Victoria answered the door. She had been crying. "Have they taken Gordon already?" I said.
She looked perplexed. "Has who taken Gordon where?" she asked.
I had rather just put my foot in it. "You've been crying. Is there anything I can do?" I said, changing tactics.
"It's Gabriela," she said. "She's in a coma. We don't know what happened. I'm looking after the little ones so that her mother can be with her," she said.
"How bad is it?" I said.
"Bad," she said, and then she started crying again. Two little boys who were watching from a doorway began to wail when they saw her.
"Where's Gordon?" I said.
"Up on Poike," she said, pulling herself together. "I've sent a message for him to come home."
Bad idea, I thought, but within seconds I heard footsteps behind me, and Gordon strode into the room. Little Edith ran in and grabbed him, "Papa, Papa, Gabriela," she kept saying over and over.
He was a man who took charge easily, and within minutes I was playing games with the little ones, while Gordon took his wife aside and calmed her down. Victoria went outside and came back with bananas and papayas she'd picked from her own garden, and soon we all had large glasses of freshly made juice in our hands. The little ones stopped crying. It looked like a perfectly normal day at home.
"I need to talk to you, Gordon," I said.
"Gordon, I've promised my sister I'd go to the hospital as soon as you got here," Victoria said. "You can go later. Will you stay with the children?"
"Of course," he said. "Maybe Lara would help me convince the boys to have a nap."
"Gordon," I said. "We need to talk."
"She's tried to kill herself," Victoria said. She was trying very hard not to cry.
"Gordon!" I said.
"Can't it wait?" he said.
"No, it cannot," I said, rather more loudly and firmly than would usually be necessary. "It's about Jasper Robinson. Have you heard the news?"
"What news? That he faked the San Pedro tablet? Now that would be news I'd like to hear."
"He's dead," I said. "We found him up at Ahu Akivi. It is possible he was murdered."
"Murdered!" both Gordon and Victoria exclaimed. "Have you heard this?" he said, turning to his wife.
"I've been looking after the children all day," she said. "Ever since Gabriela was found."
"I didn't like Robinson, as you know, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone," Gordon said.
"The police have confiscated all the film that was taken during the Moai Congress," I said. They both looked at me with a "so what?" expression on their faces. "I think they continued filming when you arrived at the rim of Rano Raraku."
Silence greeted that statement. "Oh, my God, Gordon," Victoria gasped, looking from one to the other of us as my words sank in at last. "That's what you meant when you got here, asking whether they'd taken Gordon already, isn't it? You were trying to warn us," she said. "Gordon, they have you threatening Robinson on tape!"
It was at this moment that the Carabineros de Chile pulled into the drive.
And so it was that I found myself negotiating mushy gears in a battered old truck with a fugitive in back.
I'm sure my life list, had I thought to consult it in the few seconds I took to make my decision, would have had an entry rather near the top that said I will never harbor a fugitive in a foreign country, especially one that is an island in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure what had propelled me out the back door and into the truck. Perhaps it was the expression of anguish on Victoria's face, or the baffled expression on Edith's.
I had barreled along a poor road that ran parallel to the airport runway, before cutting inland on a road that was even worse, taking muffled directions from the back. "Where are we going?" I asked, trying not to move my lips as I did so, just in case someone was looking, which they probably weren't. Given the circumstances, however, I wasn't taking any chances, other than the big one I seemed to have taken on, in a moment of insanity.
"Cave," the muffled reply came back.
"What? Where?"
Gordon evidently took the blanket off his nose for a second. "The family cave," he said. "Victoria's family has a cave."
"Okay," I said. "Am I on the right track?" It was a good expression, because a track was pretty much what the road had become. I'd long since switched to four-wheel drive. Every now and then, on my say so, Gordon would peek out the side window, get his bearings, and give me instructions. He was a big man, and I knew it was extremely uncomfortable for him curled up in the back. More than once a groan had escaped his lips as I'd taken a bump just a little too fast. Speed, however, did seem to be of the essence.
I finally reached the end of the trail and could see no way to go further. There was a wall of rock in front of me, and beyond that, maybe a hundred feet away, the sea. At Gordon's instruction, I got out, climbed the rock and looked around. There was no one to be seen in any direction, a bit surprising on an island that is twenty-five miles when measured at its very longest point, but people seemed to pretty much stick to the area around Hanga Roa.
When I said to, Gordon unfolded himself from the back seat, and stood up.
"Nice job," he said to me. "Thank you."
"I know I'm stating the obvious here," I said, as we crouched over and maneuvered into the cave. "But there's nowhere for you to go, and you can't spend the rest of your life in a cave. Furthermore, won't the carabineros know that Victoria's family has a cave?"
"They're Chilean," he said. "The police are Chilean, the doctors are Chilean, even the teachers are often Chilean. No wonder the islanders worry about losing their identity here. The carabineros don't even patrol the island at night. The only crime here is excessive drinking. You know who keeps this island under control? A bunch of strapping Rapa youth who have no compunction about using night sticks when called upon and a bunch of grannies who haul their wayward sons-in-law out of the bar by the ear when need be. Do you really think the carabineros are going to find the family cave?"
"Someone could tell them," I said. I declined to mention that there were two crimes now on Rapa Nui, excessive drinking and murder.
"They won't find me, believe me," he said. I looked around. The mouth of the cave was easily seen, even from some distance. There were stone platforms covered in dried grasses, mattresses of a sort, inside, and outside was a place to cook. Still, I figured even Pablo Fuentes could find this place.
"My point is that, even if they can't find you, you can't stay in a cave for the rest of your life!"
"No," he said. "But I can stay in a cave until Victoria has a lawyer lined up and until she can get in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Santiago and maybe even persuade them to send somebody out here. Chile was a military dictatorship until very recently. I'm not turning myself in until I have everything in place."
"Okay," I said. He had a point. Maybe having a lawyer present canceled out the obvious disadvantage of having made a run for it. "What do you want me to do now?"
"Will you take the truck up to Poike for me? Tell Christian or Rory what's up, and ask them to bring me some supplies, some food and water, and maybe some flashlight batteries. Victoria will have told the carabineros that I'm up on Poike but will be returning shortly. With any luck they won't go up there, but will wait for me in town. There's no road. You'll be using four-wheel-drive again. I'm hoping Rory or Christian can come up with some reason the car is there and I'm not. I'm really just buying time, I know."
"Okay," I said again. I rummaged around in my bag and handed him the emergency bag of trail mix I never travel without and the small bottle of water I had been carrying with me. Neither would last him for long. "Rory will be along soon," I said.