The Ambassador's Son Read online

  “Thurlow,” Whitman said as Josh came up on the porch.

  “Mister Whitman.” Josh put out his hand. “How are you, sir?”

  Whitman briefly clasped Josh’s hand with a grip that felt like a bear trap. “Happy as a bastard on his father’s birthday, mate. Why are you here?”

  “To investigate David Armistead’s disappearance,” Josh replied as the pain in his overwrung hand subsided.

  A bushman in a floral-patterned lap-lap with an ammunition bandolier across his chest came out of the house onto the porch. He stood at attention, chin up. “What’s your pleasure?” Whitman asked. “Truax won’t mind if we raid his liquor cabinet, since I doubt he’ll be coming back. Man had more alcohol than a Brisbane pub. Don’t know if he was ever sober.” Whitman quietly chuckled to himself, then said, “I recall you’re a rum man, Thurlow. Wretched drink, entirely too sweet. You need to turn to a sharper dram of rotgut out here to stay healthy. Gin’s the choice of the colonists.”

  “Mount Gay rum, if there is any,” Josh said, ignoring Whitman’s advice.

  “Very nice one, I think,” the bushman replied, then slipped inside, easing the screen door shut so it didn’t slap against the frame, even though it was splintered by bullets. Whitman made no conversation, just kept swinging in the swing, and Josh waited. The bushman soon reappeared balancing two glasses on a tray. He handed one to Josh, saying, “Sah!” then repeating the word when he presented the other glass, filled with gin, to Whitman.

  “Thank you, Moru,” Whitman said delicately. The bushman placed the tray on a small, curved-legged table inlaid with a design of the sun and the moon, then went down to stand in the grass.

  Josh took a taste of the rum. It was the good stuff, all right, and he lolled it around his tongue before swallowing it, feeling the comfort of its warmth as it eased down his gullet. In contrast, Whitman apparently received no pleasure from his drink, downing it all in a gulp, then twisting his face as if it hurt him. He tossed his glass to the bushman, who, without moving any other part of his body, caught it with one hand. “Well, Thurlow,” Whitman said, “you disappoint me. I hoped for a moment you’d come to help me kill Armistead and my wife, not for the purpose of some bloody investigation.”

  “If I find David,” Josh answered, “I guess I’ll find your missus, too. But why do you want to kill her? I thought she’d been kidnapped.”

  “Bloody hell. Who told you that?”

  “Vickers.”

  “That idiot. Never could get a story straight.”

  “Well, that’s why I’m here. To get it straight,” Josh replied.

  “How much of it do you need?”

  “The entire thing, I reckon.”

  Whitman nodded. “It’s a sad thing when the woman you love betrays you, ain’t it, Commander?”

  Josh nodded back, thinking of Dosie. It must have shown in his eyes.

  “You’ve had the same experience? Then you understand why I have to kill her. It’s the only way, though God knows, I still love her more than life.” He shook his head and released a long sigh. “Do you ever wish you could turn the clock back?”

  “All the time,” Josh confessed, and it surprised him when he said it. He didn’t want to philosophize with Whitman. He needed information and he needed it quickly. “So what happened, Mister Whitman?” he asked, allowing obvious impatience to enter his voice.

  Whitman pondered Josh for a long second, then started his tale with when he had attacked the Japanese after the American army troops had landed down the coast. “I expected your Yank soldiers to keep the Japanese busy, but they apparently bogged down right away. The Japanese commander, a chap I’ve been fighting for over a year, took advantage and wheeled around to box me in. I managed to get one radio working long enough to yell my head off to Vickers for help. A day later, he called back. Between the static, I understood Colonel Burr was sending some of his Raiders to help out.”

  Whitman went on to tell of the arrival of Armistead and his men, four Raiders with two crew-served fifty-caliber machine guns. Armistead had immediately established sites for the fifties. “Armistead’s plan was to simply stave Jap off,” Whitman said. “He reported that the American army was finally moving, and there was a good chance they would get up here in time to save us, but he couldn’t guarantee it. I told him not to let on to any of my boys that Jap might scrag us.”

