A
Matter of State by Ray StaarAlthough
this is a work of fiction, much of what follows is true. All events pertaining
to the annexation of Hawaii by the United States are documented, historical
fact.
“By an act of war, committed with the
participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without
authority of Congress, the Government of…(Hawaii,)…a feeble but friendly and
confiding people, has been overthrown. A substantial wrong has thus been done
which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the
injured people requires we should endeavor to repair.”President Grover ClevelandExecutive Mansion (White House)December, 1918Chapter
One
Thursday, April 8, 1993Kihei,
Maui, HI 9:30 PM Hawaii Time
On
the evening of his last day on earth, multi-millionaire evangelist Reverend Dr.
Faber Heath leaned, waist deep, against the marble deck of a saltwater pool in
his Maui compound, idly watching as a tawny Native Hawaiian parishioner stepped
out of her clothing and stood, completely nude, before him.
Devlin,
the visiting deacon who had procured the woman, had been right. She was
exquisite. She was also, as Heath was soon to learn, an artist.
The
reverend scarcely noticed the woman move a canvas cooler bag to the water’s
edge just before joining him in the pool. He was far too preoccupied tracking
the progress of the saltwater as it slipped over her trim ankles, her superb
calves, thighs and hips, finally rising to just below her dainty navel.
Now
standing in front of him, the young Hawaiian woman laced the brittle fingers of
Reverend Heath’s bony hands through hers, then lay them on her bosom, all while
gazing fondly at him.
The
woman drew near him and placed her moistened lips over his. Faber Heath’s mouth
opened. She found his tongue and sucked on it, grinding her naked groin back
and forth over his hoary leg. So convincing was her display of ardor that, for
several moments, Reverend Heath almost believed himself as vital and desirable
as she.
Is
this sorcery, the reverend wondered? Have I been bewitched?
However
the thing was accomplished, Dr. Heath presently sensed his breath coming
quickly, his pulse pounding. In short, as the quaint phrasing of the Bible
would have it, there was a stirring in his loins. Such passionate responses as
these were the most vigorous and authentic he’d experienced in many years.
Murmuring
softly, the Hawaiian woman slipped her hand inside the good doctor’s swimming
trunks and fondled him. Faber moaned. God knew he had been touched by female
parishioners before, some of whom had been nearly as beautiful as this one, but
few had possessed the power to fill him with such anticipation. Whatever gift
she has, he thought, she has it in abundance and she gives of it readily. He
slid off his trunks so that she might give more freely.
“Oh,
Dr. Heath,” the woman breathed, “I want so much to bring you pleasure. May I
take you in my mouth?”
Heath
was mildly shocked, but only at her forthrightness. If he had any compunction
about allowing her to commit an act considered sinful by the church to which
they both belonged, he was not aware of it.
“Oh
yes, my dear,” he said, draping his arm over the back of her neck, “of course.”
The
salty water made his body buoyant. Using the woman’s shoulder as a hoist, the
reverend closed his eyes, arching himself upward until, like a dinghy on the
Dead Sea, he floated within her easy reach.
“The
Lord has made you powerful and wealthy,” she said, taking hold of his penis.
Dr. Heath smiled at the compliment, foreseeing, so he thought, the even greater
pleasure that was soon to follow. “It’s
a pity he also made you such a fool.”
Lost
in fervor, the reverend did not, at first, grasp the disparity between the two
halves of the woman’s statement. When it dawned on him that he was being
taunted and might very well be in danger, he opened his eyes, but by then it
was too late.
While
he had been swooning, the woman had retrieved her canvas cooler bag from the
pool’s edge. Smiling, she now held it in her free hand, open and just low
enough to reveal its contents. Protruding from the brackish water inside was a
translucent mass of fleshy tissue about the size of a cabbage head. Just
beneath it, dozens of thick tentacles undulated, like a cluster of venomous and
angry worms. Faber’s eyes grew wide.
“Sea
wasp?” he said, hoarsely.
“Sea
wasp, box jellyfish, cube jelly,” the woman said. “Call it what you will, it’s
equally lethal.” Reverend Heath’s breath came harder and faster now, but not
from desire.
“Who
are you?” he asked. “What do you want from me?” The woman’s smile broadened. Dr.
Heath struggled, but held as he was by his most sensitive organ, his efforts
were quite useless. “I’ll scream,” he said. “Deacon Devlin will hear if I
scream.”
“Deacon
Devlin,” called the woman. “Reverend Heath says he’s going to scream.”
