THE MORNING SUN beat down on the ferryboat as it chugged its way out passed the moored freighters and small craft that dotted Manila harbour. Barely a ripple disturbed the placid turquoise sea as the small steamer made its way slowly but inexorably towards the entrance to the Bay. To those on board, it seemed to make little progress but after an hour or so, its passengers could make out their destination; an island that hung low on the horizon in brooding isolation. The rugged peninsula of Bataan began to slide along the starboard side, whilst flying fish cut the waves ahead like dolphins leading trusting sailors home.
The two of them leaned on the bow rail looking out at the dancing water spraying off the boat's hull as it butted the flat sea apart. Standing there with her by his side, Lechaim felt ambivalent - happy and sad, joyful and regretful and he knew why. The woman next to him wasn't Sinead whose face had been floating before him all morning like a cloud that would not go away. Lechaim was not a man given to much soul-searching. However, these past few days, he had felt pangs of conscience at the thought that he was being unfaithful to his wife's memory. His guilt was compounded by the fact that he found himself thinking less and less of Sinead and more and more of Maxine. Such is the fickleness of the human heart, he thought sardonically. Deep down he knew his feelings for Maxine could never compete with those he had for Sinead, but one was dead, the other, alive.
The love between him and Sinead had been akin to an instant binding of two souls joined together by emotions too profound to really understand. On the other hand, his relationship with the woman by his side now would be basic, carnal and down to earth. Maxine was very much a woman of the flesh whereas Sinead was now but a memory.
If the truth were known, Lechaim was really a man of the 'old school' where morality was concerned. For him, love and marriage were synonymous, and sex was the nexus whereby the union became complete and whole. It was in his nature, for better or worse, to have old-fashioned virtues in an age of so-called enlightenment. The new woman in his life, Maxine, was one of the 'new age' breed complete with a full armoury of resourcefulness, independence, and sexual liberation that he suspected bordered on licentiousness. Not that he had coupled with her yet but he knew that it would be inevitable.
For the first time since that day in Ireland when his world had fallen apart, Lechaim had found a measure of happiness with another woman. Deep down, he knew that he would never again recapture the bliss of Ireland and the love he had lost, but he could diminish, perhaps extinguish, the pain in the arms of this woman. Yet, the memory of Sinead could not be doused that easily, he found. She had flitted back into his mind often these last few days, and he had allowed her to remain like a soothing balm.
For a brief instant in time, he imagined that the body next to him was no longer Maxine's. Rather, it belonged to the girl with the sensual green eyes and shock of red hair that she had often tossed provocatively in his direction with a shake of her beautiful head. How she would have loved it here in this bewitching land, he reflected as her soft Irish brogue and the smell of her hair seemed to carry to him on the wind.
“Anything wrong? You seem miles away” Maxine said as she squeezed his arm
“No, nothing!” he lied defensively as he smiled down at her. Looking at Maxine's trusting beautiful face staring up, with the sun highlighting her high cheekbones and perfect features, his heart lifted. He willed himself to dispel the depression that had descended on him. After all, he still had his life to live, and he had an alluring girl on his arm to help him live it.
In a change of mood, he said, “All being well, we should be there in an hour or so. Come on! Let's grab a coffee downstairs. It might be our last for a while!” Gently leading her with his arm about her waist, they went below together.
Maxine and he were on their second cup of coffee and her third cigarette when the boat started slowing and they returned to the deck above to observe its arrival. The boat had almost reached the island now, and it was making its final cautious approach to a square dock of rough concrete partly overgrown and heavily crated in places. To the forefront of the dock lay the large corroded barrel of a coastal gun that had not fired a shot in anger for many years. Lechaim turned his head as the vessel ran in and spotted a small pier off to the left and low forbidding crags beyond. As the cheerless place echoed to the low growl of the boat's engines in reverse, Lechaim thought of the history in this one place alone, never mind the island as a whole. More than fifty years before, on a tropical barmy night, a man, his wife, and their son had stepped aboard an American PT boat at the very pier he was gazing upon. That PT boat, accompanied by two other PT boats, had then made a dash for Mindanao in the south, and on to Australia.
As Lechaim took in the scene, he could picture in his mind the famous man with his trademark corncob pipe and his 'scrambled eggs' hat. This island, from which that man and his family had left, had been the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting in the Second World War. The Spanish first fortified this natural fortress in the 18th century, using it as a registration site for ships entering the Bay. Now, it lay deserted, remembered only in a guidebook or two, or books on the war in the Pacific. The four miles long tadpole-shaped strip of land seemed to simmer in the heat, asleep now, confident of its place in history. The image of the man with the pipe, General Douglas MacArthur, slipped quietly back to Valhalla as Lechaim became aware that Maxine was no longer beside him.
