The Navidad Incident (45 page)

He inadvertently asks the question with his eyes and she nods.

“It's a girl,” is all she says, quite softly, then laughs.

It's the first time he's ever seen this young woman laugh. Never before—not at Angelina's, not at his office, not on that trip to Brun Reef, of course not during her stint as a Yuuka, or when he brought her to this house before—never did she even smile. Only now, at the very last. She smiles at a future in which Matías will play no part. As if a vague inkling had all of a sudden taken on reality. A future he'll never hear or see or hold in his arms. The thought fills him with great pangs of sadness. A feeling of utter hopelessness. It's all he can do to shut his eyes and breathe deeply to keep his head from spinning. It's okay, he can still stand, he's not going to keel over. It's all right to cry. He waits. Slowly he opens his eyes and looks up at the sun.

Then slowly, with only a nod, he turns his back on Améliana and his house, and starts walking toward the airfield. His shadow falls short at his feet.

The pilot is napping in the shade of the airplane wing. Matías would like nothing better than to stretch out beside him and take a little rest too, but now is not the time. He crouches down and shakes him awake.

“Wha—? Where the heck?” the man groans, straining to make out the other's face against the glare. “Aw, yeah, right. Sorry, I mean, excuse me, sir. I musta dozed off there.”

He gets up and yawns. “Ready to head home?” he says finally, still looking half asleep.

“Uh-huh, going home.”

“Be right with you. Just let me get a drink of water.”

While the pilot trots off toward the supply shed a short distance away, Matías opens the right-hand passenger door and climbs into the same seat as before, locking the door behind him. Settling back, he watches the pilot come running back. What's the hurry? He could have walked at a normal pace—they've got all the time in the world.

The man gives the plane a quick once-over, checks all the major parts, undoes the Pitot tube covers and lock pins, removes the blocks under the wheels and throws them in the hold. Then he settles into his seat and carefully closes the door before beginning his pre-takeoff rundown of the control panel. He's a conscientious guy, not one to skip procedures. As he said himself on the trip over, he'll never die in any accident; he's reliable.

The pilot flicks on several overhead switches, turns the fuel cock to
OPEN
, adjusts the choke, and reads the gauges one by one. Once everything checks out, he presses the ignition, and the hum of the right engine gradually builds, the propeller starts to spin and pick up speed, and after brief adjustments to the throttle and fuel mixture, strong vibrations pulse through the plane from front to back. Now he repeats the same steps for the left engine. Outside the window, the tall grass whips back in the slipstream. He conducts one last check, then dons his headset, switches on the radio, selects the frequency and calls in for clearance to take off.

The pilot turns to look at his passenger a couple of rows back.

“Seat belt fastened, sir?” he shouts over the roar of the engines.

“All set,” Matías shouts back, poking his head up between two seats in the middle row. He could have just nodded, but the words came out first.

“Door latch?”

“Locked.”

“Well, then, shall we?”

“Hang on, I've got a request,” Matías speaks up before he can face forward.

“What's that, sir?”

“Before heading back to Baltasár, could we circle a couple of times over Melchor?”

“Sure thing. She's your plane,” shouts the pilot. His standard line. As loud as ever, always cheerful and eager to please. “I'll take her around as many times as you want, just tell me when you're ready to make for Baltasár. Fair enough?”

“Fine, thanks.”

The pilot puts his hand on the throttle and by only the slightest maneuver pushes both engines to high velocity, then releases the parking brake, and the plane creeps forward.

No one else is leaving or landing at this hour; the long runway is all theirs. Like a clumsy stiff-winged bird on a pebbly path, the tiny aircraft rattles over the rough tarmac. Until it attains flight speed, until airborne, the Islander is an ungainly thing.

At the end of the runway, the pilot brakes one wheel and revs the opposite engine to bring the plane about in a U-turn. The flaps are down, the runway stretches wide open before them. Now comes the tricky part: taking off and climbing to cruising altitude. The roar of the engines redoubles, sending shudders down the fuselage, as the pilot coaxes out the full power of the machine, then slowly lets out the brakes. Warily at first, like a captive animal suddenly set free, the plane needs gradually to get up the nerve to make a break for open spaces. It runs and runs, picking up speed. The drooping wings buoy up on the wind and spring taut. Still the pilot reins in the eager plane, pacing the engines until they gain sufficient thrust to fly. Gently he pulls back on the stick to nose the aircraft up; the front wheel lifts off the ground, the weight eases up on the wheels behind, and the plane rises skyward. Air temperature twenty-nine degrees Celsius, combined pilot and passenger weight 160 kilograms, headwind eight knots—and 225 meters of runway in which to clear the nine-meter palm trees—flying is an exacting business.

“Circle a couple of times above Melchor” must mean his passenger wants to view the scenery below, the pilot assumes, so when they reach the three-hundred-meter mark a minute later, he levels off and trims the engines. The plane is all confidence now, ready and willing to take the two of them wherever they want to go for the next few hours.

One nice thing about the British Norman-built Islander is the raised-wing design, which allows an unobstructed field of vision below. Matías gazes down fondly at the peaceful hills of Melchor like some obliging carpet dealer unrolling rare kilims for an unlikely customer. The plane circles clockwise with its right wing dipped slightly, affording Matías an even clearer view of the topography. Seen from this height, Melchor looks so big and bountiful. Directly below is Sarisaran Beach, where he stood and faced Améliana only hours before—a point in time now speeding off into the distance.

