It’s strange, looking back on it, how calm I felt at the time. No, not just calm—more like exhilarated. Anything, after all, was better than being stuck in that narrow crawl space. Plus, I had the strangest feeling that, given any sort of luck, I would find a way out. I guess you can say I’d finally found in myself, when everything seemed against it, something to trust.
I touched the pendant one more time for luck. Then I climbed slowly into the sinkhole, wedging my back against one side while using my knees and arms against the other for the first ten feet until the shaft opened wider. I dropped the remaining five feet like a convict down a prison wall, onto a flat stone surface. Outside the shaft the ceiling was slightly above my head. The rapids roared two or three yards to my left, but some of its icy overflow swirled around my calves.
I began to shiver uncontrollably. The racing, frigid water that had risen above my knees made it almost impossible to stay upright. I walked briskly with the current, however, using my right hand to feel my way along the wall. After three false leads I reached an opening with a fresh breeze flowing from it.
By stretching my hands over my head, I felt the top of the entrance of what I hoped was a lava tube. That meant no rocks to cut and bruise me, just a smooth cannon barrel six feet or so in diameter cutting through the mountain. Putting the freight-train din of the rapids behind me, I pushed away from the wall and drifted into a tributary with a powerful but surprisingly gentle flow.
I was soon floating around a curve where the stream intersected with a larger subterranean river. Scrambling to keep my head above water, I felt like I’d been dumped in a giant washing machine, but I saw a pinprick of light in the distance.
The gleam became brighter and brighter as I propelled faster, ever faster, until I shot out of darkness into the early-morning air, my heart nearly bursting with joy. I had become an element of the Cat O’Nine Tails cascade and, seconds later, landed headfirst into the Waipara River.
Thankfully, the river was slow-moving at this juncture, and deep enough so that I didn’t break my neck. After drifting a hundred or so feet downstream, I was able to swim to the pebbled shoreline. It took my eyes several minutes to fully adjust to the sunlight after getting out, but when they finally did, the first thing I beheld was the glistening pyramid of Mount Aspiring.
I didn’t have long to admire the view because I was shivering again. But one thing New Zealand has is plenty of thermal springs, and my nose detected the strong sulfur odor not far away. The steam-shrouded pond was just temperate enough not to scald, and I stumbled in, letting the warm mineral-laden water work its magic.
The meadow where we had first encountered Ngati was less than fifty yards away. There was considerably more snow on the ground now. Another mile beyond would be the green jade boulders, but I had no intention of going back.
I got out of the pool, shook off as much water as possible, and began the upward trek toward the Bonar Glacier. Soaked to the bone, the odds weren’t good that I’d get over the Matukituki Saddle without freezing to death.
But I needn’t have worried. Tane Craddock and two squads of New Zealand Special Air Service troopers found me four hours later, shivering under a ledge on the leeward side of the Hector Col.
Chapter Thirty-six
After getting kitted out in proper alpine winter gear, it still took a couple of cans of Sterno and an extra pair of fleece socks to get circulation back in my feet. I had no trouble keeping up with the soldiers once we got going, thanks to two civilian radiation-containment experts whose curricula vitae didn’t include mountain climbing in winter.
At midday we halted at the westernmost end of the nameless lake to rest and make final plans for the approach to the compound.
It didn’t take long. You don’t need much when you have twenty-five elite fighters armed with Heckler & Koch submachine guns going against an assortment of axes, baseball bats, chains, and taiahas.
The strategy was for Tane Craddock to guide the party through the winding labyrinth of the cavern. Once in the valley, the first squad would surround the marae and the second, again led by Tane, would rush to the bunkhouses in order for the radiation experts to secure the deadly containers of polonium-210 still above ground. I was to go with Captain Slaughter in the first squad to identify friend from foe as much as possible, with the bikers being in a different category from the taiaha-carrying youths like Ngati. The troopers already had photos of Witako and Daig Kildare. I also made it clear that my first priority would be to locate and secure the safety of Pillow Wilkes, Aronui, and, if possible, Adrian Hart. Under no circumstances were the troopers to use their weapons on anyone unless in immediate bodily peril.
