Jeff knocked him away as if he were no more than a yapping puppy, and returned to his attack on the Plexiglas wall.
Outside the plastic cell, Takeo Yoshihara and Stephen Jameson watched Jeff Kina’s attack.
Yoshihara spoke. “Flush the enclosure.”
Josh, the wind knocked out of him by Jeff’s casual blow, lay on the floor, trying to catch his breath. And then, as Jeff kept smashing at the wall, leaving reddish brown smears everywhere his bleeding hands struck the greasy surface of the plastic, the atmosphere inside the chamber began to change.
The brown haze cleared away.
And Josh Malani felt his chest begin to hurt.
He tried to struggle to his feet, but couldn’t. Scrabbling across the floor, he instinctively stretched a hand out toward the two men who stood safely beyond the confines of the Plexiglas. “Help us,” he pleaded. “Please? Just help us …”
Jeff Kina, writhing on the floor now, was clutching at his chest as he struggled to breathe the oxygen-rich air that was quickly replacing the noxious fumes with which the box had been filled only a moment ago. Josh crawled toward him, his hands closing on Jeff’s wrists.
“They’re killing us, Jeff,” he whispered. “Oh, God, they’re killing us.”
Once more Jeff Kina tried to heave himself up, tried to launch one final attack, but already the strength was leaching from his body and darkness was closing in on him. “Mama …” he whispered. “Mama …” His voice trailed off, his body convulsed, then relaxed, and he lay still.
“Interesting that the bigger one died first,” Josh Malani heard Takeo Yoshihara say. It was the last thing he heard before the darkness conquered him.
CHAPTER 28
“I still don’t understand why they brought him up here,” Rob said as he steered the Explorer through the gates of Takeo Yoshihara’s estate.
“She didn’t tell me,” Katharine said. She sat tensely in the passenger seat, arms wrapped tightly around herself, as if to contain the anxiety within. Her mind was reeling with images of Michael hidden away in one of the subterranean rooms below the south wing of the research building; Michael imprisoned like the poor puppy that died in her arms. “All Yolanda Umiki said was that I should come to Yoshihara’s office.”
Leaping from the car a moment after they pulled up, she ran across the gardens that separated the research pavilion from the collection of structures that made up Takeo Yoshihara’s personal residence, as Rob followed — and stopped, realizing that she had never seen Takeo Yoshihara’s office, and wasn’t certain where it was. She looked about in confusion just as a servant materialized and bowed respectfully to them.
“Mr. Yoshihara is waiting in his office. This way, if you please.”
A small bridge led to an Oriental-style building like a perfect teahouse, floating in the center of a pond. Inside were the two rooms that Takeo Yoshihara used as an office on the estate. The smaller, rather cramped anteroom held Yolanda Umiki’s desk, two ornately carved teak chairs, a tonsu, and several filing cabinets. In Takeo Yoshihara’s own office there was only a simple table of highly polished wood that served as a desk — bare save for a telephone — and a single chair. Several cushions were scattered on the floor. Takeo Yoshihara himself stepped into the room through an open shoji that led to a veranda that overlooked the mirrorlike surface of the pond and the perfectly tended garden of bonsai conifers that lay beyond. Sliding the screen closed, Yoshihara approached Katharine, his hand extended, his expression grave.
Katharine was tempted not to take his hand at all, but thought better of it at the last second.
Why warn him of her suspicions?
“Dr. Sundquist, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your son.”
“Where is he?” Katharine demanded. “I want to see him.”
“I shall take you to him myself in just a few moments.”
“A few moments?” Katharine repeated, her voice rising. “Mr. Yoshihara, you’re talking about my son! My son! From what I already know, he collapsed on the playing field at Bailey High. Why wasn’t he taken to Maui Memorial Hospital?”
Takeo Yoshihara tried to gesture her onto one of the cushions on the floor, but when she remained standing, he did, too. “It was upon my orders that he was brought here,” he explained.
“Your orders?” Katharine shot back. “Who are you to be giving orders as to what is to be done with my son? And how did you even know something had happened to him? Have you been watching him?”
If she expected him to flinch at the accusation, she was disappointed; far from being taken aback by the question, Takeo Yoshihara appeared to welcome it. “As a matter of fact, we have,” he said. “Ever since Kioki Santoya died, I have been concerned not only about Michael, but about his friends Josh Malani and Jeff Kina, as well.” He hesitated, then: “I’m not sure how to tell you this, Dr. Sundquist, but the Malani boy died on the beach at Spreckelsville yesterday afternoon.”
The words struck Katharine like a physical blow. Instinctively she reached out to Rob for support. As Rob took her arm, Takeo Yoshihara brought the chair around from behind his desk. “I can have Yolanda bring you something,” he offered as Katharine sank onto the chair.
She shook her head but could say nothing. Josh? Dead? How could it have happened? And if Josh were dead … “How?” she asked, the bravado of a moment before gone from her voice, her hand slipping unconsciously into Rob’s. “Dear God, why?”
“Dr. Jameson isn’t yet certain where the problem began,” Takeo Yoshihara said, leaning back against his desk. “But he was very interested in what happened to the Santoya boy, particularly the condition of his lungs. When he analyzed the lung tissue, it appeared that the boy’s lungs had somehow become incapable of allowing oxygen to be absorbed into the blood. In fact, it was as if he had become allergic to it. When it was determined that your son was having respiratory problems but seemed not to be having difficulty in moving air in and out of his lungs, Dr. Jameson thought it imperative that Michael not be given oxygen.”
Katharine’s fingers clamped down hard on Rob’s hand as she struggled against the terrible panic rising inside her. Rob tightened his arm around her, as if to protect her from whatever Takeo Yoshihara might say next. “But you still haven’t told us exactly what’s wrong with Michael,” he said.
“In order to do that, I have to explain to you about some experiments that are going on here,” Yoshihara replied. His gaze shifted to Katharine. “Dr. Silver has already signed a confidentiality agreement. It was part of his employment contract. I’m afraid I shall also have to ask you to sign one.” He pressed a button on the telephone, summoning Yolanda Umiki, who appeared with a single sheet of paper in her hand.
Rob Silver’s eyes narrowed. “Is this really necessary?” he asked. “Given the circumstances, I can’t believe —”
“I’m afraid I shall have to insist.” Taking a silver pen from the pocket inside his jacket, Yoshihara handed it to Katharine.
Without reading a single line of the document — not caring at all what it might say — Katharine scribbled her signature on it and handed it back to the woman.
As silently as she’d come in, the secretary left, quietly closing the door behind her.
When the three of them were alone, Takeo Yoshihara turned to Katharine. “As Dr. Silver may have told you, we are doing a great deal of environmental research here. What he hasn’t told you, because until now he hasn’t known, is that we have been working with a substance that appears to give oxygen-sustained, carbon-based life- forms — which comprise most of what we have on this planet — the ability to sustain themselves on gases other than oxygen. Gases that would ordinarily be poisonous to them.”
“Are you saying you’ve developed a compound that would let people survive in badly polluted air?” Katharine asked, carefully keeping any clue that she had seen the subterranean labs out of her voice.
“We haven’t developed it,” Yoshihara explained. “We found it.”
“Found it?” Rob echoed. “You mean you’re mining it?”
Yoshihara shook his head. “One of my research teams — a group of divers — was working off the Big
