by Peter Tonkin
‘There is much to discuss, Your Highness,’ said the pompous little official as soon as he was standing on the pier. ‘Do you wish to come to my office? We have maps, charts, tide tables and tea there. We have hand-held receiver/transmitters - walkie-talkies - that will, I am certain, soon be in range of the approaching vessels. Unfortunately our expensive and powerful new radio equipment went down when the masts went down...’ He gestured with his chin at the brown mess of the landslide beyond the sluggish brown flood. ‘And, of course, there is an enormous amount of electrical interference...’ He gestured again at the volcanic discharge towering above the mountain, its huge grey trunk starred with lightning.
Sailendra was tempted. By the promise of tea if by nothing else. But his arrival had had such a powerful effect upon the crowd, he could hardly dare calculate what effect his departure might have. Even if he was only going as far as the harbour master’s office. ‘I will wait here,’ he decided. ‘But you are right. It is vital that I remain in contact with you - especially when you begin to make contact with the ships. Can you send me one of these walkie-talkies when you return to the office?’ The harbour master nodded. Sailendra continued, hardly taking time for a breath, ‘Have you many men at your disposal?’
‘A dozen. And the harbour pilots. Some of the longshoremen have reported to me as well. A team of twenty-five in all.’
‘You will of course remain in charge of the harbour waters. I will try and assemble teams up here. I must try and break the crowd into more manageable units. Then we must try and bring them fresh water at least, if not food.’
‘Those at the rear of the crowd are of course near to the houses in the city. I believe there is still running water there.’
‘An excellent thought, though we will have to take care.’ There was no time to explain about deadly gas permeating the water in the paddy fields. ‘Is there anything else? It will be hot soon.’
‘As chance would have it, Your Highness, there is a million litres of bottled water in one of my warehouses awaiting shipment to Yokohama.’
‘The warehouses!’ Sailendra looked across to the harbour’s secure area. ‘I had forgotten the warehouses. What else is in them we might use?’
‘I will check, Your Highness, and alert you. In the meantime, the bottled water?’
‘Leave it where it is until we get some sort of organization. As with the arrival of the ships, we could do more harm than good unless we have some kind of plan worked out. And to that end, get your people organized as soon as possible - then send someone to me with a walkie-talkie. And some instructions on how to use it, please.’
The harbour master bowed until the yellow buttons of his double-breasted blue-serge uniform met at breast and belly, then he heaved himself on to the ladder and vanished. He was replaced almost at once by Bambang. ‘I have found my father. He was with the chief of the emergency services. They have a large number of men already organized to deal with the landslide. Now of course they have more important things. They are on their way here now, Your Highness. I came faster...’ He ducked through the legs of the nearest people to show how.
And he nearly tripped up Parang, who was pushing through the crush towards his prince. ‘This is Junior Councillor Nona,’ he said without ceremony. ‘He is the only councillor I could find. The others seem to have gone to their homes. Or to have gone with Chief Councillor Kerian.’
‘With Kerian? Where has Kerian gone?’ demanded Sailendra.
Parang gestured at the empty harbour at Sailendra’s back, as though that in itself would supply the answer. Sailendra swung round, seeing once again the harbour mouth, the sea, the slowly approaching ships. And nothing in between. So that the gesture indeed did explain everything.
Even so, Junior Councillor Nona put into words what the shaken Sailendra suddenly came to understand. Everything he understood - and then some. ‘Councillor Kerian and all his so called Bugis friends took to their praus almost immediately after the mountain exploded and sailed straight out of the harbour. Each and every one of them seemed to me to be armed to the teeth. They said the outside world was sending too little help too late. So they were going to take whatever they could from wherever they found it - in the old-fashioned Bugis way.’
Chapter 22: The Bugis Way
‘My grandfather was a soldier stationed on this island,’ said Dr Hirai quietly to Richard. They were standing side by side watching the satellite TV image on the big screen that she had used to illustrate her talk on Krakatau. Pulau Baya swam in as much of a close-up as the pilot of the news company’s plane could allow the cameraman, swinging as close as he dared to the huge column of smoke with its constant electrical discharge.
