“I told you we need help.”
“Vanya, Vanya, this is a joke. A very sad, expensive joke.
“If I do this, I’m giving up my practice, maybe my freedom. It’s not a joke.”
He passed his hands across his eyes. “No. It’s not. It’s a metaphor. For every egotistical, ill-timed, laughable, abominably amateur, farcical, anarchical plot that ever failed. You cannot go through with this.”
She pulled up in front of the motel, looking straight ahead. “I’m going through with it. Alone.”
He sighed, stared at his hands. His voice was old, resigned. “Right. Just tell me what you want to do. And we will do it.”
Jess stood in her doorway, hesitant. “Vanya? Are you okay?”
She covered a sheaf of papers, maps, diagrams. “Come in.”
Affectionately, Jess put her arm round her shoulder. “I hardly see you anymore. Where do you go?”
“Oh, meetings.”
“He’s here isn’t he? Your friend.”
“He’s come to help us, Jess.”
“Are you in love with him?”
She shook her head, half smiling. “Such a funny word. It means so many things. Or nothing. I would say we’re sexually in thrall.”
Jess pulled back from her. “Your old cliché, reducing everything to . . .”
“Lust. Curiosity in heat.” She crossed her feet up on the desk, assuming the air of a philosopher. “Let me tell you something, Jess. Except for blood ties, tribal connections, what people think of as love is a coma, a trusted dog at your feet. But lust, real driving lust is something else. It... I don’t know, it challenges you, distorts the brain. You don’t court it, it comes when your back is turned. Think of a lion tamer. And every time it roars, you back up, flick the whip, daring it to leap. It’s mental, completely mental.”
“Right,” Jess said. “The whip is control. Even in the throes, you’re still flicking the whip.” She studied her, trying to fathom her. “If you don’t love this Simon, then you’re using him.”
“That’s what people do. It’s not a dirty word. We use people to learn, progress. We compare ourselves as humans, see how we stack up, then try to make improvements. Didn’t you use your friend in New York?”
She flinched, still missing Mars. “He helped me understand what was important to me, that my history here was taking place without me. I never used him. I loved him.”
“Or was it lust? His big, shimmering black body ...”
“Shut up, Vanya. Just shut up. I loved him, and I respected him, I even respected his rage.”
“You were scamming, Jess. You don’t possess that kind of temperament, you wouldn’t blow things up. You’re a healer, remember? You came home looking for the past, some tropical Utopia. You romanticized us, now you feel betrayed.”
Jess hugged herself while Vanya fired all her guns. “I will only feel betrayed if you and Toru die or go to prison. This won’t be a family anymore. It will be just me and Rachel, struggling with this place.”
Vanya smiled. “You can do it, Jess. I was never meant to run a farm.” She suddenly laughed, disdainful. “Rachel and her little harem harvesting the fields. God, what a joke. We’re fighting for our lands, she’s going off to rescue prostitutes in Thailand.”
“She financed half your explosives shipments with money made from prostitutes. How does that make you feel?”
Vanya dropped her feet to the floor, seriously considering the question. “It makes me very glad Hiro’s dead. Look, I understand she needs to launder all that wealth, little do-good errands for her conscience. But why not stay home, take care of our prostitutes? This Thai scheme . . . she asked me what a visa was. She doesn’t even own a passport.”
“She does now.” Jess folded her arms. “Give her credit, will you? She’s going out into the world alone. Think of it!”
Vanya’s expression changed, she suddenly looked pained. “Stubborn, frivolous, crazy bitch. She can’t even read a map. Suppose something happens to her? I won’t be there to help her. Jess, don’t let her go.”
“I can’t stop her. I can’t stop you. No one could stop Ming. Tūtū once said she needed keaumiki to raise us, keep us in line. We inherited her stubborn streak, it’s like the Hapsburg lip. I don’t have that gift of keaumiki. We’re flying apart, Vanya.”
She sat thinking, patting Jess’s arm almost absentmindedly. “When was the last time you saw Waipi‘o Jimi?”
“Years ago. Five? Ten? The last time we went hiking.”
“I want you to call him, Jess. Take a note to him. I can’t be seen up there for several reasons. I won’t involve you any more than this.”
Jess nodded. “Only, promise me after the Centennial you’ll get out of this for good.”
