The Canal House

by Mark Lee

  “When do you plan to go?”

  “We’ll drive past the Igreja Motael at fourteen hundred hours,” said Gurung. “Perhaps you’ll be there and perhaps we’ll travel together. As I said, it would just be a coincidence and not an official decision.”

  Jenkins nodded to the sergeant and they got ready to go. “Have a very pleasant day, Dr. Cadell.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “There’s no need for that, ma’am. We came here to do our job, not sit around a hotel like a bunch of wankers.”

  I closed the door and Daniel began to pull on his shoes. “So Jenkins is going to Liquica and you have an unofficial escort. It’s all very diplomatic.”

  “I think it’s quite brilliant, actually.”

  “You’ve got just five hours to find a vehicle and fill it with supplies. I’ll help you.”

  “Nicky doesn’t think you should get involved in relief work.”

  “It’s a news story with good photographs,” Daniel said, looking up at me. “Even Nicky can’t argue with that.”

  DANIEL LEFT THE HOTEL to find Sister Xavier while I returned to the wharf. My helpers had already shown up and one of the women had brought along her cousin. Pak and the crew unloaded pallets of food and we divided everything into different piles. I told them how it should be distributed: people who had a red ink mark on their arm could get additional food and water while anyone showing up for the first time received the basic supplies. Cooking fires were burning in the churchyard and a bluish-gray haze drifted through the air. A man was building a shelter with blackened pieces of roof sheeting while a woman braided her daughter’s hair. It was a small moment, but it made me feel hopeful.

  I hadn’t seen Richard and Billy all morning. Perhaps they were exhausted from the interviews. As we began to hand out food, Collins and Briggs came down onto the wharf. They seemed happy to sit in the shade and watch the Timorese do the work.

  “So where did you go last night?” Briggs asked.

  “I stayed with friends.”

  “Your special friend,” Collins said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m special, too. You just don’t see my good side.”

  I left the wharf and walked down the street to the bishop’s residence. Inside the gates, there were several white buildings with red-tile roofs. The militia had looted all the buildings, smashed every window, and set the main house on fire. The bishop had fled to Australia, but hundreds of Timorese had come down from the hills and were living in the compound. There was a safe feeling about the area; it was home, a refuge. Everyone believed that the bishop would eventually return to his people.

  I kept saying, “Ando à procura de Sister Xavier,” and finally a boy led me to a patch of dead grass behind the house. Nicky and Sister Xavier were both there, watching Daniel work on the engine of a Toyota pickup truck. The Indonesians had tried to steal the church truck, but the bishop’s servants had removed the alternator, the battery, and the carburetor. Now Daniel was trying to put it back together with a screwdriver.

  “It’s going to work,” he said.

  Nicky shook his head. “Twenty minutes ago, you said it wasn’t possible.”

  “God will help us,” Sister Xavier announced.

  “I’m sure he will,” Nicky said. “But perhaps you could ask God to fix the carburetor.”

  DANIEL MANAGED TO GET the truck started though it wouldn’t go past second gear. That was good enough. I drove us back down to the wharf and bought petrol from some Portuguese soldiers. Food distribution was going on in a slow but organized manner while Collins and Briggs drank beer. I told Daniel and Nicky to load the truck with water bottles and emergency food rations, then climbed back onto the ship. In my cabin, I quickly gathered up medical supplies. The villagers in Liquica would be dehydrated and there probably would be cases of infant diarrhea. I needed IV tubes and needles and sealed bags of saline solution. I needed syringes. Two boxes. No, three. Tinidazole. Bactrim. Surgical gloves.

  I had filled one bag and was starting on the second when Richard came in. He looked as calm as if he were back in England. I felt frantic and disorganized. We had to load the truck and meet Captain Jenkins in just twenty minutes.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Down the coast road to a village called Liquica. The militia is holding four hundred people on a wharf there.”

  “They’ll kill you, Julia.”

  “I hope not. A platoon of Gurkhas is traveling with us.”

  “And you arranged this?”