‘Was he an expert on volcanoes too?’
‘He still is. He is living in contented retirement with my grandmother in the city of Miyazaki. He was a doctor of medicine specializing in sports injuries but ceased practising some years ago. He says he stays because of the excellent golf. But the area is one of the most volcanic in Japan. Birthplace of the Gods. And he is working on a definitive history of volcanoes. He will be very jealous to know I am going to Pulau Baya under these circumstances. But he will also be a little surprised, I think. He was certain that of all the islands in the Java Sea, Pulau Baya was the least likely to be volcanic. All the time that he was stationed in the jungle there before the Americans came, he kept a diary. And he noted nothing even faintly like volcanic activity.’
‘Well, that sure as hell looks like a volcano to me,’ said Nic, joining the pair of them in the cavernous lecture theatre. The whole of Tai Fun was almost empty now, a Mary Celeste with the vast majority of its passengers in bed in Makassar. Many of its contingent were also left in the safety of the city. Only the skeleton crew of volunteers were still aboard - all of them there because they felt they had something important to offer to the vessel’s brave new mission.
‘It is shaping up to be a powerful eruption, by the look of things,’ agreed the doctor.
‘Shaping up?’ gasped Inge, coming in through the deserted - and currently managerless - casino. ‘How much worse can it get?’
‘Oh, very much worse,’ explained the doctor earnestly. ‘This is an early phase. Many volcanoes smoke and spit like this. Etna, for instance. It may carry on as it is or it may settle down. Or...’
‘Or what?’ asked Richard.
‘Or it may go Plinian.’ She looked around the blank faces and gave a little modest smile. ‘Pliny the Younger wrote all about the eruption of Vesuvius in two letters written in 79 AD to the historian Tacitus so that he could accurately record the facts of the eruption in his famous Histories,’ she explained. ‘Pliny is the first person in Western science or literature to do such a thing. He observed it all across the Bay of Naples from Misenum, where his uncle, Pliny the Elder, was the naval squadron commander. Then, although he stayed with his mother - he was seventeen at the time - he talked to men who went with his uncle to try to rescue the people trapped by the eruption. He recorded how his uncle died in the attempt and how the rest of his command were lucky to escape with their lives. The record describes the classic sequence of events from the first explosion to the final nuées ardente or pyroclastic flows. Those flows were what finally destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. Though it was not until the 1990s before they finally discovered how many people actually died at Herculaneum, of course. When they opened up the long-buried waterside warehouses and found them full of two-thousand-year-old corpses.’ She fell silent, but all of their eyes were drawn to the stippled, surging grey mass along the edge of the bright blue waters of the harbour which was the closest the picture could come to showing the better part of ten thousand desperate people waiting for them there. ‘Or it may go up like Krakatau,’ Dr Hirai finished. ‘And simply blow the whole island to pieces.’
It hadn’t taken much of a conference to convince Richard, Robin, Nic and Gabriella to join the rescue mission. Nic and Gabriella were hardly risk-averse and neither of them had much to
lose in terms of family and responsibilities. Richard and Robin had been in situations like this before and were confident that their presence would add a good deal to Tai Fun’s effectiveness as a rescue vessel. Both kept their qualifications up to accident-and-emergency standard in first aid, so at the very least they could help Dr Hirai. But of course, both were fully trained ship’s captains holding current certificates, so either could replace Captain Olmeijer if anything went wrong; both held the documents that would allow them to replace or support Eva Gruber as navigating officer; and Richard also held the same set of papers Larsen held, allowing him to double as sailing master if need be. The only thing they couldn’t do was to replace le Chef in his oversight of the motors and mechanical equipment below. And that made all the difference in the end. Both of the men, however, had insisted on waiting until they contacted their respective head offices. Nic had fingers in a wide range of pies. There was a lot of action he could stir up - and stir it up he did. Richard also, as CEO of one of the largest shipping companies in the world, had a lot of tonnage he could send to the stricken island. And he was happy to do so - every vessel in the local area under his ultimate control was ordered to alter course for Pulau Baya. Except for the supertankers.
