Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (11 page)

Benguet Gold Mine
Baguio, Philippines

November 17, 2012

Elijah was halfway across the yard to the limo when he stopped and turned. Belmonte was still standing in the doorway of the office.

“Jaime, while I’m here, I am going to visit the lab and talk to Wolf. I’d like to take a look at the work he’s been doing. If you’re right and Benny finds the old man, we could be up and operating again within the week.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll call down and have him come up to meet you right now.”

Belmonte turned and spoke to his secretary inside the office.

“Tell him I’ll meet him halfway,” Elijah said. “Meanwhile, book me on the next flight from here to Manila.” He took off down the gravel path toward the lab, pleased that he would be able to see Esmerelda’s smile even sooner than he had anticipated.

He had almost arrived at the prefab building when the back door swung open and Wolfgang, dressed in his usual white lab coat, stepped outside. Elijah had hired the chemist six years ago and brought both
Wolf and his wife, Ulrika, to the Philippines. Today Wolf was very good at his job only because Elijah had spent so much time in the Philippines teaching him. The German crossed the gap between them and extended his hand.

“Elijah. Come inside.” He turned and extended his arm toward the door to the lab.

Once inside the lab, Elijah walked over to the mass spectrometer and rested his hands on the table next to the instrument. “I expected to hear from you, Wolf.”

“You mean about that sample?”

Elijah turned and faced the German. He examined him for several long seconds before he answered. “Of course. Are you stalling for some reason?” He no longer trusted Wolfgang. Ever since his wife had taken her own life a little over a year ago, the man had changed.

“No, not at all. My findings aren’t conclusive. I wanted to pin it down to the exact mine.”

“And what have you found?”

“It’s been more than two weeks, and I can’t even determine the country, much less the mine.”

Elijah’s face broke into a broad smile. “Excellent! If you can’t, no one can.”

“I don’t know what you did differently this time, but if you can replicate that, we can pass off gold mined anywhere in the world. No one will be able to fingerprint it.”

Elijah patted Wolf’s forearm and crossed to the door. The big man would be pleased. “I’ll report your findings to Brightstone,” he said as he pushed the door open.

He was halfway out when he turned to face the German. “On the phone last week, you said you had something you wanted to ask me.”

Wolfgang dropped his head like a dog being scolded by his master.

“Wasn’t it something about your wife?” Elijah could see the man’s chin quivering. It was little wonder Ulrika had needed the attentions
of a real man. And Wolfgang had made it so easy, since he liked to watch.

“I have something to show you,” the German said.

Elijah stepped back inside and eyed his friend. He wondered what sort of secrets Wolf was keeping from him.

Wolf stepped past Elijah and activated the electronic lock on the door. They had installed fingerprint-activated locks six months earlier. Elijah knew because he had made the request and signed the orders. Not only did they often have millions in gold in the lab, but there was also more than a million dollars’ worth of equipment in that room.

“So what have you been up to, Wolf?”

“I get bored and my mind wanders. I don’t want to have too much time on my hands. You know what I mean. They won’t let me leave this mountain, and there is nothing more for me to do here until they bring me more gold. But this,” he said, squatting down and opening a cabinet, “this has been one of my greatest pleasures these days.”

Wolfgang removed what looked like a rolled-up swath of dark velvet fabric. He carried it over to one of the tables in the lab and carefully unrolled then folded back the fabric.

When he saw it, Elijah drew in a quick breath. The detail in the metalwork was exquisite.

“I remembered the design on your back, you see, when Belmonte brought it in from the same site where they located those documents. It was that last dig up near Tuguegarao. He told me to destroy it because we had no way to prove its provenance. He said we aren’t in this business to sell to private collectors, so I was to extract whatever I could.” Wolf lifted the sword from the table and handed it to Elijah. “I couldn’t do it—and I thought you would understand.”

The heft of the blade felt balanced across his palms. “Hmm. Yes.”

Wolfgang would not look directly at Elijah. When he spoke, his face was turned away. “Ah, I was right. I knew you would see it that way. I’m not an expert, but I have spent some time doing research since
I’ve had little else to do. It’s an eighteenth-century Chinese ceremonial sword—more of a broadsword than a saber. The Qianlong emperor had many swords made with that dragon along the dorsal edge during that period. Much of the gold on the hilt there is only gold leaf, but the scales on the dragon’s back are all solid droplets. And then there are the jewels. That was all that Belmonte saw. But I knew you would appreciate that is not where the value is.”

“Quite right,” Elijah said. “You know me well, Wolf. I appreciate beautiful things.” He wrapped both hands around the hilt and lifted the sword, stepping back from the table. The blade was only about twenty inches long, but it felt perfectly balanced. This was not only a ceremonial sword. This blade was a true weapon. Elijah closed his eyes and he was certain it wasn’t his imagination. He really did feel the tingling of a force flowing from the dragon sword in his hands to the ink on his back.

He’d once been a lost kid on the streets of Reno being raised by his older sister. Then he had discovered that he had been born in the Chinese year of the Wood Dragon. He’d found his way to a dojo, and between reading about Asia and studying martial arts he had become a different young man. God meant for him to find his path, and now the Good Lord meant this sword for him.

The sword’s blade was a mess right now, but he would bring back the edge in time. He lifted it over his head, then brought it down from right to left and the sound of the wind whistling past the blade sounded like a wing in flight.

The phone on the desk rang. Wolfgang hurried over to answer it.

