Snake Bite (20 page)

‘Maybe there was a separate key that mentioned which book and which pages?’ Cameron said. ‘Maybe that key took a different route, and arrived a few days ago in the
post.’

Something in Sherlock’s brain was telling him that Cameron had said something important. Several important things. Odd phrases kept repeating themselves: ‘It looks like it’s
some kind of journey.’ ‘Maybe the letters beneath each circle on the path would spell out a message.’ ‘Maybe that key took a different route.’

Journey. Path. Route.

‘What else do most people have in their possession?’ Sherlock asked. ‘Maps! Every family, every home, has a map of the world! And there are certain maps that are generally
regarded as being better than any others – Ordnance Survey maps in England, and Admiralty maps for the world. Where does your father keep his maps?’

‘Where
did
he keep his maps?’ Cameron corrected softly.

Sherlock winced. ‘Sorry, that was clumsy.’

Cameron shrugged. ‘It’s going to take time.’ He pointed to a shelf with no books on, but which contained a number of rolled papers. ‘They’re over there.’

‘Help me look.’

Quickly the two of them unrolled the papers, one after the other. They were all maps – some of China, some of the area local to Shanghai, but some of the entire world. Sherlock quickly
focused on the most detailed and colourful map – one that also showed current directions and shallow areas of the ocean as well as land masses. The text at the top identified it as an
Admiralty map.

‘Right, let’s get it on the desk.’

Sherlock spread the map out on the desk while Cameron retrieved some drawing pins from a drawer and pinned the corners down. Then Sherlock took the first sheet with the spider diagrams on and
placed it over the map.

It was smaller.

‘Where does it fit?’ Cameron asked. ‘We could slide it all over the place.’

Sherlock moved the sheet until its top left corner corresponded with the top left corner of the map. ‘Let’s try the simplest option.’

He quickly located one of the circles which only had one line coming out of it. ‘Here, let’s start with this one.’

‘It’s right over a town in Asia,’ Cameron pointed out. ‘Ulan Bator.’

‘All right, let’s follow the line to the next circle.’

‘It’s still in Asia.’ Cameron didn’t sound too impressed. ‘It’s another town – Singapore.’

‘
U-S
,’ Sherlock murmured. ‘Difficult to tell if that’s the beginning of a message or just a random pair of letters.’

‘Scotland,’ Cameron said, tracing his finger along the line to the third circle.

‘
U-S-S
,’ Sherlock said. ‘I’m beginning to get an idea where this is going. Quick – write down what I say.’ He scooted his finger across the map from
circle to circle, reading out the names of the cities, towns, rivers, country names and oceans that were revealed inside the circles. Sometimes they surrounded the initial letters, sometimes they
were buried somewhere in the middle of the name.

‘Right,’ he said eventually. ‘What have we got?’ Cameron didn’t say anything. His face was grim, and his eyes were scared as he spoke: ‘
USS Monocacy to be
blown up on Yangtze River!
’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh yes. It’s very clear.’

Sherlock quickly ran his fingers from circle to circle again. Cameron was right. ‘Hand me another sheet.’

Cameron passed the next one over. Sherlock matched it to the top left-hand corner of the map, but this time the circles only occasionally overlapped with any letters in the place names. He
frowned, thought for a moment, then he slid the sheet sideways until the top right-hand corner fitted the top right-hand corner of the map. Quickly he checked the circles. They all had letters
inside.

‘Clever,’ he said. ‘It’s a way of working out the order of the sheets. Start top left, then top right, then presumably bottom right and bottom left.’

‘What does the message say?’

Sherlock let his finger slide along the lines. Each time he got to a circle he called out the letter. He tried to hold them all in his mind, but after five or six he lost track.

As he got to the last circle, he called out, ‘Right – what have we got?’

‘Nothing that makes any sense.’

Sherlock considered for a moment. ‘Reverse it,’ he said. ‘Maybe we accidentally started with the last circle, not the first one, this time.’

Cameron scribbled down a reversed version of the message beneath the one he had already written. ‘
Explosion is going to be blamed on innocent Taiping rebels
,’ he read
breathlessly.

