Oriental Salt "Tales of the inscrutable)

By Byron Bales

Oriental Salt brings you a sweeping panorama of Asia in the explosive 20th Century. From mythical China of the 1930's to the nightmare of World War II's Bataan Death March, of innocent young love driven to desperate measures, of cruel treachery by greedy, cursed espionage agents, and scheming harlots in Honolulu's red light district. It's all here: the brave and the cowardly; the engineers of treachery and deceit; masterminds of revenge and cold-blooded murder, hope and angst of bewildered souls, their punishment and salvation. Raw, unvarnished tales from Oriental Salt.

You'll laugh, cringe and weep and never forget these memorable characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Byron Bales
• Release date: May 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9780984485246

Byron Bales

I was born in St. Louis in 1942. At 15, I dropped out of school and worked various jobs, one being a spotter for detectives conducting surveillances. In those late days of the 1950's, surveillances were low-tech indeed and in certain situations, where no photograph or other identification was available, it was preferable in low population areas for one operative to first 'spot' and plot a subject's movement pattern and then point him/her out for another detective or team to follow. Easy enough for an inconspicuous youngster to avoid suspicion. The average detective, as a non-owner of an agency, earned around $10 a day. I was paid two dollars per spot. Until the day when the gumshoe assigned to the case eloped with a bottle of bourbon. I handled the surveillance, thereafter the agency owner, a tight-fisted, hard-drinking, crusty Irishman tried fobbing me off with the customary two bucks. I balked, an argument ensued, insults and physical threats exchanged, but I began receiving seven bucks per shadow. The old detective drove home the point that this work was dangerous, and that an operative must maintain confidentiality at all times. Tell no one, he warned, absolutely no one as your life may depend on secrecy. He was fond of displaying an old bullet wound, claiming that he received it when certain criminal elements discovered he was a private dick. I eventually learned that the old shamus didn't want the authorities alerted to the fact that he was working an underage kid, and as for the bullet wound, the clumsy bastard accidentally shot himself in basic training during World War I. In those days of conscription, the Army would have scooped up a dropout in no time, so I enlisted in the Marine Corps. Following Boot Camp in San Diego, I was posted a mere two miles away at the Naval Station right there in Dago handling base and brig security with the Marine Detachment. Eventually, I got what I'd requested in Boot Camp, a transfer to the First Marine Division's FMF-Fleet Marine Force. A fancy name for floating infantry. I picked up a secret clearance along the way and in addition to infantry duties (crew-served weapons; the old 3.5 rocket launcher), I served at various times as an interrogator. It was with an element of the 9th Marines (E-2-9) where I traveled around Asia, and later, during the Cuban Missile Crisis with the 5th Marines, I bounced across the Caribbean and Central America as a courier. Discharged in 1963, I headed for New York City and gained an inspector's position in a retail credit organization. That led to my own P.I. license after the prescribed time. I handled every manner of criminal case; private and indigent (court-appointed defendants), surveillances, industrial undercover, bounty and repo work before specializing in insurance investigations, particularly locates and bogus death claims. After working solo for 10 years, I formed a company in 1979 specializing in international claims work, particularly Life and Health claims, and more specifically; Questionable Death Claims and Disappearances. I began writing fifteen years ago, but never bothered with publishing anything until 2003, with The Family Business, by Asia Books. I'm retired, but I handle an occasional assignment, providing it's in Asia or Pacifica.

Book preview

Oriental Salt

(Tales of the Inscrutable)

By Byron Bales

Smashwords Edition.

Copyright. Byron Bales

ISBN: 978-0-9844852-2-2

eBook published 2011

http://www.byronbales.com

This book is a work of fiction. Other than for historical details and personages, all names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to other persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

For information, request through [e-mail]

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank my editor, Richard Baker

Book cover by ISE

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Oriental Salt (Tales of the Inscrutable)

Phuket

I was born the year World War One ended: 1918. I never knew my parents; they were taken shortly after, by the great pandemic. So, an aunt on a farm in Indiana raised me. My father had been a United States Marine. A lifer. He’d fought Boxers in China, campaigned in Banana Wars, and whacked a bunch of Krauts in France during the Great War, as it was called then. I understood he was one fighting sonofabitch. But he died at home in bed, taken by influenza. Ironic, huh?

