by Rob Swigart
A Nobel scientist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California, interviewed on television in San Francisco, and carried on one of the network news shows, declared that it was a plutonium-powered research satellite launched “probably from Plesetsk,” and that there was some, albeit slight, danger that the plutonium could escape into the atmosphere.
Word began to spread that the entire coast downwind of the crash site, which included all of Lihu’e, the county seat, and the harbor, the airport, and most of the resort hotels up the coast toward Kapa’a and south almost to Koloa, was contaminated. The area of contamination was spreading, and would soon cover the resorts at Poipu. Some fallout had hit Haena, Princeville, and Hanalei on the north side as the craft broke apart in the air over Kaua’i. Food was dangerous, the drinking water was now so radioactive that in a few days, according to some reports, or hours, according to others, it could kill anyone who drank it, and even getting into a car that was outside when the satellite crashed was dangerous. These reports were transmitted mainly by telephone or word of mouth as motorists stopped at gas stations on their way out of the supposedly contaminated areas.
It did not as yet constitute a panic. Most people sensibly laughed off the rumors, unwilling to put up with the inconvenience they would entail if true. But after a few moments’ reflection, many made further telephone calls of their own to relatives or friends in other parts of the island, to hotels in the supposedly contaminated zone, to official county departments. Many of those called were surprised by the questions, since they had not experienced any difficulties, nor had anyone gotten sick. But of course radioactivity was invisible, and a few more people got in their cars and drove west to get out of the fallout region.
The phone system gradually overloaded; delays of as much as five minutes before a call went through were not uncommon. Around ten the police switchboard saw another increase in calls. Meanwhile the radio announcer could only say that the news department was trying to get reliable information and not to panic, but apparently there was some kind of emergency. Please stand by, and do not call the station.
By ten-thirty the bars in Waimea and Kekaha were doing a landslide business, and the rumor mill began to move into high gear, with these two towns as new centers.
Though the sirens had been silent for almost three hours without either official confirmation or denial, most people suspected that the emergency was real. They knew what kind of emergency it was, too: plutonium contamination. “They’re keeping it quiet, see,” someone at The Honeycreeper, an enormous, garishly painted cinderblock bar, said. “They don’t want panic, see. They can’t do nothing, so they don’t want panic. Millions’re gonna die, but they want us all to go like sheep, you see?” He swallowed his beer and thumped the empty glass on the bar. When it was full again, he drank greedily, painting a line of foam across his upper lip.
“I was inna army,” he went on, tapping his companion’s knee with a thick finger. “I seen that atomic stuff. I was inna U. S. Army. Bombs. Artilley… artillery shells. Little yellow `n black sign on ‘em. Atomic. Thass what we have here, see. Russians’ atomic satellites, fallin’ on us. Good thing we’re over here, out of the danger zone.”
“How’d you know all this?” someone behind him asked. He turned.
“You live on this island all your life, you get an instinct for these things,” he said emphatically, finishing his beer and tapping on the bar once more. “ ‘Sides, I was inna army.”
“I was in the army, too,” the other said. “They’re real careful with atomic stuff. I don’t believe it.” He pushed up to the bar and ordered a beer.
“Believe it, see,” the first man muttered.
“Well, if it was true, the police would know. Let’s call the police.”
“I tried that,” someone else said. “You can’t get through. Line’s busy all the time. Everyone must be calling.”
“Then let’s all go over to the police station and ask ‘em.”
Three of four people agreed, and soon a small delegation formed to go over to the Waimea substation to ask about the emergency. Before they got to the door, though, the sirens started again.
“There,” said the first man. “What did I tell ya, see. Atomic fallout.”
“Come on, Mateo, it could be anything. No one’s said it was anything atomic. That’s just a rumor.” They had to shout over the sound of the sirens wailing at the edge of town. Suddenly the wailing died away, started feebly once again, then quit for good.
“That damn thing’s always broke,” Mateo said. “Broke down the other day in the test. Broke down two months ago in the test. Broke down last winter. Somebody from public works came over and fixed it every time. Then it breaks again. They need a new one, see.”
The air in The Honeycreeper was heavy with smoke and tension. No one spoke for a while. “Why’d they sound the siren again?” an older man at the end of the bar asked finally.
“Because there’s an emergency, that’s why,” someone else answered after a silence. “Ain’t that true, Scottie? There’s an emergency. I heard someone say it was some missile test went haywire.”
Scott Handel shook his head. “That wasn’t the emergency signal. That was an alert—just an alert. I don’t know why everyone’s so excited. Probably just an unscheduled test. They do those, you know. I been on duty all day. It’s nothing. Probably Civil Defense just testing the sirens.” He signaled the bartender for a draft.
Mateo finished another beer. He was very drunk by now. “Fuck it,” he said, cradling his head in his arms. “We’re all dead.”
His companion patted him on the back. “Come on, Mateo. Come on. It can’t be that.”
The door opened and three Japanese men entered. They moved as a group through the smoke to an empty table near the back and sat down. They were all dressed in suits, white shirts, and dark ties. All three immediately lit cigarettes for one another and sat back without speaking. The bartender ambled over. “What’ll it be?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon,” the youngest of the three said. “I do not understand.”