A
sliding glass door leading to the nearby pool house was heard to open. From
inside, the deacon called out his reply.
“I’ll
put on some music, then,” he said.
Realizing
he was alone and defenseless, Dr. Heath’s expression grew more desperate.
Having no other recourse, he began to beg.
“Please.
I’ll give you anything. Whatever you want, it’s yours. Just don’t do this, I
implore you.”
The
woman brought her face directly over Faber Heath’s and looked into his eyes.
“Will you lead Japheth out from the tents of Shem?” she said.
To
a bystander, even to a Biblical scholar, the question might have seemed
obscure. To Dr. Heath, it apparently spoke volumes. For the first time, his
face registered complete comprehension. He now grasped with whom he was dealing
and what was at stake. He now understood it was time for him to die.
“Will
you lead Japheth out from the tents of Shem?” the woman asked again.
His
eyes bulging in fright, Dr. Heath remained silent.
“I
thought not,” she said.
Then,
in one nimble movement, the woman released the reverend doctor, leapt from the
pool and upended her cooler bag. Amid a splash of seawater, the dread creature
fell on Faber Heath. Its once fat tentacles, now sticky and thin, encircled his
body and adhered to his skin, its organelles stinging repeatedly, injecting him
with deadly venom.
He
sank briefly and then shot up out of the water like a demented fiend, clawing
at the transparent strings and howling in agony, his skin aflame, his heart
pounding.
Alas,
Dr. Heath’s efforts served only to stimulate the creature’s secretions. The
more he struggled, the more toxins flowed into his flesh. One final time, his head broke the surface of
the pool. He screamed pitiably.
“Olga!”
The
beautiful Hawaiian woman did not stop to wonder why, with his last breath, the
old man had called out this particular name. It did not concern her. Calmly,
she picked up a long pole and pushed down on his chest. Within minutes, Faber Heath
was dead.
Chapter
Two
Friday, April 9, 1993Somewhere in Puna, The
Big Island, HI 9:00 AM Hawaii Time
Iggy
the Apostle was late. Dickley Hooper, guerrilla pot farmer, squatted near a
newly planted marijuana patch, sparked up a blunt and waited.
This
year would mark the fifth season in a row that Hooper had contracted with Iggy
to plant a highly potent variety of weed known as Puna Pow. Previously, as an
independent grower, he had cultivated White Widow, another species of cannabis,
but five out of the last six years he had done so, his crop had been discovered
by police and destroyed. Since throwing in with Iggy, such difficulties had
ceased to plague him. That was one of the benefits of being under Iggy’s
protection.
Another
benefit was money. Iggy paid a generous yearly advance even though, as far as
Dickley knew, no Puna Pow was ever sold on the Big Island, a fact he had always
found puzzling. Another puzzle was that Iggy forbade Dickley to hold back any
Puna Pow for himself.
“Don’t
even smoke any,” he told Dickley. “You do, and I’ll know. You do, and I’ll kill
your ass.”
Dickley
shook his head. Yes, that Iggy was an odd bird, but he paid well and he paid
punctually. He could not imagine what might be delaying him today.
Inhaling
yet another long pull from the blunt, Hooper held it in his lungs until spots
appeared before his eyes.
Then,
while exhaling, he thought he heard a rustling sound from the brush some sixty
feet away. He looked up, but saw nothing. Still light-headed, he rubbed his
eyes and looked again. Still, there was nothing. Had he imagined the noise?
Dickley
stood up and set out across the field, focusing his attention on a thicket
whose branches appeared to have begun fluttering. Abruptly, the fluttering
escalated to a racket. Limbs bowed, boughs crackled and small animals bolted
from the underbrush. Iggy the Apostle, weaving unsteadily, moaning and holding
his arms in front of him, materialized in the clearing.
Dickley’s
first thought was that Iggy was playing some kind of trick. A heartbeat later,
he realized he was wrong. Iggy had no sense of humor. He didn’t play tricks.
Then
Dickley saw the blood.
Streaming
from Iggy the Apostle’s eyes and rolling down his cheeks ran two streams of
red. Somewhere in his mind, Dickley must have also realized that Iggy’s eyelids
were hanging, strangely slack and flaccid over his eye sockets. Even so,
Hooper’s horror stricken brain would not allow him to draw the obvious
conclusion. He called out.
“Iggy?”
The
Apostle, standing at a slight angle away from Hooper, awkwardly turned himself
toward the sound of Dickley’s voice, cocked his ear and grunted. Seen straight
on, his appearance was all the more grisly.
