Treachery times two, p.26
Treachery Times Two, page 26
Another thirty minutes passed, and Koa began to worry that Wingate had been alone when the candlelight inside the temple went out. Moments later, the temple doors opened, and a man stepped onto the porch. He stood still, barely illuminated by the scant moonlight, scanning the night for danger. Muscular like a bodybuilder, he appeared to be in his thirties with a brutal, sun-damaged face under a shock of unruly black hair. He wore stained jeans and an ill-fitting sweatshirt. Koa didn’t recognize him, and he was not at all what Koa expected. Koa snapped a dozen photos before the stranger put on his shoes, moved down the short flight of stairs, got into the Prius, and drove off.
Koa thought about waiting until morning to brief the feds but decided against any delay. He’d just achieved a major break in the investigation, felt an urgent need to identify the stranger who’d met with Wingate, and didn’t want to hear Moreno complaining about being out of the loop. On his way back to Hilo, Koa called Goodling, awakening her for the second night in a row to summon her to a post-midnight meeting in Zeke’s office. She wasn’t happy, but she and Moreno appeared for the three thirty a.m. conference. Bringing them up to speed, Koa explained the gaps in Wingate’s location data and the renewed surveillance of the X-CO facility. “I’ll be damned,” Moreno conceded when Koa described Wingate’s late-night motorcycle ride and Koa’s tracking starting in Pāhala.
Using an office copier, Koa had downloaded and printed the digital photos he’d taken. Passing copies to the feds, he explained that they showed Wingate leaving the temple, followed thirty minutes later by a second person who left in the black Toyota Prius.
“Who is he?” Goodling asked.
“Don’t know,” Koa responded. “The plates on the black Prius came off a wrecked vehicle reported stolen months ago. I rousted an IT professor at UH Hilo out of bed, and he’s running the dude’s picture through facial recognition software. I figured you guys might also try your sources.”
“How come you didn’t follow him?” Moreno asked with more than a touch of annoyance.
Koa wasn’t in the mood for criticism from Moreno, but responded, “Couldn’t.” Then somewhat conciliatory, he added, “I was too far from my wheels.”
Zeke made coffee while the feds transmitted pictures of the stranger to their colleagues to help identify the unknown man. Koa checked in twice with the IT professor, only to hear that his software was grinding through the county’s DMV database. Two hours passed before Koa got word. When the name of Professor Diaz’s colleague popped up on his cell, Koa put the caller on speaker. “We got a hit. Your man is Kū‘ula Kai.”
“Kū‘ula Kai! You’re kidding,” Koa exclaimed.
“No, I’m not kidding. That’s the name attached to the DMV photo,” the IT professor responded.
Koa walked to Zeke’s computer, signed in to his police account, and queried the DMV database. A picture popped up, and there it was. The face of the man he’d photographed coming out of the Wood Valley Temple. His name was indeed Kū‘ula Kai. He listed his occupation as a fisherman and his home address as a commercial fishing vessel named Mea Ho‘opa‘i, the Avenger, moored in the Wailoa Boat Harbor.
Kū‘ula Kai, Koa explained to the feds, was a mythological Hawaiian fisherman with a magic fishhook giving him mystical powers to control fish in the sea. “I’ve never heard of a real person with that name. If it’s not an alias, this guy’s parents had one wicked sense of humor.”
“How do we get a handle on this fishhook man?” Moreno asked.
Koa knew who to ask. Hook Hao, his fisherman friend, knew everyone worth knowing on the Hilo waterfront and frequently updated Koa on waterfront activities. Turning to the rest of the group, Koa said, “I’m going to pursue a couple of leads on this guy. I’ll be back in an hour. In the meantime, see what the bureau has on this dude.”
Leaving Zeke’s office, Koa stepped into the beginnings of sunrise and knew Hook would already be on his second or third cup of uber-strong java. He called to tell his fisherman buddy he’d be stopping by the Ka‘upu, the Albatross, Hook’s big ocean going trawler. Ten minutes later, Koa stepped off the quay onto the stern of the Ka‘upu. Moving around to the side of the wheelhouse, Koa entered to find the old fisherman in his chair behind the chart table with a steaming cup of Kona coffee.
