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.”