Left Turn at Paradise

by Thomas Shawver

  Initially, all I heard was bitching and moaning from the bikers about having to sleep outside the hut following their hard trek over the mountains. Then one of the youths asked when he could have the girl.

  That brought a howl of obscenities from two leather-jacketed devils, leading one of them to toss the kid headlong into the fire. Sparks and ashes flew everywhere as he rolled out, howling and clawing frantically at the embers clinging to his legs, to the general merriment of the others.

  “Now, calm down, lads!” Kildare shouted above the din while the girl was dragged by another Mongrel into the light of the fire. Like Aronui, she might not have been a stranger to the sex trade, but by the look on her terrified face, it was clear she hadn’t signed up for this party.

  “Here’s what’s waitin’ for you if you do your jobs right,” Kildare said, tearing off her jacket and lifting up her sweater. “Some of you youngsters will have to wait your turn when the time comes, but there’s plenty more bints at the marae. We’ve got work to do first.”

  Aronui clutched my arm. She was trembling.

  “Go back,” I whispered. “I’ll join you as soon as I find out what these brutes are up to.”

  She slipped away and I turned my attention back to the campfire, glad to be responsible only for myself.

  Someone sitting directly opposite Kildare had not found the horseplay so amusing. He was too far away for me to see him or hear what was said, but his words silenced the others, even the members of the Mongrel Mob entertainment committee.

  With quiet restored, Kildare proceeded to set out the agenda.

  “At dawn we take the last of the canisters to the caves so the engineers can begin releasing the gas. Should anyone get in the way, you know what to do.”

  “What about the Ranginui?” someone asked.

  “Leave him to me,” a voice answered, “for I have his hau.”

  The words were met with grunts of approval.

  The voice belonged to Witako, who now stepped from the shadows. Accompanying him was Kahoura, all 260 pounds of butt-ugly brawn.

  I remembered what Elsdon Best had written about the power of makutu. To take one’s hau meant stealing the essence of life so that a person’s spiritual and intellectual force no longer had substance. Without a countercharm to the spell, the victim simply wasted away. It sure sounded like that was happening to Ivo Mackin.

  Whether it was the menacing words being bandied about or my natural reaction when close to danger, I was starting to feel a bit addled myself. I’d heard enough. It was time to leave.

  In the midst of turning, however, I detected a faint silhouette in the trees behind me where there had been none before. I froze. Peering into the darkness, I tried like mad to stop the chattering of my teeth. Then I heard a branch break.

  I reacted as if a starting gun had gone off, bolting blindly toward the cover of a murky thicket twenty yards to my right. Had clouds not covered the moon, I might have made it. But it was dark as Pluto’s palace and five paces later I plunged headlong into a pit. The only reason I didn’t break my neck was because a bed of plantain leaves cushioned my fall.

  I started to scramble out, but the sound of approaching voices forced me back into the hole. Hurriedly covering myself with the long fronds, I stopped breathing and waited for the threat to pass.

  Only it didn’t. Not right away. The footsteps halted directly above me, oblivious to my quivering presence. Two men—Mongrels, by their voices—belched and farted and bragged about what the women would soon have coming to them. My blood froze when I felt what I thought were small stones being tossed onto my leafy cover.

  I couldn’t imagine what the men were doing, but one must always consider the positives of a situation. In my case, while the temperature above had dipped considerably, my hiding spot felt downright warm. Rather cozy, in fact, as if I’d fallen onto a mattress heated by an electric blanket. I was prepared to stay there all night, if need be.

  But what goes up must come down—and vice versa, if you’re talking about degrees of temperature. While the two yahoos above continued to yap and shuffle their feet in the cold, I began to feel downright feverish. A natural inclination, one might say, given the stressful situation I was in. As I soon learned, however, it wasn’t only anxiety causing the sweat to pop out on my forehead.

  Suddenly two hundred pounds of something hard and stinking of manure landed on my back.

