by R. R. Irvine
Farrington smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?”
The men were halfway to the waiting helicopter when Mrs. Innis came through the door at the back of the Quonset, carrying a platter of sandwiches. “Don’t you want to eat first?”
Before anyone could answer, the helicopter’s engine whined to life. Conversation became impossible. Shaking her head at the din, Mrs. Innis moved along the pews dispensing sandwiches.
At Nick’s first bite, she sighed with relief. Though she’d been hungry enough to eat Spam, Mrs. Innis had worked a miracle, coming up with something that tasted like a tuna-salad sandwich. Everyone ate, even the pacing Yali.
“There are seconds for everyone,” Mrs. Innis announced. “So eat up. We can’t have any leftovers, not in this heat.” She sat beside Nick in the front pew.
Until that moment Nick hadn’t realized how hot it was. The noontime temperature had soared, well into the nineties if she was any judge. The Quonset’s corrigated walls radiated heat like a microwave. Yet part of her felt chilled to the bone by what was happening on the island. If the past was repeating itself, Yali had to be responsible for Tracy and Axelrad, just as his ancestors were responsible for the Innises. Or was she missing something? One way or another she had to know. But with Ohmura hovering nearby, she hesitated to confront the shaman. Yet this might be her last chance now that Farrington and his Navy helicopters were clearly in charge.
She took a deep breath and began. “Henry, there’s something you ought to know.”
Yali stopped pacing but didn’t respond.
“I read the journal,” she went on. “I know about Mount Nomenuk.”
Yali moved behind the pulpit as if wanting a barrier between them. “The mountain belongs to John Frum. It is his pathway from heaven.”
She nudged her father to let him know something was coming. “I don’t believe that someone from heaven would demand the spilling of blood. John Frum must be the devil.”
“Blasphemy!” Yali spat.
Elliot laid a restraining hand on Nick’s arm but she ignored it. “What kind of God would kill people because they walked on his mountain?”
Yali grabbed the pulpit so hard his arms shook. “Frum’s hands are clean.”
“If that’s true,” Nick persisted, “then yours aren’t.”
Yali’s frantic eyes sought Lily, who immediately left the pew to stand beside the shaman.
“A god didn’t kill the Innises,” Nick said calmly.
“Is that what my husband’s reading?” Mrs. Innis asked. “About the death of his parents?”
“I’m afraid so,” Nick told her, thinking that Coltrane had a lot to answer for.
“And the people on this island did that?” Mrs. Innis asked. “That’s what’s in the book?”
“Unless Henry can prove otherwise, that’s what I think.”
Mrs. Innis leaned against Nick and began to sob quietly.
“This must end,” Lily said suddenly. “It’s time, Henry. The truth has to come out.”
“I am John Frum’s priest. He spoke to me personally. He touched me, anointed me. I will not turn against him.”
“Henry,” Lily pleaded, “this isn’t about John Frum anymore.” She reached out to him. He shuddered beneath her touch. “I’m begging you, Henry.”
His shoulders sagged. “I must do my duty. I must—”
The sacristy door banged open.
“Yali!” Innis screamed as he charged through the door, brandishing a revolver. Yali danced away, putting the pulpit between them.
With a swipe of his arm, Innis sent the pulpit crashing to the ground. “Judgment day,” he spat, and pointed the gun at Yali’s head. Lily moved between the two men.
“My hands are clean,” Yali protested.
“You must pay for your father’s sins,” the reverend replied.
Out of the corner of her eye Nick saw a gun appear suddenly in Sam Ohmura’s hand, not a move you’d expect from a middle-aged professor. The gun stayed at his side, beyond Innis’s field of vision.
Yali bowed his head. “If it is the will of John Frum, so be it.”
Innis gestured Lily out of the way. When Lily didn’t budge, Nick grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the line of fire.
“George,” Mrs. Innis said. “Don’t do this.” She leapt from the pew and took Lily’s place. “Remember your commandments. Thou shall not kill.”
