Impossible Places (20 page)

“That was very clever of you, Wahgi. Very clever indeed. And I know that the case—it’s called a briefcase, by the way—is safe with you. Now, my friends and I would like to have it back. If you will tell us where you are, we will send other men to take it off your hands.”

“It is not heavy,” the Huli replied with unconscious irony. “Will I get a reward?”

More muttering on the other end, a few violent words in that strange alien tongue that were overridden by still louder words from the English speaker, and then the voice was back on the line.

“We’ll be glad to give you a reward, Wahgi. So long as you return the briefcase and its contents in good condition.” Anxiety crept unbidden into the man’s voice. “They are in good condition, aren’t they?”

The Huli decided to be honest. “I broke the lock. To make certain the contents were okay,” he lied easily.

Rather than upset him, this seemed to amuse the other man. “That’s all right, Wahgi. The lock is not important. There should be some papers in the briefcase. Papers with colored printing on them and brightly colored borders. Are they still there—in good condition?”

“Oh yes,” Wahgi assured him readily. “They have not been harmed at all.”

Softer mutterings from behind the speaker. “That’s just fine, Wahgi. Now, what would you like for a reward?”

Large numbers being foreign to traditional Huli culture, Wahgi stalled for time. What was larger than twenty? What was the briefcase, and more importantly, the pretty papers it held, worth to the man on the strange telephone?

“What is your name, and what is the name of your village?” How much should he ask for? he thought tensely. He had heard many numbers on the televisions in the pubs. Which one would be suitable?

For the second time, the other man sounded amused. “My name is Eric Werner von Maltzan, Wahgi, and I am speaking to you from the village of Zurich.”

“Zurich. I do not know that village. Is it in Australia?” Australia was the only country Wahgi knew besides Papua New Guinea.

“A little farther,” von Maltzan told him. “About your reward?”

Wahgi had decided. “I want a million kina.”
Million
was a term he had heard during sports programs, and it had sounded pretty big to him. Would it be too much? Were the telephone and the papers worth more? Having dealt in pigs, he knew how to bargain. You did not need a big education for that.

His request certainly had an effect on the other man, and those Wahgi believed to be in the room or hut with him. He could hear them arguing in their strange tongues. Crossing his legs under him and watching the flying foxes spit pits from the fruit they were peeling and eating, he waited patiently. With the lateness of the hour, traffic on the nearby main road was becoming infrequent.

Eventually von Maltzan came back on line. “That’s about five hundred thousand American dollars, Wahgi. That’s a great deal of money.”

Wahgi did not know if it was, but decided to take the other man’s word for it. After all, he reasoned, if von Maltzan knew about briefcases and telephones and colored papers, he should know something about money.

“That is the reward I want.”

Again von Maltzan could be heard arguing with other men. “All right, Wahgi. You’ll get your reward. Now, here’s what I want you to do. Go to the airport. Not the public terminal. The private one next to it. In the main building you’ll find—”

“No.”

The other man hesitated. “What’s that?”

“No. I do not know what time it is in Zurich village, but it is very late here, and I am very tired. I am going home, to talk with my friends. Can you call me on this telephone later tonight?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then that is what I want you to do.” He started to put the phone back in the briefcase.

Entirely composed up to now, von Maltzan’s voice began to crack. “No, Wahgi,
nein
! Don’t do that! It’s vital that you . . . !”

The Huli was pleased to discover that despite its tiny size, lack of a connecting cord, and strange appearance, the telephone still operated very much like the other telephones he had seen in use around the city. When he found the button that turned it off, he was delighted. The beeping that had so startled him at first and had precipitated the conversation resumed immediately. It continued until Wahgi found another button that turned it off for good. Satisfied, he put the device back in the briefcase and tied it up with the length of twine. Then he resumed his hike back to Koki, dashing across the two lanes of highway.

Gembogl and Kuikui were lying on their torn, bedbuginfested, salvaged mattresses when he arrived. Kuikui lit the single kerosene lantern and put his machete down as soon as he saw who was standing in the doorway.

“Where have you been, Wahgi? We were worried about you.”