“You’re up early,” Hook said in greeting. “Help yourself to a cup.”
Koa poured himself a coffee, enjoying its fragrant aroma as the dark liquid slowly filled his cup. “Need to ask you about a fellow fisherman—a guy named Kū‘ula Kai.”
“Sea trash,” Hook snorted, surprising Koa with his vehemence. “Crime must be at an all-time low if you’re chasing a bottom-feeder like Kai.”
“How so?”
“Holds himself out to be god’s gift to fishermen like his namesake, but he can barely bait a hook.”
“Then how’s he make a living?” Koa asked.
“Smuggling, I’d guess.”
“Based on?” Koa pushed.
“He sails way beyond the twelve-mile limit. Says he’s hunting deepwater ‘ahi, but the couple of times I’ve seen the Mea Ho‘opa‘i out there, she’s been alongside a freighter. Had to be transporting contraband one way or the other.”
Of course, Koa thought to himself. A Hawaiian fishing vessel connecting offshore with a freighter would be a perfect way to smuggle a computer disk onto the island. “You ever catch the name of one of these freighters?”
“Nope.” Hook shook his head. “But I remember them flying an Indonesian flag.”
If China were using ships to smuggle materials into Hawai‘i, they would not, Koa figured, use China-flagged vessels, but they might use an Indonesian vessel. China and Indonesia, he knew, were significant trade partners. In other cases, he’d checked ship registries, but wasn’t sure whether any website tracked ship movements the way they traced plane flights. He called Makanui and asked her to see what she could find. He then headed back to headquarters.
By ten a.m., the police-FBI team had assembled a dossier on Kū‘ula Kai. The high school dropout had never filed a tax return despite ownership of an old, but serviceable, oceangoing trawler and a five-figure bank account with numerous $2,500 deposits. A review of the credit card charges linked to his bank account disclosed payments for boat maintenance, a gym membership, and numerous bar bills, but little else of interest. Oddly, they could find no evidence that he sold fish despite frequent trips into deep water east of the Big Island. Nor did he appear to be otherwise employed.
Makanui had checked international shipping registries and discovered that the Bumi, a freighter owned by a Hong Kong shipping company and flying Indonesian colors, had passed fifteen miles off the eastern coast of the Big Island at least ten times in the past year. Koa told the feds what he learned from Hook, along with the shipping data compiled by Makanui. Extending Makanui’s research, Moreno dug into his files and confirmed that the Bumi had been near the Big Island before each of the dates when someone had inserted corrupt code into the Deimos software. Koa and the feds figured they’d found the saboteurs’ pipeline.
Despite their confidence that they’d identified the supply chain, they still didn’t know who was really behind the Deimos sabotage. None of the team, not even Moreno, pegged Kū‘ula Kai as anything more than a delivery boy. He’d barely made it through junior high school, never had a passport, and so far as records revealed, had never been out of Hawai‘i. His relatively modest cash bank deposits corresponding with his probable rendezvous with the Indonesian-flagged ship supported their conclusion that he was just a courier. Based on his history, neither Koa nor the feds would ever have suspected him of international espionage. His superiors had chosen well.
They debated arresting him. Moreno wanted him in an interrogation room, but Goodling and Koa resisted. “He’ll lawyer up, and we’ll get nothing,” Goodling argued. “Better to leave him on the street and watch him.”
“I agree,” Koa responded, “especially since he’s just come from a meeting with Wingate and could have a message to pass on.”
They put Kū‘ula Kai under maximum surveillance—phone tap, car and boat trackers, sound and video, as well as physical eyes on. He slept on his trawler until twelve thirty p.m. when he left carrying a gym bag. Gyms, Koa knew, were ideal places for clandestine meetings. He called Moreno, who checked Kai’s credit card records and reported that Kai belonged to Shaka Fitness, a run-down sports club in south Hilo. Figuring Kai would hit his gym for a workout, Koa called Piki. “Looks like Kai is heading for Shaka Fitness. Pick up some special gear from the bureau and go for a workout.”
With their access to a plethora of high-tech gadgets, the feds armed Piki with a camera and recording device concealed in a pair of phony eyeglasses. Slightly heavier than regular eyeglasses and far more capable than the highly publicized, but commercially unsuccessful, Google glasses, Piki couldn’t help feeling a little like James Bond. That put a spring in his step.
