Solomons Seal

by Hammond Innes

  ‘What’s it matter?’ I was wet and irritable, my shirt sodden. ‘It happened seventy years ago, maybe more.’

  ‘Perenna.’ He stopped there, staring at me hard, his face so close to mine I could see every pale line of the crease marks in his skin, exaggerated by the water streaming off his bare head. ‘What about Perenna, has she read it?’

  I shook my head slowly, something in the expression of his eyes warning me. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t show it to Jonathan? No, you couldn’t, of course. But anybody on the LCT? Who else has seen it?’

  ‘I’ve told you, nobody. Just myself and Mac, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re lying.’ He stood there in the rain, staring at me, and suddenly, for a moment, he was a different man. There was something in his eyes, a sort of madness – or was that my imagination? I seemed for a second to be looking into his soul, into pools of unfathomable darkness. A trickle of water reached my crotch, and I shivered.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, his voice and manner suddenly normal again. ‘As soon as I get back from Sohano, we’ll go over to Madehas – you, me, Perenna, McAvoy, too. I want that letter, understand? Meanwhile, you stay on board.’

  Chapter Nine

  Hans took the ferry, the Barreto Chebu, across to Sohano, one of his Buka guards going with him, and while he was away, a truckload of armed men came in from Queen Carola. Their weapons were World War II rifles, and they sat nursing them in the back of the truck, staring out at the rain, none of them doing anything except relieve themselves against the banyan tree. The Barreto stayed moored to the Sohano jetty, which was only just visible through the rain.

  The rest of the morning passed slowly. The tug was primarily a harbour tug, and the quarters, entered by a companionway at the back of the little caboose of a wheelhouse, were cramped and pretty basic. Perenna and her brother, as well as Hans, had spent the night dozing with their clothes on in the tiny saloon. Now she was lying curled up on the bench beside the small mess table. I don’t think she was asleep, but she didn’t speak to me. The incessant rain and lack of sleep had affected us all, the rain particularly.

  About 10.30 we moved to the bunkering wharf close by the market and took on fuel. With no truck-load of armed men to stop me, I thought it an opportunity to slip ashore, but I was stopped by the fair-bearded Australian skipper. ‘Much as my job’s worth to let you go wandering in the bush, mate.’ He wasn’t armed, but there were armed men at the Cooperative he could call upon, so I stayed with him in the caboose. He was aiming to make his fortune backing the new Sapuru regime, and Holland he regarded as a guy who was going places. ‘Got it all planned, finance for ships, everything. Stick with him, mate, and you won’t go wrong.’ Half an hour later we were back at the jetty.

  At midday we picked up a news bulletin on the radio. The Australian government had ordered the frigate Dampier, on fishery protection duty off the Barrier Reef, to proceed at once to Bougainville to stand by to evacuate Australian civilians. Papua New Guinea was reported to have sent an ultimatum to the rebel Council of the Sapuru regime giving them until noon to release all prisoners and hand over power to the legitimate administration; if not, the forces at present standing by would be ordered to take the necessary action to restore the legal government. Since the time was now four minutes past midday and no reply had been received from the rebel regime, it was presumed that military action would be taken. Preparations for such an eventuality had already been made. There followed an eye-witness account from Port Moresby of troops embarking in the harbour, also an announcement that Air Niugini Fokker Friendships were being requisitioned to act as air transports.

  Then, right at the end of the news, there was a news flash:

  A report has just come in that security forces of the PNG administration in Bougainville recaptured Buka airfield in the early hours of this morning. The time limit for surrender of power by the rebel regime having expired, we understand that the airlift of troops to Buka, the island to the north of Bougainville that is virtually a part of the mainland, has already begun. We will keep listeners informed as soon as we have further news.

  Within minutes of that announcement the little Barreto had cast off and was sidling across the tideway towards us. Somewhere in the distance a shot was fired. I thought it came from the direction of the airfield, but then there were more shots, a sporadic outburst of firing that clearly emanated from the rising ground in the vicinity of the Administration buildings.

