THE NORTH-WEST TIP of Molokai stuck out like the blunt handle of a .25 calibre handgun. The fishing boat slowed about 500 yards offshore and the Hawaiian idled in the swells. He came out of the cabin with a plate of cold rice and vegetables, which he handed to Nessheim with a friendly nod. He pointed to himself and said, ‘Hiapo.’
Nessheim grinned. ‘Jim,’ he said, keeping it simple.
The light was starting to go and instead of moving on Hiapo cut the engines, then came back and threw the anchor overboard. He chucked an old wool blanket to Nessheim.
‘Sleeping time,’ he said, with a grin.
Within fifteen minutes, just as it grew resolutely dark, Nessheim could hear the sound of gentle snoring. He could see Hiapo lying on his back, his belly moving like a small bellows, and then he too fell asleep.
There was poi for breakfast, a disgusting paste of pounded roots which Hiapo served in wooden bowls, and black coffee in a tin mug, along with fresh pineapple chopped with a hand axe. Hiapo started the engine while Nessheim drew up the anchor. They were less than a mile offshore, and the Hawaiian pointed ahead.
‘Kalaupapa,’ he said.
Then he steered them further out into the Pacific, until the island of Molokai was little more than a distant southern speck.
After travelling east almost an hour – the rising sun straight in their eyes – they moved south towards Molokai again. As land neared, Nessheim saw a tree-less shoreline lined with lethal-looking rocks, jagged as sharks’ teeth. The point of the Kalaupapa promontory, at the northernmost part of Molokai, seemed unbeachable. But when the boat swung around the tip he saw an inlet sweep of honey-coloured sand and a few straggly palms.
About forty yards out Hiapo slowed the boat, turning it while idling until it didn’t rock in the gentle swells. He motioned to Nessheim that he should go ashore. He then came over and pointed to his watch. Hiapo moved the hands around until they said six o’clock and pointed meaningfully at them. He said in halting English, ‘I will leave then.’ He was smiling, but there was nothing flexible in his voice.
They shook hands, then Nessheim clambered over the side of the boat, jumping down to find himself up to his hips in the crystal clear water. It was bathtub warm, which he hadn’t expected. A sudden wave hit him from behind and knocked him over onto his knees. His first reaction was that his gun would get wet, but then his left knee hit a razor-sharp rock on the bottom and the pain was excruciating. He managed to stand and hobble to shore. He turned around and shouted, but already the boat was chugging out further to sea, and Hiapo, standing at the wheel, didn’t hear him. The breeze had picked up.
He managed to climb the small incline of the beach, picking his way through a crop of small, black volcanic boulders, then stood on level ground to survey the damage. It still hurt like hell, though he doubted he had broken his kneecap or he wouldn’t have been able to walk at all. But it was bleeding profusely, just below it.
He took off his coat and then his shirt and ripped a large patch from one of its sleeves. Doubling it up, he held it against the cut to staunch the flow, which slowed and finally stopped, coagulating into a thick, dark paste. He unfolded the patch of cloth and managed to tie it tightly around his upper calf and shin. It wasn’t Red Cross standard, but it would have to do.
He put back on what remained of his shirt, followed by his coat, then tried to check his bearings. Facing him over a mile away was a range of spectacularly high sea cliffs, the na pali as the natives called the range. Their tops were heavily wooded in deep furrows of thick emerald growth. The pali ran in a forbidding line that blocked off access to the rest of Molokai, to the south; at either side of the peninsula they plunged vertiginously down into the Pacific. He saw now why they’d told Popov to come by boat and why he was duplicating those instructions. It was a natural prison. He felt he had just thrown away the key.
A quarter mile ahead a tall lighthouse loomed like a thin, tapered pencil stuck in the flat landscape. He headed towards it, limping now since each step was painful. It took him ten minutes to go 200 yards, and he was sweating profusely, though it was probably only in the low seventies.
There was no one at the lighthouse. A few hundred yards away there was a turf airstrip, which had been laid down in the early Thirties. But its use was confined to the military and Hawaii authorities in charge of the colony of patients and afflicted residing in Kalaupapa; no other visitors were allowed to arrive by air.