Kai stopped at a nearby greasy spoon for a classic Hawaiian loco moco lunch of white rice, topped with a spam slice and a fried egg, passing on the usual topping of brown gravy and opting instead for ketchup. An hour and a half later, he hit the aging Shaka Fitness located in a shabby commercial space. Piki was already inside on a stationary bike with a clear view of the entrance and the exercise floor. He snapped pictures of Kai coming in and working out on the weights. True to his physique, the man could bench press 250 pounds.
While working out, Kai repeatedly checked his watch and occasionally scanned the gym. Piki figured he was waiting for someone. About forty-five minutes into Kai’s workout, another man entered the gym and headed straight to the locker room. Piki knew he’d seen the newcomer somewhere in Hilo but could not put a name to the face. Kai stopped his workout, returned his weights to their racks, and headed for the lockers. Piki gave him a two-minute head start and then followed. Although there were only a handful of men in the locker room, Kai and the man who’d just entered the club stood at adjoining lockers.
Kai and the newcomer did not appear to speak, but Piki sensed they were coordinating their movements. Both men stripped and headed for the showers. Kai’s clock-watching, the two men’s odd choice of lockers, and their strange lack of overt communication made Piki suspicious. He stripped, leaving his glasses on, and followed the two men into the open-plan showers. The two men stood close together, soaping up.
Kai and his contact stepped under a cascade of hot water. Piki could see that they were talking, but was too far away to hear anything over the shower noise. The thick steam and the other men in the showers gave Piki some cover, enabling him to move closer to his targets without arousing suspicions. Activating both the camera and the recorder in his phony glasses, Piki photographed them through a curtain of steam. Given the roar of water from multiple shower heads, Piki doubted that his miniature recording device would catch much of their conversation.
Piki wasn’t the world’s best photographer and didn’t have a professional camera. Yet, the pictures he transmitted back to Koa left no doubt about the identity of the man who’d met Kai in the showers of a sleazy Hilo fitness club. He was Kāwika Keahi, Senator Chao’s aide.
Koa found it hard to believe his childhood friend and aide to a powerful US senator was a traitor to his country. Koa wracked his brain for an innocent rationale for the meeting, but couldn’t think of one. It hurt to reveal his childhood friend’s betrayal to the feds, but Koa had no choice. They needed to know about the Keahi-Kai meeting to protect critical defense secrets. He would need their intelligence sources and Patriot Act powers to investigate how, when, and why Keahi had become a foreign agent.
“Senator Chao’s aide!” Moreno yelled, unable to hide his astonishment. Goodling, too, expressed shock. Like Koa, they sought an innocent explanation, but the sketchy recording Piki had captured put a quick end to any effort at exoneration. The tiny audio recording device had captured little given the heavy background noise, but they heard the word “Deimos” twice in the garbled recording. That highly classified word left no room for doubt.
Koa’s shock at Keahi’s treachery slowly faded, replaced by consternation and outrage. How could someone he’d known like a brother for most of his life be a traitor? The magnitude of Keahi’s deceit astonished Koa. Deceit. Koa focused on the word. A traitor was the ultimate deceiver. If he lied about his loyalty, he could lie about anything and everything. Everything about a traitor—every word he’d ever uttered—was suspect.
Koa began digging into Keahi’s history. Starting at the beginning with Keahi’s birth certificate, he found the first lie. That led to the discovery of other deceits. Koa only wished he’d investigated earlier. Maybe, just maybe, it was not too late.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE CALL FROM Wingate’s wife came into the police switchboard at four p.m. that afternoon. It seemed Wingate had left for the X-CO offices at seven a.m. but hadn’t returned her calls all day. When she finally got hold of one of his colleagues at X-CO, she’d learned that he’d never arrived at work, and she was frantic. The news reached Koa minutes later. He swore and called Goodling. What, he asked, did their surveillance tracking show?
Goodling paused, and Koa heard her ask someone in the background for an update on Wingate. Following more muffled voices, Goodling said, “His car is in the X-CO parking lot.”