“ „I will render vengeance to mine enemies,’ ” Innis answered, his voice as shaky as the rest of him.
“Give me the gun, George.” His wife moved toward him, reaching out, placing herself between Yali and her husband.
Inside the metal hut, the explosion was deafening.
Innis fell to his knees beside his wife, whose staring eyes told Nick that help was useless. Innis flung the revolver against the wall, where Ohmura scooped it up.
“Please, God,” the reverend moaned as he pressed both hands against her wound. “Help me!”
Nick searched for a pulse and then said as gently as she could, “I’m afraid she’s gone.”
Innis looked up at her with pleading eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Nick told him.
CHAPTER 45
Innis blinked, then laid his head against his wife’s bloody breast.
“Enough,” Lily blurted, her eyes filled with tears. She pointed a finger at Yali. “Do you hear me, old man? Too many have died already. No more secrets.”
“Lily, I—”
“Don’t,” Lily snapped. “No more talk.”
“Please,” he said.
“I won’t listen, Henry. We have lived in fear too long. We have become prisoners of our past.”
“As John Frum’s priest, I beg you.”
“My ears are closed to you.” Lily turned her back on him to look at Nick. “Child, if you found the diary, you also found the bones. They are what’s left of the Japanese soldiers that our fathers killed.”
Yali gasped.
Lily nodded. “There, it’s said. It’s done.”
“It was the war,” Yali pleaded.
“The war was over, old man.”
“They invaded our island. They killed our people. They deserved no better.”
Tears were running down Lily’s cheeks. “Listen to yourself, Henry. They were cut off and forgotten. They’d run out of food. They were weak and starving. It was a massacre.”
Nick looked at Ohmura, wondering how a man with his obvious Japanese ancestry would react to such a revelation. But he was only nodding as if he already knew the truth.
“All we did,” Yali went on, “was save the Americans the trouble.”
“We, Henry?” Lily responded with a shake of her head. “You’re acting like you and I did it, but we were only children, then. I refuse to shoulder the blame any longer.”
“I touched John Frum,” Yali said, as if that superseded blame.
Lily’s shoulders sagged. “You never change, old man.” She collapsed onto the pew and bowed her head.
“Lily,” Nick said gently, “I can understand your people’s anger, even their need for revenge against the Japanese. But what about the reverend’s parents?”
“They had discovered part of our secret. So old Thomas Yali and my father, all of the men, decided to kill them and add their bones to those already at Balabat. There was a price though. The village had to be moved away or it would have been poisoned by the souls of the dead.”
“And that’s why your village is on the wet side of the island?”
Lily nodded.
“You still haven’t told me what the Innises found on Mount Nomenuk,” Nick said.
“Come with me,” Lily answered, taking Nick’s hand. “I’ll show you and put an end to the secrets once and for all.”
“No!” Yali screamed frantically.
Lily glared at him. “My mind is made up.”
Yali lunged at her, but Elliot caught him from behind.
“What about the rest of us?” Buet
tner asked. “Can’t we go too?”
“I’m sorry,” Lily told him. “Only Nick may come. It is proper. She is the forerunner.”
Nick looked to Ohmura, questioning him with a glance.
He shrugged. “Do what you want. I’m sure there will be plenty of time for the rest of us to go sightseeing later.”
CHAPTER 46
The hard-packed, winding trail up Mount Nomenuk was obviously well traveled. It was clear of vegetation and solid underfoot despite the rain. For a while it was wide enough for Nick and Lily to walk side by side. But halfway up the two-thousand-foot slope, the trail narrowed, becoming snake-like as it doubled back upon itself to reduce the angle of ascent. They were forced to trudge single file. Lily took the lead, setting the pace.
All around them heavy growth, dominated by walls of bamboo, reduced visibility to only a few yards. If an outsider like herself wandered off the trail by accident, Nick thought, it was doubtful she’d ever find it again.
By the time Lily called a halt, Nick was gasping for breath, the sweat dripping from her like rain. Even the brim of her Cubs cap was soaked. But Lily looked fresh. Or maybe placid would have been a better description.
