Harrison had to clear his throat. “No, sir. Nothing like that…”
“I didn’t want to push it, Captain, considering I’m just a tiny little cog and there’s a war, but my detailer said the paperwork for the change in rank got lost, somewhere in the bowels of the bureaucracy in Washington.”
“Well, talk about your
Harrison beamed. Jeffrey too was pleased. With the right nurturing, Jeffrey felt sure, Harrison would go far.
Jeffrey was self-aware enough to know his moods were on a seesaw today, up and down and up — exhaustion and overwork did that to him. So did the pins-and-needles anticipation of imminent combat. He resolved that once he sorted things out on the island and got back to
Jeffrey glanced at the navigation display. He picked up the intercom mike. The enlisted SEAL in the transport compartment responded. “Come forward, please. We’re closing fast on the minefield protecting the fishing piers.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Jeffrey gingerly opened the minisub’s top hatch. It rose partway and hit the planks of the pier the mini was hiding under. Jeffrey peeked outside. It was barely dawn. Jeffrey caught his first whiff of natural air in almost a week. What struck him at once were the smells. Dead fish, diesel fuel and lubricants, and tarry creosote — the odors of a working waterfront. The minisub bobbed in the swell, which was noticeable even here on the downwind side of the island.
Jeffrey listened. The swell sloshed. Rope lines creaked. The minisub scraped gently against seaweed and barnacles growing on the pilings of the pier.
Next to the pier, as Jeffrey expected, was an old fishing boat, large but wooden hulled, resting on the bottom mud, derelict. By the red light coming from down in the mini’s lockout chamber, Jeffrey spotted a stained and dirty canvas tarpaulin hanging over the side of the hulk, between the rotting fenders that still held the boat against the pier. He motioned for Harrison to follow him.
Harrison held the hatch open as far as he could, and Jeffrey clambered up. Then he helped Harrison. They dogged the hatch — the enlisted SEAL and the mini would wait for them here.
Jeffrey crawled along the cold, wet top deck of the mini. He timed the swells carefully, so he wouldn’t be crushed. At the right moment he worked his way under the tarpaulin, climbed over the side of the fishing boat, and flopped onto its greasy deck in front of the half-collapsed wheelhouse. He moved aside, concealed beneath the canvas sheet, and Harrison followed. They were already filthy.
Jeffrey waited, listening carefully again. There was nothing but the wind and waves, and the normal clanking and swishing sounds of dormant, tied-up vessels. Jeffrey glanced from under the tarpaulin. Scattered lights along the shore showed him it was very misty. Jeffrey and Harrison climbed from the derelict boat to the pier. They walked onto the land as casually as they could. More mist blew by a lamppost. Gravel crunched beneath their feet.
“Who goes there?” someone called. The accent fell between Australian and British.
“Serenity,” Jeffrey said. “Serenity One.” “Serenity” was the code name Clayton had established for the submarine on which the SEALs had come. “One” was navy talk for the captain himself.
A figure stepped from behind a parked vehicle. He advanced and offered his hand.
“Welcome to Chatham Island!” Constable Joshua Henga smiled. “Precisely halfway between the South Pole and the equator, right on the international date line. The first populated land to greet every new calendar day… That’s one of our main claims to fame, Captain. We like to say we’re quite easy to find on a map, though usually no one bothers looking.”
Given word from SEAL lieutenant Clayton, already on the island, Henga had been expecting Jeffrey, including Jeffrey’s sneaky approach to the land. Henga started up his ancient Land Rover truck and took a narrow road west. Jeffrey sat in the passenger seat, and Harrison sat behind Jeffrey — Jeffrey brought Harrison along as his aide, and also just for fun. They’d both removed their dirty coveralls and thrown them in back. Underneath they wore low-key civilian clothes.
“Thanks, Constable,” Jeffrey said. “I hope we haven’t inconvenienced you.” Henga was tall and wiry, mid- thirties, and wore a revolver on his policeman’s equipment belt. He seemed relaxed and patient in a manner almost alien to Jeffrey.
Henga laughed, a friendly, welcoming laugh. “I’m not inconvenienced in the least. Your team coming is the most interesting thing to happen here in some time.” The Land Rover bounced along.
“That isolated, are you?”
Henga glanced at Jeffrey and made keen eye contact. “It’s a big event when the supply ship puts in from New Zealand once a month. Tourism stopped right dead with the war.”
“I imagine it would have.” Just like New York. Jeffrey knew it would take a little while to get where they were going, so he made small talk. “You used to get many tourists?”
“Ecotourism. Lots of it. We’re so far away from anywhere, we have dozens of species of birds and plants found no place else in the world. Birdwatchers came especially. Our famous endangered black robins.”
That sounded interesting. “Can you point them out to us?”
“Not here, sorry. Only on some of the outlying islets. They need virgin forest, you see, and all the forest on Chatham Island itself was cleared for pasture land. That’s why they’re endangered.”
Jeffrey paused, then gave in to curiosity. Henga looked like a West Indies black. “If you don’t mind my asking, Constable, are you Maori, or Moriori?”
“Some of both, plus English blood. There’s been intermarriage for many decades. We’re a tight-knit community.”
“Being a constable keep you busy?”
“No. That’s why there’s just one of me. In the old days I’d mostly keep an eye out for nature conservation problems, and make sure the kids at least were discreet if they smoked marijuana. Never any real crime here. A magistrate makes a day trip from the mainland every six months. In the interim, I dish out justice with a tongue lashing or my fist.” Henga chuckled. “We don’t even have a high school. For that the older children board over in New Zealand. They fly home for holidays, if they ever come back at all.”
“They see this as a place to escape from?”
“Unless you want to fish or raise sheep or farm for the rest of your life…”
Henga made a left turn onto a rough dirt road. It was bright enough now that he could turn off his headlights. Jeffrey looked around. The land was rolling, covered by lime-green grasses or purplish moss. There was also low scrub brush, and patches of red and yellow wildflowers, and weathered volcanic rock. Jeffrey saw barbed-wire fences and low stone walls dividing grazing fields. The Land Rover went by scattered houses and outbuildings. All were one story, some ramshackle; some of them had tin roofs, like sheep-shearing sheds. Sometimes the truck passed local people on porches or in their farmyards, up with the dawn. The people waved at the constable and eyed his passengers with interest. Jeffrey saw young children playing.
“Another two or three kilometers,” Henga said. The land began to rise. Chatham Island was shaped like a giant letter I, twenty-five miles from top to bottom. Just to the east of the shaft of the I, which ran north-south, a
