Chapter 21
Ester’s emerald-green karst turned out to be a dead end. Though it was similar to the engraving on the capsule, when the engraving was superimposed over a photo of the real thing on Kate’s iPhone, it became apparent that the crooks in their peaks didn’t match up. In addition, the base of the real karst was wider. Regardless, they had entered the narrow opening of the cave on their hands and knees to be sure. There were a few charred animal bones and a fire pit on the damp dirt floor, but other than the narrow tunnel to the rock outcropping above, not much else. It was readily apparent that though what had happened here was tragic, it wasn’t what they were looking for.
After looping back to Yangshuo on their bicycles, Michael had to admit that in spite of their failure, he’d had an invigorating day. It was true, Ester’s story had been sad, but Yangshuo's siren song landscape had been perfect, too perfect to merely shrug off. Under less pressing circumstances, Michael could imagine nothing better than a hot burger, a cold beer, and a long night’s sleep to end the day. As it was, however, there was still work to be done and after parting ways with Ester he found himself seated beside Kate at a busy café, reexamining the contents of Larry’s mobile phone. The video message was exactly as he had remembered it — his father standing in a cell halfway between a gray metal table and a tubular chair reciting a number which they now knew to be a waypoint. As before, a battered metal door was visible in one corner, but that was it. Kate checked it again, but other than the single video clip, the phone was empty. No agenda, no to do list. Nothing.
“I had Six’s tech team run the last incoming call. It went to a Kowloon cell tower before bouncing across forty-four different servers on six continents. They’re working on it, but it looks like another dead end.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Michael said. “We have the engraving. That’s what we need to be looking at.”
Kate was quiet as their waitress arrived, gently placing a glass bottle of Coke and a fruit smoothie on the teak table. A green karst rose above them, West Street just beginning to buzz with the evening dinner crowd, the first stars visible in the twilight.
“It’s not enough.”
“Not enough? You ever hear of Google Earth? It’s the twenty-first century. Your people don’t have topographical maps, satellite images we can compare this to?”
“If it were only that simple.”
“It is that simple. Pull out your iPhone.”
“Did you forget the last time I pulled out my iPhone?” Kate said. “Unless there’s no alternative, we need to use hardwired ISPs. Besides, we’ve already tasked satellites over the area. What we need is ground-based photography. It’s all in the angles. We need a profile of the very top of the karst. The crook.”
“So search databases. It’s not like this area hasn’t been photographed before. A photo of exactly what we’re looking for has to exist. We just need to find it.”
“And we will,” Kate said. “Six is running through all known photographs of the region as we speak. But it takes time.”
Michael cast his glance toward the jade green Li River where the cormorant fishermen were plying their trade. It was the most ingenious way of catching a fish that Michael had ever seen. They made the birds do the work. Literally. The fishermen sat on bamboo rafts shining lanterns into the river. They each held a cormorant tethered by a thin rope with a brass ring around its neck. When the fish showed up in the river, attracted by the light, the cormorant would dive in and catch it, happily giving up its catch for its master. Michael had to wonder whether the birds ever got to eat, but he admired the fishermen’s ingenuity just the same.
“See those guys down there with the birds?”
“The cormorant fishermen? They’ve been doing it that way forever. They say one guy with one good bird can feed his whole family.”
“So maybe we should take a page from their book.”
“You want to go fishing?”
Michael took a pull on his Coke, the old glass bottle worn from being refilled a thousand times. “I want to work smart,” Michael said. “Those fishermen, they probably couldn’t catch a fish on their own if their life depended on it. But the bird, the bird knows how. If the Horten is hidden in these hills, it’s been here for a long time, but someone’s got to know about it. Maybe not Ester, but someone. Let your people work their satellite maps; we need to find someone who remembers where this thing is. We’ve got to find our bird.”
Michael thought the analogy was apt, but more importantly, he believed it. As lovely as Yangshuo was, he had come here to find his father. They had a job to do and he wasn’t going to blow any more time wandering around without a well-reasoned strategy. They needed to find somebody who knew, a living memory to the location of the Horten. Michael reasoned that if he and Kate put their heads together, they could generate some idea as to where to find this person. But instead of an idea, they got an invasion.
“Hi Ho, Mates!”
Michael peered up from his drink to see Crust and crew fly in on rollerblades and broomsticks.
“Was hoping we’d find you here,” Crust screamed as he did a pirouette around the table and plunked down in a free chair, Song and the Frenchman in tow. “We did Yangshuo on skates and tubes.”
“Skates and what?” Michael asked, certain that tubes was some kind of backpacker vernacular for smoking the local weed.
“Skates and tubes,” Song chimed in. She tossed her broomstick through the air like a spear, watching it land on the other side of the street, dead in the middle of a pile of inflated inner tubes. “We rode the current halfway down the river. You poke the broomsticks to keep clear of the buffalo.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“The river’s full of them,” Crust said, “always swimming from this side to that. How you doing, Kate?”
The Frenchman smirked. “Kate, I think, is good.”
Kate smiled. “I’m all right.”
“Glad to hear it,” Crust said. “The thing is, I’m feeling bloody marvelous.”
“Are you now?”
Crust leaned back in his chair, and started unlacing his blades, Song and the Frenchman following his lead. Kate had a sly look on her face as though she knew what would be coming next.
“I thought you guys weren’t into the whole Guilin Circuit?” Michael said.
“Not into the Guilin circuit? My God, my American friend. Life itself is the nectar we poor pilgrims pull from the Guilin Circuit.” Crust stood up on his chair, taking a step above it onto the rough hewn teak table, thrusting his arms into the twilight like a burly messiah. “I have come to Guilin and learned to live.”
On cue, Song and the Frenchman bent down on the ground on one knee like Knights Templar serving their one true king. Michael wasn’t quite sure how to react to the spectacle before him, but from the looks of Kate’s even response, she’d seen it all before.