He sat and rested on the inland side of the raised concrete platform that surrounded the lighthouse like a collar. At this rate he would be hours late for his rendezvous; actually, he doubted he could even make it to the village, which was over a mile away according to the map he had seen.
Why he was doing all this? Guttman’s instructions – or were they Stephenson’s? – had been precise about where he was to go, but there had been nothing about why he was there other than the general instruction to receive information from the Japanese. He didn’t like the vagueness of it one bit and he was in any case finding it hard to concentrate, given the pain in his leg.
From the lighthouse a dirt path led into the heart of the peninsula. The terrain ahead was flat here, though the path looked rocky and was overgrown in places with low, scrub-like bushes. Then he heard a shuffling noise and, turning his head, saw a small Hawaiian boy standing on another path which led to the lighthouse from the west. He was holding a mule by a sagging length of rope and he was staring straight at Nessheim.
Nessheim beckoned, but the boy stayed where he was, still staring. Standing up, Nessheim took an awkward step and pointed to the bandage below his knee. He didn’t have to exaggerate to show he was in pain.
The boy came forward hesitantly and Nessheim smiled, trying to look friendly and unthreatening. He gestured to the south-west, then pointed at his chest. The boy looked at him and his eyes widened.
‘Kalaupapa?’ he asked timidly.
Nessheim nodded vigorously and said, ‘St Francis Church.’
The boy suddenly beamed. ‘Mother Julia?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Yes,’ said Nessheim. Whoever she might be.
The boy came closer now, tugging on the rope to make the mule follow him. He motioned for Nessheim to move to the edge of the platform, then drew the reluctant animal alongside. Nessheim crouched down, ignoring the sharp pain from his leg, and swinging his wounded limb to the far side clambered onto the mule’s back. The boy laughed at the sight of him there, and then set off along the peninsula’s central path, leading the mule and Nessheim.
They travelled at the pace of a slow walk and Nessheim tried to ignore the steady throbbing in his leg. From his position astride the mule he could see for hundreds of yards over the open flat of the peninsula. He spotted a pair of wild spotted deer, which bolted when they heard the mule’s lumbering tread, and a bright orange-red bird flitted across the sky, picking minuscule flies out of the air with its attenuated beak. Low stone walks were laid across stretches of grassland, which looked unfarmable, though he saw a small herd of cattle in the distance.
The path turned sharply west and soon Nessheim could see clumps of trees ahead, ironwood and coconut palms, plum and papaya. Then he saw houses and knew he was almost at Kalaupapa, since it was the only village on the peninsula.
As he came to the first street he was surprised to find it paved, and more surprised still to see an old Model T sitting in a concrete driveway of one of the bungalows, since the enclosing cliffs meant you wouldn’t be able to drive it very far. The houses were one-storey and well built in the Hawaiian plantation style, with shingle roofs, sweep-around porches and encircling verandas. Their boarded walls were sun-faded, the white or green paint half-stripped by the humid air and high rainfall. One larger house had a wooden portico.
The village was bigger than he had expected, and carefully planned: the streets seemed to form a regular grid and the houses sat in neat rows, divided by picket fences, stone walls or thick hedges of lantana in yellows and pink, and some were obscured by the shady fronds of banana trees. There were huge coconut palms and morning glory, hibiscus, lilies and roses; most of the yards contained tidy vegetable gardens. It all seemed part of a concerted effort to look like a normal Hawaiian village.
They were nearing the ocean. He could smell the salt brought in by a breeze that had suddenly come up. Another street over and he heard the roar of the breakers. They passed a row of shops: the grocery store, which had concrete walls and a corrugated roof, a freshly painted white bakery on Damien Road, squashed between a launderette and a bigger building that had a sign offering the services of a carpenter, plumber and blacksmith. A goat was tethered under a flame-coloured Poinciana tree.
