The Nicholas Linnear Novels (188 page)

“In any event, unlike the Eurasian poppy, it appears as if this climate and soil are perfect for the Para tree. If this proves true, the effect on Singapore will be—well, I can’t really imagine it. Quite remarkable, at the very least.

“I’ve mentioned the Para to Mr. Tak, but he seems to have other matters on his mind. Growing it would be easy for him; he’s got acres and acres of land to the north of Singapore.”

“Why would he want to grow this tree?” So-Peng asked.

H. N. Ridley looked at him. “Have you ever heard of rubber?”

“No,” So-Peng admitted. “What is it?”

Ridley told him. To So-Peng, what he had to say was far more interesting than the brace of tigers the hunting party took.

The tiger hunt was a way for them to move northward without causing any undue talk.

“If these tanjian were actually in Singapore,” Tak said to So-Peng, “I would have known about it. That means they’re out here in the jungle with the tigers.”

So-Peng nodded. “From what I understand, that fits their elemental philosophy.” He had not said anything about his talk with Ridley, preferring to keep his information to himself until a propitious moment. In life, So-Peng knew, one not only had to cross bridges, but one had to cross them at the proper time.

“It also means they’ll be far more dangerous,” Tak warned. “In Singapore I control virtually everyone or know someone who does. We would have a much easier time of it.”

To So-Peng’s surprise, they did not head into the jungle when the hunt broke up. Instead, they trekked for just over an hour through mangrove and thick forest palms until they emerged on the bank of a wide, meandering, muddy river. A slim sampan was waiting for them. Surrounding it were three heavily armed men who bowed when they saw Tak approaching. He stepped aboard the boat, checking the provisions himself. Apparently satisfied, he waved So-Peng aboard, and casting off the lines, the three men leaped into the sampan as it nosed out from the shore. At the rear of the boat, one of the men had a coal fire going. An iron wok was beginning to sizzle.

“What river is this?” So-Peng asked.

Tak said, “The orang asli have named it, but I don’t know what it is.” He was speaking of the original people—the natives—of the peninsula. “It doesn’t matter. It will get us where we need to go.”

The man in the stern produced food—drunken chicken, strips of meat boiled in
shao shing,
the yellow rice wine that was a Shanghainese favorite, served cold with broad, pungent sprigs of fresh coriander. In a moment the wok was emptied, rilled again, and Tak and So-Peng were delivered of baby eels sauteed in sesame oil; crisp baskets of deep-fried yam noodles.

Tak talked animatedly as they ate. As he spoke it gradually dawned on So-Peng that he had passed some kind of test that Tak had devised for him. He thought back to the people he had been introduced to on the hunt. Each of them, though polite, had seemed eager to know about him, almost as if they were quizzing him. And, indeed, So-Peng now realized that that was precisely what they had been doing.

When he thought about it, it was not so surprising. People in Tak’s position had a right if not a duty to be skeptical of everyone with whom they came in contact. Tak’s only fear was from infiltration from the police or from a rival tong. Tak had, in effect, passed him around to all those in the hunt party who could identify him as something other than what So-Peng had claimed to be.

“These two merchants,” Tak was saying now, “were something special to me, and everyone knew it. They had the fastest fleets, the trained personnel, the desire to take risks that I required. It is clear to me that whoever murdered them—the tanjian, you say—did so at the behest of someone with whom I have done business. We had a disagreement about six months ago, and he vowed to get even. Now he has, and I cannot let his challenge go unavenged.”

Hearing this, So-Peng was about to say that this could not be so, since his mother was certain that the tanjian had murdered the two merchants as a warning for her to return to her family, but instead he bit his tongue. It was clear to him that Tik Po Tak was far from a fool. If he believed that the murders were meant to teach him a lesson, So-Peng could not discount that possibility. Then who was right about the motive for the murders, Tak or Liang?

“You were very quick with your reflexes,” Tak said, returning to the subject of the tiger hunt. “Desaru owes you; he will not forget.”

“I had some practice,” So-Peng admitted. “Some years ago I made money by bagging those giant rats that were gobbling up the Colony’s cats. Remember? The governor put a bounty on their heads. One week I brought in twenty. They made a good deal more noise than the tiger.”

