Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (7 page)

Mrs. Patton was drinking coffee and reading the paper, the radio playing. She looked up as he stood in the door. "Dr. Ballard! I hope you slept well."

"Very well, thank you," Jerry said.

"Join me. I'll have Ito bring a second cup." A silent Japanese houseboy disappeared into the dining room beyond.

"I'd be glad to," Jerry said. It was just short of eight o'clock, so they had a little time before they were to meet Dr. Buck. Hopefully there would be more than coffee for breakfast. One advantage of staying in a hotel would be room service. He settled down in the other chair, taking deep breaths of the warm air. It was very peaceful.

She waited until the houseboy had returned with a pristine white porcelain cup and saucer and deftly placed them in front of Jerry before she continued. "I expect you'll want to go out to the dig as soon as possible."

"I will," Jerry said, helping himself to the sugar. "Mrs. Patton, there are some things about this that baffle me."

"You too," she said, sipping her coffee with a smile. "There are certainly things that baffle Peter."

"The identity of the donor?"

"Yes." She nodded. "Even he doesn't know. Only certain members of the museum's Board of Directors do. Also, why Dr. Radke is here."

"This dig is far beneath him," Jerry said. "His qualifications exceed anything that one could hope to learn. For that matter, what could one hope to learn?"

Beatrice took a deep breath. "That's the question, isn't it? There is a sad chapter in these islands' history, the transformation by the missionaries who hoped to 'civilize' the heathens. Perhaps some of the 19th century missionaries had been in China and had acquired the porcelain there."

Jerry shook his head. "Which is very interesting in terms of local history, but hardly worthy of Dr. Radke’s attention, or frankly of the attention of the Bishop Museum. 19th century missions are not exactly rare. Nor do they require a foremost East Asian scholar."

"There is the other option," Beatrice said mildly, lifting her coffee cup to her lips. "That Hawai'i was discovered by the Chinese in the fifteenth century, two hundred years or more before Cook claimed the islands for England."

Jerry frowned. "Is that a serious theory?"

"No. It's a crackpot theory." Beatrice smiled. "And there has never been anything discovered to lend credence to it."

"Until now," Jerry said.

Bea nodded. "If you find some evidence of fifteenth century ruins, or frankly anything before 1800 that is at all suggestive of Asian origins, it will turn every mainstream theory about Polynesia on its ear. It says that the islands were populated very slowly from west to east by peoples moving from one island to another in outrigger canoes, and that those peoples were Polynesian and had no contact with other populations until very late in the game. Contact with mainland China is out of the question and would completely change everything we think we know."

"But there are people who embrace that theory?" Jerry asked. This was entirely outside his sphere of expertise.

"There are people who believe that Aryan supermen built the statues on Easter Island," Bea said with an enigmatic smile. "There are people who believe a lot of things. And one of them has enough money to finance a dig in Collins’ pineapple grove."

"But if it's true…."

"If it's true that the Chinese had contact with Hawai'i, that changes our understanding." Bea nodded. "You are an outside authority with no dog in the fight, a Classicist who has no professional motive to find evidence or not to find it. And that's the heart of the matter, Dr. Ballard."

"I see," Jerry said. His management of the dig would have to be impeccable. Any deviation would be seized upon by either side of the debate as a sign that the results were hopelessly flawed. He must be utterly impartial. Which would be easy enough, Jerry thought, as he had no personal feelings about this one way or the other. It would be easy enough not to bias his conclusions. After all, he had no emotional involvement in the outcome.

“But I’m remiss,” Bea said. “You must want breakfast.”

It was bacon and eggs, plain and tasty, served on the veranda along with a glass of pineapple juice and more of the excellent coffee. He tried not to wolf his food, but it seemed to him that it disappeared with dismaying haste. When he had finished, Bea collected hat and gloves and they climbed back into the Packard for the drive down the mountainside to the Museum. The air blowing past the car was soft and warm and strangely scented, and he couldn’t help a smile.