“We’ll see.”
The next day Jess drove up to the northwestern tip of the island, up past Shark Bay and Pu’ukohola Heiau, past the deep waters of Kawaihae, and the dreaming little sugar towns of Hawi and Kapa’au, where air was cooler, diamond sharp and clear. She arrived at a spot of lush tropical gulches, waterfalls soaring three thousand feet from jungle cliffs down to black lava beaches. Below her lay a jungle floor almost two miles wide, twisting back into itself for seven miles.
Mysterious Waipi‘o Valley, the Valley of Ancient Kings—Umi, Liloa. Here in 1780, Kamehameha I received his war god, Kukailimoku, from reigning chiefs, and here he was singled out as future ruler, the Great One. Here in 1791, he and Kaheiki engaged in the first naval battle in Hawaiian history using kepuwahaulaula, cannon, the red-mouthed gun.
Waipi‘o was the home of ancient Hawaiian settlers numbering in the thousands, place of mass human sacrifices, burial caves laced with bones untouched for centuries. Down the years it had become a sanctuary for priests, kāhuna, refuge for rebels, outcasts, victims of ma‘i Pākē. Except for old renegades still tending taro farms, few people lived in the valley now. Those who came, left soon with tales of Night Marchers clubbing them in sleep, angry menehune who pushed branches through their cheeks, and blue-faced dogs who danced on hind legs like wāhine.
Jess parked her car at Lookout Point, frequented by tourists. There were mudslide paths for sturdy hikers willing to struggle through jungle brush down to black sand beaches fronting the valley. Most tourists were content to stand beside their cars, snapping photos of the lushness far below. After half an hour, Jess heard a horse whinny. Someone cursed softly, urging it up the mountain path. She smiled as the old man’s dark, leathery face appeared. He waved, dismounted, tied his horse to a tree.
They sat in sunlight, sucking Kona oranges, while he read Vanya’s note. Waipi‘o Jimi had lived in the valley all his life, descendant of Royalists-turned-guerillas who, a hundred years ago when America dethroned their queen, sought sanctuary in the valley after kidnapping five U.S. Marines, relieving them of uniforms and arms, tying them naked to palm trees on Honolulu’s main street. Sixty years ago, his ’ohana had helped Duke and Pono when they were running for their lives.
“Can you tell me what it says, Jimi?”
He folded the note, shook his head. “Vanya say no. See, keiki, she want you stay safe, for run da farm. You girls da bosses now. Somet’ing happen you, farm be pau.”
“Will you help her?”
He smiled, baring big purple gums. “I go foah broke foah Vanya. Any keiki of Pono, I cut my heart out for. Look my horse, handsome, neh? Pono give me, years ago. She give me five horses. I say Pono, ’nuff! ’nuff! I no want no ranch! She nevah forget me. I six years old when bounty hunters chase her and Duke here to Waipi‘o. Some weeks we got no food foah dem, ’cept taro. Dey live like wild dogs in da bush. You know, even when she starvin’ look like scarecrow, she most beautiful wahine I ever seen.”
He wiped his eyes, studied Jess. “You got a little bit her face, da nose, da chin. God bless you, keiki. Go home take care da farm.”
She stood and hugged him. “What should I tell Vanya?”
“Yes. Say her Waipi‘o Jimi say yes.”
&
nbsp; Dressed like a tourist in Bermuda shorts, tortoise sunglasses, Simon Weir studied a brochure and frowned. “Twelve restaurants. Ten bars. Two full-size discotheques. Six free-form swimming pools. Six tennis courts, including a nine-hundred-seat stadium. Golf, racquetball, squash. Health spa. Thirty-seven boutiques. Three thousand guest rooms, each with bidet. All under one roof. ‘THE MOST FANTASTIC RESORT ON EARTH.᾿” He looked across the table at Vanya. “God, it’s a bloody circus.”
She read off other “amenities” offered by the Halenani Resort. “Besides the health spa, they offer a ‘Holotropic Breathing’ workshop. Also workshops with ‘Life Enhancement Consultants.’ Here’s a weekend seminar led by a ‘Cranial-Sacral Therapist,’ a Dr. Rebirth, held in the Temple of Love.” She looked at him, spoke softly. “Can you believe this crap.”
