Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

Chazz was smiling. He’d seen Patria tease with her words before. She did it with students. She used cryptic, potent words: anger, guilt, remorse. He loved it about her, this mischievous methodology.

  “Faith,” she continued, not answering Takamura’s question. “Conviction. Righteousness. Holy Writ. Zeal. People with a mission. Dewilliter, for example. He’s a believer. His faith will make him strong because it gives him meaning. But meaning isn’t enough: he needs a place, a niche, recognition. He needs to know he is noticed. So he provides drama too. Oracular pronouncements. ‘A Sense of Foreboding,’ he said. He knew something was about to happen, and he had to let someone else know he knew. The way he slipped out Lolo.”

  “Where does the faith come in, if he knew? If he had certain knowledge, he didn’t need faith.”

  “Oh, yes. He needed faith. He needed it very much. He needed to believe it was right. People were dying. The cause must be just.”

  “What’s the cause?” Chazz snapped. His own anger was a dry stick breaking in his voice. “Faster boats for the Navy?”

  “No. Fear. Fear drives faith. People fall easily into the sleep of ghosts. We all do.” She shook her head. “Then the killing starts. Nazis, Communists, patriots. Why do you study aikido, Chazz? Because you want a better ethic. It’s why you went to Asilomar, why you argued for sensible constraints. You argue now in favor of honoring the ban on recombinant DNA in weapons research. The ghost-driven would argue against constraints. Out of fear.”

  “These people are making boats go faster. That’s not a weapon, as far as I know.”

  “Quite a few people have died. Violently, without judgment or mercy. That’s a weapon.”

  “It could have been an accident,” Chazz suggested without conviction.

  She shrugged. “It could have been. That’s not really the point. The point, and by now they are quite literally impaled upon it, is that they are capable of doing it, of killing all those people. They’re willing to do it. Remember what you quoted at me not so long ago. Robert Oppenheimer. ‘The physicists have known sin.’ The problem most of us have dealing with these hidden cultures within cultures is that we are the ones who know sin. It limits us. They work under no such handicap.”

  Takamura put on his hat. ‘They have power,” he said. “The United States Navy.” He shrugged. ‘The FBI was unavailable; the Centers for Disease Control recalled their man. At least one of the bodies was KGB. Was he killed? Was he looking into this for the Soviets? Is CIA involved too? Who would know? How could we tell?”

  “We could turn it over to the Feds. Call the senators, the congressmen, tell them what’s happening. We could get out. We’re not responsible for this, you know,” Chazz said.

  “My friend is dying in the hospital,” Takamura reminded him gently. “We have no allies. Who would believe us? We don’t know our enemy’s face. We don’t know what they’re up to or why they’re doing it. We only know they must be stopped. My peace has been disturbed, Chazz. The public trust violated. We are here. I am here. So I will stop them. I’d like your help. At the moment, for instance, I only know who two of them are, and I’m going to have to let them go.”

  Patria cried out “What?” but Chazz nodded.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” he said. “Patria, if what you say is right, then Freeman and Dewilliter really don’t know what they’re doing. Only an idiot would trust Dewilliter with the truth. They are not idiots.”

  “No. They’re not idiots. They’re a conspiracy, a culture within our culture. They look like us, they talk like us. They’re not spies, not foreigners. They have our best interests at heart. They’re sincere. They believe. But they are driven by ghosts, Chazz. They’re afraid, and that makes them dangerous.”

  “They’re like a virus, then,” Chazz said. “Something invaded the people who died. Something got into them and pretended it was part of them, and then it did something that killed them. Every victim has a long stretch of identical DNA. That stretch code’s for something.”

  “Perhaps we’d better find out what,” Takamura suggested. “Perhaps we’d better,” Chazz agreed.

  “What about this sugar mill? It must be nearby,” Patria said.

  “Yes,” Takamura said. “We’ll have to go there eventually.”

  “And we have a more urgent possibility,” Chazz said.

  “There’s a well-equipped biological laboratory on this island: this place, the Douglass Research Center. Dewilliter was there. Dr. Morgan ought to know what his research facility is being used for.” Chazz stood and stretched.

