The King had launched the treated tobacco enterprise with a sales conference. It had gone according to plan. All the Americans had volunteered as salesmen, and the King’s Aussie and English contacts had bitched. But that was only normal. He had already arranged to buy twenty pounds of Java weed from Ah Lee, the Chinese who had the concession of the camp store, and he had got it at a good discount. An Aussie cookhouse had agreed to set one of their ovens aside daily for an hour, so the whole batch of tobacco could be cooked at one time under Tex’s supervision. Since all the men were working on percentage, the King’s only outlay was the cost of the tobacco. Tomorrow, the treated tobacco would be on sale. The way he had set it up, he would clear a hundred percent profit. Which was only fair.
Now that the tobacco project was launched, the King was ready to tackle the diamond …
The hiss of the bubbling coffeepot interrupted his contemplations. He slipped from under the mosquito net and unlocked the black box. He put three heaped spoons of coffee in the water and added a pinch of salt. As the water frothed, he took it off the stove and waited until it had subsided.
The aroma of the coffee spilled through the hut, teasing the men still awake.
“Jesus,” Max said involuntarily.
“What’s the matter, Max?” the King said. “Can’t you sleep?”
“No. Got too much on my mind. I been thinking. We can make one helluva deal outta that tobacco.”
Tex shifted uneasily, soaring with the aroma. “That smell reminds me of wildcatting.”
“How come?” The King poured in cold water to settle the grounds, then put a heaped spoonful of sugar into his mug and filled it.
“Best part of drilling’s in the mornings. After a long sweaty night’s shift on the rig. When you set with your buddies over the first steaming pot of Java, ’bout dawn. An’ the coffee’s steamy hot and sweet, an’ at the same time a mite bitter. An’ maybe you look out through the maze of oil derricks at the sun rising over Texas.” There was a long sigh. “Man, that’s living.”
“I’ve never been to Texas,” the King said. “Been all over but not Texas.”
“That’s God’s country.”
“You like a cup?”
“You know it.” Tex was there with his mug. The King poured himself a second cup. Then he gave Tex half a cup.
“Max?”
Max got half a cup too. He drank the coffee quickly. “I’ll fix this for you in the morning,” he said, taking the pot with its bed of grounds.
“Okay. ’Night, you guys.”
The King slipped under the net once more and made sure it was tight and neat under the mattress. Then he lay back gratefully between the sheets. Across the hut he saw Max add some water to the coffee grounds and set it beside the bunk to marinate. He knew that Max would rebrew the grounds for breakfast. Personally the King never liked rebrewed coffee. It was too bitter. But the boys said it was fine. If Max wanted to rebrew it, great, he thought agreeably. The King did not approve of waste.
He closed his eyes and turned his mind to the diamond. At last he knew who had it, how to get it, and now that luck had brought Peter Marlowe to him, he knew how the vastly complicated deal could be arranged.
Once you know a man, the King told himself contentedly, know his Achilles heel, you know how to play him, how to work him into your plans. Yep, his hunch had paid off when he had first seen Peter Marlowe squatting Woglike in the dirt, chattering Malay. You got to play hunches in this world.
Now, thinking about the talk he had had with Peter Marlowe after dusk roll call, the King felt the warmth of anticipation spread over him.
“Nothing happens in this lousy dump,” the King had said innocently as they sat in the lee of the hut under a moonless sky.
“That’s right,” Peter Marlowe said. “Sickening. One day’s just like the rest. Enough to drive you around the bend.”
The King nodded. He squashed a mosquito. “I know a guy who has all the excitement he can use, and then some.”
“Oh? What does he do?”
“He goes through the wire. At night.”
“My God. That’s asking for trouble. He must be mad!”
But the King had seen the flicker of excitement in Peter Marlowe’s eyes. He waited in the silence, saying nothing.
“Why does he do it?”
“Most times, just for kicks.”
“You mean excitement?”
The King nodded.
Peter Marlowe whistled softly. “I don’t think I’d have that amount of nerve.”
“Sometimes this guy goes to the Malay village.”
Peter Marlowe looked out of the wire, seeing in his mind the village that they all knew existed on the coast, three miles away. Once he had gone to the topmost cell in the jail and had clambered up to the tiny barred window. He had looked out and seen the panorama of jungle and the village, nestling the coast. There were ships in the waters that day. Fishing ships, and enemy warships — big ones and little ones — set like islands in the glass of the sea. He had stared out, fascinated with the sea’s closeness, hanging to the bars until his hands and arms were tired. After resting awhile he was going to jump up and look out again. But he did not look again. Ever. It hurt too much. He had always lived near the sea. Away from it, he felt lost. Now he was near it again. But it was beyond touch.
“Very dangerous to trust a whole village,” Peter Marlowe said.
“Not if you know them.”
“That’s right. This man really goes to the village?”
“So he told me.”
“I don’t think even Suliman would risk that.”
“Who?”
“Suliman. The Malay I was talking to. This afternoon.”
“It seems more like a month ago,” the King said.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“What the hell’s a guy like Suliman doing in this dump? Why didn’t he just take off when the war ended?”
“He was caught in Java. Suliman was a rubber tapper on Mac’s plantation. Mac’s one of my unit. Well, Mac’s battalion, the Malayan Regiment, got out of Singapore and were sent to Java. When the war ended, Suliman had to stick with the battalion.”
“Hell, he could’ve got lost. There are millions of them in Java…”
“The Javanese would have recognized him instantly, and probably turned him in.”
“What about the co-prosperity sphere yak? You know, Asia for the Asiatics?”
“I’m afraid that doesn’t mean much. It didn’t do the Javanese much good, either. Not if they didn’t obey.”
“How do you mean?”
“In ’42, autumn of ’42, I was in a camp just outside Bandung,” Peter Marlowe said. “That’s up in the hills of Java, in the center of the island. At that time there were a lot of Ambonese, Menadonese and a number of Javanese with us — men who were in the Dutch army. Well, the camp was tough on the Javanese because many of them were from Bandung, and their wives and children were living just outside the wire. For a long time they used to slip out and spend the night, then get back into the camp before dawn. The camp was lightly guarded, so it was easy. Very dangerous for Europeans though, because the Javanese’d turn you over to the Japs and that’d be your lot. One day the Japs gave out an order that anyone caught outside would be shot. Of course the Javanese thought it applied to everyone except them — they had been told that in a couple of weeks they were all to go free anyway. One morning seven of them got caught. We were paraded the next day. The whole camp. The Javanese were put up against a wall and shot. Just like that, in front of us. The seven bodies were buried — with military honors — where they fell. Then the Japs made a little garden around the graves. They planted flowers and put a tiny white rope fence around the whole area and put up a sign in Malay, Japanese and English. It said, These men died for their country.”