“This truly is paradise to them,” Pillow said wistfully. “I wish there had been a place like this when I was that young.”
“You would have been a prime candidate,” I told her, “but a life without consequences is never good.”
“It’s better than the alternative for people abused by parents and bullied by peers. At least they feel protected here.”
“They can’t live like this forever. They’re being used.”
“Used? That’s ridiculous, Michael!”
“Is it? When I asked Aronui what she intended to do when back in Auckland she looked at me as if I was an idiot. Neither Ngati nor Aronui plan or expect to leave the valley. They’re woefully unprepared to meet societal pressures outside. A few months here ensures they could never hack it in the real world. They’ll become—how do you say it in Maori?”
“Kaipaoe.”
“Right. Vagrants, drifters, like a fellow I saw on a stoop in Wellington. It’s as if the witches have cast a spell on them—with a little help from the drugs, of course. Even if they wanted to leave, I suspect guys like Kahoura are paid to make sure they don’t.”
“Kahoura? Who’s that?”
“Someone you only want to see in a nightmare. He may belong to the human race, but just. Kahoura’s the ugliest devil I’ve ever seen, with the possible exception of Dennis Rodman.”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. Kahoura’s a Mongrel gangbanger who doesn’t bother with the dress code. His face is a road map to hell.”
Her face brightened.
“I know who you’re talking about. A huge man, his face covered with mokos?”
“Yeah, the kind applied with a chisel, not a needle.”
Pillow bit her lip. “The last time I saw Tane he was talking to him by the river.”
“Talking or arguing?”
“They were too far away to see their expressions. But when they’d finished, they headed toward the cavern.”
I didn’t respond immediately. My mind was racing.
Finally, I took her hand. “We’ve got to assume he’s gone.”
She turned very pale. “Tane wouldn’t desert us.”
“I agree.”
“You don’t mean…”
“Some men are so evil, so beyond the snickering savagery of your garden-variety sadist, they’d make Vlad the Impaler nervous. My only encounter with Kahoura was brief and at a distance, but what I saw in him fit my template for the devil.”
She pulled her hand away from mine, tried to find words again, but couldn’t.
“I don’t know what happened to Tane, Pillow. But even if your father agrees to let us have the journal, Witako doesn’t intend to let us leave this valley.”
“But the only way out is through the cavern.”
“So we need to do a recon of it. I’ve been meaning to find out what the Chinese are doing in there anyway. Are you with me on this?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I’m not sure I want to be.”
Chapter Thirty-one
We approached the mouth of the cavern shortly after dawn, keeping close to the cliff wall to avoid detection by gangbangers and Medusa’s roaming harridans. As before, silver bars of light streamed diagonally to the floor through natural apertures hundreds of feet above.
Beyond the no-man’s-land of belching fumaroles were a series of fissures in the limestone walls. Each appeared to lead to innumerable vaults and passages. Using flashlights purchased in Glenorchy, we entered a ten-foot-wide crease in the rock that seemed as likely an exit as any other.
Inside was a twilight zone where natural light barely penetrated. Yellow sumps, interspersed among spiral stalactites, hung like crystalline pumpkins from the ceiling. Nothing looked familiar. We followed a slight, slippery decline to a flowstone. Its globular bulk of shimmering calcite deposits looked like a giant ice-cream cone carelessly stuck upside down. In the center of it was a shaft just wide enough for a grown person to slip through. This was definitely not the way we had traversed before.
“Care to explore?” I asked Pillow.
Her face was very pale. “Up to a point.”
We edged sideways through the cleft for about twenty feet before coming to a small chamber. Tens of thousands of tiny flickering lights clung to networks of silk threads dangling from the rocks and calcite formations.
“Arachnocampa luminosa,” Pillow told me. “They’re glowworms, the larvae of the two-winged gnat fly found only in New Zealand’s caves.”
“Those pretty things are maggots?”
“Yes, and they’re territorial buggers as well, not opposed to eating one another when battling for space.”