‘The Taiping rebels? Aren’t they the Han Chinese? Didn’t your father say that they wanted to overthrow the Manchu rulers?’ Sherlock asked.

Cameron nodded. ‘That’s right – they make the occasional small attack on a town, or take over a village for a while. They’re more of a nuisance than anything else. They
don’t have any real power.’

‘But if people think that they have suddenly blown up an American military vessel, they will take them seriously,’ Sherlock pointed out.

‘But why would they want to blow up an American military vessel? I mean, why would people
believe
that they wanted to blow up an American military vessel when everyone knows that
their aim is to drive the Manchus from the country?’

Sherlock shrugged. ‘Maybe they so desperately want China to be for the Chinese that they resent any outside influence whatsoever. Maybe they think that the Manchu rulers are corruptly
accepting bribes from the American Government. But the reasons don’t matter – the Taiping rebels are a convenient scapegoat for whoever is behind the attack. The Chinese Emperor would
send the army in to hunt them down like dogs. He would have to.’

‘Worse than that.’ Cameron looked grim. ‘I can’t see the American Government standing for it. They’d send in the Navy.’

‘It could lead to war!’ Sherlock said, appalled.

‘And where there’s a war, there are trade opportunities.’

Sherlock stared at Cameron. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that, as the ruling class, the Manchu officials have currently got a stranglehold on all the trade in China. It all flows through their hands – they can dictate prices, and
they get to decide what is bought and sold. It makes my father furious. He wants there to be complete freedom for the Western traders to buy and sell anything, and to undercut each other if they
want to, without having to pay bribes to the Manchu officials. A free market. But if there’s a whole American fleet standing off the coast, and if the Emperor is kow-towing to the American
ambassador to stop a war starting, then the American traders have got the upper hand. America will end up annexing this whole area and turning it into a thirty-eighth state.’

‘Are the trade opportunities that important?’ Sherlock asked, hardly able to believe what he was hearing.

‘The silk and the silver that come out of China could make every Western trader a millionaire,’ Cameron said sombrely. ‘And every Chinese peasant is a potential customer for
Western goods – you Brits found that out with the opium trade. The US wants as big a part of that as possible.’

Sherlock looked at the remaining two spider diagrams. ‘We need to find out what those last two messages are,’ he said grimly.

By now the two boys had the process off pat. It only took a few minutes to decode the third message. It read: ‘
Explosion will take place at Snake Bite Hill on Yangtze River. Avoid area
at all costs. Do not travel on USS
Monocacy
if invited
.’

Cameron stared at Sherlock. ‘Whoever sent this message to my father is talking about mass murder as if it’s another tactic for making money,’ he breathed. ‘He
doesn’t seem to care that people are going to die! They’re talking about sacrificing the entire crew of the
Monocacy
and any Chinese who get caught in the blast too.’

Sherlock nodded. ‘I guess they think it’s a small price to pay for the trade benefits that will follow. The only thing that will cause the US Navy to blockade Chinese ports and go to
war with the Emperor would be the death of a group of Americans.’

‘What do you think is in the last message?’ Cameron asked.

‘I think I can guess,’ Sherlock muttered.

This one took even less time: ‘
Prepare to take advantage of political and economic chaos to make best deals you can, for benefit of US companies. We are relying on you
.’

‘I can’t believe my father was involved in this,’ Cameron whispered. His face had drained of colour and his voice was hoarse.

‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t think he wanted to go along with it,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘I don’t think he
was
going along with it.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Well, we know he was expecting the message, but judging by the way he acted at breakfast this morning he really didn’t like the contents. We know that he went to the Prefect’s
Residence with an urgent message. I think he decided that he couldn’t go through with it, and wanted to warn the authorities.’

‘And then he died.’ Cameron glanced up at Sherlock, and his eyes were red with sorrow – and anger. ‘Was his death an accident, Sherlock?’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘It would be a huge coincidence if it was. No, I think he was killed so that he wouldn’t be able to warn anyone.’ He reached out and squeezed
Cameron’s arm. ‘I’m . . . sorry.’

