“The tomb was in the water!”
“It was underwater?”
“The island is dynamic. This part of the coast was above water six or seven hundred years ago. The island of Hawaii is so heavy that it sinks into the earth's mantle as the volcano grows higher. It's the largest mountain on earth, and it can't get any bigger. It has reached critical mass for equilibrium. As it grows, it also sinks. Someone had built a tomb in the rocks along the coast back when the old lava tube, a cave formed by flowing lava, had been above the surface, or possibly in the shallow surfline. Two hundred years ago it would have been in even shallower water but would have been at least partially submerged. That's why I think repairing. I think this was a forgotten tomb or hiding place in the early nineteenth century, when Kamehameha died. That he knew about it was almost certain. He knew most of this coastline. This was his home as a young man.
“We began diving the next day, using SCUBA and lights. It took us a month of searching, but we found it.
“We found a lava tube predating the 1802 Hualalai event, with its shallow side almost completely obscured by lava and coral. The deeper side, however, was open. We swam into the tube and found a chamber cut from the rock. Inside the chamber was a stone maze. At the end of the maze was the burial chamber. That was where we found the remains of the large man and the Spanish treasure.”
“That's impossible.”
She smiled tiredly. “It would seem that it was possible. And that is why no one has found it until now. Nobody had considered
the fact that the island is constantly sinking. What was possible two hundred years ago would not be possible now, given their technology. We had to slip out of our paradigm.”
“When did he do this?”
“I can only speculate, but I feel that the Hualalai eruption gave him the idea. There's no record of it, so this is strictly guesswork, but I think that he chose the site, thinking that he would eventually be buried by the lava. Of course, it never erupted again. If it had, we would never have found him.”
“You know Pele, the goddess of fire,” said Tutu Mae, speaking softly from the deep cushions in the chair.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Kamehameha and Pele had a close relationship. When he fought King Keoua for control of the Big Island in 1790, a large force of Keoua's warriors were marching from Hilo to Ka'u to attack Kamehameha. Madam Pele lives in Kilauea, you know. She protects those whom she loves and destroys those she dislikes. Keoua's men were destroyed. The volcano erupted, throwing red-hot lava boulders high into the air. The explosions brought down Pele's fire onto the warriors and their women and children, wiping them out entirely.”
Donna Wong nodded. “It is known that Pele loved Kamehameha, and that he returned her love. So we think that the eruption of Hualalai provided him with the location of his tomb.”
“He would rest with Pele.”
“Yes.”
“And the eruption of, when did you say it was?”
“Eighteen-oh-two.”
“And the eruption of 1802 gave him the place.”
“Yes. He saw it happen almost exactly between the place where he was born and where he had decided to die. He must have thought it would be a place where he could be laid to rest.”
“So he prepared his tomb well in advance of its need.”
Donna Wong nodded. “Just like the Egyptian Pharaohs.”
Now I sat back in my chair, fascinated by the story. “So how
do I come in? You've got your career ahead of you right there. You've made a discovery that will make you rich and famous.”
“That's the point. I am not getting credit for it.”
“There have been some threats,” said Tutu Mae.
“There is a problem,” said Kimo.
Y
ou don't have to shout,” said Tutu Mae. “We can hear you, Kimo.”
“I wasn't shouting.”
“It sounded like it to me,” said Tutu Mae.
“We have a problem,” said Kimo, after taking three of four deep breaths. “Miss Wong ⦠Donna ⦠her adviser at the university is taking the credit for her work. In effect, it is theft, but I can't do anything about it because the act is a purely civil matter. That doesn't change the fact that it is theft. Theft of intellectual property is still theft. Her discovery is her property, and it is theft of her hard work and reputation.”
“Does she have an attorney?”
“Yes. Woman named Tala Sufai. You might have heard about her. She won that case against the newspaper last year. She's handling the civil matter. There will be papers to serve, that kind of thing.”
“Oh boy,” I said.
“There's more.”
“You said something about a threat?”
“The other problem is related, we think. And it may involve something criminal, which is where I come in.”
“Is this the treasure? All that wealth suddenly coming to the surface?”
“Yes. And no. Remember that Donna does not plan to bring any of it to the surface. She plans to leave it there, honoring Kamehameha's last wishes. And honoring the bones. She is in the process of extensively photographing and cataloguing the contents. The number of artifacts is numerous. It would take years to do it right on dry land, and she doesn't have that luxury. She is taking great pains to avoid contact with the bones. She has studied what is near the bones, but not the bones themselves.”