We turned off the flashlights and stood on the edge of a shimmering pool of water, its border of crystal bouquets infused with the turquoise luminescence of the innumerable insects.
“It’s so beautiful,” she began, “don’t you think…”
I expected her to continue waxing poetic about the wonders of nature even in its subterranean depths, but she stopped in mid-sentence, clutching my hand.
* * *
The man sitting straight up in the pool looked to have been dead a week or more—long enough, anyway, to start rotting, but not enough to expose bone. The blue maggots performed their mating lightshow within the mouth and eye sockets, but there weren’t the myriad legions of ants or other insects that normally make short work of the flesh. That’s not to say there weren’t other things feasting on him.
One creature clung to the chin like a shiny goatee. The forklike pincers stemming from either side of its head steadily worked on what remained of the man’s lower lip without seeming to disturb the glowworms. I thought it might be a mutant cricket, but Pillow told me later that it was a cave weta. Like every insect in the cavern, the weta was unique to New Zealand and, having been around 190 million years, it’s the oldest original species in existence. It also wins top honors for being the heaviest bug in the world, weighing more than a sparrow.
What I had first thought to be the man’s lacquered black hair turned out to be a bloated spider sitting atop the skull. The spider’s torso was five inches long and almost as wide. Eight legs, covered with bristly hairs, gripped either side of the head past the earlobes. It looked like it might pounce any second on the larger weta.
Sections of the man’s neck and shoulders visible above the water were covered with boils as if he had suffered some sort of chemical burn.
We’d started to back away from the ghastly scene when we heard voices and hacking coughs outside the chamber.
Peering through the opening, we saw Medusa leading five Chinese men across the floor of the cavern. The woman bridled with impatience as the grim procession padded past the fumaroles toward openings in the far wall.
The men wore hard hats affixed with mining lamps, orange jumpsuits, and thick-soled boots. The ends of metal instruments stuck out from the top flaps of their backpacks. All carried lunch boxes, most of which were generic green or black, except for one that featured a collage of Hello Kitty characters. Two of them had trouble maintaining the pace.
It seemed obvious that they were scientists or engineers looking to identify a resource. But if the gold and silver had been tapped out long ago, what could they have been seeking?
Whatever it was, I didn’t intend to risk being discovered in the cavern.
When the Chinese men disappeared into the fissures, and before Medusa reemerged, Pillow and I ran for daylight.
* * *
Early that same afternoon I left Pillow in the communal dining whare and took the path down to the river. After crossing a stone bridge, I entered a dense pine forest, where I walked a mile, maybe more.
It was silent as death in this section of the vale, where everything was cast in shadows. In a clearing at the far edge of the woods, I spotted the pair of bunkhouses tucked at the base of a tussock-covered hill. I turned to see if I’d been followed, then tiptoed for the last fifty yards across a carpet of needles and m
oss.
Each of the single-story buildings was about thirty feet long and twenty feet wide. Slanted corrugated roofs topped the pitted concrete walls. They looked more like horse stables than bunkhouses, which is probably what they had been originally.
In contrast to the elaborate Maori designs found on structures in the marae, the only decoration here was the crudely carved figure of a naked lady on the door of the first hut. The barely legible name Lucille—undoubtedly a fond memory for a tracker or miner from gold rush days long past—had been etched above her head.
A small plastic Buddha, evidence of more recent guests, squatted inside the first building behind a filthy windowpane. Tin cans and chicken bones lay strewn in front of a steel drum that had been used recently as a cooker. Woolen socks, gloves, cotton shirts, and pants hung on the limbs of a dead tree. There were Chinese markings on some of the clothes.
Behind the buildings were copper tubs, washbasins, and four poles with wooden buckets for showering. A bit farther, four primitive outhouses tilted at angles, perilously close to collapse. Here and there lay evidence of the mining days that had ceased in the 1920s—rusty crowbars, pick heads, a huge anvil, and a massive cog wheel.