They turned the corner and the boy pointed ahead down the street towards the Catholic church of St Francis, a cream-coloured building built of stone covered in rich layers of plaster.
Approaching it, the boy stopped the mule by the entrance and Nessheim got down very slowly, trying not to put pressure on his hurt leg.
‘I’m okay,’ he said when the boy tried to help. ‘Thank you,’ he added, wondering how he would ever get back to the boat. He’d have to find someone to take him there, but Nessheim didn’t want to ask the boy to wait when he himself didn’t know what he was letting himself in for.
The wood door to the church was slightly ajar. He heard music inside and limped in cautiously. There were half a dozen rows of dark wood pews, divided by a thin centre aisle that led up to the altar. At the foot of the tall white pillars on each side of the nave were wide pedestals which held brightly painted, life-size statues of the Madonna and Child and of St Francis.
The front pews were half-filled with people: men and women and a few children. The men were dressed neatly in white short-sleeved shirts; the women wore skirts and cotton blouses and hats. It could have been a service held almost anywhere, except that this congregation was barefoot and there was no sign of a priest. Instead a nun stood in front of the altar, in traditional black-and-white habit. She was a tall, imposing woman with weathered skin, probably in her fifties. Giving the faintest of nods as Nessheim came in, she and the parishioners were singing the final verse of a hymn.
The hymn finished, the nun took a step forward and regarded her audience fondly.
‘Next week we welcome our new priest, Father Patrick, who will be arriving on the supplies boat from Oahu, and at last we will be able to celebrate Mass again.’ She paused to let this sink in, then concluded, ‘Please bow your heads. Let us pray.’
There was an unusual cadence to her voice and Nessheim realised she was English. The small sea of heads bowed and the Sister tucked her chin down. As she intoned the words of the final blessing, Nessheim’s were the only watchful eyes. The instructions had been vague – no mention of the congregation, only the injunction to sit in the last row and wait for the contact.
‘Amen,’ the nun declared again, and as the heads lifted she signalled that the service was over. The congregation stood up to leave and Nessheim saw them properly for the first time. He tried not to gawp.
These were the lepers of Kalaupapa, the reason for the community’s physical isolation. They all seemed to have something terribly wrong with them – a perman-ently raised eye, a lip curled in an involuntary grimace, a pus-seeping wound on a nose. And scars – so many terrible facial scars, furrows and cuts and lines etched into their skin. As they came towards him, Nessheim saw that many of them were also crippled – toes missing, fingers gone, an arm amputated at the elbow. They moved down the aisle like the wounded retreating from the front line. There was nothing self-conscious about their procession; they barely gave him a glance.
At last the parishioners had all left and the church sat empty and quiet. The nun had disappeared and when she appeared again she entered by the church’s front door – she must have gone through the vestry to greet her congregation as it came out. As she passed Nessheim’s pew she said chidingly, ‘The lepers are not to be frightened of.’
‘I’m not scared of them, Sister,’ Nessheim said, and realised he hadn’t masked his shock.
‘Believe me, they are not the worst cases – those will not even come to church, however much I tell them that the Lord sees people only with eyes of love. Many people do not understand. It is why we do not usually have visitors here. Are you of the faith, my son?’ she enquired.
‘I’m Lutheran, Sister,’ he said, with the deference he had always given nuns – the Lutherans had plenty of them.
She tilted her head questioningly. ‘I am Mother Julia. Have you hurt yourself?’ she asked, pointing at the makeshift bandage wrapped around his leg.
‘It’s nothing, Sister. A small accident, nothing serious.’
She took a longer look at his leg. Finally she said, ‘Excuse me a moment.’
She walked to the vestry and Nessheim sat and waited tensely. His leg was stiffening badly. After a few minutes the door to the church opened and a balding Japanese man came in, then sidled into his pew.
‘What’s your name?’
The voice wasn’t friendly.
‘Rossbach.’
‘Noritaka,’ the man said.
Nessheim nodded. That was the name he had been given in Guttman’s instructions, the same person Popov was supposed to have met five months ago.
‘How did you get here?’ asked the man.