“You heard him anyway,” Tak said, missing nothing, “when Ridley and I did not.”

“Well, I have not lived in Singapore all my life,” So-Peng said, judging the time was right to divulge this information. “My family moved around a lot, and I spent time on both coasts of the peninsula.”

Tak laughed. “So you know the jungle better than I.”

So-Peng told him the Malay name of the river they were on, then immediately regretted it; Tak might think him devious.

“Do you also know where we’re going?” Tak asked seriously.

So-Peng shook his head. “I’d need second sight for that,” he said.

“I know someone who has second sight,” Tak said. “I consulted him before we set out.” He spat into the muddy water. “He said I would not return from upriver.”

“Yet you chose to go anyway.”

“Chose?” Tak seemed surprised by the word. “Face dictated that I must go. These merchants were like part of my family. Also, I was waiting for a sign.” He pointed at So-Peng. “You are the sign, lad. You know the murderers, these tanjian. I no longer feel like an eagle in the dark. You’ll see them before they see us.”

So-Peng felt his bowels turn to water. He was angry at himself for inflating his value to Tak. He had told the
samseng
that he had seen the tanjian and could thus identify them. Now Tak was counting on him to provide the edge in a showdown between two powerful enemies. So-Peng was in the middle of a war from which it was impossible to extricate himself.

Yet he knew that he could not confess his error in judgment—not now, after he knew what was required of him. All of a sudden he found that his cynical feelings about Tak had dissipated. Tak had revealed himself as a man who believed in his ideals and was willing to die for them. So-Peng thought that no better definition of a hero existed.

It was, perhaps, not surprising that Tik Po Tak should have such a profound effect upon So-Peng. After all, the boy had grown up in a family where his father was all but completely absent. That So-Peng should wind up admiring this man with the iron will and compelling personality was, in restrospect, inevitable.

Children from a kampong they passed swam out into the river, laughing and splashing at the garfish which could swim atop the water for minutes at a time. Two enterprising lads swam alongside the sampan until one of Tak’s men shouted a warning in Bahasa, pointing to an oncoming crocodile. The lads shouted. So-Peng could see their eyes rolling in fear, and he was reminded of the mortally wounded tiger before Tak shot it through the eye. The children turned, trying to head for shore, but So-Peng, watching the crocodile overhauling them, did not believe they would make it to safety. The crocodile, close now, opened wide its greedy jaws.

One of Tak’s men reached for a rifle, but So-Peng put his hand on the barrel, saying, “The blood will only attract more animals.”

Leaning over the side of the boat, So-Peng ripped off a thick branch, and launching himself into the river between the terrified children and the crocodile, he jammed the branch into the mouth of the crocodile. Immediately he swung aboard its back, riding it as it thrashed. Behind it the river was turned into a froth by its whipping tail.

The children, seeing this display, began to laugh, swimming to shore, pulling themselves up the embankment, standing, dripping, pointing, and laughing as they nonchalantly peeled giant leeches off their bodies.

Tak pulled So-Peng back aboard the sampan, and the boat moved on.

“Where did you learn that trick?” he asked.

So-Peng, thinking of Zhao Hsia, laughed. “I’m glad it worked,” he said. “When I was a boy my best friend used to do that with crocodiles larger than this one. He had a knack with animals. Not like second sight, but similar, I suppose. They would not harm him.” He shrugged. “Perhaps he hypnotized them.”

Tak was staring upriver at the Gunung Muntahak mountain, rising in blue haze out of the emerald and khaki jungle. “I could use your friend’s powers on this journey,” he said. Then he turned and smiled at So-Peng. “It is good that you are here, lad. Not many Chinese are familiar with the Malay east coast. It is my great good fortune that you came to me at just this moment.”

Within a stand of huge Tualang trees they saw a brace of scaly pangolin, overseen by a family of raucous gibbons, swinging from branch to branch. Kingfishers, hornbills, and sunbirds flitted and stalked along the river and its steep embankments. Sunset was approaching.

There were few cooking fires in the kampongs, for this was the beginning of Ramadan and, for the Muslim Malays, the next thirty days were reserved for fasting and for prayer.

“I chose this time well,” Tak said as the sampan nosed into a natural cove in the right bank. “In Ramadan the spirit may be strong, but the flesh is weak.”

