by Mark Lee
IN AUGUST, THE PHONE RANG at one in the morning and I fumbled for the handset. Daniel was calling from his desk at the Stampa Estera.
“How’s my favorite shooter?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Where are you? What’s going on?”
“I’m flying to Macedonia to cover the fighting. Julia’s back in London, running Hand-to-Hand.”
“In London? Is that okay with you?” I asked.
“The organization was having serious problems and Richard said they needed a temporary director. It looks like Hand-to-Hand is going to East Timor.”
“Are you still …” I didn’t finish the sentence.
“Julia and I are doing our jobs. We’re still together. Drop by the Hand-to-Hand office. I know she’d love to see you.”
I USED MY LAPTOP to go online and find out about East Timor. Four hundred miles north of Australia, it was a small, poor province of Indonesia on one half of a dagger-shaped island. The country had no economic or geopolitical significance. It was notable only for the intensity and duration of its suffering. The Portuguese had once controlled East Timor. They made a profit from the sandalwood trade and introduced the locals to Christianity. After the Portuguese Empire collapsed, the Timorese fought among themselves for a few months, then proclaimed their independence. Indonesia already controlled West Timor. With encouragement from the U.S. government, they decided to invade the rest of the island. Years of fighting between the Indonesian army and the pro-independence guerillas had killed thousands of people.
Now there was a new government in Indonesia and the president had allowed the East Timorese to vote on a possible secession. The Indonesian army wanted to hold on to the province and it secretly organized and armed Timorese militias. When UN observers arrived to supervise the referendum, the militiamen began killing anyone who was in favor of independence.
The next morning I walked over to the new Hand-to-Hand headquarters on Gracechurch Street, down the block from the Leadenhall Market. This was bank and insurance-company territory, the sort of place where businessmen in dark suits carried copies of the Financial Times. Most of the other relief organizations in London were housed in converted flats near Russell Square. When you visited them, you found a temperamental copy machine and an electric teapot in the bathroom. Richard must have either owned the entire building on Gracechurch or controlled the property on a long-term lease.
No one was at the reception desk when I got off the elevator so I pushed through the glass door. A tough-looking young woman with piercings in her eyebrows and nose was sitting in an office, talking on the phone. I asked for Julia and the woman pointed me down the corridor. Little slips of paper were taped to the doors. COMPUTER ROOM. STORAGE ROOM. BOOKKEEPER’S ROOM (WHEN WE HIRE ONE). The last door proclaimed DR. J. CADELL: ACTING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. Although it was a provisional title, I realized that Richard had won a significant victory. Julia was in his world, sitting in a London office building, rather than making love to Daniel in Italy.
She was on the phone when I walked in and motioned me to sit down. The room was filled with standard-issue rental furniture, barcode stickers still taped to the edges. The only decoration was a framed poster hanging on the wall, a silk-screen cartoon of a glamorous young woman looking annoyed. GENOCIDE IN THE BALKANS? The caption read. BUT WHAT ABOUT MY CAREER?
Julia finished her call and stepped around the desk. “Nicky! How nice to see you!” We hugged awkwardly.
“Big office.”
“We’re growing into it.” She sat back down at her desk and we both gazed out the window at the wall of buildings across the street. I could just see the spire of St. Peter upon Cornhill.
“Daniel’s going to Macedonia,” she said.
“Yes. He called me.”
“We used to talk on the phone every night. Now, it’s down to once every few days.” Julia glanced at me, wanting some kind of reaction, then looked away.
“You’re both very busy,” I said.
“Two more workers start on Wednesday. Three more in a week.”
Julia began to explain what she’d been doing for the last few weeks. At established relief organizations, the staff would have written memos and held committee meetings, but she had been forced to make all the major decisions on her own. With help from Richard’s bank she had bought relief supplies from wholesale companies in Australia and chartered a cargo ship to carry everything to Timor.