As I grew up, some of his buddies stopped by as they criss-crossed America; adventurers on their way to fascinating exploits, to my way of thinking. They were wildcat oilmen, musicians, carnies, all with two things in common – the Corps and the Orient, that mystical region of the globe that captured my imagination just from listening to their stories.

Little was known about Asia back then. A traveling evangelist once preached to us about those mysterious lands: Yea, there is evil, brothers and sisters. Eeeeeevil, he boomed, his voice resonating across the meeting hall, his piercing gaze cutting through the congregation. The congregation stared hypnotically, as though looking upon the sole agent of Our Maker. The devil patrols the rice fields and muddy villages, lurking within unenlightened heathens, peering out through their dark, inscrutable eyes– He slammed his Bible on the podium and everyone jumped. Recruiting souls too ignorant to rise up to salvation.

Wide-eyed children trembled; their parents, horrified by his tales of sin, corruption, and depravity, were shocked into emptying their pockets for the Lord’s work. But I was enthralled. My young imagination churned, especially when he railed against unspeakable perversions and wanton women. It was an enlistment talk, and I was ready to join up right then. Not the Church; the Marines. But I was nine years old and I’d have to wait. An eternity, it seemed.

I enlisted when I was fourteen. Underage, but it was a different world back then. Marine recruiters didn’t ask questions when they saw a prime cut, for I was a big, strapping kid, even then. By the time I was seventeen – the legal age to have joined anyway – I was re-enlisting for my second hitch and stood six-two. By the time I stopped growing, I’d added two more inches, and tipped the scales at 230 pounds.

After recruit training – they call it ‘boot camp’ now – I pulled security duty at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, then did a tour as a weapons instructor before getting posted to that place I’d dreamed about ever since I could remember. China.

China Marines were special, a breed apart. Salts of the Corps. A bold, cocky bunch befitting what sailors called ‘China Hands.’ And the missionaries were right there with us. Missionaries and Marines. Strange bedfellows; convert ’em or kill ’em. Medieval, I suppose, but there you have it.

Before shipping out, I returned to Bloomington on leave. My uncles slapped me on the back and my aunts fawned over me, while a few local girls fell in love with my uniform. Mary Elizabeth Hunkler, at nineteen, was three years older than me, and just about the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. She wore tight dresses that showed off every impressive asset she kept beneath, hinting that her knickers could be dropped – if I only whispered the right words, one being ‘marry.’ So I right smartly beat it out to San Francisco to embark for Asia. What a girl wouldn’t do for a guy’s allotment checks in those Depression years!

I arrived in China in November, 1934. The voyage across the Pacific, while an adventure, didn’t compare to my first impressions of Asia as I overlooked the pier in Wusong, Shanghai’s deep-water port. I was a brand-new corporal with the Fourth Marine Regiment. Although my service record said I was approaching twenty years of age, I was actually a non-commissioned officer at sixteen. Not bad for an Indiana plowboy. Corporal was good rank in those days. There wasn’t another NCO in the Fourth younger than twenty, and most were pushing thirty. I’d never again swab another deck or polish another crapper. Now all I looked forward to was a nice little war.

My seventeenth birthday arrived in China shortly after I did. On the very day, I was called into the skipper’s office. He chewed a huge chunk out of my ass, raging that my true age had just been discovered.

How dare you sneak into my beloved Corps under the legal age, he bellowed in my face, accompanied by a liberal spray of spittle. The clerks in the outer office had their ears pinned to his door for this yell-fest. The captain regained his composure, which I realized later he’d never actually lost. However, he added, since you are now of legal age and already in China at the government’s expense, the Corps will allow you to remain in uniform.

I was sworn in again, my service record amended, and my corporal stripes forfeited. That was for appearances sake; I got them back a few months later under what they called a meritorious promotion. When I left the company office with my reinstatement certificate, the old man was chewing some butt from a miserable private from the Tientsin detachment: How dare you slither your sixteen-year-old pimples into our glorious Corps. However, since you’ve turned seventeen….

