by Swigart, Rob
“Don’t be stupid. I’m an anthropologist, not a chauvinist. His accent sounded forced, unreal. He made me feel a little creepy, that’s all.”
“You believe he isn’t French?” Takamura’s head was tilted with his quizzical look, and she knew he was processing this possibility.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be, or he could just speak better English than he pretends. And why is he so curious about the Ocean Mother?”
“It’s probably big news in Tahiti, you know. They’d just visited there and everyone died. They call it the Death Ship, too.” Chazz was not taken in by her suppositions.
“Well, he gives me the creeps.”
“But handsome, eh? And did you notice his tattoo? An octopus, like Plato. Rather attractive.” Chazz smiled.
“Maybe he belonged to a weird cult of some kind.”
“Ah. Followers of the Octopus Dragon, perhaps?”
“Very funny, Chazz Koenig, very funny. I wish Orli and I were going with you.”
The telephone rang. Cobb answered, spoke, listened, murmured something soft and noncommittal.
“Why do you wish you were going with us?” Chazz asked Patria, even though he knew the answer.
“Because there’s a creep loose on this island. You said so.”
“Yes,” Chazz agreed. “But this creep was a journalist, not a killer.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Now I know you’re joking,” Chazz laughed.
“Another Frenchman,” Cobb announced, hanging up. “A diplomat from San Francisco. Suddenly the French are everywhere.”
PART TWO
THE BARREN WOMB
TEN
DIPLOMACY
The consular official liked Americans. He had said so, out loud and in company, on many occasions. The consular official sat across the desk from a bland-faced police official who was a completely incomprehensible and unreadable Oriental man, despite being an American.
“The situation is unclear,” he repeated for perhaps the fifth or sixth time. “This vessel had an international crew. Two were French citizens. One was Tahitian but a French citizen. We must know what is happening. As far as your investigation is concerned, that is. My superiors…” He shrugged, shifting responsibility to these vague and distant but awesomely powerful entities.
Cobb Takamura dipped his chin in what might have been assent. After a moment, the consular official nodded, almost to himself, and stood up to go. “I will be staying in Kauai for some days. You will contact me if you have anything to tell the French government.” A heavy emphasis on the last word flattened the question into a statement.
Cobb nodded and stood. “Certainly. Kauai County Police are eager to help. Where are you staying?”
The official lifted his hands. “A diplomat can usually find a room at the Hilton.”
“Let us know,” Cobb said. “I’ll be away for a few days myself, but I’ll instruct Sergeant Handel to call you if anything develops. This is a difficult investigation for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the problem of jurisdiction, Mr…” Cobb looked at the business card on his desk. “Mr. Sangier. The high seas, international waters, that sort of thing.”
“This I do not understand,” the official said softly. “You do not coordinate?” Sangier was aware that he lived in a glass house. Two conflicting coded messages in his pocket reminded him that coordination was a quality not necessarily shared by the French services either.
Lieutenant Takamura smiled, and the consular official realized with a sinking heart that the American understood only too well that bureaucracies were the same the world over. The left foot did not know where the right foot was going.
“We do feel there was foul play,” Lieutenant Takamura said suddenly.
“Ah.” The consular official sat down again.
“The crew was dead,” Takamura went on. He blew out through his lips, a curiously guileless gesture. The official said nothing.
“All but one,” Cobb said shortly.
A silence grew between the two men. The silence took on a shape and form of its own, a life independent of the conversational lapse that engendered it. The consular official began to perceive a subtle hint of accusation, a suggestion of governmental impropriety, but his command of American culture was not adequate for defining it. Cobb shook his head. “Not dead.”
“I had understood everyone was dead. A sudden disease, poisoning, something of that sort.”
“I’m afraid not. Not everyone is dead, that is to say. An American girl is still alive. Some elements have aroused curiosity. Perhaps something happened back in Tahiti that might point us in the right direction. At the moment…” Cobb gave a helpless shrug.
“Did this girl, this American, did she say anything, tell you what happened?”
“Alas, no. Not yet. But as Detective Chan has said, ‘Always harder to keep murder secret than for egg to bounce on sidewalk.’”
“I don’t understand.”
“Never mind. What is the French government’s role in this affair, please?”
“What? What do you mean, Lieutenant?”
“Excuse me. Perhaps I phrased that wrong. What position does the French government plan to take? There were, as you say, French citizens involved. We are reasonably certain they were killed. Yet the deaths did not happen here, but aboard a ship in international waters. The French government perhaps had reason to take offense at the mission of the Ocean Mother. One cannot help but be reminded of the Rainbow Warrior affair a few years ago. French agents sneak aboard an American vessel at dock in New Zealand and plant a bomb…”
The consular official took it upon himself to stand again. “You cannot be suggesting that the French government would have any part of such a scheme.” His chin trembled, yet it could have been with doubt and not, after all, with indignation.
Cobb spread his hands out on his blotter. It was green in the few places that remained unsmirched by leaky pens and hastily scrawled notes and telephone numbers. “I merely ask. Police procedure, you see. Ask what the French position is. There were also Canadian and Dutch citizens aboard. And of course American. All dead.”