She had wandered down the deck and was talking to a weedy dapper little man that stood out from everyone else because he was dressed as though he were dining out while the other passengers were just your average tourists, dressed in jeans, casual shirts, sandshoes, and the like. Maxine saw Lechaim looking at her and sidled back down the deck.
“Who was that?” Lechaim asked curiously.
“Just wanted a light!” Maxine replied. She smiled and then said, “He remarked that you looked like the famous Captain Lewis! I said, hardly! You were my husband and you were not nearly that brave!”
He chuckled with her.
“So this is Corregidor!” she exclaimed looking around her. “It's very different from what I imagined.”
“It's just as I imagined it would be!” Lechaim replied.
For most of the morning, the pair of them browsed on their own, away from the small group of tourists they had arrived with. The day was sultry and they took their time as they meandered up to 'Topside', a small plateau where a large barracks once stood. Its mocking ruins of crumpled walls and shattered innards bore stark testament to the ravishes of the fierce battles that had taken place there. They found a memorial on the summit, erected by Filipinos and Americans, with a small museum close by. Inside, they ambled around the small building and looked closely at the faded black and white photographs displaying snatches of the island's chequered history. Finally, they returned to the sunlight, linked themselves together again, and continued to stroll at a leisurely pace.
Presently, Lechaim's eyes took in the fluted, rusted iron flagpole that stood on what was the former parade ground. In the island's heyday, the grass on this parade area had been shorn and treated with tender loving care by a flock of Filipino gardeners. These days it lay slovenly and unkempt with no hint of its former crowning glory.
He deserted her for a moment and walked across to the old flagpole that had caught his eye. Running his fingers over the rough metal, he couldn't help but reflect on the events that had taken place around it. If only inanimate objects could speak, he mused, this old flagpole would tell some stories. The metal was hot beneath his fingers and the pitted surface seemed to be crying out in protest as it was slowly being consigned into oblivion. Having been a soldier of recent vintage, Lechaim pondered whether the ultimate sacrifice made here was ever really worthwhile. The failure of politicians to learn from history or remember the slaughter of men and women in these far-flung outposts gave little comfort to the ordinary footslogger, he reflected. Yet, there was something noble, almost profound, he felt, in laying down one's life for a set of beliefs, however foolish the logic of it all was. What had General MacArthur said in his final speech to Congress, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” Glancing around, Lechaim could see that this island's deeds, like its famous commander, were also just fading away, but history would remember even if people did not. He smiled to himself as he realized that he was becoming maudlin.
Maxine sidled up as he flicked through his guidebook and read, “In days gone by the lowering of 'Old Glory' on this flagpole had been a daily ritual. That is, before 1941 when Japanese soldiers had come and replaced the American flag with their own 'Rising Sun”. In his mind’s eye, he could picture General MacArthur taking the salute beneath this old rusted relic after the Island's recapture in 1945. He shrugged off his dolefulness. It was a wonderful day, he felt happy, and he was in the company of a beautiful woman. What more could a man want? The soporific atmosphere of the hibernating island was making him drowsy. “Let's sit for a while!” he suggested.
They found a spot on a grassy bank to one side of the old parade ground and lay down, he on his back and she with her head on his chest. Closing his eyes, he lost himself in the ambiance of it all. The staccato beat of a bee's wings close by as it busied itself in a cluster of wildflowers was the only sound to be heard as they clung together in lulling contemplation. He felt contented and at peace with the world.
... The parade ground was full of noisy men as they poured out of the long barracks in response to a trooper blowing reveille on his bugle. Quickly, the men formed ranks and then an office on a white horse appeared and trotted past them. The pointed brown hat on the officer's head, a product of a bygone era, gave the man the appearance of a scoutmaster rather than a soldier. The khaki shirt and white riding breeches he wore were augmented by brown riding boots and a Sam Browne cross belt. The hot afternoon sun beat down on the officer, shining off his brass buttons and the leather sheen of his belt and boots. Presently the officer reached Lechaim and he drew up his horse. The figure before Lechaim seemed to dance in the heat like a mirage in the desert, and, for a moment or so, he couldn't make out the rider's face. Then the sun went behind a cloud and Lechaim saw that the rider had no face. Just a skull full of maggots that crawled out of the eye sockets and down the flayed bone ...
“Ahhhhh!” he cried awaking with a start that made Maxine jump.
“Are you all right?” she asked as she noticed a strange look in his eyes that she hadn't seen before. He was also sweating profusely although the sun had gone in and the day was beginning to cool.
For a moment or so, he didn't answer but instead gazed around the open ground before him.
“Yes, Just a bad dream!” he told her finally. “More a nightmare really. God! I haven't had those for a long time!”
