by Paul Adam
‘No. I fly him in, then bring tour group back to Kuching. That is all.’
Max didn’t press him further. He gazed out of the window, trying to contain his excitement. His father had been here in Borneo just the week before. Perhaps he was still here, still in Pangkalan Bun. The mere thought made his heart beat faster. He was on his father’s trail, and the scent was still fresh. He was getting closer by the hour. Surely he would find him soon.
The plane flew low the whole journey, cruising beneath cloud level and giving Max a good view of the ground below. He was astonished at how green the terrain was, how sparsely populated. The dense, impenetrable rainforest seemed to stretch for hundreds of miles in all directions, a thick carpet of trees and other vegetation unbroken by towns or cities. Occasionally he saw a clearing containing a village or the shimmering ribbon of a river twisting its way towards the distant sea. They flew over mountains, their rocky peaks poking up through the jungle like islands in a vast green ocean. Then, suddenly, the scenery changed. The thick canopy of rainforest disappeared and Max saw nothing but bare open ground, some of it blackened as if a fire had swept across it.
‘What’s happened down there?’ he asked Sammy. ‘It looks as if it’s been burned.’
‘It has,’ the pilot replied. ‘They clear land, chop down all trees, then burn off other vegetation.’
‘What for?’
‘For that. You see it?’ Sammy pointed down through the window to where the cleared ground had given way to trees – not the solid cloak of the rainforest, but rows of trees arranged in straight lines with gaps in between. ‘Oil-palm plantations,’ he explained.
Max stared down at the trees, remembering what Axel Svensson had told him in Stockholm – about how the Borneo jungle was being destroyed, the wildlife killed or displaced to make way for oil palms for the bio-fuel industry. He saw what the Swede had meant now. The plantations below were enormous. Max had never seen anything like them. They seemed to go on for ever, thousands and thousands of trees reaching all the way to the horizon.
‘Every time I fly over here, is more and more clear ground,’ Sammy said. ‘Sometimes smoke from burning is so thick I have to change course.’
‘How many of these plantations are there?’ Max asked.
The pilot shrugged. ‘Who knows? Thousands, probably. There are more to the west – big area near coast where rainforest has all gone completely. None left. But they start to spread inland. Ten years ago I fly across whole island, hundreds of kilometres, and see only a few plantations. Now they everywhere.’
On the descent into Pangkalan Bun, Max saw more oil-palm plantations, then the plane turned and touched down on the landing strip.
Sammy handed Max a business card with his name and phone number on it. ‘You want plane, give me a call,’ he said. ‘Any time, day or night.’
The sun was low in the sky as they took a taxi from the airport into Pangkalan Bun. There were flooded paddy fields on either side of the road, the water shimmering in the twilight, and dotted around the landscape were wooden houses on stilts. Max saw a small monkey swinging idly beneath one of the houses, then the taxi pulled out to overtake a cart pulled by a bullock. The hot, humid air gusted in through the open windows, laced with sweet foreign scents. Max had never been to the tropics before and he marvelled at how different it was. How serene and exotic.
The taxi driver had recommended a hotel and dropped them off outside it. It was a short distance from the river, a two-storey building with a veranda on the ground floor and a long wooden balcony running along outside the first-floor bedrooms.
Max and Chris shared a twin; Consuela had a single next door to them. They took it in turns to have a shower in the bathroom down the landing. Max swilled away the sweat and grime of their long journey with tepid water, but it was so humid that by the time he’d dressed he was damp with perspiration again. They ate in a nearby restaurant – a simple meal of fried fish and rice – then went to bed early.
Max was weary, but he couldn’t sleep. He lay on his bed – it was too hot to slip beneath the sheet – and listened to Chris’s heavy breathing for a while before getting up and going out onto the balcony.
He could see lights, hear some creature – a gecko, he thought – chirping up on the roof. A motor scooter rattled by, two young men on the back of it. A scrawny dog, its ribs showing through its skin, dodged out of their way, then crossed the street and slunk away down a dark alley.