The Corps was small, plenty shy of 20,000 leathernecks, and that’s how things worked then. The horseshit would come later, during World War Two, when our ranks swelled to nearly half a million.

Over the next few years, I pulled duty all across China, guarding legations and convoys, chasing down bandits, and running messages from one end of that great, ancient land to the other.

I drew first blood there. Bandits were ravaging a tiny village one evening when our patrol came trucking over a bridge. They spotted our vehicle, and most of those yellow rascals ran as a few of our number flew out of the truck at them. But one heathen was so busy chopping a coolie into hamburger that he didn’t spot me barreling down on him. At the last instant he turned and hurled his meat cleaver at me. It sailed past my head, missed by inches, and I ran up and popped a .45 round into his chest as he was reaching for another ax in his belt. Those boys certainly loved their meat cleavers – they’d hacked up two coolies pretty good. One thing I noticed over the years: the Asians take a fancy to mutilating their victims. Never understood why; dead is dead, why bother to butcher if you can’t sell the meat?

Anyhow, that night we camped outside of Wuxi. That was the old capital of China back around the time Christ was a corporal. I was extraordinarily charged up, and inexplicably hungry for a woman. But aside from a few toothless old crones, there was little in the offing. Just the same, I banged a washer-lady senseless for an American dollar – thrice the going rate. But she earned it; I left her balled up and cursing me on a pile of dirty laundry while I rustled up a dinner of warm beer and cold rice. Best meal I ever had. Not sure why. Maybe from just being alive while those Chink bastards weren’t.

Two days later, the laundry gods exacted their revenge, for that dollar bought me the worst case of gonorrhea known to man. There was no penicillin in those days, and a course of sulfa drugs took its sweet time kicking in, not to mention having tubes shoved down my pecker to suck out puss. I waddled around for two weeks, afraid that Lieutenant Johnson – as I proudly call it – would just drop off, snake down my trousers, and plop out in the dust. I nearly cried whenever I took a whizzer, it was so damned painful. I half expected the next time I whipped the lieutenant outta my pants for a night infiltration, he’d look up at me, ask, Hey, idiot, you sure you wanna do this?

I learned Mandarin. Most of us could speak enough Chink to negotiate prices for the rickshaws and the painted ladies, but I wanted to learn more. Even took lessons from a Russian émigré. She was a middle-aged lady, but none too hard to look at, and like every other Russky who bolted when the reds took over, was reputed to be nobility. If she was, she never let on, never put on airs or anything like that. Didn’t matter; I hadn’t a prayer of exploring her knickers because I was sure she had eyes for some little sing-song gal.

I also studied every weapon in the Corps’ arsenal, and foreign armaments and munitions, as well: pistols, rifles, crew-served machine-guns, mortars, and small artillery pieces. We were getting ready for the Japs. Everybody knew that show was coming.

Courier duty took me up to Manchuria once. The Nippers had overrun that province in ’31. They were a belligerent bunch of bastards who’d kill a Chinaman just because they could. Never understood why they hated the Chinks so, them being out of the same fucking tree ’n all.

The Nips were slovenly, with oversized uniforms, and they glared at me like they wanted some of yours truly next, which would have been just hunky-dory with me. ’Course, they wouldn’t have jumped me without rounding up a gang first. That’s how those cowardly little Nippers were: yellow, just like their skin.

The best duty I ever pulled in China was at our consulate in Shanghai. The consular offices were in a hotel and my uniform of the day was usually civvies. The few of us there did the morning run, jogging along the Bund, the wide commercial boulevard running parallel to the Huangpo River. Our small, tight formation always drew gawkers, and sometimes hecklers, on whose feet we took measures to stomp on.

A bunch of us chipped in for a flat a few blocks away. The place came supplied with an ancient amah named Wang, like she was part of the furniture. She refused to speak English, but kept the place shipshape. If six guys seemed crowded, our schedules precluded more than a few of us being there at the same time, except for poker nights, which was the object behind this arrangement. Wang kept us stocked with booze, did the cooking, cleaning, the laundry, and controlled the girlie traffic, which at times was annoying because the little darlings wanted to hang around forever. They liked American boys. Probably because we didn’t beat them and always paid for services, as agreed.