“You mean you use to have nightmares?” she asked.
“It's a long story. I'll tell you about it sometime. We'd better get on if we want to see the rest of the island.”
He rose and she followed as the nervous tension coursed through his veins. Arm in arm they set off anew to explore the rest of the island. The narrow lanes along which they had to walk to reach most of the Island’s gun batteries were overgrown and unused except by the sightseers that came twice a week. The gun batteries themselves contained large mortars that stood silent and rusted; their metal barrels scarred with the shock of battle and age, the scrub around them, wild and insistent in its efforts to place a shroud over these celebrated field pieces.
It seemed to Lechaim as they strolled along that only unruly vegetation flourish today on this shock of land in the sea that had once abounded with so much activity.
“I don't think we have time for Malinta Tunnel if we want to get back!” Lechaim said finally.
“Oh! let's see the tunnel!” she insisted. “I do want to see it!”
It came as a surprise to Lechaim that Maxine should be so interested in the island and its history. That sort of thing, he imagined, was more a man's thing or was he being too sexist? Certainly, she would have accused him of being such if he had voiced his thoughts to her. He had to admit that it was a nice change to have a woman share his interest in historical things.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Oh, yes! We must see it now that we've come all this way!”
“Okay!” he agreed, “but we can't stay too long or the boat may leave without us!”
“What time's it going back?”
“Not sure! An hour or so perhaps! Still, I expect they'll give us a blast on the ship's horn to warn us to return to the ship.” He looked about him and saw Malinta Hill off to the left. “This way!” he said pointing to Malinta Hill in the distance.
It took them ten minutes to reach the 'Malinta Tunnel' and enter its shady gloom. Walking through the tunnel's deserted interior, Lechaim tried to forget the nightmare he had experienced twenty minutes before. It had shaken him up but he tried not to dwell on it. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled forth the cheap guidebook and browsed through its pages. Reading through the information it contained on the Malinta Tunnel, he realized, not for the first time that day, that they were literally walking through history. According to the book, the Japanese did not only try to bomb the island into submission, but they also shelled the island from the mountainous peninsular of Bataan which lay well within range. The Malinta Tunnel that they were now in had been the place where the American and Filipino soldiers had made their last stand before surrendering to the Japanese in 1942. Later many of the island's survivors were to perish on the Bataan death march.
Lechaim now forgot the horror of his nightmare as he lost himself in the tunnel's history. They walked past the dusty silent passages on either side of the main tunnel, one of which had served as General MacArthur's headquarters when Fort Mills on Topside had become untenable. Another had served as a hospital whilst yet others had sheltered the island's occupants from attack those many years ago. Lechaim glanced down at the dusty concrete floor as he read in his guidebook, “Some two thousand Japanese soldiers squatted on the floor of Malinta Tunnel just before the island was retaken by the Americans. The two thousand or so ‘Empire of the Rising Sun’ fanatics then blew themselves up in true samurai style rather than be taken.”
Lechaim glanced away from the book in his hands to the parallel set of rusty iron rails set into the concrete beneath their feet. It took him a few seconds to realize that they had been laid to guide the tramcars that once clanged around Corregidor. Some of these tramcars had originally served the public in San Francisco before being imported to service the army personnel garrisoning the Island. Lechaim's aroused imagination conjured up pictures of these old tramcars rattling along the rails beneath him, their interiors full of people long since dead and forgotten. A voice from the darkness of a lateral close by intruded on Lechiam's daydreaming.
“Captain Lewis!” the man insisted as his melodious voice broke the tranquillity.
When the man stepped out, Lechaim saw that it was the same man Maxine had been speaking to on the boat. He was European in appearance although he had an American accent of sorts. A shaft of sunlight played on the man's thin features displaying a face that was unimpressive with a pair of ferret eyes atop a small wiry body. Certainly, the man's puny physique and evident lack of body strength posed little threat to a man like Lechaim but the revolver in his hand did.
If Maxine hadn't been with him, Lechaim would have immediately rushed the man even though the gap between him and the gunman was too wide for safety.
“What do you want?” Lechaim asked as he sought an opportunity.
“Come!” the man demanded, making sure to keep his distance, as he gestured with his gun in the direction of the lateral from which he had emerged.
“And the girl?”
“She's safe enough!”
“You'd better go, Lechaim. I'll be all right!”
Lechaim was impressed by Maxine's calmness in such a situation. Some women would have screamed. For that matter, some men may have as well. Lechaim knew though that he couldn't leave her here with this man who would surely kill her after he had disposed of him, that much was obvious. Once they had put some distance between them and Maxine, Lechaim felt he had no choice, and he lunged for the man knowing as he did so that he wasn't going to make it, but she might!
