On the Java Ridge

by Jock Serong

  He made two more great heaves at the wrench. The second one ended abruptly: his top hand slipped and flew from the handle and his body swung off balance.

  In the instant it took for Ali Hassan’s body to tip sideways, Luke drew his right hand out from behind himself, whipping it in an arc across his body. There was something in his hand and it connected with the side of Ali Hassan’s face. At first it seemed the blow had done him no damage, but his left hand sprang open and the knife fell. It landed near Roya’s feet with a small metallic clang that was almost lost in the racket of the labouring engine.

  A trickle of blood appeared and started to run from above Ali Hassan’s eye. He swayed, senseless. Isi stared in disbelief at the object in Luke’s hand: she saw it was the winding rod from the vice on Sanusi’s workbench.

  Ali Hassan’s hands began to respond, swirling around in front of him like a man who has disturbed a swarm of bees. He tilted towards Luke, but he was stunned, off-balance—already falling into the space between Luke and Roya.

  Isi saw the child shift, her movements tiny and soft as a cat. She wanted to grab her, hold her, somehow stop the relentless pull of events. Oh Christ, not the kid.

  Luke had raised the steel rod. He seemed to be considering whether to hit the man again. But the girl had quietly picked up the knife from where it fell—she used both hands because the knife was large and heavy in her grip—and she leaned over Ali Hassan and pushed it into his throat, just under and forward of his ear.

  It entered the flesh softly, without resistance. Roya immediately recoiled. She let the knife go and raised her hands to her mouth as Luke dropped the winder and stepped in and down. He pressed the heels of his hands on the knife handle so that it sliced outward, opening the front of Ali Hassan’s throat cleanly.

  The knife fell away. The coils of his windpipe showed white in the red shock of the wound. A gurgle, a retch, a jet of blood gushing forward. His fingers groped for his opened throat. Pulled feebly at the lip of the wound as the last of his breath bubbled the blood. His eyes moved left and right, unseeing: the eyes of a frightened animal, uncomprehending, already given to death. Then he fell face first onto the grille.

  Roya edged herself back behind the engine block as if concealment would undo what had happened. Isi and Luke stood mute over the dead man’s slumped back, shocked motionless. So much had passed in that instant that it seemed nobody could move until time caught up.

  Then, after a long moment, Luke leaned down and heaved the body forward so that Ali Hassan’s face hung in a gap between the plates of the grille and was submerged in the bilge water. A frightening quantity of his blood swirled thick and precious in the oily water around the drifting strands of his black hair.

  Something came over Luke then, a breaking wave of suppressed fury. He swung a kick at Ali Hassan’s ribs that lifted the inert body as it sank home. He kicked out again then shifted sideways and aimed his foot at the bloodied head. Isi grabbed at him, shouting over the noise of the engines, but his eyes were blank and he shoved back at her. He stood over the corpse once more, heaving great breaths, then turned and ran from the room.

  Isi found Roya peering out from behind the engine block with her hands clenched in front of her heaving chest and tears running down her cheeks. Released, finally, to be the terrified child she was.

  FRIDAY MORNING

  Canberra

  His checking of messages had become frenetic, like a lab rat working the pedal for more amphetamine. Email, SMS, the frog-like hop across four social media accounts, then back to email.

  Still nothing from Monica. Ringing her was a breach of the consent orders, Cassius knew, but he’d breached them anyway by keeping Rory overnight and he needed an answer. So he dialled her number: at the third ring it switched to voicemail and he hung up angrily. Why was she doing this? Did everything have to be a game?

  Stella put through a call from the PM. He could hear him speaking in the background, shuffling sounds of a hand over the receiver, then the voice directed his way.

  ‘Right: these are the rules, Cassius. They’re not for negotiation, and I’m not going to write them down so some fucktard can FOI them. One: you are not to publicise the fact that there’s a boat out there. If you are asked directly, you can cite operational security, on-water matters, any shit you like, but you are not to reveal the presence of a boat under any circumstances. Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Cassius could feel his chest tightening. The breaths were coming to him in short jabs. He’d needed a break between the Monica call and this.

