The Samurai Inheritance

III

Jamie stared at the photograph for a disbelieving moment before he dropped it on the desk. ‘You’ve got the wrong man, Mr Devlin.’ He turned, ready to walk out of the room, but Devlin laid a hand on his arm and the charming smile, so difficult to refuse, was back.

‘Just hear me out, son. I promise you won’t regret it.’ The mining boss picked up the print and walked over to the map. He traced his finger north-east from Sydney to a series of tiny fly specks that trailed like the wake of a ship from the land mass of Papua New Guinea. The digit finally came to rest on a green streak at the top of the string of islands. ‘Bougainville.’ His voice took on an almost mystic quality as he said the word. ‘Does the name mean anything to you?’

Jamie shook his head.

‘I’m not surprised. Four thousand square miles of jungle, rock and mountain, with a couple of active volcanoes thrown in to keep life interesting. Some of the people are still living in the Stone Age despite everything we’ve done to help them. Until a few years ago the economy was entirely based on copra — that’s dried coconut shipped from the islands to be turned into oil. Not much to attract a bloke like me, you’d say?’ Jamie shrugged. ‘And you’d be right, unless it’s also home to the world’s largest copper mine.’

Jamie looked at the map with slightly renewed interest. ‘I don’t see any red dots?’

‘Naturally, because Devlin Metal doesn’t own it … yet. The mine is shut down because of a few labour problems and some local difficulties with community leaders. Helluva place. My old man sent me there to get a bit of experience when I was just starting out and, believe me, some of the natives can be a bolshie lot. The current owners are fed up of working in that kind of environment. They’re talking about offloading all or part of it, but Bougainville politics will effectively decide when, or if, the mine ever reopens, and who runs it.’

‘What has this got to do with a shrunken head?’ Jamie was puzzled. ‘Surely to God there’s no such thing as headhunting any more, even out there?’

‘Of course not.’ Devlin smiled again. ‘At least as far as we know. But the natives on Bougainville still revere the heads taken by their ancestors. Or, in this case, taken from their ancestor. If we can get agreement to buy the company, we still need the consent of the big chief from the area around the Panguna Mine to restart work and provide us with local labour. My fellas have been talking to him for a while, but during our negotiations a briefcase containing some very important documents went missing — some of the natives on Bougainville would steal the sugar from your tea — and we’ve asked for them back. The price the crazy old bastard is demanding is the return of that — his ancestor’s head. Would you believe it?’

‘What I don’t understand is how you expect me to find the bloody thing.’ Jamie didn’t hide his exasperation. ‘It could be anywhere on the island. Jungle, rocks and volcanoes? You don’t need Jamie Saintclair, Mr Devlin, you need Indiana bloody Jones.’

‘If the head was on the island maybe you’re right,’ the big Australian admitted, ‘but it hasn’t been on the island for the best part of a hundred and fifty years. Bougainville is part of Papua New Guinea these days, but before the First World War it was a German colony. German merchant adventurers exchanged trade goods worth a few pfennigs for boatloads of coconuts to turn into copra and oil. They were followed by geologists, scientists … and anthropologists. Our chief’s tribe had recovered the head of their ancestor from the group who’d killed and probably eaten the rest of him.’ He laughed at the change in Jamie’s expression. ‘Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. They believed eating the flesh of their rivals passed on their strength and courage. The story that’s come down over the years is that it was stolen by a German who visited the islands around that time. More likely one of their own fellows traded it to him. There’s a fairly extensive record of who visited the islands. We think the original of this,’ he waved the picture, ‘was taken by the anthropologist who took the head and was part of the price he paid for it. My people have pinned it down to a bloke called Adolfus Ribbe, a Hamburg collector who spent five years touring the islands in the eighteen nineties. Apparently, he sent back bits and pieces to Berlin museums. So now you know why I was so keen to have you on board.’

‘That’s it? A German collector might have taken the head. He might have presented it to a museum in Berlin. Have you any idea how many museums there are in Berlin?’

‘No,’ Devlin said evenly. ‘But I’m sure you do.’