‘Hey!’ said Gabriella suddenly. ‘Turn the sound up, somebody, would you?’ The picture on the big screen had changed from a close-up on the island to an aerial shot of the rescue fleet powering into Baya Bay. All the ships had one central focus, whether they were heading east of south, due south or west of south. The only exceptions seemed to be a small fleet of native praus sailing close-hauled east of north. And, apparently by coincidence, a laden freighter steaming busily away from the island on a convergent course with the praus.
‘Only the Miyazaki Maru, belonging to the Luzon Logging Company, seems to be ignoring the urgent call for aid,’ the newscaster said, a little sententiously. ‘And that’s really a tragedy, because as we noted in our last broadcast, she seems to have at least one sizeable helicopter on her deck. What good use the poor people of Pulau Baya could make of that if it was all fuelled up and ready to be of help! But no! Just a minute, viewers! Even she is turning to reverse her course. Every ship in the Java Sea is now steaming to Pulau Baya, full speed ahead!’
‘Miyazaki,’ said Richard to the doctor. ‘That’s where your grandfather lives, isn’t it? That’s a hell of a coincidence.’
‘Synchronicity. But Miyazaki is a large port,’ she answered coolly. ‘And the regional capital. It is also an important business centre as well as a leading centre for sport and recreation. There are many ships named for Miyazaki.’
‘But it’s interesting that she belongs to Luzon Logging,’ added Nic thoughtfully. ‘The only ship slow to get stuck in there to help is Luzon Logging’s Miyazaki Maru.’
‘You shouldn’t be surprised, Nic,’ said Richard without thinking. ‘After all, you’ve seen her sailing orders.’
‘Yeah. Until some guy in Manila decided to change them just now.’
Kerian brought his prau alongside Miyazaki Maru’s purposefully throbbing side. They ran in parallel, a little west of north for a moment, as though they were both heading for the ship’s home port on the South Island of Japan. The prau was not a small vessel. Kerian did not have to do more than stand up on top of the traditional deckhouse to communicate with Captain Nakatomi, who was leaning over the edge of the starboard bridge wing. ‘Make it quick,’ the captain called down. ‘The owners are about to come through, apparently.’ He looked up at the vertical smudge of grey disfiguring the southern horizon and spreading like a mushroom cloud across the sky. He shuddered. Both sets of his grandparents had died in Nagasaki, leaving his father and mother to be raised in an orphanage, where they had met as children and married as young adults, and died of cancer twenty years ago.
‘You have the timber aboard?’ demanded Kerian. From the look of things everything he owned except his prau was about to be reduced to ashes. The timber from Guanung Surat’s upper slopes that he had sold to Luzon Logging as a little perk of office now looked like a vital investment. But he wasn’t due for payment until delivery had been made. He had acquired the tastes of an expensive lifestyle and they would take some keeping up. Especially as there would be no more native forest girls to slake his lust. He suspected acutely that such pleasures as rape and bondage came expensive in the bordellos of Jakarta, Bangkok and points east.
‘We have the timber, with some other cargo more recently acquired in Kalimantan. So what?’
‘Are you in the market for anything else? Say, less traditional products. Knick-knacks and whatnots such as we might stumble across if we went aboard a ship or two?’
‘Anything, Councillor. You know that. There is more to Luzon Logging than dead wood, as they say.’ Captain Nakatomi turned away, summoned by a call from the bridge behind him. But then he turned back, looked down. ‘But stay on course with us a while longer, Councillor. The owners are coming through. They’ll have further orders for me, I expect; I haven’t filled my holds yet. There’s room for a good deal more, one way and another. And the choppers still have plenty of gas. So, more orders are on the way and it might be useful for you to know about them.’