  Hans Holland had already seen the truckload of men waiting, and he was shouting somebody’s name as the ferryboat bumped alongside and he jumped on to the jetty and went running towards the truck. A stocky jet-black man, bare-chested and with a great shock of hair, climbed out of the cab. They stood there for a moment, the two of them in the rain, Hans’s voice loud and angry, the other’s soft and sullen. Finally the man from Queen Carola got back into the cab, and the truck drove off. ‘They should’ve moved on the airfield an hour ago,’ the tug skipper said. ‘Looks like they’ve lost the initiative now.’

  Hans was walking back towards the tug, his head bent, oblivious of the rain. He was walking slowly, pausing every now and then to turn his head and listen to the sound of firing, which continued very sporadically. He reached the bulwarks and climbed on board, then stood there a moment as though undecided. The skipper stuck his head out of the caboose window. ‘You heard the newscast, did you, boss?’

  Hans nodded. ‘Yes. And the stupid bastards have got themselves cut off—’ He seemed to take a grip on himself, his mouth shut, his lips a hard line. Water poured off him as he came slowly down the deck. The firing had ceased now, everything quiet except for the sound of the rain and the faint hubbub of voices from the shops across the road. He stood listening for a moment outside the caboose door. ‘That firing – from the Sub-District office, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Reck’n so.’ The Australian pushed open the door for him. ‘Sounds like the police have captured it now.’

  He nodded, still listening intently, his shirt and trousers clinging to him, his head lifted and his eyes staring at nothing with great intensity. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Still plenty of time. If those aircraft really did take off … What is it – five, six hundred miles? They’ll be nearly two hours yet.’ He looked at the pair of us, and suddenly that cocky jauntiness was back. ‘Come on. We’ll grab a truck and some arms and get out to the airfield. Three trucks. That should do it. Three trucks parked on the runway should stop them, and in this rain …’

  He was already heading back along the jetty, and such was the magnetism of the man that we were both out of the caboose and actually running after him when we heard it. At first we didn’t stop. It was coming from behind us, out of the west, a soft whisper like a line squall whipping up the sea. It grew steadily, swelling to a solid, high-toned cacophony of sound that we must have identified at the same instant, for we stopped in our tracks, all three of us, standing there listening, our eyes searching the leaden overcast beyond Sohano, beyond Minon. And suddenly, there it was, coming in low over Madehas, the roar of its engines getting louder and louder.

  It was the first of four, and already it had its wheels down. It was so low they seemed to brush the marker posts. It came straight down the Buka Passage, sweeping close over our heads, the Air Niugini bird of paradise insignia bright against the low-hanging cloud, and by then the others were in sight, coming in like dragonflies low over the water.

  ‘The bastards! The bloody, cheating, sodding bastards!’ Hans’s voice was strangely shrill. ‘They were in the air,’ he cried. ‘They must have had them in the air … ’ His voice was drowned in the scream of the engines close over our heads as they peeled off to circle the airfield, and we stood there, rooted to the spot, as all four of them were lost to sight beyond the plantations.

  The market was in turmoil, people standing staring up at the sky, others running. And down at the Government wharf the crew of the freighter were throwing off her warps, pausing every no
w and then to glance up at the overcast sky, as though expecting bombs to fall, for the sound of engines was growing again. Then one by one the aircraft reappeared to make the approach run. We watched them descend in quick succession, the sound of their engines dying to a gentle murmur as they completed their landings and began to taxi.

  The Australian was the first to speak. ‘Well, mate, I guess that’s it.’ He was looking at Hans. We both were, and in that moment I was sorry for him. He had taken one hell of a gamble, and now … ‘Looks like those bastards in Port Moresby have called your bluff.’ The skipper’s face was sour with disappointment.

  Hans turned and stared at him, anger in his eyes, and something else – ‘I wasn’t bluffing,’ he said, his voice a hard whisper of sound that was more implacable than if he had shouted.

  ‘You mean …’ The Australian gazed at him, open-mouthed. ‘Christ! I believe you would, too.’

  I didn’t know what they were talking about, but the words had a curious effect, the Australian with a shocked look on his face and Hans actually smiling. ‘We lose Buka, it doesn’t matter. So long as they can’t land at Kieta—’ He began walking back to the tug.

