Pacific Rebound

By Jay Lillie

PACIFIC REBOUND

Many of the islands of the southwestern Pacific, north of Australia, were occupied by Japan or came under the Japanese sphere of influence from the late 1930s through the end of World War II.
About halfway on a straight line south from Tokyo to Darwin, Australia lies the Island of Yap. Like its neighbors close to the east, Yap is one of the pinpoint peaks of an under-sea volcanic mountain range several thousand feet taller than Himalayas' Mount Everest. The shoreline of Yap rises over 35,000 feet from the depths of the nearby Challenger Deep.
We don't know much about what's down there, but it would be a good place to hide something that you never want found.

This story begins halfway around the globe in midtown Manhattan. The time is now and the people, as well as what they see and do, exist only in your imagination.

Compelling international adventure... intriguing, challenging.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311840769

Book preview

PACIFIC REBOUND

Many of the islands of the southwestern Pacific, north of Australia, were occupied by Japan or came under the Japanese sphere of influence from the late 1930s through the end of World War II.

About halfway on a straight line south from Tokyo to Darwin, Australia lies the Island of Yap. Like its neighbors close to the east, Yap is one of the pinpoint peaks of an under-sea volcanic mountain range several thousand feet taller than Himalayas' Mount Everest. The shoreline of Yap rises over 35,000 feet from the depths of the nearby Challenger Deep.

We don't know much about what's down there, but it would be a good place to hide something that you never want found.

This story begins halfway around the globe in midtown Manhattan. The time is now and the people, as well as what they see and do, exist only in your imagination.

Compelling international adventure... intriguing, challenging.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A Wall Street lawyer specializing in international and financial transactions and representing American, European and Japanese clients in over 40 countries, Jay Lillie has met and dealt with his share of brilliant minds and rascals amid serious conflicts of culture and self-preservation. A talent for writing fiction allows him to bring to his readers the sense and feel of being there in places and lands less familiar to most of us, dealing with real men and women in extraordinary situations. Jay is a prizewinning essayist, blue water sailor, and since 2005 author of three published novels.

Copyright © 2008-2016 Jay Lillie

Published by

CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS

C

lassic imprint

Asia’s Global Print & eBook Publisher

DIGITAL EDITION

First Edition Published by IVY HOUSE PUBLISHING, USA 2008

All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

PACIFIC

REBOUND

A Novel by JAY LILLIE

For Michael W. Lillie

who left us too soon

CONTENTS

1 New York

2 San Diego

3 Honolulu

4 Sydney

5 Connecticut, USA

6 Tokyo

7 Alice Springs

8 North of the Great Victoria

9 Winter Camp

10 Aotearoa

11 Auckland

12 Through the Looking Glass

CHAPTER 1

NEW YORK

Manhattan Island, bartered by the North American Aboriginals for trinkets; where today anything is possible and often obtainable; where the cement’s too thick to put down roots; a place that looks better straight on than over your shoulder; an exciting city of high-powered achievers, scarred and awakened by another ‘eye for an eye’ exercise; and a cosmos of gainfully employed shrinks.

My most challenging times sailing and racing across oceans often began with the false promise of brilliant sunshine. This ironic pattern was repeated on a Monday morning in late winter when I rolled out of bed in Manhattan to the dawn of a beautiful day… and walked straight into an ambush at the office.

Associates and adversaries, unforeseen and unexpected, were assembled that day in the tower, and I’d lost the one person who could get me through a bad day like that with style and grace. Sara was gone, and nothing was going to bring her back… not that day… and not the next time I needed her.

The Executive Committee is waiting for you to join them in the boardroom, the handwritten note on my desk told me. It was a convenience for others that I had become so predictable in scheduling my day. I’m Peter White, and my job was running our pharmaceutical company’s Asia and Latin America divisions.

Leonard Arnold, sitting at the far end of the highly polished mahogany table in his light blue suit and flowery tie, looked as if he had just won the lottery. On that morning Len was enjoying a role he had long given up ever having the chance to play. This committee advised on executive salaries and kept management informed on the quality of our company’s key employees; and the meeting on that morning, as I was about to learn, had been called to conduct my own performance review.

