Kimo grinned. “Don't say something like that in the wrong circles, Caine. These guys seem like they're serious.”
“This proclamation of sovereignty wouldn't have anything to do with rumors of the treasure, would it?”
“I think you can count on it,” Kimo said. “Look at this one.” He handed me another flyer, this one printed on a pale green sheet.
“Oh, ho!” I said. “And this one is their demand that the treasure be immediately turned over to this Kanaka group. âBloodshed is threatened.' That's a nice touch. Isn't that coercion?”
“Look who signed this one.”
“Silversword,” I said. “The same group that's been threatening tourists.”
“Hina hina is Hawaiian for silversword. The same group we talked about earlier. They are nameless and faceless. I'm a Hawaiian and I don't know who they are.”
“But you're a cop, and therefore outside the pale.”
“Not the way I see it.”
“But the way the revolutionaries are going to see it you're as bad, if not worse, as us haoles. You're a traitor. They're patriots. You've sold out. They're holding on to the true path. You cannot be trusted.”
Kimo nodded.
“Lots of groups. It's hard keeping them straight.”
“That's the best part of this. While they argue about which is treading the true path, we get to find out who they are.”
“Silversword and Hina Hina are the same?”
He shrugged. “It makes no difference. They're all cockroaches.”
“So what do you want me to do with this?”
“The university received a bomb threat today. The male, who spoke in a falsetto, said that Donna Wong would be killed unless the site is turned over to the exclusive use of the Hina Hina Kanaka Maoli.”
“Was Hayes mentioned?”
“Nope.”
“And they apparently know nothing of the tomb.”
“They would be shouting that from the rooftops. There would be people in the streets.”
“You're serious.”
Kimo nodded.
“So you want me to be her bodyguard? Is that it?”
Kimo nodded again.
“I'm not exactly at my best. Or hadn't you noticed?”
Kimo grinned. “Then put your bodyguard to work. Donna's been here at the house since we received the threat. I hear you're going out tomorrow at six. We'll have a couple of cars around, just so you won't be worried.”
“The way I feel I'd have to tell them to hold still while I hobble off and find a cop.”
“So use your Mr. Chen.”
I looked at Kimo, trying to find something in his expression that would tell me what he really thought. “You don't like him much, do you?”
“Just stuff I've heard. I don't like your other friend, either.”
“Chawlie?”
“He's not my cup of green tea.”
“But you're willing to use any of us if it suits your purpose.”
“It saves the taxpayers' money.”
“We'll keep an eye on things for her.” I handed him back the flyers. “And these are just the rantings of a couple of overeager students. They threatened the university? You know and I know that they see that as their primary focus, so they'll threaten it as they would fight with their parents. But I don't think they're serious.”
“We've already covered that. This paper comes from the computer lab. Both colors. Some stock of each color is missing.”
“So they're just students.”
Kimo nodded. “Could be. They tend to get a little passionate, politically. Remember the sixties?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Got one of my sons all hot and bothered, too. He'd listen to these guys, probably already has.” He held up the flyers. “Some of this stuff sounds like one of our dinner-table conversations.”
“Not Charles?”
“No, another one. James.”
“Another Kimo.”
“He won't use that name, says it's a missionary name and not from the islands. He wants to be called Keola.”
“So you call him ⦠?”
“James.”
“Tell Charles to come down to the boat at five. We're leaving as soon as Donna loads her gear aboard.”
“His mother say it's okay?”
“I'm assuming.”
“You know what that makes out of you and me.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, you're right. I better talk to Neolani.”
“Yep.”
C
harles came knocking at the gate at twenty minutes to five, catching all of us asleep. I climbed out on deck, stretched, yawned, and wandered down the dock to open the gate and let the boy in. A tiger-stripe sun hung just above the horizon, thin dark bands of clouds partially obscuring its orange face.
Kimo waved his coffee mug at me as he drove off, leaving the young man in my custody for the next several days. He must not have though me such a desperate criminal, to leave his youngest child in my care. That told me that the warrant had not yet hit Honolulu.
I wondered just how long I could string out this dose of freedom. Between the hospital and the threat of jail, my life seemed limited. Chawlie advised me to tell no one of my destination. And then I agreed to take the son of the police officer who would come for me when the warrant was delivered.
It made no sense, but there was nothing I could do about it now.
Charles brought a cardboard box of hot manapua Neolani had made for the trip, and I munched on one as we tramped down to my boat. The white doughy exterior hid a delicious apricot filling, and I got some of it on my beard, which is exactly what you're supposed to do with these things.