  “Yes, he should,” Takamura agreed. “He ought to be told, if he doesn’t know already.”

  Chazz nodded. “Yes, he might know already,” he said, but he was thinking about Renfrew.

  55

  Morgan had gone to the lower palm gardens. They commandeered a Scout and drove the three miles down the dirt road. He was in the grove on his hands and knees.

  When he saw them coming, he stood slowly. He wore large leather pads strapped to his knees and very muddy gloves. He gestured a pair of clippers at the grove. “Lots of damage,” he said. “Some of the exotics were crushed.”

  Chazz introduced Patria and Takamura. “I believe,” Dr. Morgan said, squinting skyward, “that there might be sun. Perhaps we will see the end of the wet for a while.” He led them all to a gazebo with benches.

  “Now,” he said, settling in.

  Chazz watched Morgan closely while Takamura asked questions. “What do you know about Freddie Dewilliter?”

  Morgan frowned. “Dewilliter? Lobelioids? Youngish man with rimless glasses? He works with plant viroids.”

  “Do you know his work?” Takamura asked.

  “I really can’t say that I do. He came from Johns Hopkins. He’s been here almost a year. You know, it’s funny.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I hardly know the man. Been here almost a year; he came at the end of the spring semester last year, the beginning of the summer. Yes, summer. Highly recommended.”

  The palms were full of birds: cardinals, mynas, a thrush that warbled liquidly. Chazz listened. A varied and rich song drifted among the palms. The sun was coming out.

  “You’re listening to the shama,” Morgan said. “From Malaysia. And over there, see, the red-crested cardinal, from Brazil; there the northern cardinal, the red one. The myna was brought to the islands from India in 1865. Nowhere can you see a bird native to the islands.”

  But then, he went on, nothing is really native to the islands. Everything came here from somewhere else, seeds and insects borne on the air or water, birds strayed from migratory paths, people and pigs from Polynesia, goats from Europe. “Life,” Dr. Morgan said, “is tenacious. It likes to spread.”

  “Who recommended Dewilliter?” Takamura asked.

  “Oh, I am sorry. I do go on sometimes. An enthusiast, you see. Birds, gardening. I believe Ben Silver said he was a graduate student of his some years ago.”

  “And Dr. Silver? How long has he been here?”

  “Oh, goodness, quite some time now.” Morgan pushed his palms down on his leather knee pads and straightened his arms in a gesture that lifted his shoulders. “Let me think, now. He and Andrea came out here three, no, four years ago, for a few months. He dropped in one day, I recall, just after that shipment of seedlings from Java – some of them were in very bad shape and didn’t survive – and asked about the facilities. Quite a delightful man, Ben Silver, delightful to talk with, a very knowledgeable man. Quite remarkable. You were a student of his also, weren’t you, Dr. Koenig?”

  “Yes,” Chazz said. “You’re right, he’s a gifted scientist.” He looked at Takamura. His expression was bleak.

  “Indeed,” Morgan went on. “Very precise. Careful attention to detail, but with leaps of intuition. He would have made an extraordinary gardener if he’d wanted.”

  “Yes,” Takamura said. “He came for a visit, then, is that right? He didn’t stay?”

  “No.” Mor
gan’s head came back down. “No, he didn’t stay then. We corresponded over the next few months. I’d say he’s been here three years now, though. Why?”

  “Dr. Morgan, there’s been some unpleasantness lately.”

  “You’re telling me! The storm did untold damage. I’ll have crews out for weeks assessing it all.”

  “That’s not really what I meant,” Takamura said gently. “Dewilliter, and very likely Dr. Silver, have been possibly engaged in some research that is… suspect.”

  Morgan put up his hands in shock. “Oh, no, surely not! I can’t believe that! I can’t imagine such a thing. No, Dr. Silver has impeccable credentials. He is a personal friend, Lieutenant. And Dewilliter, he studies diseases of the lobelioid family. Surely there is nothing suspect about such things.”

  “‘Humbly suggest not to judge wine by barrel it is in,’” Takamura quoted.

  “What are you suggesting?” Dr. Morgan’s chin trembled.

  “Where was Dr. Silver before he came here, Dr. Morgan?”