Max wondered where his father was. Pangkalan Bun was only a small place. Are you here somewhere, Dad? he thought. I hope so. Don’t let me lose you again. Stay around for at least one more day, because in the morning I’m coming looking for you.
EIGHTEEN
Max was up early the next day, woken by the traffic on the street outside the hotel. He lay on his bed, staring into space and planning how he was going to track down his father. Where in Pangkalan Bun might he have gone? A hotel? Max could go round all the hotels in town and see if Alex had stayed in one, but that would take a long time and might not produce a result. In any case, his dad might not necessarily have stayed in Pangkalan Bun. He might have flown in to the airport and gone somewhere else straight away. But where? Max recalled the notes on the back of the flyer he’d found in his father’s office – in particular, the name Narang Anwar. That had to be important. Who was Narang Anwar?
Max slid off the bed, dressed and crept quietly out of the room, trying not to disturb Chris. Downstairs, he borrowed the local telephone directory from the hotel manager and sat on the veranda looking through it.
There were a large number of Anwars listed, but only one with the forename Narang. There were two numbers and two addresses for him, one obviously business, the other residential. Max made a note of them both on a scrap of paper. Then he stretched out his legs and leaned back in his bamboo armchair, waiting for Chris and Consuela to get up. It was pleasantly warm on the veranda. He was in the shade, but he could see the line of the sun creeping gradually across the ground, feel his skin getting damp in the already humid air. In an hour or two it would be insufferably hot.
After ten minutes he began to get impatient. He didn’t want to be lolling around on a veranda, he wanted to be getting on with his search. Going back upstairs, he roused Chris and Consuela, then returned to the veranda. Chris came down first, crumpled and unshaven. Consuela took a little longer, but she looked fresh and clear-eyed, her skirt and top uncreased, her make-up immaculate.
They went to a kedai kopi – a coffee shop – along the street for breakfast. Chris had been in Borneo with the army – though not this bit of the island – and he warned Max about the food.
‘Don’t expect cornflakes and toast, or a nice pastry. They’re much more likely to serve us noodles or rice.’
Some of the locals were indeed eating bowls of noodles, but Chris and Max had a roti each – a sort of griddled flatbread that came with a small bowl of curry in which to dip it. Consuela just had black coffee.
Max told them what he’d found in the phone book and suggested that tracing Narang Anwar should be the first thing they did. They didn’t argue with him.
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Chris said. ‘But after what happened in Sweden, and what happened to Max before that in London, we stick close together at all times.’
‘You think there’s any danger here?’ Consuela asked anxiously.
‘There’s danger everywhere.’
They headed for Narang Anwar’s business address first. It was near the centre of the town, in a narrow street that was crammed with brightly coloured market stalls selling everything from pots and pans to beds. They squeezed through the throng past live chickens squawking in cages, rolls of silk and other cloths hanging from racks, huge baskets of nuts, and exotic-looking fruits and vegetables that Max had never seen before. The sultry air was heavy with the scents of cooking and oriental spices.
Anwar’s office was on the first floor of an old two-storey commercial building which, like
their hotel, had a wide wooden balcony running all the way along the front. From the balcony, doors opened into small office units housing various businesses – an accountant and book-keeper, an insurance broker, an estate agent – their professions advertised on signs in both the local language, Bahasa Indonesia, and English. Outside Anwar’s office was a discreet plaque identifying him as an ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. But the door was shut – and locked, as Max discovered when he tried the handle.
‘Anwar not there,’ said a man in a short-sleeved white shirt who’d come out of the adjoining office.
‘Do you know where he is?’ Max asked.
‘He gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean?’
‘He not there for many weeks now. No one know where he is. He disappear.’
‘Does he have any family?’
‘He have wife. She live out of town.’
Max read out the address he’d written down from the phone directory.
‘That right,’ the man said. ‘That where wife live. Rita.’
‘Is it far?’
‘Ten minute on foot, less in car. Go south along Jalan Abdullah Muhammad.’