They crept ashore, under cover of the swiftly encroaching night and the chittering of the nocturnal insects. Fireflies glittered in the gathering dusk and, here and there, birdwing butterflies as large across as So-Peng’s head made their last foray of the day. They went as far as they could, then made camp without a fire, settled down for the night.

At first light they set out. Tak led them down a jungle path, winding and circuitous. There were many breaks, and the path was overgrown with palm and fern, so that intuition—or perhaps memory—played as great a role as jungle lore in divining the way.

However, it was So-Peng who pointed out that several of the clumps of fern were unattached. Rather, they had been purposefully placed in order to obscure the path in as natural a manner as was possible.

“Is this your enemy’s doing?” So-Peng asked.

“I don’t think his people are that sophisticated,” Tak said, shaking his head.

They pressed on, strung out in single file: two of Tak’s heavily-armed men, then Tak himself, So-Peng, and the last of the men, the one who cooked for them.

The foliage, thick, wide, beaded with moisture, held all manner of treasures: a multitude of insects, tiny jeweled snakes, green and blue tree frogs, small multicolored birds.

The days were always more quiet than the nights, but just as dangerous. Spitting cobras, krates, and vipers whose bites were powerful enough to paralyze a man within seconds were much in evidence. Once, the lead man stopped, pointing at a great creature coiled around the bole of a tree by the side of the path. It was a reticulated python which looked to be longer than the height of five men.

Just before midday Tak called a halt and they hunkered down in place for a light meal. So-Peng, who was nearest the cook, helped pass the fruit down the line of men: rambutan, which were similar to litchi, and the sweet-sour mangosteen with its pure white flesh. It was said that one told seasons in Singapore by what fruit was on sale there.

So-Peng was opening the last of his mangosteen when the white sections were suddenly, startlingly spattered with deep red. So-Peng smelled the sickly sweet stench of fresh blood, and out of the corner of his eye saw the cook crumple over as if he had fallen asleep.

Except that the middle of the cook’s chest was rudely split by a gleaming steel object, eight-pointed, buried halfway into flesh. So-Peng recognized it immediately as a tanjian throwing star.

So-Peng grew very still. He felt his spirit contracting into an opaque ball, keeping to the low ground, staying invisible. The hairs at the back of his neck stirred; he was acutely aware of his vulnerability, his utter helplessness. He waited for the soft whirring of the throwing star, the sharp bite of steel blade burying itself in his back. He willed his mind to think of nothing. Afraid to move or to make any sound, So-Peng clandestinely watched the cook die.

All was quiet around them. The men ate, unsuspecting. So-Peng acted accordingly, so as not to differentiate himself from them.

He believed he knew what the tanjian were up to. His mother had emphasized their dependence on strategy, and he knew that he must bank on that dependence, turning it to his advantage, transmuting the tanjian strength into a weakness. He could not do that by offering himself up as a target. Sick at heart, trembling in fear, he obediently ate his last mangosteen, speckled with the cook’s blood.

At length So-Peng rose, went off the trail to urinate. Afterward, instead of returning directly to the party, he struck out in a direction that ran roughly parallel to the jungle path they had been following.

He had been at this for perhaps ten minutes when he heard a voice calling softly, “Don’t move.”

So-Peng froze; he dared not even look around. Now he felt something on his back. As it began to undulate, silently tracking obliquely across one shoulder to his waist, he began to understand.

He waited patiently. In a moment he sensed someone approaching him from the side. So-Peng relaxed his muscles. There was a quick movement, no more than a blur, then he felt the weight off his back, heard the swish of the knife through the air, turned and saw the viper’s head severed from its writhing body. Black venom squirted onto the jungle floor, absorbed by the thick mulch.

So-Peng looked into Tik Po Tak’s eyes. “What do you think you’re doing, lad?” the
samseng
said. “You could’ve been killed.”

“I was looking for the tanjian in the trees,” So-Peng said, watching Tak wipe down his knife. “The cook is dead.”

“I know. I got the men under cover, then I went looking for you. I thought you’d been killed as well.”

“The tanjian are here,” So-Peng said. When Tak said nothing, he went on. “The cook was killed with the same weapon as the two merchants in Singapore—a throwing star.”