  “Basically.” I broke open another box of saline packets.

  “You should stay here and do your job.”

  “Everything is going quite well here and there are four hundred other people who need some immediate assistance.” I pointed to the felt pens on my desk “Yesterday, we put a red mark on people’s arms. Today, it’s blue. I recommend green for tomorrow.”

  “Are you angry because you weren’t interviewed?”

  “You know I don’t give a damn about that.”

  “I’m helping our organization. You know how it works.”

  “Yes, I know. Would you move to one side, please. There’s another box of saline packets beneath the table.”

  Richard stood back as I ripped open the box. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said. “You’re the one who got us here and made all the major decisions. I’ll hide from the press. I’ll do whatever you want. You’re in charge from now on.”

  “All right. Then I’m ordering you to stay here and hand out food. I hope to be back by nightfall.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  I opened another box and scattered its contents on the bed. “When you came to Bracciano, you told me that our relationship was over. I believed you and that’s why I took this job. So why are you always hovering around, waiting for something to change?”

  “I can’t help it, Julia. I still love you.” Richard shrugged his shoulders as if his emotions were a peculiar disability.

  I finished packing and picked up the canvas bags. When I turned around, Richard was standing a few feet away, blocking the open doorway.

  “I’m sorry, Richard. But I don’t feel the same way. When we’re finished with our work here, I’m going back to Bracciano.”

  I brushed past him and left the cabin. I jogged across the deck, slung the canvas handles of both bags around my neck like bandoleers, then lowered myself down onto the wharf. The medicine was heavy, but I moved fast, eager to get away from the ship. When I reached the warehouse, I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Richard was standing on the deck, watching me.

  Nicky

  18 INTO LIQUICA

  It’s common for journalists to travel with relief workers; you get a story and they get publicity. But this time I felt uncomfortable about Daniel and his motives. Instead of remaining an observer, he had fixed the church truck and loaded the supplies. He actually seemed to care about the people in Liquica and I was worried that I’d catch the same disease.

  We drove across the road to the churchyard. Captain Jenkins and a platoon of Gurkhas met us there a few minutes later. Jenkins had gone out to the airport and found three Land Rovers abandoned by the United Nations. One had been set on fire and a second had a jagged line of bullet holes on the side. The third was in good condition, but someone had nailed a dog’s skull onto the hood. Sergeant Gurung pried off the head with his kukri knife, but there was still a smear of blood on the metal.

  The seventeen men in the platoon were commanded by a second lieutenant, Colin Mitchell; he was a young officer with wire-rimmed glasses who looked like he should be supervising basketball games at a parish hall. Jenkins split the platoon into three groups. Lieutenant Mitchell would take the point position while Jenkins commanded the reserve. Sergeant Gurung and four other Gurkhas were responsible for everyone riding in the church truck.

  “You’ll have about three hours in Liquica,” Jenkins explained. “Most of the platoon will c
ontinue down the road for another forty kilometers, then we’ll come back and pick you up before nightfall.”

  I could see that Julia wasn’t satisfied with only a few hours in the village. “Would it be possible for your soldiers to spend the night there?” she asked Jenkins.

  “General Bates is so bloody cautious that”—the captain saw Daniel take out his notepad and decided to be more diplomatic—“Interfet command isn’t ready to extend the range of the pacification effort. This is only a reconnaissance mission. We’re not holding ground.”

  Sergeant Gurung introduced us to the four men in his squad. Corporals Battis and Mainla were in their thirties, but the two privates, Thapa and Rai, looked like teenagers. Thapa was shy and polite around strangers. Rai seemed more confident. He wore his beret at a sharp angle. “You are English?” he asked me.

  “Dr. Cadell is from Britain. Mr. McFarland and I are Americans.”

  “New York. Chicago. Texas. Hol-ly-wood,” he said, rolling the last word around in his mouth.

  “Yeah. That’s about it.”

