The Sun Is God (5 page)

Kessler saluted him and marched onto the gleaming sandalwood veranda.

“How many of these Cocovores are there?” Will asked.

“We do not know exactly, twelve or thirteen perhaps. Originally twenty or so.”

“Are there women there as well as men?”

“Lately they have been trying to recruit women but I do not think they have met with much success.”

“The idea is that they go around naked all of the time?”

“Yes, at least that is what they say on their advertisements.”

“Naked women on a tropical island. Where do I sign the pledge?”

Kessler approached the door of the Governor's mansion, which was made of heavy pine and had been shipped in from some old pile in Saxony. It wasn't particularly ornate or beautiful, just heavy. The rest of the house was bamboo.

The window shutters were open and the servants had seen their approach, but Kessler rapped the large gleaming brass wolf's head knocker anyway.

Will picked up on something Kessler had said. “What do you mean ‘originally twenty?'” he asked.

“I'm sorry?”

“You said ‘originally' there were twenty.”

“Several left almost immediately, a few more arrived, several more left. Kabakon was not the paradise which many had been led to believe it would be, but perhaps more significantly Lutzow was not the first of the Cocovores to die,” Kessler whispered while the servants bustled around inside.

“No?”

“Two died in the hospital here. Another on the island. All, apparently, of malaria. The man who died on Kabakon was, presumably, buried on the island itself. No one thought anything about it; there was nothing strange about these deaths and Governor Hahl signed the death certificates as a matter of course.”

The Governor's door opened and a nervous little chap informed them that the Governor was not at home. Kessler didn't believe it. “Don't be an idiot, Bohm. He will be ‘at home' to me. He has asked to see me.”

Little Bohm looked genuinely put out. He was a secretary and wasn't used to dealing with guests at the door, but the steward was dead, the footman was in an isolation room of the hospital with an unknown fever, and the deputy footman had run off into the jungle to find the “Silver River”—as likely a place as the “City of Gold.”

“Hauptman Kessler, sir, he is not at home. He is not physically in the house. He is at Queen Emma's with Doctor Parkinson and an English lady. He has asked me to tell you to join him there,” Bohm said in a stage whisper.

“I see,” Kessler said, taken aback. “Well, we shall go over there. Thank you, Bohm, carry on.”

On the way back down the steps Kessler shook his head in annoyance.

“What's the matter?” Will asked.

“I wished to keep Frau Forsayth out of this. I hope Governor Hahl has not told her of our suspicions.”

They unhitched Brunhilde and headed back toward the center of the settlement. They walked back through the dusty, empty town, filled only with mosquitoes and dragon flies.

“I will leave off Brunhilde if you do not mind,” Kessler said.

“With the sun going down it's the only sensible course of action,” Will agreed with a slight shudder. On other parts of the globe the twilight hour was a delight, but in New Guinea the feeling was markedly different. The day belonged to man, but the night belonged to the things that creeped and crawled and flew from tree to tree in the dense, ancient, primordial jungle.

They walked along the little coast road for fifty meters until they came to Kessler's house: a large, ugly bungalow on stilts overlooking the bay.

“Gerhard!” Kessler called out.

A native boy—clearly not Gerhard—ran from the darkness, took Brunhilde by the reins, and led her to a stable block with Ross mosquito screens over the shutters: perhaps the real reason for Brunhilde's longevity.

“If you will just excuse me for one moment, Will,” Kessler said, going inside.

Will nodded. The sun had set over Cape Stevens and the sky had rapidly turned the curious purple-black color that it assumed in the rainy season. Herbertshöhe had almost no street lighting and since the local ants would devour any candles they came across, the few internal house lights were kerosene or whale-blubber lanterns. With this light and the rich star-field it was just bright enough to read on most nights, if one was so inclined. But why read when you could watch Siwa dance the Ramayana or go with her, watching for snakes, into the jungle behind the house until you came to the waterfall that brought river-water clear and cold from some unknown place in the highlands.

Kessler had been inside for five minutes.

“What's going on in there?” Will asked.

