Rogue Raider (25 page)

“How fascinating.” Lauterbach unbuckled swiftly, spread her from behind and impaled her forcefully on his lap guiding in his rampant penis, feeding it to her slowly and then settling to a slow rhythmic thrust, lifting her whole body at each piston stroke. “Your Hawaiian additions have greatly increased the beauty and desirability of this island.” A board beneath them began creaking like a metronome. They fought to control their panting.
Creak
!

“What's that?” McCoy looked quizzically irritated. He laid down his cup and made as if to rise. “What's that noise?”
Creak
!

She thrust down firmly onto him. “The wind blowing that loose guttering. You will remember, my love, that I mentioned it last week but, as usual, no one took any notice.
Creak
! You pay no attention to such things.”

“Well it's very annoying. We must get one of the boys onto it.
Creak
! Call Manuel right now and get him to come in and listen.”

“Oh darling. He's busy. Anyway, you know tea time is our only chance to get a little peace from the servants.”
Creak
! Lauterbach thrust away cheerfully, enjoying the slick friction of membrane on membrane, the slap of sweaty thigh on sweaty thigh. This mixture of exhibitionism and concealment excited him strangely. The Lauterbach torpedo swelled and hardened to a rock as he jiggled and juggled. He was triumphant, all-consuming, pounding like a ship's engine with his mighty shaft.

McCoy chuckled. “May I have my chocolate cake now?”

They sighed and rose, still coupled, a dancing pair in perfect synchrony, shuffled as in a three-legged race round the table and she sliced cake, dumping it roughly on a plate, digging her fingers heedlessly into the icing, and slapping it down. Lauterbach turned her and bent her forward so she could grip the massive sideboard, buried his hand in her long lustrous hair and began pumping towards a climax, giving a slight twist at the end of each stroke that made her shudder as the china dogs tinkled. The muscles of her buttocks were excitingly hard against his groin. In the mirror her face was a savage, snarling mask.

“The one advantage of being blind,” McCoy observed smugly, dribbling chocolate happily onto his snowy shirtfront, “is that the other senses become more acute, you actually know more about what is going on around you than the sighted, if you get my thrust. You are probably unaware, for example, of a rhythmic trembling through the floorboards but I can feel it most distinctly. It is the volcano over the other side of the island. Whenever it is set to blow, I am always the very first to know.”

Lauterbach felt wave after wave of agonised pleasure tear through his body and gasped aloud, spasmed, gasped, spasmed again. He ground out the afterglow of lust inside her like a cigarette in an ashtray. “Volcano?”

McCoy chuckled. “I hear a tremour in your voice, Captain Lauterbach. You must not be afraid. I am sure you are thinking of those mighty explosions with huge, towering rocks and streams of white hot lava shooting and gushing all over the place that are described in books. But normally, here, it is simply a matter of a few quick spurts of muck, a puff of smoke, perhaps a bit of gas and shaking about and then it's all over and no one the worse for wear. We clear up the mess and carry on as usual. Isn't that so my love?”

Lauterbach lent over the china dogs, chest heaving, taking deep breaths. He was exalted, shriven, but as his manhood collapsed, physical shame crept back in and he turned away coyly to dress. Mrs McCoy returned brazenly to the table, threw back her long hair and dried her face, slick with sweat, on her serviette, towelled off her breasts and wiped between her legs with as little embarrassment as a wrestler.

“Normally, my love.” She threw the soiled cloth down on the table with the food and tossed her long black hair out of her eyes. “Normally but not always. You only talk to the men. The women are more affected by these things and some of them speak of experiencing quite considerable eruptions in the past.” She rolled her eyes at Lauterbach and mouthed a silent kiss.

McCoy tapped his feet pettishly on the floor, “Shhh!” mimed listening. “There,” he smirked triumphantly, in a little high voice “what did I tell you? It's over already. Never much to it.”

