“Jana, my pigeon. It’s you. Shoot you? Never, my dove! Hasn’t our noble president said we must conserve our natural resources? And what girl has such natural resources as yours? What girl is so generous with them, I ask you?” He punctuated the question with an appreciative grab at Jana’s haunches.
“You are such a flatterer, Manuel.” She let him keep his grip as she patted his cheek. “But I can’t relieve your vigil tonight, I’m afraid. I am occupied with a friend.”
“What friend?”
“Steve, come here,” Jana called. “Come here and meet Manuel, the greatest lover of the south dock.”
“Hi.” I held out my hand.
“Any friend of Jana’s is a friend of mine,” He assured me. “But Jana, why do you bring him here?” he asked. “Are all the beds broken at the International?”
“A special,” she told him. “I don’t want to split the fee. You know how it is. I thought we might find a nice quiet place. . . . ”
“Ah!” Manuel chuckled. “You’re a very lucky man. ” he told me. “Jana really knows how to make a man happy.”
“And I'll make you happy another time, Manuel,” she told him, “if you’ll let us find a place where we can be alone.”
“How can I refuse?” He turned his back to us ostentatiously. “Enjoy yourselves.” He winked at me over his shoulder.
Once again Jana took my hand and led me through the darkness. We moved slowly, and it was about ten minutes later when the flashlight hit us in the eyes. It stayed there as someone silently moved behind us. A hand with a baling-hook reached from the rear and wavered between us, nudging each of our bellies by turn.
“Wait!” Jana spoke quickly, trying to shield her eyes against the light. “Let there be no blood. Please! ”
“Please!” I echoed fervently.
“Should I stick them, Raoul?” the voice from behind us asked.
“A minute.” The flashlight moved closer. “What are you doing here? ” the second voice demanded.
“Manuel said it would be all right,” Jana replied. “He said we should take care of you.”
“Well, then?” A hand materialized in front of the flashlight, and the fingers were rubbed together in a money-hungry gesture.
“Give him two hundred pesos,” Jana whispered to me.
“Why not kill them and take it all?” asked the voice behind us. The baling-hook twirled lightly and slashed my shirt. “
The hand in front of the flashlight swallowed up the two hundred pesos. Then it reappeared and made the same gesture as before. “Do it again.”
I didn’t argue. I handed over another two hundred.
“You’re too bloodthirsty,” Raoul told the baling-hook. “They are just young lovers. Let them go.”
“And you’re too sentimental,” the voice grumbled behind us. But the baling-hook disappeared obediently.
A few seconds later the light was doused, and Jana and I were alone again. My breath came whooshing out in a sigh of relief. But Jana was still worried as she led me farther through the darkness.
“The most dangerous is to come,” she told me. “Now we have to cross the boundary between the south and north docks. If we’re seen, the ‘North Dock Gang may shoot first and ask questions later.”
How right she was! No sooner did we emerge into the no-man’s-land between the two territories than a volley of pistol shots nipped at our heels. I grabbed Jana and dived back into the shadows.
“We’ll never make it!” she said, shaking. “We’d better turn back.”
“We’ve come this far. We’ll make it,” I assured her. “You just stay here quietly while I take care of the sentry.” I patted her arm and moved off on my belly.
I crawled in a wide half-circle that brought me to the right of the guard and a bit in front of him. I was pretty much out in the open now, and if he looked in my direction, I’d be a sitting duck. I latched onto a few rusty nails lying on the dock. When his head changed angles to peer into the darkness in the direction from which I’d come, I threw the nails so that they hit on the other side of him. He jumped forward in that direction, firing as he went.
The movement put me behind him. I’d banked on that. As he moved, I dived, slamming into his back and wrapping an arm around his throat. I wrenched his pistol from him and clubbed him over the head with it. I held onto the pistol and let his body sag silently to the pier.
Jana had seen the whole thing. Now she joined me. We reached the dock alongside the Luzona Maru without further incident. Getting onto the pier itself was another matter. It was crawling with men. They were loading the large cans I’d seen in the hold onto waiting trucks which had been lined up parallel to the ship. The operation was going forward smoothly and quietly, with half a dozen armed men patrolling the perimeter of the pier to see that it stayed that way.
“Look.” Jana pointed. “There’s ‘Baby’ Torres.”
I looked and saw the man the cops had been so concerned about during the balut-eating melee before, the same man who’d sicced his henchmen on me in the sauna. He was talking to the ferocious Spanish moustache. Now he moved off with a wave of his hand and climbed into a waiting car. A moment later the car pulled away. The moustache began hissing orders and otherwise making like a foreman. I gathered that “Baby” must have left him in charge of the unloading gang.
The line of waiting trucks extended beyond the dock. I decided that my only chance of following the cargo to its destination would be to get aboard one of those trucks and hide before it was loaded. With Jana at my side, I circled the area until we were fairly close to the next-to-last truck in the line.
“Hey! Who’s that!”
The voice came from behind us. I didn’t wait for it to get an answer. I grabbed Jana’s hand and plunged into the shadows of the trucks. We crawled under the length of the last truck and then I pulled her over the tailgate of the one in front of it. At the very back there were some quilts of the type used by moving men lying on the floor in a tangle. We crawled under them and arranged them so they’d conceal us.
Perhaps half an hour passed, and then our otherwise empty van moved up to the head of the loading line. Some thirty of the large containers were put aboard, and then the back of the truck was closed and locked. The truck started moving slowly, and then picked up speed. It was about three-thirty in the morning when it came to a halt again. I judged we’d ‘gone some fifty miles-— maybe more. Throughout most of the journey Jana had been complaining in bitter whispers about having been forced to make the trip.
“It wasn’t part of our bargain,” she protested. “I only promised to get you to the ship. Now who knows what sort of trouble you’ve got me into? ”
“I’m sorry. It couldn’t be helped,” I told her. “It was either crawl in here or get nabbed by the guards.”
“They’ll get us anyway when we stop,” she pointed out. “And these north dock boys don’t play games. They won’t think anything of killing us for sneaking onto one of their trucks when they’re pulling a job.”
She’d kept on like that throughout the ride, but now, as the truck stopped, she quieted down. I could hear her heart beating loudly, though. She was scared. I couldn’t blame her. I was pretty scared myself.
After a while the truck’s back door was opened and the tailgate lowered again. Men began moving the large metal containers onto hand-trucks. They were taking them up a ramp into a large building. I could barely make out the looming structure in the darkness. With the palm trees surrounding it, I guessed it was some sort of plantation shed.
“You stay here,” I whispered to Jana as the last of the containers were removed. “You can probably sneak off when they get back to Manila.”
“What are you going to do?”
“This is where I get off.”