  ‘You’re a deceitful prick Cassius and I’ll get to you in good time, but right now I’m ensuring you don’t distract the electors from the real issues. Are you still listening?’

  ‘Yes. Real issues.’ No air. He clutched at the receiver and one knee. No air.

  ‘Right. Mortgages. Fucking…I dunno, fucking Chinese land investment. Interest rates. Not you, not boats. You can get some junior arseling from your press office to do a media release with nothing but black texta redactions, I don’t give a fuck. I can’t believe I’m having to hose this shit down with twenty-one hours on the clock, you cunt.’

  ‘I don’t care anymore.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Do what you want.’

  Cassius took the receiver in both hands and stared at it for a moment, heard the miniature static of the cursing PM from the speaker holes. Then the air broke through in a great combustive rush and he brought the receiver down with all his strength on the edge of the desk: two, three and four times. His precisely parted hair broke free and a spike of gelled fringe swung and poked him in the eye and he was still hitting.

  Stella looked around the corner, her face full of concern. She took in the shards of broken black plastic, the free-hanging wires.

  His mobile rang. He looked at it, looked at Stella and picked it up. The electorate office. Final numbers: a cliff-hanger for the government, safe for him. He listened without comment and stabbed it off.

  It rang again.

  Departmental liaison. He breathed slowly.

  When he’d put the request in, Cassius had been unsure precisely how to frame his question. It was important, since the department followed a strict practice of providing operational information only in direct response to whatever they were asked. For countless reasons, valid and invalid, they would hold back everything about their own activities in the field from their minister until compelled to answer. The question in this case had come from Carmichael.

  Ask your people about the program of sabotaging boats.

  It was as though Carmichael wanted to compromise Cassius before he’d agree to sit down with him.

  The answer was that for some years Indonesian intelligence officials had been engaged in a program of sabotaging boats in port. With the active assistance and training of Core Resolve, they’d punctured fuel tanks, drained lubricants and filed off engine mounts. So boats could get out of the embarkation ports—revealing the trafficking operator and the client list to Australian authorities—but never get far enough for the passengers to claim asylum. Cassius knew enough of the murky scene to be sure the police chiefs would be taking a cut of the profit from each boat that sailed. They would also be on the payroll of Core Resolve, nominating which of the hundreds of phinisis lining the wharf were legitimate fishing vessels and which were the caskets of the damned.

  The Indonesians would have a fit if this got out, the staffer told him. And Core Resolve will claim commercial-in-confidence. You cannot use this for anything public.

  Cassius had no idea how he felt about this. Elected by the people to speak for the people and to serve them in executive government, he spent most of his time concealing the septic realities from them. It was no real surprise that such a program could exist: the calculated willingness to risk—even sacrifice—lives to make a point with the electorate. If anything, his surprise was reserved for the surge of disgust he felt.

  Twenty hour
s till they opened the booths. Nothing he could find out now would make the least difference.

  He grabbed lunch with Rory in the Kings Terrace café among the pensioners in their bus groups. He was watching Rory pull slices of tomato out of his roll, slipping them under the table and through the grille of the pet carrier at his feet, when the phone rang. Stella.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘What do you want, Stella?’

  ‘Your ex-wife emailed me just now.’

  Cassius groaned. ‘What’d she say?’

  ‘Ah, lemme see. Right. Please indicate to Cassius that I am not happy with this arrangement about the football. I have had to think about it very carefully, and I am not satisfied that he will keep him clear of the media. Rory is a sensitive boy and I WON’T HAVE HIM USED AS A PROP FOR THOSE PEOPLE.

  ‘That bit was in caps-lock. And there’s a bit more—

  ‘It troubles me that you have put me in the position to have to say no. Please do not blame me when you discuss this with Rory.

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Fuck!’ His eyes darted to Rory. ‘Kick-off’s in five hours! She’s deliberately waited!’

