“Me neither.”
Thomas squatted to peer into the pond, moving the water with his fingers. Kane thought of the sheer sides of the island, the hungry sea, the hungry rats. In the diary found on Ascension Island, the abandoned mariner had recorded his nightly fear that the rats would eat him as he slept. They’d colonized the place. It was one explanation as to why his own skeleton was never found.
“I heard something else at the café,” Kane said. “Apparently there was another girl who might know what happened: Lauren something.”
Thomas straightened.
“Who said that?”
“The woman who runs the place. She said this girl knows something. She’s been too scared to talk until now. Apparently, she was very close to Petra.”
“Lauren’s close to Connor as well. What did they say she knew?”
“I don’t know. But she’d been scared and now she might go above the police, straight to other authorities—straight to the UK.”
This was clearly news to Thomas. He nodded, looking almost hopeful.
“Well, that would be something. Did she see it?”
“Maybe. She’s just been too terrified to talk.”
“I bet.” Thomas shook his head. “Then I really hope she’s okay. Because whatever Lauren knows, it’s not that my son is a murderer. Which puts her in a very vulnerable situation. She needs a guard. Shit.”
Thomas stared anxiously back at the water. Kane imagined they were thinking the same thing: They weren’t in a position to guard Lauren Carter. Kane wondered who she would try to speak to, who it was safe to speak to.
It had got late. The setting sun pierced the bamboo and ignited the spaces between the lilies. Thomas circled the pond distractedly.
“No frogs today. You watch the ecosystem here like it could fall apart at any minute.”
The sunset crept up on them as they made their way back, first as a general thickening of light, and then the bamboo thinned out and there was a view down a thousand feet across the lava plains. Both of them stopped.
The sun was dissolving into the Atlantic, becoming blood red as they stared. Kane had never seen a sun so red. But equally breathtaking was the effect it had on the landscape. Volcanic mounds caught fire and the ground revealed itself as pink, purple, and blue.
“It drops so fast here,” Thomas said.
The evening mists rose from the heated rocks, softening the outlines of the peaks so that the island looked like a crumpled sheet. And, just as silently, the sense of confinement came in off the darkening ocean like a breeze.
16
They parted before getting into Two Boats.
“Listen,” Thomas said. “It’s probably best if you keep a distance from me. I don’t know what’s about to happen. I probably can’t show my face much anymore. If you hear anything I’d appreciate you letting me know—just come to the base. But don’t put yourself in danger. And don’t believe what people say.”
“I won’t. I’ll see if I hear anything.”
“This is a great island in many ways. I’d just really avoid the wrong crowds.”
“Okay.”
Kane drove back to Georgetown. In the beam of his headlights the roads crawled. The crabs had come out, with orange legs and purple pincers, scuttling across roads and pathways toward the sea. Human life had also roused itself, free of the oppressive sun. Lights had turned on in homes and other buildings. The rocks dissolved into the night and the thin, electric forms of civilization became visible like an X-ray.
Kane imagined the patterns of desire and secrecy becoming visible too, webs of lust, guilt, shame. Morality shaped itself to the environment at hand. In his experience, no one’s ethics were stronger than those of the people around them. Groups released themselves into depravity as one. That didn’t mean Connor himself might not have woven some tall tales, but there was a ring of truth to what his father said. Adults turning from the radars, from the secrets of nations and armies to the mystery of girls becoming women.
Just before One Boat, Kane passed a young man in US Air Force fatigues who flagged him down. The airman had been trying to transport crates on the back of a motorbike, but the ropes had snapped.
“Could really use a lift to the base.”
“Sure. Jump in.”
The young man filled the back seat with boxes of mushrooms and got in.
“Mind if I smoke?” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“You smoke?”
“I’m fine.”
No matter how many warzones Kane visited, the childlike youth of military personnel never failed to surprise him. The man couldn’t have been older than twenty.
“How long have you been here?” Kane asked.
“Four hundred and seventeen days.” He laughed. “Oh boy.”
“Many to go?”
“Two hundred, I believe. Join the Air Force, see the world. Didn’t tell me the world was like this.” He whistled softly. Kane thought of the generations of young men before him, in slightly different uniforms with similar looks of youthful stoicism; back through World War II and the Napoleonic Wars, staring at the same rocks.
“How’s business on the US base?”
“All nice and quiet. Better than Iraq, that’s for sure.”
“Did you serve in Iraq?”
“No, sir.”
“What do you do for fun here?”
“There’s the Volcano Club on the base. That’s got cheap beer. There’s a gym, burger place.”
“Ever mix with the locals? Must be some nice young ladies around.”
He gave Kane a sidelong glance.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“What about the Brits? Get on with them?”
“Don’t see them that much. There’s a bit of tension right now.”
“Really?”
“Think so.”
“What’s that about?”
“Just the same old rivalries I guess.”
They passed one of the traps and the car filled briefly with the stink of rotten fish.
“Oh, man.”
“I heard that’s for the cats,” Kane said.
“Right. We’re down to the last few. That’s what they say.”
“Bet those last few are pretty canny.”