“What do you want to drink?” the bartender asked.
The young man nodded. “Yes, thank you. Three beers would be fine, thank you.”
“Any special kind?”
“Do you have Japanese beer?”
“Sure,” the bartender said. “Sapporo, Kirin…”
“Three Sapporo, please.”
The bartender left. The three men settled into a stolid silence.
“Them three don’t seem worried about the satellite,” the bartender told Mateo. “Just come in like regular tourists.”
“Howdja know they’re tourists?” Mateo asked. “Could be from Oahu or somewhere.”
The bartender shook his head. “English isn’t too good. They’re from Japan all right. Weird, too, ‘cause The Honeycreeper’s a little off the tourist track.”
“So was that satellite,” Mateo’s companion said. He was younger than Mateo and not nearly as drunk. He had two deep grooves folded into his forehead and looked permanently worried.
“What’s that mean?” the bartender asked, pausing in the process of opening the three Sapporos.
The young man spread his hands. “Hey, I work up at the radar station, you know. They track everything up there. I heard talk, that’s all.”
Mateo cradled his head in his arms again. “Dead,” he murmured.
“What kind of talk?” Handel asked. He leaned back against the bar where he could see the three Japanese men, who sat upright and sipped slowly at their Sapporos. They still did not appear to be speaking to one another.
“Couple of the guys on duty the other night. They said something went funny on the radar. You know, they have that big satellite dish, for space tracking? And they got a bunch of others, too. They thought there was something funny about the radar trace, that’s all.”
“Yeah?” Handel asked. He was still watching the Japanese men, who had now fallen into an apparently
unimportant conversation in Japanese, although he could not hear them from the bar over the noise of the crowd. They just looked like they were speaking Japanese. “What kind of funny?” he asked finally, taking another sip of his draft.
“Listen, I just work there, you know? I’m not a technician. Something funny, that’s what they said.”
Handel shrugged. “Not important. I just wondered. Lots of people talking about it, the satellite. I wouldn’t believe all these rumors, though. They’re just testing the sirens or something.”
The door swung open and a uniformed officer entered and looked around through the garish fluorescent-lit smoke. When he saw Handel he waved and made his way through the crowd. “Hey, Scottie, I thought I’d find you here. Your partner wants you to call him.”
Handel frowned. “The lieutenant?”
The officer nodded. “Yeah. He called the station. He said he was sorry to bother you. He knew you were on your way home, but didn’t answer the phone, so he thought maybe someone at the station would know where to find you.” He smiled. “Since I know you always stop here, I said I’d come over.”
“OK, Cairnes. I’ll check it out.”
Mateo raised his head. “Say. You come from the police station?”
“Sure,” the officer said. “Why?”
“So what’s going on, anyway? We had all these sirens.”
The officer held out his hands, palms up. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. We got through to Civil Defense on the radio. It was some kind of mistake. They set off all the sirens on the island around eight-thirty, but it was a mistake. The phones’ve been tied up off and on for hours.” He shook his head. “Hell, you know how these things are. They get screwed up all the time.”
Mateo stared at him. “Thass it? Screwed up? Come on.”
The officer shrugged. “It’s all I can say. A fuckup somewhere.”
Handel tapped the officer on the shoulder and moved toward the door. As he went down the steps outside, a car pulled into the parking area to the side of the building and an older man rushed into the bar. Handel paused, then went back to the door and looked in. The man was approaching the table where the Japanese men were seated. He pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning forward to speak urgently.
Handel hesitated. The lieutenant wanted him to call, and he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to call the station if it weren’t important. On the other hand, there were those men they had seen at the Kapuna Shores Development office. He had a feeling it might be important to know what they were up to. He pushed his way back inside and moved to the bar.
The officer was still besieged by anxious questioners. Handel had to tug at his sleeve to get his attention. “Do you know who that is, over there?” He pointed to the Japanese trio.
The officer frowned. “No. Why?”
Handel shook his head. “Maybe you could do me a favor. There’s a new beige Chevrolet station wagon in the lot near the door. Maybe you could run a check on the license for me. I gotta call the lieutenant.”
The officer shrugged. “Sure. You need it right away?”
“Yeah, I’ll be down at the corner in the phone booth, then back here.”
They left together. The phone was just a few steps away, at the corner of the building. As he dialed he watched the officer take down the license number and get in the patrol car.
When she answered the phone, he said, “Uh, Mrs. Takamura. The lieutenant’s been trying to get hold of me, I think. This is Sergeant Handel.”
“Hello, Sergeant. He said he couldn’t wait any longer. If you called, he asked if you could meet him at the Douglass Research Center, please. You know where that is?”
Handel listened to the television mumbling in the background. She was watching the news. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve been there.”
“He said to hurry.”
Handel hesitated. Finally he got in his car and drove the four blocks to the precinct station. “Cairnes here?” he asked.