  Lieutenant Mitchell and his men led our convoy, followed by Jenkins. Sergeant Gurung was twenty feet behind them, driving the half-burned Land Rover. The church truck carrying the relief supplies was to follow the soldiers. We were in a fairly safe position unless the militia had mortars or rocket-propelled grenades. I doubted that they’d stop shooting if I showed them my Newsweek ID.

  Julia drove the church truck and Sister Xavier sat beside her. Daniel, Corporal Battis, and I sat in the back with our legs dangling over the side. The corporal was a stocky man with a shaven head who smoked cheroot cigars. He told us that the Gurkhas had invented nicknames for the three UN Land Rovers and tried to translate the Nepalese phrases into English. “Sergeant Gurung is driving the fire Land Rover and the lieutenant has the wounded Land Rover,” he said. “It’s wounded because someone shot it with a machine gun.”

  “What’s the captain driving?” Daniel asked.

  “The dog Land Rover. You can still see the blood.” Battis puffed on his cigar and stared at the hills. “The dog Land Rover is bad luck. We should have taken another one.”

  The convoy passed through an Interfet roadblock near the airport and headed west on the coast road. A steep hillside was on the left of the two-lane road, the ocean on our right. The water was clear enough so that even from the truck I could see the coral beds and rose-colored seaweed clinging to the rocks. A pelican circled in the sky, swooping down over a line of whitecaps formed by a hidden sandbar. If I turned my head and ignored Battis and his assault rifle, I could pretend that we were tourists, on our way to the beach.

  “I need a rum drink with a little umbrella,” I told Daniel.

  He smiled and leaned back against the boxes of water. “Sounds good, Nicky. But first let’s go scuba diving.”

  The road went inland a few hundred yards and passed through a small village. Several of the huts had been set on fire and I didn’t see any stray dogs lurking in the underbrush. You could take the pulse of a war zone by evaluating what was going on around you. We had a kind of running list; as you moved down it, the situation got more dangerous. At first, you saw villagers who looked cautious. Then they automatically ran away when they heard a car approaching. Then all the people disappeared. Then you saw burned huts and dead animals. Then dead villagers. And finally, the bodies of soldiers that had been left there by their friends. The road west wasn’t that bad yet, but there was enough to be concerned. It looked as if a powerful virus had spread across the island and destroyed everything but the palm trees.

  We passed the turnoff that led south to the mountains and traveled across a mud flat bordered by mangrove bushes. The bare ground was dotted with clay mounds. I had seen the same kind of mounds on the coast of Mozambique; they were ovens, used to boil down ocean water and turn it into salt. Near the drainage ditch the road had collapsed and someone had placed palm fronds across a pothole; it was a typical way to conceal a land mine. Lieutenant Mitchell stopped the lead vehicle and everyone got out. I jumped off the truck, hustled up the road, and took a few photographs of a Gurkha sweeping the area with a mine detector. When I came back, Daniel was talking to the two corporals.

  “You know why Mainla is our best shot?” Battis asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “Six children! He never misses his wife!”

  Corporal Mainla was a thin, quiet man. He drank from a water bottle while Battis giggled. “Now you have proof that you’re alive,” Mainla said. “Battis tells that joke to anyone who is breathing.”

  A faint tapping sound came from a mud-wall hut near one of the salt ovens. Battis and Mainla raised their rifles and Gurung ran forward with the two younger soldiers. The sergeant whispered something in Nepalese and pointed with his forefinger. You go left. You go right. He crouched beside the road ditch, ready to fire, while his men split up into two groups and flanked the hut. They darted around to the back, then reappeared a minute later.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Mainla said. “The wind pushed a sheet of roofing against the wall.”

  There were no land mines and the men kicked the palm fronds away. Lieutenant Mitchell drove a little faster and we reached a flat area where the road moved inland from the sea. Our convoy slowed down again as we crossed a bridge and reached the outskirts of Liquica. The village mercado was on the left side of the road. It had once been an open arcade with merchant stalls, but someone had blown up the water tank and set the stalls on fire. All that remained was a few pieces of charred wood and white columns. It looked like the ruins of an ancient city.