‘I came down the cliffs,’ he said, as he had been instructed.
The man said tersely, ‘We were expecting you months ago.’
‘I don’t know anything about that. I was ordered to come here now.’
Noritaka wasn’t satisfied. ‘No one understands where these orders have come from, including Dr Kuhn.’
According to Guttman’s briefing, Kuhn was a Nazi who had been sent to spy for the Japanese in Hawaii, but Guttman’s instructions had also said that Kuhn would be arrested on espionage charges well before Nessheim arrived here.
He said firmly, ‘Dr Kuhn doesn’t have any idea who I am. He was detected by American Naval Intelligence last year. They’ve read his letters, deciphered his cables and watched every move he’s made. The last thing we wanted was for him to know I was here. I’d have been arrested the moment I arrived in Honolulu.’
He could see that Noritaka was taken aback.
Nessheim went on, ‘You say I’m too late – why?’
Noritaka was silent. Then he said slowly, ‘Because the information has already been supplied.’
‘I have come a long way, Mr Noritaka. I can’t go back without a message for my superiors.’
‘The harbour depths won’t change, and we know what the tides will be.’ Noritaka added impatiently, ‘Though you can’t expect us to guarantee clear skies. So –’ He stopped suddenly, as if he’d heard something. ‘Stay here,’ he said abruptly. He got up and went out of the church, pulling the heavy wood door behind him.
A minute later the door opened again. He heard a footstep and Noritaka said, ‘There’s someone else who wants to speak with you.’
There was another step and a rough voice said, ‘Is this him?’
Nessheim turned and saw another Japanese man standing at the end of the pew. He had a rifle cradled in one arm – a 30.06, the kind people used to hunt deer back in Wisconsin. He was wiry, with black hair that was cut in the LA style – a shock in front, short at the sides.
For a split second Nessheim thought it was Billy Osaka. But there was a harshness to the face that he’d never seen in Billy’s, an anger that put this man at odds with the world.
Nessheim realised he was staring at Akiro.
‘You had a long trip down the cliffs,’ said Akiro.
‘It felt that way.’ Nessheim said nonchalantly.
‘Schwab guide you down?’
‘Was that his name?’
‘Did he limp?’ asked Akiro, watching him with relentless eyes.
‘Couldn’t say. I wasn’t walking so good myself by the end.’ He pointed to his leg and said sheepishly, ‘I fell off the mule halfway down.’
Akiro ignored this and barked, ‘Where’s your identification?’
Nessheim reached slowly in his pocket, then pushed his driver’s licence down the bench. He noticed Akiro kept his barrel ready to swing round as he reached for the licence. He looked at it and a thin smile creased his face.
‘Nicely done,’ he said.
‘The State of Illinois does its best.’
Akiro flipped the licence back to him; when it fell on the bench Nessheim left it there.
Akiro said, ‘Is your real name Rossbach?’
‘What else could it be?’ He tried to sound indignant.
‘Someone who’s been looking for me in Honolulu.’
‘Maybe you’re a popular guy.’
‘I think it was you.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘The description fits.’ Then Akiro said, ‘Stand up and take your coat off.’
Nessheim started to stand up. Akiro said tensely, ‘Do it slowly.’ He had raised the barrel of his rifle.
Nessheim kept his hands out in the open and delicately lifted each lapel of his jacket back, then wriggled out of the coat. Akiro stared at Nessheim’s gun and called out for Noritaka. When Noritaka came over, Akiro rattled out something in Japanese and Noritaka moved along the pew in front of Nessheim’s, taking care to stay out of the line of fire. He extended his arm and carefully fished out the .38.
Akiro laughed sourly. ‘You can keep the holster.’
‘You didn’t expect me to come here unarmed. I didn’t know what I was going to find.’
‘G-Men carry the Smith & Wesson, not Germans.’
‘Ever try to find a Luger in Honolulu?’
