“The fact that I have proven that the Spanish reached Hawaii more than a hundred years before any other Europeans is good enough,” she said. “We will have to live with the mystery.”
Legends would grow. She did bring back video and photographs. She had measured and analyzed the bones. There would be speculation enough to last her for the rest of her career.
We agreed to sail Olympia back to Honolulu on the morning tide. It would be an easy sail, one that we would remember. Donna called the university, told them that she was coming and what she was bringing back, arranging for a truck to meet the boat and pick up our equipment and supplies. They asked about artifacts.
“Artifacts?” she said into her little cell phone. “Artifacts are nonexistent. We left everything in place.”
Whoever she had called gave her a long speech that made her close her eyes and pinch the skin of her forehead together. “No,” she said after a long pause, “we can’t go back and retrieve the artifacts. You’ll have to get along with the photographic evidence.”
The treasure would remain hidden where it had been deposited.
And would remain hidden forever.
It was a peaceful sail home. My last view of Moana Loa was of a long, humped peak jutting through the clouds, barely recognizable in the marine mist. Another giant lay off my starboard. Haleakala, Maui’s own massive shield volcano, brooded silently, brown and barren from the sea.
I took us into Pearl Harbor and sailed right into the slip, a neat job, one that can only be accomplished when the winds are perfect. And they were. It was the perfect ending of the perfect day. Donna’s university contact met her as promised, and soon her gear was unloaded and the entire crew trudged up the dock and vanished into the evening air. And suddenly I was alone.
It felt good. It was the first time in months that I had been alone on my own boat, with nothing hanging over my head, and no obligations to fulfill. I had done what I’d had to do. I retained my freedom and some of my sanity. Olympia needed a lot of work. As I began to feel better I would tackle the small chores, then the larger jobs, and then the big ones, until she was like new again. A classic wooden-hulled sailing vessel of the thirties, Olympia demanded constant attention. The tropics demanded even more. She had been neglected. But I was back now. Injured and hurting, but back, and in one piece. Maintenance would be my therapy. It would be good for Olympia and it would be good for me.
Nothing lasts forever. Peace, whenever I find it, is always one of those fleeting destinations, a mirage that vanishes even as I approach it. So when I find it I celebrate. I opened a bottle of La Crema Pinot Noir and drank half of it, savoring the taste, sitting in my lounge listening to some favorite old CDs and becoming reacquainted with my home. Other people’s mana had invaded the place. Their scents and leavings surrounded me. It would take some time, and the investment of my own Mana, to recapture the place. But I was comfortable. And I was home.
I went below, dug into my private stash and came up with a Ramon Allones. Taking it topside, I lit it and accompanied the remains of the La Crema. Evening breezes found me on my aft deck, brightening the end of my first cigar in months.
I was safe.
Until I closed my eyes.
My old bedtime partner, that Vietnamese warrior, returned for his regular visit.
“They’re in the wire!” I heard the call again from that panicked, disembodied voice, the terror and the realization of the man’s own mortality manifest in his cry. It might have been the last sentence he ever uttered. I’ll never know. It was instantly followed by the chaos of M-16s and AK-47 fire, explosions, the sound of men screaming, the sound of their dying. And in my sector, men started dying in front of me, killed by my hand, dead because of political implications that none of us cared about or fully understood.
I shot the man in the trench, firing from the hip, blowing away most of his head. The figure crumbled, collapsing into the mud at my feet.
Above me, Felix Chen lunged toward me, armed with a long-bladed bayonet at the tip of an old rifle.
I aimed my carbine at his center mass.
It clicked empty.
The bayonet slid into my chest.
I started awake, sweat pouring off my body, opened my eyes and looked directly into the face of Felix Chen.
He stood over me, armed with a long Bowie knife. The blade hovered near my throat.
“Don’t move!”
I lay absolutely still, watching him, watching the knife.
“Caine?”
“I hear you.”
“I’m going to turn on the light. Don’t do anything that might annoy me, okay?”
“That’s reasonable,” I said. I felt a trickle of sweat run down my neck from my hairline to dampen the pillow.
Felix took the knife away, but kept it in his hand while he closed the curtains and turned on the cabin light. He wore shorts and a new sweatshirt and carried a small backpack. And that long knife.
“Hello, Felix.”
“Hello, John.”
“You could have knocked.”
He put his finger to his mouth. “I don’t think anybody saw me come aboard. You never know who’s watching.”
“You could have called.”
“I could not. Your line’s tapped.”
“Not my cellular.”
“I forgot your number.”
“Okay, fine. What do you want?”
“I need your help. I have to get to San Francisco. Can this thing make it?”
He saw me glance at my headboard bookcase where I stored the Colt .45. Felix smiled, and wagged his finger at me.
“You never know who your friends are,” I said.
“Just stay away from it.” Felix motioned with the knife. “Come into the lounge.”
I rolled out of my bunk, careful not to get too close to the huge pig sticker he held in his hand. The blade looked to be at least a foot long. “Mind if I put on my shorts?”
“Sure, old man.”
