Rembrandt's Ghost (18 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are two of these sprawling semislums in Labuan,
Kampung Bebuloh
and
Kampung Patau-Patau.
Both of these are tourist showplaces, full of stores and small craft-ware factories, the tin-roofed, open-walled structures connected by a maze of wooden plank walkways and accessible by water taxi. A much larger
kampong ayer
is occupied by several thousand Filipino squatters on the near side of the harbor.

These are Labuan’s true poor, the majority of them indentured sex industry workers employed in floating brothels in the
kampong ayer
as well as in bars, discothèques, karaoke lounges, hair salons, and massage parlors in the resort and hotel district. Among the knowledgeable Labuan is as important a sex trade tourist destination as Bangkok with every imaginable vice available to whoever has the money to pay.

The
Batavia Queen
arrived in Labuan shortly after noon, docking at the Merdeka Pier close to the ultramodern ferry terminal. From the wheelhouse Finn and Billy could see across the length and breadth of the island; according to Briney Hanson, it was flat as a pancake with its highest point no more than a hundred fifty feet above sea level. From where they stood, there was nothing but the gleaming white structures of the beach hotels and small, modern cityscape to the east and a sea of jungle green stretching off to the north. In the far distance, beyond the hotels and the gold and white onion dome of the central mosque, they could see the belching stacks of the petroleum refinery and the huge sheds of the government shipyards.

While Elisha went to the Customs House to clear their arrival and arrange for the bunkers to be topped up, McSeveney and Toshi Minimoto headed for the supermarket on
Tun Mustapha
Road for supplies, including several cases of Orangeboom Dutch Lager, the
Batavia Queen
’s beer of choice. Hanson went with Finn and Pilgrim to look for Osterman, the mysterious antiquities dealer who’d sold Pieter Boegart the little gold statue.

They took an oddly modern Panga twenty-six-foot water taxi across the bay at a breezy forty-five miles an hour and arrived at
Kampung Patau-Patau
ten minutes later after deftly skirting a fleet of dive boats on their way out to the “resort wrecks” sunk along the shoal lines of the sprinkling of atolls and small islands that stood between Labuan and the Brunei mainland. There were four wrecks that Hanson knew of: the
Tung Huang
, a Chinese freighter with a load of cement once destined for the sultan’s palace in Brunei; the SS
De Klerke
commandeered by the Japanese during World War Two and sunk by the Australian Air Force; the USS
Salute
, a minesweeper much like the original
Batavia Queen
; and a Philippine fishing trawler, the
Mapine Padre
, which caught fire and sank sometime in the eighties. The four wrecks and the sex trade were the real basis for Labuan’s day-to-day economy.

The taxi dropped them at a rickety-looking wooden pier without guardrails and they climbed up a bamboo ladder. “How are we supposed to find this man Osterman?” Billy asked, staring down the narrow plank-surfaced wharf. Facing them was a patchwork of buildings made out of everything from flattened oil drums to heavy plastic sheeting. It seemed as though every house had its own small boat anchored close by and every window opening was festooned with overflowing flower boxes. The tin roofs and the walls of a lot of the houses were painted in bright blues, yellows, and greens.

Finn shrugged. “We just ask, I guess.”

A group of young children was playing farther along the pier, happily flinging themselves off the planks and into the sea, then climbing out again, swarming up the bamboo supports, and repeating the whole process. They were wearing an assortment of clothes ranging from nothing at all through bright white underpants to colorful sarongs. There didn’t seem to be any adult supervision, the oldest of the children clearly keeping an eye on their younger companions. Suddenly Finn found herself transported back to her childhood and her uncle Danny’s farm that backed up to Big Darby Creek just outside Maryville. She’d gone swimming just like this with no fear of drowning or being swept away and with not a worrying adult anywhere in sight. It seemed to her that the world had been a safer place then, but at least a little of it seemed to have remained in this strange, out-of-the-way place. She smiled and laughed at the kids’ antics, which were clearly accelerating and becoming noisier because the children had an audience.

