One Blood (29 page)

‘So you shot him,’ said Kella. Desperately he tried to think of something else to say to retain the American’s attention. For the past few minutes he had been aware of a figure scurrying across the clearing behind Imison. He tried to look everywhere except in the direction of the hut.

‘Who sent you?’ he asked. ‘Who wants to blacken Kennedy’s reputation? I suppose it’s somebody who doesn’t want him to become president?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that,’ said Imison. ‘All I can say is that it was a sweet little scheme, before it started going wrong, sweet as a nut. We can’t waste any more time. Sister, you go and stand next to the sergeant. It’ll be light in an hour and I must be getting on my way.’

Slowly Sister Conchita walked over and stood next to Sergeant Kella. Kella tensed to leap across at the American, although he knew that he would surely be shot down before he had covered even half of the distance between them. A swarm of fireflies danced delicately across the clearing. This was a bad omen; fireflies were regarded as the ghosts of men killed in battle. Kella wished that he could have some indication from the ghosts of what was going to happen. The previous day, after his return to Munda from Skull Island, he had forced himself to sleep for an hour, in the hope that his
ano
, his soul, would leave him as he rested and wander freely, to return later and tell him what it had seen across the lagoon. There had been no such visitation.

He commended his soul to the safe keeping of his ancestor Sina Kwao, the war god known as Shining White because of the light colour of his skin, who had journeyed to the artificial island of Sulufou from far over the seas. Then he prepared to launch himself at the American.

It was then that the apparition struck from the shadows of the hut. As Imison shifted the position of his rifle, the figure sprang forward, a knife raised in its hand. Imison heard a sound, but before he could turn, his attacker was on him, striking fiercely at his neck and back. Imison screamed and fell to the ground. The figure toppled over on top of him and struck savagely twice more. Imison lay still. The figure stood up.

‘This is the second man I have killed on Olasana,’ he said sadly, hurling his knife as far away from him as he could into the trees. ‘The dreaded gods of war must assuredly follow me here to torment me.’

It was the dignified patrician politician Welchman Buna.

‘
LIEUTENANT JOHN F. KENNEDY
came from a wealthy and influential family,’ said Welchman Buna, as if reciting the bloodline of a much-respected traditional chief. ‘After his ship had been sunk by the Japanese in the Roviana Lagoon, there were all sorts of rumours. Some claimed that he and his crew must have been asleep not to see the Japanese destroyer bearing down on them that night. Others said that he narrowly avoided a court-martial afterwards.’ The politician paused. ‘And there were stories that Kennedy and his men were so upset because they had not been rescued quickly that they were even contemplating surrendering to the Japanese.’

‘And these were all lies?’ asked Sister Conchita.

‘Of course, but there are always those who are prepared to think the worst of the privileged.’

They were sitting in the refectory at Marakosi Mission. Around the long table were the four sisters of the mission, Sergeant Kella and Welchman Buna. Several days had passed since Buna had attacked Imison and saved the lives of Sister Conchita and Kella. During that time, a police launch had arrived at Olasana and taken on board the stricken bodies of the American FBI agents. All three men had been taken to Pilgrim Hospital in Honiara, the capital. A cryptic radio message to the mission, which would have meant nothing to outsiders listening in, had informed Sergeant Kella that the Americans were expected to live. Sister Conchita, Kella and
Buna were waiting for a government vessel to arrive some time over the next few days to take them all to Honiara to attend a series of meetings about the events in the Roviana Lagoon over the last two weeks.

‘How did you get involved in the affair, Mr Buna?’ Kella asked.

Buna looked across the table at Sister Brigid. The elderly nun seemed a different person since the politician had arrived at the mission. She had greeted his arrival first with incredulity and then with transparent joy. Since then the pair of them had spent much time wandering around the island deep in conversation. They seemed to have arrived at some sort of agreement, because the nun was now almost beaming as she looked proudly across the table at the islander.

‘It started in August 1943,’ said Buna. ‘The coast-watchers were sending every man who could be spared to search for the missing seamen from PT-109. I was only a young man then, but I had already helped look for a number of downed US pilots in the lagoon. On this occasion I had just finished searching a small island called Nisi when Sister Brigid and her guide Kakaihe also landed there.’

