The Presence

CHAPTER 30

“What if he can’t do it?” Katharine asked. They were driving up Lipoa Street toward the Computer Center. In the fifteen minutes since they’d left the dive shop, Rob Silver had made two phone calls. Nick Grieco hadn’t answered, but Al Kalama had. On a terrible hunch, Rob had decided to swing by Nick’s apartment building. The presence of three police cars confirmed that his hunch had hit a bull’s-eye,

“I don’t think we have any choice,” Rob said, his voice grim. “You can’t leave Michael alone up at Yoshihara’s any longer, and there’s no way Phil Howell and I can find what we’re looking for by ourselves. We’ve got to have an expert.”

“But you said he’s a dive guide—” Katharine began.

“He’s also a computer freak. When he’s not diving, he’s messing around on the Net. If he can’t find the information we need, then it’s just not there. I don’t know why I didn’t think of him an hour ago.”

“If he’s such a genius, then why doesn’t he have a job?”

Rob glanced over at her, one eyebrow lifted. “Come on, Kath — this is Maui. Haven’t you noticed how many jobs only exist to pay for the rent and the sports equipment? Besides, Al had a little problem a few years ago. Something to do with hacking into a government computer where he wasn’t supposed to be. The way he tells it, the only reason he didn’t go to jail was because no one was willing to acknowledge that what he’d done was possible. It’s hard to convict someone of a crime if you won’t admit it was committed.”

The light at the Piilani Highway changed. As Rob pressed on the accelerator, a horn blasted behind them, and an ancient Honda Civic, its caved-in passenger door tied shut with a frayed rope, and a surfboard strapped to its top, shot past them. “Hey, man! Quit blockin’ the road with that beater, huh?” A hand appeared from the driver’s window, thumb and pinkie waggling.

Katharine’s heart sank. “That’s Al Kalama, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Believe me, he knows what he’s doing,” Rob insisted, but a quick glance at Katharine told him she didn’t believe him. A few seconds later Rob pulled the Explorer up next to the Honda.

Al Kalama, wearing nothing but a Speedo, a pair of sandals, and a grin, was already leaning against the door of his car. “So what’s the rush, man? The way you were talkin’, it sounded like someone was dyin’ or something.”

Rob Silver’s eyes fixed on the beach bum. “Ken Richter’s already dead, and I think Nick Grieco is, too.”

The grin wiped from his face, Kalama listened to what they had found, first at the dive shop, then at Nick Grieco’s condo complex. When Rob finished, he uttered a low whistle. “Jesus! What the hell’s goin’ on?”

“That’s why we need you,” Rob said. He handed Kalama the list of names Katharine had copied from the board in the back room of the dive shop. “We need to find out where these five people are, or at least if they’re still alive.”

Al Kalama paled as he read the names. “I was on a dive with these guys a few days ago.”

Rob glanced at Katharine. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure! I remember the kids ’cause most of them were assholes. Plus, one of them had some trouble with his air tank, which was really weird, ’cause it was brand-new equipment that guy Takeo Yoshihara sent down.”

The words struck Katharine like nails being pounded into a coffin.

Michael’s coffin.

Until that moment she had been clinging to the hope, no matter how slim, that Michael’s illness was an accident, as Takeo Yoshihara had insisted. Now there was no more room to deny the truth. “The one who had trouble,” she said, her voice trembling, “is there any way you can find out if he’s still alive? Is he still on the island?”

Kalama shrugged. “Should be a piece of cake. All the kids on that dive were leaving that afternoon or the next morning. The guy who had the problem was from Chicago, and it seems like if he died, there ought to be some mention in the local papers.”

“Do it,” she said. “Please do it.” She turned to Rob. “I have to get back up there. I have to get Michael out.” She moved to get behind the wheel of the Explorer, but Rob stopped her.

“Katharine, are you crazy? How are you going to get him out?” he asked. “And even if you can, where are you going to take him? He can’t breathe outside that box, remember?”

