The Navidad Incident (35 page)

Actually, her search began even before coming to the Presidential Villa. She went through Angelina's premises from top to bottom. That's why she got herself placed there to begin with. She assumed that since Angelina was surely involved in drawing up the document in question, it either had to be in her safekeeping or under Guili's own lock and key. She has no idea whether the other pair engaged in the contract might have a copy or not. The big man might have even sent it out of the country. That paper underwrites the security of both sides. He'd have been very careful about where he kept it.

A door across the room leads to a short passage and a thin papered sliding door, easily mistaken for a wall. With a light touch on the finger hold, she gently slides the door open, then feels for the light switch, hoping there's no alarm. She warily presses the button and the lights come on. What a strange room! The floor is fitted wall-to-wall with twelve glossy yellow grass mats. These have to be from Japan. Who knows what they're called? There is a recess in the far wall, an alcove of sorts, where another portrait of His Excellency Matías Guili, President of the Republic of Navidad, is hanging. Only this one isn't framed or in color; it's black and white and pasted in the middle of an oversize length of paper. Is this how they put up pictures in Japan?

This is Itsuko's territory. No one else is allowed in here. No one else could even begin to know how to clean a room so completely Japanese. What she's looking for has to be in this room, she can just feel it. If it's not here, it's nowhere. Which would mean there was no contract, only a verbal agreement. Before she goes digging around in here, she takes a good look at these strange quarters.

There are two more sliding doors: one paper, the other wood. She opens the paper door and finds another room laid with yet another dozen or so of the same grass floor mats and several layers of what look like thick blankets spread out in the middle. This must be his bedroom. On the far wall is a large window covered with vertical wooden slats and a framed glass pane slid partially open. For ventilation perhaps? This place is much more vulnerable than she'd imagined. She knows there's no surveillance system out in the garden. No Island Security patrolling here at night. The President doesn't seem to have given any thought to the possibility of an attack during the night.

She closes the paper door and now tries the wooden one. Beyond is what appears to be a bathroom. The lower half of the walls is skirted in a queer-smelling wood, and there's a large square box over in the corner, covered with the same resinous boards. Even the floor is laid with this wood, the slats spaced to let the water drain through, she assumes, because those two gleaming faucets over there—one with a red knob, one blue—are positioned to pour directly onto the floor.

No, he wouldn't keep an important document in a wet area. Blank walls, no cabinets of any kind, no place to conceal papers. But then, back in the first grass-matted room, there's no furniture to speak of either. The only place to hide papers would be behind the portrait, tacked onto the back of that long hanging mount. Easy enough to check—but nothing there. In the center of the room is a large square cushion, twice shoulder width in size. She thought there'd be a zipper, but the purple silk cover is sewn tight on all four sides and appliquéd with heavy yellow tassels in the corners and center.

She tries feeling the cushion, but it's too densely stuffed to tell if any paper is hidden inside. Maybe it's folded up? Was that something she felt just now? Only one way to find out: get a knife and cut it open. But then how will she ever sew it up again? One look and he'll know the document is missing. In any case, she'd planned to run away as soon as she found it. That was her whole reason for coming here. She'll cut the cushion.

There must be a letter opener in the President's study, something he keeps handy to slit envelopes. She hurriedly backtracks to the desk and soon finds a package knife in the top drawer. Perfect, one straight cut with this and then run. She just hopes Guili doesn't show up and catch her red-handed. She'll slash the underside, take out the papers, turn the cushion back over, and no one will be the wiser. Or does she want him to find out? Isn't that part of her purpose here?

She grabs the knife, returns to the twelve-mat room, and is about to slice open the cushion when a voice comes from behind—

“Just what do you think you're doing?”

She turns to see Itsuko standing there. The woman may be small, but there's a stern authority about her. Instinctively, Améliana's fingers clench the knife in her hand.

That July, Navidadians were startled by the appearance of a new cluster of stars in the night sky to the south. Roughly rectangular in shape, this grouping of one second-magnitude star with five third-magnitude stars was noticed because of its situation in a darker part of the sky where elderly islanders could not recall having seen any light before. The stars were much discussed among the populace at large, and the Navidad Science Council received letters inquiring what these stars might be. Were they new American satellites, for example? The Science Council, comprised entirely of high school science teachers and Ministry of Education officials, was stumped and embarrassed. Astronomy as they knew it had no ready explanation for the sudden appearance of new stars. One council member suggested they might be supernovas, but the odds of multiple supernovas occurring in close proximity seemed extremely slim.

The Science Council thought to forgo pronouncements pending further communications from abroad, but such a refusal to deal with local issues and inquiries ran counter to its very raison d'être. Thus, rather than offer a scientific explanation, it was decided they would try to preserve some semblance of authority by naming the constellation ad hoc. However, before they could convene their two-thirds quorum, the very day after the stars were first sighted in fact, locals coined a nickname, which rapidly gained nationwide acceptance. This meant, in most people's view, that the name seemed to fit. Officials had little choice but to adopt the popular name, but then proceeded to act as if they'd invented it themselves. They held an “unveiling” of the new appellation—their first and last press conference ever—and the headline in the following morning's
Navidad Daily
read:

NAVIDAD SCIENCE COUNCIL OFFICIALLY PROCLAIMS
NEW CONSTELLATION
“
AUTOBUS MAJOR
”

Whatever nomenclature might later gain currency among the international scientific community, the Science Council opted to let the “bus” name ride in Navidad for the time being. Not that there was any law against something so controversial going unnamed. Yet despite their conviction that this was big news, not one report on the new constellation filtered in from overseas. The Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) was silent on the subject; the major news agencies and wire services issued no press releases. The few operative parabolic antennae in Navidad positioned to pick up electromagnetic spillover from Filipino, Taiwanese, and Japanese satellite broadcasts gleaned nothing about any new constellation.