Akiro shook his head impatiently. Noritaka said something to him and Akiro replied sharply. Noritaka answered back more mildly and Akiro said something else. It was clear they were arguing – Nessheim figured it was about what to do with him. From the tone of their voices – one decisive, the other uncertain – Akiro wanted to shoot him and Noritaka wasn’t sure.
Nessheim tried to calm himself, but saw that there was a good chance he was about to be executed. It seemed so preposterous – he hadn’t learned anything on this foolhardy mission – that it was almost enough to still his mounting fear.
The door to the vestry opened and Mother Julia appeared. She looked surprised to see the three men and came towards them.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘You are not kama’aina – I have never seen you before.’
‘We are staying at the Japanese clubhouse,’ Akiro said.
‘On whose authority? You should not be on the island without the superintendent’s permission – and mine.’ She pointed at Akiro’s rifle. ‘Take that out of here at once. This is a house of God.’
‘All right, Sister,’ Akiro said. ‘We’ll take our friend and be on our way.’
‘You’re not taking him anywhere.’
‘Get up,’ Akiro ordered Nessheim.
Two native boys suddenly appeared, coming out of the vestry. They were in their teens, strong-looking, but still just boys. Mother Julia said to them, ‘Come along. I want you to help this man to the infirmary.’
Akiro lifted his gun. ‘He’s staying with us.’
Mother Julia was unfazed. ‘Now you listen to me: you can’t just barge into my church and tell me what to do. This man can’t travel without treatment. The supplies boat isn’t due for another week and we don’t know when the next airplane will land. If you think you can walk out the way you walked in, you’re mistaken. The watchman at the top of the pali is armed, so your gun will not impress him, and he won’t unlock the gate there for anyone without a pass from the superintendent. The superintendent never gives that out until he has consulted with me.’
Noritaka was looking anxiously at Akiro, and started whispering. Akiro dismissed him with a wave of his hand, but he too looked uncertain now.
‘All right,’ he declared at last. ‘You may have this man treated. But we will come with you.’
Mother Julia quickly motioned the two boys and they came forward to help Nessheim. It was a good thing too, he thought, for in sitting so long his leg had virtually seized up. He managed to get to the end of the pew, then the boys each took one of his arms around their broad shoulders and led him out of the church.
They moved in a slow and awkward procession down a street and towards the ocean. The nun walked next to Nessheim and the boys, with Akiro and Noritaka right behind them. She turned to one of the boys helping Nessheim and said something. The boy nodded, then spoke to the other boy and they began to sing, loud enough for the nun to speak without being heard from behind.
‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’
He whispered, ‘I’m with the FBI.’
‘But how did you get here? If you’d come down the pali I would have been told.’
‘I came by boat and put down by the lighthouse. The boat’s still there waiting for me.’
Mother Julia said nothing. She was looking thoughtful.
They came to a long one-storey building with a glassed-in sun porch. The wind had picked up and Nessheim could see the spray the big breakers threw up as they hit the rocks by the town’s little landing dock. The Pacific here was almost unbelievably blue.
Mother Julia turned back to Akiro. ‘This was the old hospital – the new one’s next door. Come this way.’
She led the way through an archway into a courtyard that was surrounded by small living quarters for the lepers.
‘This is where our patients live,’ she said.
A man was sitting at a small table in a corner of the courtyard, reading a newspaper. When he put it down to nod hello to Mother Julia, Noritaka gave a little gasp – the man’s face was badly scarred and one of his cheeks flattened, as if it had been crushed in a press.
They moved through another arch at the far end, then climbed some steps into a new building with concrete foundations. At the door Mother Julia turned.
‘Wait here,’ she told them.
She was back in a minute. ‘Now, I am going to take this man through to see the nurse. You can’t come any further.’
Akiro shook his head, though Noritaka looked ill at ease. Akiro said, ‘We’re coming too.’
Mother Julia said, ‘If you insist.’ Before Akiro could argue, she opened the door and motioned the boys to help Nessheim inside.