“What do you think, Nicky? I don’t have enough time to train idealistic people so it’s professionals all the way. That girl outside ran the phones for an out-call prostitution service. She’s very good under pressure, doesn’t take nonsense from anyone. Our transportation manager can actually repair a truck. I think he used to steal them.”
“All this sounds quite revolutionary.”
“I can tell them they’ve made a mistake and they don’t burst into tears. It’s quite wonderful, actually. No one on the staff has a therapist or a political agenda.”
“Maybe they’ll get that way later on.”
“There’s no later on. Everything’s happening right now. Most of the other aid organizations are cautious, hoping things will work out peacefully, but I’m not optimistic. The Indonesian soldiers have been giving weapons to the local militia.”
“So why are you going? What’s the point?”
“We’ll distribute food and medicine. I hope we can save some lives.”
“But why do you have to go? Couldn’t someone else handle the problem?”
“Yes. Definitely.” She paused. “But I feel like it’s my responsibility.”
“You’ve always been responsible, Julia. You’ve helped thousands of people all over the world. Maybe it’s time to retire and go home.”
Julia considered the question as the photocopy machine spat out pages in the next room. “I don’t have any excuses,” she said. “No one depends on me, Nicky. I don’t have a child or an elderly parent. I’m not running a business or teaching at a school. So when they show those pictures on television of sick children or people starving, I have to say to myself, ‘I can go there. I can help them.’ There’s nothing holding me back.”
“So you feel responsible because you don’t have responsibilities?”
Julia looked regretful for a few seconds, then tried to cover it up by checking an order form. “My life could have turned out a different way, but this is the present reality.” She tossed the form into a tray and became a surgeon again, disciplined and efficient. “You should always deal with the patient in front of you.”
The receptionist walked in with a fax from Australia and placed it on the desk. “I’m sorry,” Julia told me. “But I need to make some more calls.” She escorted me down the hallway and to the elevator. “What’s a stand-up guy, Nicky? That’s an American term, right?”
“It’s someone who won’t turn his friends in to the police.”
“Daniel told me that you’re a stand-up guy. I guess that means he trusts you.”
“I hope so.”
“I worry about him. If you two end up working together, please make sure he doesn’t do anything crazy.” She stepped a little closer and watched my eyes. “Promise?”
IT STARTED RAINING a few days later. Cars hissed down the wet street outside the hotel. I sat alone in my room taking in words and images from East Timor on my computer screen. There had been a brief moment of peace on referendum day. Then the United Nations had announced that a majority had voted for independence. Street fighting started in Dili, the capital, and the entire country lurched into a civil war. After the United Nations pulled out, Indonesia’s president asked for a peacekeeping force to take control.
I called the Hand-to-Hand office and the receptionist said that Dr. Cadell and Mr. Seaton had already flown to Australia. My phone at the hotel started ringing, but I refused to answer. I was still on vacation. It was easier to hide at the Lamb, drinking beer and reading the British tabloids. That summer, reporters were running around the country w
ith thermometers looking for the working man with the hottest job in England. So far, it was a tie between a baker in Plymouth and a Jamaican who smeared tar on leaky roofs.
I thought about staying in the Lamb until my money ran out. When the phone rang early one morning I tried to ignore it. Newsweek always gave up after a minute or so, but this time the ringing didn’t stop. That could only be Daniel.
I picked up the handset. “Forget it,” I said. “I’m asleep.”
“Hey, Nicky!” Daniel was on his cell phone, driving down to Rome. “Everybody’s been trying to contact you. I’m going to East Timor with the UN task force. Julia will be working there, too.”
“You don’t have to go.”
“Of course not. There’s always a choice. I’ve thought about other jobs, Nicky. And I always come up with the same answer. I’m a good journalist. You’re a good photographer. It’s what we do.”
He stopped talking and I could hear tires squealing as the car went around a turn. Daniel didn’t beg me to go with him, but I suddenly felt childish for hiding at the Lamb. He needed a friend to come along. A stand-up guy.