They sat at one of one of the hotel’s posh outdoor cafés, this one overlooking a pond surrounded by tall lava stone walls, where hotel guests, under supervision, fed and played with eight imprisoned bottle-nosed dolphins.
“They advertise the dolphins as part of a ‘Marine Life Fund,’ kept here for the ‘Advancement of Marine Education, Conservation and Research,’” Vanya said. “I contacted two of the marine biologists from Stanford University listed on their Board of Research. They’re qualified researchers all right. The hotel pays them for the use of their names, but neither of them has ever set foot on this island.”
In a corner cage affair, bars kept four of the dolphins from the other four.
“That’s to discipline them,” Simon said. “The waiter said sometimes they get depressed, and won’t perform. They’re kept in the cage for a penalty period, like delinquents. Meanwhile three dolphins have already died in here. They blame it on ciguatera.”
Vanya gazed at the intelligent, graceful mammals leaping in the pathetically small pond.
“What about public sentiment?” he asked. “I should think locals would be up in arms.”
“When they first brought in the dolphins, locals demonstrated in front of the hotel, on the highway, in town; they wrote letters to the governor demanding their release. No response. When dolphins started dying, a group of kanaka tried to set the others free. Came in by sea, used slings trying to lift them over those lava walls. A disaster. They went to prison. Now this place is crawling with security.”
Simon glanced round the bar and adjoining pool, picking them out easily. Clothes, posture, casual, but bodies a little too fit, eyes a little too quick behind sunglasses.
“Who’s your ‘in’ here?” he asked.
“Gardeners. Chambermaids. All locals. The head of maintenance has access to the infrastructure, plumbing, pipelines, sewage units.”
As they strolled round, taking snapshots of Vanya in tennis whites, the hotel grounds strategically behind her, Simon shook his head, disbelieving the layout of this $400 million mega-resort. The two-hundred-acre complex had once been nothing but a bleak lava desert fronting the Pacific. Tons of sand were hauled in, thousands of tropical plants, palm trees, acres of roll-out lawns. Now, half a dozen man-made ponds and grottoes were separated from large lagoons by islets boasting Oriental statuary and even smaller “contemplation pools,” connected one to the other by myriad arched bridges.
Big-engined pleasure boats with uniformed “captains” cruised canals, ferrying guests to one of six suite towers. Guides bellowed out approaching towers through bullhorns. On an elevated monorail, a hightech “torpedo” train circumnavigated the entire resort. Eerily juxtaposed against swaying palms, ancient volcanoes in the distance, the thing screeched in at designated “stations,” then snorted out again. Most guests pointedly avoided it. At night, shrieking through the hotel’s sound-and-light show, it seemed a ghost train rumbling round and round, abandoned toy of a giant, moody child.
Strolling through the lobby, an architect’s wet dream of a twenty-first-century Polynesian palace, they climbed a monumental staircase with huge towering columns, which gave out onto a panoramic view of a lagoon, beyond that a simulated beach—sand imported from another island—and, finally, the sea.
“Talk about urban blight,” Simon whispered. “Whole place should be leveled.”
“Where would you start?”
“Right here. At night.” He looked at the grandiose roof and columns overhead, the empty staircase behind them. “Least amount of human traffic. Far from shops and restaurants. I’d also like to blow that fucking silly train. Too risky, though. Has to be something stationary.”
“How long would it take, once a bomb is planted?”
He looked at her steadily. “As long as you like. Any way you like. Timer. Climate-activated. Do it dry, do it wet. Voice-activated. Even code. I can sing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ ten miles away. On the second chorus, it would blow.”
They shot another roll of film, then strolled back toward the parking lot, observing security cameras positioned in the lobby, outside the hotel entrance, in bushes leading to the tennis courts.
“Crucial part is the plant,” he said. “It has to be staff, someone low-profile we can trust.”
Vanya nodded. “There’s an old gardener here named Kito. Loves flowers, hates haole. A decorated infantryman in Korea.”
“Let’s hope he still remembers explosives.”
In late afternoon, they stood in Kailua Town overlooking the bay, watching Santa arrive by submarine, escorted by a flotilla of Christmas-lit boats. All through the town, in towns throughout the island, glitter lights were wound round trunks of palm trees. Bands marched in the streets playing “Mele Kalikimaka,” and in King Kamehameha Hotel a children’s choir sang “Joy to the World,” and “Drummer Boy,” in Hawaiian.