  The last of the aircraft had cut its engines, and in the sudden silence the sound of human voices from the shops and from the market seemed very loud. The freighter had pulled out into the stream. She was very high out of the water, and the slowly revolving prop was making a steady thumping sound as it flailed the surface.

  Hans reached the end of the jetty and turned to the skipper. ‘We’ll go across to Sohano now. They’re arranging radio contact with Sapuru for me. President Sapuru! He likes the sound of that. And now that he’s in a fix I guess he’ll do it.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I think so. He’s no alternative now. And you,’ he added as he climbed on board. ‘While you’re waiting for me at Sohano, see if you can raise the LCT on VHF, tell Captain Holland to dump the prisoners anywhere he can and return here immediately. Madehas. We’ll meet him at Madehas. By then we should’ve stopped those bastards in their tracks.’

  The tug was manned by one Mortlock and two Shortland islanders. The engineer was from Buin in the extreme south-west of Bougainville. They knew their job, all of them, so that a shout from the Australian skipper and we were cast off with the engine turning over almost before our feet touched the deck. And on the other side we didn’t stay at the Sohano jetty after Hans had leapt on to it, but backed off and anchored out past the first of the water loos that stood like a little wooden bathing machine with its legs in the water. ‘Nobody’s going to rush me, I tell ya.’ And then he was looking at me closely as he said, ‘You think they’ll do it? You think Sapuru’s got the guts? Or will they just lay down their arms?’

  ‘Do what?’ I asked.

  ‘Start killing them. Do you think he’ll do it?’ And when I asked who Sapuru was expecting to kill, he stared at me as though he thought I was trying to be funny. ‘Why, the whites, of course. The expats. And don’t pretend you didn’t know. You heard what the boss said. I thought he was bluffing, that’s true, mate. I really did think it was a bluff. But it isn’t, is it? He’s gone to get Sapuru on the air, tell him to go ahead, to start killing. And that frigate, the Dampier, hasn’t a hope of getting here in time to stop it. Do you think Sapuru will do it?’ He was staring at me, nervous and excited at the same time.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ I was appalled, aghast at the thought that I had got myself into a position where I could be accused of complicity. ‘I’ve never met the man.’

  ‘Never met him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, he’s not much to look at, I can tell ya. A dried-up little mummy of a man, a sort of elder-cum-wizard, and very much feared by his people. ‘Fact, they’re dead scared of him, so if he tells them to start killing, the odds are they’ll do it.’

  Murder! What else could you call it? It wasn’t even indiscriminate bombing, as in Northern Ireland. True, the motive was political, and almost anything, it seems, can be justified these days if that’s the motive. But to hold people hostage and then shoot them down in cold blood … Or was a revolution the same as war? Did the writ to kill cover innocent civilians? We were still arguing about it when the distant whine of aircraft engines started up again.

  By then the sky had lightened and the rain had eased up, a breeze blowing down the narrow tideway, wind against current so that the surface of the Passage was ruffled with little breaking waves. The noise of aircraft engines was steady for several minutes so that I guessed they were taxiing out to the runway. Then, suddenly, the noise increased as, one after the other, they took off and rose above the palms like insects on a string. I thought they’d taken off to fly back to Port Moresby for reinforcements, but instead of heading out to the west, they banked and came straight across Chinaman’s Quay and the Buka Passage heading south-east. ‘Kieta,’ the Australian murmured unbelievingly. ‘They’re headed for Kieta.’ He turned and stared across the water at the Sohano jetty, which was deserted. ‘Something’s wrong,’ he muttered. ‘Kieta should be blocked.’ He reached for the radio, switched on and began fiddling with the tuning as he slipped the headphones on. ‘I’ll try the normal air channel. See if they’re talking.’ His fingers checked, his face concentrated as he listened intently.

  Then he nodded and switched the loudspeaker on: ‘ … just hear you. Over … That’s better. ETA over Arawa thirteen-twenty-five. Have your helicopter in position a thousand feet above the downwind end of the chosen section. Okay? … Yes, as a marker. We’ll come in below him. If the road is not clear he’s to switch his nav lights on and fire red warning flares. Okay? Over … Yes, as soon as the boys are out, we’ll turn straight round and take off downwind … Thanks, Paguna. If the rain stops, the road surface shouldn’t be too bad. We’ll contact you again as we approach Arawa. It’s important about the vehicles, remember. They don’t want to footslog it in the heat. Over and out.’

