The Navidad Incident (10 page)

“Is my presence so very convenient to you all?” Matías enjoys tossing out sharp rebuttals to throw respective arguments into us-and-them relief.

“It's not that simple. Even should other new politicians be waiting in the wings, surpassing even Your Excellency in ability, it is still Japanese diplomatic policy to value continuity. Big changes may have bad consequences. Then there's Your Excellency's fifty years of relations with Japan.”

“That's a big figure you've dredged up.”

“I make it my personal duty to know all there is to know about Your Excellency, and I repeat, Japan can ill afford to lose such a good partner in the West Pacific. At present, Your Excellency has disbanded the legislature while a soft martial law stays in effect for the sake of domestic stability, but it is our experts' opinion that your Island Security lacks effective muscle.”

“What you mean is, you'd set me up as a real dictator.”

“Not in so many words. Different countries have different stages of development, and the forms of governance vary accordingly. As Navidad faces up to the stringencies of the twenty-first century, she will need your guidance all the more. Not for just another five or ten years—Your Excellency must lead the way forward for much, much longer. And to guard against instabilities that threaten your benevolent regime, Island Security should be strengthened.”

“The more you tell me, the more I feel myself turning into a puppet.”

“Not at all. It's for the mutual good of Navidad and Japan. Both countries need you for decades to come.”

“Who's to guarantee that what profits both sides will coincide forever? Rather dangerous, dancing so close. More natural for two countries to recognize their respective differences and just check in from time to time. At any rate, I have no intention of becoming another Yuan Shikai selling out a South Seas' Manchuria.”

“What a memory for names you have! I'm not so well up on my history, I really had to think there for a second. No, please don't forget that the full command of the Island Security would be in Your Excellency's hands. We would merely offer technical training, nothing more.”

“Technical training. And secret indoctrination sessions on the side. Brainwashing our best and brightest with the idea that Navidad's well-being is best served by sucking up to Japan. That's how they'll come home. With maybe a couple of rabble rousers in their midst. Or else you'll send us Japanese technical advisers to keep them drilled. Then one day you'll turn some upstart with ambitions against me, and I'll be out just like that.”

“You exaggerate!” Suzuki protests, unconvincingly.

“Historical imperative, if you'd care to study up on it. Not that I'm against it necessarily. If I thought it were for the good of the country, I'd gladly step down. I just don't like being jerked around. And not just me, none of us living on these three islands have ever had much stomach for that. The less that's brought in from outside, the better.”

“Moving people and things creates wealth.”

“Yes, transport brings wealth to one end, but makes the other end poor. Value flows in one direction.”

“Not at all, both sides get rich on exchange.”

“That's a basic tenet of trade, I grant you. With my business background, I don't doubt it.” Matías is beginning to enjoy arguing with Suzuki. Now that the petroleum facility issue and Island Security training have been nicely eased into the background for the moment, time to extrapolate and digress; it makes the game more fun. Size up the adversary's position, plot out what both sides will say. Intellectual games like these have made Matías who he is today—a shrewd political thinker, confident that no Japanese will ever get the better of him. At least he knows of no race of people worse at debating than the Japanese.

Matías would happily spend the whole afternoon matching wits with Suzuki, when not fifteen minutes later in barges Katsumata. Once again, unannounced.

“I'm in a meeting,” hisses Matías. Ordinarily he can overlook the clown's lack of manners, but not while he's receiving important visitors from abroad. And especially not when the subject of discussion is the restructuring of Katsumata's Island Security.

“Sorry,” stammers Katsumata in a clumsy stage whisper. “Emergency.”

All right, this emergency had better be good
, thinks Matías, grabbing him by the arm to walk him back toward the door. “Okay, out with it!”

“The veterans delegation … they're missing,” says Katsumata just out of Suzuki's hearing range.

“They're what? Did some of them wander off somewhere?”

“N-no, all of them, they're just gone.”

Got to think here. If it's anything like what he seems to be saying, we might just have a sticky situation
. “We can't talk here,” says Matías, who turns to tell Suzuki there'll be a brief recess, then drags Katsumata into the next room and slams the door. “Start explaining!”

“This morning at nine o'clock we held the bus tour launch at the Shinto shrine, right?”

I know
, thinks Matías,
I was there.
The Ministry of Welfare escort duly lectured everyone on keeping pomp to a minimum, so it finished quickly. No burning flags, no fainting old men, and the remains of the toppled torii gate cleared away as per orders. No one who hadn't been there recently would notice anything amiss. Matías waved goodbye to their yellow-and-green-striped bus. Yes, everything went smoothly this morning.

“According to today's schedule, they were supposed to go by bus to Diego and walk into the jungle for the first memorial service.”

I know that too, thank you
. Matías had reviewed the schedule several times over. Diego had been the site of a Japanese Navy Wireless Corps outpost.

“After that, lunch at Tonoy House, then on to Sonn.”

“And another memorial service in Sonn, then back to the hotel,” Matías cuts in curtly.

“But,” says Katsumata, pausing theatrically, “the bus never arrived in Diego. At two o'clock, Tonoy House calls the Foreign Office asking when they're going to arrive. The Foreign Office calls us, and we send out our motorcycle. The bike phones in from Tonoy House, no sign of any bus anywhere between here and Diego.”

“That's ridiculous. Then what?”

“We send out a Jeep with three more guards. The bike goes on ahead to search the road to Sonn and all side roads in between. Nothing. That's when I thought I'd better report in, so I came here.”

