“Sorry,” the driver said. “One dollar.”
“Seventy-five cents,” Tuck said.
“You find another taxi,” the driver said, digging in his fiscal heels.
“That’s better,” said Tuck. “A dollar it is. And there’s another one in it for you if you don’t run over any chickens.”
The driver put the car in gear and started off. They passed though several miles of jungle before breaking into a brightly lit, surprisingly modern-looking town with concrete streets. Occasionally, they passed a tin house with stone wheels leaning against the walls. The stones ranged from the size of a small tire to seven feet in diameter and were covered with varying degrees of green moss. “What are those millstone-looking things?” Tuck asked the driver.
“Fei,” the driver said. “Stone money. Very valuable.”
“No shit, money?” Tuck looked at a piece of fei standing in a yard as they passed. It was five feet tall and nearly two feet thick. “What do your pay phones look like?” Tuck asked with a grin.
The driver didn’t find it funny. He let Tucker out at the dock, which was suspiciously shipless.
Tuck saw a bearded, red-faced white man sitting in the shade of a forklift, smoking a cigarette.
“G’day,” the man said. He was about thirty. In good shape. “Impela my tribe?”
“Huh?” Tuck said.
“American, then?”
Tuck nodded. “You Australian?”
“Royal Navy,” the man said. He pulled a hat from behind him and tapped on it. “Join me?” He motioned for Tuck to sit next to him on the concrete.
Tuck dragged his pack into the shade, dropped it, and extended his hand to the Australian. “Tucker Case.”
The Australian took his hand and nearly crushed it. “Commander Brion Frick. Have a seat, mate. Looks like you been on the piss for a fortnight, if you don’t mind my saying.”
He handed Tucker a business card. It bore the seal of the Royal Australian Navy, Frick’s name and rank, and the designation NAVAL INTELLIGENCE. Tuck looked again at the scruffy Australian, then back at the card.
“Naval Intelligence, huh? What do you do?”
“I’m a spy, mate. You know, secret stuff. Very hush-hush.”
Tuck wondered just how secret a spy could be who had his status printed on a business card.
“Espionage, huh?”
“Well, right now we’re watching the Yapese Navy don’t make a move.”
“Yap has a navy?”
“Only one patrol boat, and she’s broken right now. Yapese put gas in the diesel engine. But you can’t be too careful, lest the little buggers get it in their mind to launch a surprise attack. That’s her over there.” He nodded down the wharf. Tuck spotted a rusted boat designed like a Chinese junk with the word YAP stenciled on the side in flaking orange Rust-Oleum. A half-dozen Yapese, thin brown men with high cheekbones and potbellies, were lounging on the deck in loincloths, drinking beer.
Tuck said, “I guess an attack would be a surprise.”
“Ain’t as easy a job as it looks. Yapese can lull you into a false sense of security. They might sit there without moving for two, three weeks, then just when you start to relax, wham, they make their move.”
“Right,” Tucker said. The only damage the patrol boat looked capable of inflicting was a case of tetanus for the crew.
A mile past the Yapese Navy waves crashed on the reef, just a line of white against the turquoise sea. Cottony clouds rose out of the sea into shining columns. Tuck scanned the horizon for a ship.
“Is the Micro Trader in yet?”
“Been in and gone,” Frick said. “She’ll be back around in six weeks or so.”
“Dammit,” Tuck said. “I can’t fucking believe it. I need to get to Alualu.”
“Why’d you want to go out there?”
“I’m a pilot. I’m supposed to be flying for a missionary out there.”
“Boys and I were out there in the patrol boat last week. Godforsaken place.”
Tuck lit up at the mention of the patrol boat. Maybe he could catch a ride. “You have a patrol boat?”
“Seventy-footer. Some of the boys are out with it now, tuna fishin’ with the CIA. Don’t mention it, though. Secret, you know.”
“What’s the CIA doing down here?”
Frick raised a blond eyebrow. “Keepin’ an eye on the Yapese Navy.”
“I thought you were doing that.”
“Well, I am, ain’t I? And when they come back, it’s my turn to go fishin’. Lovely, us bein’ allies and all. Cuts the work in half. Want to suck some piss?”
“Pardon?” Tuck wasn’t ready for any kind of bizarre native customs.
“Drink some beers, mate. If you keep an eye on the Yappies, I’ll run down to the store and grab some beers.”
“Sounds good.” Tuck was ready to take the edge off his headache. Besides, there was still a chance for a ride out to the island.
Frick put his hat on Tuck’s head. “Right then. By the power invested in me by the Australian Royal Navy, et cetera, et cetera, I hearby deputize you as official intelligence officer until I get back. Do you swear?”
“Swear what?”
“Just swear.”
“Sure.”
“There it is.” Frick started walking off.
“What do I do if they make a move?”
“How the bloody hell should I know?”
Tuck watched the Yapese Navy for an hour before they all stood up and left the boat. He was pretty sure that this did not constitute a defense emergency, but just in case he decided to walk up the street to see what had happened to Frick. The pack felt even heavier now, and he guessed that it was the responsibility for Australian people that weighed him down. (A woman had once offered Tucker a goldfish in a bowl, and Tuck had graciously declined it on the basis that it was too much responsibility and would probably die anyway. He felt the same way about the Australians.)
The concrete streets of Colonia were bleached white and stained with three-foot red strips of betel nut spit on either side and lined with thick jungle vegetation. Off the streets Tuck could see tin hovels, children playing in the mud, women passing the hottest part of the day combing lice from each other’s hair in the shade of a tin-roofed porch. The women wore wraparound skirts, black with brightly colored stripes, and went topless. All but the youngest of them were enormously fat by Western standards, and Tuck felt his idealized picture of the beautiful island girls fade to a lice-infested, rotund reality. Still, there was something in their gentle grooming and in the quiet concentration of the children that made him feel sad and a little lonely. If only he could run into a woman he could talk to. A Western woman—she wouldn’t have to know he was a eunuch.
He broke out of the jungle into the open street of Colonia’s main “business district.” On one side was a marina with a restaurant and bar (or so the sign said), on the other a two-story, stucco minimall of shops and snack bars. Around it, in the shade of the modern portico, stood perhaps a hundred Yapese, mostly women, some
young men in bright blue loincloths, all shirtless. The islanders all had bright red lips and teeth from chewing betel nut. Even the little children were chewing the narcotic cud and spitting periodically into the street. Tuck walked in among them, hoping to find someone to ask about Frick’s whereabouts, but none made eye contact. The women and girls turned their backs to him. The men just looked away or pretended to pay attention to sprinkling powdered coral on to a split green betel nut before beginning a chew.
He went into a surprisingly modern grocery store and was relieved to see that the prices were in American dollars, the signs in English. He picked up a quart of bottled water and took it to the checkout counter, where a woman in a lavalava and a blue polyester smock rang up his purchase and held out her hand for the money.