True

True (2004)

Michael Cordy

*

PROLOGUE:

'Wake Up, Max. Wake Up! We've Got To Leave.'

Max doesn't hear his mother's urgent whispers. He is lost in his dreams, riding the gleaming red bike he hopes to get for his ninth birthday tomorrow. A few hours ago he was so excited that his mother had to soothe him to sleep, stroking his forehead with her cool hand. Now nothing stirs him. Not the full Hawaiian moon, which shines through the thin curtains, bathing his tanned skin and white-blond hair in a blue glow. Not the waves breaking on the beach behind the isolated clapperboard house. Not even the harsh voices and heavy footsteps on the sandy deck outside.

Now the same cool hand that earlier soothed him to sleep shakes him. 'Wake up, Max. Now.'

His eyes flicker open. His mother is in a white nightdress and looks anxious; her high cheekbones are etched into sharp relief by the shadows and her long fair hair shimmers in the blue light. 'They've come for us, Max. We must leave.- Quickly and quietly.'

He groans. 'Not again, Mum. I'm sleepy.'

'This isn't a practice, Max. It's real. They're here.'

He hears the guttural voices outside and something cold uncoils m his stomach. He is suddenly wide awake, his birthday forgotten. 'Is he here?' he whispers.

Eyes wide, she nods and puts a finger to her lips.

As she leads him across the main corridor to her bedroom there's a rending crash. The front door buckles and an axe blade appears through the splintered wood. The bungalow's secluded position on the north-western shore of Kauai, the most westerly of the Hawaiian Islands, concealed them once. Now its isolation renders them defenceless.

Inside her bedroom his mother locks the door and they push the chest of drawers in front of it. She reaches under the bed and pulls out a baseball bat, two ready-packed rucksacks and a plastic bag, which contains a wad of US dollars and three passports: a United States passport in her maiden name, Collins, and two passports bearing Max's photograph -- one Swiss, the other American. The Swiss passport carries his full name Max William Kappel. The American passport carries his middle name and his mother's maiden name: William Collins. She rolls back the rug, pulls a brass latch embedded in the wooden floor and opens a trapdoor to the crawl-space beneath the house.

They drop on to the sand, and as they wriggle between the struts supporting the house Max hears heavy footsteps on the floorboards above. His mother pulls him towards the front, but he can see legs pacing by the porch. He shakes his head and points to the frangipani by the side of the house. It will take longer, but the trees provide cover.

The warm air is thick with the cloying scent of frangipani blossom as they crawl away from the sea to firmer ground. When the moon disappears behind the cloud they use the darkness to hurry across the dirt track by the front gate and disappear into the carport where the old jeep is parked. Max is tall for a nine-year-old, bigger than some teenagers, but he is uncoordinated and runs awkwardly. When he reaches the shelter of the carport he is panting hard. As his mother unlocks the jeep he looks back at the house, which has been their home for the last two years. The fractured front door gapes like a broken tooth and torches flash inside. He looks to the jetty beyond, and sees a large white yacht moored beside their small dinghy.

As he opens the car door he detects a distinctive odour in the air. He remembers the acrid smell from somewhere, but can't place it. She releases the handbrake, turns the ignition and presses her foot on the accelerator.

Nothing happens.

She tries again. Still nothing.

'Shit.'

For the first time he sees panic in her eyes and his stomach somersaults. This isn't like the other drills. This isn't fun at all.

She tries again.

Nothing.

A shadowy figure steps in front of the car and throws a tangle of severed cables on to the bonnet. A cigarette tip glows in the dark and Max now recognizes the familiar tobacco smell he detected earlier. His father is here somewhere.

Max's door is yanked open and strong hands pull him from the car. For all his size, he is no match for the man pinning him down. He yells and struggles, but his attacker is too strong. The man has long, jet-black hair tied into a ponytail and smells of seawater and sweat.

'Leave my son alone,' his mother shouts, clambering out of the car. She hits the man with the baseball bat, and Max jams two fingers into his left eye as hard as he can. The eyeball feels like a hard-boiled egg and the man screams, but Max keeps gouging, desperate to break his grip. Two more men appear, knock his mother to the ground and pull Max's hands behind his back. The first man pushes his face directly into Max's: his swelling eye socket glistens with gore and his remaining eye glares with such fury that Max squeezes his own shut.

'Achtung, Stein!' a familiar voice warns from the shadows. 'Don't damage the boy. Take them to the boat.'

The men drag Max and his mother down the beach to the sleek white motor yacht. The wind is stronger now and the scudding clouds clear when they reach the jetty. In the moonlight Max sees his father. He is immaculately dressed in pressed trousers, blazer and tie. His neatly combed hair is as shockingly white as Max's. A distinctive black cigarette glows in his lips. He barely glances at Max before he turns to his mother. His unblinking, pale blue eyes are cold. 'You shouldn't have reverted to your maiden name, Jean,' he says matter-of-factly. 'That's what led us to you.'

She steps closer to him, unafraid. 'Helmut, let us be. You've nothing tofear from me. If I'd wanted to tell theauthorities anything I'd have gone ahead by now. I no longer care what you've done, but I can't allow you to corrupt my son.'