“Something isn’t right,” Koa responded. “His wife just reported him missing.”
“Meet you at X-CO,” Goodling responded, urgency evident in her voice.
Koa raced for his SUV, phoning Makanui to join him. They made it to the X-CO building in less than seven minutes. Wingate’s car was nowhere in sight. Goodling and Moreno arrived a short time later. For once, Moreno moved more slowly and with less self-assurance. Using a handheld device, the feds located the tracker that should have been on Wingate’s car. They found it on the ground in an empty parking space.
“Think it fell off?” Koa asked, sarcastically.
“Hell no,” Moreno responded. “Not in a million years. Someone had to have pulled the sucker off.”
Moreno, Koa thought, was almost certainly right. How, Koa wondered, had the perp known about the tracker? If he knew about the tracker, what else did he know about their surveillance? Was he smart enough to leave the tracking device where it might plausibly have fallen off, casting a sliver of doubt? Absent a witness, they might never know for sure what had happened.
“What about his cell? You’re tracking that, too, aren’t you?” Koa asked.
“There’s no signal. It must be off,” Goodling responded.
It was a bad sign for Wingate, Koa realized. A terrible sign. Their inability to monitor Wingate’s whereabouts suggested foul play. Who, Koa asked himself, would benefit from Wingate’s demise? He considered Snelling, but that didn’t seem right. Snelling, it appeared, had repeatedly protected Wingate and seemed to have nothing to gain from his death. Maybe Kai? It was possible. Wingate could finger him as his go-between with Keahi, but it seemed unlikely that he’d go after Wingate. No, he realized that Keahi, the senator’s aide, had the most to gain. Wingate could almost certainly expose him as a traitor.
So much for the government’s vaunted surveillance. Koa wanted to take his frustrations out on Moreno but held his tongue. There’d be time for recriminations. He needed to focus on finding Wingate if it wasn’t too late. He called the dispatcher and ordered an APB on Wingate’s car. He started for the X-CO building to ask if anyone inside knew of Wingate’s whereabouts when his cell buzzed.
He answered, and the dispatcher reported that a park ranger had found Wingate’s car abandoned near the ocean on Chain of Craters Road in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. The ranger had seen no sign of Wingate and suspected a possible suicide. Koa passed this information to the others. Makanui called for a police helicopter to transport them to the scene and a police boat to scour the adjoining shoreline.
The chopper carried the four of them—Koa, Makanui, and the two feds—over the meandering brownish-black lava flows from the recent eruptions in the lower east rift zone, then farther south past the now-dormant volcanic cone at Pu‘u Ō‘ō before making a rough landing between two park police vehicles blocking the Chain of Craters Road. They climbed out of the aircraft into shafts of sunlight cutting through fluffy white clouds, racing overhead in stiff trade winds.
They’d landed near the ocean on the eastern side of a vast lava delta. To the west, naked lava rose in steps back to a massive pali or cliff rising a thousand feet to another sloping plain of old lava flows. Aside from ruins of a few ancient Hawaiian settlements and the two-lane asphalt road leading back toward the pali and Kīlauea Crater, the landscape was barren. Civilization lay more than twenty miles away.
To the east, the delta ended just off the road at a rocky cliff edge poised above a restless, white-capped ocean extending to the horizon. Waves thundered against the black pāhoehoe lava threatening to break it into chunks and carry it away.
Wingate’s gray BMW SUV sat half on and half off the narrow asphalt roadway, not more than fifty feet from the cliff at the edge of the ocean. The driver’s door stood open, rocking in the wind. Before checking the vehicle, Koa walked to the edge and peered down at a tiny black sand beach between a rocky outcrop and a sea arch. Eight-foot waves repeatedly swept over the inaccessible shoreline and broke against the cliff in a blizzard of frothy white spray. Koa didn’t expect to see Wingate’s body. If the man had jumped, been pushed, or thrown over, the waves had carried him away.
Troubled by the turn of events, Koa turned back toward the car. He spotted Jimmy Kahana, whom he knew from HVNP events he’d attended with Nālani. The two men acknowledged each other, and Koa shook hands with the tall, broad-shouldered national park ranger. “Aloha, Jimmy. What’s your take?”