Felix and David dragged themselves out of their bunks, splashed water on their faces, and pitched in to help prepare
Olympia
for sea while I percolated a pot of strong Kona.
Donna's sisters arrived promptly at six, dragging diving gear along the dock, still rubbing sleep from their eyes.
By six-thirty we were ready to go but there was no sign of Donna Wong. That didn't sit well with me. This was her party and she hadn't made it. I looked for David and found him below lashing the air bottles so they wouldn't roll around in rough seas.
“Did you keep the lovely Miss Wong up all last night?”
He shook his head. “No, sir. I took her home. We just, ah, we just ⦠I didn't stay more than ten or fifteen minutes.” He blushed while lying, something I found refreshing. Lying is an art, I suppose, that gets easier the more you practice it.
“And during the ten or fifteen minutes you were there she, ah, didn't say she would be late, did she?”
“No, sir. The last thing she told me was that she'd see me here at six or a little before.” He looked at his watch. “She's late, isn't she?”
“Yep.”
“Do you want me to call her?”
“I think that would be a good idea. I'll finish lashing the tanks.”
He nodded, wiped his hands on his shorts, and headed for the communications cabin where I keep the telephones.
He had done a fairly good job of securing the dive tanks to the bulkhead. We didn't want these high-pressure bottles rolling around loose in a rough sea. If something were to happen, if one of the valves became dislodged, the tank could explode. At 2,200 pounds to the square inch, the compressed air would detonate like a stick of dynamite. That would make me very unhappy, seeing a hole in my hull caused by simple carelessness.
I had just finished securing the last tank when he returned.
“No joy,” he said. “All I got was her answering machine. I left a message. Ditto on her cell phone.”
“Probably means she's on her way. I'm sure she has a good explanation. Maybe a piece of her equipment broke down and she had to work on it.”
“She was the one who wanted to get going early.”
“Well ⦠that's one thing you're going to have to learn about close relationships with women. Sometimes you have to wait for them. Sometimes they'll have to wait for you. It works out.”
“I'm worried about her.”
“Now
that
I can't help you with.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you love somebody you can't help but worry about them. It goes with the territory.”
“Who said I loved her?”
“I just made the leap. I watched you two together. It shows.”
“We're deeply in like. She doesn't want me to tell anybody.”
“So who did you tell?”
He nodded, understanding coming into his face.
“Why don't you wait at the parking lot. When she gets here she'll want to unload her equipment as quickly as possible. And she'll be embarrassed by her tardiness. Don't say anything about it, and when she says something, just be understanding. Not patronizing, understanding. Patronizing is worse than giving her a hard time. Believe me.”
“Okay.”
“They don't teach you these things at Berkeley, but it's good for a man to know.”
David looked at me as if I had said something profound. I had been trying to make him smile, but he just didn't have it in him this morning. Either he was worried for Donna or he needed a couple more mugs of Kona before he got his brains going.
And I guessed that I needed more coffee before I got my own brains going. Didn't Kimo say she had received a death threat yesterday?
“Was there a patrol car parked near her house last night?”
“Yes. Parked right at her door. Two guys in it. They waved at us when we went in.”
“Were they there when you left?”
“Yes. They smiled at me when I walked by.”
“Did you talk to them?”
“No, sir.”
“Did they look like they would be there all night?”
“They had a big thermos with them, and I think they looked pretty comfortable.”
So they would be there in the morning, was his conclusion. One that I shared. No use worrying the kid about the threat. If Kimo hung a couple of his people on her, then she would be safe.
“I'll fire up the engine and let it idle and you take Felix and Charles with you. That way you all can probably make just one trip.”
He nodded.
“And don't give her a hard time. It's ungentlemanly.”
Nodding again, he scurried off.
I double-checked all of the tanks and climbed up to the galley and poured myself a second mug of coffee.
Olympia
was deserted, all the young people apparently having decided to wait in the parking lot together. It felt good to be alone again, not to have to mind another person around.
The thought of spending time locked behind concrete and steel wasn't something I wanted to contemplate on this fine and sunny morning. When the authorities decided to bring down fire and brimstone upon me, I would do what I could to resist. But I was not going to waste this priceless Hawaiian day, and the days afloat ahead of me, worrying about it. What would be, would be. And I would take each day, good or bad, as it came, and treat it as the gift that it was, rare and precious, until they ran out and they didn't give me any more.
I looked out the porthole and saw Donna's truck arrive.
David and Charles and her sisters immediately went to the rear of the pick-up and began unloading Donna's equipment. David went to the window. I couldn't tell what he was saying to her, but I hoped he remembered my little speech.