I was wondering how the things were ever transported through the cavern when I suddenly froze. Behind me, at the edge of the wood, a deer scurried into the underbrush.
After vainly straining my eyes and ears to determine what had frightened it, I crept up to the door of the first building. It wasn’t locked—probably never had been—and I entered into a dark, evil-smelling lair filled with sleeping bags, various heavy packs, and scientific equipment. The stench of wet wool, kerosene, and sour body odor permeated the place.
The windows, ten to a side, were covered with so much grime as to be nearly opaque. A makeshift shelf held tins of sardines and boxes of rice next to a wood-burning potbelly stove. Unlit kerosene lamps hung on hooks from wooden rafters. A calendar with Chinese characters was pinned to a center post. Porn and movie magazines, all in Chinese, lay scattered on single mattress beds.
On a table lay a heavy notebook filled with equations, universal chemical element designations, and hand drawings of various minerals. I turned on my flashlight, hoping to determine what the formulas might be about, but the writing, except for the company name on the cover, was in Mandarin. Below the logo of a red cube and the company’s Chinese hanzi characters was the title in English: Baomong Iron, Ltd.
* * *
I left the bunkhouse nauseated by the stifling atmosphere, but slightly wiser. From the paperwork I’d seen, I figured Mackin and Witako were looking for a Chinese partner to revive TransNational Metals. Again, I asked myself what the Baomong engineers could be seeking in the cavern where the gold and silver had been tapped out long ago. As impressive as the pounamu strains were, greenstone wasn’t the type of mineral to interest an international conglomerate.
Blue jeans, sweatshirts with Mongrel Mob symbols, and other clothes hung on clotheslines in front of the other building. My stomach hadn’t sufficiently recovered, however, for me to investigate the gangbangers’ lair. By then, anyway, I’d noticed the sunken foundation of another structure partially hidden by gorse and bracken. Rotted planks of quarter-sawn wood lay within the rectangular border along with forks, spoons, rolling pins, a coffeepot, metal chairs, and something that didn’t harken back to the 1920s—a lead canister topped by a screw valve.
I wouldn’t have noticed it except for a hook-beaked kea bird that had pulled back the corner of a tarp to feast on a dead rat. The tube was three feet long with an eight-inch diameter. It looked like a pressurized gas container for beer kegs, except it was stamped with a black trefoil on a yellow background—the universal symbol for radiation. I pulled off the canvas and counted fifteen more tubes.
With the shadows deepening in the valley, I placed the tarp back over the canisters and headed for Ivo Mackin’s whare, determined to get some answers.
* * *
Twenty minutes later I was under the iron anchor and, to my surprise, found the entrance unguarded.
Inside, Ivo Mackin sat at his table, reading J. C. Beaglehole’s biography of Sir Joseph Banks.
“Ah, Mr. Bevan!” he said, sounding pleased to see me. He appeared weak, but lucid. “I was told you had gone.”
“And Pillow as well?”
“Yes. I was rather disappointed she didn’t stop by before leaving.”
“You daughter’s still here, sir. She’d like nothing more than to see you again.”
Hearing our voices, Ngati rushed into the room from the sleeping quarters.
“Ranginui, you are not to have visitors. The Ariki…”
“Yes?”
“He says you must have your rest.”
“I understand, but now that Mr. Bevan is here I wish to challenge him to a game.” Mackin eyed me.
“You do wish to play, don’t you, Bevan?”
“Sure,” I said, taking a seat across from him.
A beautifully carved wooden box with brass fittings, burl wood inlay on top, mitered joints, and a lustrous finish lay in front of him. Its lid was open, revealing thirty or forty small wooden balls, half of them a tan shade and the other half a darker brown. They lay sprawled on a green velvet cloth. Affixed to the inside of the lid were seven empty channels.
Mackin picked up a brown ball and dropped it into the first chute.