‘But he’d already warned the Prefect,’ Cameron wailed. ‘There was no point in killing him!’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘I think the message was intercepted by that . . . thing . . . that was following him, whatever it was. I think it saw the message being taken in by the official
and so it somehow got into the Residence and retrieved it. I know it stopped following your father as soon as he passed that message on. The chances are it stopped following him and started
following the message instead.’

‘The message could have been taken and hidden by someone inside the Residence – someone who had been bribed.’

‘A friend of mine once told me that the simplest explanation is usually the best. In this case, we already know that something was following your father. It makes more sense to assume that
the thing then got hold of the message rather than invent a bribed official to do the same job.’

‘But how do we know the message was actually intercepted before it got to the Prefect?’

‘Because,’ Sherlock said grimly, ‘if it had got to the Prefect, you would have a house full of Chinese officials right now – and, of course, there would have been no
point in killing your father.’

‘So – so you think my father was trying to do the right thing?’

‘I do. More than that – I think he was punished for it.’

‘By whom?’

‘That,’ Sherlock said, ‘is something we need to find out in a hurry.’

‘But who was it that actually sent the messages?’

Sherlock shrugged. ‘Who did your father work for?’

‘He didn’t work for anyone,’ Cameron said. ‘I mean, he had agreements with various companies back in the USA that he would represent their goods here in China, and take a
commission on sales, but he didn’t actually report to anyone.’

‘I suspect that someone from one of those companies contacted him and told him that they had a plan that would increase the value of their goods a hundred times over. I suspect that they
strung him along, not quite telling him what was going to happen. By the time he realized the truth, it was too late. He was in it up to his neck.’

Cameron suddenly looked confused. ‘But what does this have to do with your cook friend – Wu Chung? Why was he killed?’

‘I’ve been wondering about that. I still think it’s because he accidentally got a job as a cook’s assistant on the USS
Monocacy
.’ Sherlock thought for a
moment. ‘I think that Wu Chung found something out on board the ship that would have revealed their plans, and they had to kill him for it.’

‘Do you remember what he said?’ Cameron asked slowly. ‘He said that he’d been on the
Monocacy
and he’d noticed that the Head Cook had over-ordered on barrels
of water. He told them that the ship was going up a freshwater river, and they could get water any time they wanted, so why had they ordered so much?’

‘You think there is something else in those barrels?’ Sherlock frowned. ‘You think there are
explosives
in those barrels?’

Cameron shrugged. ‘It would take a lot of explosives to blow up a ship the size of the
Monocacy
. There were a lot of barrels. Wu Chung said so.’

‘I suppose the conspirators could do something to the steam engines instead,’ Sherlock mused. ‘You know – increase the pressure or something until they blow
up.’

‘But there would be engineers and other people all around the engines. Getting to them, fiddling with the controls and then letting the pressure gradually increase would take a lot of
time, and someone would have been bound to notice. No, the most obvious solution would be to bring a whole lot of explosives in.’

‘Disguised as water barrels,’ Sherlock agreed, nodding. ‘It makes sense.’

‘So what do we do about it?’

Sherlock gazed at Cameron. Cameron gazed back.

‘We could tell the authorities here in Shanghai,’ Sherlock suggested.

‘But my father tried that, and clearly failed. Even if we
could
tell someone, they wouldn’t believe two kids with a wild story like this.’

‘We could get a message to the Captain of the USS
Monocacy.
’

‘But we wouldn’t know for sure whether the message ever got to him or not. Even if it did, why would he believe an anonymous message that told him his ship was going to explode?
He’d just screw it up and throw it away.’

‘So . . .’

‘So . . . the only thing we can do,’ Cameron said, ‘is to head upriver after the
Monocacy
, get on board and somehow tell the Captain ourselves. You’ve met him, and
he met my father. He would listen to us when he might not listen to someone he doesn’t know.’

Sherlock nodded slowly. ‘I can’t see any other option. It has to be us.’