Four days after the appearance of the new stars, the Science Council started to have doubts. If what should have been the biggest topic in astronomical history since the Star of Bethlehem guided the Three Magi to the infant Christ attracted no attention whatsoever, then, just possibly, these stars were only visible from Navidad (the council member who made this suggestion was also, of course, alluding to the three “island kings” Gaspar, Baltasár, and Melchor that comprise the Republic of Navidad). Were they even stars? The council debated the question back and forth, and finally resolved to take a closer look at the phenomenon. They would conduct observations using the twenty-inch reflective telescope donated by a Japanese corporation to Baltasár High School. A prudent decision, if a little late.

The fifth night clouded over, much to everyone's chagrin, but on the sixth, a clear sky brought even greater disappointment: for where the five stars had shone two nights before was now only darkness—Autobus Major had vanished! Just gone, after all that commotion—and such lovely stars they'd been too! Was it just some freak light display, people wondered, put on for Navidad's viewing alone? A prank pulled by that other wayward bus, showing off, swerving across the night sky with its high beams on?

The Science Council was in a spot. The stars had not been visible from any other country. What they'd taken for astral lumina from thousands of light years away had in fact only been a few kilometers in altitude. It was too bad they hadn't been quicker with the high school telescope or hadn't had a spectroscope to analyze whether those were true stars or man-made light sources or some other heretofore-unknown heavenly bodies.

Just then, word came from Melchor Island three hundred kilometers away that the same phenomenon had been sighted in exactly the same position at precisely the same time as in the capital. Effectively, there was no parallax. Would the mystery ever be resolved? A more immediate problem, however, was that they had gone and officially announced the finding of a new constellation. What to do? Someone suggested they simply pretend the whole affair had never happened. But no, they couldn't do that in good conscience. Thus, several days later, a single-line retraction appeared in the back pages of the
Navidad Daily
:

As of today, the Science Council officially denies the existence of the constellation Autobus Major.

“Looking for something?” Itsuko asks incriminatingly.

She's been caught in the act.

“It's not in that cushion. Better not cut it open or you'll get stuffing all over everything. Nothing inside but kapok anyway.”

Améliana accepts the advice without protest and slides the blade back into its sheath, but can't think what to do next. Will this woman squeal on her to President Guili? And how will Guili deal with her?

“Stay right where you are,” says Itsuko, then leaves the room. She's probably gone to call someone. Will she alert Island Security? Tell them she found her snooping around late at night in the inner chambers where she doesn't belong, with a knife in her hand? There's no possible defense.

But then Itsuko quickly returns from the next room, looking resourceful. She's fetched something shiny, sharp, and menacing. It's an awl, the one the President uses to punch papers for binding with string instead of stapling—an old Japanese filing system that Guili's partial to. Just what does Itsuko think she's going to do with that thing? Duel against her package knife?

“Don't cut the cushion, okay?” repeats Itsuko, then walks toward the President's portrait and kneels down beside a thick grass mat in front of the scroll. She thrusts the awl diagonally into the dark fabric edging of the mat; it goes in easily, all the way up to the handle. Now she heaves and the mat lifts. So it wasn't attached to the floor, only set in place like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

“Don't just stand there looking. Lend me a hand,” says Itsuko.

Améliana helps grab the raised edge of the mat, then slips her fingers underneath. She can see rough floorboards below. Itsuko now tosses the awl aside and joins Améliana in levering up the mat to face level, and there on the subflooring is a plain brown envelope the size of a magazine. The grass mat is bulky, but not too heavy; Améliana can manage it single-handedly while Itsuko reaches for the envelope.

“I believe this is what you're looking for,” says Itsuko, handing it over, then grabs the mat. Quickly, Améliana accepts the envelope and Itsuko lowers the mat, tamping it back in place with her foot. Not a trace remains of their exploits except for the envelope in hand.

“You take it,” says Itsuko. “It was time for somebody to come along, so when you showed up, I knew it had to be you. I told myself, this is the girl who'll change everything. That's why I helped you.”

Améliana just listens. She had no idea this dour old woman could see so much.

“It's time for a change. I could see it coming,” repeats Itsuko in a low voice. “The man's been sitting on top for too long. But he slipped up, lost his nerve when he shouldn't have. He'd come so far without any big mistakes, then he went wrong. What he did after the last election was unforgivable. Doesn't matter how incompetent his successor might've been, he should have let him have his turn. But no, he couldn't do that. Oh, it's been quite a show while it lasted, I'll grant you that, but now it's over.”

Améliana eyes the envelope. Should she open it here and now?

“Go on, take a look. Wouldn't want you thinking I'd give you a forgery. Better you make sure and be on your way.”

There's no telling when the President might return, but Itsuko seems unconcerned; it's almost as if she's certain he'll be at Angelina's until morning, even though he's never once done that before. What makes tonight so different?

Améliana kneels down on the firm grass mat and opens the envelope. Inside is a single sheet of paper written in English, though she already knows what it's all about:

Matías Guili (hereinafter referred to as “Party A”), and Paul Ketch in partnership with Peter Joel (hereinafter referred to as “Parties B”), do by their respective signatures on this document enter into a solemn and binding Agreement as set forth in the following terms and conditions:

1. Party A hereby engages the services of Parties B to dispose of the current President of the Republic of Navidad, Bonhomme Tamang.

2. Party A leaves the choice of ways and means of dispatch entirely to the discretion of Parties B, and promises to have no further word to say on the actual execution thereof, with the provision that Parties B shall make every effort to make the said demise appear to have occurred owing to natural causes so as not to arouse suspicion among the public at large.