In the normal course of events, the gunman would have had enough time to get off two shots. However, his gun failed to fire. The man's eyes filled with terror as he pulled the trigger and nothing happened. The sound of the clicks was still ringing in his ears as Lechaim's hands seized his throat and the man realized that he was about to die. He screamed like a woman but the shrill was cut off as his voice box was stifled by the pressure Lechaim exerted.
Lechaim knew the man was his as his large hands dug into the man's soft flesh then all was blackness. Relinquishing his hold on the gasping man's throat, Lechaim slowly crumbled to the ground and lay there unconscious. Clouds of fine dust started to rise around Lechaim's inert form as the gunman wheezed at his colleague who had felled Lechaim from behind.
“Come on, Sam! We have to get rid of him!”
Sam responded by grabbing Lechaim's other arm and they both dragged Lechaim into the gloomy lateral. Sam then pulled out a gun and placed it against his head.
“No!” Peter Sartori said. “If someone finds him, let them think it was an accident, a rock fall, or something!”
Sam lowered the gun and she then kissed Sartori passionately on the lips. “What kept you!” she asked.
“I couldn't find a suitable spot. Too many tourists wandering around,” he replied. “Anyway, Sam, you seemed to be enjoying yourself!”
“What do we do now?” she asked, ignoring his barbed remark.
“I have something with me that will take care of the good Captain. Let's get out of here!”
“But he might wake up!” she said. “Shouldn't we kill him now just to make sure?”
Sartori's eyes narrowed. “I've told you before, it has to look like an accident. Don't worry, when he wakes up, he won't be going anywhere.”
Peter Sartori knew his stuff so the explosion that followed was not a large one; he didn't want to attract undue attention. It was just powerful enough to bring down the entrance to the lateral entombing Lechaim within.
Sartori and Maxine satisfied themselves that the sound, muffled by the tunnel itself, had not been heard by anyone else, then they returned to see the results of their handiwork.
“God, the dust!” Sam exclaimed.
Turning to her, Sartori said in a satisfied tone, “Good! It will be weeks, maybe months before anyone bothers to dig out that particular passageway!”
“With luck, maybe never!” was her reply.
By the time his body was found they would both be on the other side of the world, she thought, and no one would even remember that she, Sam, posing as Maxine, and the Captain had been on the island together. That is except for the Regas and Lito Moreno, but Peter would deal with them as he had with Captain Lewis.
The pair made their way casually back to the ferry and went aboard.
Some of the other visitors to the island that day heard a dull noise but took little notice. However, one alert tourist did remark, “Was that something exploding!”
Her husband, a decrepit Australian, turned on her and scoffed, “Don't be so bloody stupid!”
Arsehole, she thought resentfully, couldn't the fool read? It had said in her guidebook that there was still unexploded ammunition lying around. It could have been an explosion. What did he know anyway? However, she kept her thoughts to herself rather than voice them. Being young, nearly fifty years her husband's junior, pregnant, and Filipino, she was content to wait. She would have her day in the sun when he took her back to Australia with him. Until then she would put up with his smelly, flabby, odious body. In Australia it would be a different story, then he wouldn't see her for dust.
“Can't we go home now?” she asked in a huffish voice. “I'm not feeling very well!”
“God!” he thought. “If it wasn't for the bloody sex, who'd ever marry the bitches?”
Thirty minutes later the geriatric and his miffed wife were at sea and the Island was receding with every minute that passed. Sartori and Sam were leaning on the ship's rail close by gazing back at the lonely sentinel when the noise and the shock wave hit simultaneously as the Island belched a ball of fire and a column of earth rose into the air. The four of them together with the other passengers ducked for cover as flying debris rained down churning up the water.
“Christ!” Sam exclaimed as the ringing in her ears gradually subsided. “What was that?”
Sartori was equally puzzled as he got up from the deck where he had flung himself and looked out. Across the water a quarter of a mile away, he could see a pall of black smoke shrouding the side of the five-hundred-foot high mass of Malinta Hill.
“It must have been some unexploded ammunition going off!” he muttered in reply.
Could it have been caused by the charge he had set off earlier, Sartori wondered. No, it wasn't possible, he concluded. Sartori was an explosives expert courtesy of the Italian Army and he was therefore aware that things do not normally explode without human intervention of some kind. Certainly, man-made explosive devices do not and that explosion had been caused by something constructed by man; his highly trained ear told him that.
Sam's eyes met his and she shuddered as she realized the risk they had run when Peter had used explosives earlier.
Some feet away a crisis was occurring as the geriatric Aussie clutched his chest and tried to get the elephant off it. His young wife held his hand and looked into his screwed-up face with genuine concern.
Please God, she prayed inwardly, don't let the bastard die until we get to Australia.