“All but one.”
“Quite.” Takamura looked closely at the official, his eyes bright with open, friendly curiosity.
Sangier had nothing more to say. He would consult with his superiors. He was interested of course in anything the survivor might say.
They shook hands. They murmured assurances. Words like “unfortunate,” and, once, “tragic,” moved back and forth in the heavy air. The consular official closed the door behind him, and Cobb Takamura pursed his lips and thought for a moment. Then he called Sergeant Handel into his office and gave him a series of instructions.
Outside in the sunlight, the consular official blinked. Polished automobiles rushed past in both directions, reflecting from their bumpers and windshields painful stabs of light. He began to perspire in his tweed jacket.
He consulted his memo book. Names, numbers, places. He shrugged again and went to find a telephone. He would arrange a meeting at the Hilton. There was always a Hilton.
He walked past the man on his way to his table, walked past him again on his way to the men’s room, and once more on his way back. This time, though, the man raised his eyes and looked into his, and he knew.
The man picked up his beer and followed him to his table. When they finally spoke, it was in French.
“Onyx?” the consular official asked, and the other replied, “Phénix,” completing one of the rhymes of a sonnet by Mallarmé. Sangier found all this quite delightful, and showed it by chuckling as he shook the other’s hand. The other man did not smile, and the chuckle died. “I was to contact you,” he began, but the other made a quick gesture that shut him off.
“This is a grave situation,” the man said urgently. “Not to be taken lightly. Bad publicity for the territories, for the government, if certain things become known, you understand?”
The official
nodded, of course he understood, he was not above doing a little intelligence gathering himself, perhaps this man had heard about him, seen some of his reports on the Silicon Valley in America, what was going on there? No? Well, no matter. He understood perfectly, perfectly.
“You read too many novels,” the man told him. He was so nondescript that he defied description altogether. Ordinary. Medium. Average. Ordinary looks, medium height, average intelligence. His eyes were gray, or perhaps blue. Not brown, though. Certainly not brown.
Sangier processed visas. He looked at people, measured them against their passport photographs. He carried the shorthand of passport descriptions in his blood. But this man could not be identified. A photograph of him would look like thousands of other photographs of other people. He could be anyone.
This pleased the official. This man’s anyoneness was an asset in his profession, a chameleon talent that let him slip in and out unnoticed. “How long have you been here?” The official asked.
The man shrugged and sipped at his beer. “You came in at six thirteen,” he said slowly. “At six thirty-two you went to the men’s room. Nine minutes later you came back. You had washed your hands. You still stink of that American soap that comes out in liquid spurts as if it were sex. That’s the Americans for you. Obsessed.”
The official smiled. “That’s what they say about us,” he observed.
The other man put his empty glass down on the black plastic tabletop. He did it precisely on top of the condensation ring that had formed when the waiter put the glass down the first time. “My name,” he said, “really is Phénix. Henri Phénix.’’
“I see.”
“Americans think everyone is a spy, a secret agent. They are romantic, the Americans. I am not a spy. You are not a spy. You are a clerk. I am a messenger. Nothing romantic or glorious about any of it.”
Sangier thought this a lengthy speech for a man so anonymous. It lent him an imitation of character, the sketchiest outlines of a personality. This man thought of himself as a realist, pragmatic, down-to-earth, as the Americans liked to say, though God knew why.
“So. What is your message?”
The waiter materialized. Henri tapped his glass and the waiter nodded then glanced at the official, who failed to notice. “Another glass of wine?” the waiter asked Sangier, indicating his glass.
“Wine? You can’t call this wine,” the official stated.
The waiter turned away. “Whatever you say,” he murmured. He was back in moments with the beer, but when he reached for Henri’s empty glass the man placed his palm over it. The waiter shrugged and put the bottle down. Condensation rolled down the sides of the bottle and pooled on the black table. Onyx, the official thought, looking at the beads raised over the surface, reflecting the ceiling lights. Black and bright.
After the waiter vanished again, Henri lifted the glass straight up from its ring, poured swiftly and precisely, and set the bottle down in its own circle. The head of the beer rose swiftly to the rim and stopped.
There was something disquieting about the man’s skill. The consular official decided he was not average, medium, or ordinary at all. “The message,” he urged.
“The situation is complex,” Henri said. “The protest vessel intruded into French territorial waters near Moruroa. There was a bomb test under way, a small one, just another in the series. But there was a small… disruption… of the basalt core. Some leakage. Radiation. Military intelligence believes the ship was monitoring the water and air. Very sophisticated, some of these radical ecology people. Full of cunning and fat with money, resources. But they broke the law.” He lifted his glass and drank slowly. A tight knot in his neck, somehow menacing as he swallowed, one, two, three. The consular official decided this would turn into a wonderful story to tell his wife. Drinks at the Hilton with a secret agent.
The man, Henri, was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt. His hair was brown. The official began editing his story, shading it, improving it, removing redundancies and dull spots. A little reworking and it would play fine at official functions, dinners. Diplomatic insiders having a laugh at the expense of the darker services.