Lauterbach, reclothed, sank back in his chair sated, now feeling no guilt, no sense of violating his host by giving pleasure to his wife. After all, it was always better to have a happy woman under your roof than a bitter and frustrated one. He had done the man a favour when all was said and done, lubricated the juddering machinery of his household with the sweat of his brow, and he lacked the meanness of spirit that might make him begrudge that another reaped content where he had sown it. Anyway, McCoy was blind and his own attention to the woman was only the due of an otherwise wasted beauty. Blind men? That was what plain women with good conversation had been put into the world for. He deserved a reward. Now how about a piece of that chocolate cake?

Manila stank of woodsmoke and old dishcloths. Lauterbach stalked the Intramuros walled city and rejoiced in the superiority of his own height and girth compared to the local men and the unfeigned beauty of the women. He was billeted on another
Etappe
captain, interned out in the harbour. But the ship was a mess. The young captain had given way to joyless dissipation and spent all day in an alcoholic daze that turned aggressive after dark. Lauterbach could not wait to move on. All around him in the city were the sounds of ordinary life, laughter, babies, soothing him back to normality. Perhaps he would move out, spend some time in a hotel, eat, drink, have a touch of the other.

He settled in a little coffee shop that catered for the foreign trade and leaned back against the ancient, honeyed stone to watch the rich mix of people teeming along the street and let it all wash over him. He blew slow smoke and savoured the neat, light tread of Asia where a walk of provocation was no part of masculinity. Then a tiny urchin came slouching along selling newspapers, leaning back to counterbalance the weight folded over his arm. He appraised Lauterbach dispassionately. He had made an effort to blend in, dressed like a frayed-at-the-cuffs travelling salesman, tried to look …

“English?”

Lauterbach nodded. His Spanish was that of a sailor, restricted to telling people about their mothers. The boy fished in the pile and drew one out, crisp, neat-edged, today's date, another sign of life and civilisation. Lauterbach paid with a soiled note and received change in coins, plucked from a stack inside the seller's ears as if by magic. He chuckled at this folk version of his own money paunch and then he saw the headline. “
Lusitania
sunk by German submarines. Hundreds lost in cowardly attack on passenger vessel. 123 American civilians, including Mr Alfred Vanderbilt, among those dead. Congress calls for War.”

“Shit!” Was there no end to all this? The paper trembled in his hands and he upset his coffee. People at neighbouring tables turned to look at this muttering, dithering madman. Kessel and the Crown Prince had done their work, completely undoing that of the
Emden.
The German navy was evil incarnate. The editorial spoke hotly of nothing but America entering the war within days and opening hostilities against the Hun in Europe. It raged against perfidious Germany, its cowardice, cruelty, the need for swift retribution. And the Philippines were an American colony. And the most unpopular thing to be in town at the moment was a German naval officer who had sunk civilian ships. He was a man running up a blazing staircase with the flames licking ever closer at his heels.

There was no safe way to reach the chaotic neutrality of China. Most of the vessels in the harbour were British and bound for Hong Kong. To go that way was to thrust his head into a noose. Many of the seamen were personal acquaintances from his years on the Asia run and there could be no hope of staying unrecognised for long. The only chance was to take a berth on a Japanese ship where all Westerners looked alike. He ran a finger down the shipping list. The
Otaka Maru
, sailed in two days, via Tsingtao, where he could hop the train straight to Shanghai, simply hoping to remain anonymous for the few hours it would take to get out of the colony. And the only uncompromised travel document he had left was that passport for Pieter Blaamo, purchased from Katsura. It was a sign. He downed the remaining inch of hot coffee – damn and blast- that burned his lips. It was time to move on fast. He shoved out between the tables. Someone had left a custard tart untouched and he crammed it into his mouth as he passed. It was almost an act of compassion. Already the urchin was taking back the newspaper, abandoned on the table, and carefully refolding it for resale.

Back to the ship. The captain could be heard drunkenly mumbling to himself in the saloon, followed by the splintering of a glass, dropped or flung. No need for elaborate leave-taking. Going down to his cabin, he stared at himself one last time in the mirror. Goodbye Lauterbach. He shaved, cropped his hair and became once more a new person. His very features now seemed to swim free of each other and they rearranged themselves into a vacuous moon face. Hallo Pieter Blaamo.

The
Otaka Maru
was not a passenger vessel but a collier, the sort he had once hunted to near extinction on the
Emden.
That was all to the good. If the captain took him aboard it would be money straight into his own back pocket so he would not want anyone else to hear about it, especially the shipping company. He could be certain of appearing on no passenger list.