Dr. Buck was waiting already, although by Jerry’s watch it wasn’t quite nine, standing beside an elderly Ford that had definitely seen better days. The doors were missing, and the roof had been cut away in the back to make a cargo platform. Bea made her farewells without seeming to notice its state, promising to collect Jerry in the evening, and disappeared into the Museum. A couple of young men dodged past her carrying baskets and three shovels, which they tied to the car with the ease of long practice. Dr. Buck gave Jerry an apologetic glance.

“I’m afraid I’ve loaned Dr. Radke my car at the moment — I had things to deliver here before we headed to the dig. There’s something of a tradition of creative repurposing here on Hawai’i, Dr. Ballard. New imported vehicles are prohibitively expensive for most people, so the majority make do with older, rebuilt models. Even the museum.”

“So this belongs to the museum?” Jerry asked, and levered himself carefully into the passenger seat. There was a leather strap bolted to the frame above where the door had been, and he wound his fingers through it.

Buck nodded, working the starter. “Or possibly in a museum. But it’s at your disposal, yours and Dr. Radke’s. All the boys working at the dig can drive, so there’s no shortage of drivers, either.” He backed the Ford carefully out of its place, and turned onto the road that seemed to lead north out of town. “Mind you, like many machines, it has its own eccentricities.”

“I’m used to that,” Jerry said, with a smile. He appreciated Buck’s tact. He hadn’t been able to drive a car since he lost his leg. Alma had talked about rigging him a hand throttle, but he had dreaded the thought — one more thing to relearn that had once been instinctive and easy — anyway, there had never been any real need.

“That’s right,” Buck said. “I imagine your aviator friends have to improvise occasionally.”

“More than one might wish,” Jerry answered, and was rewarded with a grin.

“Yes, I followed the Great Passenger Derby, Dr. Ballard. I wasn’t sorry to see Harvard’s defeat.”

Right, Buck had been a visiting scholar at Yale that year. Jerry felt himself blush anyway. So much for presenting himself purely as a serious academic.

The buildings fell away behind them as they turned north along the coast road, traveling on an edge between the houses and shops on the seaward side, and the farmland further in. Jerry didn’t recognize most of the crops, though he guessed that the short, spike-leaved plants were pineapples; to the west, the surf beat against reefs and curled in here and there to beaches as pale as new bread. After about half an hour, Buck turned onto a road that led into the fields. It rapidly became little more than a rutted track, and Jerry tightened his grip on the leather strap. Buck downshifted, gears grinding, as they crossed a muddy irrigation ditch, and turned up a last steep incline. Jerry caught his breath.

Hawaii really was impossibly, unfairly beautiful. The pineapple groves were on the middle ground, rising above the beaches and the coast road with its shacks and more substantial houses; inland, the mountains rose sharply, lush and green and still forbidding, and all around him rose the improbable plants that would produce pineapples in due season. The air smelled of salt and freshly turned earth, and the sun was already baking his shoulders, making him glad of his broad-brimmed panama. Ahead, a section of field lay fallow. A newer model Buick was parked in the turnaround, under the shade of the single tree, and Gray and Tompkins had already started placing stakes in the soft ground. A teenage boy with a Chinese face stood holding a clipboard, and Radke stood beside him hands on hips, directing the placement of the stakes. He’d stripped to the waist already in the rising heat, and Jerry followed the line of his backbone with appreciation. He was thin but neatly muscled, and the light khakis suggested an equally nice ass. His months in the Chinese desert had left him bronzed, and when he turned to face the approaching truck, the hair on his arms and belly caught the light like red gold.
Oh, my good Lord…
Jerry hoped he hadn’t actually said that out loud, and focused on getting himself out of the doorless truck.

Radke removed his hat and propped his sunglasses on top of his head. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, and when Jerry made himself meet the German’s eyes, there was a definite glint of mischief there.

“A lovely day,” he answered. “And quite a view.”

Radke’s smile widened for an instant to a smirk. “I’m glad you think so.” He turned back toward the unplowed field, and Jerry limped after him, his cane sinking slightly in the rich dirt.

“This tree is where Mr. Collins found the first pieces of porcelain,” Radke went on smoothly, and Jerry gave himself a mental shake. “I’ve had Gray and Tompkins start laying out the test trenches as we discussed yesterday.”