He stepped away as I reached down and picked up my old khaki shorts. The comfortable weight of my new knife told me he hadn’t checked them. I watched him as I slipped them on.
“You first,” he said, and followed me into the lounge.
I touched a bench seat and sat down, conscious of the Colt .22 automatic that I kept behind the paperbacks near my right hand. I’d put it there last night, right after I’d cleaned it and reloaded it. Safety on, clocked and locked.
Felix sat across from me, within striking distance of that deadly knife. “Can you take me to California?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I was your bodyguard. I looked after you.”
“Why don’t you get on an airplane? You need money?”
“I can always use money, but money won’t get me to California. Daniel is after me. He and Chawlie want me dead.”
“Why?”
“You don’t want to know, Caine. Just take me to California. I’ll be fine then.”
“Chawlie is my friend. Why does he want you dead?”
Felix shook his head.
“You’d better leave,” I said. “I won’t take you to California. And if Daniel wants you dead it must have something to do with the attempt on Chawlie’s life. Is that it?”
Felix smiled. He looked exhausted, the strain evident in the way his smile sagged. “You are stupid, Caine,” he said. “I heard stories about how tough and smart you were, but you must have lost it. You sure missed it this time. Nobody wanted to kill Chawlie. He was never the target.”
“What do you mean?” Chawlie had told me the same thing, but I must have forgotten it. Now I remembered.
“Can I trust you?”
“If Daniel knows about you already, you’re a dead man. You can’t run far enough. Nothing I have to say will save you. Who was the target?”
“Daniel was the main target.”
“Daniel?”
“You know the story of Cain and Abel?”
“Which br
other wanted him dead?”
“You can guess.”
“Gilbert?”
“Maybe you aren’t so stupid. But it’s been all around you for the last six months and you didn’t see it.”
And then I did see it, all of it, the vision that I’d had just before the volcano erupted in its one final spasm. I remembered Chawlie’s mentioning that the family had been in revolt. And I knew now who he was talking about. “Gilbert wanted Daniel out of the way.”
“Chawlie is making noises like he wants to retire, all those bonsai trees and the meditation garden, and his work with the old Hawaiian woman. He has other interests besides the business. Gilbert is his oldest son. He naturally assumed that Chawlie would leave everything to him.”
“But Chawlie chose Daniel.”
“Right. He’s the natural successor, not Gilbert.”
“So Gilbert …”
“So Gilbert decided that if something happened to Daniel, Chawlie would have nobody to turn to. Except him.”
“Back in May. You had something to do with that?”
Felix nodded. “Tit for tat,” he said. “Simultaneous revolutions. Gilbert had an idea. My lover and I wanted to take over the San Francisco Triads. The old men were running them into the ground. No energy. Other interests. Gilbert wanted to take over Honolulu. He set it up over a year ago, just after Chawlie had been so damaged by the woman with the emeralds. Gilbert thought the old man was growing weak and stupid; letting a woman steal that much from him damaged his credibility. When Daniel suddenly rose as the heir apparent, Gilbert contacted my brother, who lived here.”
“Your brother,” I said. “He lived here.”
“Yes. Daniel killed him.”
I remembered what Tutu Mae had said before my trial. She must have repeated the same thing to Chawlie, who started thinking. And I remembered the Cadillac SUV in the Waialua parking lot. “Ricky Lee was your brother.”
Felix nodded. “They executed my lover and they murdered my brother and now they’re going to kill me. I’m trapped in the Islands and I have to get out.”
“I can’t help you.”
“I was hoping you would, but I am prepared to take this thing out myself.”
“Or get rid of me as soon as we were close to California.”
He nodded. “Gilbert brokered the bodyguard job for me. The thinking was that I could get Daniel and Chawlie together at one time. Do them both. Daniel must have smelled something, because he never let it happen.”
“You almost got close.”
“Once, but I would have died. Staying alive is always my first priority.”
“So what are you going to do now? Kill me? Take Olympia out and head for San Francisco? They’ll find you. They’ll track you down easily. As soon as you key the satellite phone or use the GPS they’ll zero in on the signal and send the Coast Guard after you. Or the Navy. That’s a big flat ocean out there with nowhere to hide.”
“You’ll take me out of Pearl Harbor. I can head for Canada or Mexico or South America.”
I nodded. “And then what?”
“I’ve got money.”
“No, Felix,” I said patiently. “And then what about me?”
“Your choice. Either join me or die.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I thought you’d say that,” he said. He reached into the backpack and drew out a sawed-off shotgun. I saw it coming out of the bag, tossed paperbacks off the bookcase with the tips of my fingers, grabbed the .22, aimed quickly at center mass and fired twice.
Felix fell over.
He lay on the deck, the bag and both arms underneath his body, the knife on the bench seat. His breath came in quick pants. But he still breathed.
“Felix,” I said quickly, “let me see your hands.”
He pulled his right hand from beneath his chest and wiggled bloody fingers.
“That’s one hand. Now the other.”
He lay still, as if thinking it over. Blood was pooling under him and running along the grooves of the teak decking.
“Come on, man, I don’t want to shoot you again.”
