Reluctant Dead

by John Moss

  Suddenly, she felt herself dragged unceremoniously off balance as her idol dug his feet of clay into the path and pulled her along. She could see a roostertail of dust swirling behind a vehicle moving in their direction and instinctively she wrenched free of Matteo and crouched, even though it was still a great distance away. Matteo shielded his eyes from the wheeling glare of the overhead sun, trying to make out who it was. Suddenly, he dove down and pulled Miranda over him into the low ground cover. Together they squirmed and scrambled into denser foliage and took shelter behind a small cluster of lava boulders. Another fallen moai, disguised by time as a natural outcropping.

  “Who is it?” She whispered although the vehicle was still a long way off and its occupants could not possibly have heard them.

  He held an upraised palm toward her face and shrugged. They waited. The sun beat down on them. They were hidden from view, but they were not in shadow. If the new arrivals strayed off the path, Miranda realized, they were completely exposed.

  Doors slammed with the solid thud of a Land Rover. They heard voices. Without looking up, she knew Matteo could identify whose they were. She listened as the voices got closer. She could hear Spanish, snatches of Rapanui, and then Oxonian English. She exchanged a knowing glance of dismay with Matteo. Thomas Edward Ross was not someone either of them had wanted to hear. The cluster of voices moved over the edge of the cliff and out of range. Matteo slowly rose to his feet, surveying the scene carefully, in case they had left a lookout behind.

  “Te Ave Teao is with them,” he said in a low voice. “They have my brother, he is with them. He should not be with them. And your Mr. Ross, he is with them, as well, and I believe he is not their prisoner. I think he is leading them to the cave.”

  “He is not my Mr. Ross!” She paused. “He won’t want them to find his boxes.”

  “And what do you suppose is in those boxes?”

  “Armaments.”

  “No, I believe they are filled with artifacts.”

  “He’s a collector?”

  “An entrepreneur. He has visited our island a number of times. He has indeed brought arms, but they are not his to be stockpiled. He receives them from the Pinochet people, pays off the government people, and we have purchased them with our ancestral legacy.”

  “You supplied him with the artifacts.”

  “A few genuine. Most of them fake. We are very good at faking our past. It comes of not having access to how it actually was.”

  “So you have the armaments?”

  “Hidden. And he had the artifacts hidden, as well. Rapanui wouldn’t go into his cave and the Chilean soldiers didn’t know it was there. It is not the boxes they’re after. It’s you.”

  “The bastard,” said Miranda, with a grimace of embarrassment for being so easily betrayed.

  “It would seem he is. Nothing with Mr. Ross is certain, even the circumstances of his birth. Once they find it, you know, the federales will have no hesitation about entering the cave. But my brother, he will cast himself onto the rocks below before he would violate tapu. He is a good Catholic, of course. He would not embrace suicide easily.”

  “Is that going to happen?”

  “Yes, I think so. Your Mr. Ross will lead the Chileans into the ariki’s chamber. They will find you have gone. They will find the book.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but they won’t find the paper with our calculations.” She pushed against the thin material at the waistband of her dress so that it crackled.

  “Good,” he said. “Somewhere between Malta and Casablanca or Tangier.”

  “Do we make a run for it?” she asked, looking around them, wondering where they would run to that was not even more exposed than their present position.

  Without speaking, he took her hand. They walked not fifty paces before coming to a slight crevasse in the rock surface where two slabs of lava had thrust up against one another, leaving a space between. “Down here,” he directed and disappeared into the earth. Miranda dropped to her knees and only then did she see where the crevasse opened at one end into a small cavern under the slabs and she crawled in after him.

  Time passed neither slowly nor fast, but more like a feeling of warmth and security. Finally, voices in the distance moved closer, then away. Matteo climbed out of their lair and peered through the sparse foliage, following their movement. He sank back down into the shadows and stayed very still. They waited for the Land Rover doors to slam, then he spoke.

  “Te Ave Teao is dead.”

  “No!”

  “He was not with them. We must go now.”

  “No,” said Miranda. “We need to talk. I’m so sorry. Your sister. Your brother.” She did not know what to say. He smiled.

  “My mother, she is alive in Toronto. Someday I must come and visit you both. Perhaps I will be a doctor as I was supposed to be and I will make my mother proud.”

  Miranda was speechless. This was a man. She reached out and touched his cheek with her fingertips. This was a man unlike any she could have imagined.

  * * *

  When Morgan woke up he was alone. He burrowed deeper into the damp moss, but could not get comfortable. A chill running shivers down his spine forced him to crawl out into the open where he felt almost cowed by the vastness of the Arctic sky. A vault of royal blue arced from horizon to horizon in every direction, including the west where the wall of glacial ice stood proud over the ragged landscape. As his gaze swung to the north, he saw a wisp of white that appeared first like a crack in the blue, then wavered, and he realized it was smoke.

  Gloria Simmons approached him from behind and put her hand on his shoulder. “I see it,” she said. “There was no point in waking you. We can’t get across for a few more hours.”

  “Yeah, we probably can if we go upriver or down.”