Olympia
is a small vessel. Much too small for a lovers' quarrel. There was
nowhere to go when one of them had to get away from the other.
I looked at my watch.
Eight-seventeen.
More than two hours late.
When the procession trooped up the gangplank I saw her face and recognized both fear and rage in equal parts and wondered if David had done everything backwards. But then I saw that he held her hand, and was physically supporting her, and I wondered what had happened that had made her so late, and so angry, and so scared.
S
he ran out of gas.” David reported the source of Donna's trouble as I was trying to negotiate
Olympia'
s passage through the narrow mouth of Pearl Harbor. It was an inopportune time to talk.
“Hmmm?” I was concentrating on keeping all of
Olympia'
s bow paint intact, slipping between a buoy on my port side and a stationary marker on my starboard.
“She ran out of gas. That's what made her so mad. She was furious with herself.”
“Uh-huh.” It didn't sound believable. The girl had too much on the ball. Furious with herself or not, she wouldn't have run out of gas on one of the most important days of her investigation. It wasn't in character.
“She got onto the Kam Highway and sputtered to a halt over by the Aloha Stadium. Took her over an hour to get to the gas station and back.”
The Aloha Stadium was just around the corner, less than a mile from the Rainbow Marina. She could have easily walked here and one of us would have driven her back. She was a brilliant woman. She carried a cell phone. She didn't have to walk anywhere. She could have called Triple A, or me, or any number of people to come help her. But she didn't. That meant something else had happened. And she didn't want us to know.
I didn't share my conclusion with David. He had enough on
his mind, being newly in love, or lust, or like, or whatever malady he currently suffered from. I didn't want him to think his new lady friend was feeding him falsehoods.
“Let's get those sails up,” I said to him instead. We had cleared the harbor and were now ready to become a sailboat. “Charles!”
“Yo,” he called from the foredeck. White spray was already splashing high across the bow.
“I'm going to raise the mainsail.”
“Yo.”
“Yo? Where'd you learn that?”
“From Felix. It's sailor talk.”
“Sure it is. Where's your parrot?” I turned to David. “Take the wheel.” I carefully crept forward to raise the mainsail, mindful of the need of keeping dry. “Keep her on the same course. Right toward Diamond Head.” I pointed to make sure he understood. He was a college student, working on fuzzy logic, or something. I wanted to make certain that he knew this was not just theory.
It didn't take Charles and me long to get all the canvas out there and filled with air. Actually, it wasn't canvas, it was Kevlar, but canvas is what they've called sails for more than a few centuries and I was always one of those traditionalists. It goes with my analog watch.
Kevlar is expensive, but it doesn't rip until it gets old, and then it just disintegrates. When I had to replace all the sails just after my first trip across the Pacific, the salesman sold me on the virtues of Kevlar. It sounded terrific, and costing as much as it did it just had to be the best thing I could buy, right? Well, yeah, but only for a short time. These sails were on their last voyage. And when I replaced them this time it would be with canvas. Traditionalists should know better.
Assuming, of course, that I was free to spend my money and travel where I chose.
I swore that I would not let the threat of jail hang like a cloud over me.
I wouldn't even think about it.
Uh-huh.
“Thanks, David,” I said, taking back the wheel.
“I didn't run her aground.”
“That's a bare minimum,” I said, noting that he was having trouble keeping it on course. The winds were tricky, and we would have to tack until we passed Diamond Head. We could have set course directly for Hawaii as soon as we hit blue water, but I wanted to hug the shore along Waikiki, sailing just off the reefs. I just liked being offshore for awhile, letting our spirits gradually disengage from the island.
Sailing offshore on a bright and cheery day always lifted my spirits. With a compatible group of youngsters on a treasure hunt it should have been a merry event. But Donna's unexplained tardiness and the hurry-up attitude that went with it, plus my own personal troubles, made it a little less festive than it should have been. Sure, there were some serious scientific issues to be settled, but these were young people, and I never knew young people who didn't look for any excuse to party.
When we had established course with the Honolulu shoreline on our port side, I got an idea.
“Charles.”
“Yo?”
“Take the wheel,” I said. “And stop saying âyo.'”
I went below and rummaged around in my communications cabin. When I returned with my ukulele they greeted me with laughter and disbelief.
“Hey, what's this?” Felix pointed and smirked.
“My guitar shrunk,” I said.
“Floor show time?”
“Where's the grass skirt?”
“Do we have to sing along?”
Donna, who had been sitting alone in the lounge, came topside to see what the commotion was about. She shaded her eyes and watched the big clown with the tiny uke.