  “You were afraid they’d run?”

  Whitman gave Josh a long stare, then glanced at his servant, who still stood as straight and still as if he were a statue. “I never really know what these blokes are thinking, you know,” he confessed in a lowered voice. “But that ain’t here nor there. The next thing I noticed was my wife taking Armistead off to the shadows. Oh, they were having quite the conversation, about what, I don’t know.”

  “Tactics, maybe?” Josh asked. “I heard your wife is a warrior.”

  Whitman eyed Josh. “Kimba’s been known to fire a rifle now and again, but she’s no warrior. Who told you that?”

  “A Missus Markham.”

  “Felicity?” Whitman laughed with his mouth open, showing his false teeth. “Her brain’s been immersed in gin for a decade. You’ll never get naught but bull fodder from the likes of that dingbat.”

  “Hold on,” Josh interrupted. He took a small notebook and a pencil from his shirt pocket, opened the notebook to the first page, and wrote a single word: Kimba. “OK, go ahead.”

  “What did you write down?” Whitman asked suspiciously.

  “Your wife’s name. I just realized I never heard it before now.”

  Whitman continued his story. “By and by the sun went down and Jap still hadn’t come, although we could hear him out there in the bush. Jap ain’t the bloody jungle fighter he thinks he is. He sounded like he was having a full-dress parade. I got Kimba to the side and told her if Jap broke through, to kill herself. Jap considers it his right to rape and murder civilians, part of his pay and allowances, if you will. I impressed on her that death was the better course.”

  For the first time, Josh had heard something that made a little sense. David Armistead was the kind of man who might be upset with the concept of a woman killing herself. He might even want to do something about it. “When did you see your wife last?” he asked.

  “Around midnight. She was sitting on this very swing. Armistead was sitting on the steps, just as you. The two of them stopped talking when I came near. I should have killed them both then and there. I knew there was something going on between them. It probably started back on Melagi. Three times in the past year, I came down the Slot by canoe to meet with your Colonel Burr and Vickers about this or that. Kimba usually came with me. Armistead met her there. My guess is he fell in love with her and probably leapt at the chance to get close to her again, even if he had to fight Jap to do it.”

  “I was at those meetings, too,” Josh said. “I don’t recall your wife.”

  “Oh, she knows her place, Thurlow. She camped out on the beach. But one night, I came back from a party hosted by Colonel Burr and found Armistead and Kimba sitting together down there. I had my Webley with me. A bullet to her brain right there and then, and his, too. That would have been the ticket.”

  “But they were just talking, right? God knows, all us Americans out here don’t get the chance to talk to a woman much.”

  Whitman grimaced. “If you ever laid eyes on her, mate, you’d understand. Most men would bloody well lie down beneath a lorry for her. Let me give you some advice. Always marry an ugly woman. It will save you some heartache.”

  Josh reflected a man didn’t have to marry a beautiful woman to get his share of heartache. Just loving one was enough. “What happened when the Japanese attacked?” he asked.

  “We beat them back,” Whitman replied, grim as a rock. “But Jap ain’t never beat all the way, not unless he’s dead.”

  “What did Armistead do during the attack?”

  “Do? All right, I’ll tell you. I’m not the type of man who won�
�t give a man praise, even a man what cuckolded me. He stopped the charge cold with his bloody big fifty calibers. Then, he stepped out front and his four bloody Raiders with him, drawing out their God-awful K-bars. They went after the Japs still standing, killed every one of the blokes. It was a good example for my boys, I can tell you that. Give no quarter to the enemy. Kill them, kill them all.”

  “So Jap ran?”