“Are you okay?” Nick asked, wondering if she was misreading the woman’s appearance.
“For once I feel as light as a feather. A heavy burden has been lifted from me at last.”
Nick swung her cap around like a catcher and looked back the way they’d come. But there was nothing to see but bamboo.
“John Frum’s place isn’t far now,” Lily said.
To Nick, the ground slope looked unsuitable for a landing field. “Did you see John Frum?” she asked.
“Not to talk to.” With that, Lily started climbing again.
For the next few minutes, Nick walked with her head down, watching where she stepped. The ground seemed to be leveling out somewhat, and around them the bamboo thinned.
“There,” Lily said suddenly.
Nick looked up to see a long, straight clearing, lush with knee-high grass. A quarter of a mile of it stretched out before her, ending in a stand of breadfruit trees. For the briefest moment, seeing it from ground level, she didn’t recognize it for what it was. In the next instant, she felt triumphant. She was looking at the airstrip she’d seen from the air, one still usable if the grass were mown.
“Is this where John Frum landed?” Nick asked.
Nodding enigmatically, Lily started down the runway, with Nick hustling after her, marveling at the older woman’s stamina. But then she no longer felt tired, either. Her archaeologist’s adrenaline had kicked in.
Yet as impressive as the strip was, cut into the mountainside by hand, she felt a growing sense of disappointment. A quarter of a mile wasn’t much of a takeoff run for a real airplane. Yet it didn’t make sense that Lily would have challenged Henry Yali’s authority if all that was at stake was just another make-believe airstrip.
Lily stopped suddenly, shading her eyes against the sun, and pointed toward the trees directly ahead.
“I see them, Lily. They’re beautiful.”
“No, child, what we seek is beyond Henry’s airplanes.”
Nick spun the bill of her cap around to shield her eyes. “Is it a real hangar?” she asked, failing to mention that she’d already seen it from the air.
“Yes,” Lily said. “John Frum shares it.”
With whom? Nick thought, but didn’t waste time asking. She wanted to see for herself. Now she led the way, with Lily struggling to keep up.
At the edge of the trees, Nick stopped dead in her tracks. Before her, tucked beneath overhanging tree limbs, stood something she hadn’t expected. It wasn’t one of those round prefab Quonsets, but a square, high-roofed structure. Obviously, it had been built by hand to take full advantage of the natural camouflage.
Blinking, Nick wiped the sweat from her eyes. Not a working hangar, she decided, since there was no door to accommodate an airplane. There was no opening at all that she could see.
Lily pulled up beside her and bowed her head as if in prayer. To show her respect, Nick did the same, though she could barely contain herself. Her heart thumped excitedly; she tingled with expectation.
“You said John Frum shares it,” Nick said.
Lily nodded. “With the forerunner. Come. You’ll meet them both.”
Lily led her to a small door at the side of the building. Like the walls and roof, the door had been hammered together from pieces of metal siding, war salvage judging by the olive-drab paint that still clung to some of the crannies.
Lily pulled a chain from around her neck. “Henry and I are the only ones with keys.” She hesitated. It was clear that the door had been forced.
“Who has been here?” Lily cried, and thrust open the door.
Even with the door open the gloom inside remained impenetrable. Remembering her grim discovery inside the Quonset on Balabat, Nick hesitated.
“I must see what has happened,” Lily said, and disappeared inside.
Nick held her breath, straining to catch the slightest sound. “Lily?”
“Patience, child.”
A moment later light flared, accompanied by the hissing of a kerosene lantern. “It’s all right,” Lily called. “Nothing appears to have been touched.”
Nick stepped over the raised threshold, gazing in wonder. This was no mock-up in front of her. This airplane was real, a twin-engine, twin-tailed bomber. It had to be the original template for John Frum’s air force.
A second lantern blazed to life, this one near the bomber’s nose.
