by Swigart, Rob
“That’s too bad.”
Freddie threw up his hands. “Too bad? What the hell’s matter with you, son? Those was mean guys, gut mean. Not popular around here, anyway. You, on the other hand, are something of a folk hero. Fella works at the airport called up his cousin, who’s married to my wife’s cousin, see, and he said when they came through they didn’t look at all happy. Didn’t talk, didn’t smile. Held his head, the bandaged one did, and the other one was leaning on his buddies. And then, see, Tepe likes to tell about it. He’s a real actor. Almost believe he saw the whole thing, way he tells it. Spinning around, bodies flying, all that.”
“Not true, I’m afraid. It was over in a short time.”
“Sure. Why I came, I wanted to tell you something. I thought of it after you left.” His fingers lightly stroked his graying goatee down, down.
Chazz looked up at him. Even from the chair it was not a long look up. “Go on,” he urged.
“It’s, uh, well, what you might call hearsay, I suppose, but you were asking about the man, the boat leaving and all that, so, I suppose, it applies.”
“Yes?”
He pulled a folded piece of newspaper from his pocket and handed it to Chazz, who shrugged. His eye was still swollen almost shut. Only a thin slit showed. “It’s a little blurred,” he said. “And I don’t read French that well.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Freddie took the paper back and unfolded it. “It’s about the crew, see. Who they are— were. Noel Taviri, see. He was from Huahine, over that way.” Freddie nodded his head toward the distant island, hidden by the bulk of the hospital. “Well, I heard you met Charlie Song?”
“Yes.”
“Noel was working with him.” Freddie stopped speaking. His fingers continued to smooth down his goatee, and his eyes seemed to bulge with unspoken meaning behind his thick glasses.
“You mean they were doing something subversive? Something the government didn’t like?”
“I wouldn’t want to say anything,” Freddie said softly. “I’m a resident here. You have to be careful what you say.”
Chazz nodded. “Why don’t you just read me the piece, then?”
The botanist pushed his glasses back against the bridge of his nose and stared down at the paper. “Well, I’ll just summarize, right? The Ocean Mother, a Gaia Foundation vessel, is in Polynesian waters, you know that, of course, everyone did, but the paper implies this is something significant. A Tahitian man, Noel Taviri, has joined the crew in Papeete as a volunteer. Taviri is a well-known independence activist convicted several times on charges of sedition, is that the word? He was on probation when he joined the ship. Did Charlie tell you he’s spent time in jail too? No? Both of them, years I think. You think Polynesia is so laid back and quiet it’s almost a joke, but the French don’t think it’s funny, they take it serious, see, but they got real sensitive to public opinion, so they move quiet and soft mostly when it comes to these guys.”
Cobb Takamura appeared. “What are you doing to the invalid?” he asked Freddie, who bobbed his head and swallowed.
“He’s reading me the funnies,” Chazz said. “Go on, Freddie.”
Cobb stood with his hands resting on the handles of Chazz’s wheelchair and listened attentively. Freddie went on. “Well, it seems there was a warrant out for Taviri’s arrest again, see, after the protest at Moruroa. The ship went inside national waters despite repeated warnings, et cetera, et cetera. The criminal ringleader was this Noel Taviri. He was unofficial navigator, they say, responsible for showing the Ocean Mother’s captain how to slip in undetected in time for the test. I’m translating here, see, a little between the lines. The tone is more detached and official than that, but it’s what they mean.” Freddie looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I’m not taking a position on this, you understand, just giving you the information. I thought it might be important.”
“Let me get this straight,” Chazz said. “If I read between the lines you are reading between, it means that the French government had some reason to either kill or discredit this Taviri?”
“I didn’t say that exactly,” Freddie protested. “Noel Taviri was not popular in official circles. He knew how to generate publicity. An attractive man, not pretty but well-liked. The official position was that he was the dupe of international terrorists pretendin’ to be ecology activists. But you see, between the lines, so to speak, he looks a lot like a threat.”