After our briefing, Tane and I warmed our hands over a small fire. It was the first opportunity to talk since our reunion on the mountain.
“How’d you get through?” I asked, after describing my desperate struggle to escape via the flow-hole subway.
“The same way we came in. My mother knew the secrets of the Waitaha, the first wave of people who discovered and settled this mountain region seven hundred years ago. You saw the way I controlled Ngati when he first challenged us in the meadow?”
“I remember how you threatened to send some nasty spirits after him. It certainly put him in his place.”
“My mother passed on more than that to me. The early iwi hunted and found shelter in the caverns and created an art form exclusive to the South Island. Using charcoal and red ochre mixed with bird fat, they drew fantastic images onto the limestone walls. Some are extremely beautiful and complex. My mother said these had enormous spiritual qualities, a link between man and the supernatural. Others are simple stick figures, but they, too, had a valuable purpose—as signposts to direct people through the caves.”
“And that’s what you used?”
“Yeah. I’d noticed the moa bird drawings when we were first led in. The flightless creatures are extinct now, but they held a special place in the hearts of the people because they represented deliverance from suffering. Most have faded to pale images over the centuries, so you have to know to look for them. My mother told me that if ever I found myself lost in a cave, they would guide me home. One bird means turn right, two means left. Basic as that, but extremely effective. A couple of Witako’s men saw me enter the cave and the chase was on, but they didn’t know about the signs.”
“What do you think will happen to Pillow now that we know she was in with Hart?”
“I’m suggesting the government put her up for the Order of Saint George.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kahoura informed Pillow of our mission shortly after her arrival. The plan had to be kept secret, or Hart and subsequently Witako might have suspected something. The polonium threat was too important to risk letting even you know I’d escaped.”
Captain Slaughter interrupted Craddock’s story, barking orders to move out. After gathering our gear, we went to the head of the patrol and slogged for three hours in heavy snow before reaching the twin greenstone boulders.
There was no one at the portal. The area was deserted. Even the haystack witches were absent. Tane led us at a quick-time pace through the labyrinth and across the great chamber. At the mouth of the cave, the captain reiterated his plan of attack, then we fanned out on our designated assignments.
When we arrived at the marae we saw that most of the people in the valley had gathered for Ivo Mackin’s funeral ritual.
Slaughter, who was a quarter Maori himself, quietly ordered his men to block any potential exits, but to make no other attempts to stop the sacred rites. His men showed their prowess by swiftly and silently surrounding the compound.
Witako stood stoically before the bier where Ivo Mackin lay. The Ranginui’s corpse had been trussed according to ancient custom. The knees were drawn up so that they touched the body and secured in place by a cord. He wore a beautiful cape of kiwi feathers and an elaborately detailed kilt. His hair had been neatly combed and oiled in the Maori chieftain fashion with
bird plumes sticking out of it. Red paint marked his face and a greenstone pendant graced his neck. A taiaha and a patu were at his side. There was no evidence of his pakeha heritage except for the captain’s uniform smoldering in a fire before the bier.
You’ve got to hand it to the Ariki; he didn’t avoid fulfilling his final obligation to the man who had been both his mentor and victim. Pillow sat to the side of the platform, dutifully solemn, but her eyes could not hide a flare of surprised relief at seeing me. I was glad to see Aronui in the throng of worshippers, as well as Ngati and the other young people.
The squad of heavily armed troopers patiently observed the speeches, songs, and wailings, but I didn’t stay to hear them. After issuing further orders to his men, Captain Slaughter and I left the marae to join the other troopers en route to capture Daig Kildare, the Mongrel Mobsters, and the Chinese engineers.