“Iggy.
My god, what’s happened?”
Iggy
parted his lips and pointed between them. “Ah,” he said. “Aye pooh mah Ah ah.”
Past
the edge of the man’s mouth, beyond his lips and behind his teeth, loomed a
revolting void. At the back of Iggy’s throat, a stump of bloody muscle that had
once been his tongue, writhed like a wounded serpent. Dickley tasted bile,
finally realizing what he was seeing.
He
leaned over, heaving convulsively, driven to his knees by nausea. He remained
on the ground, his head in his hands, for several long moments. When, at
length, Dickley did raise his eyes, what he saw filled him with even greater dread.
Two
enormous brown men, identical in appearance and dressed as Hawaiian warriors,
wearing colorful sarongs, gourd helmets and feathers, flanked Iggy the Apostle,
holding him fast by either arm. Beside them stood the most beautiful Native
Hawaiian woman Dickley had ever seen. Her face was covered in yellow and red
paint. She was naked to the waist. In her hands she held a shark-toothed
bludgeon.
“This
is the plague with which the nations that fight against us will be stricken,”
she said. Dickley gazed at her with alarm and awe. “Their flesh will rot where
they stand, their eyes will fall from their sockets, their tongues will be torn
from their mouths.” Then, with a powerful grace that Dickley could not but
admire, the woman swung her truncheon, neatly splitting Iggy’s head like a ripe
melon.
The
two brown behemoths made a move toward Dickley as if to take him, but the woman
held out her ax, blocking their way.
“For
now,” she said, “this is the last of four. Should more poison find its way to
my people, more deaths will follow. Do you understand?”
Dickley
did not understand. Still he nodded.
“Good,”
she said before disappearing into the brush. “Go now. Go and tell them.”Garrison Residence, San
Francisco, CA 10:00 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time)
For
days now, Deborah Garrison’s phone had alternately played the role of both protector
and tormentor. One set of incoming calls had been uniformly threatening.
Another set held out hope.
An
old friend of her family, engaged in a business which flew regularly between Hilo,
Hawaii, and Kingman, Arizona, had offered to arrange safe transport if she
could but reach the place undetected. That was going to be tricky.
The
airports had to be under surveillance by this time. Likewise the buses and
trains. Engaging private transport or taking her husband’s company jet would
leave an easily followed paper trail. That left only one option. She would have
to drive.
Deborah
did not like leaving her San Francisco home, nor did she relish the idea of
running, especially from an oaf like Hugh Nachtmann. In their youth he had been
an arrogant boor and a bully, an embarrassment to both his school and
community. Time, she was sorry to learn, had not altered him.
Among
their high school peers in the Hilo District of Hawaii’s Big Island, she alone
had stood up to Nachtmann, defending those he tormented and bearing up under
the revenge he took on her for opposing him. Over time, his very presence, she
remembered, became enough to set her teeth on edge.
Still,
though she had defied him once, she could not defy him now. If she and her
family were ever to know peace again, today she and her four year-old son,
Noah, must run.
The
classic brown 1966 Mustang in which they fled belonged to Deborah’s friend and
neighbor, airline executive Rachel Morris. She’d left it in Deborah’s care
while vacationing in Europe.
To
keep Rachel’s car running well, Deborah had agreed to use it for shopping and
other short trips, but the bargain had proven difficult to keep. In fact, until
tonight, she hadn’t driven the car at all, dispensing with her care-taking
responsibilities by occasionally opening Rachel’s garage door, starting the
engine and letting it run.
It
was with a comforting sense of anonymity then, that at 10:00 PM Friday evening,
she and Noah had followed a flashlight beam down the alley and through the gate
leading to Rachel’s backyard, climbed into the Mustang and driven into the
darkness.
Had
they taken Deborah’s Volvo station wagon, Hugh Nachtmann and his people would
likely have been on their trail almost instantly. The unfamiliar vehicle, she
hoped, would buy the pair at least some of the time they needed.
Noah
sat in his child safety seat in the back of the car. “Does Daddy know where
we’re going?” he asked.
“No,
sweetheart,” said Deborah, catching her son’s eye in the rearview mirror.
“How
come?”
“Well,
you know how Daddy sometimes has to go on trips by himself?”
“Yes.”
“That’s
what we have to do, sweetie. We have to take a trip by ourselves. OK?” The boy
cocked his head to the side and pursed his lips, a manner of looking thoughtful
he’d learned from his father.
“OK,
Mom,” Noah said.