  “Upriver, then, toward the glacier. It’s narrower.” She climbed onto a slight rise of rubbled rock. “No, downriver, it spreads, we’ll find a shallow place.” She jumped down. “I told you he was alive.”

  Close to the sea, they picked their way across knee-deep water, bracing each other in the surges, and stopped on the far shore to empty their boots and wring out their sodden socks, then trudged in silence over the rough terrain until they cut through a breach in the rocks and came out into a small open space in front of a granite boulder slide, and there in a natural cavern gouged out of the slope were two men reclined beside a smouldering fire of moss and dwarf willow twigs.

  “Harrington D’Arcy?” Morgan whispered into the smoke.

  D’Arcy raised his head slowly and seemed to be trying to bring Morgan into focus. His face showed a deathly pallor and his eyes seemed almost vacant, yet he spoke in a surprisingly clear, but tremulous voice. “I’m glad you are here, Detective.” He shifted his gaze. “And you, Gloria, of course, you have come for me.” He seemed to be trying to reach up as she leaned down to embrace him. “I don’t suppose you’ve brought dinner?” he whispered. He reached an index finger up to his lips, then rubbed it against the bristle of his mustache in a small gesture of resignation before letting his hand drop back against his chest. “No, of course,” he murmured. Then, rousing his spirits he declared with incongruous formality, “This is Miguel Escobar, we lost our associate, buried him by the shore, the cold got to him quickly, he was a smoker, his lighter has come in handy, we’re lucky for that.” He slumped back, exhausted by his role as host.

  Gloria Simmons took off her jacket and wrapped it around him. Harrington D’Arcy was already wearing a layer of the dead man’s clothes, as was Miguel Escobar. Morgan removed his own jacket and draped in over the other man’s shoulders. The man forced a grim smile, but made no effort to speak. Morgan immediately set about gathering sticks of dried willow from ancient trees that had died having reached maturity at the height of his knees, after lives huddled close to the ground waiting for their brief seasons of growth and renewal. Gloria moved around with equal vigour to maintain body heat, gathering the driest moss in great clumps t
o build up their crude bivouac into something more comfortable.

  “We need food,” said Morgan and took back his jacket after they had moved Escobar closer to the blazing fire. “I’m going hunting.”

  Once he was out of sight, Morgan slowed his pace. He had never hunted in his life, except in the Don Valley Ravine when he was a kid, and then only for squirrels. With makeshift bows and arrows, and zero success. Dejected, he walked down to the river shallows where they had crossed and he sat on the embankment, staring into the water. The cloudy surface reflected deep blue shards of the sky, but it was ribboned here and there with streaks the colour of tarnished silver. He stood up to examine more clearly the unusual play between light and shadows that moved of their own volition.

  “My goodness,” he said aloud. In a few of the deeper pools close to the shore he could identify patterns that were facing upstream, with their tails to the sea, swimming lazily against the diminishing current. Morgan ran through the files in his mind. Arctic char was a freshwater and saltwater fish in the salmon family. Exceptionally hardy, thrived in the coldest waters, flesh a deep pink. Served occasionally in the same Toronto restaurants that also featured caribou and musk ox on their menus. He had never tried it.

  He found a twisted branch among a thicket of dwarf willows the length of a walking stick. He broke it laterally and then sharpened the end on a rough piece of granite. He carried rocks to the bank and made a pile beside a submerged pool no bigger than a bathtub, then he waded into the water and hoisted the rocks into position to form a weir that gradually circled around to become an enclosure with an open segment in the downstream end. Periodically, he climbed out onto the land where he jumped up and down and stamped his feet and waved his arms wildly until feeling came back in the form of excruciating pain.

  Surveying his work with satisfaction, he moved downstream until he spied a couple of char, then he made his way out into the flow and slowly closed in on them so that they lazily swam upstream and into his weir. There was enough water flowing through the rocks he had built on the upper side that the fish seemed content to linger in the current, oblivious to their fate. After another wild dance to warm his extremities, Morgan repeated the procedure, beating three fish, this time, upstream into the enclosure. Then he reached over and lifted rocks to block the downstream opening and proceeded with the slaughter.

  Walking back to the encampment with five Arctic char strung through the gills on his warped willow spear, Morgan felt a strange sense of contentment and wonder. He seemed to have been working from a corner of his mind not previously explored. The notion of a survival instinct meant something different now than in his familiar world. He felt at home here as he never quite did on the streets of the city. Part of him hoped they would not be rescued for days. When he came over the rise into the open, he triumphantly held the fish out in front of him and tried to suppress a broad grin. His eyes watered as he peered at the other three through the fire’s sweet-smelling haze that hovered over them like a nimbus signalling their salvation. Approaching closely, he set down his catch.

  “Morgan,” whispered Gloria Simmons, gazing up at him through the smoke with a sad smile. “Morgan,” she repeated, her words barely audible, “Harrington D’Arcy is dead.”