“On each of his three voyages,” he said, “Cook played this deceptively simple game to relax. Given the intellectual and reasoning challenges, he usually invited Sir Joseph Banks as an opponent. Cook spent so much time playing the game that it came to be known by crew members as the Captain’s Mistress. The rules are as simple as tic-tac-toe, but the strategies are practically endless. The aim is to get four of a player’s balls side by side in a row, diagonally, vertically, or horizontally. Should all the balls in the set be played without either player having a consecutive, uninterrupted line, a draw results.”
He selected a tan one off the cloth and handed it to me.
“Are you sorry to have told us?” I asked him.
“I have many regrets, Mr. Bevan, but not for that. Penelope needed to know.”
I placed my ball in the first chute and watched it clatter to the bottom. Mackin countered by letting his darker ball fall on top of mine.
As play progressed, I found it increasingly difficult to concentrate. Mackin’s moves were extraordinarily fast, while I struggled to anticipate his moves while plotting my own. The game had seemed so childish at first, nothing near as complicated as chess or even backgammon. But having second-guessed myself on every move, I was forced to concede after fifteen minutes. At game’s end, he pulled the bottom retaining board—or, as he called it, “the gangplank”—and the hardwood rounds dropped into the velvet-lined cabinet.
When we began a second match Ngati retired to the front room.
“Simple, yet deceptively challenging,” Mackin told me. “That’s how things are here. The old ways we teach are very basic—primitive, in fact—and of no use in the outside world. And yet in the art of weaving, lineage chanting, singing, carving, there is much value.”
He hesitated a moment before focusing his eyes on me. His hands trembled slightly. “If you haven’t noticed, Bevan, I am going mad. It’s not just the phantoms and dementia that plague me. Lono and Ku, the gods of love and war, battle for my soul.”
“Cattley Middleditch thought you might have Parkinson’s disease,” I told him bluntly. “The proper drugs can control the hallucinations. Pillow and I will go with you to Queenstown for help.”
He slowly inclined his head.
“Drugs cannot control titiro makutu, the evil eye. Only Witako understands the art of matapuru and has the mana to ward off the demons. At any rate, it’s far too late for me, Bevan. All I wish to do is seek redemption before I die.”
“Sir?”
“Your move,” he said loudly. Then, nodding toward the room, he muttered, “Let him think we’re sti
ll playing.”
I dropped a ball in the third chute.
“What are the Chinese doing here?” I asked quietly.
“Confirming that what lies within is worth destroying.”
“I don’t follow.”
Ivo Mackin countered my move, opening a new chute.
Chapter Thirty-two
Later that evening Aronui visited my hut. She looked out of sorts and not a little disgruntled to find Pillow with me.
“Yes?”
“Sorry, I see you’re busy.”
“What is it, Aronui? You can speak freely.”
“You asked me to tell you if Daig Kildare came up. He brought in more Chinese fellas tonight. But not just them.”
“Who else?”
“Five or six more bikers from Porirua. A new girl came with them, too. She looked scared.”
“Where are they now?”
“They left the marae for the bunkhouses. Kildare wants me to entertain them there.”
I got off the mat and fastened my cloak.
“What are you doing?” Pillow asked.
“I’ve got to find out why they’re here.”
“I’ll go with you,” Aronui said.
“I know where it is.”
“But you’ll never find it in the dark.”
* * *
The moon had not yet risen over Mount Aspiring when we reached the far section of the forest near the buildings. Hearing voices ahead, we dropped to our knees and peered through tangled brush. A large group of men huddled around a roaring fire between the two buildings. Half of them were thugs armed with chains, bats, and knives. They wore dirty leathers with the Mongrel Mob colors. In addition to them were a dozen Chinese and a pair of the youths I’d seen training with their long taiaha staffs with Ngati. Some of the Chinese looked decidedly nervous and out of place. I figured they were the new arrivals.
Daig Kildare sat at the top of the circle. The new girl Aronui had mentioned lay shivering beyond the warmth of the fire. She wore a tattered parka, wool trousers, and canvas tennis shoes.
It was obvious the newcomers hadn’t arrived to learn the intricacies of basket weaving.
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