  Stella’s tone softened. ‘You never know. Could’ve been she was, you know, struggling with it. Wanted to do the right thing. It’s hard to tell with emails.’

  Cassius lowered his voice to a furious hiss. ‘That’s why she shouldn’t fucking use them when she’s talking about our son.’

  ‘Hey! Don’t shoot the messenger boss.’

  ‘Sorry. And sorry about before with the…with the phone.’

  Once he’d returned the mobile to his pocket he studied Rory carefully. The boy had his eyes lowered, was picking at some other ingredient in his food.

  ‘Mate, the footy’s off,’ he said. Rory continued to pick at the roll. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Cassius dropped Rory at the apartment for the afternoon. He wondered what the boy would do, but he couldn’t think of an alternative. He took himself back to his office and tried to sandbag the tide of paper that was flooding his desk. It felt good, or it felt less bad, to be preoccupied. The boy, the boy.

  At five, Stella sent a car to take Rory to the airport, and Cassius booked himself a Comcar to meet him there. He found his son in departures, chaperoned as requested by a woman from the airline. Her jewelled wrist reached into the pet carrier to stroke the bird’s feathers. She vanished discreetly when she saw Cassius.

  ‘Mate. You got all your gear?’

  ‘Yeah.’ There was no disguising the hurt.

  ‘I can’t…look, shi—shivers I’m sorry about this.’

  ‘That’s okay. I should get home in time to see it on telly. You gonna watch?’

  ‘Yeah. Give you a ring at half time, eh?’

  ‘Okay.’ The boy fell silent, looked away.

  ‘Hey, hug?’

  They embraced clumsily, Cassius stooping down from his great height, his son stretching upwards and succeeding only in grabbing Cassius’s shirt near his ribs.

  I’m not the light, Rory. Don’t grow towards me.

  Tears warmed his eyes and he resisted them. This wouldn’t do. Not in public.

  Rory regarded him gravely when they separated. ‘Dad, are you all right?’

  ‘What do you mean? Of course I’m all right.’

  ‘It’s just you look…you look kinda messy.’

  ‘Messy?’

  ‘Like, your hair’s all over the place.’ Rory screwed up his face. ‘It’s always so neat, like a Lego man. And today it’s like—’ he made thrashing motions around his head with his small hands. ‘Your eyes are red. And you cut yourself shaving.’ He pointed at Cassius’s throat, where a small dot of blood stood out on his collar.

  Cassius unconsciously smoothed the hair with his hands. ‘Long day, that’s all.’

  Rory’s eyes made clear he wouldn’t press any further.

  ‘Handshake, Rorkers?’ Cassius proffered his own hand. ‘You know, for a bloke your age you’re bloody good at all this.’

  Rory shook the hand, an enactment and no more. ‘What, catching planes?’

  And then he was gone and Cassius stood in the middle of the terminal, alone among the milling, distracted mass. He wanted to sob; hoped he could make it back to the car first. Against a wall he could see the woman who had been minding Rory, the airline uniform stretching at the curves of her hips. She was huddled with another woman in the same uniform, talking to her behind a hand and both of them eyeing Cassius sidelong. He was accustomed to being stared at, but under the pinned hair and makeup, their faces were openly concerned.

  By the time the car dropped him back at the apartment the headache had returned. There were bright spots of light, dying fireworks, drifting across his vision and a ringing in his head like a power tool working on plate steel.

  He fumbled with the key, passed into the air that normally smelled of home. Now he could detect the differences: the boy, his belongings, the bird.

  Somewhere, boats were heading out to sea with their engines hobbled. Somewhere else, people punted on those boats carking it near a safe shore. Somewhere there was a place even lonelier than he was, where a boat-load of bodies rotted on a beach.

  Rory had picked up the towel that he’d left on the hallway floor. Good boy. Cassius turned left into the spare room, wanting to mourn his absence. It was neat and the bed was made. But his eyes were drawn to the maroon square on the armchair beside the bed. The jersey, folded carefully with the beanie and the scarf placed on top.