Captain Yoshida was a small man, scrupulous within his small corruption, who was only too willing to have a passenger, even giving up his cabin for the journey but was deeply disappointed to find that Pieter Blaamo spoke hardly any English so that conversation was restricted to bows and smiles for Yoshida loved to talk of baseball. But at least Dr Blaamo was no trouble. Most of the time he spent reading in his cabin or watching the British and Japanese navy vessels that teemed like fish in these waters.

Pieter Blaamo, it seemed, was a pipe-smoker and, on the last night at sunset, he was enjoying a pipe on the upper deck, surprised at his own feeling of peace in these hostile waters. Strictly speaking, of course, Tsingtao was not hostile territory but that would count for little if he were recognised. He puffed and daydreamed till his reverie was disturbed by two pigtailed Chinese heads that suddenly popped up from below like prairie dogs. Stokers, he assumed, getting a breath of air. They were silhouetted against the setting sun which made them look even more alike.

“Captain Lauterbach!” He bit down hard on the pipestem, nearly breaking it in two. His armpits gushed sudden fear.

“Who are you?” His whisper was like a scream.

“Gan Poon and Lee Fatt.” Of course. They had been on the
Staatssekretaer Kraetke.
Both good men. He had last seen them at the coaling in Pagan. As he had foreseen, the locals were adapting themselves smoothly to the change in administration.

“We see you. We recognise. Everybody seekee Lauterbach. Picture everywhere in Tsingtao.”

“Shit!” He was worth £10,000 and they knew it. A rush of blood to the face, trembling. “Who else you tellee?” He hated the tremour in his own voice.

They shook their heads, the way children do when they are lying, swaying their whole bodies from the waist with the movement. “Tellee no one.”

“How much you wantee?” A worm seemed to have crawled inside his stomach.

“No wantee dollar. Last time we see you givee watch.” They showed their wrists proudly. It was true. In Pagan he had dished out all those useless watches, given by lady passengers, to the crew. “All we askee is paper character so can getee good berth like before.”

He was shocked, humbled. He wanted to cry at the simple goodness of poor men. They had the power to betray him for the unimaginable sum of £10,000 and all they wanted was a written reference that cost him nothing. Well he would give them the best references stokers had ever got. He sat and wrote, tears streaming from eyes, described them as angels without wings. They took the papers with solemn grace, folded and stowed them carefully away and waved him farewell, wished him good luck. He swore a silent oath that, when the war was over and he came back toTsingtao, he would look after them. At that moment, he almost meant it too.

In the early morning, their anchor tumbled into the water of the inner harbour. Pieter Blaamo, face fresh-scraped, already lurked on deck with his luggage. He would have to be alert. Everywhere were people who knew Lauterbach. Gan Poon and Lee Fatt had been set to work on the foredeck and stonily ignored him. ButTsingtao was transformed. He looked around in horror at the devastation wrought by the Allied bombardment. On the waterfront virtually all the solid, stone buildings had been razed and the cobbles torn up in deep shellcraters. Once more, his memories, his youth and much of his optimism had gone with them. The smooth harbour walls were pitted and scored from naval fire and most of the sheds were reduced to wrecks of twisted girders. The sign over the roof garden reading “Dachsaal” had gone and been replaced by a snarl of Japanese characters while the advanced new dry dock had been cut up and shipped off to rapidly-industrialising Japan and now their occupying troops were everywhere, looking every bit as bored and puzzled as the Germans had been before them, only cleaner, and instead of the black-white-and-red of Germany, the Japanese ensign waved arrogantly over the shattered city as if its destruction were a minor irrelevance. Lauterbach felt sad and sick and very old, a well-kicked dog.

In happier days the harbourmaster used to be British, Captain Robertson, a punctilious observer of the old custom of taking a glass with the master of every incoming vessel. It was possible he was still in post and there, suddenly, he was. Lauterbach craned round a corner to see the red boozy face disappear up to the bridge and crept out soft-footed towards the gangway, suitcase under his arm like a tenant doing a moonlight flit.