“It needs work. English is the best for swearing.”
“They have machine guns, Favo.”
“Fuckin’ mooks,” Favo said.
“Amen,” Malink said, crossing himself in the sign of the B-26 bomber.
The two old men fell in behind the guards, following them from house to house, waiting outside on the path so the villagers could see them when they were roused out of their houses.
For the guards’ part, it was a wholly unsatisfying endeavor. They had been looking forward to kicking in some doors, only to find that the Shark People had no doors. There were no beds to throw over, no back rooms to burst into, no closets, no place, in fact, where a man could hide and not be exposed by the most perfunctory inspection. And the doctor had told them that no one was to be hurt. They did not want to make a mistake. For all the appearance of military efficiency, they were screwups to a man. One, a former security guard at a nuclear power plant, had been fired for taking drugs; two were brothers who had been dismissed from the Tokyo police department for accepting Yakuza bribes; the fourth, from Okinawa, had been a jujitsu instructor who had beaten a German tourist to death in a bar over a gross miscarriage of karaoke. The man who had recruited them, put them in the black uniforms, and trained them made it clear that this was their last chance. They had two choices: succeed and become rich or die. They took their jobs very seriously.
“He might be in the trees,” Favo said in Japanese. “Look in the trees!”
The guards scanned the trees as they marched, which caused them to bump into each other and stumble. Above them there was a fluttering of wings. A glout of bat guano splatted across the Okinawan’s forehead. He threw the bolt on his Uzi and the air was filled with the staccato roar of nine millimeters ripping through the foliage. When at last the clip was empty, palm fronds settled to the ground
around them. Frightened children screamed in their mothers’ arms, and Favo, who was lying next to his friend with his arms thrown over his head, snickered like an asthmatic hyena.
The guards scuffled for a moment, not sure whether to disarm their companion or shove their clips home and begin the massacre. Above the crying, the scuffle, the snickering, and the tintinnabulation of residual gunfire, a girl giggled. The guards looked up. Sepie stood in the doorway of the bachelors’ house, naked but for a pair of panties she’d recently ac-quired from a transvestite navigator. “Hey, sailors,” she said, trying out a phrase she’d also acquired from Kimi, “you want a date?” The guards didn’t understand the words, but they got the message.
“Go inside, girl,” Malink scolded. Women, even the mispel, were not permitted to show their thighs in public. Not even when swimming, not when bathing, not when crapping on the beach, not ever.
“Go back inside,” Favo said. “When they go away, you will be beaten.”
“I have been beaten before,” Sepie said. “Now I will be rich.”
“Tell her,” Favo said to Malink.
Malink shrugged. His authority as chief worked only as long as his people willingly obeyed him. The key to retaining their respect was to find out what they wanted to do, then tell them to do it. He levied the most severe punishment he knew. “Sepie, you may not touch the sea for ten days.”
She turned and wiggled her bottom at him, then disappeared into the bachelors’ house. The stunned guards ceased their scuffle and moved tentatively toward the doorway, looking to each other for permission.
“This is your fault,” Malink said to Favo. “You shouldn’t have started giving her things.”
“I didn’t give her things,” Favo said.
“You gave her things for”—and here Malink paused, trying to catch himself before losing a friend—“for doing favors for you.”
35
Free Press, My Ass
Jefferson Pardee sat on a metal office chair in the corner of a windowless cinder-block room. The guard stood by the metal door, his machine gun trained on Pardee’s hairy chest. The reporter was trying to affect an attitude of innocence tempered with a little righteous indignation, but, in fact, he was terrified. He could feel his heartbeat climbing into his throat and sweat rolled down his back in icy streams. He’d given up on trying to talk to the guards; they either didn’t speak English or were pretending they didn’t.
He heard the throw of the heavy bolt on the door and expected the other guard to return, but instead a woman wearing surgical garb entered the room. Her eyes were the same color as the surgical blues and even in the oppressive heat she looked chilly.
“At last,” Pardee said. “There’s been some kind of mistake here.” He offered his hand, trying not to show how unsteady he was, and the guard threatened him with the Uzi. “I’m Jefferson Pardee from the Truk Star.”
She nodded to the guard and he left the room. Her voice was friendly, but she wasn’t smiling.
“I’m Beth Curtis. My husband runs the mission clinic on this island.” She didn’t offer her hand. “I’m sorry you’ve been treated this way, Mr. Pardee, but this island is under quarantine. We’ve tried to limit the contact with the outside until we have a better handle on this epidemic.”
“What epidemic? I haven’t heard anything about this?”
“Encephalitis. It’s a rare strain, airborne and very contagious. We don’t let anyone off island who’s been exposed.”
Jefferson Pardee exhaled a deep sigh of relief. So this was the big story. Of course he’d promise not to say a word, but Time magazine would kill for this. He’d leave out the part about being taken prisoner in his flying piggy boxers. “And the guards?”
“World Health Organization. They’ve also given us an aircraft and lab equipment, as I’m sure you’ve seen.”
He’d seen an awful lot of lab equipment as he was led through the little hospital, but the aircraft was still a rumor. He decided to go for the facts. “You have a new Learjet, is that correct?”
“Yes.” She seemed genuinely taken aback by his comment. “How did you know?”
“I have my sources,” Pardee said, wishing he wore glasses so he could take them off in a meaningful way.
“I’m sure you do. Information is like a virus sometimes, and the only way to find a cure is to trace it to the source. Who told you about the jet?”
Pardee wasn’t giving anything for free. “How long have you known about the encephalitis?”
For the first time Pardee noticed that Beth Curtis had been holding her right hand behind her back the entire time they had been talking. He noticed because when the hand appeared, it was holding a syringe. “Mr. Pardee, this syringe contains a vaccine that my husband and I have developed with the help of the World Health Organization. Because you took it on yourself to sneak onto Alualu, you have exposed yourself to a deadly virus that at-tacks the nervous system. The vaccine seems to work even after exposure to the disease, but only if administered in the first few hours. I want to give you this vaccine, I really do. But if you insist on drawing out this little game of liar’s poker, then I can’t guarantee that you won’t contract the disease and die a horrible and painful death. So, that said, who told you about the jet?”
Pardee felt the sweat rising again. She hadn’t raised her voice, there wasn’t even a detectable note of anger there, but he felt as if she was holding a knife to his throat. Okay, to hell with the adventurous journalist. He could still get a byline based on what she’d already told him. “I talked to a pilot who passed through Truk a few months ago.”
“A few months ago? Not more recently?”
“No. He said he was going to fly a jet for some missionaries on Alualu. I came out to check it out.”