While he waited, Kerian stood on the top of the deckhouse, leaned against the solid wood of the mast and looked away along his prau’s invisible wake. His island was well below the horizon now. The smoke from the volcano hung in the air like a thunderhead, blocking a good deal of the sky down there. If the councillor felt a twinge of guilt for the thousands who had trusted him and who stood deserted now beneath that strange dark cloud, he dismissed it quickly enough. He had more important things to worry about than the fate of some worthless islanders. His own personal comfort and welfare, for instance.
‘I’m on the television!’ raged Captain Nakatomi as he came back out along the bridge wing. ‘CNN or Fox News or some such. The only vessel in the whole Java Sea heading away from that fucking island except for you! You’re on there too, but no one cares for a couple of scummy praus! Miyazaki Maru is different, however. The bastards in head office want the world to know they have a conscience. The word’s come straight from Del Monte Avenue, or I’d think they must be joking! Luzon Logging with a conscience! But the Man from Del Monte he say Go! So I’m to turn round, if you please. Turn round, go back and at least pretend to help the pathetic rabble you left to fry and die!’
‘What did they say about me?’ demanded Kerian almost petulantly. ‘Will they take anything I can bring them, no questions asked?’
Captain Nakatomi had had much more urgent business than discussing with the Luzon Logging Company of Del Monte Avenue, Quezon City, Manila, the doings of some self-important little Bugis pirate with ideas inflated far above his station. And, given his new orders, he had far more important things to do than to stand here chewing the fat with him. ‘They say yes,’ he lied therefore. ‘You bring it, they’ll take it. All part of the package with the timber from the island. Top dollar guaranteed.’
Tai Fun leaned easily across the northerly wind as she ran south in the wake of the armada bound for Pulau Baya. She was behind the bulk of the fleet, but beginning to catch them up, the great black sails driving her forward as swiftly as her motors would have done. They had no clear idea what to expect when they reached Baya Port, so they were preparing for the worst. All of those aboard not actively involved in shiphandling had joined the little team of stewards in making up all the bunks and filling the open entertainment areas with more mattresses, pillows and blankets. With everything out, and every possible place prepared, they could accept nearly three hundred people. And the next stage of the plan was to expect them to be burned, hurt, dying. Richard and Robin worked with the increasingly stressed and snappy Dr Hirai, good-humouredly making sure that all the ship’s medication, supplemented like the mattresses with extra provisions loaded at Makassar, was in the best possible place and ready to go. Gabriella, Nic and Inge did not stand on ceremony either. They had no great me
dical expertise and were not needed to handle the ship. They helped in the galleys therefore, working under the tutelage of two chefs de cuisine whose normal professional manner made the stressed-out Dr Hirai at her tensest and rudest seem like the doyenne of the diplomatic service. But bullying, swearing and tantrums aside, there would be simple meals, cold water and a range of sustaining beverages ready from the moment the first refugee came aboard.
Because of her size and draft, Tai Fun had been anchored closest inshore at Pelni Harbour. Because of what had happened to her unfortunate passengers, she was already in contact with the hospital. Because she had the owner already aboard there had been no need to wait around for permission, clearance or head office bumbling. Because of her unique position, she was the vessel that could be loaded easiest and quickest with the most delicate and expensive of equipment, medicines, survival supplies. Because Richard and Nic had held her at anchor for the better part of a vital hour as they arranged things with their respective head offices, she was simply available for longer than the rest of the busily departing armada. Because of the urgency of the situation no one thought twice about putting so many vital and precious eggs into one undermanned insecure and all-too assailable basket. And, because of the urgency of the situation, not even the trenchantly old-fashioned and romantic Richard Mariner, who trusted these waters least of them all, thought twice about taking her out into Bugis waters with so much of worth aboard and so little in the way of protection. With no protection at all, in fact.