“My God,” Nick murmured reverently. Seen head-on the plane was unlike any other she’d ever encountered. She moved closer, reaching out tentatively to touch this piece of history. Her hand found a seam, a ragged seam without rivets. She circled the plane, finding more such seams, examining them carefully to make certain she wasn’t jumping to the wrong conclusion. All right, she told herself, think. The nose looked like a B-25, though the Plexiglas portion of the nose was missing. The tail looked right, too. But there was something subtly wrong.
“Are there more lanterns, Lily?”
Lily came forward with two more. Their combined light dispelled most of the shadows. It was only then that Nick saw there was no machine-gun turret atop the fuselage, and no opening to show there ever had been one. So it couldn’t have been a warplane like a B-25.
She checked the engines. They were Wright Cyclones sure enough, like the ones that powered B-25s. Only one of the propellers was real, the other an ingenious hand-carved replica.
She raised one of the lanterns high enough to get a better look at the cockpit. The badly cracked Plexiglas windshield appeared to have been glued back together like a jigsaw puzzle.
She examined the port wing and shook her head in awe. It was pockmarked with bullet holes. The starboard wing was relatively undamaged; but then she realized it didn’t match. It had to have come from a separate kind of airplane.
She moved closer to the fuselage door, which was held in place by a piece of heavy wire looped around a rivet.
“Go ahead,” Lily assured her. “It can be opened safely.”
The moment Nick thrust her lantern into the fuselage her knees wobbled. Her hand shook at the enormity of her discovery. The lantern light pitched drunkenly. Despite that, she could see the reason for the ragged metal seams outside. The plane had been recreated by hand, each piece held in place by wrappings of wire.
Directly in front of her, a scrap of jagged metal lay on the fuselage floor. Reverently, she picked it up and held it to the light. It was a foot-long piece of Alclad with a line of rivet holes along its one smooth side. She’d need calipers to prove what she already knew intuitively, that it had been ripped from a larger sheet of 0.032 Alclad.
Shakily, she backed away from the plane and collapsed onto the hard-packed earthen floor, the Alclad clutched in her hand. Lily came over to sit beside her.
Nick dropped her head between her knees and wil
led herself to relax, while Lily gently stroked her back. Finally Nick was calm enough to sit up and ask, “There are two planes here. You put the pieces together, didn’t you?”
“We salvaged them, yes.”
“And one came during the war, is that right?”
“It was John Frum’s plane. But the Japanese hit it with a shell and it exploded. But John Frum got away, at least for a while.”
“And the other plane?”
“That was the forerunner’s. She came before John Frum, as it is hoped you have come before his return.”
Get a hold of yourself, Nick thought. She was jumping to conclusions. Elliot would have her head. She silently repeated his mantra, never make assumptions.
“How far ahead was the forerunner, Lily?” she asked. “Do you know the year?”
Lily shook her head. “I was a small child. I have been told that it was two, maybe three years before the Japanese came.”
It couldn’t be possible, Nick thought. Balesin was too far north, but the time was right.
“And her name?” Nick asked, silently praying for what she considered must be impossible.
“Her name was Mis’a’putam. In your language it means she who comes before. In those days we didn’t speak much English like we do now.”
“And the English name?” Nick asked.
“I was never told. Perhaps Henry knows.”
Nick let out the breath she’d been holding. It was enough. With Lily’s statement, along with Alclad, and the other pieces in the patchwork plane, she could prove what was now obvious. That there were two separate airplanes here, one a B-25, the other a Lockheed Electra. Both had looked very much alike. Both had two engines, twin tails, and similar wing and cockpit configurations. But the Lockheed, a civilian plane, had no gun turrets. Which brought it down to this. It was possible that John Frum, or whoever he was, had flown here during the war in a B-25. Why had he come? Had he been looking for this woman, the forerunner? And if so, why? What was so important about this woman that a B-25 would fly to this flyspeck in the ocean? And even if the B-25 didn’t have anything to do with the previous plane, what was important was that Nick had pieces of a Lockheed Electra five hundred miles north of Howard Island. And Howard Island was where in 1937 the Navy had looked for the world’s most famous aviatrix.