“Wake Gembogl. I have something to show you both.”

As the three men sat in a circle on the floor, Wahgi undid the twine and triumphantly showed them the contents of the case. “This is called a briefcase,” he explained with the air of a new schoolteacher.

Not to be outdone, Kuikui added, “
Brief
means
small
in English.”

“That makes sense. And this—” He held up the satellite phone. “—is a telephone.”

A doubtful Gembogl took it and held it closer to the lantern. “It doesn’t look like a phone.”

“It is. I used it to talk to a man in a village called Zurich. He promised me a reward for returning the briefcase.”

That caught his friends’ attention. “How big a reward?” Kuikui asked.

“A million kina.”

Gembogl burst out laughing. “
Wanem!
A million kina? For a briefcase and a bunch of papers?”

Kuikui was less skeptical. “Wahgi may be telling the truth. You know how peculiar Europeans are about their papers and things. I have seen them in the bank, fussing over them like women over shells.”

“A million kina. We could buy a car with that.” Gembogl sounded wistful.

“Many cars.” Kuikui was more economically learned than either of his friends.

“Then we agree on the amount?” Wahgi’s gaze traveled from one man to another. They had shared privation and insults, hunger and spiteful taunts from the more sophisticated townsfolk. Now they would share in his reward.

Gembogl was shaking his head. He was the youngest of the three who had come down from the Highlands to seek work in the city. “I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe it. It’s too good to be true. Of course we agree on the amount,” he added as an afterthought.

Kuikui urged his friend, “Call this man back. Tell him we have discussed your proposal and we are all agreed.”

“Yes, call him back,” Gembogl said excitedly.

“I can’t.” Wahgi picked up the phone. “I don’t know how to use this. But I think he will be calling me.” So saying, he pressed the button that had successfully shut off the beeping. It recommenced instantly, as if it had never stopped.

“Now watch.” Exaggerating his movements for maximum effect, the Huli pressed the button he had used to activate the device previously.

“This is Eric Werner von Maltzan calling for Wahgi. Eric Werner von Maltzan of Zurich calling for Wahgi of Port Moresby, PNG.” Though clear enough, the voice sounded very tired.

“See?” Proud of his newly acquired technical skill, Wahgi responded. “I am here,
pren
Eric. With two of my friends. How will you get my reward to me?”

“Just leave everything to me, Wahgi. I will take care of—”

“Just a moment.” It was Kuikui. He was staring at the open doorway and frowning. “I thought I heard something.”

“We should be careful.” Gembogl kept his voice down as the older man blew out the lantern. “A million kina is a lot of money.”

“Yes. Wait here.” Picking up his machete, Kuikui moved purposefully toward the open doorway. His friends waited in the darkness.

“What is it?” The voice on the phone sounded more anxious than ever. “What’s going on?”

“Probably nothing,
pren
Eric.” Wahgi spoke in a whisper. “Just some noise outside. My friend Kuikui went to check on—”

The staccato burst of sound splintered on the Huli’s eardrums. He had heard that sound before, once during a riot and again during a military parade. It was the sound of a gun going off. Not a shotgun, but an automatic gun that could fire many bullets without stopping. Gembogl sprang for his machete while Wahgi grabbed the briefcase and stumbled toward the rear of the shack.

The voice on the phone never stopped. “Wahgi! What was that? It sounded like an Uzi!”

“We are being shot at!” Clutching the phone in one hand and the briefcase in the other, Wahgi pushed up against the back wall of the shanty. Outside were plank walkways, and below, the sewage-saturated part of the harbor that surged back and forth beneath Koki.

“In the briefcase!” the voice on the phone told him. “A plastic egg the size of a man’s fist! Put it next to the phone.” Fumbling among the devices and papers, Wahgi found the object described and did as he was told. An electronic tone sounded from the phone, in response to which a red light appeared on the side of the egg shape.

“I did what you told me to,” he stammered into the phone. “What do I do now?”

“Run, jump, get away, Wahgi—and throw it at the people with the guns!”