“Then,” Henri went on, “they stopped by Raïatéa. Are you familiar with Polynesia? No Well, Raïatéa is a thousand kilometers from Moruroa, a couple of hundred kilometers northwest of Tahiti, near Bora Bora. But it was the ancient religious center of Polynesia, and the ship aroused considerable local support by playing on this fact, so the High Commissioner’s office had doubts about the advisability of intercepting it. The public relations would have been… not good at all.” He shrugged and drank again. “One of the crew was a local activist, a Tahitian, Noel Taviri. You see how it is.”
It was a statement, not a question. The official cleared his throat.
“You have been to the local police?” Henri was looking at him with disconcerting steadiness.
“Well, yes, of course. That was my task, to sound them out.” The official’s words sounded a little resentful. It was a tone he did not like, and to cover it he looked into the nearly empty glass of this dreadful wine. Why the Americans exhibited such pride in this swill was unfathomable.
The other man said nothing, but his eyes were now fixed on the official, who finally looked up again. “They have no leads. Not yet.”
“Really? Everyone dead. The Death Ship, they call it.” His eyes rested on those of the official without wavering. Without blinking.
“Well, no. There was a survivor. So the police informed me.”
“Ah. Is that so?” The official wondered if the question was idle, or was there some policy matter he did not entirely grasp?
“Does it matter?” the official insisted. “The French citizens are dead. That is enough to cause trouble, I should think. A survivor may help unravel what happened.”
“And has it?”
“No, I don’t think so. The police told me she had said nothing yet.”
“So the American girl survived.” Henri began to peel the label from his beer bottle. He did it slowly and with intense concentration, as if preparing the bottle for display, and next he would construct a ship in amazing detail inside it.
Sangier did not notice the slip at first and began to say something, stopped. “The American girl? I didn’t mention which one survived, did I?”
After a silence, Henri said, “My job. And the police, they’re going to Tahiti, yes?”
“It sounded that way, yes.” The official decided it would not be proper for him to pursue most of the swarm of questions now circling in his head. Finally, he selected the most flattering. “How did you know they were going to Tahiti?”
Henri didn’t answer. “They should not find much there to interest them,” he said. “But if they do find something, we shall have to take steps. In fact, we shall have to take steps anyway, just in case.”
“Steps?”
“A matter of containment,” Henri said. Something about his voice caused the official to look up again. He found Henri’s eyes waiting for him, and the look in those eyes was even more disquieting than his voice had been. The official had a sudden helpless feeling of being in over his depth and decided to bring this interview to a close as quickly as he could. He held up his hand and attempted to catch the waiter’s eye. But the waiter was on the other side of the room, leaning over a table, speaking with what was obviously great pleasure to a very tan woman with a phenomenal amount of gold about her. Henri followed the official’s look and smiled. “I’ll take care of it,” he said softly.
“Eh?”
“The bill. I’ll take care of it.”
The consular official stood up. “Yes. I take it you have passed me the message?”
“I believe you understand me, yes.”
The official paused at the entrance to the room and looked back. He was not at all sure he understood. He watched Henri finish his beer, set the glass down, take out his wallet and place a few bills precisely on the table. It looked as though Henri had caref
ully laid the money in the pool of water left by the beer bottle. He stood, smoothed the front of his shirt and walked over to where the waiter was still talking to the very tan woman.
This, he thought, should be interesting, but Henri glanced his direction as he steered through the black tables, and the official half turned to watch in a mirror near the entrance. He checked his necktie and felt grateful that the bar at the Hilton was air-conditioned.
Henri gave no sign that he had seen him, but continued to the woman’s table. Henri touched the waiter briefly on the elbow. The waiter looked up in astonishment, said something, nodded and moved away. The woman was looking up with a light in her eyes, a delicate smile playing around her lips. Her gold shone in the subdued light with a heavy liquid glow.
The woman patted the plastic seat beside her. Henri sat down and they fell into an animated conversation, almost as if they were old friends, though it seemed a stunning coincidence that Henri, so recently arrived from Tahiti, could know anyone here. The official shook his head. It was glorious to be French. He went to the front desk, where he booked a room. Jet lag was catching up with him.
Sergeant Handel sauntered out of the bar and leaned over the magazine rack near the front desk. Finally he selected a copy of Runner’s World, which he paid for as the consular official followed the bellhop toward the elevators. The elevator stopped on the fourth floor, but by then Sergeant Handel had already left the building.
Sangicr’s room looked out on the ocean, swiftly dimming as darkness fell. He stood for a long time at the window watching the white creamy phosphorescence of the surf until he couldn’t see it any longer. Then he called room service and ordered a steak sandwich and a bottle of beer. Better to stick to something safe, not try the wine again. That done he lifted the receiver again and dialed the number of Vincent Meissner’s hotel.
ELEVEN
PAPEETE
“What are we looking for?” Chazz was sitting awkwardly in the back of le truck from Faaa Airport into Papeete, his bulk braced against the window frame at his back as the vehicle bounced onto the highway. “Exactly?” he added. They swerved and accelerated to top speed of around forty miles an hour.