The officer on duty jerked his thumb toward the back. He found Cairnes at a desk in the squad room. He had the receiver of his telephone propped under his cheek and was reading The Garden Island. When he saw Handel he folded back the paper and showed him the article. It seemed to be suggesting that information from Washington about the satellite was confused at best, and that there existed some doubt as to whose satellite it really was. One “informed source” suggested that it was an Indian communications satellite.
Cairnes pointed to the article underneath it: DEVELOPER VICTOR LINZ SHOT. He ran his thumb along the headline, then mouthed “Your case?” at Handel, who nodded.
Cairnes hunched the receiver to his ear. “Yeah, yeah, go ahead.” He took up a pencil, scratched some information on a memo pad, and tore off the page as he said good-bye. With an “I don’t know” shrug he held it out to Handel, who glanced at it, folded it, and stuck it in his pocket and waved. Then he sprinted for the door.
Even for this late traffic seemed unusually light. People were worried about the sirens, although there was still no official word on what the danger might be. He listened as the radio issued reassuring announcements. The communications network must be functioning now. Civil Defense made a statement to the effect that there was some possibility that the satellite posed a minor health problem to anyone in the vicinity of the crash site, but since it had fallen in the interior of the island in dense rain forest where no one lived, there was very little danger. Stay away from the area of the Wai’ale’ale crater for the time being. Helicopter tours of the area were suspended, and the forest service was requesting hunters and hikers to stay away pending the investigation.
It took fifteen minutes for him to drive to the DRC to meet Cobb. Since he was driving his own battered Dodge he had no police radio; he chewed his lip, worrying that he had taken too long, sidetracked by the appearance of the Japanese men at The Honeycreeper.
He had a hunch. On television, detectives always had hunches, and the hunches were always right. He took his hand off the wheel to snap his fingers. “That’s it,” he exclaimed, swinging out to pass the first car he’d seen since leaving town.
He turned right onto the narrow road that led to the laboratories, whistling to himself. The young man in the guard house waved him through without question when he showed his badge. The night was clear and clean, with large stars and a full bright moon. The hotels would be full of lovers staring up for sheer romance. They would be spending their honeymoon here, breathing in the scents of plumeria leis and each other, while he, Scottie Handel, sergeant of the Kaua’i Police Department’s Investigative Services Bureau, was speeding down a narrow road on official business in the dead of night. As he turned sharply left he thumped the steering wheel with the side of his fist.
At that moment a ghostly white van with its headlights off, briefly glimpsed, entered from a dirt side road onto the road in front of him. As he struggled to get his hand back on the wheel and hit the brakes, his foot caught on the underside of the pedal. His ancient heavy Dodge slewed sideways and skidded violently against the van’s passenger door. For a long moment everything turned, tilted crazily into a collage of bizarre impressions of green and gray, sharp-edged shadow, stars and moon and faces in the window as his car spun toward the foliage at the side on the road.
Then all he heard for some time, and that dimly, was the sound of a car horn endlessly pouring into the night.
CHAPTER 12
“WHAT’S THAT?” PATRIA, her hand resting on Chazz’s shoulder, lifted her head and listened. “Hear something?”
Cobb Takamura, his porkpie hat clutched in both hands, frowned at the window, which showed nothing but his own reflection against the darkness outside. If he looked hard enough, he could see the tops of palms outlined against the stars, very faint behind the glare of the room lights.
“No,” he said.
“It sounds like another siren.”
Chazz, moving two vernier wheels on the microscope, looked up. “Just a
minute. I’ve almost got it. Get ready to turn off those lights.”
“Chazz, listen. It’s not a siren, it’s a car horn just going on and on.”
Cobb frowned harder. “I hear it,” he said. “Accident?”
“What is it about this island?” Chazz complained. “We come here for a nice peaceful life and it’s nothing but mayhem and murder. We should go back to Berkeley where life is simpler.”
“Ho ho, of course. ‘Honors crowd close on this mainland,’ as the great detective would say. Such thirst for worldly success does not befit one of your advanced state of enlightenment.” Cobb faked a laugh. “Maybe I’d better run up the road a little and see what it is.” He seated his hat firmly on his head. At the door he paused briefly to touch his gun.
A large moon floated over the gardens. The rest of the one-story laboratory building was dark, its roof and courtyard wall washed in the moon’s light, which left a sharp slanted shadow down the side where Chazz worked. Only the lights in his office broke the soft dark tranquility of the scene. The white wall looked bleached, like bone.
Cobb moved up the road at a trot. The sound grew louder, and now there was no mistaking its insistence.
He noticed strange things: the sound of his shoes on the asphalt, a kind of whispering swish with each step; the light sway of leaves near the ground, black against gray; the mingled heavy flower scents, so profuse as to defy cataloging; the sharp silver side of a cloud floating near the mountains and the way moonlight stroked its hollows, leaving irregular pools of shadow behind the brilliant highlights of its coral-shaped outgrowths. And the sound of the car horn, on and on as he ran. Urgency pushed him faster. He’d forgotten how long this entry road was. Several miles, he remembered, but there was no point in going back for his car now. The sound was close.