“Slow down,” I said. “I’ll meet you in Australia.”
15 DARWIN
I decided to leave immediately and was able to get on a plane going from London to Melbourne. It was a four-movie flight. My legs cramped up and I found it difficult to sleep. After I passed through customs in Melbourne I realized that I had eight hours to kill, so I took a bus into the city and walked down Flinders Street to a pub across from the train station. Young and Jackson’s had once been a spit-on-the-sawdust establishment, but now it was slicked up like the rest of the city with a coffee bar on one side and carpets upstairs. Still, it was a pleasant enough place to sit at a corner table and watch the Australians drink. The whole country had a short-sleeve style. Even though some of the executive types at the bar were wearing suits, I felt like they were hurrying home to change clothes as soon as they finished their beer.
I left the bar with a vague idea of crossing the street to St. Paul’s Cathedral and lighting a candle for good luck. The moment I reached the curb, the mixture of alcohol and jet lag hit me hard and I knew that I should sit down as quickly as possible. There was a tram stop near the intersection, the green and yellow cars heading out to the suburbs, so I stumbled onto the No. 8 and sat down near an open window.
I was worried about East Timor and the feeling was a bit stronger than usual, something more fundamental then tension about doing a good job. But the moment the tram closed its doors and started moving, the fear began to go away. The evening light softened all the sharp edges of the world. We crossed the Yarra River and there were two rowing shells gliding toward the bridge, the long oars breaking the surface of the water. An old man wearing shorts and black socks got on the tram followed by a group of schoolgirls in checkered jumpers. And suddenly I loved the old man and the girls, loved all the Australians with a drunken benevolence as we started moving again. Tram wheels clicked past a line of massive elm trees in Fawkner Park. Not many elms in America. Gone. All gone. Some kind of fungus. I remembered from childhood how the heavy, gray branches of the trees reached down to the grass, and if you slipped beneath them it was cool and quiet and safe. It was going to be all right, I thought. Relaxed and a little sleepy, I stayed on the tram as it made a dogleg turn at Park Street and clattered toward the gloom of lower Toorak Road.
I RETURNED TO the airport in the dark, ate a burger and some chips, then took the red-eye flight north to Darwin. The sun came up and I could look down at the countryside. There was a vast ocean of red desert, a yellowish flood plain, a dry riverbed slithering across the landscape like a giant snake. As we approached Darwin, the earth became greener, and we passed over lakes and farms, the rectangular fields bordered by roads. Small clouds made separate shadows on the land like little clumps of dark wool scattered across a meadow. Gradually, the trees below us moved closer together, merging in a tropical forest. The plane passed over the mangrove swamps on the edge of Frances Bay, circled over the ocean, then turned back toward the airport.
The runway was bordered with palm trees. It was early in the morning, but I felt the heat the moment I got off the plane. Wet season, the cyclones and the monsoon rains, were still a month or two away, but there was already some humidity in the air, a gathering tension for the storm that was going to arrive. Inside the terminal, I looked out the window at the tarmac and saw that a C-130 transport plane had landed and soldiers were unloading refugees from East Timor.
I left the terminal. A chain-link fence surrounded the airport runway, but I followed three military trucks through the parking lot to a guarded gate. Trying to look like part of the plan, I flashed my Newsweek ID card and nodded to the Australian army sergeant in charge of the convoy.
“Is this the right place?” I asked. “They just called me. I’m supposed to meet the refugees.”
“Well, they’re here,” he said. “We’re picking them up.” The sky was clear, and bright sunlight bounced off every piece of glass and metal. I climbed onto the truck’s running board and nodded to the guard as we rode out onto the tarmac. A group of civilian doctors and nurses were there to help the refugees getting off the plane. The Timorese were small, delicate-looking people with high cheekbones and round eyes. They had light brown skin: a mix of Malaysian, a little South Sea Islander, and four hundred years of the Portuguese. The older women had sarongs, but everyone else wore Western-style clothes and rubber thong sandals.