What Frank Hardy, our Chief Financial Officer, said pretty well summed it up. ‘Peter,’ he said, ‘let me cut to the chase. Last year you received the third largest bonus in the company.’

‘I guess that’s right,’ I said. ‘It was a large sum.’

‘And your performance review by three of the persons in this room gave you an outstanding.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s correct too.’

‘So what do you expect us to give you this year?’ He said it in a no BS, matter-of-fact, manner.

‘Less than satisfactory,’ I answered.

‘Why is that?’ he asked.

I drew a breath, and looked around the room at each person.

‘I have not measured up to my own standards of accomplishment,’ I began, ‘and I’m sure those standards are no higher than any of yours. I don’t make excuses, but I can’t deny that the loss of my wife hit me pretty hard. I can’t honestly say I’m over it even now.’

‘That’s understandable,’ Frank said, adding, ‘At the same time the business must go on. Why didn’t you take some time off?’

‘And do what?’ I said much too quickly with the result I might have expected, as I could see Frank react as if I’d thrown something at him. ‘Sorry, Frank,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to be so abrupt, but it’s true, what would I go and do? Sit on a beach somewhere and feel sorry for myself?’

He seemed to shrug off my aggressive reaction to his point with a weak smile, but remained serious. ‘I understand you’re a very active sailor,’ he said. ‘Why not take a long hike across an ocean, throw yourself over a big wave and get yourself sorted out?’

I swallowed. ‘I just thought getting back to my job and working hard was the best way to get over the loss.’

‘I see,’ he said, ‘but wasn’t that putting yourself before the interests of those who work for you, deal with you and depend on your good judgment?’

He had a point, and I nodded. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

‘Well, I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but I think you understand where I’m coming from.’

‘Perfectly,’ I said. It was a fair comment.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope you’re on the mend soon. You have too bright a future and too important a position in this company for it to be otherwise.’

Looking back, I could see that my general attitude and alertness had dulled and become sticky following Sara’s battle against the cancer that took her. For sure, I had much less patience, and for months after we put her to rest I felt lost.

Everyone else could see it: ties that didn’t match shirts or suits, different colored socks and coming into the office on holidays, all signs of not having a life. Friends tried fixing me up with single women they knew. I did my best, but I couldn’t summon the energy to measure up to the pre-billing I was getting. The results, except for a couple of remarkable one-night stands, were mostly disastrous. Associates in the office showed more sympathy than I thought I needed, and my reaction was often annoyance with them. As I told the committee, I thought hard work and attention to detail was what was keeping me in a positive state of mind, but apparently that was not the case.

My administrative assistant, Virginia Eely, was a middle-aged wonder. She’d been with me since I came back to New York from Australia to take on the department head job. She was without a doubt my most valuable asset. She could take completely in stride anything the day handed her. She was unflappable, and watched over me like a mother hen in my grandfather’s barnyard. I don’t think I could have navigated through the first month in this job without her attending to the details. With her cheery air of professionalism, alert to all going on around her, she was the soul of my New York office. She was more aware than anyone of my deep sense of loss for Sara and the effect this had on my daily routine.

Sara always marveled at what a good team we were. ‘I don’t know how Virginia manages you, Pete. I couldn’t take you in that office for one day.’

Virginia did it by staying a step ahead, anticipating my every move. Sometimes she knew what I was going to do, or not do, before I knew it myself.

‘I saw the note on your desk,’ she said, as I returned to my office from the committee meeting. ‘Are you all right?’

I gave her a nod and the best smile I could manage. Neither fooled her, and she followed me into the office.

‘Who ran the meeting?’ she asked, getting right to the heart.

‘Leonard Arnold,’ I said, taking a seat behind my desk and pretending to sort some papers.

Virginia stood her ground shifting weight from one leg to the other. ‘Mr. Wall is in Chicago today, I understand,’ she said.

‘No, Virginia, I’m not going to bring him into this. The committee was right, and everyone in this office knows it. I’ve been operating at half speed for months. I need to get back on track. Where’s that file on Singapore I was looking for yesterday?’

