House of Corruption (26 page)

“Your father’s?” Savoy asked, impressed.

“Miss Carlovec?”

An open carriage, pulled by four horses, slowed to a stop. A tall Englishman descended, clad in a khaki helmet, uniform and shorts, knee-high leech socks and round glasses perched on his hawkish nose, an Army-caliber pistol slung at his waist. His wide smile revealed a fellow more than pleased to be shaking Kiria’s gloved hand. She grinned broadly.

“Duncan,” she said. “You received my message.”

“Only just. I am afraid your more extensive letter arrived just five days ago.”

“I sent it late November.”

“Pirates,” he said. “Despite our best efforts. Both mail and wire from Sarawak is delayed—the Iban are upset at the Chinese, who are upset at the Bujan, and the governor’s too busy expanding the railway, it seems. Most off-island mail’s not arrived this month. I’m surprised I received your wire at all.”

Reynard coughed to gain attention. Kiria introduced her three companions in turn. “May I present Duncan Barnett, Sandakan’s Chief Inspector.”

“Just a humble member of the constabulary,” Duncan said as he shook their hands with a firm, British formality. “Miss Carlovec informed me of your plight. May I offer my warmest wishes that Miss...LaCroix, is it?...be found safe.”

“She is my sister,” Reynard said. “Any news?”

“Nothing, I am afraid. The only ship from your direction docked at Tambisan over a week ago, but no word as to its passengers or cargo.”

“There must have been a record.”

“There should have been, but local bureaucracies are not as efficient as Our Majesty’s. The opium trade’s booming and still they feel the need to sneak under our noses. We have circulated your sister’s description to every regional office. It is the best we can do.”

“And Master Carlovec?” Reynard asked. “You have questioned him?”

Duncan looked to Kiria. “Miss?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “My father may be of service.”

“You never told him?” Reynard asked.

“I did not think—”

“Obviously,” Reynard said. He focused on Duncan. “Miss Carlovec’s father is directly involved in my sister’s abduction, if not the author of it.”

“Sir?”

“I urge an immediate investigation.”

Duncan paused at that. “Unfortunately I cannot be much help there either,” he said. “It is one thing to implicate one of the governor’s trusted associates. It is quite another when I cannot question him, even if I felt it necessary. He left for Saint Dismas…months ago. I’ve not seen him since August.”

“Where?” Savoy asked.

“My grandfather’s old estate,” Kiria said. “Carlovec Manor is a hundred miles inland. It is so isolated now...we’ve all but abandoned it. I cannot fathom why he would travel there, much less this time of year. Not in his condition.”

“Convenient,” Grant said.

“Nonsense,” Duncan said, his smile gone. “Cannot fault a man for traveling to his own property. I refer you to the Office of Indigenous Affairs, which can direct you to whomever handles that region.” He offered his hand to Kiria and helped her step up into the carriage as the porter stored her luggage. “I did not expect so large a group, so you will understand if you secure your own transport. I recommend the Victoria’s Lion Hotel on Harris Street. If we learn anything more, someone will contact you.”

“You are leaving us?” Savoy asked.

“Another conveyance ought to arrive shortly,” Duncan said. “Again, Victoria’s Lion. Good day, gentlemen.”

With that he ascended the carriage and sat beside Kiria. With a word, the driver flicked the reins and the carriage pulled forward, leaving the three men standing in the mud with their luggage slowly sinking in the road. Kiria did not look back, engaged in animated conversation, her open parasol spinning as she laughed.

“What a pompous ass,” said Reynard.

“At least where it concerns Miss Carlovec,” Savoy added.

The next morning Reynard awoke to hard rain outside his hotel window, rushing off gutters and into the sidewalks. With a heavy thunder, the downpour delivered a month’s worth of Louisiana. He stared past the bed’s mosquito netting and over the bare furnishings of his room, brushing his fingers against his slippery face. The
Victoria’s Lion
did indeed have as many amenities as any hotel in London, but the furnishings and smells and feel of the air made it clear London was in a distant country.

He listened to the rain. He thought of Kiria, her olive skin, the play of her hair over her shoulders. Regardless of her many faults, he closed his eyes and imagined her smiling at him with pursed lips—

A knock rapped at his door. He rose from bed, touched his toes and stretched. He looked at his right hand, the muscle between his thumb and index finger rippling with an almost imperceptible tremor. He squeezed his hand into a fist.