Deborah
Garrison could not explain to her young son. His child’s mind was not yet
capable of understanding. In his mother’s past there was an enormous and troubling
secret. Because of it her parents had died. From this thing, there could be no
escape, only confrontation.Garrison Residence, San
Francisco, CA 11:00 PM PST
Jim
Garrison returned from a business trip later that evening to find Deborah and
Noah not at home. Though their absence was something of a surprise, he was not overly
concerned. It was Friday night. Possibly they were having a sleepover with one
of Noah’s day school friends. The couple’s son loved spending time in
unfamiliar places, especially if his mother was somewhere near at hand.
The
fact that Deborah Garrison had left no note might have troubled another
husband. Garrison, however, remained unperturbed. He knew his wife to be a conscientious
person. Even conscientious people occasionally have lapses of memory.
More
likely, he thought, it had been he whose memory had lapsed. Doubtless, Deborah
had told him of her plans and, in his busyness, he had let it slip his mind. In
either event, Garrison did not fret. He did his nighttime exercises and went to
bed. Office of US Congressman
Joe Chow, Hilo, The Big Island, HI 11:00 PM Hawaii Time
Moses
Pukuli, member of the Hawaiian House of Representatives for the 4th
District, sat in the home office of his friend and fellow Democrat, US
Congressman Joseph Chow.
Chow
was not as yet in attendance and Moses Pukuli was growing restless. A former
cop, he was predisposed to take easy offense from politicians, even though he
had been one himself for many years now.
At
8:05 PM, Hawaii Time, Congressman Pukuli had been contacted by one of Chow’s
aides who had requested his immediate presence for an emergency meeting. Could
Mr. Pukuli, the aide wondered, be in Hilo by 9:30 PM?
As
of this moment, 11:00 PM Hawaii Time, Moses Pukuli had been cooling his heels in
Congressman Chow’s empty office for nearly two hours. If this meeting was so
goddamn urgent, he grumbled to himself, why is my chair the only one with an
ass in it?
Pukuli
drummed his fingertips and glanced impatiently around the room. The walls of
Chow’s office were covered with an impressive array of photos, plaques and
memorabilia, attesting to the congressman’s popularity, not only in his home
district, but also statewide and even in Washington, D.C.
Pukuli
rose from his seat and walked to an especially large color photograph. Standing
before it, he was ashamed to feel a wave of envy stirring his breast. Pictured
there, in the glowing spring sun near a tulip bed, was Joe Chow and two of his
staunchest political allies: Bill and Hillary Clinton. The scene of the photo,
he then realized, was the Rose Garden at the West End of the White House. The
wave of envy threatened to become an tsunami of spite.
At
that moment, the door to the office swung open and through it strode Chow
himself, his hand extended, an apologetic smile spreading over his face.
“Moses,”
he said, advancing into the room. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”
Reaching out for his comrade’s hand, Pukuli’s jealousy evaporated. While it may
have been feasible to work up resentment against Chow in his absence, it was
quite impossible to dislike the man face-to-face. He was just too damned
genuine.
“Sit
down, Moses. Sit down,” Chow urged. “Please forgive my tardiness. It’s been a
brutal day.” Pukuli resumed his seat, glancing back across the desk just in
time to see Chow wincing in pain. The leg wounds he had sustained while serving
in Vietnam were especially troublesome when he was overtired.
Pukuli
leaned forward. “What’s going on, Joe?” he asked.
Chow
did not mince words. “We’ve got trouble, Moses,” he said. “Big trouble.”
“With
what? Who?”
“Faber
Heath is dead,” said Chow. “His body washed up on the beach near his home.”
“Drowned?”
“No.
Evidently he was swimming when he was attacked by a venomous jellyfish.”
“Jesus
H. Christ,” Pukuli whispered. “What a way to go.” A moment later, the larger
implications of Congressman Chow’s news became clear.
“Oh,
shit,” Pukuli said. “The Faber-Brady trust…will it…?”
“Yes,”
said Chow. “The only known eligible beneficiary cannot be located. That being
the case, unless another eligible candidate can be identified, the Council
succeeds by default.”
“How
long before that happens?”
“We’ve
got five days,” said Chow. “The deadline is Wednesday.”
“Great
God in heaven,” whispered Congressman Pukuli. “The Council of Kahunas…a radical
agenda with an eight billion dollar war chest.”
“Exactly,”
said Chow. “When word gets out, the news alone will cause more political
fallout than Watergate.”
“Political
fallout my brown ass,” Pukuli said. “We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t cause real fallout.”