Katharine brushed the questions aside. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll find a way. But I have to get back to him! My God, Rob, don’t you see? Takeo Yoshihara doesn’t want him alive! He just wants to find out how Michael and his friends got into that stuff, and when he does, he’ll kill him!” Even as she spoke the words, new questions — questions Rob hadn’t yet thought of — came into her mind.

What if they wouldn’t let her back into the estate?

What if Michael were already—

She cut the last question off, unwilling even to let the thought come into her head. “Find out everything you can,” she begged Rob. “Find out what’s in the files. Find out what they’re really doing!” Putting her arms around him, she pressed close to him for a moment, then broke the embrace and got into the Explorer. She was just about to pull out of the parking slot when Rob produced his cellular phone from his pocket and shoved it through the open window.

“Take this,” he said. “I have a feeling we’re going to need to talk.”

“But if I have your phone—” Katharine began.

Rob cut her off. “I’ll find another one. Phil Howell has one — his car’s still here, so I’ll bet he is, too. I’ll call you with the number as soon as I get it.”

As Katharine’s car sped back down toward the Piilani Highway, Rob and Al Kalama hurried into the computer center.

In less than a minute Al was seated in front of the terminal next to the one at which Phil Howell was still working. Barely acknowledging the introduction Rob made, Kalama’s fingers were tapping at the keyboard even before the monitor had fully warmed up.

While Kalama navigated through the Internet, Rob turned to Phil Howell. “I need to borrow your cell phone, Phil,” he said. When he got no response, he glanced at the monitor in front of the astronomer, where the results of the substitution program he’d been running had finally come up. The screen was now displaying a new window, and inside the box was a list of the twenty-four files the computer had generated, each of them containing the results of one of the twenty-four possible substitution equations that could be applied to the original sequence of four letters.

Next to each file was the probability that the letter sequence could represent DNA code.

The fourth one from the bottom was highlighted, and read: ninety-seven percent.

Rob frowned, then felt his pulse begin to quicken. “Does that mean what I think it does?” he asked Howell.

The astronomer nodded. He had broken out in a cold sweat a few moments ago when the window opened and he’d seen the fourth line from the bottom of the report. He spoke, his voice quavering with excitement: “I think so. At least the computer thinks so.” He slowly shook his head, as if still unable to accept what he was seeing. “My God,” he breathed. “What if it’s really true?”

“What if what’s true?” Al Kalama asked from the next terminal, but Phil Howell had already returned to his work, so engrossed that he didn’t even hear the question. Then, before Al could repeat it, a window on his own terminal filled with a brief paragraph — an obituary from the Chicago Tribune noting the death of Kevin O’Connor, a sixteen-year-old boy, from an unnamed “respiratory problem.”

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked Rob.

Rob Silver, who had been staring at Phil Howell’s screen in fascination, turned back to Al. “Takeo Yoshihara is experimenting on people,” he said without preamble. “Katharine’s son is one of the ones he’s experimenting on.”

Al Kalama emitted a low whistle, but he made no argument, asked no questions. Instead, he simply said: “So how do we nail the prick?”

“There’s a directory on the computer up at his estate,” Rob told him. “Those are the files Katharine was talking about just before she left. We think those files hold all the information on the project.”

“What about the kid?” Al Kalama asked. “What are we going to do about him?”

To that question Rob had no answer.

Knowing there was no chance of regaining Phil Howell’s attention for something as trivial as a cellular telephone, Rob began searching for it himself, and when he found it — in the right front pocket of Howell’s shirt — the astronomer didn’t even notice as he fished it out.

“Kath?” Rob said a moment later after he’d dialed his own number. “It looks like you’re right. Be careful.” Giving her the number of the phone he’d just appropriated, he hung up.

And still had no idea of what to do about Michael Sundquist.

Katharine was being followed.

She knew it, as surely as she knew her own name.

