Kella brought the sedan to a halt outside the airport with a squeal of brakes. The clock on the wall told him that there still remained another twenty minutes before the Fokker Friendship was due to take off. He forced himself to remain behind the wheel of the car, making sure that he had gone through everything in his mind at least twice.
Of course someone as malevolent as Wainoni would not have been satisfied with initiating a vague sequence of events merely to inconvenience the colonial authorities. He would have wanted to end his planning almost literally with a spectacular display of fireworks, and that would take place at the airport before one of the few major assemblages of the top brass to take place in the Solomons for years.
Where Kella had got it wrong was in thinking that Wainoni’s reinvention of a Japanese soldier in action had been just a ploy to add to the general confusion. Instead it had been central to the Gammon Man’s plans. By attracting the attention of the colonial administrators to the possible presence of a Japanese survivor on Malaita, he had ensured that a large-scale manhunt would be launched, allied to the promise of a reward for any islander finding a soldier still alive in the bush. It had also brought the wealth-distributing Mayotishi to the islands, with the full backing of the Japanese government.
Sometime in his travels though the high bush, Wainoni had come across the grave of Lieutenant Shimadu. The woman had as good as told Kella that when she had screamed ‘Plenty too much, plenty too much! No more come!’ at him. The phrase was open to several interpretations. Kella had assumed that it had meant that his arrival was proving too much for the woman and that he should leave and not return. In fact she was saying that someone else, presumably the Gammon Man, had visited the site before him and that she wanted no more strangers to come.
Wainoni had known that sooner or later the search would lead to someone else coming across the remains of the officer, especially with Mayotishi willing to spend so much money on returning the ashes to Japan. Back at the restaurant the Gammon Man had evinced a desire to leave before the aircraft took off for Papua New Guinea. He probably wanted to watch its departure. And then there had been the reek of bananas in the back of the Bedford truck.
It was time to take action. Still Kella hesitated. If he should be wrong, his next actions would condemn him irretrievably in the eyes of his superiors. ‘So what else is new?’ he muttered, opening the door of the car and entering the airport, where the High Commissioner was in the act of shaking hands with Mayotishi before a beaming assemblage.
Aware of the murmurs of consternation coming from the august assembly behind him, Kella ran across the empty runway to the waiting aeroplane. The mobile rack of steps was in place and the door had been left open to admit air. Kella took the steps two at a time into the aircraft. A white-coated male flight attendant shouted at him angrily, but the policeman ignored him. He ran down the aisle to the cockpit and threw the door open. The captain and first officer were in their seats reading newspapers. They looked up as Kella burst in.
‘You’re not allowed in here, mate,’ said the captain mildly. The irate attendant appeared at the sergeant’s shoulder.
‘I tried to tell him,’ he said.
Kella ignored both men. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, gasping for breath, ‘you must deal with this information as you see fit, of course, but I thought you’d like to know that there’s an explosive device on board, probably timed to detonate when the aircraft takes off. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must share this information with the proper authorities.’
‘Bloody hell!’ said the flight attendant.
Kella ran back down the aisle, aware of the clattering feet of the crew members gaining on him with every stride. As he emerged from the aircraft, the heat greeted him like a blast from a furnace. He hurried back down the steps, aware of the startled, indignant and in some cases scandalized gazes of hundreds of the Protectorate’s leading citizens in their serried ranks. Fortunately Kella was seldom shy. He ran towards them, waving his arms like a windmill.
‘Bomb!’ he shouted. ‘There’s a bomb on board! Get away from the airport at once, before it goes off!’
Silence fell over the crowd. There was no panic and at first very little movement. All eyes went to the High Commissioner, whose face, as sharp as a honed hatchet, betrayed no emotion. His aide-de-camp, a young flight lieutenant on secondment from the Royal Air Force, whispered into his ear. The High Commissioner nodded.
‘I agree,’ he said. ‘Just in case there’s something in it, see to the women first.’
The young officer ran to the seated section and started ushering the unruffled wives out of the airport. Within a few moments the government officials were streaming in their wake with well-drilled nonchalance.
Sergeant Ha’a walked out of the crowd and stood at Kella’s shoulder. He watched the dignified, straight-backed mass retreat of the old colonials with something between wonder and admiration. Soon the spectators’ area had emptied as the expatriates reassembled in restrained decorous groups according to rank in an adjacent car park. Ha’a turned his attention to the deserted airstrip. A few discarded paper cartons blew across the tarmac in the light breeze. It was a peaceful scene. The fat sergeant sucked his teeth judiciously and placed an arm like a flipper around his fellow policeman’s shoulder.
‘For your sake, I hope you’ve got this one right, old son,’ he said.