Later, I heard that the rest of the tangihanga had proceeded in the traditional manner. By all accounts, Witako had given a moving speech, wishing the Ranginui fair passage to the region where human life began and to where his ancestors would escort him to Rangiātea, the abode of Io the Parent God. Medusa, by all accounts, did a masterly job of wailing, and Pillow added a few tearful words of thanks for having had the chance to reunite with her father.
Witako’s stoic performance was one thing; the reactions by Kildare and his Mongrel Mob to our arrival quite another. To say they weren’t staggered when the armed-to-the-teeth commandos showed up on their doorstep is like saying the Irish speak well of one another.
It was Ngati who told me that Adrian Hart had fled at the first sign of our approach and was seen heading in the direction of the waterfall that fed the pool by the poppy fields. With the SAS men engaged in rounding up Kildare, the Chinese, and the rest of the Mongrels, I picked up a taiaha and headed off alone to find him.
* * *
The path to the top of the cliff from which the water tumbled was treacherously steep. On the lower reaches, I had to thrash my way through thick patches of tussock and bracken. Once there I was surprised to see that there was an even more vertical precipice plunging hundreds of feet to the canyon below. Beyond it was a panorama of mountain ranges extending westward to the Tasman Sea.
Adrian Hart sat yogalike on a flat slab of rock. His backpack lay next to him.
Hearing my approach, he turned his head and stared at me as if I were Lazarus. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“It’s over, Adrian,” I said quietly. “Time to go.”
“Indeed,” he said, finding his voice.
He got to his feet, picked up the backpack, and, stepping to the edge of the precipice, said, “Can you guess what I have here?”
I advanced cautiously toward him. “You didn’t have to kill Billy Bartow.”
“I was just following the lead of Robert Anderson.”
“Anderson?” The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“Of course.” Hart began to swing the pack back and forth. “Sam Gibson’s erstwhile friend. It was Anderson, not the alleged wharf ruffians, who murdered his old shipmate for the third journal.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“The May 1790 edition of the London Gazetteer—one I somehow neglected to show you at the Turnbull Library—tells us it was Anderson who sold the last journal to the London printer.” He paused for an exaggerated sigh. “My dear Bevan, you really must learn to do research.”
“Set the bag down and move away from the cliff, Adrian. There’s no need to end it this way.”
In a flat voice, he answered, “I’m afraid there is,” and flung the rucksack at me as if it were a rugby ball. I dove to catch it before it hit the ground. Then, getting back to my feet, I started to say something else. But he had disappeared by then.
* * *
The pool at the base of the cliff was shallow, most of its water splashing off to form another cataract. By the look of things, Hart had dived headfirst. When Captain Slaughter’s men pulled him out that afternoon there wasn’t much of his upper body that wasn’t broken.
I didn’t feel good about his death. Maybe it’s because I was beginning to sense there was an uncomfortable amount of him in me, something beyond the craving for books.
Adrian Hart was a knowledgeable and cunning bibliophile. Let that be his epitaph.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Esme greeted us like conquering heroes when we climbed out of the NZSAS helicopter at Paradise Flat. Aside from a heartfelt handshake from Captain Slaughter, however, that was the only thanks we got in the days that followed. We’d saved the country from a radioactive nightmare, but it’s not the sort of thing the government likes to mention when it was a hairbreadth away from delivering one of its premier natural wonders to ecoterrorists.
While Pillow and Tane Craddock followed her up to the lodge, I pulled out my cell phone to call home. It was eighteen hours earlier there—4:30 A.M. in K.C.—and after the phone rang ten or fifteen times I heard Josie’s groggy voice.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” I said.
“Michael! Where are you?”
“Just landed in Paradise.”
“Are you okay?”
“Hundred percent. We’ve got it, babe.”
“The journal?”
“All three of them. We’re set.”
“Fabulous! When will you be back?”
“In a week or two. I have some business to attend to with the feds in Wellington.”
