by Matt Hammond
All the time he had been speaking, Ed had been moving animatedly around the small room, clearly enthused by his subject. Now he stopped pacing, moved back towards the kitchen table and sat opposite David once more.
The Maori trio, noting his change of mood, stopped talking and turned to listen as he sat, his face serious, his hands clasped in front of him. “The first thing that attracted Patrick O’Sullivan to the environmental movement was Anika Tamaki. She was the Chair of their university campus Green movement. They quickly fell in love, moved in together and later got married. Only when Pat’s dad died did she find out about his wealthy family back in Ireland and the Dairytree connection. Once Pat got his degree, and consequent inheritance, things started to change. Of course Anika subsequently found out it was because Cowood was on his back, but as far as she was concerned at the time, he was becoming distant, obsessed with his work and, from her point of view, he was just using her, abusing her principles, to gain a foothold into the fledgling Ecology Party for his own business ends. They argued, drifted apart, he ended up having an affair and they finally divorced. I met her about a year later. We got together and, over a fairly short period, the whole story, up to that point at least, came out. That was a few years ago now, and since that time we have both taken a keen interest in Patrick O’Sullivan’s business and political dealings, and the result is where we sit tonight.”
“So she knows what’s going on here?”
“Absolutely, in fact she knows him probably better than anyone. After all, she was married to the guy for five years. She understands what he is capable of, she understands he has to be stopped and she accepts how.”
David looked over to where Hone, Tom and Billy stood listening intently, almost devoutly, to Ed. They were nodding in agreement. Ed finished talking and stood signalling it was time to sleep. He had said more than enough for today.
They each made their way to one of the five rough camp beds. David lay down, fully clothed, pulling the cold, damp blankets over his head to keep out the chill night air that has already penetrated the thin wooden walls.
The light went out, plunging the room into a thick, heavy darkness. The wind outside blew gently, scraping overhanging branches against the tin roof. David found himself relaxing, content in the knowledge that Katherine was safer being looked after by Anika than being with him now.
* * *
The bed was moving violently.
David sat up, his shoulders aching from the sag of yet another unfamiliar bed. It was Hone shaking the base. “Wake up, man. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.” David peered through crusty eyes at his watch. It was nine-thirty. He had slept soundly for ten hours. It felt more like three.
“There’s a shower out back, clean towels in the cupboard by the door. Don’t be long; we’ll eat on the way.”
He found the small dirty shower cubicle that had gone unnoticed the night before and worked out the intricacies of getting the right temperature whilst removing the clothes he had slept in. He was determined to spend as long under the steaming hot water as possible, letting it wake and fully refresh him. Instead it suddenly ran icy cold. David yelled out. As if in answer, a voice somewhere in the house yelled back, “Sorry, Bro’, had to kill the electric. The generator is just about running on empty and Hone didn’t bring some more diesel with him.”
The quicker they get this bloody bio-fuel on stream, the better, he thought stopping the freezing torrent and putting the same clothes back on, still warm from wearing them for the past forty-eight hours. He walked into the back room to collect his bag to find all the beds already folded away. The main room at the front looked as if they had never been there.
Ed was standing in the doorway. “Ready then?”
They walked out into mild mid-morning sunshine. The cottage was set in a large clearing amongst pine trees. In any other situation it would have been almost fairytale-like, except for the stripped dead car bodies piled three-high at the rear of the property which itself seemed to have fallen into greater disrepair the further back it went. A corrugated iron lean-to at the rear had leant a bit too far and collapsed in an untidy uninhabitable mess of metal, wood and broken glass in rotting frames.
Last night Ed had said they were heading to Nelson. This was the city David and Katherine had planned to live and work in. It was where all their belongings now sat in a container awaiting collection. David knew exactly what was in the container. Nelson gave him the ideal opportunity to escape.
They were back on a main highway. Other cars, trucks and several tourist buses passed in the opposite direction. For everyone else on the road, it was a perfectly normal Thursday morning. David was on an unfamiliar road in a foreign country, surrounded by terrorists, heading towards a town called Nelson which, according to the green road sign, was eighty kilometres away, and very soon he was expected to help them kill a politician.
Was Patrick O’Sullivan an innocent man? He wasn’t sure any more. Ed had certainly tried to persuade him otherwise, but why should he believe an old school friend who was making this whole thing out to be some kind of secretive civil war?
David pondered on the fact he had grown up in a time when his own country had regularly been targeted by terrorists, yet he had never felt threatened or endangered by them. He was not a target - neither a soldier, nor a policeman, nor a politician - just a schoolboy growing up in an age when the only precaution he had to take was not to go shopping in Central London around Christmas. He smiled to himself, remembering the warnings to never go on holiday to Ireland because of the bloody murdering IRA, and yet now recalling that their most spectacularly horrific bombing had actually occurred less than eighty miles from where he had grown up - London, a city he had regularly visited throughout his childhood when the IRA were most active with their bombing campaigns.