“Kuikui, Gembogl, run away!” he shouted. There was no reply as he tossed the red-eyed ovoid onto the floor and pushed through the flimsy rear wall of the shack. As he did so three men burst through the doorway. Two were tall and European while the third was Melanesian, but no Highlander. A slim, fine-featured coastal man, Wahgi saw in the glow of the lights they carried, probably from down near Milne Bay.

As he fell toward the outriggers moored below, the sun seemed to come out behind him. It was a sun full of thunder, as the shack, the wooden planks on which it sat, and a portion of the surrounding walkways erupted in a ball of white-hot flame. Screams filled the air as other shanty dwellers, explosively roused from their sleep, staggered out of their thrown-together homes to gape at the fireball that was rising in their midst.

Wahgi landed hard in an open outrigger, twisting his ankle and hitting his jaw on the side of the narrow craft. But there was nothing wrong with the rest of him. Carefully placing the briefcase in the bottom of the boat, he untied it and began stroking toward shore, toward Ela Beach. As he paddled, the phone jabbered frantically at him. He ignored it, occasionally looking back over his shoulder. Where the shack had been was a flamelined hole in the elevated walkway. The supporting stilts had been blown off right down to the water, like mangroves that had been logged. There was no sign of his interim home, of the other two men who had lived there, or of the three heavily armed intruders who had burst in on him.

They had not paused to talk or to ask questions, Wahgi reflected. They had simply shot their way in. He was sorry for Gembogl and Kuikui, and angry at what had happened to them, but he now knew one thing for certain: The briefcase and its contents were unquestionably worth a million kina.

Maybe two million, based on what had just happened.

Safely ashore on the narrow city beach, he abandoned the outrigger to the vagaries of the harbor currents. Exhausted and out of breath, his left ankle throbbing, he threw himself down under a coconut palm and opened the briefcase.

“. . . are you there, Wahgi! Can you hear—”

“What happened?” he asked von Maltzan. “What did you do?”

“Those gunmen were after the briefcase,” the foreigner explained. He did not need to do that. Of course the gunmen were after the briefcase. Did he still think Wahgi was stupid? “I used the phone to activate the grenade you threw at them. Where are you? Are you all right?”

“Yes, I am all right. But my friends are not.”

“I’m sorry. Now will you listen to me and not hang up anymore? If you do, I won’t be able to help you.”

“Never mind that.” Tasting wet saltiness in his mouth, Wahgi felt for his teeth. One was missing, knocked out when he had hit the side of the outrigger, and blood was trickling over his lip and down his chin. To a Huli it was nothing more than an inconvenience. “I want my reward.”

“Yes, yes, of course, but—”

“I want it left for me in a paper-wrapped package at the main airport cargo pickup counter, with my name on it. By tomorrow morning.”

“It’ll be there, Wahgi. No problem. But please, do one thing for me. Leave this phone on in case you run into trouble again. That way I can help you. Keep it close at all times. Other people want what is in the briefcase, and as you have seen this morning—”

“It is night here.”

“All right, all right. As you have seen this night, these others are willing to kill to get it.”

“I will not turn the phone off again,” Wahgi promised.

“Good! Tomorrow morning, at the Jackson’s Airport cargo counter. Look for your package.”

The voice went away, but the green light remained on. Wahgi surmised that it indicated the line was still open to him if he needed to use it. Looking around, he sought and found a picnic bench across the street from the Ela Beach hotel. In an emergency, he could run in that direction. Port Moresby hotels always had guards on duty around the clock. They would not interfere in a fight to help him, but their presence might well discourage an attacker from using a gun in the presence of armed witnesses.

Stretching out on the warm sand beneath the table, he felt he had done all that he could until morning. Dreaming of a million kina and sorrowing for his dead kinsmen, he fell into a deep and placid sleep.

Parker put the silencer to the side of the sleeping man’s head and pulled the trigger once. There was a soft
phut
followed by the sound of bone splintering. Blood spurted briefly, quickly slowing to a trickle. Unscrewing the silencer, he placed it and the gun back in their respective jacket holsters.

“Poor dumb blackfella,” he murmured emotionlessly to his companion as the other man picked up the briefcase. “Never had a clue what he was dealing with.”