Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Goodnight. Hope you feel better in the morning,’ I replied, watching, concerned, as she turned and walked away then suddenly stopped. I caught her slim image in the hallway mirror – it was true, she was losing weight – and she had her right hand clasped to her left breast, her eyes tightly shut in what was clearly a grimace of pain. ‘You all right, Anna?’ I asked. ‘Shall I call someone?’ Meaning a doctor.

  ‘No, no . . . I’m fine, a bit of indigestion, that’s all,’ she answered, then moved on down the hallway towards her bedroom.

  I ate almost nothing and when Cook brought dessert I sent it away with a gesture of impatience. ‘Masta no feel gud,’ she said, removing the pudding. I poured myself another Scotch, telling myself it was the last for the night, but as it was only half-past eight I knew it wouldn’t be. I went out and sat on the verandah, not knowing whether to feel angry, sad, frightened for Anna or all these things together. But underneath these feelings was a slow fuse of anger because she’d known the cause of her vaginismus and had chosen to do nothing about it. I felt sad that I’d been denied her children while it was still possible, and fearful that if her tightly constructed world came apart I’d lose her. Typically, my initial concerns were all about me, whereas it wasn’t me who was standing on the edge of a precipice, it was Anna.

  Through all her suffering she’d somehow held herself together in a world she thought of as rotten to the core and formulated her own search for justice in a peculiar and personal endgame. But now I found myself critically involved in the outcome. I reasoned that she couldn’t possibly have stopped the deaths of the five journalists, and furthermore she’d seen so much gratuitous death under the Japanese, so much violence that went unpunished, that it was bound to have affected her. On several occasions she had come perilously close to a violent death herself. As a nineteen-year-old, the year everything had changed for her, she’d seen the severed head of her beloved Til, the humble trishaw driver and homespun philosopher, stuck onto the front gatepost to intimidate her in preparation for her own rape by the Japanese commoner kempeitai colonel, Takahashi. No doubt afterwards he would have killed or discarded her in a show of neurotic contempt for his predecessor, the nobly born Konoe Akira.

  Given her circumstances and mindset, which she’d just outlined for me, gaining financially as a consequence of a tragic event over which she had no control was something she could live with, whereas I, with my comparatively sheltered life and putative Anglican background, might have reached a different conclusion.

  Marg had quite correctly insisted that I could no longer sit on the fence, be ambivalent, play moderator between the two of them. I had to choose where my conscience lay. I cared about trees, I cared about the great apes, I cared about justice for the five men who’d died and I cared about the 200 000 Timorese men, women and children who had lost their lives. To be honest, in the case of the environment and the orangutan, perhaps not to the extent Marg cared, but the dreams of the slaughter of the nine sailors jumbled up with the Balibo Five had been haunting me in nightmares for nine years. One of the two women I loved stood to gain hugely from the tragedy and as a consequence the other was threatening to destroy her. The outcome, I felt certain, would be that I would lose both Anna and Marg.

  Moreover, Anna considered herself quite safe from discovery in terms of the Timor Sea oilfields. She had shown enormous trust in me by revealing Budi’s guilt and the reason for it, knowing rightly that I would never betray her. But therein lay the problem. She’d only told me because she felt safe from Peter Yeldham, the never-give-up Fin Review reporter. I had the task of revealing to her that she wasn’t safe by any means. I was now convinced Marg had spoken to him or he to her. Her ‘watch this space’ threat was real. I had somehow to get Anna to sever her ties with Budi and the oil deal and furthermore abandon her timber concessions for the sake of the orangutan. It was going to be a long week.

  It was just before nine when I decided I needed to know exactly what Marg knew. I was making too many suppositions, too many leaps in the dark. I’d call Marg in Tasmania rather than wait until she called me in the morning. When Anna was in residence Marg called in the morning around seven-thirty because I’d told her Anna didn’t rise until around ten, a habit she’d formed when she’d worked the late nights required at Madam Butterfly. I’d usually take the call in my office because sometimes the line was so bad I’d be forced to shout and I didn’t wish to disturb Anna. Marg was an early-to-bed and early-to-rise person and with luck I might just catch her before she retired for the night.