  Whitman laughed, a harsh, sharp sound like a yapping dog. “Jap don’t run for long, not when he thinks he’s got a ghost of a chance of winning. The next time he came, he flanked us from the beach, charging up through those palm trees right in front of us. Armistead had anticipated it and had put one of his guns down there. It bloody well chewed Jap up. He backed off after that and did what he should have from the beginning, started using his mortars. Not much you can do to defend against them. But it being night, you could see the flash of the tubes every time a bloody round was shot out of them. By then, one of the Raiders was dead. Armistead took his three remaining fellows and went out. One by one, we saw the flash of his grenades or the rattle of his guns until the mortars were put out of action. But two more of his men were killed. You’ll find his Raiders buried right over there.” He pointed along the lawn and Josh saw three mounds of dirt with American helmets sitting atop them.

  “Where’s the fourth one?”

  “Half a moment. I’ll get to it,” Whitman answered gruffly. “A few things you need to understand first. With the mortars knocked out, things got quiet, and I decided to get some sleep. At sunrise, one of my boys woke me, said Armistead and Kimba were gone. My boys were all spooked, started mumbling something about ghosts, their usual idiocy when they can’t explain a thing. Then I spotted boot prints leading down to the beach. Marine Corps issue. And small bare feet. You want to know my first thought? I figured they were down there screwing. Don’t look at me that way, Commander. A jealous man can’t help the way he thinks. I was going to follow them, but then Jap came at us again and I got distracted. Then your United States Army must have fallen on Jap from the rear. Anyway, he withdrew, and when I had time to clear my head, I immediately started looking to find Armistead and my wife. It didn’t take me too long to find it.”

  “It?”

  “How’s your stomach?” Whitman asked.

  “Empty except for the rum,” Josh said.

  “Let’s take a walk.” Surprisingly catlike in his movements, Whitman pushed out of the swing and went down the steps and headed down a path that went straight through the palm trees to the sea. Josh followed, and the three bushmen who’d met him on the beach fell in behind, their rifles slung across their shoulders. Josh found Whitman standing beside a rusting fifty-caliber machine gun set on a parapet. “The last Raider, not counting Armistead, was stationed here with a couple of my boys to help serve this gun. When I came down, it was abandoned, just as you see it.”

  Whitman was a fast walker and took off again, disappearing behind a line of bush that hid the beach. Josh next found him next standing with a significant look on his face beside what was evidently a war canoe. It was an ancient craft, and it was half submerged. “This is a tomako,” he said. “Truax kept it around to remind him of the old days. Rotted out long ago, but it’ll give you an idea of what one looks like.”

  Josh looked at the canoe. He’d seen one before, on Melagi, where some enterprising natives would paddle you around for two or three cigarettes. As a man of the sea, Josh admired the workmanship of the long, plank-sided, cigar-shaped craft, even though the one before him had seen better days. On its prow was a carving of an ugly, scowling head. “The head represents death,” Whitman said, noting where Josh was looking. “A tomako is built for one purpose, and that’s to kill people. Armistead and Kimba left in one very similar. We found the scrape marks on the beach. Couldn’t be from anything else.”

  “It would take a lot of men to maneuver one of these,” Josh said.

  “At least fifty, and they were in full headhunting regalia, feathers, cockleshells, beads, tattoos, paint, all of it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “One of my men saw what happened.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “No.” Before Josh could ask why, Whitman provided the answer. “He’s dead. Japanese sniper. Jap always likes to leave one or two sharpshooters behind. Don’t worry. I think we’ve killed them all.”

  Josh shook his head. “To the best of my knowledge, one thing Jap doesn’t do is dress up in beads and paint and paddle war canoes around. So who manned this tomako?

  “Renegades, led by a man named Joe Gimmee. Nasty brute, though he sometimes pretends to be a holy man. He’s been trouble in the Solomons for a long time, raiding up and down the islands. He sells himself to the highest bidder. Right now, he works for Jap. I’ve been fighting him off and on for years. He hates white men especially. Been known to take more than one poor planter’s head.”

  “Missus belong Joe Gimmee,” one of the three coast-watchers suddenly interrupted in a low growl. The other two men let their eyes drift over to the one who had spoken, then echoed him. “Missus belong Joe Gimmee.” Then all three muttered something together that sounded like a chant and stamped their feet. “We kill Joe Gimmee!” they cried.

  “Keep your bloody yaps shut!” Whitman snapped. “You boys. Get!”