“Christmas in the islands.” Simon smiled. “Rather innocent, and touching.”
“What’s it like at home, in the Kakadu?” she asked.
“Oh, I sit round campfires with the boys, eating witchetty grub and talking ‘Dreamtime.’”
“Do you miss it, Simon?”
“Not yet. Though, I aim to go back. After we serve our prison terms, I figure you and I can retire there. Pen our memoirs in the bush.”
Driving north up into the hill towns, they saw coffee shacks adorned with gold and silver garlands, cardboard Nativity scenes blinked off and on. In the town of Kainali’u, a flatbed truck roared past them in the back of which staggered a half-naked man in red Santa hat, red rubber boots and grass skirt. He was clutching a bottle of whiskey in one hand and in the other what looked like a rifle. The driver pulled over, got out and flagged them down, slightly drunk.
He leaned down in her window. “Vanya! Lissen, we did one numbah-one job tonight! Stashed plenny crates in one hidin’ place no one evah goin’ find. Like one giant bunkah!”
Simon threw open his door, staring at the reeling Santa on the truck. “Say, mate, tell me that’s not an assault rifle that silly fucker’s waving.”
“Oh, sheeet!” The driver ran back toward the truck as Santa flung the bottle in the air, aimed the rifle, and shot. A telephone pole cracked and tilted, wires sagging.
Before the drunk could aim again, Simon was on the truck beside him, squeezing his windpipe with thumb and forefinger. Santa dropped the assault rifle, seeming to fall asleep on his feet. Simon kicked his legs out from under him, grabbed the rifle, and jumped down, throwing the husky driver against the truck. He seemed to question him, then waved him on. The truck roared off as he climbed back into the car, running his hands down the rifle barrel.
“Should have shot the bleeder. Shot them both. Said they liberated the rifle from the cache so they could target practice. Target practice!”
Later, lying beside him in his bed, she could still feel his tension. She tried to apologize but it came out defensive.
“I’m sorry, Simon, sorry they don’t have the ethos of a crack commando unit!”
“Its a right mess I can tell you. Be a miracle if we don’t end up behind bars.”
“You can pull out anytime.”
He turned to
her. “No. I can’t. Leave it to your kanaka boys, they’ll blow themselves to pieces. If you’d just let me work alone, I could do it with my eyes closed.”
She sat up chilled, rubbing her arms. “You could do it in your sleep, I bet.”
“It takes a certain amount of gall. One must be swift, detached. No apprehension. One should not even perspire.”
“God, how you relish it. You’re still an assassin in your heart.”
He pulled away from her, so stunned his voice turned soft. “No. I’m not. It came with basic military training, something I was schooled in, became expert in. One day I discovered I was addicted to the drill. Bait, Pursue, Exterminate. I started fearing for my sanity.”
He took her hand, sick with remembering. “In Central America, I saw a friend hose down a family while they were still wiping sleep from their eyes. He didn’t know why; they weren’t insurgents. It was like his gun had become his brain, dictating every move. When he was finished, I looked down at three generations, sweet-faced people, even children, in slippers and robes. I saw what we were, what we’d become. I wasted him, my best friend. Everything I had, I poured into his stomach. Then, I walked out of that country and out of that life. For years there was this large fatigue, a kind of gutlessness, lack of stomach for any kind of confrontation. I have retained that gutlessness.”
“Then why are you here?”
He pulled her closer. “I said I’d do what it takes to prove myself. I wouldn’t choose to do this, but now I see I might save your life. You cannot put bombs in the hands of irresponsible drunken blokes, even if it is their cause.” He smoothed her hair back like a child. “I’m not an assassin, sweetheart. I’m just a man, trying to save someone I value.”
Much later, a sudden absence in the bed beside her woke her. Simon sat by a window, energetically scratching his arm and neck.
“What is it?” she asked.
“This bloody crud ...”
She lit a lamp and stood beside him, seeing on his arm a pimply red rash, and interspersed among the rash odd, small, white patches. She closed her eyes, steadying herself. “How long have you had this.”
Shark Dialogues Page 49