The car’s lights had switched on as she’d made a left turn in Puunene. She watched in the rearview mirror as it pulled up behind her, following closely when she took the quick right onto Hansen Road, the shortcut to the Hana Highway.

How had he known she’d be coming this way?

Was the car bugged?

Of course it was — the same device that automatically opened the gate no doubt sent out a signal that Takeo Yoshihara’s men could home in on.

Twice she considered turning off Hansen Road to take one of the narrow cuts through the cane fields that would lead her up toward Kula, but both times she lost her nerve as she slowed the Explorer to a near stop to peer up the long stretches of deserted road that quickly disappeared into the blackness of the night.

A blackness that seemed far darker than usual.

If she took one of these roads and got lost, she could poke around in Kula or Pukalani for an hour and never find the road to Makawao. Worse, if the car that was following her overtook her, and forced her off the road—

She cut off the thought, telling herself her sense of being followed was brought on by paranoia, but, unbidden and unwanted, an image of Ken Richter’s body sprawled in a pool of fresh blood rose up in front of her, and the terror that had been escalating inside her all day notched up yet again. If they hadn’t hesitated to gun down Ken Richter, why would they hesitate to kill her, too?

When the car behind her blasted its horn and ducked around her to speed away into the night, Katharine’s body jerked so convulsively that she wrenched her shoulder against the restraining seat belt.

That’s it! she scolded herself. If you don’t calm down, you don’t have a hope of saving Michael.

Bringing the Explorer back up to speed, she held it steady until she came to the intersection with the Hana Highway, then turned a few hundred yards farther on, where the road ascended the slope of Haleakala. She remained steadfastly calm until she neared the Haliimaile cutoff that wound through the cane fields to the left and would eventually take her to Baldwin Road, just a mile or so below Makawao.

Almost involuntarily, her eyes went to the pair of headlights glowing in the polarized glass of the rearview mirror.

Biting down hard on her lower lip, Katharine moved into the left turn lane.

The car behind followed.

She let the car continue to slow until she was almost into the intersection, then pressed the accelerator hard and swerved back to the right, shooting into a break in the uphill traffic that was small enough to make the driver of the car she’d cut off blast furiously on his horn. Ignoring the sound, Katharine glanced in the side mirror.

The other car was just completing its left turn, its taillights disappearing down the road toward Haliimaile as she watched.

Feeling both relieved and a little bit foolish, she managed to keep the paranoia firmly in check until she came to the turnoff from Olinda Road into the dark, narrow lane that led to her house.

As if acting under its own volition, her right foot left the gas pedal and moved to the brake. The Explorer rolled to a stop, its headlights aimed down the drive, washing the shadows away as far as the first curve in the road that wound through the eucalyptus trees.

The road appeared to be deserted.

Too deserted?

Images flashed through her mind of a dark figure lurking in the shadows within the forest, peering through the windows as she quickly packed a bag so that the watcher would believe she was planning to spend at least this night at Takeo Yoshihara’s estate.

When would they come for her?

Would they use the cover of darkness to close in on the house, while she was helplessly blinded by the false security of the electric lights?

Or would they wait until she was at the estate itself?

No! No, no, NO!

No one had followed her; no one was waiting for her!

Then, just as she was about to move her foot back to the gas pedal, the cellular phone rang, startling her so badly she yelped out loud. Fumbling in her purse, she found the instrument, flipped it open, and held it to her ear. “Rob?”

“It’s me,” his familiar voice confirmed. “Two things. First, Al can’t get into the Serinus directory from any computer outside the estate. But he says there’s a workaround. Once you get there, get to any computer terminal — try the one in my office — and connect to this number. Got a pen?” Katharine rummaged in her purse, then told him to go ahead. Rob gave her a telephone number, then repeated it. “Once you hook up to him from my office, he should be able to use my terminal as a slave, and Yoshihara’s central server won’t realize he’s coming in from the outside.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“Michael,” Rob said. “We need a place to take him.”