Stay away
.

Out in the hall waited Grant with his overcoat dripping, his Calvary hat spilling rainwater as he tipped his greeting. “Wet morning,” he said. “Seems Miss Carlovec wants us to join her to go to her family’s mansion, wherever her father’s holed up.”

“She did?” Reynard asked.

“You figure she wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know what to think about that woman. So when do we leave? A week? A month?”

“Three hours,” Grant said. “We’ve a train to catch, and she’s sent along a shopping list. We’re to plan for the jungle, and that means leeches, snakes, crocodiles and mosquitoes plum full of the malaria.”

“Wonderful.”

“Care for some breakfast?”

The three men spent their morning in a supply store buying mosquito nets and creams and long socks and powders and dry-pack matches and hammocks and tents and an ammunition belt for Grant’s Winchester rifle, each item revealing its own peculiar story. Though Reynard and Grant ordered their malaria pills with less than enthusiastic faces, Savoy slapped down a wad of bills before the cashier like an enthusiastic schoolboy.

They organized their supplies into packs then waved down a cab—a Chinese in a surrey—who drove them through the outer streets of Sandakan. Outside the British quarter the city sprawled with ramshackle dwellings and tenements; warehouses filled with drying tobacco and pre-processed rubber; smelting plants stinking of tin; rows of groggeries and brothels. They saw too many native children—dirty, barely dressed—lingering in doorways with empty expressions.

“They say the jungle will rot your clothes,” Grant said. “We’re to sleep in hammocks ‘cause of the ants. Men have died ‘cause of the ants.”

“Couldn’t be much worse than the bayou,” Reynard said.

“The locals there don’t cut off your head.”

“There are headhunters here?”

Grant nodded.

“As soon as we find Lasha,” Savoy said, “I hope to document an
orang utan
in the wild. The boys in Biology would pull their beards off knowing I was here.” He watched the city’s outskirts roll past. “I made inquiries concerning my colleague Professor Stronheim. He was indeed here, having arrived last year—but none seem to know why or where he’s gone off to.”

“A dead end?” Reynard asked.

“He was involved,” Savoy said.

“He told them about me, didn’t he?”

“If so, not voluntarily. I assure you.”

They rode until the city transformed into lush rows of palm and bamboo and fig trees with long, crawling roots. They wondered if their cabby had taken them in the wrong direction, but soon the trees moved aside as they arrived at Sungai Station. Native Dayaks and Chinese and Indians and Europeans clamored onto the single train hissing against the platform. British soldiers with bayonet-tipped rifles tried to keep the crowd in check, with little success. In the midst of the din, the surrey stopped and the cabby, without a word, unloaded the men’s luggage.

“Gentlemen. You are late.”

Kiria appeared in a long-sleeved shirt and trousers and knee-high boots, her hair pulled back in a knot and scarf. Beside her, Duncan Barnett stood with not a speck of mud on his trousers. He nodded curtly.

“I hope my list was satisfactory,” Kiria said.

“Now you dress like a man,” Reynard said.

“Would you wear a frock out here?”

“Why would your grandfather build so far outside the city?” Savoy asked.

“Carlovec Manor was built along the Kinabatangan River in hopes of founding a strong port further inland,” she said. “A town was started. Monks built a monastery nearby as a sign of good faith. It would have flourished if the governor hadn’t moved the railway to Jesselton...”

“It was the proper choice,” Duncan said.

“So he says—but the house is now stranded, an oddity.”

“The road to the monastery of Saint Dismas is flooded ten miles west of Kinda Lu,” Duncan said. “The only remaining route is downriver, and the Kinabatangan is out of the question. The docks are burned at Lamag and there are reports the insurgent Mat Selleh is to blame. I doubt he would take kindly to whites attempting the interior. You might try the Jebata River out of Takala, but you will need a guide. So far, no one is willing.”

The skies cracked with thunder and dropped more rain. They gathered their belongings and hurried up the ramp onto the covered platform as locals crowded in around them. The air stank with unwashed bodies. The air shuddered and rain fell in heavy sheets until the mud boiled.