  I groaned to high heaven, but the mass of whatever it was, plus the bushels of dirt quickly shoveled onto it, must have muffled the noise.

  Only after I reached up to feel the gristly snout of a boar did it dawn on me that I was trapped in a traditional hangi oven. The burning charcoal beneath the stones and leaves was just beginning to heat up. And those weren’t rocks the men had been tossing—they were cabbages, sweet potatoes, and other veggies.

  As any boy raised in the barbecue belt of America can tell you, it’s an exquisitely slow process that requires the utmost patience. The heat builds steadily, then rapidly increases after an hour or two, causing the smoke to infuse the meat with that delicious flavor Arthur Bryant’s is famous for. Given any luck, I’d suffocate long before my tasty flesh began to loosen from my bones.

  There was nothing for it but to climb out of the pit, issue apologies, and sprint for the woods, hoping that my zombielike resurrection would discourage the chefs from pursuit. If that didn’t work, at least I wouldn’t become a surprise dish on that evening’s menu.

  Trouble was, I was trapped in a situation that only a Carnival Cruise comedian could appreciate. The combined weight of pig and dirt had packed me in as tight as a Monday-morning commuter in Tokyo. Only my left arm had any play at all, allowing just enough motion to create a hole for air.

  While the men made their culinary preparations and I struggled in vain beneath a mound of assorted vegetables, a chicken or two, and that damn hog, my brain erupted in utter terror in anticipation of the agony to come.

  * * *

  You may guess what my thoughts were as the minutes crept by, but you’d most likely be wrong. With the singeing heat of the steam attacking my body like a thousand razor cuts, I didn’t think of Josie, my daughter, or the bookstore. Not even rugby. And for damn sure I didn’t waste time asking forgiveness for having wasted much of my life on drink, drugs, and fornication.

  With my lungs bursting, my throat and dirt-clogged nostrils scorched from the steam, my only thought was that it wouldn’t be wise to hurl the contents of my gut into the limited air space in front of my nose. Reptilian instinct was all I had left. My spastic efforts were only good for buying a few more miserable moments of existence. If I’d been trapped underwater, I would have taken a final gulp, but I was denied even that.

  Billy Graham can preach all he wants about it, but there was no bright light at the end of a tunnel, no heavenly voices calling me home. Nothing but blinding pain, suffocation, and pure terror.

  Charming, eh?

  It was close to checkout time, but something in me made a last desperate effort to get free. With the muscles of my neck straining, my head exploding with the pain in my legs and ribs, I thrust my arm as far up as the space allowed.

  Like people who have favorite colors and animals, I have a favorite word. It is “serendipity.” The writer Horace Walpole first coined it in a letter to a friend in the 1750s to describe a pleasant surprise. He took it from a Persian fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip in which the royal characters continually discovered delightful things they weren’t looking for.

  I didn’t expect a helping hand to remove me from that pit. I didn’t expect anything, in fact—only to die. But as soon as my hand emerged from the dirt, I felt the great weight of the hog lift. A moment later someone grabbed my wrist and jerked me like a gigged catfish out of the crater.

  Serendipity.

  The launch nearly dislocated my shoulder and the rush of oxygen ignited the smoldering coals to set my kilt on fire. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. T
he skin was only slightly seared, thanks to my benefactor’s quick action of rolling me in the dirt, but the muscles in my arms and legs were another matter. After the slow roasting in that hellish steam bath they felt like deflated beach balls.

  So did my brain, which—having recognized the immediate danger was over—decided that it was time to take a little nap.

  * * *

  I emerged from my swoon to find myself in my hut with gentle Aronui spreading upon my burns a salve made from boiled bark of the rata tree. Tears ran down her chubby cheeks when I opened my eyes and she practically knocked me out again with the nose pressing that followed.

  It’s odd how being resurrected can recharge certain batteries. While my major appendages felt all but worthless after the harrowing event, there was another that seemed remarkably robust. It might have had to do with breathing real air again.