I got a wide shot of the Hercules transport plane, then took a close-up of an Australian soldier holding a little girl. An elderly Timorese woman began to cry, clutching a red cloth bag with all her belongings. When a very blond Australian nurse approached the old woman, I captured a good shot of the two cultures standing together. There, I thought. That pays the rent. Then a military policeman waved me away and I left the area, taking the airport shuttle into town. We rode past banyan trees and Carpenteria palms and climbing ferns with heart-shaped leaves. Some of the plants had shed their foliage during dry season and there was a sparseness in the vegetation like a man with thinning hair.
“Goin’ to Timor?” asked the driver.
“Yes. In a few days.”
“Wouldn’t catch me there,” he said. “Lot of shootin’ and no sense.”
I checked into a hotel on Daley Street and got a message from Daniel saying that he’d be in late that afternoon. Attaching my computer to the phone, I downloaded the digital shots and sent them to Newsweek. All my images were turned into bytes of energy, bounced off a satellite and thrown across the world. The blond nurse and the old woman would be sold and cropped and printed, an object independent of their lives.
I left the hotel and walked through Darwin. It was a small, compact city that had been built on a plateau above the harbor. A cyclone had knocked down most of the historical sites in the seventies and the replacement buildings were clean and blandly modern. Aside from a cluster of government offices, it was a tourist town. Big chain hotels that looked like stacks of poker chips stood next to smaller restaurants and hostels set up for the backpacker crowd. September was supposed to be the beginning of a quiet time for the locals, but now Darwin was filling up with journalists and aid workers and soldiers from twenty countries. I could tell right away that the people I passed on the street weren’t there to take a tour of the crocodile farm or the pearl-diving exhibition. The United Nations had abandoned East Timor and now an international peacekeeping force was going to invade the country. Everyone seemed to be talking on mobile phones or hurrying down the sidewalk carrying manila envelopes.
I took a taxi to the airport to meet Daniel. Drivers from relief organizations were filling out greeting signs for their workers and a Portuguese army captain paced in front of the gift shop. Daniel’s plane arrived carrying business travelers and a platoon of Portuguese soldiers, nice young men who looked like they expected to go snorkeling. The soldiers were followed by a UN contingent, and then Dan
iel appeared carrying a single travel bag and his laptop computer.
“How’s the hotel?” he asked.
“It’s small, but okay. The air-conditioning works and the TV has CNN.”
“I got a message from Julia before I left Rome. She’s in Darwin Harbor, on a boat called the Seria.”
“And where’s Richard?”
Daniel glanced at me and forced a smile. “I’m sure he’s on the boat with Billy Monroe and a few Australians.”
“Right. They probably hired some local thugs.”
“Don’t be so harsh, Nicky. Put a necktie on a thug and he becomes a security consultant.”
Daniel checked into his room, then followed me down Mitchell Street through the city to the edge of the plateau that rose above the harbor. It was late in the day and the sun was low on the horizon. We could see nine military ships anchored in deep water, seven from the Australian navy, one from Britain, one from New Zealand—all part of the military task force that was going to take control of a very small country.
Stokes Hill Wharf was on one side of the harbor. It was a tourist destination with souvenir shops and restaurants. Fort Hill Wharf was a few hundred feet away. It was a fenced-off industrial area with a massive crane that was unloading twenty-foot-long cargo containers. Daniel and I followed a concrete walkway that led down the slope through some palm trees. We crossed the harbor road to Fort Hill Wharf, passed through a security gate and approached the Seria.
The ship was painted dark blue and rust marks trickled down from the scuppers. Seria was a city in Brunei, but the ship used an Indonesian crew and was flying a Liberian flag. If I had three or four years to waste I probably could have figured out who actually owned the ship. Later I learned that it was controlled by corporate shells within corporate shells, like a financial matrioshka doll.