''Your son?' Helmut Kappel swells before her, as if unable to contain his rage. Yet his voice is so quiet it is barely audible above the gusting wind. 'He's my son. The boy's a Kappel. He has duties. A destiny.' He pauses, and when he speaks again his voice is softer. 'You shouldn't have left, Jean. I can't believe you did. No one leaves a Kappel.'

'I don't love you any more.'

His eyes darken. 'What's love got to do with it? Duty and loyalty are all I asked of you.'

She blinks as if he has slapped her face. 'But I did love you once, Helmut. More than you'll ever know. I just can't accept the crimes you committed in the name of your family.'

'It was our family.' He takes the black cigarette from his lips, studies the gold filter and flicks it into the sea. 'Enough of this.' He turns to the man with the jet-black ponytail, who has wrapped a bandage over his bloody eye. 'Your men can put her on board, Stein.'

'I'll stay with the boy, Helmut,' says a stockier, bearded man, with similar pale eyes and white-blond hair. He is dressed in a formal lightweight suit, Max's Uncle Klaus, his father's younger brother. 'Until you return.'

'No, Klaus. I want him to see this.' Max's father turns away with a flourish, revealing a glimpse of scarlet lining in his sober blue blazer. 'The boy must learn.'

The yacht is over fifty feet long with cabins in the bow, but the men bundle Max and his mother into the exposed stern. A man sits on each side of Max, holding his wrists, while Stein and another man sit with his mother. The anchor is raised and the yacht casts off. His father nods to Uncle Klaus at the wheel and the idling engine roars into life, taking the craft out into the Pacific.

His father looms over him like an Old Testament prophet. 'I'm taking you back to Zurich to continue your education. You're my heir, Max. Your mother stole two years of your life but you'll catch up. You're a Kappel.'

Max strains to see past his father but the men tighten their hold on his wrists. 'What are you doing to Mutti?'

'Forget about her, Max.' The clouds again conceal the moon, darkening his father's face. "You must learn, my son, that love brings nothing but sorrow and chaos. The world would be a better place without it. At best it is a trivial distraction. At worst it's a dangerous sickness that softens the mind and clouds the judgement. It must be controlled.' Helmut Kappel glances over his shoulder at the woman to whom he has been married for eleven years. 'No one is immune to its poison. Duty and loyalty are all that matter in a family, but your mother never understood this.'

'Don't listen to him, Max,' his mother says. 'Duty and loyalty are meaningless without love.'

Helmut Kappel straightens, and Max sees that Stein has knotted a rope round his mother's legs. His eyes follow the wet coils, which lie on the deck like a dormant python. His heart jumps when he sees the stone block by her feet.

'How deep is it here?' his father demands.

Uncle Klaus checks the charts, then peers through the rain and intermittent moonlight to the high, serrated cliffs of the Na Pali coast. 'Drops straight to the ocean floor -- over two thousand feet.'

'Stand her up, Stein.'

'No,' Max shouts. 'No, Vater, no.' He reaches for his mother but the men tighten their grip on his arms.

His mother's eyes are fierce with passion. 'Don't hate your father for this,' she says. 'Don't let him make you like he is.'

Stein stands her on the side of the boat, stares at Max with his single eye, and smiles. As the clouds part again, the moon shines like a silver sun and his mother's white nightdress-glows in the ghostly light. At a signal from Kappel, Stein wrestles the block overboard and, as the slick coils slither after it, she raises her arms high above her head, as if preparing to dive. She looks so beautiful, so composed, that the men stare in awe and relax their grip.

'He good, Max,' she says. T love you.'

Marshalling all his strength, Max wrenches himself from the men's grasp and lunges for her as the taut rope plucks her overboard.

'Stop him!' his father shouts, as Max grips her wrists and takes one last deep breath. When the water engulfs him he feels no fear.

On land he is awkward but in water he is in his element. If he tries hard enough he will save her. His mother was once an Olympic swimmer. Together they will swim against the weight of the block.

In the submarine moonlight her eyes widen with shock and bubbles issue from her mouth. The fall has winded her, driving precious air from her lungs. It is up to him now. He must pull her to the surface. He kicks against the weight of the block, straining with all his power, but it continues its inexorable descent.

Her hands pull at his, trying to release him from their bond, but he will not let go. When the inky blackness closes in, she stares up at him, imploring him to release her. But he continues to hold her. The cold floor of the ocean seems an infinitely warmer place than that which awaits him above. 'I love you,' he declares silendy, staring into her eyes.

Then his body betrays him. The build-up of carbon dioxide in his blood triggers the need to breathe before he blacks out, and in its panic his body obeys only one involuntary imperative: to survive. He releases his mother's wrists and kicks for the surface. When he breaches it he gasps for air as greedily as a newborn. Rough hands grip him and lift him on to the boat.

Shivering on deck, he retches, hating himself for letting his mother die but hating himself more for living. His father scowls down at him. 'You'll learn never to do anything like that again, boy,' he says. 'You'll feel no emotion, show no pain.'

*