  Any carnal thoughts were promptly dashed, however, when I noticed Pillow standing by the door. Steely-eyed and with arms crossed, she seemed poised to pounce, should Aronui’s ministrations extend to areas unaffected by flame or steam.

  “Feeling better, are we?” Pillow asked, tossing my civilian clothes to me.

  “Yeah. Thanks for the rescue.”

  “It wasn’t us.”

  “Huh?”

  “At least, not the physical part,” Aronui chimed in. “I’d started back to the marae for help when I spotted four men hauling the pig toward the bunkhouses. I figured they’d be joining Kildare, so I ran back to warn you.”

  “And you saw me fall in the pit?”

  She nodded. “With the men standing around the hangi, there was nothing I could do. Soon, however, only one of them remained to stir the coals. Our friend surprised him with a swipe of the patu. He pulled you out.”

  “Your friend?”

  “You’ll meet him soon,” Pillow said.

  “What happened to the guy who got whacked?”

  Aronui lowered her eyes. “We knew the others would be returning soon.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He was big. Must have weighed eighteen stone. Maybe more. We didn’t have the time to hide him in the woods.”

  “Yeah?”

  She looked up at me. “He took your place under the pig.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m fairly sure he was dead already.”

  “That’s comforting to know.”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I wish it had been Kildare,” she said sweetly.

  Aronui might have looked like an angelic teddy bear when she was teaching me cat’s cradle or the back-knuckle game, and she could certainly be a charming little fox when the mood was upon her, but I’d misjudged her capacity for revenge.

  I glanced sideways at Pillow, expecting her to be shocked, but her face exhibited as much emotion as a stone idol. She and Aronui were two of a kind when it came to Utu, the Maori word Hart had applied to Pillow when describing her retaliation on the Russian oligarch.

  Depending on the circumstances, it can mean the reciprocation of kind deeds or the seeking of vengeance to restore balance. In the old days, when a Maori, man or woman, set out to avenge a grievous wrong, the first person they met, whether friend or foe, was slain—just to get warmed up, I imagine, for the later innings. I reminded myself it would be wise not to make either of these women jealous. Their penchant for Old Testament justice would have made Delilah blanch.

  “How are you feeling?” Pillow asked.

  “Sixty percent.”

  “That will have to do.” She turned to Aronui. “Leave us. Michael and I have something to discuss. Alone.”

  A petulant look flashed across the girl’s face, but after pressing her forehead to mine, she gathered up her lotions and disappeared into the night.

  Pillow turned back to me. “I understand you visited my father this afternoon. Has he changed his mind about the journal?”

  “We didn’t discuss it. There was something far more important on his mind.”

  “I think I know what it was,” she said, walking toward the opening and drawing back the flap. “You can come in now.”

  I got up to see who she was talking to when I suddenly found myself staring into a face that was even more grotesque than the late, great Captain Cook’s.

  “We need to talk,” Kahoura said.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Talk? This from the ruffian who’d sent me to my knees for just looking at him, the same monster who commanded a pack of the worst motorcycle thugs I’d seen this side of Oakland. Considering the knuckle-dragger’s size, however, and the encouraging fact that he’d literally pulled my ass out of the fire, I saw no point in objecting.

  Anyone who’s read my earlier exploits knows my middle name is Malachy, not Dauntless.

  “Get out of the way, bro.”

  I did as ordered and he ducked inside. With a great sigh, he plopped onto my bed mat and began rubbing the back of his leg.

  “I’m Special Constable Richard Kahoura Carlton, New Zealand Federal Police.”

  You’d think I’d be inured to shock by now, but this astounding pronouncement had me wondering when the next bus to Bedlam would arrive.

  “Eh?” I squeaked.

  “Been on assignment for the Conservation Department,” the brute continued. “Before that, it was three years in Hawke’s Bay, establishing my creds with the Mongrel Mob.”

  The cobwebs cleared from my muddled brain. He had my attention. I sat next to him.