Wang also ran a little opium on the side, but she had no takers with our bunch. No, sireee, we knew better’n to touch that crap. Glassy-eyed Chinks lying around the streets was a common sight in those days. The police, mostly former Western detectives and Sikhs hired by the Shanghai Municipality, never even bothered to scrape ’em out of the gutter. We didn’t mind Wang’s enterprise, providing she didn’t peddle it to the girls, either. Not that we cared about debasing those already corrupt cuties, it’s just that a toked-up babe floating on an opium cloud is about as useful in bed as a wet mop. So, out the tokers went. Aside from that, Wang was free to operate her vile enterprise; everyone fills their own rice bowl as they see fit, I always say.

Wondrous women, those Shanghai gals, decked out in those Mandarin-necked, body-hugging cheongsams, slits running up the sides. Their faces were made up as white as porcelain; their black dolls’ eyes expressionless; lips precisely painted fire-engine red. Little heart-breakers to look at ’em. Most were teenagers, like us, but few reached five feet. Still, they had special talents like no women I’d known before or since. Contortionists. And one peculiar little darling could suck the eagle off a silver dollar without getting feathers in her mouth. My, oh my, the tricks they worked on the body!

But enough about them. And about me. This isn’t my story, although I elbow in every now and then. It’s about some of the people I served with, some others I didn’t, both during and after devoting a quarter-century to our glorious Corps.

A buddy of mine, Corporal Albert Vale, was transferred down to the Philippines in early ’41 along with a few other guys from the Fourth Marines. Vale held high-flying theories of international conspiracies, one being that power brokers in America wanted into the European war that had cranked up in ’39. Being Marines, we were pretty much apolitical, but Vale mapped it all out for anyone who’d listen: Roosevelt and his commie cronies – both in Washington and in Moscow – were gonna take on the Nazis and the Nippers, preferably one at a time, maybe both together if it came to that. Vale reckoned that America would maneuver those kindred spirits into throwing the first punch, so we could jump in and kick hell outta everyone. Looking back at it, maybe Vale wasn’t so wacky. For one thing, war clouds sure ended the Depression.

This isn’t Vale’s story, either. There was a kid we’ll never forget, a young Marine named Turner. He was a hayseed like myself, and outside of his duties, wasn’t the quickest scooter on the block. He’d been in China with us for a year, then got transferred, along with Vale, down to Subic Bay Naval Station, a few hours outside Manila. There were even rumors that the whole regiment might be shipped out of China soon.

Turner was a tall, good-looking kid with a generally good disposition, unless somebody pissed him off. He was the kind of Marine who’d come through in a fight, bust heads with the best of ’em. But a soldier’s life wasn’t for him. He was preoccupied with the fair sex. He went dippy over a little honey down in the ’Peens. Even married her. Imagine that! Marines in those days were married to the Corps, so why a guy would wanna up and do that was a mystery to all.

Except to those who met her.

Private Turner and His Woman

The Philippines, 1941-1942

1

It was already dark when the bus from Subic Bay pulled into Manila. Thanks to hard-charging Corporal Vale, Terry hadn’t gotten off base until three o’clock.

Theresa wasn’t there to meet him. He wasn’t surprised; she’d gone off with that sailor she’d talked about. Well, to hell with her. Terry stood on the curb, his overnight bag at his feet, wondering what to do. He only had tonight and tomorrow before he’d have to scoot back to base.

He grabbed a taxi down to the North Pier. Maybe he’d pick up a girl in one of the waterfront joints, although he disliked the idea of a one-night stand. He wasn’t like the other guys. Most Subic Marines just wanted a short-time. But Terry supposed that that was better than kicking tin cans up and down an alley.

He found a small hotel on Chicago Street, showered and changed into fresh civvies. He was tired, torn between crashing with his bottle of rum, and scaring up a broad. But Terry wasn’t much of a drinker, either. Not like his old man, or his brothers, who boozed and whored around all the time since Mom died.