  He switched off. ‘Something Holland never thought of, them using a road.’ He shook his head. ‘He should’ve. A road surface would be a damned sight better than some of the fields I’ve seen those Friendships land on in Australia.’ He got up and peered out of the window. The time was 12.52. There was nobody on the jetty, apart from two kids playing tag in the light drizzle, and the path down to it from the radio station and the hospital was deserted. ‘Well, he’d better hurry up, or I’m off back to Anewa. Think they’ll give me a medal for bringing their tug back safe and sound?’ He grinned at me, running his fingers through his blond beard. ‘Pity. We might’ve finished up driving ships as big as tankers, with nice cosy quarters, a bar on board and women. Oh, well … ’ He gave a little shrug, reaching for the packet of cigarettes lying on the window ledge. ‘No sweat as far as I’m concerned, but Hans Holland now – wonder what he’ll do? Finished here, ennee? Be lucky if they don’t stand him up against a wall and shoot the—’ Footsteps sounded on the companionway, and he turned. It was Perenna.

  ‘Shoot what?’ she asked. ‘What’s happened?’ And when we told her, she stood staring out at Sohano, her face pale and dark shadows under her eyes. ‘So it’s all over. He’s lost. Lost everything. He’ll be sent to prison.’ She turned, groping for the helmsman’s chair, and sat down. ‘Oh, my God! It’s no place for a man like Hans.’

  It struck me as odd at the time, and it still does, but in that moment her thoughts were not for the men who had been killed to no purpose, or the expatriates in Bougainville whose lives were threatened if Sapuru didn’t capitulate, or even for her brother. They were for Hans Holland, as though he were some sort of exotic butterfly that couldn’t exist in the strict confines of a prison cell.

  I can’t remember what we talked about, the three of us huddled together in the wheelhouse, waiting for the arrival time of the planes over Arawa. I don’t think we said very much, the time passing slowly as the rain finally stopped and the sun began to burn through the thinning cloud layer. At 13.15 we were tuned to the same VHF channel, but hearing nothin
g except static, the skipper switched to the shortwave frequency used locally. On this we caught disconnected snatches of talk. The reception was very bad, but a scattering of words came through: ‘Opposition’ was one of them, also ‘good landing’ and ‘cars at the bridge, thank God … ’ And then at 13.34, very clearly, came the words ‘four of us airborne now, course two-four-five and climbing to sixteen thousand. Our ETA … ’ The rest was lost, fading into a crackle of static.

  The Australian switched off. ‘Course two-four-five, that means they’re headed back to Port Moresby, don’t it?’

  I nodded. ‘Papua New Guinea, anyway.’

  ‘And just time to get back to Kieta again before nightfall with another eighty or so soldiers.’ He was on his feet, calling to his crew to get the anchor up. ‘I’m not hanging around here any longer. I’m on my way.’ He winked at me, his teeth showing brown nicotine stains against the bleached hairs of his beard. ‘A good law-abiding citizen, that’s me, bringing the company’s property back where it belongs. And don’t you say anything different, mate, or I’ll shop you for a gun-runner.’

  The engines were throbbing away, the anchor coming up, and Perenna was on her feet, saying, ‘You can’t just leave him.’

  ‘Can’t I?’ He laughed. ‘Look, miss. He had it all sewn up, the future, everything. But now it’s all fallen apart, and he’s in the shit, ennee? Right in it up to his neck, so I aim to put as much space between him and me—’

  ‘He’s coming down to the jetty now,’ I said.

  He turned, staring at the shore.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Oh, hell!’ he said. ‘I dunno. Take him to Madehas, I guess. That’s where he said.’ And he swung the wheel over, turning the tug’s bows towards the Sohano jetty. ‘Can’t leave him on Sohano to be picked up by the Army. They’re bound to commandeer the ferry and send a section over to grab the radio station.’