  Rory was not a kid who folded his clothes. Cassius ran the fabric through his fingers, unwilling to understand. He hadn’t forgotten to pack them. It wasn’t that.

  The folding was an apology. Or maybe a rebuke.

  FRIDAY EVENING

  Barton, Australian Capital Territory

  The manager at the Menzies gave him a booth up the back. Not entirely private, but at least they hadn’t propped him in the window. He worked through missed calls while he waited. The drugs had taken the edge off the pain for now.

  People were looking at him. And not in admiration. He touched his hair, drank some water.

  Carmichael swung through the door in a vintage tweed car coat, glasses on his nose, looking for all the world like a precocious Oxford don. Late twenties but already running a salary north of four hundred grand, funded entirely by benefactors from the Worried Left. When his eyes found Cassius his smile was as much about being seen smiling at a Cabinet minister as about greeting. He lowered himself into the booth and placed a satchel and scarf on the seat beside him.

  ‘Cassius! Lovely to see you. We haven’t done this in ages.’

  ‘That’s because you keep burning me on Twitter. Do you want a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Well I’m getting a beer.’

  ‘Good for you. Can I say’—he frowned—‘you don’t look good. Are you sleeping?’

  Again Cassius unconsciously smoothed his hair. ‘I’m fine.’

  Carmichael shrugged off his overcoat. ‘Ugh. Winter in Canberra. I don’t know how you put up with it. It’s like Boston or something—all those deciduous trees doing colours.’ He’d taken his glasses off and was twirling them. ‘But there’s this feeling the whole thing’s landed in the middle of somebody’s farm.’

  Cassius didn’t respond, but began rolling his shirt sleeves. Carmichael smiled. ‘So are we playing secret squirrel, Minister?’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me. If you fuck with me, this meeting’s over. What do you know about boats?’

  Carmichael focussed instantly. ‘You’re talking about the one off Ashmore, up at Dana Island?’

  ‘Keep going.’

  ‘I know a bit. What do you know?’

  ‘I know I’m getting squeezed.’

  ‘What on earth could you mean?’

  ‘I’m not being told everything. PM’s giving me no room to move, the department will only answer the s
pecific questions I put to them, and I don’t know what to ask. If you know something about that boat I want to hear it.’

  ‘It’s Friday night, Minister, what’s done is done. The numbers are good—wouldn’t matter if you dropped your pants now.’

  ‘It’s not about tomorrow.’

  Carmichael’s eyes lit up. ‘Ooh. Don’t tell me this is about conscience.’

  ‘It’s…’ Cassius screwed his face up. Maybe it was about being comprehensively beaten for the first time in his life, but he couldn’t say that. ‘It’s about doing it properly.’

  ‘Of course. You asked them about sabotage, like I suggested?’

  ‘Yeah. But where’s that take me?’

  ‘Well, it’s partially pragmatic: the boat doesn’t make it to Australia, and you spin it for electoral consumption. What sort of people would put their children on a boat this dangerous?’

  ‘Bullshit. Who thinks like that?’

  ‘Running quite a risk talking to me aren’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t given you anything.’

  ‘We both know it’s about perceptions, Minister.’ He cast a look around himself. ‘Busy room, known haunt.’

  ‘Ordinarily I wouldn’t give a flying fuck what you think about perceptions or anything else, Warren. But right now I’m offering you the ear of the minister, so how about we drop the posturing?’

  Carmichael shrugged and smiled. ‘I’ve arranged for someone to meet us here in…’ he looked at his watch. ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘Who?’

  That unctuous smile again. ‘A friend.’

  Fucking stagecraft. Cassius wanted to solve this problem, and the world wanted to get in the way. ‘So what’s wrong with what we’re doing?’

  ‘On asylum seekers? Where do you want me to start? Trusting the Indonesians to watch the open seas, or outsourcing our human rights obligations?’