“Would someone in official circles be willing to kill the whole crew to get rid of one man?” Cobb asked.
Freddie was shocked “Of course not! Unthinkable.”
“Perhaps not unthinkable in a complicated world like ours.”
“Surely the French government would never tolerate such a thing,” Freddie said drily.
Cobb nodded. “Chazz?”
“Ha-ha. Ouch.”
“Hurt?”
“Only when I laugh. Doesn’t Charlie Chan have anything to say about situations like this?”
“‘Biggest mistake in history made by people who didn’t think.’”
Chazz frowned. “Is that relevant?”
“Perhaps so. If true, someone didn’t think.”
“Only if the truth got out. And this isn’t proof, is it?”
“No. Not proof. A whiff of motive, is all.”
Freddie Barrone spoke up. “There’s a little gossip, too, might be interesting. Not proof either, I guess. But there was some relationship between that man who joined the crew here and one of the people on the boat.”
“Relationship?” Cobb asked. He was looking down the road at the approaching taxi.
“You know what I mean. A… relationship.”
“Ah. Who?”
Freddie shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Don’t know. One of the women, I’d guess. There were two, that American girl and the French woman, the activist. She has had a public kind of life, that one. Guillaume. Very famous person, a celebrity. Known to have had a number of highly publicized affairs, she has, see, been in the gossip magazines. There was an article about her in a Paris Match folks here were passing around, very scandalous, of course not to the Tahitians, they are very easygoing about all that, but some of the more conservative folks. Sorry, it’s probably not important. I just thought I ought to pass it along—I knew that girl, the American one, when she was here. She was a pretty thing, and I think it’s a shame what happened. Even if I’m not political at all.”
A taxi pulled up.
“Goddammit,” Chazz grunted when Cobb tried to help him out of the wheelchair. “I am not an invalid.”
He managed to stand and get in. “Home, James,” he said.
The driver gave them a funny look as he lurched into gear. “I thought airport,” he said shortly.
PART FOUR
THE FIRE THAT SAITH NOT,
IT IS ENOUGH
TWENTY-ONE
THE GANG OF FOUR
When they emerged into the bright sun of the airport pickup zone, all four men put on aviator glasses that concealed their eyes. The biggest had a slight limp he took some pains to conceal. Another, a darker man, wore a knit cap over a bandage stuck to his temple.
They flagged a taxi. Once inside they began talking in a rapid Marseille patois. The cab driver shook his head and grinned. Tourists like this, rubes, always tipped well.
He was wrong. They did not tip well: when he dropped them at a small hotel in Manoa, they paid him carefully, adding a tip that calculated out to just under nine percent. The taxi left two streaks of black rubber on the pavement when it left. They paid cash for two rooms in advance. Two of the men stayed in the room and watched American television while the others went out for lunch at a small Chinese restaurant nearby. When they returned, the second shift went out. By one-thirty they were all asleep.
At 6:05 they picked up their four red diving equipment bags, went downstairs and waited for a taxi. They could hear the voice of the desk clerk in the back office speaking on the telephone, but the early-evenin
g lobby was deserted.
The taxi dropped them at the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor. The leader consulted a piece of paper, then pointed. They walked to the end of the westward pier and waited in a stolid block for several minutes beside a sleek cruiser. Finally, a heavy balding man in a tattered blue sweater and shorts came out of the cabin. He nodded, and the four men tossed their bags onto the deck and leaped aboard. Within minutes the boat was headed out toward the open sea. No one spoke.
She made a good eighteen knots over calm seas with gentle six-foot swells. The sun set in a blaze of orange and gold, leaving streaks of lavender and green across the sky, slowly fading into brilliant starlight. A few small clouds floated three or four thousand feet overhead, turned silver by light from the waning moon just showing over the horizon in the east. The boat rode easily, and by eleven forty-five they could see lights. Half an hour later, they were tied up at the Kaumualii boat basin at the mouth of the Wailua River.