The Marine security detachment at Subic Bay was spending a lot of time on maneuvers lately. Rumors were flying that America would soon enter the war. But Europe was a long way off and the Marine Corps was too small to substantially contribute to another Great War, what with all the ships and naval bases they guarded around the world. Still, Corporal Albert Vale kept the screws on, just knowing a real hoot of a kick-ass good time was coming.

Terry took a hit on his bottle and let his hormones decide. He wandered around the waterfront bars, ignored the girls working the streets, but gawked through saloon windows. He settled on a busy place pumping loud boogie-woogie sounds into the steamy night air. The Black Agnus. He couldn’t discern if the name was spelled wrong or if some big, black momma ran the joint.

He pushed through the swinging doors, stood with arms akimbo, surveying the place. It was a cavernous hall. A long bar was at the back and tables were scattered throughout the joint, most filled with merchant seamen and stevedores playing cards. Ceiling fans hung from the high rafters, creaking lazily, barely moving the clouds of cigar smoke that hung in the air. Along a wall, stairs ran up to a high, circular inside balcony that led to rooms. A hot-sheets hotel, with most of the rooms rented by the hour.

A few dozen girls milled about. Called hostesses here, but hookers anywhere else, they hovered over the tables looking for empty laps, inviting faces, occasionally maneuvering their titties over a table, hoping to entice a john upstairs for a short-time. Some girls played dominos for fifty centavos a game with the customers; others fetched drinks for tips. Another pride laced itself into a cluster of white-suited businessmen carousing at the bar; this was the bullshit factory producing the thick clouds of cigar smoke.

Some of the girls surveyed Terry right back. He walked over and stood at the opposite end of the bar from the businessmen. Standing presented a challenge for the girls; it’s difficult to occupy a fellow’s lap when he’s on his feet.

A beefy bartender came down to Terry. He pushed out a stubby hand and smiled. You call me Julio, Marine. What do I call you?

That Terry was a Marine was obvious from his haircut. His head was shaved two inches above his ears. He sized up Julio for a clip artist in a clip joint, didn’t give his hand. You just call me Senor San Miguel, okay, bub.

Sure, whatever you say. Julio withdrew his hand with a shrug. He shuffled to the cooler and took out a San Miguel, opened it, and wrapped a napkin around it in that precise way Filipinos have of doing things. He slid it down the bar to Terry. I run a tab on you, ho-kay?

Terry grunted.

Bad day, huh? Julio asked. Some sergeant breaking your balls?

Terry drew up. Look, I came in here to drink, not to talk with the help.

Right you are, Julio agreed. The customer is always right. Every time. You want a glass?

Terry shook his head.

Julio cracked open a balut, shifted down to where the businessmen congregated around a Brit who was holding court with jokes. The Brit stopped talking in mid-sentence and watched Julio munch down the balut. He made a face, continued with his yarn.

At the other end of the bar, Terry stared at his own reflection in the mirror and didn’t like the dope staring back at him. He’d been dumb to invest so much time and money on Theresa, had known it all along. His mood was sour, and the more he thought about her, the madder he got. His eyes slid around the saloon and settled contemptuously on a gaggle of hostesses hanging around a Wurlitzer near the toilets. A strategic location, since drinkers only rent beer. Several girls returned his appraisal, those who hadn’t yet been taken upstairs at least once staring the hardest.

Terry watched a nattily-dressed stevedore stagger slowly down the stairs, zipping up his fly. He bounced from wall to banister and back again. A hostess followed, stuffing pesos into her brassiere. The stevedore patted her on the ass and dispatched her to fetch beers for the table where his buddies were camped. She spotted Terry, and threw him a look.

Terry looked away, downed his beer in three long swallows. He wondered what the going price was for an all-nighter, but the available talent tempered his mood, never mind he had enough powder backed up in his cannon to blow some gal’s ass-end off.

Julio opened another beer without being asked; put it in front of Terry just as laughter exploded from the circle of businessmen. Their good humor grated on Terry. Civilians had all the time and money in the world. If Terry had been some fat, jolly businessman, Theresa wouldn’t have done him dirt, that’s for sure. He sneered to himself and drank his beer down in big gulps.

