I heard Agent Daniel get up and head for the bathroom. The sun was just coming up over Papakōlea.
When he reached the top of the stairs and saw me, Daniel said, “I got up and brushed my teeth. But enough about me. Wouldn’t want to bore you. Looks like you’re sitting in the same spot you were in when I headed off to bed.”
I was stiff and needed to get to the can. I’ve faced a lot of bad men in dire situations, but I’d never felt the kind of dread I was feeling now. These people who were after Sean, I wanted to know who they were, and what we might be up against.
“I’m glad you’re up,” I said. “I’ve been needing to use the toilet, but I’ve been afraid to budge from this chair for fear of the bad guys busting through the front door.”
Daniel gave a half laugh. “As well they may,” he said, which made my bladder scream.
Coming back to the kitchen, I put on the coffee. Daniel was sitting in front of the TV.
“Do you all have any sort of morning news program?” he asked.
“No, not really. If you want to catch the latest, the radio is your best bet.”
He switched off the TV and turned on the radio. I had it set to KGMB. J. Akuhead Pupule was just getting into the morning news at the top of the hour.
As I rustled up some pancakes, we heard the lead story which, not surprisingly, was the shooting at the airport. Police, Pupule noted, had said only that one man had been. He’d not yet been identified, and that was it. There were no further details for the time being.
“That’s my job,” I said.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“I’m the one they chose to meet the press. The P.R. point person. I’m the face of HPD. Anytime something makes it to the news radar, I’m supposed to issue statements.”
“Lucky you,” said Daniel. “A life of abbreviated comment. To fend off the press. That’s the kind of headache I’m sure you don’t love.”
I laughed but had to agree. I brought out the pancakes and the coffee.
As he approached the table, Daniel stopped by a photo on the wall. “This would be your family, then,” he said, a statement, not a question.
“Yes, my wife, my daughter, and my son. If you’re still here on Monday, you’ll meet my son. He’s coming home to do his residency at Queens Hospital, the place where your would-be killer’s in the ICU.”
Daniel said nothing. He came to the table and sat. I wasn’t surprised he asked no more about the other two. I didn’t know if it was because he sensed they might have passed, or if he might be thinking about the murder of his own wife. Whatever the case might be, I didn’t want to mention my wife and daughter’s deaths. My grief was many years past, and although you never get over that kind of pain, it’s nothing like the new, raw sorrow he must be feeling.
“These are good,” he said, wolfing down the pancakes.
“My son’s favorite,” I said. “There’s fresh-squeezed guava juice in the batter.”
“Ah,” said Daniel, “a distinct taste indeed. And the pulp gives it great character. Lovely.”
We ate for a while in silence.
“So tell me,” I said finally, “about these people? What are we up against here, Sean?”
Daniel sat back and sipped on his coffee. “This the world-famous Kona coffee, is it?”
“Yes. I’ve never had a coffee like it,” I said, wondering if he was skirting the question.
He wasn’t. “In my line of work, David, as I mentioned, we do expect to die every day. The British government puts us into deadly situations. It’s our job. We are placed in these situations where we are generally hostile to anyone or anything surrounding us. If our job is to take someone out, we do it. If our job is to steal vital information, we do it. And if we’re to work our way undercover into some kind of situation or organization that threatens the well-being of Great Britain, we do it. If we are killed, we are killed, and there are always men, and women, behind us to take our place.”
I’d expected as much. Daunting, I knew, the tenuousness of an MI6 agent’s existence.
“So to answer your question, whoever it is who tried to kill me two weeks ago, to finally do so, they’ll stop at nothing. I’m to be silenced.”
I noted Daniel didn’t mention that his with had been killed in the attempt on his life.
“What is it you’ve done or might reveal that’s going to get you killed?”
“Ah,” said Daniel. “There’s the rub. There’s more than one possibility. I was carrying out two missions simultaneously just before I was to marry.”
At this point, Daniel’s attention shifted from me to the glass doors leading to the lānai. The morning sun was bright now, and the variety of birds around my home were in full and various song.
“A symphony,” he said. “Isn’t it amazing that all these different types of birds with all their unique songs, manage automatically to create a harmonious balance? It’s never grating, you know? It always seems to mesh into one grand musical score.”
We sat silently for a few moments, listening. Finally, he turned back to me. “Yes, so, my marriage. David, I’m assuming that since you were briefed about me, you also know that my wife was killed on that day, just shortly after the ceremony.”
“Yes.”
“Well, David, I was investigating her father.”
“What? Your father-in-law-to-be was an MI6-level assignment.”
Daniel nodded. “He’s a drug smuggler. Big time. We worked out that the UK was being flooded by his product. It used to be heroin, primarily, but recently he’s been concentrating more on cocaine.”
“But you don’t think he would have tried to kill you, do you, not if it involved risking his daughter’s life?”
“He’s the embodiment of evil, David. Who knows what he’s capable of doing? He has other children. Would losing one affect him in any way? I couldn’t say. But he runs his operation out of Amsterdam. I’ve spent the last several years insinuating my way into his network. I’m now one of his trusted connections in the U.K. Or at least I was.”
“So you’ve been helping him smuggle his drugs into your country, and you’ve been letting the authorities know about shipments to other connections in the U.K.”
“Exactly. And he’s been wising up to the fact that, more and more, the drugs not coming to me in the south, are meeting with untoward government attention. Any shipment headed for hands other than mine seems to meet with a variety of disasters, from various kinds of government seizure, both on his end and on mine, to actually sinking one of his ships. I’ve just about run my course on that campaign.”
“Sean, what do you do with the drugs that come to you?”
“The government’s been paying for them and destroying them. But here’s the other thing. At the same time I’ve been working for him, I’ve also been trying to find out who it is who’s been siphoning off the drugs on our end. We believe not everything we’ve seized is being destroyed.”
“I’m sorry to ask, Sean, but how did his daughter come into the situation in the first place?”
“David,” he said, “it was hard to avoid her given my frequent meetings with him. She is, well she was, wonderful. What can I say? I fell in love.”
I nodded. “All right, and so do you believe he’s trying to kill you, or do you think it’s the people in the U.K. who are managing to rip you folks off.”
“Well, if it is the people on our end, I would guess that the reach is high, David. You can’t get away with that sort of thing without guardian angels in higher places.”
“Are you saying that someone in MI6 is trying to kill you?”
Daniel shook his head. “I would hope not, David, but if that were the case, and if they knew I was getting close to exposing them, whoever they are might kill me or just tell Blumfeld – that’s the drug kingpin’s name – who I am.”
“Theoretically, they could both be after you.”
“True.”
I sat contemplating this. At HPD, given the ever-growing number of officers we needed to bring on board, we knew there were informants who’d worked their way in, and maybe even up. Maybe high up. But I couldn’t imagine one of them trying to kill me for whatever reason. They were there to relay information to their people outside, not kill us off. The milk, not the cow. The killers from outside the department, well, they were out there, and we knew about plenty of them.
The phone rang. It was Captain Kauhane.
Lanning Lee 