“We have to get him out first.”

“We think we can do that. But the big question is, where are we going to take him?”

It was the question Katharine had been avoiding all the way home. Now she could put it off no longer. If Michael truly could no longer breathe fresh air, then where could they possibly go? Anywhere they took him, anywhere at all—

And then it came to her: the skull.

The skull from the Philippines — and the reason it was of such interest to the Serinus Project. The mutant boy — and Katharine was now convinced the murdered child had been a mutant — had been living on Mount Pinatubo, breathing the fumes spewing from the volcano. “The Big Island,” she said. “If we can get him to where the eruption is going on, he might be able to breathe!”

There was a silence, then Rob spoke again. “It might be possible. But he’s going to have to be able to breathe long enough for you to get him out of the building, plus maybe ten to fifteen minutes. Can he do that?”

Katharine didn’t hesitate. “I’ll make sure he can.”

“How long before you get back to the estate?”

Katharine glanced at her watch. It was just past nine-thirty. “I’m just getting home,” she said, calculating the time it would take to grab a few things, then drive to the estate. “I guess I should be there by ten. That’s if they let me get in at all.”

“Don’t talk that way,” Rob told her. “Don’t even think that way. Just get what you need and go. If we’re lucky, we’ll have what we need within a few minutes after you get online with Al. How much time will you need to figure out a way to get him out of the building?”

“How much can I have?” Katharine countered.

“I wish I knew.”

“All right. I’ll let you know when I get there. Will I be able to talk to Al on the computer?”

“Absolutely.” He paused. “It’ll be just like passing messages in school.”

In the darkness Katharine smiled bleakly. “Why don’t I quite believe that?”

“Well, I thought I’d give it a shot, anyway.” There was a short silence, then Rob spoke again, his voice suddenly shy. “Katharine? Be careful, okay?”

It wasn’t just the words, but the way he said them. A tiny bit of Katharine’s tension eased, and she finally started the car slowly down the long driveway. “You have no idea how careful I intend to be,” she said softly. “And you also have no idea how much courage it will give me if you just keep talking while I drive down this road. Remind me never to take another house that’s at the end of a long, narrow, dark road.”

“What do you want me to talk about?”

“I don’t care. Tell me I don’t have to be scared, and that there’s nobody waiting in my house, and that Michael’s going to be all right, and that when all this is over you’re going to marry me and take me away from all this like a good knight in shining armor.”

“All right,” Rob said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said all right. To all of it. You proposed. I accept. Consider it a done deal. Listen to me carefully, Kath. There is no one in your house. You’re going to get what you need, and you’re going to go up to the estate, and we’re going to crack into the computer and find out all of Takeo Yoshihara’s dirty little secrets. Then I’m coming to get you and your kid, who is going to have to learn to like me, and we’re going to live happily ever after.”

Katharine was silent for a moment, then: “Promise?”

“Promise.”

The car emerged from the woods into the clearing. Katharine carefully swept the darkness with her eyes. There were no other cars in the clearing.

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” she said. “Call me again in half an hour. If I don’t answer, then you lied to me and there was someone in the house.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you. I love you. I always did.”

“Hell of a time to tell me.” Katharine sighed. “Still, it does make me feel better. Talk to you in a while.”

Breaking the connection, she sat in the car for a few more seconds, summoning the nerve to go into the house. Switching on the lights as she entered, she glanced around, half expecting it to look like a scene from a movie after the Mafia had paid someone a visit.

It was exactly as she’d left it.

Nothing had been moved.

Nothing had even been touched.

Katharine quickly threw enough clothes into a small suitcase to make it look as if she was prepared to stay at the estate for several days. Then, thinking about what she had to do in the hours to come, she added a few more items to the suitcase.

In less than five minutes she was back in her car, driving steadily toward whatever awaited her at Takeo Yoshihara’s estate.