“If it is the king,” I said.
Tutu Mae looked at me with that sharp glance of hers and for an instant I thought I was going to be chastised again, but then her features softened, and she nodded. “If it is the king.”
“Do you know for sure or not?”
She looked at Donna Wong, and then back at me. “No,” she said. “We do not know for sure.”
Kimo said, “Wait a minute. That's a point, but it's not something you should worry about.” He looked at Miss Wong. “Donna, why don't you tell Mr. Caine what has put you at odds with your adviser?”
“I will not reveal the location of the find,” she said quietly. “I wish to keep it exactly as I found it. I do not wish for the find to be disturbed any more than I already have.”
Now I understood the problem. Leaving the Hawaiian Holy Grail along with a king's ransom in treasure at the bottom of the sea was an act of self-denial that a few people could understand, let alone actualize. The archeological find and the Spanish treasure, along with their historical and sociological implications, would make her a rich woman, and a famous one. So she had principles. Strong ones. Something that was rare and precious these days. No wonder Tutu Mae had taken her on as a special case.
“What about the threats?”
“Her adviser disagrees with everything she wants to do,” said Tutu Mae. “He wants to haul it all up, bring it to the university, hold a news conference, and tell the world what he found.”
I looked at Donna. “Did he have anything to do with it?”
She shook her head. “He doesn't even know where it is. Otherwise he would have done it already.”
“Does he know what you guess?”
“About Kamehameha?”
I nodded.
“I haven't told him this is a tomb.”
My head swam. “You haven't told your faculty adviser? How can he advise you if you don't tell him what you're doing?”
“I never did trust him. He tried to get too close to me early on, and so I kept my distance. I have been working directly with Tutu Mae for help and advice, only telling him what was necessary to get a little funding from the university. It isn't much, and I've had to find a private investor who has given me some funds, enough to proceed.”
“Does your private investor know?”
“No.” She answered a little too fast for me to believe her.
“I recently learned about my adviser's plans to publish a paper about the treasure,” she continued. “I gave him the early photographs and findings when I thought I needed university backing. Then I tried to publish an early paper on just the treasure this week and coincidentally sent my paper to the same publication where my adviser had sent his. The editor returned it with a scathing note.”
“I thought he didn't know the location.”
“He doesn't.”
“Then how can he claim he found it if he doesn't know where it is?”
“He'll claim it is a work in progress on a secret site. The French did that with the Cosquer Cave. They published photographs and articles on the Neolithic cave paintings and engravings without revealing exactly where they had been discovered. They still guard its location as if it were a national secret.” She reached into her folder and laid out photographs of a huge assortment of silver and golden artifacts, jumbled together in what looked like a cave. Overlying the artifacts were red and white striped cables laid out in a grid, each object numbered with a white tag.
“Wow,” I said.
“He sent his article in more than three months ago. It's set for publication. Since he is senior, and I am so late with the initial paper, my authorship is suspect.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said, mulling the implications. “This guy wants to drag it all up and put it in some museum. But he can't because you won't tell him where it is. And so he's publishing a paper, using your work, so he alone can claim the credit for the discovery. You could easily disprove his claims but you won't because you would have to reveal the location of the tomb, and you don't want to do that because you haven't told anyone that it's a tomb. And you haven't told anyone about the bones because you think it is Kamehameha. Do I have that right?”
She nodded.
“And what about the threats?”
Kimo stirred again. “Have you ever heard of Aha Kuka O Na Kanaka?”
“Hawaiian rights group. A little on the militant side. They have a grand scheme, if I remember it right. They went to give Hawaii back to the Hawaiians?”
Kimo said, “We suspect the group has a striking arm called âSilversword.' We've had some bombs recently, some terrorist incidents.”
“Somebody did a drive-by on the main gate at Pearl.”
He nodded. “Same people, we believe. So far they haven't killed anybody, but it's only a matter of time.”
“So arrest them.”
“Arrest who?” He held up his hands. “I'd love to. Just point me in the right direction.”
“Silversword. That's a plant.”
Tutu Mae said, “Hina hina. It only grew here in Hawaii, and used to cover the slopes of Haleakala. It grew so thickly that the mountain looked as if it were sheathed in silver in the early morning light.”
“It grew?”