She reached to the corner of my desk, picked up the papers that were there and handed them to me. ‘Is this the file?’ she said with a big smile.

‘That’s it. What time is it out there?’

‘That’s your department, sir, but I guess it’s late tomorrow night.’

She was right. ‘Don’t let me forget to call out there this afternoon. I need to speak with Lee.’

‘Cup of coffee?’

I didn’t usually let Virginia get me coffee, but she was off at my nod. In doing so I’d admitted to being out of sorts following my run-in with the Executive Committee. She left me with a smile, as I sorted through my schedule for the upcoming week.

I left my Manhattan apartment on a Saturday morning a couple of weeks later, and drove out to the Connecticut town near where Sara and I had lived and raised a son. I felt the need to get out of the City, and the mention of my sailing avocation during the Executive Committee session reminded me I hadn’t seen in over a year the boat that had once been a large part of Sara’s and my life together.

It was a cloudy day, warm for late winter, and I drove through sections of the Bronx, past the Whitestone Bridge and onto the I-95. I began to look forward to climbing aboard my old boat as I wove through the backwaters of Stamford, CT and into a boatyard along the harbor side. A few dozen large sailboats were parked high in their cradles, still covered by winter tarps. I circled through the lot until I reached the large shed that housed my boat among a dozen others. I hadn’t put her in the water during Sara’s illness or following her death. When I told the yard the same would be true for the coming season, they’d asked to keep the boat back in a dark corner of the shed farthest from the hangar door entrance and out of the way of other boats that would be launched when spring arrived.

I found a ladder after a few minutes’ search with my flashlight, climbed the ten or twelve feet up into the cockpit and waited while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. It felt so good sitting there next to the oversized racing wheel that I reconsidered my decision not to launch her in the coming months.

I fired up the yacht’s electrical system with two live batteries borrowed from the yard office and spent the rest of that day and half the night cleaning up and sorting out items that needed attention, and in some cases tossed into the trash bin. I failed to notice as day turned to night. Around midnight I gathered up a couple of musty old blankets from their sealed plastic covers, curled up in the pilot berth and had the best damned sleep I’d had in months.

Winter returned during the night, and it was finger-numbing cold by the time streaks of daylight found their way through cracks in the east door of the big hangar. I found a 24-hour diner for breakfast, and, in a spirit of excitement hardly recognized, headed back into Manhattan.

I tackled the work brought home from the office with a level of energy and enthusiasm that had been long absent. Scrounging around in my old boat had proven good therapy. Other attempts to pull me out of this abyss had not been effective. My company-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Goodnight, seemed to think I was making progress, but after my session with the Executive Committee I knew that sitting around waiting for someone else to give me the needed push was not going to work. I determined to get that boat back in racing shape, and see if my sailing friends and I could do some damage out there on the racecourse. I’d made a mistake keeping her off in that dark corner for so long.

Virginia’s pleasant tones brought me back to the moment on Monday morning. ‘You haven’t forgotten, Mr. White, that you’re meeting with the Japanese at eleven?’

It was 10:56. ‘Thanks, Virginia,’ I said. ‘I’m on my way.’

Our Japanese partners, as usual, were there in force… always with one or two new faces in the group. On this day there were two, and they were introduced to me at the start of the session. One of them was called Hashimoto.

The senior Japanese introduced us. ‘Mr. Hashimoto thinks he may have met you when you were the company’s manager in Australia, Mr. White.’

Very little happens by chance with the Japanese. I was sure without remembering or asking for details that I must have met this man on one of my trips from Sydney. I had no doubt it was for that reason he’d been dragged along to our meeting.

Hashimoto and I smiled at each other and shook hands, New York style, and then bowed Tokyo style. Our Japanese visitors all sensed that I hadn’t remembered the man, and we were all embarrassed for me and for him and for us. Such is the way of Japan.

Afterwards, the bright young woman on our staff who was in charge of organizing this meeting approached me. I was ready to issue a short lecture about not taking things for granted, but something flashed across my mind, and I stopped.

Instead I said, ‘Nancy, the fun of your job is being able to apply the significant knowledge you have concerning Asian cultures to the business at hand. Don’t let this incident spoil that.’