“Sure.”
“Imagine being the last one. Alone on a rock with no one but people trying to kill you.”
The airman nodded.
“Reckon a couple of us on the base could finish them in a night or two, but that’s not allowed. Which sucks. They used to hunt the goats here. That’s what I’ve heard from some of the old-timers. See any goats around?”
“Not so far.”
“Exactly.”
Kane dropped him at the gate to the US base. The man thanked him profusely, offered his cigarettes again, then a free meal at the Volcano Club anytime. Kane circled back to Georgetown. The place felt different when he arrived. The priest walked past with a bag of shopping. At the front of the vicarage he put his bags down to check the flowers he’d cultivated. Someone waved to him from outside the post office. There was a laugh from somewhere, a couple of men stopping to chat in front of the church. One passed over a newspaper. Kane thought he could hear the radar turning up on the hillside, a clicking sound. He mentally parsed his cohabitants into instigators, fellow travelers, those turning a blind eye, those helpless and scared.
He spent an hour or so lying on the bed in the bungalow feeling his sunburn throb, letting the island grow fully dark, then showered, typed up an update, and sent it through to Taylor. His thoughts turned to the name Jack Moretti for the first time since he’d read Taylor’s report. No more on this odd thread. He searched online, saw the obituary, wondered what on earth a psychologist in LA should have to do with Rory Bannatyne, aside from their chosen means of suicide. Again, he felt that frustration at having been delivered nothing but more puzzlement. Not what he needed on this island. He boiled pasta and ate some of the provisions he’d
bought, sitting in the Wades’ small kitchen, feeling insensitive. Four weeks of this, he thought.
When he’d eaten, Kane stood in front of the bungalow and tried to remember the southern night sky. He found the Southern Cross, then the Jewel Box cluster beside it. He’d seen it once through a telescope. It was like a hundred sparkling blue jewels around a single red star. Just a bit farther to the right was the Coalsack, a dark nebula. Kane waited as more stars came into focus. The galaxies seemed to sink back, gaining depth. He thought of the early explorers reading these, their eyes on the stars as they sailed, as if the map of the world was written above them. The abandoned Dutch mariner had grown to fear the night sky; his diary made frequent references to the stars. Once his lamp had broken and he had no means of creating light, the stars had begun to appear terrifying. He associated them with the screaming of the birds, who he believed were accusing him of his crimes. A cursed place, Kane wondered, or simply blank, so that it became a mirror to your heart, with nowhere to hide.
Sink into the milieu: That was what he needed to do. What he was trained to do. Thomas’s warnings were a prescription for action. If there was something rotten at the core of Ascension, Kane needed to go there—that was his job.
At nine p.m. he walked back through Georgetown. People sat in their small homes eating meals, watching TVs. He wondered about bars, about prostitutes. He’d seen smaller communities support the trade, with a lot fewer military around. It was time to get in with the wrong crowd.
The Exiles Bar had a string of colored lights around its doorway; otherwise he wouldn’t have seen it was there. But he might have heard the laughter from inside. This was the bar where the police had been drinking when Petra Wade’s mother first tried to report her missing. Kane wondered who was in there now and how they’d respond to him. It seemed likely that this was where the two subcontractors had appeared from last night. Kane pushed the door and walked in.
The bar contained three people and none of them were the assailants from last night. One was the doctor Kane had met on the golf course, Derek Nulty, his bulky form propped on a stool that didn’t look adequate for it. Leaning against the bar beside him was a lean man tanned the color of hard wood, his Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to reveal a shark’s tooth necklace. A young Saint polished glasses behind the bar. All turned to watch Kane enter, the drinkers with the unsteady glint of men interrupted in the midst of a joke.
The barman smiled at his new customer. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen, in a white shirt and waistcoat. The bar was framed with flags and netting and faded photographs of happier times which lent its present emptiness an air of decline.
“Evening,” Kane said.
“The historian,” Nulty said. “We met, I believe. How’s the car?”
“Not bad.”
His companion had a leery smile that creased his face. Kane ordered a beer, nodded at the tumblers of dark rum on the bar.
“Can I top you up?”
They looked at their glasses then back at Kane.
“Why not?” the doctor said. “Not often a new customer walks in.”
“You’re the professor,” his companion said.
“That’s right.”
The drinks were set before them and they raised a toast to newcomers.
“Welcome to the volcano.”
“What do you think?” the man with the shark’s tooth asked.
“It’s different.”
“It’s different.” He grinned. “Where are you staying?”
“Well, it was meant to be the hotel. I’ve been put in a bungalow along the way. Looks like a family just left.”
There was an exchange of glances.
“Craig put you there?”
“That’s right.”
“Kind of him. Make sure you lock your door at night.”
“I heard it was a friendly place.”
“Oh, yes.”
“That’s the problem.”
This caused sudden hilarity. The doctor’s laugh was a rasping, asthmatic wheeze that didn’t match his speaking voice. Then it stopped, and his expression became serious. He placed a hand on Kane’s shoulder.
“There’s something you need to know.” He turned to his companion. “Do you think he’s ready?”