  Marg answered in a curt voice and after I’d said good evening she ticked me off. ‘It’s late, Nick. I was just about to go to bed. My hands are all sticky with face cream.’

  I apologised then said, ‘Marg, the journalist you spoke to from the Fin Review, was his name Peter Yeldham?’

  There was the slightest pause, then, ‘I didn’t say I’d spoken to a journalist.’

  ‘You as good as did. You spoke of Major General Budi Til and East Timor and said watch this space. That’s tantamount to saying you were going or had gone to the press. Marg, I have one or two questions. How did you know about the timber concessions or for that matter about Anna’s business association with Budi Til? And how were you able to connect him with East Timor?’ I asked, then added, ‘You didn’t get any of this information from me.’

  ‘From Anna’s files, of course,’ Marg answered blandly.

  ‘Yeah, I thought so. Marg, that’s reprehensible.’

  ‘All’s fair in love and war, Nick.’

  ‘It’s unconscionable and underhand and sneaky.’

  ‘The first two perhaps, but not the third. I always did it with her office door open and in broad daylight,’ Marg replied without a scintilla of regret in her voice.

  ‘How would you like it if I told Anna?’

  ‘You can’t, that’s our agreement,’ she snapped.

  I realised I was getting away from the reason for my call. ‘You ought to be bloody ashamed of yourself, Marg.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so pompous, Nick. You of all people! You know my background is in intelligence. Old habits die hard.’

  It was pointless continuing, Marg wasn’t going to show the slightest contrition. ‘Yeldham? Did you speak to him?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did.’

  ‘About Anna?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Not yes of course! What did you discuss?’

  ‘He told me he was doing an article for the Financial Review about women and money. As Anna was Australia’s richest woman – I think he said richest self-made woman – he was trying to build a profile. He said he’d gone to Melbourne, to her office, and had been given short shrift. Could I help join the dots so to speak.’

  ‘And you agreed?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know Anna keeps a tight lid on her affairs.’

  ‘No, Nick, I don’t. All I know about her affairs is from reading her files at Beautiful Bay.’

  ‘How did he contact you in the first instance?’

  ‘Nick, that’s a silly question. I’m a politician, I’m not exactly hard to find and your relationship with us isn’t an official secret.’

  ‘I mean, what did he say about Anna to interest you?’

  ‘Nothing, he simply mailed me the photographs of the orangutans with a note attached that said, “Note the name on the bulldozer cabin. Would you like to comment? I’m doing a piece on Anna Til”, together with his name and a Sydney phone number. I took the pictures home and every time I looked at them I grew more and more angry. When I got to my office in Parliament House the next day I called him and said, “Yes.” As it turned out I wasn’t a great help. In fact he told me more than I knew myself.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, he knew about the clothing factory, military uniforms and kids’ pyjamas, the KFC involvement, the property holdings and, of course, the timber concessions. He wanted to know what I knew about Major Genera
l Budi Til, Anna’s partner in all these undertakings. I had to tell him that I knew nothing other than that I’d seen his name on various documents. He then told me he was one of the generals who were implicated in the invasion of East Timor.’

  ‘Of course he did. Marg, there’s nothing in there that any competent journalist couldn’t find out for himself. To do business in Indonesia Anna would have to have a local partner, preferably a general. Anna’s not going to get out of bed for that exposure. There’s nothing there to frighten her, she’ll call your bluff.’

  ‘I know, so I told him about the oil.’

  I feigned ignorance. ‘What oil?’

  Marg switched to her intelligence-officer-briefing voice. ‘That’s one of the major reasons Australia stood by and watched East Timor being crushed. The Timor Sea has huge oil and natural gas deposits. The Indonesians wanted Timor’s oil and because the boundary between Australia and East Timor isn’t settled they offered to be generous in the ongoing negotiations, giving us a much larger slice of the oil reserves. In return Australia would keep quiet and not make a fuss if they annexed East Timor.’