‘Thank you. Has anyone else been here looking for Mr Anwar? Another foreigner, maybe – an Englishman?’
‘Yes, man come here last week. I tell him same thing.’
‘What did he look like, this man?’ Max asked.
‘Tall, grey hair, that all I remember.’
‘He didn’t give a name?’
‘No. No name.’
Max thanked the man again, then led the way back down the wooden steps to the street. ‘It had to be my dad,’ he said. ‘Who else could it have been?’
‘And Anwar?’ Consuela wondered. ‘What’s happened to him?’
‘He never came back from Shadow Island.’
They headed south out of the town centre along a wide road fringed with palm trees and ferns, Max mulling over what they’d found out. Narang Anwar had disappeared. That didn’t surprise Max – he knew, after all, that Anwar had been a prisoner on Shadow Island. Some of those prisoners, like Redmond Ashworth-Ames, had come back. Others, like Erik Blomkvist and Arhat Zebari, hadn’t. Max had hoped that Anwar might have been in the first category and was disappointed to find he wasn’t. But he’d discovered one interesting fact – Anwar was a lawyer. That was intriguing. Zebari had been a journalist, Blomkvist and Ashworth-Ames both ecologists. How did they all fit together?
It was a gruelling walk in the merciless glare of the sun. Max wished he’d brought a hat and sunglasses and a bottle of water. The heat was sapping, and by the time they reached Narang Anwar’s home they were all flagging and desperate for a drink.
The house was smaller than Max had expected. He thought lawyers were generally well-off, but Narang Anwar’s home was just a modest bungalow with a tiny patch of garden in front. Rita Anwar answered the door. She was a petite woman in her mid-thirties, with straight, jet-black hair and facial features that were a mixture of Indonesian and Chinese. She wore a pale blue dress and sandals, her toenails varnished pink. Max introduced himself and his companions.
Rita stared at him in astonishment. ‘You’re Alex Cassidy’s son? My goodness, what brings you here? Come in.’
She beckoned them into the house and closed the door. Max noticed the temperature change immediately – and with great relief. The place was air-conditioned.
‘You look hot. Would you like a drink?’ Rita asked.
‘Please, that would be nice.’
‘Ari?’
A boy about Max’s age appeared in the kitchen doorway. He had short black hair, dark skin and a broad face with high cheekbones.
‘Ari, would you mind helping with some drinks for our guests, please?’ Rita asked. ‘This way.’
They went through into a sitting room at the back of the house and Rita gestured at the chairs. ‘Please.’
She waited for them to make themselves comfortable, then turned to look at Max. ‘You’re Alex Cassidy’s son,’ she said again, as if she couldn’t quite believe it.
‘Has my dad been here?’ Max asked.
Rita frowned. The question seemed to confuse her. ‘Been here?’ she said hesitantly. ‘You mean recently?’
‘In the last week or so.’
‘The last week?’ She paused. ‘I don’t understand. I thought your father was dead. It was in the papers. Somewhere in Central America. And your mother, isn’t she …?’
‘My mum’s in prison, yes,’ Max said. ‘But my dad isn’t dead. He flew from Kuching to Pangkalan Bun last Monday. I thought he might have come here to see you.’
Rita shook her head in bemusement. ‘No, he hasn’t been here. You say your father is alive?’
‘I only found out a couple of weeks ago,’ Max replied. ‘I haven’t seen him, but he sent me a letter. He’s in hiding, on the run.’
‘On the run? From whom?’
‘I was hoping you might be able to help me there.’
Rita looked bewildered. ‘Me?’
‘He knew your husband. You seem to have met him too.’
‘But that was more than two years ago.’
‘Why did he come here then?’
‘To see my husband. Narang brought him home for dinner one evening. He was a very nice man, very good company.’
‘To see your husband about what?’ Chris asked.
‘They were discussing the possibility of Alex doing a show in Kalimantan. Not in Pangkalan Bun – that’s too small – but maybe in Banjarmasin or Pontianak – they’re both big cities.’