A few moments earlier Jamie had been on the verge of walking out, but his belligerence faded under the steady blue eyes. It was the craziest thing he’d ever been asked to do, but Keith Devlin was a difficult man to turn down. And in a twisted way it appealed to him. Take it back to the basics and it was simply tracing an artefact through the museum system. And that was a damn sight easier than chasing all over Germany looking for the sun stone with neo-Nazis dogging his every footstep or literally crossing swords with a power-crazed maniac who wanted to get his hands on Excalibur. It would be safe and whether he found the head or not he’d have two weeks with Fiona and Lizzie at a luxury resort to look forward to. He had plenty of contacts in Berlin and he worked his way through the list of museums in his head. Not the newer ones, for the simple reason that they wouldn’t have been around then. By the time they opened their doors a reputable German museum wouldn’t have touched a human head with a barge pole, not after what their compatriots had done at Dachau and Auschwitz. Likewise the specialist museums, the Bode and the Pergamon, with their massive collections from antiquity. But there were other possibilities …

He felt Devlin’s eyes on him. ‘You understand that hundreds of thousands of artefacts were destroyed in Berlin by British and American bombs, and that hundreds of thousands more either disappeared or were stolen for Stalin by the Red Army? This is very likely to be a complete waste of your time and your money.’

Devlin clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I think the time is worth spending and money is no object, son. All I ask is that you follow your nose, like my old man did with his gold, and if you pick up a scent stay with it.’ He reached below the desk and came up with another map, this time a large-scale version of a long, slim island. ‘Bougainville,’ he said. ‘The people are a hotchpotch of tribes, clans and extended families who between them speak nineteen or twenty different languages. Here’s the Panguna Mine.’ He pointed to a conglomeration of narrow contours in the south of the island. ‘Our chief is the leader of a Naasioi-speaking tribe who inhabit the area to the south. The one thing that makes the head distinctive and recognizable is that the natives are very black-skinned compared to the other groups in the Solomons or Papua New Guinea. Aaach,’ he threw the map aside, ‘we’ll put together a pack with all this stuff in it, Jamie. For the moment, just tell me you’re on board.’

Jamie met his grin, with a shrug of surrender. ‘Fiona has to have the final word, but I think I can persuade her. If I’m in it will cost you.’ He named a price at least double what he had been paid for any past commission. Devlin didn’t even blink as he reached for his chequebook.

Before he left to break the news, Jamie glanced again at the green and brown contours of the map. Even on paper Bougainville sent a shiver through him. Mountains and jungles and active volcanoes. He still wasn’t certain he would find the shrunken head, but if he ever did, he pitied the poor bugger who had the job of repatriating it.

Keith Devlin watched the elevator door close as a second man appeared from the far end of the corridor. Wiry and alert, the newcomer walked with a soldier’s economy of movement and his suspicious blue eyes swept the ground ahead like an IED detector. He had tanned, gaunt features and wore his silver hair swept back from his forehead in an old-fashioned style that made people he met think of a Fifties matinée idol. All it would take to complete the effect was a thin moustache, but he’d never worn one, not even in the field, and he never would.

‘What did you think, Doug, is he up to it?’

‘He’s capable enough, I grant you,’ Devlin’s head of security said thoughtfully. ‘That poncy English-gent stuff is just an act and there are a few unexplained bodies in his file I’d like to know a bit more about. But …’

‘But what?’

‘The psychological profile says he’s an idealist who sometimes makes decisions based on instinct, not logic. When he finds out what’s really happening on Bougainville he may decide he has to take sides. What if he chooses the wrong one?’

Devlin’s face twisted in a grimace of distaste. ‘That would be too bad.’

‘The woman and the girl …’

‘Yes.’ Devlin saw the possibilities immediately. That was what he liked about Doug Stewart: the combination of practicality and ruthlessness he brought to the corporate decision-making process. The same practicality and ruthlessness that had seen him through Australia’s short and comparatively glorious involvement in America’s Vietnam fiasco. He nodded. ‘Keep them close, they might come in handy somewhere down the line. And Doug?’

‘Yes, chief?’

‘No mistakes this time. I want him watched every step of the way. There’s too much riding on this to take any chances.’