He rolled over and brought the shotgun with him. I kicked his arm with the ball of my foot and the shotgun sailed across the lounge, skidded over the lounge table and wedged between two cushions on the bench seat.
He grabbed my leg and I went down, my gun under me. He scrambled for traction on the deck, punching and kicking me, gouging my eyes, trying to reach my pistol.
I fought him off but his strength was enormous, and he almost ended up on top of me before I recovered and slammed him under the chin with my cast.
It didn’t phase him. Blood weeping from two tiny bullet holes in his chest, he fought as if nothing mattered. In the confines of the small space I had the advantage of leverage and reach, but he was younger and stronger, and he fought like a cornered animal.
I fought off another attack. I could tell he was getting weaker. Time was on my side.
He attacked again, knocking me down. As I fell I dropped the gun. He reached for the pistol and I kicked it away, sending it scooting down the lounge toward the bow.
He followed and I tackled him, smashing his face against the deck. He wiggled out from under me. We both struggled to our feet and I hit him with two elbow kites that staggered him. He struck back and I blocked the last attack, using his momentum to crash his body into the teak bulkhead.
He reeled back, then faded away.
And raced for the shotgun.
I looked for the pistol, saw it lying under the table, thought about it only long enough for the synapses to come back with the calculation, my cerebrum screaming, “NOT ENOUGH TIME! WRONG DIRECTION! GET THE OTHER GUN!”
I raced for my stateroom, leaped onto the bed, reached into the bookcase for my .45, stretching until I got clumsy fingers around the checkered rubber grips.
Felix got to the shotgun first, cocked it while he turned, and ran into my stateroom with single barrel aimed directly at my head.
I brought the .45 around and aimed it at him.
Too late.
We fired simultaneously.
55
I took four BBs in the right shoulder and three or four more in the neck. The rest of the load passed over my head, punching into the bookcase and the teak paneling.
Felix slumped against the bulkhead, his shotgun on the deck beside him. I kept the 45 trained on him until I could get down from the bunk and hobble over to pick up the shotgun. I broke it open. It was a rusty single-barrel, single-shot affair that had been crudely cut down. Harmless now, I tossed it behind me onto the bunk.
I had hit Felix three times, all of the rounds so close together I could have covered them with my hand.
He opened his eyes. “You shot me again,” he said. He seemed surprised.
“Of course I shot you. What did you think I was going to do?”
“Should have known better,” he said, his breath coming in quick pants, like a dog run hard on a hot day.
“Why?”
“Why did I do any of it?”
I nodded. He reached out and I held his hand. Anything now to give him some small comfort.
“We wanted to rule, Caine. Jesse and me, we wanted to be on top. It’s just that simple.”
“Were you Silversword?”
He laughed. I wasn’t sure it was a laugh because it was so soft, but I leaned closer and found that it was. “Ricky’s contribution. It was just a front to hide our true motives. Ricky had these dreamers and college students in the palm of his hand. He taught them lua, he told them stories, and suddenly they were an activist group. Down with the government. Establish the new monarchy. They really didn’t mean any harm.”
“Kidnapping? Bombing? Murder?”
“Not a threat, not them. Honest. Ricky did most of it to give them standing.”
“You wanted Daniel dead, and me dead?”
“Uh-huh. When you were charged with murder it changed the plans, but then we thought h
ow convenient, you would be out of touch. Then the court let you go and I had those two ninjas take you out. Or try to.”
“That was you in the alley?” I’d decided that it had been Ricky Lee.
“Yeah. I went along. They were supposed to be very good. You were injured. I didn’t think you’d live to recognize me.”
“All you guys look alike to me. Who killed the professor?”
“Don’t really know, Caine. Probably Ricky. Why would you care?”
“And you cooperated with Gilbert. You were allies.”
“Yeah. We would rule the Pacific Triads. He didn’t want to harm Chawlie. Only Daniel. He would wait until Chawlie retired or died. Then Gilbert would be the undisputed leader in Hawaii.”
“Jesse was your lover?”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes. “Gonna be with him soon, wherever he is. I’m going to die.”
“Probably.”
“That’s cold, Caine. You killed me.”
“You didn’t have to come here. You didn’t have to pull a gun on me. I’m sorry, though.”
He smiled a ragged smile. “That’s something, getting an apology from you. It had to be this way, Caine. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Chawlie or Daniel would have got me one way or the other. They would have killed me for three days. Just the way they did with my beautiful Jesse. This way is better.”
He closed his eyes, his breathing rapid and small. “I’m afraid, Caine,” he said, his voice small and quiet. “I don’t want to lose this … life. I like it here.”
“We’re all afraid, Felix.”
He opened his eyes and looked directly at me, but he wasn’t seeing me. He saw something beyond me and behind me, and I thought he might have smiled. “It’s okay, Caine,” he said. “It’s okay.”
He closed his eyes again and lay still and I held his hand until he stopped breathing and I felt the life drain out of him. He had been a complicated little guy, witty and articulate. More sly than smart. He had not been one to trust. He had sought my death and the death of my friends. But I had liked him all the same. And I was sorry to have killed him.
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