“Oh, I am sorry, Will,” Kessler said from somewhere. “This is taking . . . I should have asked you . . . Braun, can you escort Herr Prior inside and get him a glass of schnapps.”

The door opened and a blonde youth in a shining uniform ushered Will inside the bungalow. The youths were always blonde, winsome, pale. This one so pale he was probably already on the coffin maker's list.

“What the hell are you doing, Kessler?” Will shouted, declining the schnapps with a shake of the head.

“I will not be a moment Will, make yourself at home.”

It was a dreary house: a few old-fashioned pieces of furniture, some dull native drawings, and several genuinely disturbing local Duk Duk masks. Kessler did, however, possess an extensive library and a rather impressive gramophone machine. Will took a volume off one of the shelves and found that it was in Greek. He put it back again.

“Do you like those things?” Will asked, pointing at the masks.

The blonde youth shrugged.

Duk Duk was one of the better-organized local religions, their witchdoctors forcing the natives who worked in the plantations to pay them a regular spiritual tax out of their meager wages. And if they didn't: hexes, curses, spells, the whole shooting match.

“May I have a go on this gramophone machine?” Will asked.

“Do not let him touch it, Braun!” Kessler shrieked, and a moment later appeared in full evening dress of black dinner jacket, white shirt, butterfly collar, gold cufflinks, and black bow tie.

“Oh really, Klaus, is this necessary?” Will asked.

“Have you dined at Frau Forsayth's before?”

“I had a luncheon,” Will sniffed.

“She is quite strict with her gentlemen callers, we Germans certainly, although she may pardon you; she has a soft spot for Englishmen.”

“I hadn't noticed.”

They walked outside just in time to see Doctor Bremmer hurrying along the track to Gunantambu.

“Herr Doctor Bremmer!” Kessler yelled.

Bremmer jumped. “Gott in Himmel you frightened me,” he said.

Much to Will's chagrin he saw that Doctor Bremmer was also in full evening dress. The men greeted one another and Kessler asked Bremmer if he, too, had been summoned to Frau Forsayth's.

“I received a note from the Governor, not one hour ago. I assume this is not about the unfortunate business of . . .” Bremmer's voice trailed off. He was a tall, slim, restrained man who had come here from German Kamerun and before that Hamburg. Bremmer was clearly a Jew but his religion was only likely to become a problem when the time came to bury the poor sod, after he had succumbed to the new diseases he was exposed to daily in the fever wards.

“I fear
it is
about the unfortunate Herr Lutzow,” Kessler said.

“Indeed?” Doctor Bremmer asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I have asked Herr Prior to help us investigate these, uh, peculiar circumstances and he has agreed to offer his services.”

Bremmer turned to Will and bowed.

“Come, let us go, gentlemen,” Kessler said.

The way to Gunantambu, Queen Emma's palatial residence, led past the telegraph office and along the coast. It was too dark for Will to see the conspiratorial gleam in Doctor Bremmer's eyes but he realized that it had to be there for as they walked by the new hospital the young man stopped to light a cigarette and then wondered casually: “If you are with us, Herr Prior, would you perhaps care to see the victim?”

“Surely you've buried the bugger by now?” Will said, astounded.

“On the contrary.”

“What did you do? Put him in a brandy cask like Nelson?”

“Something like that,” Kessler said.

They entered the hospital through the back door to avoid poor Beyer in the mad room and the fever patients in the main wing. The hospital had no nurses at this time but there were several New Guinean attendants sleeping on the floor of the dispensary.

Bremmer took them through the fever ward and a supply room.

“This way,” he said, and led them down an unlit stairwell to a basement Will had never noticed before.

“Where are we going?” Will asked.

But the Germans were determined to preserve the mystery and did not answer. At the bottom of the stairs they reached a door and here Bremmer lit a match to see where the lock was. He inserted an iron key and turned it.

When the door opened Will felt a strange blast of chilly air. He followed both men inside and when Bremmer lit an oil lamp it became clear how for two days they'd kept the body from becoming a rotten piece of meat.

