I made a note to remember this trick in case I ever encountered a Hopping Vampire myself.
After the second show, the Tang Dynasty got under way for its short run to Macau, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep with the maneuvering thrusters shrieking and the anchor chain clattering inboard, so I took a turn on deck. The ship lay in a pool of mist, an even cloud lightened only slightly by the distant moon. The ship was picking up speed as it swung onto a new heading … and then suddenly the air was full of the scent of sandalwood. It was as if we were no longer in fog, but in the smoke produced by an entire sandalwood grove going up in flames.
I had scant time to marvel at this when I heard, magnified by the fog, the sound of a toyo, the largest of the Andean panpipes. The sound was loud and flamboyant and showy, featuring triple-stopping and double-tonguing slick as the pomade on Elvis’s hair, and it was followed by a roar of applause.
“Damn it!” I shouted into the mist. “It’s Fidel Perugachi!”
And then I ran for the nearest companionway.
While I was banging on Jesse’s cabin door- and simultaneously trying to reach him on his cell phone- I was interrupted by my cousin Jorge and my brother Sancho, who were strolling down the corridor with their fan Oharu, who carried an umbrella drink in one hand, had an inebriated smile on his face, and was still wearing his poncho and derby.
“What’s up, bro?” Jorge asked.
I replied in Aymara. “The Ayancas have turned up. Get rid of our friend here as soon as you can and get back here.” When I spoke to Oharu, I switched back to English. “I’m trying to collect some gambling winnings.”
“Ah,” he nodded. “Good luck.” He raised a pudgy fist. “You want me to bash him on the head?”
“Ah,” I said, “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
Jesse opened the door and answered his cell phone simultaneously, blinking in the corridor light. “What’s happening?”
“We need to talk,” I said, and shoved my way into his room.
“The Ayancas are here!” I said while Jesse put on a dressing gown. “They’re out in the fog, taunting us with flute music! We’ve got to do something!”
“Like what?” Jesse, still not exactly compos, groped on the lacquered side table for a cigarette.
“Get some machine guns! Mortars! Rocket launchers! Those guys are evil!”
Jesse lit his coffin nail and inhaled. “Perhaps you had better tell me who these Ayancas are, exactly.”
It was difficult to condense the last thousand years of Andean history into a few minutes, but I did my best. It was only the last forty years that mattered anyway, because that’s when my uncle Iago, returning from a trip to Europe (to buy a shipment of derby hats, believe it or not), saw his first James Bond movie and decided to form his own private intelligence service, and subsequently sent his young relatives (like me) to an elite Swiss prep school, while the rest formed into bands of street musicians who could wander the streets, not unobtrusive but at least unsuspected as they went about their secret work.
“Fidel Perugachi is a traitor and a copycat cheat!” I said. “He formed his own outfit and went into competition with us.” I shook a fist. “Perugachi’s nothing but llama spit!”
“So there are competing secret organizations of Andean street musicians?” Jesse said, slow apparently to wrap his mind around this concept.
“All the musicians belong to one group or the other,” I said. “But the Ayancas lack our heritage. They’re sort-of cousins to the Urinsaya moiety, but we’re the Hanansaya moiety! Our ancestors were the Alasaa, and were buried in stone towers!”
Jesse blinked. “Good for them,” he said. “But do you really think the Ayancas are here for the Goldfish Fairy?”
“Why else would they be in Hong Kong at this moment?” I demanded. “You were right in Prague when you worried that you were being shadowed. Your opposition found out you were hiring us, so they countered by hiring the Ayancas. Why else would Fidel Perugachi be off playing his toyo in the fog and the clouds of sandalwood smoke?”
“Sandalwood?” he said, puzzled.
“Like your incense,” I said, and pointed to his little shrine. “There were great gusts of sandalwood smoke coming over the rail along with Perugachi’s music.”
Jesse puffed on his cigarette while considering this, and then he slammed his hand on the arm of his chair.
“Thunderbolt Sow!” he said.
I looked at him. “Beg pardon?”
“The Thunderbolt Sow is a holy figure in Buddhism. But Thunderbolt Sow is also the name of another cruise ship- Buddhist-themed, with a huge temple to Buddha on the stern, and several very well-regarded vegetarian restaurants. I bet that temple pours out a lot of sandalwood incense.”
“At this time of night?”
“Do you know about the smoke towers? Those coils of incense that hang from the roofs of the temples? They burn twenty-four hours per day- some of them are big enough to burn for weeks.”
“So Perugachi wasn’t taunting us,” I said. “He got a job like ours, on a cruise ship, and he was finishing his second show as the ship came into harbor.” I thought about this and snarled. “Copycat! What did I tell you!”
“The question is,” Jesse said, “what kind of menace is this, and what are we going to do?”
So we had an early-morning conference, with the water ballet guys and Jesse and the members of my band. Jesse connected with the Internet through the cellular modem on his notebook, and we found that Thunderbolt Sow belonged to the same cruise line as Tang Dynasty, and followed the same schedule, only a day later.
“We’ll be anchoring in Macau in an hour or so,” Laszlo said from beneath the avocado green beauty mask he hadn’t bothered to wash off. “But we won’t be able to get our salvage gear till midmorning at the earliest.” He considered. “We’ll spend tomorrow clearing off that tangle of cable, and maybe get a start on shifting the mast. The day following, Tang Dynasty discharges most of its passengers, takes on a new ones, and heads for Shanghai to start the circuit all over again, so we won’t be able to dive.”
“But the Ayancas can,” I pointed out. “They can take advantage of all the preparatory work you’ve done and lift the package while we’re on our way to Shanghai and back.”
“In that case,” Jesse said, “don’t do anything tomorrow. Just sit on the site to keep the Ayancas from pillaging it, and let them deal with the cable and the mast.”
“We can spend the day rehearsing!” Laszlo said brightly, and the members of his troupe rolled their eyes.
I rubbed my chin and gave this some thought. Jesse’s idea was good enough, but it lacked savor somehow. I felt it was insufficient in terms of dealing with the Ayancas. With Fidel Perugachi and his clique, I prefer instead to employ the more decisive element of diabolical vengeance.
“Instead,” I suggested calmly, “why don’t we mislead the Ayancas and drive them mad?”
Jesse seemed a little taken aback by this suggestion.
“How?” he asked.
“Let’s give them the Goldfish Fairy, but give them a Goldfish Fairy that will drive them insane!”
“You mean sabotage the ship?” Jesse blinked. “So that they dive down there and get killed?”
“It’s not that murdering the Ayancas wouldn’t be satisfying,” I said, “but practically speaking it would only motivate them toward reprisal. No, I mean simply give them a day of complete frustration, preferably one that will cause them in the end to realize that we were the cause of their difficulties.”
I turned to Laszlo. “For example,” I said, “this morning you attached a buoy to the Goldfish Fairy that would make it easier to find. Suppose that tomorrow you move that buoy about five hundred meters into deeper water. They’ll waste at least one dive, possibly more, finding the ship again.”