“We press on, with or without you,” Reynard said to Kiria. “Point us in the right direction and we should find our way.”

“You would be dead in two days,” she said.

“Abandoning us would be tantamount to murder then,” Reynard said. “Am I right?”

Twenty minutes after eleven o’clock they bid farewell to Duncan Barnett.  He watched as their train pulled away, a stiff, khaki island lost in a sea of clamoring natives. Passengers filled the train to capacity, spilling onto the roof, crouched on the stairs or leaning out open windows. Kiria craned out of their window (having managed to secure a compartment to themselves), returned Duncan’s enthusiastic wave, and settled back into her seat.

“He is fond of you,” Reynard said, seated across from her.

“He is a dear friend,” she said.

“I see.”

“Not that it is any of your business.”

“Just an observation.”

“Full of innuendo.”

“Therefore
true
, based on that reaction.”

“Our families have known each other for many years,” Kiria said. “He is a gentleman, willing to serve without compulsion.”

“Ah,” Reynard said. “Unlike myself.”

“That is not what I said.”

“You are still angry with me.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“You two feel free to discuss this elsewhere,” Grant said with his legs outstretched, his face covered with his hat. “I reckon we could use some rest?”

His gentle rebuke served its purpose. The two focused their attention out the window, avoiding each other’s gaze, as the train burst another cloud of steam. It lurched on the track and accelerated. Soon the jungle raced past in a nutty blur, the air ripe with frond and branch and flower. Reynard nodded his head against the window and soon both he and Grant were snoring.

The train bore them west then curved to the southeast, passing through
kampong
villages and makeshift camps of seasonal farmhands and tin miners. Plantations hewn from the mangrove swamps stretched with rubber trees or pepper or coconut. The land simmered in leafy swamps or towered with cliffs pocked with vegetation; the train wove through one nest of ochre bluffs like a snake slithering through an anthill. Savoy lifted his gaze from the
British North Borneo Herald
,
a newspaper devoted more to the glories of Her Majesty’s influences than accurate news coverage.

“I imagine this is an odd homecoming,” he said.

“Pardon?” said Kiria.

“Returning to your ancestral home...in these circumstances.”

“Yes.”

“You are convinced we cannot find a guide?” he asked.

“I tried wiring Takala,” she said. “There is always someone looking to earn money. Now I cannot convince anyone.”

“Why?”

“I can only guess. Carlovec Manor was built near what many believed to be...what is the word? Taboo? Superstition is ignored when money is involved. Yet when the railroad moved and the town died, the money stopped coming. Too many promises were broken.” She paused, still gazing out the window. “It was better when my mother was alive. I see that now. She respected the legends, treated the people fairly, so they were patient. The time we spent in Carlovec Manor were safe, so long as she was there.”

“Then it stopped?”

“Two years ago there was a fire in the outlying villages,” she said. “Terrible. No one knows the cause. Many longhouses were destroyed. Mother left to help the women…and she never came back.” She opened her mouth as if to say more, wagging her head. “When she died…we lost that trust. They blamed my father, blamed the monks at Saint Dismas, blamed the town my grandfather started and never finished. Their threats grew more serious, so we left with no intention of returning. We did not know when an overzealous warrior would take our heads.”

That lifted Savoy’s eyebrows. “And us?” he asked.

“Let us hope we can find a guide.”

Two hours later the train pulled into Takala Station. The four descended onto the empty platform, the depot half the size of Sungai and without the tin roof. With the storm moving swiftly to the south, the bright sun broiled the afternoon and made them earn every breath. No others descended with them. There were freshly-painted signs in English and Chinese, and a ticket booth still attached with a telegraph wire, but the platform was deserted. The conductor watched them leave from his perch between two cars.

“Locals say the train shouldn’t stop,” he said with a Dutch accent. “Bloody jungle talk, ma’am, but I’ve not seen this place so empty. You sure you don’t want to go on to Lahad Datu? No extra charge.”

“No,” Kiria said. “Thank you.”

“Good luck then.”

The conductor gave a whistle and the train lurched, puffing a loud column of smoke. A head peered from one of the open windows: an old Dayak woman with fleshy jowls and bone jewelry dangling from her neck and ears, her long hair streaked with iron gray. She cried out in a strange tongue: