Silversword by Charles Knief Page B

would know something of that?”
    â€œI helped a friend rebury his auntie a few years ago. The female skeleton that had been in the University of California at Berkeley since 1928. I helped him retrieve it from the university. We brought it back and reburied it in the mountains of Kauai.”
    â€œI read about that. You were involved?”
    â€œI just helped. But I learned about the Act.” Some of the things that Ed Alapai had told me flooded back. The importance of the bones, the gravity of the Hawaiians’ feelings about them. They were the only permanent things of the body. They would last. It was that permanence that granted them their importance. It had been extremely important to Ed. I had listened, and respected his wishes, and helped him return the bones, not questioning what it was he wanted, or why. This was the same thing. I listened to Donna Wong a little more carefully.
    â€œSo you know that we don’t just plunder tombs for the educational value. There are more advanced techniques we can use these days. We need the information, but we do not have to scatter the bones. We survey. We videotape. We photograph. Everything. There are three-dimensional photographic techniques that virtually capture an object as if it were actually there. The only thing we cannot replicate is the weight. We make certain that everything we find is identified and catalogued, listed and captured electronically. If we have to take samples, we do so with a minimum of damage.”

    â€œYou spoke of secrecy,” I said, now really listening for the first time. “Yet you talk of ‘we.’ Who is ‘we?’”
    â€œMy sisters and I are the only ones who have worked the site. We are the only ones who know exactly where it is.”
    â€œAnd it would be bad if the information got out?”
    She nodded, her face a serious mask. “Very bad.”
    Tutu Mae said, “Think of the bones. The bones of Kamehameha should never be disturbed. It would be the same as disinterring those of Washington or Lincoln. But there are those who think they can take anything, as if it is their right. No one should have that right.”
    â€œIf news of the treasure were to get out, there would be no stopping the media and the treasure hunters. They would tear the tomb apart plundering the gold and silver. They would destroy all of the other artifacts we found.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do with it?”
    â€œWhen we’re finished studying the remains and the artifacts we’re going to seal the entrance so it cannot be found again.”
    â€œWhat makes you so sure nobody else can find it? You did.”
    â€œThe old ones left clues. They thought they’d hidden it well, but they left enough clues for us to follow their trail. Still, they did a good job. It took two hundred years.”
    â€œIf it’s Kamehameha.”
    She smiled like the Cheshire Cat. “Yes,” she said, as if she knew .
    â€œWell, thank you for allowing me to hear this story,” I said. “But what does it have to do with me?”
    â€œDo you swear to secrecy, Mr. Caine? Do you swear that you will not reveal what I am about to tell you without my express permission?”
    â€œYou can count on it, Miss Wong,” I said, wondering if I should hold up my right hand.
    â€œYou must know,” said Tutu Mae, again surging out of the deep chair cushions, pointing a bony finger in my direction, “that this discovery belongs entirely to Miss Wong. No one else had the
brains or the tenacity to make this find. It was not accidental. In fact, it was truly the work of genius.”
    Donna Wong blushed at the praise.
    I finished my coffee and rum. There were worse ways of whiling away an afternoon. Even in Waikiki.
    â€œThere are only so many places the tomb could have been located,” said Donna Wong. “Some scholars and even a few contemporary witnesses speculated that his bones had