* * *
Investigators from the New Zealand Conservation Department and the national police converged on the flat later in the day. Pillow, Tane, and I had secretly agreed not to mention the Gibson journals or Ivo Mackin’s Cook ancestry claims. Besides not being relevant to the government’s polonium concerns, we didn’t intend to leak news of our findings until we’d figured how best to profit by them.
That was the idea, anyway.
After giving our statements we were ordered to stay put at Esme’s and not discuss our experiences with any but authorized personnel. A chopper would take us to Wellington two days later for more detailed debriefings following the mop-up of the compound at the Land of Tears.
While Pillow spent the next day in her room, poring over the Gibson journals, I joined Craddock and some of the musterers to round up sheep caught in a snowstorm at the base of Mount Earnslaw. It was close to ten P.M. by the time Tane and I returned to the lodge, half frozen and covered in sheep dung, to find mother and daughter sitting in the lounge on a leather ottoman.
“Come in, boys, and take a seat,” Esme said, pouring two more cups of tea from a ceramic pot. “Don’t worry about your clothes. Penelope has some things she’d like to discuss.”
Pillow smiled like the cat that’s been in the birdcage. After I settled in the chair she set the first two journals on the coffee table in front of me.
“I’m not going to release the last one, Michael. You can keep these.”
I should have seen it coming.
Pillow may have been in on the scheme with Hart from the beginning, but I’d sensed a change in her ever since Ivo had dropped the bomb that he and she were blood kin to Captain Cook and King Kalani’opu’u. She suddenly felt she had a legacy to protect. My interests no longer counted.
I was shocked and angry at what I saw as her betrayal. She had used me to gain ownership of the journal. Now, for an entirely different reason, she was denying it to me again.
“But you can’t do this!” I bleated. “Not after all we went through…”
Wasted breath, don’t you know—it was like trying to reason with Salome, who, after hearing the Salvation Army band, decided she was Mary Magdalene after all.
“Things have changed,” she said. “I’m not who I was when this started.”
“I suspect none of you are,” Esme said, grasping her daughter’s hand. “Penelope’s decided to help me run the station.”
“But what about The Book and Bell?”
/> “I’ll find someone to buy it—there’s never a lack of qualified takers in London. Mother and I thought we could bring in some of the kids from the marae and give them jobs.”
The sugary gaze emanating from those Sophia Loren eyes as she blithely said she’d decided to give up that beautiful shop made me slightly nauseated. Furthermore, the thought that Ngati, let alone Aronui, would take to herding cattle and mucking about sheep pastures seemed about as likely as LeBron James opting for a career in interior design.
“What do you think?” Pillow asked Tane Craddock. “Maybe we start our own Maori compound?”
The big man shrugged, but with a highly dubious look on his face.
Pillow was sensing none of this. Nor, for that matter, was Esme. I suppose both were so happy to have found each other again that nothing could dissuade them from their dreams.
“I suppose if it’s okay with Esme…”
“Good. And how about you, Michael? Will you stay on as well?”
By now, my anger had morphed from simmering burn into incredulity.
I put on a manly This-is-as-painful-to-me-as-it-must-be-for-you smile. Then I gravely shook my head and said, “No thanks, love.”
* * *
It was tough, but I withheld the temptation to add, “And it isn’t entirely because you tried to cheat me with your partner, or that you poisoned one man and ordered the death of your husband, or that you can be an emotional three-ring circus.”
“But before…” she said, looking bewildered.
“That was just a kiss.”
“It was a lie.”
“I’m going home, Pillow.”
“To that sorry excuse of a bookstore?” She started to say something else, but her voice trailed away.
“Yes. To what’s left of it, anyway. But mostly I’m going back to the woman I love.”
Well, that put a stamp on the old envelope.
Pillow’s face melted into the taciturn mask I’d first noticed at Café Provence. Her fingers reached slowly up to the scars on her neck.
“Don’t forget your trophies,” she said, in a passionless voice.
Left Turn at Paradise Page 21