The Brit, a guy called Blacky, finished his story and broke from the pack. He passed Terry on his way to the toilet, stopping to flirt with the girls by the Wurlitzer. When he returned, he slapped Terry on the back in passing. ’Ow’s it goin’, Marine?

Terry choked on a mouthful of beer and spun around. Keep your hands to yourself, Limey, and you won’t find out.

Blacky turned and stared at him, then at Julio, who shook his head sadly. Blacky shrugged and returned to the group at the end of the bar.

Terry slammed his bottle on the bar, ordered another. He pulled up a stool and sat down, his surly manner certain to ward off the happy hookers. He watched as Julio went to the cooler, took out another beer. When he caught his own reflection in the mirror again, he saw a man standing behind him.

You got bad manners, Marine, the man said mildly.

And you’re gonna change ’em? Terry challenged.

The man was about his height, but heavier, with very broad shoulders. Twice his age or better. A deep gash ran down one side of his face, from beneath the left eye to the chin bone. It was a hideous scar that caused Terry to reflect on his challenge. He’d just made a very bad mistake.

His stool was kicked out from beneath him and he dropped like a sack of rice to the floor. The man grabbed his belt, hoisted him up, and slammed his gut into the bar. He twisted Terry’s belt, pressing a huge fist into the small of the Marine’s back. Terry reacted with a lightening-quick elbow to catch a jaw, but the man was quicker, grabbing Terry’s wrist and slamming his hand down on the bar. Terry couldn’t move, so intense was the pressure against his back, and his wrist felt like it was in a vise. He sharpened against the realization that this gorilla had dead-lifted him with less effort than tossing back a beer.

2

Terry narrowly escaped hospitalization that night. Or possibly worse. He apologized to Blacky, against certain oblivion at the hands of the man called John Smith. He then got knee-walking, snot-flying drunk, telling his woes to Smith, Blacky, and some of the other white suits. One of the guys, a fellow named King Cardell, ran a small, quiet hotel two blocks away. He offered Terry a clean but cheap berth whenever he came to Manila.

Terry remembered vainly trying to keep up with them, drink for drink. He remembered complaining about Theresa, the bitch, and about Corporal Albert Vale, the bastard, repeating that Vale would be the death of him yet.

He recalled the gangplank, recalled lanterns spinning in circles in the ship’s saloon, and remembered three young, bare-breasted Filipinas who administered cold towels to his face while he tried in vain to kiss a nipple here, a nipple there.

Daylight. He awoke in a cabin. One of the Filipinas sat on a footlocker next to his bunk, wiping his face with a cold towel. He’d never had that much to drink, didn’t even remember passing out. The cabin door was open and an anchor splash into the water.

Reveille, boot, Smith shouted, coming down the gangway towards the cabin. Blacky trailed behind, carrying a glass of tomato juice. They stopped at the cabin door, regarded the lump that had been Private Turner and, with divine intervention, might be again.

The girl helped Terry up into a sitting position. He was in his underwear, his clothes scattered around the cabin, his breath so foul that she made a face, turned her head away.

Terry held his throbbing head. Where are we?

On the way to Cebu, Smith answered. But you’re hitting the beach here.

Terry shielded his eyes against the sun, squinted outside. The ship was anchored in a cove that sheltered a beach tucked between cliffs. He stood and stumbled out past the men, fighting the urge to vomit. To distract his queasy stomach, he grabbed for the juice and gulped it down; let his guts think about that. He breathed heavily, sucking in fresh air. Then he scanned the beach. The place was deserted, a narrow but deep expanse of white, virginal sand tucked between outcrops of palm trees, unapproachable to all but shallow-water craft.

Paradise.

But first, breakfast, Smith announced. Get squared away and come forward.

The men left him with the girl. She gave him a toilet kit and towel, supported him along the gangway to a door leading to the toilets. Inside the confined space, he became nauseous with the boat’s rocking, and sank to his knees. He heaved twice, and then pushed his trembling fingers down his throat and gagged until he was sure he’d seen the last of his insides. Groggy and shaking from the heaves, he showered in cold water, then dressed and went forward.