They all entered a small atrium. A corridor stretched down either side, with signs for the Dispensary and X-ray room. In front of him, Nessheim could look directly into one of the wards through its swing doors, which had small glass windows. It was a long white room, with two ceiling fans and a dark linoleum floor. On each side of the ward were about ten beds and all were occupied. He saw a nurse sitting at one bedside; another stood in the aisle, holding a tray.
‘This way,’ said Mother Julia.
She opened another door, next to the entrance to the ward. It gave onto a small office, where a uniformed nurse stood waiting. The room had a desk, a chair and the raised flat bed of a consulting room. There was a wall cabinet, presumably to store medicines, and a trolley that held rolls of gauze, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and half a dozen needles for injections, resting upright in a jar of liquid steriliser. At the back of the room another door led straight into the ward.
She motioned to the boys and they helped Nessheim into the chair, then left the room while Mother Julia stood guard in the doorway. She said fiercely to Akiro and Noritaka, ‘The nurse doesn’t want you in here. The ward right next door is for severe cases,’ she said, pointing towards the swing doors, ‘and the risk of contagion is extremely high. One of the patients has just died and they’re about to take him to the graveyard. Naturally, all the patients are upset. I won’t have you making things worse. Now wait there.’
She closed the door on them. ‘We have to be quick,’ she said.
The nurse went and opened the rear door of the room into the ward. The two Hawaiian boys were standing by an army stretcher that was lying on the floor. Mother Julia said to them, ‘Come help.’
Nessheim struggled to his feet, then with the aid of the two Hawaiians shuffled through the back door and lay on the stretcher. The nurse bent and took off his shoes, while Mother Julia covered him with a large sheet. Then the two boys lifted up the stretcher.
Mother Julia leaned down and put her face close to Nessheim’s. He smiled.
‘May the Lord forgive me,’ she said. ‘Now when they take you through the swing doors hold your breath. Dead men don’t breathe.’
They waited thirty seconds, then the boys bustled him through the swing doors and didn’t stop. They could hear Mother Julia just a few feet away, talking to distract Akiro and Noritaka.
He heard Akiro grunt and Noritaka answering in Japanese. Then Nessheim sensed he was being carried outside. He didn’t dare move his head and he was still holding his breath. Suddenly the cot tilted and he flinched, then realised they were taking him down the steps of the building. They moved a few steps on smooth pavement and he felt the front pair of carrying hands let go as the stretcher slid along a floor. A moment later a hand flipped the sheet down from over his head, uncovering his eyes. He took a chance and opened them and realised he was lying in the back of a wooden cart. One of the two Hawaiian boys was looking down at him and nodded, then pulled a canvas tarpaulin over the back of the cart.
The horse and cart made good time. Nessheim reckoned they had at least a few minutes’ lead, maybe more if Mother Julia could keep Akiro out of the nurse’s room for longer. It was a bumpy ride and Nessheim had nothing to hang on to. He banged his leg twice against the sides of the cart and when he reached down his hand came back sticky and wet.
He sensed the cart turning gradually and imagined their progress: north along the Kalaupapa side of the island, then east and over the aviation field, past the lighthouse and down to the shore. It couldn’t be much past noon and he only prayed that Hiapo hadn’t decided to go for a spin.
They were riding now on a soft springy surface, which he decided must be the turf runway strip. He figured it was five minutes to go when he heard a low rumble far in the distance. Thunder? No, it was a steady low noise and it was coming closer. A car. The two Japanese must have forced their way into the nurse’s room, then gone and taken the nearest vehicle, probably at gunpoint.
The smooth surface ended and the cart jolted and bounced on rough stones, which slowed them down. He sensed they were very near the water now and a moment later he heard waves breaking. The low throb of an engine was growing louder.
Suddenly the cart slanted and he was pushed against one side as it moved at an angle along the beach and stopped. He heard the cart driver get down and he tried to sit up, but the canvas had been tied firmly. He waited impatiently as the driver worked at the ropes, then threw back the tarp.
The cart driver was an enormous man in a short-sleeved shirt; his forearms looked like hams. As Nessheim struggled to get up, the Hawaiian looked at his bleeding leg with concern, then reached in and hauled Nessheim to the back of the cart, until he was sitting up, his legs dangling. In one quick move the Hawaiian hoisted Nessheim over his shoulder.