  We crossed a second bridge, then stopped on the outskirts of Liquica. Jenkins ordered most of his men to get out of the Land Rovers and dispersed them on both sides of the road. The vehicles stayed back as the platoon moved toward the center of the village. Most of the buildings in the village had been burned down a few days earlier and the soot-covered walls provided cover. Standing on the back of the pickup truck, I leaned my elbows on the roof of the truck cab and peered through my telephoto.

  Just past a graveyard, the road ended in a T. Two burned-out cars formed a roadblock in the middle of the intersection and a group of about twenty militiamen stood behind the barrier. Even from a distance I could see they were nervous. The young men kept shouting at each other, waving rifles, and running back and forth. They looked like a street gang getting ready to defend their territory.

  Jenkins parked sideways in the middle of the road and the drivers got out of their vehicles. Daniel, Julia, and Sister Xavier took cover behind the pickup while I remained on the truck bed.

  “You’re too exposed, Nicky. Get down,” Julia said.

  “Just a second.”

  “Hurry up, Nicky,” Daniel said. “Take the picture and come over here.”

  Jenkins stood behind the dog Land Rover and wiped the sweat from his face with an olive green handkerchief. “Remember what I told you this morning!” he told his men. “Only fire your weapon to protect yourself or a civilian!”

  Mitchell was farther up the road, crouched behind a concrete wall. “Excuse me, sir. But it looks like they want to fight.”

  “I bloody know what they want to do,” Jenkins said. “But the rules of engagement require that we—”

  A young man wearing a blue T-shirt raised his rifle and fired in our direction. He emptied the entire ammunition clip, then screamed something and jabbed his right fist like a boxer. The other militiamen crouched behind the burned cars and began firing. The gunshots had a quick, flat sound like someone beating a rug.

  “Hold the point and keep them busy,” Jenkins told Mitchell. “Gurung, get the Parker and take care of those bastards. Make sure you don’t hit any civilians.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Jenkins led his squad through the burned-out houses on the side of the road. I figured they were going to circle around through the deserted village and flank the intersection. I jumped off the truck and crouched down beside Daniel. We were
probably too far away to get picked off by a sniper, but over the years I’d seen several people hit by random bullets.

  “That’s the Red and White Iron militia,” Sister Xavier said. “Some of the people are from Liquica. Others come from the villages south of here. They are young men who liked to sit in the square at night and talk about politics—then the Indonesians took them to the police station and gave them rifles.”

  Daniel was taking notes. “And they started killing people?”

  “First they set up a roadblock to look for guerrillas, then they shot a man who was trying to protect his daughter. After that first killing, the devil entered their hearts.”

  “Why did they force the villagers down to the beach?”

  “They’re hostages.”

  I left the truck and joined Gurung beside the Land Rover. Opening the back, he took out a sniper rifle with a telescopic sight. I followed him as he sprinted up the road to the concrete wall. Mitchell and his men were crouched down, coming up occasionally to fire their rifles.

  “Start with that man wearing the blue shirt,” Mitchell said. “He really is quite annoying.”

  Gurung placed his elbows on top of the wall and chambered a round. “I can see him, Lieutenant.”

  “Go ahead then.”

  Gurung peered through the sight, waited a few seconds and squeezed the trigger. The rifle made a cracking sound and the man in the blue T-shirt was hit in the chest. There was a flash of blood and then he fell backward. The militiamen stopped shooting for few seconds, then blasted away at the same time. A bullet ricocheted off the road and smashed through the Land Rover’s windshield. Gurung chambered a new round, moved the rifle slightly, then killed a second man.

  I peered over the wall and got two quick photographs as the militiamen panicked and ran toward the beach. Gunfire came from Jenkins’s squad and a third militiaman was hit. A bullet spun him around and he collapsed like a marionette that had just been dumped into a box. Lieutenant Mitchell ordered me to stay behind the wall as he ran forward with his soldiers. I drank some lukewarm water from a plastic bottle as Sister Xavier came up the road with Daniel and Julia.