  ‘Oil? Are you sure?’ I asked, shocked that she knew.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How the hell do you know all this? Let me guess, your friend in Canberra, Roger Rigby.’

  ‘Nick, I’m not at liberty to say,’ Marg said crisply.

  ‘But why would he do that? He’d be charged under the Official Secrets Act, they’d put him in jail and throw away the key. Worse still, he’d lose his pension.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was him. But it’s all going to blow up and the government can’t do a thing to stop it.’

  ‘And that’s why Roger told you? How? How is it going to blow up?’ I asked, suddenly fearful for Anna.

  ‘Nick, I didn’t say it was him. Apparently somebody who was at Shoal Bay, the radio intercept post near Darwin, during the invasion of East Timor is about to die of cancer and he wants to clear his conscience. He knows the game and how to play it and has a set of the transcripts of the intelligence intercepts that show the Australian governments have been lying through their teeth about East Timor. He’s released details to Reuters and other international media organisations. The cat has been let out of the bag, or if you’ll excuse the French, as my contact put it, “We can’t put the shit back in the goose this time.” He was only telling me what the whole world is about to find out.’

  I tried to gather my thoughts. I needed to know if Marg had any more details. ‘Hang on, so what? The conspiracy, if it’s about oil, is between us and Indonesia. What’s that got to do with Anna?’

  ‘I didn’t say the exposure was only about the government’s grubby oil deal; all I said was that I told Peter Yeldham about the split-up of the oil in Australia’s favour. As a matter of fact he had heard rumours for years and wasn’t that excited about it. There’s no hard evidence the media can get onto and both governments simply deny, deny, deny.’

  ‘So, what’s the exposure about if it isn’t only about the oil?’

  ‘It’s what I hinted to you last time we talked. It’s about Major General Budi Til. Australian intelligence overheard the Indonesian army planning the murder of the Balibo Five. He’s the general who formulated it and issued the orders to kill them all. They did it to cover up the Indonesian army’s invasion of the area around Balibo. He was also implicated in the death, a little later in Dili, of Roger East, the Australian correspondent.’

  ‘You mean we knew before the murders happened?’

  ‘Yes, despite denying it for nine years, the Australian Government knew precisely what happened to the five journalists. They knew when, where and by whose command, before it took place! The Indonesian army heard from their Timorese sympathisers that there were five journalists in the village, the army radioed for instructions and Major General Budi Til instructed the nearest army unit to go in and assassinate them.’

  ‘Jesus!’ This was something I didn’t know. Anna was even closer to being in big trouble.

  Marg was still in intelligence-officer mode. ‘As you possibly know from your own time in radio intelligence with the marines and elsewhere, the last thing you want your opponent to know is that you have the capacity to eavesdrop on their top-secret conversations. From the end of the war until 1977 Canberra didn’t even allow any reference in the press to the existence of what’s now the Defence Signals Directorate.’

  ‘Where Roger is the director?’

  Marg gave an audible sigh. ‘Yes, Nick. I’ve told you that previously. Now, please stop probing for my source. You’re insulting my intelligence.’

  ‘And so the government was prepared to wash its hands of the five journalists to keep this knowledge from Indonesia?’

  ‘Nick, you should know that will always be the case – “for the greater good” and all that twaddle.’

  ‘Do you know any more about Budi . . . er, Major General Til?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes. Major General Budi is also the commander of a counter-intelligence unit that has been responsible for the torture and killing of eighty-two Timorese resistance fighters and the wholesale slaughter of civilians in reprisal raids by units of the Indonesian army under his command. The Indonesians won’t release him to an international tribunal to face charges, of course, but if he’d been a German or a Japanese general in 1945 he would certainly have been hanged.’

  ‘And Anna is his partner in several business enterprises, so it’s guilt by association? Is this the basis of your threat – that if she doesn’t give up the timber concessions you’ll reveal the relationship between her and the man responsible for the murder of the Balibo Five?’ I asked pointedly. Then, not waiting for her to answer, I let her have it. ‘Marg, Anna is one tough cookie. She won’t like the news about her business partner, but it won’t make her back off. She isn’t guilty of war crimes! It’s bad for Budi Til, but it’s not necessarily a disaster for Anna. You may be certain she’ll call your bluff.’