  * * *

  Matteo and Miranda approached the crowd of tourists seeking shade at the campgrounds below Rano Raraku. Dressed in safari clothes and Hawaiian holiday beach togs, the medley of European, American, and Japanese tourists had finished boxed lunches and were waiting to board buses back to their ship. Matteo and Miranda had been holding hands like wandering lovers as they ambled into view and on an island where everything seemed strange they drew no attention to themselves in their bedraggled state as they mingled with the visitors. Matteo spoke briefly to one of the drivers. They clambered into the back of a bus.

  “I will get off before the bus leaves,” he said. “Once you are on the boat and at sea, you will turn yourself over to the captain. He will make arrangements.”

  “Can’t you come with me?” Miranda responded, realizing how small the island was, how limited his movements. “They will be after you, especially now.”

  “It depends whether Te Ave Teao jumped or pretended to slip.”

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “They know we are brothers. If his death was an accident, they will offer condolences. If his death was by choice, they will kill me.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “What about Ross, will he give you up?”

  “He has nothing to gain. No, he would be well served by our revolution.”

  “How so?”

  “It is only a rumour, but possibly, when it succeeds, the federal government would collapse.”

  “And this is a good thing? Isn’t Chile a stable democracy?”

  “Yes and no. For us it is immaterial, one way or another. And if other forces brought down the government, that might provide us an opportunity to slip away as collateral damage. It’s a chicken-or-egg situation. It doesn’t matter whether we’re the cause or the outcome. Our interests and those of Mr. Ross’s principal handlers represent parallel routes to perhaps much different ends.”

  “Handlers?”

  “He is a puppet who thinks himself a free agent, and that is what makes him both dangerous and very useful.”

  “The strings are in American dollars?”

  “Money, yes, but vanity, more.”

  “You admire him, don’t you?”

  “He is useful. And you, do you admire him?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “He is attractive, but expendable, remember that. Do not let him get close or you will go down when he does.”

  Whenever Ross appeared, he cast death like a shadow. “I hope never to meet the man again in my life.” She wondered if this were true. “What would he gain if the government collapsed?”

  “What would he lose if it doesn’t?”

  The tourists outside were slowly gathering into their separate groups, milling close to their buses, ready to leave. The moai at Rano Raraku were inspiring, but there was still time to get back for a stroll around the deck and hors d’oeuvres.

  “When you get back to Toronto,” he said, taking her hand, “look up my friend, please. His name is Rove McMan, he is a sailor. And tell my mother I love her.”

  Miranda did not ask how she would find either the sailor or his mother. His lack of specific directives reminded her she was a cop. She would find them, of course.

  As he stood up she pulled him close over her without rising, and holding his face between her two hands she kissed him on the lips, a full lingering kiss that was neither sexual nor like family or a friend. It was a passionate statement of the connection between them. She would always carry that kiss with her, remembered with the whole of her being.

  He was halfway up the aisle when she called him back. With as much discretion as possible, she squirmed around to retrieve from under her dress the dust jacket that had the mysterious coordinates written on the back.

  “You’ll need this,” she said, holding it out to him.

  “No,” he said. “The numbers are inscribed in my mind.” He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, turned, and walked away without looking back.

  As the bus rumbled over the road back to Hanga Roa, she memorized the numbers and shredded the dust jacket. Once aboard the cruise ship, Miranda kept to public rooms until Rapa Nui had slipped below the eastern horizon. Then she found a steward and after some insistence he agreed to take her to see the captain on the bridge. The master of the ship was a robust man with a beard, probably of eastern European origin, although his English was impeccable as he spoke to various others on the bridge before turning to her. Miranda suspected he came from Poland and wrote brooding, elaborate parables of the sea in his spare time.

  Expecting the need to make a case for herself as a stowaway, Miranda was thrown when the captain addressed her with elaborate cordiality.

  “Ah, Miss Quin. Mr. Harri
ngton D’Arcy said you would come directly to me and so you have. Welcome aboard. I hope your flight, or should I say flights, from Toronto, yes, Canada, were not excessively arduous. Mr. D’Arcy asked me to give you this. You must have been rather rushed to leave your hotel empty-handed, so to speak.”

  Miranda opened the manila envelope as if it might explode and peered inside, looking for the trigger mechanism. Inside were the necessities of life.

  Since the real D’Arcy was missing, there was a possibility that her mysterious mentor was actually him, but that seemed unlikely since he was last seen in the Arctic. More likely, Ross had reverted to an earlier identity. It must be him. She slowly withdrew a dark blue Canadian passport, convincingly worn at the corners, and opened it to see her own face staring back, looking wan and startled, and she realized what a clever forgery it must be, down to the unpleasant likeness. There was an Ontario driver’s license and a health insurance card, both with the same picture as in the passport. That was a giveaway, should anyone examine these items too closely — the primary document was federal, the other two were provincial. There was no Toronto Police ID, but there were several credit cards tucked into the passport with unfamiliar numbers, both curiously ending in the same four digits. She expected they would be worthless, but the debit card from the Royal Bank, also with an unfamiliar number, she was equally certain would yield cash if she could find a bank machine on board. The PIN number would be the four digits the fake credit cards had in common. She wondered how much she was good for?