In the center of the small concrete room, Max Lutzow was lying on a massive slab of ice, partially covered by a thin grey blanket. The room itself was at or around thirty degrees Fahrenheit—a temperature Will had not experienced for years.

He examined the clear white ice and touched it. “You have installed an ice manufacturing machine at the hospital?” Will asked incredulously.

Kessler laughed. “We could not afford such a machine.”

“Then how?” Will wondered.

“Queen Emma gave the ice to us,” Doctor Bremmer said.

“Oh, I see,” Will said. And now of course it made sense, for Queen Emma was famous for her champagne parties. He looked at Kessler and shook his head. “A man dies on one of Queen Emma's islands and instead of burying him like a Christian you ask her for blocks of ice from her machine, and you have the temerity to think that you can keep her out of it? You're losing your touch, Klaus, even my curiosity would be piqued and I don't give a whistle for much.”

“Do you wish to take a look at him?” Kessler asked.

Will nodded. Lutzow was a large, rotund man, balding with melancholy black whiskers. His skin was yellow and shriveled, his delicate thin fingers bluish green. He had lost weight in the last few months for the skin was loose about his abdomen and neck. His feet were curiously rough and scarred, probably from spending a considerable amount of time shoeless.

“So you were going to live forever, were you?” Will asked Lutzow. He turned to the doctor. “What makes you think he was murdered?”

“You do not?” Doctor Bremmer asked.

“At first glance it looks like a classic case of the yellow jack to me.”

“I took the liberty of performing an autopsy,” Doctor Bremmer said and bowed again to Hauptman Kessler. It did not take a genius to deduce that Bremmer had done the autopsy at Kessler's express order.

“Oh?” Will said, looking suspiciously at Kessler, whose face had become a mask.

“Yes,” Doctor Bremmer said and lifted the blanket to reveal a long autopsy scar running from Lutzow's neck to his abdomen. He had been sewn up with neat and careful cross stitching, which impressed Will to no end. Bremmer was no hack.

“What did you find after this autopsy of yours?”

Bremmer shook his head. “We need to examine the damaged tissue and without a microscope nothing can be said definitively.”

“Nevertheless. Tell him what you have found,” Kessler insisted.

“His lungs contained seawater,” Bremmer said.

“Well, he was brought here by boat, wasn't he?” Will said.

“In a boat, not towed by a boat,” Bremmer said.

“He was drowned?”

“I believe that he was.”

Kessler looked at Will expectantly.

“So they lied about the malaria. Did Clark notice anything untoward when he picked up the body?”

“Nothing that he communicated to the navy personnel.”

“Funny that
he
wasn't afraid to touch a fever-ridden corpse?”

“Clark has had malaria, yellow jack, dengue fever, black fly fever, and the sleeping sickness—it did not trouble him to touch the body,” Kessler said.

Will lifted one of the dead man's eyelids and stared into the lifeless jelly of his iris. “He's a big fellow, isn't he? You would have thought he would have put up a bit of a fight if someone was trying to drown him.”

“Perhaps he was outnumbered?”

“No sign of a struggle at all though. No bruises on his arms, no rope burn around the neck or wrists,” Will said, and let the eyelid fall. “What was Clark doing on Kabakon?”

“He was bringing the post,” Kessler said. “He found the settlement in the midst of a commotion. Apparently, Lutzow's body had recently been discovered and it was suggested to Clark that he convey it to Herbertshöhe for a Christian burial.”

“Who suggested it?”

“I do not know.”

“Hmmm, chances are that if Clark hadn't been there on Kabakon that particular day, they would have just buried him with the others,” Will said.

“We certainly would not have been able to examine the body then,” Doctor Bremmer said.

“No,” Will agreed. He picked up Lutzow's hand and examined under the fingernails. “Have you washed the corpse?” he asked Bremmer.

“I have not.”

“And you found no signs of a struggle?” Will asked.

“Nothing,” Bremmer said and coughed. “Of course I am not an expert in this kind of doctoring,” he added, looking at the slowly melting ice draining into a cut in the floor.

“Can you help me to turn him over?” Will said to the others. Neither man moved. “Come on lads, he's not going to bite us.”