraser did not want to engage her at all so he remained motionless, looking straight ahead, not meeting her gaze. The woman reached across and took his hand but Fraser snatched it back; from the corner of his eye, he could see that she looked hurt but he did nothing.

After a few seconds she reached out a hand and tried to stroke his head but Fraser lifted her arm and placed it back on her lap. He swiped at the air as a fly buzzed around his face. There was silence in the village. Next to him Fraser heard the woman gently crying. He turned and looked at her. She bowed her head, either in deference or embarrassment, and let her tears fall onto her knees. Fraser felt his heart softening but he knew he must not let himself be taken in by all of this until he knew what was going on. He waved the woman away and reluctantly, after a few minutes, she went.

Fraser sat back on his bed and watched the clouds scudding across the sky. The sky looked so blue after the rains and the clouds were a brilliant white. He closed his eyes but would not let himself drift off to sleep. He knew he must keep alert whatever happened. However much they tried to relax him, he knew he must keep his mind aware at all times. Beside him, the professor snored as a young girl played with his hair. For the first time Fraser thought how ridiculous the professor was, how odd he seemed here, miles away from his classroom and his schoolbooks. The snores seemed to get louder and louder until the girl had to hold his nose causing him to start and to cough back phlegm.