  “San Diego, why? I really must insist that you tell me what you’re after. Ben is my friend as well as a colleague.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about it just now,” Takamura said. “I hope we’re wrong. Perhaps we are. You’ve been very helpful. Thank you.” He shook Morgan’s hand. Morgan, still seated, looked uncertain.

  “What did you think?” he asked Chazz as they wound up the dirt road to the Center.

  “He’s a good gardener and a nice person. He doesn’t know anything. This place is a convenient cover for certain Navy researches into a bacterium. Except it isn’t behaving like a bacterium. Has Dr. Shih tried to culture the tissue samples?”

  Takamura shook his head. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask her.”

  “Good. Let’s do that, shall we?”

  They called from Chazz’s office. She had.

  “Nothing you wouldn’t expect,” she said. “A perfectly ordinary zoo of bugs. Normal strains. I thought of that long ago, Dr. Koenig. Long ago. Strachey and I went through the catalogues.”

  “Could I get some tissue samples?” Chazz asked.

  “Come and get ’em.”

  The clouds were gone. Sun dazzled the lush landscape, the greens as dense and rich as the blue of the sky. A rainbow splashed across the Hoary Head; almost gaudy. As they drove past the gatehouse, Chazz thought of the surfer. His replacement was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Just Another Shitty Day in Paradise.”

  ***

  Goode sat down behind his desk with a sigh. He wiped his hand across a forehead damp despite the air conditioning. “Hell, if we hadn’t found the Valiant, we’d have gotten nowhere. And now security has been breached. We’ve gone public, and that could be disastrous.”

  Silver frowned. “Recriminations are useless at this point. We both know we’re doing the right thing. Besides, we have a more immediate problem, Jim: Takamura and Koenig. And Koenig’s wife. We’re obviously not going to convince the three of them that this is merely an escaped bug for long. They may believe that now, but they can add it up. And they’re filled with moral outrage. That’s a dangerous substance, Jim, moral outrage.”

  “There’re only three of them. We have resources. We have her tissue samples; the lab is working up her genotype now. We’ve got Koenig’s, as well. If necessary we can apply pressure. Or they can die of it.”

  “I wouldn’t like that, Jim. We’re killing too many people. Koenig is a prominent scientist. So’s his wife, for that matter. A bunch of Hawaiian derelicts might go unnoticed, victims of poverty and malnutrition, perhaps, susceptible to a mutated virus now under control. But the Koenigs, no, I think that’s a bad idea. But they are going to figure this out sooner or later. Probably sooner. I’m not sure we could get at them, anyway. After all, you said Renfrew barely made it. He took out Collins, of course, but it’s going to be difficult getting at the rest of them.”

  Goode was pacing again. “It’s worse than that,” he said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Renfrew shot a cop.” Goode pushed a sheet of paper across his desk. “Here’s a hospital report. It’s sketchy: the phones went out in the middle. But we got this much. The three of them were taken to the hospital. No firm report on their condition. Everyone but Takamura seems to be out of it, for a while anyway, but we don’t really know. They could be out of the hospital by now. Since Renfrew shot the cop, though, Takamura is going to be very persistent, and he has the Koenigs on his side.”

  Goode slapped the desktop with his palm. It made an explosive sound. “The whole situation is too dangerous, Ben. We’re so close, so very close. We could walk into the President’s office within a month and present him with the complete plan already in place. We’d have a tool for national defense, a deterrent that would be absolutely foolproof, relatively safe and basically free. It would be a Navy project! We’re so damn close. We had to test. I almost wish we hadn’t. But it was necessary.”

  Silver nodded. “We needed the tests, of course. We picked the subjects very carefully. Everything worked according to plan. A couple of things got a little out of control; that’s to be expected. All we have to do is bring events back under control and we’ll be back on track. That means convincing Koenig and Takamura. Killing them is a last resort, Jim. A last resort. I suppose we’d better prepare for it, just in case, but I’d be very reluctant to follow through. But pulling all their support out was not adequate to persuade them.”

  Goode sighed. “Then we’d better finish preparing for the Koenigs. Just in case, as you say. If you can think of a way to convince them, so much the better. And we’d better do something about Renfrew. His methods have been… excessive.”

