He gets Pedro to encrypt it and send it off. After that, all he can do is wait and pray. This shit with the stickers has to stop.
He has been tempted, a thousand times, to desert, and to go into Concepcion himself. But just because he's out in the boondocks with a band of Huk irregulars doesn't mean he's beyond the reach of military discipline. Deserters can still get shot or hanged, and despite the fact that he was one in Sweden, Bobby Shaftoe believes that they deserve to be.
Concepcion is down in the lowlands north of Manila. From the high places of the Zambales Mountains you can actually see the town lying amid the green rice paddies. Those lowlands are still totally Nip-controlled. But when the General lands, he's probably going to land north of here at Lingayen Gulf, just like the Nips did when they invaded in '41, and then Concepcion is going to lie right in the middle of his route to Manila. He's going to need eyes there.
Sure enough, the order comes through a couple of days later: RENDEZVOUS TARPON POINT GREEN 5 NOVEMBER STOP CONVEY TRANSMITTER CONCEPCION STOP AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS STOP.
Tarpon is the submarine that has been bringing them ammunition, medical supplies, I SHALL RETURN stickers, cartons of American cigarettes with I SHALL RETURN inserts in each pack, I SHALL RETURN matchbooks, I SHALL RETURN coasters, and I SHALL RETURN condoms. Shaftoe has been stockpiling the condoms because he knows they won't go over well in a Catholic country. He figures that when he finds Glory he'll go through a long ton of condoms in about a week.
Three days later, he and a squad of Huks are on hand to meet Tarpon at 'Point Green,' which is their code name for a tiny cove on the west coast of Luzon, down beneath Mount Pinatubo, not all that far north of Subic Bay. The submarine glides in at around midnight, running on its electric motors so it won't make any sound, and the Huks pull up alongside in rubber boats and outrigger canoes and unload the cargo. Sure enough, the transmitter's there. And this time there's none of those goddamn stickers or matchbooks. The cargo is ammunition and a few fighting men: some Filamerican commandoes fresh from a debriefing with MacArthur's intelligence chief, and a couple of Americans-MacArthur's advance scouts.
Over the next several days, Shaftoe and a few hand-picked Huks carry the transmitter up one slope of the Zambales Mountains and down the other. They stop when the foothills finally give way to low-lying paddy land. The main north-south road, from Manila up towards Lingayen Gulf, lies directly across their path.
After a few days of scrambling and scrounging, they are able to load the transmitter on board a farm cart and bury it in manure. They harness the cart to a pathetic carabao, loaned by a loyal but poor farmer, and set out across Nip country, headed for Concepcion.
At this point they have to split up, though, because there's no way that blue-eyed Shaftoe can travel in the open. Two Huks, pretending to be farmboys, take the manure cart while Shaftoe begins making his way cross- country, traveling at night, sleeping in ditches or in the homes of trusted American sympathizers.
It takes him a week and a half to cover the fifty kilometers, but in time, with patience and perseverance, he reaches the town of Concepcion, and knocks on the door of their local contact around midnight. The contact is a prominent local citizen-the manager of the town's only bank. Mr. Calagua is astonished to see an American standing at his back door. This tells Shaftoe that something must have gone wrong-the boys with the transmitter should have arrived a week ago. But the manager tells him that no one has shown up-though rumor has it that the Nips recently caught some boys trying to smuggle contraband in a farm cart and executed them on the spot.
So Shaftoe is marooned in Concepcion with no way to get orders or to send messages. He feels bad for the boys who died, but in a way, this isn't such a bad situation for him. The only reason he wanted to be in Concepcion is that the Altamira family comes from here. Half of the local farmers are related to Glory in some way.
Shaftoe breaks into the Calaguas' stables and improvises a bed. They would put him up in a spare bedroom if he asked, but he tells them that the stables are safer-if he gets caught, the Calaguas can at least claim ignorance. He recuperates on a pile of straw for a day or two, then starts trying to learn something about the Altamiras. He can't go out nosing around by himself, but the Calaguas know everyone in town, and they have a good sense of who can be trusted. So inquiries go out, and within a couple of days, information has come back in.
Mr. Calagua explains it to him over glasses of bourbon in his study. Wracked by guilt over the fact that his honored guest is sleeping on a pile of hay in an outbuilding, he pushes bourbon at him all the time, which is fine with Bobby Shaftoe.
'Some of the information is reliable, some is-er-farfetched,' Mr. Calagua says. 'Here is the reliable part. First of all, your guess was correct. When the Japanese took over Manila, many members of the Altamira family came back to this area to stay with relatives. They believed it would be safer.'
'Are you telling me Glory is up here?'
'No,' Mr. Calagua says sadly, 'she is not up here. But she was definitely here on September 13th, 1942.'
'How do you know?'
'Because she gave birth to a baby boy on that day-the birth certificate is on file at the town hall. Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe.'
'Well, I'll be fucked sideways,' Shaftoe says. He starts calculating dates in his head.
'Many of the Altamiras who fled here have since gone back to the city-supposedly to obtain work. But some of them are also serving as eyes and ears for the resistance.'
'I knew they would do the right thing,' Shaftoe says.
Mr. Calagua smiles cautiously. 'Manila is full of people who claim to be the eyes and ears of the resistance. It is easy to be eyes and ears. It is harder to be fists and feet. But some of the Altamiras are fighting, too-they have gone into the mountains to join the Huks.'
'Which mountains? I didn't run across any of them up in the Zambales.'
'South of Manila and Laguna de Bay are many volcanoes and heavy jungle. This is where some of Glory's family are fighting.'
'Is that where Glory is? And the baby? Or are they in the city?'
Mr. Calagua is nervous. 'This is the part that may be far-fetched. It is said that Glory is a famous heroine of the fight against the Nips.'
'Are you telling me she's dead? If she's dead, just tell me.'
'No, I have no information that she is dead. But she is a heroine. This is for certain.'
The next day, Bobby Shaftoe's malaria comes back and keeps him laid up for about a week. The Calaguas move him right into their house and bring in the town doctor to look after him. It's the same doctor who delivered Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe two years ago.
When he's feeling a little stronger, he lights out for the south. It takes him three weeks to reach the northern outskirts of Manila, hitching rides on trains and trucks, or sloshing through paddies in the middle of the night. He kills two Nipponese soldiers stealthily, and three of them in a firefight at an intersection. Each time, he has to go to ground for a few days to avoid capture. But get to Manila he does.
He can't go into the heart of the city-in addition to being really stupid, it would just slow him down. Instead he skirts it, taking advantage of the thriving resistance network. He is passed from one barangay to the next, all the way around the outskirts of Manila, until he has reached the coastal plain between Laguna de Bay and Manila Bay. At this point nothing is left to the south except for a few miles of rice paddies and then the volcanic mountains where Altamiras are making names for themselves as guerilla fighters. During his trip he has heard a thousand rumors about them. Most of them are patently false-people telling him what he obviously wants to hear. But several times he has heard what sounds like a genuine scrap of information about Glory.
They say that she has a healthy young son, living in the apartment in the Malate neighborhood of Manila, being cared for by the extended family while his mother serves in the war.
They say that she has put her nursing skills to work, acting as a sort of Florence Nightingale for the Huks.
They say that she is a messenger for the Fil-American forces, that no one surpasses her daring in crossing through Nipponese checkpoints carrying secret messages and other contraband.
The last part doesn't make much sense to Shaftoe. Which is she, a nurse or a messenger? Maybe they have her confused with someone else. Or maybe she's both-maybe she's smuggling medicine through the checkpoints.