They ate up on the sundeck, a breakfast of eggs, bacon, home-fried potatoes, and an assortment of tropical fruits. Smith and Blacky drank tomato juice generously laced with vodka. Terry asked how they could start drinking so early in the morning. The secret, Blacky revealed, was that they hadn’t stopped.

The ship was a banca, typical to Philippine waters, but the largest Terry had ever seen. It was well over 100 feet in length and its outriggers hung ten feet over the water, arching out maybe forty feet, resembling a gigantic praying mantis. There were cabins port and starboard with a huge saloon, galley, and crew’s mess amidships. Crewmen busied themselves on deck, hustling for Smith’s captain, a young Aussie named MacDowell. The crew numbered around a dozen hands. Then, of course, there were any number of life’s little distractions: eager, playful, teenage Filipinas wearing little more than smiles. This entourage, apparently Smith’s private stock, remained on the starboard side of the ship, out of sight from the crew. Terry slyly took in a trio of beauties serving breakfast, each one prettier than the other. They cupped their hands over their mouths and giggled whenever he looked their way. These young girls were not at all like their more worldly sisters at the Black Agnus.

A young Chinese-Filipino came up onto the sundeck. He was a handsome if shifty-looking fellow of twenty or so, dressed in black slacks and a black shirt, his hair pomaded and combed straight back. He seemed to miss nothing as he studied Terry briefly, but thoroughly, then went to a table further back on the sundeck where he sat down and read some papers. The young man’s mere presence sent a chill up Terry’s backside. He had no idea why, but somehow he knew the guy was dangerous. Smith glanced at the youth as he’d passed, mentioned to Terry that he was Pittsburgh Go, an associate.

Feeling better with food in him, not to mention the effervescent service crew, Terry flirted with his eyes. He envied Smith. Too soon, the ship’s engines turned over and Terry readied to debark. A deckhand came up with a canvas sack filled with bottled beer rattling around in ice. He placed it at Terry’s feet.

This is a good beach, Private Turner, Smith said. And the beer will keep you company until you’re ready to head back to base. He gave Terry directions off the beach, told him how to get to the main road leading back to Manila.

Terry had no intention of drinking again, but he accepted the beer lest these guys crossed him off as a pansy. He shook hands, picked up the sack, and went down the ladder to the main deck. He balanced himself out across an outrigger arm, removed his shoes, and holding these, his wallet, and the sack of beers above his head, eased into the waist-high water. He waded ashore and waved the sack at them, calling out, Hey, you guys are all right.

Not according to some, Smith returned, scanning the hills above the beach. Look us up the next time you’re in Manila. And stay squared away, boot.

I will, Mr. Smith, thanks. And, uh, I’m sorry for calling you a Limey, Blacky.

But I am, you colonial bastard.

Terry watched the banca reverse out to the shallows and across the bluish breakers. As the ship geared forward and to starboard, he could see her name carved into the stern: Missouri.

He looked around the beach, for the trail leading up the cliff. It was just after 9 a.m. and the sun was already hot and his brain felt fuzzy from last night’s marathon session. He plopped beneath a coconut tree where the sand was still cool from the night. He’d only had a few hours sleep and, after the heavy breakfast, a nap was in order. There couldn’t be a better place to carry out that mission than right here. Before his eyes closed, he calculated that if he pulled into Manila by midnight, he could catch the early bus to Subic at 1 a.m. The beer seemed like a good idea, after all.

3

Sarita gazed at Terry’s nakedness as he lay on his back, his senses drifting peacefully in a twilight between sleep and mild inebriation, his eyes closed against the sun, a bottle of beer by his hand. He hadn’t moved for a full ten minutes, not since she spotted him from the top of the cliff. While she’d seen white men invite the sun to brown their bodies, she’d never seen one naked before. And she’d never seen one on this deserted beach, which she regarded as hers. She thought she’d heard the ship’s engine, but by the time she reached the crest of the hill, it was gone – if it had even been there at all.

Careful not to let her shadow pass over Terry, Sarita moved around him from a distance, closing a circle. His blond hair fascinated her. Not only on his