  Marge laughed. ‘Nick, I saved the best for last. This vile little murderer was rewarded for his deeds with a small part of the future oil and natural gas concessions and Anna is a fifty per cent partner! My contact says when it comes into production their part alone will be worth billions and so Anna will be shown to be a direct beneficiary of murder and genocide in East Timor.’

  My heart sank. Marg knew. ‘Holy shit! Is this all going to be released? Anna is a part of the exposure?’

  ‘No, Anna’s involvement is not known . . . yet. It was told to me separately by my contact. Now, you tell her, Nick, that she has one week. Seven days! I believe the exposure of Major General Budi Til will break in the next couple of days. You tell Princess Plunder that if the timber concessions she holds are not left intact as habitat for the orangutan, and I mean every inch of it, I tell Peter Yeldham and he prints the pictures and the story about Australia’s richest self-made woman and how she goes about her business! It’s a story that’s bound to be syndicated throughout the world.’

  ‘Marg, you wouldn’t. You’d destroy not only Anna, but all three of us.’

  ‘Watch me, Nick. I don’t give a shit about Anna and the oil, but I do about the great apes. It’s got to stop somewhere and if I don’t do it, it will be on my conscience until I die. I’m not going to stand by and allow these gorgeous creatures to become extinct, which at the present rate will happen by the year 2015! If it destroys our relationship, and God knows I love you, Nick, I have to take that chance! Now, if you don’t mind, it’s past my bedtime.’

  So, of course, I had another Scotch and then another and followed it up with a near sleepless night. I decided I had no choice. I was going to have to confront Anna in the morning and stand by while the excrement hit the rapidly rotating blades, as they say in the classics.

  The following morning – the usual tropical extravaganza, various shades of blue with a sharp bite of green between sea and sky – I waited until after breakfast, which consisted of a single slice of dry toast
and a glass of orange juice for Anna, then suggested, ‘Darling, it’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we take Madam Butterfly and sail to Coffee Scald? I’ll get Cook to pack a cold chicken, a salad and a bottle of chilled wine for lunch, shall I?’

  ‘Wine? God no, Nicholas! Tell her a bottle of soda water and a packet of crackers for me. I must be getting old – my head feels as though it’s been inside a voodoo drum all night.’

  ‘Take it easy, have a couple of hours in the hammock under the big old native fig in the garden. It’s dark and cool under the canopy. What say we leave about eleven-thirty? There’s a nice following breeze this time of the year – we’ll get there about one-thirty. You’re bound to feel a little better by then,’ I said optimistically. ‘Nothing like a bit of a breeze and the open sea for a hangover.’

  At one-thirty when we arrived at Coffee Scald it was hot as hell and I rigged a beach umbrella while Anna laid out lunch on a blanket, then we went for a swim. Strangely she wore a bikini top, but not the pants, which was unusual because we usually swam in the nuddy and Anna wasn’t exactly big breasted. If she was becoming self-conscious of her breasts drooping I certainly hadn’t noticed; as far as I was concerned, at fifty-eight she still had the figure of a young woman, although she was just a tad too thin. We dressed in shorts and T-shirts by which time Anna pronounced herself hungry and headache free.

  ‘Eat a good lunch, darling, you need to put on a kilo or two,’ I observed. ‘I could see your ribs clearly as we were swimming.’

  Anna laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Nicholas, a woman can never be too rich or too thin. I guess I’ve been travelling and working a bit too much lately. There’s a world shortage of high-quality long-fibre cotton and I was in Egypt last week trying to negotiate supplies. The cotton merchants were giving me the run-around. Egyptian men still see women as a cross between a mule, a cook and a begetter of sons; they have few rights and are sent packing if they have the misfortune to bear more than one girl child. Budi usually does the trip but he couldn’t go on this occasion; some urgent government business cropped up. The Egyptians respect him as a fellow Muslim and a general to boot. With my attitude towards men, misogynists in particular, it’s been a difficult few days.’