Finn looked down into the water. It seemed clear and unpolluted, perhaps ten or fifteen feet deep down to a sandy bottom. The surface was remarkably clear of domestic garbage; she couldn’t see a single piece of floating plastic or anything else. The local occupants were obviously very house-proud. The boats tied up at each dwelling’s private pier were nothing more than old rowboats fitted with small outboards, but they were all freshly painted in gaudy colors like the roughly built homes, and each had a name neatly written on the prow.

As Finn and the others approached, the kids stopped playing and stood watching them silently, their eyes wide and curious. No calling out, no begging, just a silent careful assessment: friend or foe.

“Di mana Osterman tuan?”
Hanson asked. One of the kids, the tallest, who wore raggedy red shorts, pointed solemnly to a large shack with a bright blue tin roof and a window box full of blazing rhododendrons.

“Tuan Osterman kedai,”
said the boy solemnly.

“That’s Osterman’s store,” explained Hanson.

“Terima kasih,”
said Finn, using a bit of Malay she’d picked up from Bazooki, the steward. It meant “thank you.”

“Sama-sama!”
replied the boy, surprised and pleased.

“Should I give him some money?” Billy asked.

“Why?” Hanson answered. “He was just giving you directions. He doesn’t expect anything. These people aren’t beggars. They’re just poor.”

They followed the child’s pointing finger, taking a series of ever narrowing walkways, and eventually reached Osterman’s store. The whole front of the building was open, the front wall made up of rolled bamboo blinds that could be lowered at night. The store was one big room, lined with shelves that held a bizarre assortment of items ranging from ornately framed pictures from Victorian times to a set of Asian-styled Barbie Doll knockoffs arranged in gaudy cardboard display boxes with clear plastic tops that looked like coffins. It was a junk store: Osterman was hardly what you would call an antiquities dealer, Finn thought. For a moment she wondered if the little boy outside had steered them wrong.

A man appeared from behind a bamboo curtain that sectioned off the rear of the shop. He was tall, stooped, and in his sixties or seventies. His hair was very long and stringy, and his very pale belly hung over the waist band of a soiled native sarong. He wore very out-of-date black plastic-framed glasses and he was carrying a plastic bowl and chopsticks.

“Mr. Osterman?” Finn asked.

“Call me Bernard, dear,” said the man. He used the chopsticks to guide a slurry of noodles into his mouth, watching his guests over the rim of the bowl. “Not browsing tourists by the look of you.” He smiled. The accent was German or Austrian, but the English was excellent.

Finn reached into the pocket of her shirt and took out the little gold amulet. She held it out in the palm of her hand. Bernard Osterman looked down at it but made no move to take it from her.

“I was wondering if that little trinket would come back to haunt me,” he sighed.

“You sold it to a relative of mine. Pieter Boegart,” said Billy.

“That’s not what he told me his name was. I knew he was Dutch. He said his name was Derlagen.”

“That’s his lawyer.

“One of
the
Boegarts?”

“The black sheep,” said Billy.

“I know that feeling myself,” Osterman said, smiling.

“He must have come here for a reason,” said Finn. “I don’t think he was a browsing tourist any more than we were.”

“Quite right, dear.” He paused. “I’m not sure I see your part in all this.”

“Pieter Boegart is my relative, as well,” she answered, realizing that she was admitting to her mother’s infidelity at last and perhaps even to her own paternity. Somehow it didn’t seem to matter so much now.

“I see… I suppose,” murmured Osterman, looking back and forth between Billy and Finn.

“How did Pieter Boegart find you?” asked Billy.

Osterman smiled again and slurped up some more noodles. He put the bowl and chopsticks down on a nearby table and gave a small contented belch. “I learned my trade in Berlin as a very young boy, six or seven or so, too young then even for the
Deutsches Jungvolk
. To survive in Berlin after 1945, you learned a great many things, but above all you learned to trade one thing or another until you found what you wanted. You also learned to do whatever was neccessary along that path to find what you wanted or to stop others from finding it first. Whatever was necessary, no matter how unpleasant. Most important you traded in information. You, as they say, kept your ear to the ground. Later, when it became necessary for me to leave Berlin and to come eventually to this godforsaken place, I simply applied the same principles, you see?”