The Hilux slowed to a crawl. Despite a four litre engine, it struggled with over a tonne of its own body weight, plus five fully grown adults, as it hauled itself up the steep mountain road. When it could barely move any further, with black smoke belching from its exhaust and all five occupants unconsciously leaning forward as if it would somehow help, it reached the summit.
What followed was ten minutes of the most frightening driving David had ever been subjected to - a steep, downhill, switchback rollercoaster, stomach-churning descent. To the right, a steady stream of slow moving uphill traffic and, to the left, a sheer drop, with no safety barrier, into a thickly forested ravine.
The truck rolled violently at every turn, the combined mass of bodies forcing it to sway from side to side on its chassis. Hone seemed to be deliberately braking late on the sharp downhill left handers, then allowing the heavy truck to coast dangerously fast, its excessive weight assisting the rapid downwards momentum. As they descended, the smell of heated rubber increased to the point where they had to wind down the windows to release the pungent fumes.
Finally they reached the base of the mountain and all four passengers visibly relaxed, looking at each other with barely disguised relief, thankful to have survived a terrifying few minutes. As the road levelled and straightened, Hone did not let up. Exhilarated by his successful descent, he pushed his foot harder to the floor, increasing the speed of the truck until Ed finally gave in and shouted at him to slow down.
David knew all too well the consequences of Hone’s driving ability.
Chapter 13
Steep forested hillsides gave way to fields, before houses began to dot the landscape. David had started to think the South Island was just a vast landscape of verdant bush and tree covered mountains. Finally here was a proper town, with buildings higher than two storeys and what looked like some kind of civic clock tower.
This was Nelson; the town they intended moving to. Somewhere in the port, the container with all their possessions was safely stored. It felt wrong to be seeing it like this, as a hostage in a truck full of terrorists. This was not the first impression of a new home anyone should have to experience.
“We’ll go straight to the house,” directed Ed
Hone turned at a roundabout and headed away from the City Centre. David looked back over his shoulder above the buildings. Between them and the sky was an expanse of yet more vibrant green tones. Nelson was bordered by the same mountainous green forests he had been seeing all morning, bearing down on the city like tremendous freeze dried tidal waves.
The air clarity sharpened the contrast between the bright green hills and the pristine blue midday sky. It reminded him of seeing colour TV as a small child, and turning up the colour to maximum. It was as if the over the top of the South Island colour had been turned from ‘natural’ to ‘extreme’.
David recalled the long winter evenings spent planning once they had been offered work. He and Katherine both thought Nelson looked a little isolated on the maps, although it had the amenities and infrastructure they needed to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.
Now he was actually here, he could see a map couldn’t possibly convey the vast impenetrable undulating wilderness that lay just beyond the boundaries of the city and continued all the way to Christchurch, over four hundred kilometres further south. A million people on an island the size of England. Now he was beginning to get a sense of what that actually looked like.
The road curved between the sea and an outcrop of sandstone cliffs. Expensive-looking houses perched precariously close to the edge high above. Tasman Bay curved into the distance before appearing again on the western horizon opposite.
On the other side of the bay, snow-capped mountains, jagged blue silhouettes rising from the sea, headed south, forming the skeletal-white backbone of the island. David could see why people risked building million dollar houses in such an earthquake-prone area, for the pleasure of waking up to a view like that each morning. The sunsets must be spectacular;
“Before we get to the house, we need you to see something.” Ed nodded to Hone, who turned the Hilux sharply up the steep curving narrow road cut into the sandstone cliff. Again the Ute twisted and turned, climbing higher with each sharp bend, before emerging in a small car park built as a lookout at the very top of the cliff, facing the sea.
At the wooden rail on the cliff’s edge. Hone pointed out the Boulder Bank; a thin ribbon of shingle beach that acted as a natural barrier protecting the inner harbour from the open sea beyond. Between the end of the Bank and a small tree-lined Island was a breach in the shingle through which the open sea spilled in from Tasman Bay.
Below them, the rocky shoreline gave way to an expanse of clean yellow sand that stretched for miles into the distance before blurring into yet more trees. A backdrop of increasingly misty hills blurred into the snow-covered mountains crowning the vista.
David always enjoyed sea views. He found it hard to comprehend this fabulous sea and mountain panorama was completely devoid of any obvious commercial encroachment - no hotels, no holiday villas, not a single cruise ship, or indeed any ship, in the bay. The scene reminded him of the Mediterranean, but apart from the road below, and the crane in the port, the only indications of human activity were faint wisps of smoke from agricultural bonfires on the far side of the bay.
“Stunning, isn’t it?” commented Ed. “Still takes my breath away every time I stand up here, and you know what? Come back in an hour and it’ll look completely different. The tide will have turned and the sun will have moved, changing the whole perspective of those mountains. It’s literally a different view every time you look. This is what we are trying to protect, Hone, show him why.”
Hone stepped forward, pulling a pair of binoculars from a small brown case and handing them to David. “Ed’s right, Bro’. Take a look over there,” he said, pointing south along the coast to where the bay began to curve away into the distance; “See that big plume of smoke? Take a closer look.”
David scanned the shoreline. He saw half a dozen smoke trails that rose before heading north, driven by the constant southerly breeze.
