The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories (31 page)

"Do you have all the gear you need?" Jesse asked.

"We'll have it flown to Macau to meet us," Laszlo said. "It's just a matter of your giving us your credit card number."

"There isn't a cheaper or quicker way to do this?" Jesse asked.

"Total. Artistic. Control," said Laszlo, which settled it as far as he was concerned.

As for myself, I planted some sandalwood incense in Jesse's shrine and set it alight along with a prayer for success and safety. It seemed only sensible to try to get the local
numina
on my side.

Happy with a drink in my hand and my feet upon a cushion, I was inclined to loiter in Jesse's sumptuous suite as long as I could. The passengers lived in a Forbidden City of pleasures and delights, but the crew and entertainers were stuck in little bare cabins below the water line, with no natural light, precious little ventilation, and with adjacent compressors, generators, and maneuvering thrusters screaming out in the small hours of the night.

Eventually, though, Jesse grew weary of our company, and I wandered out to the Peaches of Heaven Buffet for a snack. I got some dumplings and a bottle of beer, and who should I encounter but folk music fan Tobe Oharu, fresh from bargain-hunting at the Stanley Market, who plunked down opposite me with some ox-tendon soup and a bottle of beer.

"I got some pashmina shawls for my mother," he said with great enthusiasm, "and some silk scarves and ties for presents, and some more ties and some cashmere sweaters for myself."

"Very nice," I said.

"How did you spend your day?"

"I went out for a swim," I said, "but I didn't have a good time." I was still embarrassed that I had so completely flaked out at the forty-meter mark.

"That's a shame," Oharu said. "Was the beach too crowded?"

"The company
did
leave something to be desired," I said, after which he opened what proved to be a highly informed discussion of Andean music.

The audiences for our shows that night were modest, because most of the passengers were still enjoying the fleshpots of Hong Kong, but Oharu was there, right in front as before, wearing his poncho and derby and leading the audience in applause. We tried "Twist and Shout" as an encore number, and it was a hit, getting us a second encore, which meant that the band took Oharu to the bar for several rounds of thank-you drinks.

After the second show, I stuck around for the entire Hopping Vampire Show and had a splendid time watching Chinese demons chomp ingenues while combating a Taoist magician, who repelled them with glutinous rice, which enabled him to dodge attacks long enough to control the vampires with yellow-paper magic, in which a sutra or spell was written on yellow paper with vermilion ink, then stuck on the vampire's forehead like a spiritual Post-It note.

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' 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 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."

Laszlo grinned, his white teeth a frightening contrast to his green mask.

"You can only dive that deep a certain number of times each day," Laszlo explained to Jesse. "If we waste their dives, we use up their available bottom time."

"And," I added, "suppose you clear the wire only from the
front
half of the ship. You use the jacks to move the mast partly off the fore hatch. This will suggest to them that their target is in the forward hold, not in the after hold."

Lazslo's grin broadened. He looked like a bloodthirsty idol contemplating an upcoming sacrifice.

"They'll spend all day getting into the forward hold and find
nothing!
" he said. "Brilliant!" He nodded at me and gave his highest accolade.

"Ernesto," he said, "you're an
artist!
"

 

I spent the next day on the launch at the dive site, but I didn't so much as put a foot into the water. Instead I watched the horizon for signs of the Ayancas—and there was a boat that seemed to be lurking between us and Hong Kong—while the mermaids and the off-duty Apollos swam about the boat and practiced their moves. The mermaids were even more listless, if possible, than the day before, and Laszlo felt obliged to offer them several sharp reproofs.

When Laszlo and a colleague made their second dive to the wreck, the others happily called a lunch break. Someone turned a radio to a station filled with bouncy Cantonese pop music. The Apollos sat in the stern slathering on sun oil, performing dynamic-tension exercises, and quaffing drinks into which, to aid in building muscle, vast arrays of steaks and potatoes seemed to have been scientifically crammed. Since no one else seemed inclined to pay attention to the ladies, I perched on the forward gunwales with the mermaids and helped them devour some excellent dim sum that we'd filched from the kitchens of the Grand Dynasty Restaurant that morning.

"So, how do you find the water ballet business?" I asked one of the mermaids, a nymph from Colorado named Leila.

She took her time about lighting up a cigarette. "After Felicia and I came in sixth in the Olympics, we turned pro," she said. "I'm not sure what I expected, but it certainly wasn't this.
You
try cramming your lower half into one of those rubber fish tails for an hour a day."

"Yet here you are in the Pacific, on a beautiful sunny day, on a grand adventure and with the whole of Asia before you."

She flicked cigarette ash in the direction of the Apollos. "
That's
not what I'd call the whole of Asia."

"You're not fond of your co-workers?" I asked. For it was obvious that the mermaids kept very much to themselves, and I'd wondered why.

"Let's just say that they and I have a different idea of what constitutes an object of desire."

"Surely they can't
all
be gay," I said, misunderstanding.

"They aren't," Leila said. "But they are all narcissists. When I cuddle on a couch with a guy, I want him to be looking at
me
, not at his own reflection in a mirror."

"I take your point. Perhaps you ought to confine yourself to homely men."

She looked at me. "
You're
homely," she pointed out.

"As homely as they come," I agreed, and shifted a bit closer to her on the gunwale.

These pleasantries continued until Laszlo finished his dive and demanded more rehearsals. Since he had Total Artistic Control, there was little I could say on the matter.