by Roland Perry
‘They’re not for sale,’ Jimmy said, scratching his beard.
‘That’s too bad,’ Cardinal said. ‘I think they’re great.’
‘For you, mate,’ he said, ‘they don’t cost anything.’
Cardinal looked at Burra.
‘He knows what you did for me at the pub,’ Burra explained.
‘I was there when he made Mad Mick back off from killin’ you too!’ Jimmy said.
‘If I was to make a donation to any cause you wished,’ Cardinal said, ‘would that be okay?’
‘I’ll think about it, mate,’ Jimmy said. He looked around the room. ‘I left a half bottle of Johnny Walker in here somewhere . . .”
‘You should lay off it,’ Burra said.
‘You’re right,’ Jimmy said, rinding the bottle behind a canvas. ‘While we’re on the subject, anyone like a glass? You know, hair of the dog?’
‘Bit early for me,’ Cardinal said.
‘C’mon,’ Jimmy said, pouring two glasses. ‘What time is it in New York?’
Cardinal looked at his watch. ‘About six in the evening.’
‘See what I mean?’ the old man said with a grin as he handed Cardinal a neat triple. Cardinal laughed. Burra was not amused.
‘You’ve got work to do,’ he snapped.
Jimmy rolled his eyes. ‘Reckon I do.’ He found a sketch pad and took a swig of the whisky. ‘Now I’ve had some lubrication.’
Jimmy settled at a desk, the whisky bottle and glass in front of him. He began to draw and kept glancing across at Cardinal who sat on a chair. Cardinal thought he had to be the subject. He looked at Burra who winked at him. He was positioned behind Jimmy and could see his progress. At first the strokes were broad, but soon he switched to a thinner crayon and a pencil. Cardinal watched his eyes. They looked through him in much the same way that Judy’s had before they had begun to communicate.
The more Jimmy worked, the less he worried about the whisky. By the time light had filled the room, three portraits had been finished and discarded. Burra collected them and passed them across to Cardinal. Unlike the shapeless blurs of the previous day’s effort, these were excellent. In Cardinal’s mind the man drawn was Kampuchean. The eyes were more European in shape than Vietnamese or Chinese, and he had a flat nose with wide nostrils. A prominent feature in one drawing were the jagged teeth, evident in a broad grin.
‘How did he achieve such detail?’ Cardinal whispered, ‘he was some distance away, wasn’t he?’
‘He used a powerful telescope,’ Burra said, crouching beside Cardinal. ‘What do you think?’
‘These aren’t sketches,’ Cardinal said. ‘They’re photographs!’
When Burra and Cardinal returned to Burra’s place, a young man could be seen standing in the doorway. It was his son, Silas, who had survived the bush trek. Burra jumped from the ute to embrace him.
Perdonny’s guard drove past a restless wave of wiry Indonesian and Chinese merchants who were hauling their wares along the road next to the Anjol River on the fifteen kilometre run from Jakarta to Priok dock. Rhonda had joined Perdonny and was sitting in the back with him. Near the end of the road they turned down a side street and were met by another of Perdonny’s men who climbed into the front seat.
‘The Kampucheans are already waiting on Pier 13,’ Perdonny told Rhonda after giving orders to the driver, ‘but the other party hasn’t arrived yet.’ They returned to the main road, which finished at a boom gate that lead to the docks.
A short, robust Javanese guard emerged from a hut and strolled over to the car. He asked for papers. When he saw Perdonny, his expression changed, and he began gabbling obsequiously. Papers were handed to him by the driver.
Perdonny leaned forward, lowered the rear window, and the guard gave them directions. Perdonny pointed to a car phone in the front seat, and the guard gave a vigorous nod. He scribbled a number on the palm of his hand and rushed to the hut. The boom was lifted, and they drove through.
‘He’ll ring us when the other party arrives,’ Perdonny informed Rhonda.
‘How come you have people planted here?’ she asked.
‘Not everyone supports Utun,’ he said. ‘Knowing what’s happening at the docks is one of the most useful sources for us. All sorts of sea traffic comes through here, including arms shipments.’
They cruised for a few minutes until they reached Pier 13. It was two hours before dawn, but the traffic was building up. Trucks, fork-lift vehicles and a goods train were entering and leaving the pier, where four cargo ships were being unloaded. A swarm of workers hauled and stacked crates of farm machinery, bananas, coffee and some that were marked with just serial numbers.
Perdonny had the car driven into one of a line of warehouses. The headlights went out, the ignition was switched off, and they sat at the entrance with a clear view of the vehicles speeding by. Trucks laden with cargo were coming from the ships.
They waited half an hour before the car phone rang.
‘We have a visitor,’ Perdonny announced. ‘The entrance guard dealt with an Indonesian driver of a limousine. Three Europeans were in the back. There was a second vehicle.’
Perdonny spoke in Indonesian to his men. They both slapped their sides and nodded; they were armed.