They threw their bags onto the deserted pier. The fat captain stood by, shifting nervously. “I don’t speak French,” he said at last. The entire trip had passed in silence.
“No matter,” said the leader. A scar on his neck below his right ear pulled at the lobe, giving him an off-balance and vaguely menacing look. “I speak English. You will find it all here.” His English was heavily accented, and the captain had to strain to understand.
“He said I’d get paid,” the captain said. “Four thousand, cash. Dollars,” he added.
“Of course.” The English speaker unzipped his windbreaker and handed over a gray envelope. Inside was a thick stack of twenty-dollar bills. The captain counted them carefully.
“All right.” He paused. “This isn’t enough,” he added. His face, tilted to one side, glistened, as if his venality showed on his skin.
“Not possible,” the Frenchman said. “Count again.” He looked impatient and a little bit bored.
“No, no. I mean, four thousand isn’t enough. I don’t think you fellows want me talking about this little trip.”
“Ah, you want a bonus,” the man said. It was not a question. He took out another envelope. “An extra thousand? That would be enough?”
“Yeah, that would be enough.” The captain took the money and turned toward the cabin. The man who had paid him nodded at one of the others, who bounced slightly on the balls of his feet before his foot lashed out in a lightning strike to the side of the captain’s head, which snapped sideways. He slumped to the deck, head at an odd angle, and lay still.
The other two carried the body into the cabin. One rapped the dead captain’s head hard on the corner of the galley table. They found a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon in the galley and poured some into his mouth and onto his clothes. The man with the scar laughed a little as he wrapped the captain’s hand around a glass. Then they dropped the body on the galley floor and left the boat. The whiskey bottle, overturned on the table, poured what was left of its contents onto the dead man’s shirt.
The harbor was deserted. Music from the Coco Palms dance band sounded faintly from up the beach. They carried their bags toward the highway and settled down to wait in the trees alongside the road.
Traffic was light. Headlights swept over their position, but no one stopped.
From time to time, the leader checked a large military chronometer with an illuminated dial, and said a few words to the others.
Half an hour passed.
Finally, the leader stirred, and the four men lifted their bags and began hiking down the road. Whenever a car approached, they melted into the shrubbery or trees at the side. Within an hour, they were in the town of Kapaa.
A few couples wandered around a small park by the ocean at this late hour, enjoying the night breezes. Across from the park, a cafe was lit up. A few people stood in the entrance listening to the music from a small Hawaiian band, electric slide guitar and ukulele, drums. The music was plaintive and maudlin; the four men ignored it. They sat on a bench in the park.
A car approached slowly, then parked with a squeal of brakes. A big man got out, pausing to mop his forehead with a white handkerchief. He looked around after he locked the car door, and walked over to the bench. “Jean-Marie?” he asked. It sounded like John-Mary. The leader nodded without getting up.
Vincent Meissner sat down on the end of the bench and sighed. “It’s late,” he complained. The others said nothing. “Almost two.”
“We have been here,” Jean-Marie said shortly. He did not elaborate.
“Yeah,” Vincent said. “But it’s after my bedtime. Mr. Sangier set up a meeting with some guy named Cavanaugh. He said you’d have something for me.”
“I do not know Sangier,” Jean-Marie said. “Cavanaugh brought us here from Polynésie. We are to tell you there are those in France who wanted to kill your crew. Soon there will be a communiqué, tomorrow perhaps, from the terrorists who committed this awful act.”
“A communiqué?”
“A group acted on behalf of the French people. They will be denounced by the French government, of course, which would never condone such an act. The troublemakers of the Gaia Foundation have found they cannot act with impunity, invading French territorial waters to spy on legitimate actions of the French people. I think that is how it is going to sound. My English is not perfect.”
“Close enough,” Vincent muttered. “These other guys have names?”
The other three stared at him impassively and said nothing.