“There are still some surviving specimens high up near the rim, but the plant is nearly extinct, the victim of an alien ant.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“The flower depends upon a native bee for pollination. The bee has almost been wiped out because it lives underground. It had no natural enemy, so it lived where it pleased. When the ant was introduced to Hawaii at the end of the nineteenth century, it began invading and killing the queen in its ground nest, carrying off the larvae. The bee could not adapt quickly enough. With the bee gone, the plant soon followed. Now it only grows where the ant has yet to travel. In a few more years both the hina hina and the bee will be gone forever.”
Kimo nodded. “The group calls itself Silversword because they see themselves as threatened with extinction, just like the plant.”
“So they're a bunch of dreamers,” I said. “Who's going to give this place back to the monarchy?”
I saw Tutu Mae's face when I said that and had one of those oh-no moments when I wished I could have called my words back. Her expression went from hurt to rage and back to hurt, and finally settled on resignation, all in the space of an instant.
“You truly do not understand, John Caine,” she said softly, the words striking like a hammer covered in velvet. “Maybe you are not mature enough for this task. Maybe you should go back to live on the mainland where you came from and leave us here.”
“I am truly sorry, Iâ”
“You do not know the pain that your words have caused me.” She looked at Kimo. “I would like to leave this person now. I must go home for my afternoon nap.”
Kimo looked sadly at her. “Now Tutu Mae, why don't you let him apologize? He just said what he said without thinking.”
“He said it without thinking. That's right. He has no feeling for what we have suffered.”
Kimo turned to me, his brown eyes as warm and gentle as I'd ever seen them. And filled with hurt. “John,” he said, his voice tender. “You don't seem to recall that Hawaii belonged to the
Hawaiians for over a thousand years. Some say two thousand. Some do not know how far back we go. We do know that a thousand years ago the great canoes stopped sailing between Tahiti and Hawaiâi, and we were isolated until the Europeans came. Everyone seems to have forgotten that we managed to do just fine here without England, without the United States, without Russia, or France, or any of those other nations who lusted after Hawai'i. Because of Sanford Dole and his cronies we lost our queen, we lost our sovereignty, and we became an unwilling colony of the United States, even though we are the thousands of miles away.”
Kimo paused and looked at me, as if expecting some sort of a response. I nodded.
“We are a colony, John. We know it. Washington knows it. We exist for one thing, and it isn't tourism. We exist here because of Pearl Harbor. We're an outpost, protecting the western coast of the United States's mainland.”
“But I thought you upheld the laws.”
“I do uphold the law, John. But don't take it for granted that I'm just another one of your haole friends who can make fun of the mokes and the kanakas and then push on with the day.”
“I am truly sorry,” I said. “I understand what you are all saying. Please forgive me for making such a reckless statement.”
“I accept your apology, Mr. Caine,” said Tutu Mae, her eyes still blazing. “But I would like to conclude this interview while the day is still young.” She smiled from behind her thick glasses. It wasn't a warm smile. It was just her way of letting me know that I got away with my impolitic statement this one time, and that I would have to watch myself from this point forward.
“You said there were threats?” I said, trying to get back to the point.
Kimo nodded. “Silversword somehow knows something about Donna's discovery. They have claimed the treasure under the Antiquities Repatriation Act. They demand exclusive access to the artifacts.”
“They don't know anything about the remains?”
“Aside from Donna's sisters, who have been the only ones to
dive with her on the site, and those of us in this room, no one knows anything about the bones.”
“So they're after the treasure.”
“One appraisal, a rough one, exceeded one hundred eighty million dollars in gold, silver, and jewels. It could be more.”
“And you want to leave it on the bottom of the ocean.”
“It was his final wish,” said Miss Wong.
“How do they know about it?”
“We believe that Silversword is based at the university. My adviser may have had them as his students.”
“So you might even know them?”
She nodded. “But I wouldn't know them as members of any group. I keep to myself. I don't pay attention to other students.”
“How have they threatened you?”
“They will take action if they are not given access to the site.”
I looked at Kimo. “Do you believe them?”
“It seems difficult. They are mere children.”
“Who shot up Pearl Harbor's main gate and bombed a couple of tourist sites.”
He shrugged. “We don't know that they did that.”
“Yes you do.”
He shrugged again. “They left leaflets.”
I nodded. “So was Miss Wong threatened personally?”
“Only by extension. This genius put himself into the spotlight with his article. They do not know that she exists. She is not in danger. Not yet.”
“He have a name, this talkative, lying thief? Something besides stupid and greedy?”