“What in hell's name is going on?”

“No way anyone could get lost on that road.”

“That's for sure. Straight line, ten kilometers at most.”

“No, ten miles. That's sixteen kilometers.”

“Whatever. Doesn't the motorcycle officer have a mobile phone?”

“It's broken.”

“So why didn't you have it fixed?”

“No parts.”

“Did you send anyone beyond Sonn? To Naafa, for instance?”

“No, wanted to wait for word from Sonn. They've got to be somewhere between here and Sonn.”

“Let's go look.” President Matías Guili strikes a decisive pose. “I'm coming along.”

Katsumata just nods. This time, apparently, he sees how serious the situation is. Too many people involved here. And not just anyone, important guests of state. If word gets out, he'll never hear the end of it.

“You go by Island Security Jeep. I'll take the Nissan. We'll meet up in front of the Public Works Bureau. And get all your info straight by then. At least I'll be able to use the car radio.” Matías practically pushes Katsumata down the hallway, then returns to his office.

“The strangest thing just happened,” he tells Suzuki. “The veterans delegation has disappeared.”

“All of them?”

“The whole bus.”

“With how many people in it?”

“Forty-seven Japanese and one of ours, a staffer from the Foreign Office. Plus the driver.”

“Forty-nine people. Do you think it's a hijacking?”

Uh-oh, didn't think of that
. Could someone on the island really pull off something like that? Never any kidnappings here. The only crime's when some joker gets drunk and goes berserk, or a village idiot threatens people with a shark harpoon. No one even thinks of nicking a tourist's handbag. So then who was it knocked down the torii gate? Who put up all those handbills around town? A bus can flip over or run into a palm tree or something, but vanish without a trace? “Impossible,” he says, dismissing the hijack hypothesis flat out. “But just in case, I'm going out with the search team myself, so with your permission I'd like to continue our discussion tomorrow or the next day.”

“Very well then, I'll stand by at the hotel. Let's hope and pray they come back safely.”

That sounds ominous
, thinks Matías as he sees Suzuki off.

It's late at night in the President's private apartments. All is quiet. Outside, the night sky swirls with stars, but the only ones who'd care are fishermen eager to read next morning's weather conditions. As ever, the beauty of nature bores the locals.

President Matías Guili sits on the sofa and mulls over the afternoon's events. Earlier in the evening, he visited Angelina's for a small snifter of cognac and commiseration, too preoccupied for much else. It's been one hell of a hard day.

Today's events call for otherworldly insights, the kind a spirit he knows can provide. He must summon him properly but can barely bring himself to say “Lee Bo,” the ghost of a name.

He rises from the sofa to fetch a candle, which he lights with the seldom-used coffee table cigarette lighter and places in the equally clunky ashtray beside it. Then he gets up again and turns off the room lights. No drafts enter the room, yet the flame wavers briefly before coming to a stable pinpoint of illumination. As age increases, so does ceremony. He looks at the candle and shakes his head; nothing but protocol lately. Politically, he pretends to tackle each and every situation, but it hardly takes more than a superficial mental swish. Real judgments are rare; he merely moves from ceremony to ceremony. Not once in the last year has he actually had to shift out of autopilot. Probably the last time was that Tamang decision. And he wonders why the days are so monotonous.

The flame stays perfectly still, not a flicker of movement. He stares until all thought settles like ash. Presently the flame appears to flare. He strains his eyes, then looks up to see sitting there before him … Lee Bo, glowering head-on. Matías nods. The apparition nods back.

Lee Bo—the erstwhile Leigh Beau—is formally attired in late eighteenth-century English frock coat, kinky hair tied behind in a queue, an intense scowl on his black face. His dark complexion could make him a Navidadian beachboy who chases pale-limbed Japanese tourist girls as they deplane; only his clothing and stern expression would seem out of place.

“Been a long time.”

“Aye,” says Lee Bo in a mannered basso profundo. “How fare the islands in my absence?”

“Lots going on, but nothing new at all. Same as ever here below.”

“Words becoming a man half unencumber'd of this mortal sphere.” The voice trails off into echoes, this visible form a mere shadow of his real self millions of leagues away. “Or do you feign this distant air?”

“Just as you might be putting on airs for me.”

“Nay, a cursed habit, that.”

“You speak from experience? Your time in London?”

“My conduct is inconsequent. 'Twas you who summoned, was it not?” Lee Bo steers the conversation back on course.

“So it was. I called you because something's come up. Today, an entire bus disappeared on the way to Diego with forty-seven Japanese and two Navidadians on board.”

“Not each conveyance shall reach its destination,” muses Lee Bo.

“True. But the problem is this one bus—why didn't it get there? It's not the general principle but the particulars that concern me.”

“Ah, but did not you yourself just say that tho much transpires, little signifies? The vagaries of one coach, methinks, are of scant interest.”

“I'm a politician, so by day at least, I can't be so casual about things. A bus has gone missing, and I need to know. Was it a natural accident? Was it a plot? And if so, by whom?”

“And the diff'rence? Is not the plotting of the human mind a work of nature?”

“If I wanted to take a philosophical view, I'd turn in the keys to my office. Politics is a hands-on job. I can't just look on from above the clouds.”

“The coach is safe. As are those on board.”

“Then you do know! Who's behind this?”

“Ah, the undercurrents are deep indeed.”

“When will they return?”

“Alas, I can no more divine the morrow than the next man, being privy to but one small part of the present scheme of things, as you must know.”