Elijah set the sword on the velvet cloth. It would be a crime to destroy such a weapon merely for the gold, but most of the men in the Enterprise lacked vision.

“Right,” Wolfgang said. “I’ll tell him.” He hung up the phone. “That was Belmonte.”

Elijah ran his fingers over the dragon’s scales from the head to the tip of the tail.

“He said to tell you that Benny’s got the old man, but he doesn’t have the artifact anymore. The old man gave it or sold it to someone else. They want you to go to Bangkok.”

The sheer incompetence of them all ignited his need to cause pain. In a flash, he saw a vision of himself grasping the jeweled hilt and swinging the sword at Wolfgang’s neck like a crusader beheading an infidel.

Elijah drew a deep breath. He folded the ends of the fabric toward the center, then rolled up the sword. He slid his palms under the package, lifted it, and extended it to Wolfgang.

He knew the German wanted the sword for himself, but the man had decided to confess his disobedience so he would not risk being accused of stealing. He was offering it to Elijah just as he had offered his little blond wife.

“You will keep this safe for me,” Elijah said.

The skin around the German’s left eye twitched. “Of course. Whatever you say.”

Aboard the USS
Bonefish
Sea of Japan

June 18, 1945

It took some finagling to find berths for the boy and Lieutenant Colonel Miyata—as Ozzie had promised to call him. With the extra technicians for the FM sonar aboard, the sub was already overcrowded, and many of the men were hot-bunking three to a bunk as it was. At last he managed to get them eight hours each of sleep time in a couple of berths in the compartment just forward of his quarters.

On any other ship as a junior officer, he would have had his own cabin, but not on a sub. He shared a cabin with two other officers. Since one of the three was always asleep in there, it wasn’t as though having a cabin afforded him any privacy. But he did have a small compartment in the cabin where he kept his personal effects, clothes, and a few books.

Ozzie was thinking about what was stored in his kit that night as he stood atop the conning tower smoking a cigarette with the sub’s second in command, Lieutenant Commander Dustin Westbrooke, Jr. Ozzie hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that gold all evening,
and when an outlandish scheme popped into this head, he couldn’t let that go either.

Westbrooke was a weak executive officer—the sort who had risen in the Navy on the coattails of his father, Admiral Westbrooke. Dustin was twenty-four years old, only three years younger than Ozzie, but he was young for his age and not very bright. He was a perfect example of a guy who was nervous in the service—and he had no combat experience to account for it. He had no rapport with the men, most of whom were older than he was. Westbrooke had been flown out to Guam to join the
Bonefish
when Commander Johnson’s previous executive officer had suffered a burst appendix during training maneuvers with the new sonar. It had been Johnson’s bad luck to get stuck with Westbrooke on this trip. Now, it might turn out to be something Ozzie could work to his own favor.

“So, Westbrooke,” he said, “what are your plans when this thing is all over?”

“You mean the war?”

“Of course I mean the war. You got a girl at home?”

“No. I haven’t got much luck with girls.”

“I’m going to let you in on a secret, okay? Do you want to know what the trick is to getting girls?”

“Why, sure.”

“Girls like the guys with dough. Heck, your old man’s an admiral. You should be able to get yourself a nice new sports car when you get home. Get yourself an expensive haircut, fancy clothes, the best money can buy. Then you’ll have all the girls you want.”

Westbrooke laughed. “Right. My old man’s so tight with his money he squeaks every time he gives me a dollar.”

Ozzie shook his head and tossed his cigarette butt into the sea. “Now that’s a downright shame. Young officer like you risking your life for God and country. You deserve better than that.”

“Try telling my old man.”

They stood in silence for the next several minutes watching the horizon and listening to the soft sound of the water sliding past the hull. The wind had died at sunset and the boat was now slicing through an almost mirrorlike sea. They could see the reflection of the Milky Way like a pale gauzy arc across the water.

“You know, there was a girl once.”

Ozzie kept his face stern but he felt the smile behind his eyes. “What happened?”

“Nothing. That’s the point. Like I said, I’ve never had luck with girls. But this one—Susan Mulligan was her name. She came to a party at our house. She didn’t even know I was alive.”

“It’s like I said, Westbrooke. Women are attracted to rich and powerful men. And, of course, brave men who aren’t afraid to take risks. I think that’s the sort you are. You just need the car and clothes to attract their attention.”

Wat Pho
Bangkok, Thailand

November 17, 2012

After she paid the entrance fee, the man in the booth handed Riley a pamphlet that explained some of the history of the temple and showed a map of the grounds. Peewee had said three hours. She was about fifteen minutes early, and given that she had just seen him exiting a boat on the other side of the river, she assumed she had beat him to their rendezvous location.

Again, she decided to walk around and familiarize herself with the layout of the compound. Either the old man was going to show, and he’d have some logical explanation for what he was doing fraternizing with the man he’d identified as the enemy, or there was something else going on here, some whole other story she knew nothing about. She was worried that it was the latter.

But as she walked around admiring the huge stone statues of funny-looking old men, some with long beards, others in weird derby hats, she kept coming back to the one word
Bonefish
. If this was all some kind of scam and this Irv guy really never knew her grandfather, but
he had some other goal in getting her up to Bangkok, then how did she explain him coming up with the USS
Bonefish
? Was it coincidence? She doubted it. Obviously, there was some truth in what he had to say. If there was some, there might be more. She was already here in Bangkok. She might as well learn all she could.