  “I’ll go to the lab; there’s a lot to do yet. You handle the Naval Intelligence. And I’ll let you know if I think of anything. I think we need to push up the schedule. We can still beat them if we hurry.”

  56

  Takamura dozed. His eyelids drooped, and his chin dipped low enough to show Dewilliter the bald spot on the crown of his head.

  He was looking down at his fingers curled in his lap, thumb tips together, fingers overlapped, so his hands made a circle. He was meditating. Dewilliter twitched uneasily.

  The table between them was empty, a green, institutional surface devoid of data. The walls were equally blank, equally green. The only relief from this emptiness was the door, and the mirror opposite it. But the mirror was behind Dewilliter, and he couldn’t turn around. The hidden fluorescents which cast a sickly pall over the room tinted the detective’s bald spot an unhealthy purple. Dewilliter twitched.

  Takamura did not move; his breathing was undetectable.

  There was no clock, and they had taken Dewilliter’s watch. He was restless and impatient, and now, without a watch or clock, he fretted. Takamura watched him surreptitiously. He was counting seconds; he was planning what to say; then he was realizing he hadn’t been asked anything. Time acquired a liquid quality for Dewilliter, viscous and slick. Takamura said nothing.

  Dewilliter counted seconds. He wondered what Takamura was thinking. Then he wondered if Takamura was thinking. Then he said, “You can’t do this.” There was no reply. “You can’t do this,” he repeated, louder. Takamura’s eyes lifted to his. This appalling serenity was infuriating; Dewilliter said: “I won’t stand for it.”

  Takamura’s eyes told him nothing. They were, Dewilliter thought, empty and alien. Damn his eyes, he thought.

  “You can’t do this,” he said again. “The Project is secret. There are important people behind this. Very important. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Takamura gazed at him in silence.

  “You don’t understand,” Dewilliter said; his voice was a sullen whine. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I work for the government. I didn’t know what they were doing in that cabin. They took me there. I knew Koenig. I didn’t know that was his wife. I never met her. Freeman said go to the cabin, so I went. He said I’d
be needed. What did they need me there for?”

  “I don’t know,” Takamura said quietly. “What did they need you for?” He seemed indifferent.

  “They needed me!” Dewilliter insisted. “They still need me!”

  “That’s not what Freeman says,” Takamura told him.

  “Oh? What does Freeman say? Tell me that. What does he say? Does he say they don’t need me? Is that what he says? God damn him, he doesn’t know. Hell, he’s working on Cetus. I haven’t finished with the vector. He doesn’t… oh, no. They need me,” he finished abruptly.

  Takamura shrugged slightly. “Perhaps.” The word said, no, they don’t need you.

  Dewilliter fidgeted. He took off his rimless glasses and wiped the lenses on his shirt. He put them back on and pushed his shirt into his trousers again. He started to speak, then stopped. In the end he said nothing.

  Takamura’s eyes drooped again. When he spoke, his tone was sympathetic.

  “Of course we know the project is important,” he said. “The vector—”

  “Yes,” Dewilliter interrupted eagerly. “The vector. It’ll work, it does work. The stability, though, we had problems with stability. The strain – either it kept mutating or it wasn’t viable – it died out. So small, you see? They couldn’t stop it. I fixed it, though. Me, I fixed it. I don’t care what Freeman says. They need me. Ben told me.”

  “Yes.” Takamura nodded sympathetically. “Ben was right, I’m sure.”

  Dewilliter’s head bobbed. “Yes. Just ask Ben.”

  Takamura nodded. “Certainly. I’m letting you go. Perhaps you can convince Koenig.”

  “What?” Dewilliter barked. “Convince him? They overrate Koenig. They don’t need him. I can do it. Maybe they thought if I was at the cabin he’d want to join, hah?”

  “Maybe they thought Koenig could help with the stability problem,” Takamura said. He made a small gesture, a tap at his right temple.

  Dewilliter said, “Too right. He’s a liberal. You understand that, you’re a policeman. You understand the importance of stability. Of course, I mean the stability of the vector— but the people involved, they have to be stable, too. Koenig isn’t stable, is he?”