“Okay. Do you think anyone is going to believe this so-called communiqué? The United States government, for instance, are they going to believe it? The world press?” Vincent felt no relief from the cool night breeze. He was trapped, and he knew it. Gaia could publicize the French government’s assassination of his crew, and the French government would counter that Gaia engineered the deaths and tried to pin the blame on the French. It would be a standoff. The outcome would depend on who could manufacture the most convincing evidence. Vincent did not believe in manufactured evidence. Usually there was enough real evidence to get Gaia the publicity it wanted. Cavanaugh had not offered him anything concrete.
“Look,” Vincent said after a moment of silence. “I hope you’re right, I really do. I hope your fictitious group delivers its fictitious announcement, and everyone falls in line and believes it. It doesn’t help us much, but it doesn’t hurt either. But I think this whole thing is going to blow up in our faces. First of all, the police here aren’t stupid. Given time they’re going to figure out what really happened on the Ocean Mother. I know we didn’t do it… I want to know who did.”
“We are taking care of that,” Jean-Marie said softly. “Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? Jesus Christ, you people are really something, aren’t you?” Vincent stood up. “I’ve half a mind to call the FBI in Honolulu about this. Or, I don't know, the CIA. I think the United States government is interested in stopping your bomb tests.”
“I wouldn’t advise that, Monsieur Meissner. We are meeting you to tell you we are taking care of everything. Cavanaugh called us here to contain the problem. By tomorrow night it will be contained.”
“I do love the way you guys talk. Contain the problem? You think this is some little oil spill or something? Seven people were killed by some kind of venomous goo on my ship. Someone killed them. Seven people! Sangier thinks his pal Cavanaugh can cook up a convincing little lie for the world about some right-wing French group trying to discredit Gaia and then announce it? I don’t believe this. You were supposed to get me evidence of the group, not have them issue a fucking communiqué, for Christ’s sake. I got a crew dead, and you’re telling me some simple-minded terrorist scenario is going to convince anyone. No one attacks environmental groups, you moron, except governments or corporations. Not right-wing fanatics.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Jean-Marie shushed. “It will be fine. The police will lose interest in the investigation. They will have other things to think about.”
Vincent stared down at him. “
What are you talking about?”
Jean-Marie stood up and faced the shorter man. “We will take care of everything.” His eyes glittered in the faint light falling into the park from the street. Across the highway, a couple went into the cafe, allowing the Hawaiian music to spill across the road.
“I don’t like it,” Vincent said. The dark man leaned down and unzipped his dive bag while Vincent was talking. “If they traced you here, the police are going to know I was involved. The whole story will blow up in our faces.”
The dark man had casually drawn a dive knife with a ten-inch serrated blade. He leaned sideways a little and touched the point of the knife to Vincent’s neck, just by the shoulder.
Vincent recoiled. “What the hell are you doing?”
Jean-Marie shrugged. “You’re going to take us for a ride,” he said softly. “Just five friends out for a drive.”
“You can’t do this,” Vincent protested weakly.
“In your car.” He prodded Vincent with the tip. “Now.” Vincent complied.
Jean-Marie, seated in back, shone a pencil flashlight at his paper again. “We are going north.”
Vincent was frightened. “You won’t get away with this,” he stammered. “I’m the head of an international foundation.” He glanced at the dark blade at his neck. The Algerian sat with his arm on the seat back, holding the back of Vincent’s collar.
“Shut up.” Jean-Marie folded the paper and pointed straight ahead past Vincent’s head. He put the car in gear.
The four Frenchmen said nothing. Vincent, responding mechanically to Jean-Marie’s directions, turned left, then left again, then right. Mountains, darker black against the black sky, loomed behind a small house, itself at the end of a mile-long dirt road. They parked in front of a sagging porch. Only a glimmer of faint light seemed to seep through the windows.
“Get out.” The knife moved fractionally and Vincent yelped. He stood shivering in the darkness. Jean-Marie said something to the others and got out. Vincent was breathing heavily. “Inside,” Jean-Marie said.