  “Why—how—did you put me on the ground at the food line the other day?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That curse or whatever it was. Hit me in the chest like a lightning bolt.”

  “Ahh!” he roared. “You think I sent you to your knees with just a look? Must have been the saintly Ariki who jabbed you. A pin coated with tutu juice works like a Stone Age Taser. In higher doses it’s fatal. I wondered what happened when I saw him chanting the mumbo jumbo over you. Should have known when I saw him chop up the green lizard and have Aronui pitch it into the fire.”

  “Witako?”

  “Just another nasty trick he’s played on you.”

  “You mean the Ariki’s behind all this?”

  “Who bloody else?” Kahoura said, rubbing his chin with the blood-caked patu. “That crafty bugger’s been manipulating Ivo Mackin for years, ever since Ivo began showing signs of the irrational behavior that led to the bankruptcy of TransNational. Even though he was chief operating officer, Terence Robertson couldn’t prevent the downfall of the corporation, but he discovered another way Mackin could regain their fortune through ownership of this valley. In a few months the Ngāti Kāti Māmoe tribe that he controls through Ivo’s provenance will have full title to this area.”

  “Is Ivo aware that the tikanga Maori is more or less a charade? It doesn’t seem worth the effort to con the Inland Revenue for a tax write-off.”

  Kahoura narrowed his eyes—hideous-looking things—but his deep voice was amazingly soft. He was articulate, too, in the way that polymorphs usually are.

  “It’s more than that, Bevan. This is a sophisticated scheme to get control of minerals that are worth billions.”

  I’ve heard some peculiar things in my time, but this absurd claim caused me to forget I was within patu-clubbing distance of a man whose looks would make a Neanderthal mother weep.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I blurted. “The gold and silver deposits were tapped out in these mountains decades ago.”

  Instead of bashing my head, Kahoura smiled, displaying a row of metal teeth.

  “That’s true,” he agreed. “But a century of mining resulted in vast amounts of tailings from those metals. Once thought worthless, they’re far more precious than diamonds now. Ever hear of rare earth elements?”

  “The stuff they make cell phones with?”

  “And iPods and laptops, color TVs, wind turbines, medical imaging, you name it. They represent the fift
een elements having atomic numbers 57 through 71. Modern life wouldn’t be the same without them. To meet future tech demands it’s going to take thousands of times the amount of the stuff currently being extracted. China controls ninety-seven percent of the world’s output. Russia and Brazil most of the rest. Your country is totally dependent on REE imports from them.”

  “Surely America can find deposits of its own.”

  “It did in the eighties and early nineties, but to maintain its monopoly China undercut its prices to make it economically unfeasible. It takes ten years to develop new mines once deposits are discovered. They’re usually difficult to quarry and the risks to the environment are enormous. Only China with its lack of regulations has been willing to make the sacrifice.”

  It’s not often one finds oneself standing in a straw hut being lectured by a tattoo-faced heathen on geological physics as if he were Lord Kelvin. But there it was. The man knew his stuff way beyond what appearances—and his pay grade—would indicate. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn he could play a Bartók concerto on the kazoo as well.

  “But given their lock on the market,” I said, “why are the Chinese bothering with New Zealand?”

  “You have to understand something,” Kahoura answered, bristling at my ignorance of macroeconomics. “The Chinese always look decades ahead. Demand for rare earth materials is growing exponentially. A future New Zealand government will no longer be able to ignore the untapped treasure within these mountains. Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth pales in comparison to what this little country could reap. Underneath us are enough rare earth oxides to cut China’s production by twenty-five percent, maybe more. Even more important, it’s of a much higher grade and would be relatively easy to extract.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says Jiang Tsao, a former guest of Witako. He was one of the Chinese geologists brought in to confirm the extent of the deposits.”

  “Former guest?”

  “He had moral qualms about what was going on. He was last seen being taken into the cavern last week, but not before secretly passing me his notes.”