“Don’t tell him, Derek.”
“Better sooner rather than later.”
“He’s just arrived.” The younger man watched warily.
“Neil Armstrong.” He extended a finger toward the rocks outside. “This is where they filmed it—the moon landing.”
His friend grinned.
“It was here,” the man continued. “The whole thing.”
“That must be why the flag was rippling,” Kane said.
“You’re on the moon, my son.”
“Not over the moon, for sure,” his friend said.
“The dark side of the moon,” the doctor said. They all drank. The barman watched Kane as if he hadn’t seen any sober Englishmen for a while and it was a marvel.
“Spent much time on an island before?” the doctor asked.
“Not like this one.”
He leaned close, and Kane could smell warm and sour breath.
“Watch out for the wives.”
His companion shook his head. “Fuck’s sake, Derek.”
“I’m serious. A good-looking man like yourself.”
“That hotel,” the tall man said. “It’s the end of this place, now that’s gone.”
“Certainly seems quiet out there tonight,” Kane said.
“Quiet’s one way of putting it.”
“What brings you guys to Ascension?” Kane asked.
They looked at each other.
“He’s the doc.” The thin man nodded at the fat one. “So don’t get sick while you’re here. I’m an electrician. Frankie.”
“Good to meet you, Frankie. Valuable profession. Live in Georgetown?”
“Travellers Hill, by the RAF base.”
“You work on the base?”
“That’s right. Dull enough that I have to come hang out with this old fart.”
“He’s after his Viagra prescription,” Nulty said.
“Like there’s anything worth that.”
“Warn the donkeys.”
Kane grinned. Eighty percent of spying is pretending to be drunk with men you wouldn’t choose to drink with. This wasn’t new territory. Frankie was missing teeth and his nose had been broken and reset at one point, skin leathered by sunny postings. Kane had crossed paths with a lot of Frankies in Afghanistan and Iraq: tradesmen who’d got on the khaki circuit. Camp followers, who enjoyed the sense of being on the road, the stories they could tell when they got back home, the subsidized lifestyle.
“Seriously, though,” Kane said. “Where are the ladies? Where are these wives? Beautiful as you guys are.”
They hesitated, as if struck by shyness, but it wasn’t shyness. They were calculating something.
“Are you married?” Nulty asked.
“No. You? You guys single?”
The doctor said he was sadly divorced. The electrician grinned and said he was single on the island.
“What do you do for fun?” Kane asked.
“Oh, there’s options.”
“Really?”
“Steady yourself, my friend, the night is young.”
They asked Kane about the UK, about news there, then what he’d heard about the island before coming over. Talk turned to the loss of the airbridge with the UK, and Kane got a sense that they felt abandoned, that the island was floating away. “Cast adrift,” the doctor said. But he didn’t seem too sorry about it.
“They’ve done it elsewhere,” Frankie said. “Sterilized the place. Swept it clean when it suited them.”
Kane wondered where he meant exactly. Diego Garcia? That was a colonial possession the British had emptied for the sake of military installations and American radar. How much did the people of Ascension think about their Pacific sibling? Twinned
with Diego Garcia wasn’t a heart-lifting proposition.
“We are the endangered species here, make no mistake,” Nulty said. “The island now has more antennae than people.”
It chimed with what Thomas had said. Was this neglect of the island’s population the vague background to a lower-level corruption? There was a sense that civilian time was almost done here, a fin de siècle guttering, a last hurrah. Kane finished his drink and insisted on buying another round, insisted on them all accompanying their pints with shots.
“You really have Viagra?” he said.
“Of course. It’s a bestseller.”
“Prozac?”
“Prozac, diazepam. Why? The place got to you already?” The doctor laughed and laid a fleshy hand on Kane’s arm. “My treasure chest is always open.”
“What about contraceptives?” Kane said.
“Essential service.”
“The pill?”
The doctor studied his face, nodded.
“You’re very curious.”
“I’m trying to imagine life here,” Kane said. “The doctor must know all the secrets.”
Nulty smiled. “A few.”
“What’s the craziest thing you’ve dealt with while on here?”
He considered this, downed his rum.
“A case of telepathy.”
“Telepathy?”
“Man said he could read people’s minds. He’d been stung by a jellyfish and the poison got to his brain. But he voiced people’s thoughts with some degree of accuracy for twenty-four hours or so. Had to be airlifted off when he started speaking prophecies that upset the ladies. Filth, but also what we eventually determined was an African dialect. That was the strangest thing about it. The man had never set foot in Africa. Claimed to be possessed by the slaves who’d worked here. Possessed by their voices.”
The doctor shrugged. A silence fell. Each man seemed to feel the darkness lapping at the bar, a darkness filled with the ghosts of men far from home, severed from their lives.
“My round,” the electrician said eventually.
The clock behind the bar ticked toward ten thirty p.m. No sign that closing time was approaching. Kane wondered if this was enough progress for one night. He’d made his first foray into companionship. It hadn’t been an entirely unproductive day. They drank a final round, then the doctor checked his watch. Frankie checked the clock. They looked at each other.
Ascension Page 16