‘A show?’
‘I think it was going to be a charity show. To raise funds for a local wildlife project – an orang-utan sanctuary near here. Narang was always doing things for charity. He was a very good man.’ Her voice cracked and Max saw her blink away a tear.
‘What happened to your husband, Mrs Anwar?’ he asked as gently as he could, sensing that the question might upset her.
Before Rita could reply, the sitting-room door opened and Ari came in with a tray of drinks. He placed the tray on a low table next to Rita’s chair and went back out.
‘Tea?’ she asked Chris and Consuela.
She filled three cups with pale Chinese tea, then handed Max a glass containing some kind of soft drink. He took a tentative sip. It was cold and tasted of lime. He took a bigger gulp. It was delicious.
Rita composed herself, her cup and saucer perched on her knee, then answered Max’s question.
‘I don’t know what happened to him,’ she said calmly. ‘He just disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘He flew to Jakarta on business in April – a meeting at one of the government offices. His plane arrived safely, with Narang on board, but he never made it to the meeting. Somewhere between the airport and Jakarta city centre he vanished. He hasn’t been seen since.’
‘The police have investigated it?’ Consuela said.
‘So they say,’ Rita replied, her tone sceptical.
‘You don’t think they have?’
Rita took a delicate sip of tea, considering her response for a moment. ‘You know my husband was a lawyer?’ she said. ‘His work didn’t make him popular, with either the police or anyone else in authority.’
‘Why not?’
‘How much do you know about Kalimantan? You must know that it is covered with rainforest, with hardwood trees that sell for a lot of money when they are felled. It becomes even more profitable when you turn the cleared land into oil-palm plantations.’
Max nodded. ‘We saw some of the plantations when we flew down from Kuching.’
‘Much of the forest has been cleared illegally, but the local police and politicians have turned a blind eye to it. Many of them have been bribed by the big corporations that are doing the logging. The forest has been destroyed, with all the implications that has for wildlife and the environment, but there is a human cost to it all too. Local people have lost their land – the land they depended on for thei
r food. It has been stolen from them by the corporations, who employ security guards and armed thugs to frighten and intimidate anyone who tries to oppose them. Sometimes they kill their opponents. Ari, the Dayak boy you saw just now – his parents were both murdered by militias working for an oil-palm corporation called Rescomin International.’
‘Rescomin!’ Chris exclaimed. ‘Julius Clark’s company.’
‘That’s right,’ Rita replied. ‘They have a massive oil-palm plantation and processing plant upriver from here. Narang was fighting them, representing the poor, defenceless people whose land had been stolen, whose families had been threatened or killed. But he was fighting a powerful enemy. Rescomin have teams of lawyers working for them, powerful people in their pocket both here and in Jakarta. It was an immensely difficult task for Narang, but he wouldn’t give up. He was determined to get justice for his clients. And that has cost him his life.’
‘You think he’s dead?’ Max asked.
‘He must be. There were death threats: phone calls, letters warning him to drop his cases. But Narang wouldn’t be frightened off. He was a very brave man.’ Rita looked away, her lower lip quivering, her eyes glistening. ‘He stood up for what was right. He stood up for the weak against the strong. And they killed him. I don’t know who – the militias, some hired thugs working for Rescomin. I can’t prove it – Narang’s body hasn’t even been found – but I know that’s what happened.’
‘You’re right, I think your husband is dead,’ Max said softly. ‘I’m very sorry. And I think I know how he died.’
He told her about Shadow Island, about finding Narang’s file in Julius Clark’s office and his suspicions about the drug Episuderon, which he believed had killed Narang and many others. Chris backed him up, telling of his own experiences too.
Rita listened intently, her face screwed up in horror. ‘You are sure about this?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Then this man Clark is a murderer. How can he get away with it?’
‘He won’t,’ Max said. ‘That’s why we’ve come here: to find evidence against him. Did your husband have anything we might be able to use – statements, documents, files?’