The big man carried him down the twenty feet or so and carefully put Nessheim down to stand at the water’s edge. He turned to go back to the cart and Nessheim could hear the car coming. It must have reached the airstrip by now.
The Moana Two was anchored less than fifty yards from shore and he waded gingerly into the water and swam for it. It was only as he made his last few strokes that Hiapo heard him and then he helped him into the stern with the aid of a grappling hook.
‘We have to go right away,’ Nessheim said, gasping. He pointed wildly at the shore. When he turned and looked he saw a Model T screech to a halt next to the cart and horse. Hiapo had gone straight to the wheel. There was a low rumble and the diesel engine caught. Hiapo pushed the throttle down hard and they crouched beneath the gunwale level as the boat surged forward. Looking back, Nessheim could see Akiro aiming the rifle in their direction. Then suddenly the big Hawaiian appeared next to him on the beach and Nessheim watched as he launched a punch that connected flush on Akiro’s jaw. The Japanese man collapsed onto the sand, and his rifle flew in the air and landed with a splash in the water.
When they were out of range, Nessheim looked at his watch, feeling like he’d aged ten years. Less than three hours had passed since he’d waded ashore.
The cutter in the channel between Molokai and Oahu appeared out of nowhere. The sun had just set when a blinking semaphoric light came out of the dusk and approached at a sharp angle off their bow. The ship was called the Prairie Schooner and it was manned at its prow by a sailor tending a thirty-millimetre gun. An American flag was flying from the top of its pilot house. When the vessel was less than twenty yards away a voice rang out, amplified by a megaphone: ‘Moana Two, turn off your engines and keep your hands in the air! I repeat, keep your hands in the air!’
Thank God, Nessheim thought.
He waited to explain until he was brought on board, while a sailor stayed on Moana Two with the Hawaiian.
‘I’m an FBI agent,’ he said.
‘Save it for the Marines,’ said the skipper, a young lieutenant. He turned to the two sailors who stood, pistols drawn, on either side of Nessheim. ‘How about the other one?’
‘He’s called Hiapo, sir. He’s a local fisherman. I think he’s okay. We’ve seen him out here plenty of times before.’
The lieutenant nodded. ‘Let him go. If we want to talk to him again we know where to find him.’ He pointed at Nessheim. ‘This must be Rossbach. Cuff him and take him below.’
‘I’m not Rossbach,’ Nessheim protested. The skipper shook his head.
Nessheim tried again, but it was no use – when he started to speak for a third time, the young lieutenant threatened to gag him as the sailors led him away. Below deck they attached his handcuffs to a large internal pipe, which didn’t budge. Then the cutter started to move again.
They travelled quickly, at probably twice the knots of Moana Two. There was nothing to do but wait until they reached Oahu. Nessheim wondered whose attention he would command on a Friday night. His thoughts alternated between anxiety that no one would believe him and fury that he had been betrayed. How else did these Navy men know to look for ‘Rossbach’?
It was pitch dark when they came into Pearl Harbor and only a solitary light glowed from the Pan Am terminal on the east loch. They headed towards it in the vast internal waterway, towards the main docks of the naval base. An enormous battleship in war camouflage was berthed there and as they passed it he could just make out the name, painted in bold letters by the bow – USS Arizona.
They marched him off the boat, half-lifting, half-dragging him into the command-post headquarters, which were tucked away at one side of the south-east loch of the harbour. He tried to hobble along unassisted, but when he moved too slowly the escorts propelled him by both arms.
He was expecting to be taken to the base commander, and the same two sailors led him along a series of linoleum-floored hallways, through a succession of swinging doors. At last they arrived at one that wasn’t swinging. The sailors rapped smartly on the door and an orderly opened it. On the far side Nessheim could see a long corridor, battleship grey, with barred cells on either side.
‘Prisoner,’ the sailors announced and shoved Nessheim through the door.