‘I had picked up Kakaihe on Kolombangara,’ said the nun. ‘I had never met him before, but he seemed eager to take part in the search. We stopped off at Nisi for water.’

‘We were to find out why very soon,’ said Buna. ‘The three of us agreed to join together because it would make searching the islands easier. Next we paddled to Olasana.’

‘So you actually found Lieutenant Kennedy and his men?’ asked Sister Conchita.

‘Not quite, although we came very close, as you will hear,’ said Buna. ‘It was night by the time we landed on Olasana. We were very quiet because we weren’t sure if there would be Japanese on the island. As it happened, there were no Japanese there.’

‘But Lieutenant Kennedy and his men were sleeping on
another section of the beach round a headland,’ said Sister Brigid, who was growing quite animated by her standards. Little red spots of excitement burned on her pale cheeks.

‘We didn’t know that, of course,’ said Buna. ‘We decided to sleep on the beach and search Olasana the following morning. Sister Brigid rested in a small tent she had brought with her, and Kakaihe and I slept in the open on the beach a short distance away.’

‘A few hours after we had all retired, I heard the sounds of a struggle on the beach,’ said the elderly nun. ‘Mr Buna and Kakaihe were fighting one another with knives. It was a dreadful sight in the moonlight.’

‘I had returned from attending to a call of nature,’ said Buna with some embarrassment. ‘When I did so, I found Kakaihe examining something on the beach. He seemed to be making preparations to leave. He tried to hide what he was looking at, but I demanded that he show it to me. He refused, so I took it from him and examined it. It was a frigate
knap knap
.’

‘A signal of safe passage,’ frowned Conchita. ‘But …’

‘Or a sign of surrender,’ said Buna. ‘It was then that I guessed what had happened, of course. Kolombangara was occupied by many Japanese soldiers at the time. Some of the villagers on the island were on quite good terms with the Japanese, and would scout for them and perform other services, like looking for coast-watchers and reporting on their whereabouts.’

‘Kakaihe was working for the Japanese?’ asked Conchita.

‘It was uncommon, but it did happen,’ said Buna. ‘Kakaihe was young and not very bright. In addition, his tribe was engaged in a blood feud with some of the villages that were supporting the Americans. I believe that he was using the
knap knap
to gain safe passage among all the islanders in the lagoon, while he looked for the stranded American sailors. If he found them, he would report their presence to the Japanese on Kolombangara.’

‘So he was a traitor,’ said Conchita.

‘Let us say that he had no particular allegiances,’ said Buna. ‘After all, with a few exceptions, most of the British in the Solomons had fled to Australia as soon as the war had broken out. That dented the confidence of some islanders in the invincibility of the white men.’

‘Could you prove that he was working for the Japanese?’ asked Kella.

‘Oh yes, I had my suspicions confirmed in a most violent manner that night,’ said Buna drily. ‘When I saw the
knap knap
and had guessed what it was, Kakaihe suddenly produced a knife and attacked me with it from behind. We struggled on the sand. It was then that Sister Brigid came out of her tent. I’m afraid that what she witnessed must have horrified her. I was bigger and stronger than Kakaihe. I managed to get the knife from him and stabbed him with it. When I examined his body, I saw that he was dead.’

‘What did you do?’ asked Sister Johanna.

‘I thought it best to get off Olasana as quickly as possible, in case there were Japanese on the island and we had aroused them with the noise of our struggle. Sister Brigid was in a state of considerable shock by this time.’

‘I had never seen a man killed before,’ said the elderly nun.

‘I paddled Sister Brigid and Kakaihe’s body back to Kolombangara,’ said Buna. ‘Then I made myself scarce. I knew that the villagers would bury Kakaihe and see to it that Sister Brigid was taken back to her mission. Soon after that, two other islanders came across Lieutenant Kennedy and his men and escorted them to safety. All in all, a most satisfactory conclusion to the affair, except that ever since, rumours have persisted that John F. Kennedy and the survivors of PT-109 were preparing to surrender to the Japanese, which was a total and complete lie, of course.’

‘But I don’t understand why Mr Imison and his two friends came to the Solomons,’ said Sister Johanna.

‘It’s complicated,’ said Buna vaguely.