It was more like my old approach to things, even if I did need to work at it.

‘I thought you knew him, Peter. I should have double checked.’

‘You did just fine. It was a well thought out agenda, and I know they felt we accomplished a great deal. I did too.’

I had not seen that smile of hers in a long time.

My friend Brian Keating called as I got back to my corner office overlooking the Avenue. Virginia winked at me as I passed her desk.

‘It’s Brian, Peter. He’s in Dallas.’

I never knew when Virginia was going to use my first name. It was my preference, but if there was a rhyme or reason I’d never figured it out.

Thirty-year-old Brian Keating had captivated middle-aged Virginia with his sun-bleached blonde locks, his boyish charm and natural politeness. I left the door open as I took the call at my desk.

‘Hi, Brian.’

‘Hello, Skipper. How’s it going?’

‘Not too bad. What’s up?’

‘I was just wondering…’

‘If I’ve decided to put the boat in the water,’ I said.

‘Right.’

‘Your call is timely, Brian. Why don’t we go ahead and see if she still floats?’ Brian could hardly contain his delight.

‘All riiight,’ he said. ‘What can I do?’

‘When are you back in town?’

‘Thursday night.’

‘Tell you what. Meet me at the yard next Saturday morning. We’ll make a list.’

‘You got it, Skipper. I’ll be there with bells on. So how’s the Admiral?’ he wanted to know. This was his current name for my son Jake, who was in his first year at the Naval Academy.

‘He’s frostbiting dinghies on the Severn.’

‘Good. Maybe I’ll go down there and give him a few pointers. We can talk about it on Saturday. Oh, and by the way, are you going to be at the West Coast shindig in May?’

‘I’ll be there, on my way to Australia.’

‘Great, and the Harbor Island bullshit?’

‘I took a table. Your name’s on two places. But make sure your date’s over eighteen this time.’

‘You bet, Skipper,’ he said with a quick laugh. ‘See you Saturday at the yard.’

‘All right, Brian. Thanks for calling.’ And I meant it.

Things were definitely looking up. Keating, as long as I’d known him, had been able to lift my spirits. He’d come to me late one afternoon down in Auckland, New Zealand, where Sara and I had traveled to watch the America’s Cup finals. Brian was involved with one of the defeated American contenders, and approached me during the finals. I passed on my condolences.

‘Thanks, Mr. White,’ he said that day, and paused for a moment before getting to what was really on his mind. ‘May I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘This Cup campaigning has been great, but you know, I really need to move on. I love it, but it requires a no holds barred dedication and takes up years of your time. I need to settle down a little and start thinking about what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.’

That sounded like a good plan to me, and I told him so.

‘Thanks. Well, yes, it’s a plan anyway. Ah, one of the things I was thinking about doing was detailing drugs to doctors and hospitals. A friend of mine does that, and she really likes it.’

As I soon learned, most all of Brian’s ‘friends’ were female.

‘It’s a good profession, Brian. If you’d like, I’ll give you an introduction to the groups who do our detailing.’

‘That would be super, Mr. White. I’ll do a good job. You won’t be sorry for the introduction.’

And I never have been. Brian practically runs their operation these days. But he had more on his mind that day.

‘I understand you do the Bermuda Race and the spring and fall race series on Long Island Sound. If you ever need a good man on the foredeck…’

You always need a good man on the foredeck. They are rare indeed, and Brian was one of the best, even among the professionals who had begun to dominate the sport. It was to be the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship. In the process, he became the older brother my son didn’t have.

Brian and Sara got along well too.

‘Where can I find a woman like you?’ he loved asking her. ‘Do I have to go to Indiana?’

‘That was a nice girl with you at the yacht club last week,’ she’ would say.

‘A child, a mere child, Sara. I need a real woman. Why don’t you leave this clod you’re with and come camp with me?’

She would laugh and look at me. ‘Why do we put up with this rascal, darling?’

Brian sat next to Jake and me at her funeral service. The tears running down all our faces were real enough, as a young woman who was Sara’s favorite in the church choir sang Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria.’ Brian had stayed up half the night helping sixteen-year-old Jake write his eulogy from son to mother.