“I have never explained our motto here at camp,” I said seriously, trying to get their attention. “Clean mind ⦔
“Oh, no.”
“Clean body ⦔
“Jeesh!”
“Take your pick.”
That broke the ice.
“Somebody get me another cup of coffee.”
Donna took my empty mug and disappeared back into the gloom of the cabin, her mouth a straight line.
So she was not buying my corny routine. She had enough on her mind to keep her sober and level. But she was also a warm-blooded womanâat least that was what I presumed from the hints dropped in David's conversationâand she knew how to relax. I was just trying to get her to feel a part of the group. It was her party, after all.
By the time she returned with my Kona, I had launched into my hapa-haole rendition of “I'm Going To Maui Tomorrow,” and I had the kids singing the chorus.
It was just silly enough to appeal to them. Felix, who had stayed on the edge of the group, joined in, and Donna remained on deck, warming either to the sunshine or the song. She didn't sing, but she clapped her hands when it was over.
“Do you know another one?” Susan, one of her sisters, asked.
“No.”
“That's it?”
“That's all I know.”
“You're kidding!”
“I practiced for hours to learn that song. Couldn't stand listening to myself enough to learn another one.”
“May I try?”
I handed her the ukulele and she immediately began strumming so expertly I knew I'd been set up.
“You've done this before.”
She smiled and winked at me and continued playing and singing a beautiful little tune about cutting cane and the evil luna who ran the plantation. I wondered if she knew that the ukulele had come from the Portuguese luna, who had been brought to Hawaii to supervise the cane growing and harvesting. And then I
guessed that she probably did, coming from such a scholarly family.
We reached Diamond Head and I told Charles to set a course for the Big Island, one that would take us close to the western coasts of Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe. This was as much a sightseeing tour as a scientific expedition. And the winds were favorable. We would be on a broad reach all the way until we reached the Alenuihaha Channel.
When she finished I asked her if she knew “Aloha 'oe.”
She answered with her fingers and her lovely young voice.
“Ahola âoe, aloha, 'oe,
“E Ke onaona no ho i ka lipo,
“One fond embrace, a hoâi a'e au
“A hui hou aku.”
“Farewell to you, farewell to you,
“Fragrance in the blue depths,
“One fond embrace and I leave,
“Until we meet again.”
When she finished no one made a sound. There was only the simpatico white noise of
Olympia'
s hull as she rushed through the sea, and the snapping and groaning of her sails and her rigging. Susan had sung it so clearly and sweetly that it affected us all.
“The Queen wrote that,” said Susan, clearing her throat. “Liliuokalani wrote it for her brother the king when he left for an official visit to England. He came down with a disease there and he returned home in a coffin. It was the end of Hawaii as a free nation.”
“The Bayonet Constitution,” I said.
“You know the history.”
“I remember the hundredth anniversary. The papers wrote a lot about it at the time.”
“The Queenâthe only reigning queen Hawaii ever hadâwas arrested and placed under house arrest for years afterward. And the islands became a part of the United States.”
It wasn't that simple, but she got the salient points of the story.
“It was a sad time.”
“Are we resurrecting the bad times? Is what we are about to do going to destroy the peace of Hawaii?”
“I don't know how we can.”
Donna finally spoke. She had been listening intently, leaning against the cabin structure, but now she came into the group and sat down among us.
“What we do is no secret,” she said. “Everyone knows where we are going. We are being followed. And these people will plunder the treasure and desecrate the king's remains.”
She pointed.
Two hundred yards astern of us a white motorsailer plowed through the rough seas, keeping a course identical to the one
Olympia
sailed, I had noticed them earlier, as we changed course at Diamond Head, but had thought nothing about it. Now they plugged along, keeping pace with us.
“Is this going to be a problem?” I asked.
“Yes. If they find Kamehameha's tomb.”
“But they're not dangerous.”
“Not these people. There are others.”
“Felix!”
He had fallen asleep in the sun. Now he roused himself. “Wha?”
“Get the glasses in the com shack. Keep an eye on those guys. I want to know the registration number and the name of the boat.”
He turned and looked, nodded to himself, and went below. When he came back he carried the big 50 x 300's and a pad of paper.
“Mr. Caine?” Donna touched my arm lightly.
I turned and saw that she was crying.
“Can I speak with you? Privately?” She looked at David, as if she were afraid that he would want to comfort her.
I gave him a look that warned him away.
“Come below,” I said, taking her hand and leading her down into the cool, friendly shadows of the lounge.