The politician would say no more. A few minutes later the meeting broke up. Buna indicated with an almost imperceptible nod of his head that he wished to speak to Conchita and Kella. The three of them gathered in a small group in a corner of the room. Buna waited until the other sisters had left before he spoke.

‘I think I owe you both a further explanation,’ he said. ‘Shall we go for a stroll?’

It was a warm evening on the beach, with just a soft breeze coming in from the lagoon. Buna led the way along the sand, fastidiously skirting the rocks and small pools.

‘That night when I killed Kakaihe changed my life,’ he began abruptly. ‘I reported back to Lieutenant Evans, the coast-watcher, and he sent me to see some American officers at their headquarters on Tulagi. They questioned me closely about what had happened. They seemed very pleased that Lieutenant Kennedy had got back safely with his men and that I had inadvertently prevented his falling into the hands of the Japanese.’

There was a rustling among the trees, and the nocturnal invasion of coconut crabs began in the cool night air. They were huge creatures, around five or six pounds in weight, three feet long and with a leg span of thirty inches. They burst out of their burrows containing beds of packed coconut fibre beneath the outer ring of trees, and began swarming over the area in their search for food, providing a living brown carpet of heaving movement. The two men paid no attention to them, but Sister Conchita, captivated, stopped to watch.

‘It would have been a feather in their cap if the Japanese had captured somebody as well connected as John F. Kennedy,’ said Kella.

‘No doubt! Anyway, I was passed from one officer to another on Tulagi and Guadalcanal, repeating my story again
and again. Each one seemed to have more braid on his shoulders than the one before. The war in the Solomons was almost over by this time. I didn’t know it, but the Americans were starting to plan for the post-war period when they would have to hand the islands back to British colonial rule. They wanted to have their own carefully selected islanders in place for the day when independence would be granted.’

Some of the crabs were already hauling themselves up the trunks of coconut palms, using their massive claws to gain a purchase on the wood, looking for edible leaves and using their pincers to nip off coconuts and send them crashing to the ground below.

‘Sleepers,’ said Sergeant Kella. ‘People like that are called sleepers, because they have to lie dormant for a long while. You were one of those?’

‘If you say so, Sergeant, although I was ignorant of the word you have just used. I was given a regular weekly salary and told to make my way to the new capital, Honiara. I was to build upon my mission-school education, and also to take the opportunity to enter local politics. Any expenses I incurred would be reimbursed, as long as I made my way up the political ladder. As I was suddenly financially independent, I did not have to work and could devote all my time to studying and voluntary public service, and eventually enter the Administrative Council and nurse my constituency in the Roviana Lagoon.’

The orange-red coconut crabs on the ground were still massed together. They did not venture more than thirty yards from the holes in which they spent their daylight hours. Two of them were fighting savagely for possession of a dead fish on the sand. Both creatures were emitting a clicking sound and stretching their legs to a tiptoeing position. If they were hungry enough, they would kill and eat one another. Guiltily, Conchita ran lightly along the beach to catch up with the two islanders.

‘The Americans would have asked around,’ said Kella, ‘and discovered that you came from a good bloodline, had an outstanding educational record and were well thought of on your own island. You were a potential vote-gatherer. In addition, they would have known from the way that you dealt with Kakaihe on Olasana that you were also brave and resourceful.’

‘Presumably; it is not for me to say. For their part, the Americans continued to pay me but otherwise made no attempt to contact me for seventeen years, until a few months ago.’

Sister Conchita looked back over her shoulder. One crab was hauling a length of seaweed across the sand, out of the way of the others, so that it could pause to examine the potential source of food at its leisure. During the war, coconut crabs had invaded the trenches being occupied by American marines at the height of the fighting in order to steal their provisions.

‘What happened then?’ asked Sister Conchita, returning her attention to the men.

‘It seemed,’ said Buna thoughtfully, ‘that the devil-devils of 1943 were returning to haunt the Roviana Lagoon again. My contact alerted me to the fact that a group of FBI agents were coming to look for evidence that Lieutenant Kennedy and the rest of his crew had considered surrendering to the Japanese while they were on Osalana. Needless to say, if that turned out to be true, then Mr Kennedy’s chances in the forthcoming election would be negligible.’