But whereas the others appeared to rise from inland and had the distinct blue tinge of wood smoke, the one that Hone was directing his gaze to, he could tell, even with the naked eye, was different. Not one trail, but three, and not blue, but white, more like steam than smoke. He put the binoculars to his face and focused on the source of these plumes.
Large steel chimneys surrounded by metal buildings rose from the shoreline amidst this otherwise unspoilt picture of perfect clean green spectacular scenery. What was this bloody great industrial blot doing right in the middle of this pristine landscape? He lowered the binoculars to see the others staring, waiting for his reaction;
“How the hell did they allow something like that in a place like this?”
“It was originally built about twenty years ago. It’s been gradually added to over the years as demand has increased. It’s used for producing medium density fibre board - MDF. They mince up wood pulp, compress it into sheets and ship it all over the world for making cheap furniture, or for building. Apart from being a huge eyesore, the factory itself is not really a problem - the current operators have done a lot to keep the environmentalists sweet - but we’re more worried about the long term plans for the plant. The building’s already there, so no debate about that. No need to apply for planning consent. No environmental impact reviews required. The machinery takes in huge quantities of low grade pine and spits out the finished MDF. So the basic infrastructure is in place. Switching production to bio-fuel can be done at a relatively low cost. When the time is right, Cowood will make a few fairly inexpensive modifications to the equipment and, within a few months the plant will re-open and start pumping fuel processed from the wood pulp through feeder pipes out across the bay, joining up with the other pipes coming from the other plants along the coast. Cowood’s dream of making New Zealand the world’s primary source of bio-fuel is another step closer. We reckon they’ll need to build another six or maybe seven similar size processing plants around this bay alone to make it a viable proposition. The pipes running out along the seabed will need to be vented, so there’ll be dozens of stacks rising up into the air, climbing about twenty metres. A constant plume of vapour will either drift back towards the city or out into the bay. These stacks will have to be floodlit as a warning to shipping and fishing boats, and they’ll probably have some kind of security cordon round them. Imagine that factory times seven; with vertical and horizontal pipe work criss-crossing the ocean floor and most of the surface of the bay lit up like a Christmas tree, out of bounds to leisure craft, commercial and sport fishing. No more kayaking from the National Park on the other side of the bay. Multiply the combined effect of that by fifty similar sites around the country. That’s just trees. Don’t forget the ethanol production from milk you already know about. That’s what we face.”
David looked out into the bay, trying to visualize all that Ed had described pasted onto the scene of natural perfection before him. It was all so obviously wrong in such a stunning location. But David was still not convinced it was inevitable, or that it was worth killing in order to stop.
They drove back down. Five minutes later they had pulled into a quiet side street, onto the drive of a badly maintained weatherboard house. Getting out of the truck, David looked along the street. Each house was distinct and different from its neighbour. All except this one appeared freshly painted, with a neat well-kept garden.
David looked across the badly cracked drive, the swathe of green in front of the house a mass of healthy weeds, not grass. The windows were opaque with dirt, wooden frames cracked and rotting. It looked as if bed sheets were being used in place of curtains. The tin roof was dented, rusting and blackened with soot, or possibly mould. As safe houses went, it didn’t look very safe, at least from the outside.
Inside was no better. Stepping into the gloom of the hallway, there was an overwhelming smell of damp mingling with decaying food. There were three bedrooms, each with two rough looking beds covered by dirty bed linen, and a lounge area with two ancient armchairs and a flattened
ochre carpet that couldn’t even be bothered to reach the edges of the room and, in stretching to do so, had managed to tear a number of ragged holes into the fabric through which bare wooden boards could clearly be seen.
A filthy bathroom and a tiny kitchen area, identified as such only by a chipped ceramic sink and food-encrusted cooker, completed the scene of domestic hell.
“You can share with me.” Ed directed David to the bedroom at the front of the house. He threw his bag, claiming the cleaner looking of the two beds, and then followed it.
“Think I’ll have a nap,” he said, looking at his watch and noting it was nearly three in the afternoon.
“Good plan,” agreed Ed. “I’ll get one of the boys to go and stock up for the next few days. We can get take-away for tea.” The bedroom door clicked as Ed shut it behind him.
There were two possibilities for escape. Firstly David could play along for the rest of the evening before creeping out in the dead of night. Then he would have to get past a sleeping Ed, out of the door and away. He intended to head back towards the port, which he estimated was probably a half hour’s walk away. Then he would have to wait around until the offices opened in the morning.
The second idea was to go now, or at least as soon as someone went to get supplies. They were bound to take the Hilux. Once his escape was detected, the others would either have to follow him on foot or wait until the car came back. This would give him time to get away. He could get to the port before the offices shut for the day and locate the shipping company who were looking after his container.
David lay perfectly still, listening to the others moving around the house. With the bedroom door shut, voices were muffled. He heard keys jangling. The front door on the other side of the bedroom wall banged shut. There was the clunk of a car door, the chugging of the engine and the nostril-tingling exhaust fumes seeping in through the cracks around the window frame.