Unlike flying over unknown territory, viewing familiar places from above is oddly poignant. So near and dear yet far out of reach, the now-deserted landmarks seem to lie there beyond real life. It's as if every coco palm, each trunk, is now untouchable, inviolate. Tin-and-thatch rooftops cluster in a pattern recognizable as Zaran, chalk-white streets stringing the houses together into a necklace knotted with childhood memories, sandy paths never to be walked again. The tropical rainforest canopy offers up a damp leafy smell, but no trace of the fragrant flowers hidden beneath. The sugar fields radiate an intense emerald gleam, but the forbidden fun of chewing stolen sugarcane, the sweet trickle of milky green juice, escapes him. There at arm's length is a Yuuka Yuumai
site, a clearing by the beach the size of his hand, but nowhere he will ever visit again to share in the fervor of his fellow islanders. This must be how Lee Bo sees the world: each particular in uncanny clarity, the entirety remote and unapproachable.

The pilot completes the first circuit, bringing them back over the airfield to start another loop. Presently Sarisaran comes into view. It won't be long now.

The pilot doesn't think anything special as he starts the second go-around. He's fine just taking orders. Do as many circuits as requested, then head back to Baltasár City. There's plenty of fuel, the weather is perfect for flying. Maybe the President is trying to make his presence felt overhead. Everybody knows this government Islander is used almost exclusively by him; flown at this altitude, everybody on the ground will know it's the President up here. A good leader needs to keep his eye on the people, and what better way to get a general perspective on all the villages? Or maybe he just wants to reminisce, to revisit childhood haunts and courting places?

Just as he's thinking this, a sudden gust of wind bursts into the cabin and the plane veers sharply to the right. On the left side of the control panel, a warning light flashes on. He steps hard on the aileron pedal by his right foot to correct the yaw and glances back over his shoulder to find the right-hand passenger door ajar. Through the narrow opening he glimpses a dark mass drop away and disappear, before the wind slams the door shut. The pilot quickly banks the plane to the left, jamming his foot on the left pedal to send the plane into a tight spiral while he cranes his neck to look behind to his left. Far below, at the edge of his field of vision, his eyes barely catch the tiny black speck of a falling object. He strains to see, even as it vanishes into the green mosaic of the ground below.

He reduces altitude and circles several times, but can see nothing moving. From above, the lightly forested white sand beach looks perfectly peaceful, fulfilling the prophetic words:

The earth shall accept thee

To: Executive Secretary of the Republic of Navidad Jim Jameson

Dear Jim:

I enclose my formal letter of resignation; I leave the rest up to you. I also enclose papers assigning you provisional powers as acting president in my stead. Inasmuch as Navidad doesn't have any vice president, and given that Tamang and I were the only two candidates to stand in the last election, you would seem the person most legally entitled to the office. So for the time being, the country is yours. Up to now, I've kept you in the dark about things you didn't need to know, so you might as well continue to disregard them. Stick to the cards on the table. There's no need to get your hands dirty.

If Suzuki should show up from Japan, don't listen to him. Just send him away. Nothing will come of that scheme we talked about at Brun Reef. Letters from Kurokawa can go straight in the bin. He's no one you need to deal with.

You should probably reconvene the legislature. All their hot air never made much difference anyway. Just let them say what they're going to say, then go ahead and do what you've got to do. (Here I am telling you to keep your hands clean, then I bend your ear with unsolicited advice—read on and just ignore what you will.) Among the legislators, Arenas the plantation owner is the most trustworthy; he's got no ambitions greater than his own present standing. He's easygoing, but shrewd—he knows right from wrong. Arenas and his men are good people to have on your side.

In terms of policy, be sensible: you want to be a good caretaker. You're still young and inexperienced. Big gestures invite big failures. Err, if you must, on the side of thoroughness. You don't need an ideology to run a country; in fact, you're better off without one. It's probably more prudent for a small country like Navidad to see where the prevailing winds and currents take it rather than try to power through on its own. Don't think of it pessimistically. This way we won't need to get too close to America or Japan; we can be friends with Palau, stay on good terms with Yap and all the Micronesian Federation, and invite in just enough foreign investment to keep us afloat. Don't push economic growth at all costs. You're smart; I have every confidence in you.

Now, one immediate item of business. A Swiss accounting firm will be contacting you about transferring a large sum of money to the Navidad National Treasury. Having no heir, I made prior arrangements to have savings there disbursed in case of the account holder's decease. You can let the legislature debate what to do with it all, but it would please me greatly if a portion could be used to establish an education fund in my name (laugh at an old man's vanity if you will).

Sorry to bother you, but one more thing: there's my own personal account at the Baltasár City branch of the Bank of Hawaii. It won't come to much, but can you please make sure that Améliana gets it. Also my house in Melchor. Ask her why if you want to know. She'll explain if she feels like it, but don't press the issue.

I know it must be confusing to have an entire administration shoved into your hands, but believe me, running a country is not all that different from driving a car. Just make sure you don't crash into things. Other than that, if you feel like accelerating, do it slowly. It's your prerogative, but it's also your neck. Speeding leads to accidents. And especially, ignore backseat drivers. Remember: you're the one in the driver's seat, not them.