Virginia and I spent the rest of the morning going over changes to my upcoming visit to our subsidiaries and distributors in Latin America. She knew most of the branch people with whom we dealt, and they knew her.

Overseas trips went with my job, but I used to love the concentration of energy, seeing improvement from previous visits, and getting a close, firsthand feel for the marketplace that you can’t get sitting behind a desk in New York. Now these had become cold hotel rooms, boring dinners with people who tried too hard to get you to enjoy yourself, and no Sara with whom to share a laugh at the world. Virginia was doing her best to get me into gear, but the last year had been a roller coaster ride for both of us. I vowed every day to make our business fun again. Maybe I was trying too hard.

For lunch I went down to the cafeteria, stood in the sandwich line and forced myself to pass time with a few staff people with whom I hadn’t spoken in a while. When I got back to the office, Virginia announced she had a Mrs. Michael J. Leary on the line. I must have looked surprised, because Virginia gave me her ‘Are you all right?’ look.

Michael Leary was a name I had not heard in a long time. I was sure I had not met his wife. I couldn’t imagine why she was calling me.

Virginia cleared her throat. ‘Mr. White, she says it is most urgent that she speak with you.’

‘Line one?’ I said, trying to think of a reason not to take the call.

‘No, she’s on my line, ‘Virginia said. ‘They sent her call up from the main switchboard. Shall I patch her in to you?’

‘Get her number, please, Virginia,’ I said.

She dismissed my mumbling, and was back in seconds.

‘Mr. White, she says she’s in New York, calling from a friend’s office. She says it will only take a moment. She seems most pleasant, Mr. White. She says you are acquainted with her husband and, if I’m any judge, her concern that something has happened to him seems quite natural and straightforward.’

God bless Virginia Eely. The President of the United States might have a difficult time getting through to me, but a promising female voice found little resistance at my assistant’s desk. I guessed it was all in the hopes of getting me comfortable interacting with women again, an effort that had proved unsuccessful up to that point. Virginia was not the type to give up easily.

‘Okay, wait a minute,’ I said, and with a bemused smile, in my mind if not actually on my face, I took the call on my private phone.

‘Mr. White, hello, this is Rosemary Leary.’ The voice came with a hint of apprehension and a slight but noticeable English accent. ‘Michael Leary is my husband,’ she said.

‘How are you, Mrs. Leary?’ I said in as friendly a manner as I could muster.

If she noticed any annoyance in my voice, she didn’t let on. ‘Mr. White, I need your advice. Michael always told me if I ever needed anyone to talk with in his absence that I should contact you.’

‘How can I help?’

‘I’m very worried something has happened. Michael left here on one of his treks last year. That’s not unusual, as I guess you know. But this year he let Christmas… in all the years that he’s been away, not once has he let Christmas go by without calling home, at least.’

There was a noticeable break in her voice.

‘Michael didn’t call last Christmas?’ I said.

‘I haven’t heard from him in over a year.’

I choked on that timeline. ‘Well, Mrs. Leary, I’m not sure that I…’

‘Mr. White, if I send you his flight schedule and itinerary from his last trip, do you think…’ and she hesitated as her voice broke again. ‘I thought maybe you could tell me where to start.’

I wondered to what part of the world Michael Leary had gone this time. I told her to send what she had to me, and I’d get back to her.

‘Here, I’ll put my assistant, Virginia Eely, back on. Give her your contact information, and she’ll give you our address.’

‘Thank you, Mr. White,’ I heard her say. ‘I really… ‘I’ll do what I can,’ I said impatiently. Then, ashamed that I’d been so abrupt, I tried to be more gracious. ‘Don’t worry, Michael will show up,’ I said, having no particular reason to believe he would or wouldn’t.

‘Dear Michael,’ she said, ‘always stirring the pot. I really appreciate your taking the time for this, Mr. White.’

To be honest, I had no premonition of things to come, only a sense of the absurd to receive a call about a man I hadn’t seen or heard of in years, a most extraordinary man at that, and one who’d been missing for over a year.