Jerry took the clipboard with its site plan and notes, pushing his glasses up on his nose, and saw Buck give a smile of satisfaction.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said, and turned back to collect the Buick. His car, Jerry guessed, not the Museum’s.

“Does it meet with your approval?” Radke asked, and Jerry couldn’t resist a quick glance in his direction.

“Entirely, at least so far.” He took a breath, looking from plan to ground and back again. “Let’s think about extending the western trench a little further out of the field. The ground may not have been as badly disturbed there.”

“Yes.” Radke nodded. “Very well.”

Jerry looked at the plan again, focusing on the familiar minutiae of ground and plot, angles that would give good coverage. He was here to work, not to admire any of the scenery, human or otherwise. For a moment, he thought he could hear Gil laughing, then the wind blew the sound away.

Chapter Three

A
lma opened the thick letter from Floyd Odlum, trying to tune out the general chaos in the office off Gilchrist Aviation's hangar. Despite the thin wall that separated the office from the hangar, the sound of Lewis pulling the Frontiersman out for the run to Santa Fe was quiet compared to the rest of it. Mitch was on the phone with someone at the Sheriff's office, ducking his head while holding the receiver with one hand and the stick with the other in hopes of hearing what the other person was saying. The radio was blaring. Stasi, Dora, and Merilee were singing what sounded like a jingle for peanut butter at the top of their voices. Dora didn’t have all of the words right, since she wouldn't be two until next month, but she made up for it with volume. Merilee had all the words but they were all punctuated with loud squeals of excitement.

One child in the office had been a lot. Two were too much. But there wasn't exactly an alternative. Jimmy and Douglas, the two Patterson boys, were at school — in fifth and first grades respectively — but Merilee was too young. As long as they were keeping the kids, Merilee had to come to work with Dora. Or else they'd have to have someone stay home, and they couldn't afford to do that right now with Odlum's contract.

Alma slit the manila envelope and pulled out the contents. She'd already signed the contract — eight weeks work in Hawaii field-testing the Catalina Flying Boat under owner/operator conditions, based at Honolulu on the island of Oahu. This included their steamer tickets plus the extra one for Stasi, sailing from San Diego on the tenth of June, as well as all of the manuals and technical documents related to the Catalina. Alma couldn't wait to dig into those.

"Ok, thank you." Mitch put the phone down, shaking his head.

Stasi looked up, a frown between her brows. "What did they say?" She got to her feet, dusting off her black dress.

Mitch blew out a breath, including Alma in his answer. "They've had a missing persons report on Joey for three weeks and nothing. The guy who owns the house he was renting has filed to evict and to seize the household property in lieu of back rent. It's going to be sold at auction."

"Doesn't that belong to the children?" Alma said.

"It would if Joey were dead," Mitch said. "But we don't know that. For all we know he's working in Chicago or something." A note of frustration had crept into his voice. "They don't even own the clothes on their backs, much less their toys back at the house or their winter coats or their parents' pictures. But that's not the worst of it. He's got no kin as far as anyone can find. So the kids are supposed to go to the State Home in Denver."

Stasi drew a sharp breath.

Alma frowned. "I thought the Sheriff said it was ok for them to stay with us."

"As a temporary haven, he called it," Mitch said. "Which is fine for three weeks. But they've got to have proper guardians or go into state custody." He shook his head, putting the phone back on the desk carefully. "And we're going to Hawaii in two weeks. So after the weekend one of the deputy sheriffs will drive them up to Denver."

Stasi brushed her hands off on her dress abruptly. "I'm going to see what Lewis is doing," she said and hurried out into the hangar.

Alma stepped around the little girls playing on the floor, her own and the other, the one who had no home. "Surely Joey will turn up."

Mitch looked intently at the phone on the desk. "Al, don't you think he would have by now if he was just on a bender? I think he's dead. But God knows when somebody will find his body."

"I wish Stasi could," Alma said.

"So does she," Mitch replied. "But she can't talk to the Dead unless they want to. She can't make Joey turn up disembodied any more than I can make him show up in the flesh!" He changed the subject with visible effort. "So what does Odlum say?"