  Sullenly the three men crept off, but only to the shade provided by an avocado tree, heavy with fruit. “First-class fighting men but so steeped with superstition they can’t operate at times,” Whitman said dismissively.

  Josh found himself impatient. “Look, Whitman, your story’s all over the farm. It sounds like now you’re saying Armistead and your wife were taken prisoner by this Joe Gimmee. That’s a lot different than Armistead running off with your wife.”

  “As I said, one of my men saw what happened. Come on back to the house and I’ll explain.”

  “You said you’d found ‘it.’ What was it?”

  “I’ve changed my mind about showing it to you. Come on. There are too many flies here.”

  “I don’t care about the flies,” Josh lied, since a big one had just savagely bitten him, leaving a bloody welt on his arm.

  Whitman considered Josh for a long second, then seemed to come to a decision. “All right. You might as well see it.” He beckoned Josh into a tangle of bush, over a log, and into a clearing.

  A sharp, burnt odor penetrated Josh’s nostrils, and he saw the remains of a fire in the sand and the greasy black residue of something in the ashes. Whatever it was, the flies were really working it over. “What is it? A pig? Somebody roast a pig down here?”

  “It’s not a pig,” Whitman replied, his voice grinding as if he were having trouble making spit. “Though the bushmen call it long pig. It’s a human.”

  Josh felt a chill travel up and back down his spine. He stared at the black lumps in the spent fire while Whitman used a stick to drag something out of the ashes. He picked the thing up and held it out so that Josh could see what it was, a scorched piece of green cloth, soaked in grease. “Notice the insignia?”

  Josh noticed it very well. It was a scrap of uniform, a collar, and on it was the ball-and-anchor insignia of the United States Marine Corps. He felt his stomach turn over.

  “This is all that remains of the last of Armistead’s Raiders,” Whitman said.

  “Are you saying somebody ate him?”

  Whitman tossed the collar remnant back into the horrible remains of the cooking fire. “Oh, they had themselves quite the party, they did,” he mused, then stared at the sea with such intensity that Josh would not have been surprised if it had suddenly started boiling. “A man can go insane out here, Thurlow. It ain’t difficult. The heat, the bloody bugs, the disease. Add in this war and the cruelty of our enemy. Armistead has probably been insane for a long time. God only knows how Kimba affected him. He wanted her, that much I know, so much he’d do anything to have her.”

  “I can’t believe David had anything to do
with this,” Josh retorted.

  Whitman turned toward him. “How well do you know him?”

  “We were on Wilton’s Ridge together.”

  “And he never did anything that made you wonder about him?”

  Josh didn’t answer, because he couldn’t. Yes, there was something about David Armistead that had made him wonder, all right. But did it mean anything? He would have to think about that.

  Whitman, in any case, didn’t seem to expect an answer. “Oh, how I wish I had killed that girl when I had the chance,” he said, repeating what had become a refrain, though Josh noticed wetness at the corners of Whitman’s eyes. “I still love her, Thurlow. That’s why I never did it, but now I know I must, and your David Armistead, too. Kimba’s from Joe Gimmee’s tribe. I captured her two years ago. I thought she loved me and would put her heathen ways behind her.” He wearily shook his head. “But they say once you’ve had a taste of long pig, you can never stop.”

  “That doesn’t include David Armistead.”

  Whitman huffed out a snort. “Doesn’t it? I can’t imagine Kimba would let him go with her if he didn’t have a bite, too. Call it an initiation rite.”

  Josh said, “If you believe that, you’re the one who’s insane, Whitman.”

  “I wish I were, Commander. I wish I were. And before this is over, I suspect you’ll wish you were, too.”

  12

  The American encampment at Santa Cruz was covered by thousands of Quonset huts, tents, and warehouses. Wooden crates and steel containers and every imaginable kind of machinery and spare parts were piled behind barbed wire fences. Thousands of men roamed the roads and the fields, every one of them apparently on an important mission. It was America with all her industry and might and bureaucracy brought to the South Pacific.