That evening, sitting in my kitchen with my feet up and a whiskey in my hand, I revisited the discussion with Rosemary Leary and thought about an earlier time and the man she said was her husband. When was the last time I saw Dr. Michael J. Leary? It must have been when I was still the area manager for what we called Australasia.

I’d been in the final days of a mid-winter marketing swing from Sydney through Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. On my last evening in Java a sizeable crowd of Western businessmen and their families collected in the lobby of my hotel at the suggestion of the American Embassy.

The man standing next to me in the crowd of businesspersons and their spouses explained there had been an incident involving a family of expatriate Americans. Rumors were spreading among the Western business community, and the U.S. Ambassador was trying to keep the lid on.

A thirty-three-year-old American banker with his wife and two young children were returning to their home in Jakarta by car from a weekend of mountaineering in the cooler high elevations of Java – coffee country. It was dusk as they entered a village on the high promontory overlooking the city from the south. The dimly lighted streets were congested as usual, and the driver was tired from a half day trekking on mountain trails and the long, difficult drive back. As his wife dozed, their four-year-old daughter and her six-year-old brother slept soundly in the back seat.

Suddenly, an Indonesian boy darted into the street from between two parked trucks. The American swerved, but it was too late. He hit the boy and dragged him several meters down the road. The wife awoke as her husband braked hard and leapt out of the car.

A crowd gathered quickly around the fallen boy. An onlooker lifted him from the road and carried his lifeless body to the side. The American couple waited among an increasingly hostile gathering until the police finally arrived. The husband tried, despite the crowd of pushing and shouting villagers, to explain to the police what had happened.

Suddenly, his wife’s agonized scream pierced the night air. She’d gone back to their car to check on her children. Someone from the crowd had entered their unlocked car and slit both her children’s throats.

The Ambassador insisted that the deaths were a tragic but isolated incident, and should not cause panic among other families stationed in Indonesia. From the questions and comments coming from the assembled group, I wasn’t so sure. The incident became an important part of my report on the long-term outlook for our company in that predominately Muslim market.

As the group assembled in the hotel lobby started to break up, I heard a voice from behind me. ‘An eye for an eye, eh, White?’

I turned to see the massive figure of Dr. Michael Leary smiling broadly behind a beard in need of a good trim.

‘Dr. Leary, it’s good to see you,’ I said, surprised and pleased with his greeting. ‘Yes, we Westerners don’t understand that, do we?’

‘Not yet. In time, I reckon we will,’ he said, as my right hand disappeared into his enormous mitt. ‘White, if your expense account has room for a couple of drinks, I have some remarkable Cubans. The lounge is over that way,’ and he lifted me off the floor and into his stride toward the lobby bar.

A reasonable bottle of cognac in non-drinking Djakarta was unobtainable outside the Western hotels and was worth the price of a case of very good Scotch whiskey back in New York.

We polished off most of a bottle that night, sip by sip while filling in all the time that had passed since our last meeting. The following day, Leary went off to Sumatra in search of microbes in the mud, and I had a headache that lasted all the way back to Sydney, with a two- day layover in Singapore.

Leary was going to probe for undiscovered microbes deep in the mud of the jungle marshes, a new tetracycline maybe, or a cure for cancer. He was looking for immortality in discovery of the kind that changes the way things are. The company he freelanced for in Philadelphia was a competitor of ours, but none of the people I knew there seemed to have any contact with Dr. Leary. I heard at one point he’d spent several years probing under the Tibetan icecap, deep in the Himalayas.

I’d always assumed Michael Leary wasn’t married.

The day of my last visit to Dr. Goodnight’s office finally arrived. We were in what I hoped to be the last few minutes of that hour when Goodnight asked me the kind of question I guessed he used to conclude his consultations.

‘Mr. White, please tell me if there have been any recollections of people, places or things long forgotten that have come into your consciousness over the past months, anything that we haven’t already discussed?’

My mind was racing ahead to going out the door for the last time. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor, I didn’t get that.’

‘I was wondering if at any time since our sessions began that recollections of places or people long forgotten have come to your mind, you know, after a long period?’

I wasn’t in the mood to challenge his asking me such a question at this point.