He got out of the car with the two guards.
‘We’re going to get closer,’ he said to her. ‘Best if you stay here.’
Rhonda objected. It was better to be close to the action and protected than left alone in a dark warehouse. Perdonny relented. He handed her some infrared binoculars.
‘If you could keep scanning the area as we go,’ he said, ‘that will limit possible surprises.’
‘Making the little lady feel useful?’ Rhonda said with a nervous giggle. ‘I can knit and cook too, you know.’
‘The Kampuchean has men scattered to cover him,’ Perdonny said. ‘The people he is meeting seem to have a car load of support as well.’
‘Not a great deal of mutual trust?’ Rhonda whispered as they waited near the entrance to the warehouse.
‘Very little,’ Perdonny said. Some trucks straggled past, and when they had gone he led the way behind the warehouse to the pier. They walked about a hundred metres towards the cargo of unmarked crates, which were being stacked high. Perdonny pointed to an open area between them and the ships next to the last warehouse. They crept closer, and Rhonda could make out a vehicle. The binoculars showed it was a hearse. A man could be seen leaning against it.
‘Where are the other Kampucheans?’ she asked.
‘Concentrate on points beyond the vehicle,’ Perdonny said.
Rhonda raised the binoculars.
‘My God!’ she mumbled. ‘I can see somebody . . . No, two people!’
Seconds later two limousines rolled onto the pier and stopped about fifty metres from the hearse.
‘Can you see licence plates?’ Perdonny said.
Rhonda strained to see them. ‘No,’ she said, ‘they’ve been removed’.
Car lights went on high-beam. Three men got out and strode towards the hearse. Lights and ignitions were turned off.
Rhonda nudged Perdonny. ‘Four guys are getting out of the second limo,’ she said breathlessly, ‘think they’ve got weapons.’
Perdonny took the binoculars and focused on the man at the hearse. A tall Caucasian from the new arrivals stepped up to him.
‘The Kampuchean we saw at Ujung Pandang is at the hearse,’ Perdonny said quietly. ‘1 can’t quite see the other man.’
The Kampuchean and the Caucasian came closer. They shook hands. The Caucasian handed over a package. He returned to the limousines.
‘Can you see the other guy yet?’ Rhonda whispered.
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’ Rhonda said, as the limousines started up.
‘His name is Blundell.’
Burra dropped his family off at his Darwin home at midnight. It was a modest weatherboard set close to two other places also inhabited by Aborigines. The only acce
ss was from the front, and this was guarded by a high brick wall. Topfist and a companion who had accompanied them from the reserve were detailed by Burra to protect the family. They both had rifles.
‘Expecting trouble?’ Cardinal asked. They climbed into the ute for the drive to the Casino Hotel.
‘No,’ Burra said. ‘I’m just cautious after what happened at the Crossing.’
Cardinal was apprehensive as they approached the hotel. Instead of driving up to the main entrance, Burra went around the block.
‘What’s wrong?’ Cardinal asked.
Burra scanned the street, eased into second gear, and crawled the vehicle down a narrow road at the rear of the hotel.
Two figures were near the revolving door entrance. Burra reversed out of their view. He pulled the rifle from under the front seat, opened the glove box, pulled out cartridges and loaded the rifle.
‘You can’t go there again, mate,’ he said as they drove on another block.
‘Why not?’ Cardinal said.
Burra pulled up fifty metres short of a stationary road-train. It was hidden in the shadows down a side street. Burra flicked off the lights. He rolled the ute forward until it was within thirty metres of the truck.
Burra accelerated into top and sped past the vehicle. Cardinal squinted at the cabin’s smashed windows. It belonged to Mad Mick Malone.
5
A phone conversation with Rhonda whom he discovered had left a message for him at the Casino – had helped Cardinal make up his mind about his next stop: Jakarta. She had alerted him by talking about the so-called Kampuchean, and he had asked her to describe him. Cardinal had the sketches in front of him and felt certain that she was talking about the same person.
Flying over plush green and mountainous Java aboard a Qantas flight from Darwin, Cardinal was struck by the contrast with the brown, flat and parched land he had left two hours earlier. The difference did not end with the geography. Caucasian, European Australia at the bottom of Asia clung to most things western despite growing pressures on it to increase its intake of non-white neighbours. Its sixteen million people, although nominally Christian, were essentially materialistic and scientific in outlook. Indonesia, with ten times the population, was essentially mystic, and instinctively opposed to western values. More than ninety per cent of the nation professed Islam, and Cardinal was made aware that some professed it much more than others. The morning he took off for Indonesia, the Australian papers carried front-page stories about Moslem riots all over Java. Utun had reacted by enforcing a modified martial law. Indonesian newspapers were being shut down and night curfews had been introduced. The president had even threatened to take action against Mullahs who had been active in remote parts of the country’s archipelago. No one had proposed a new Iran, but the portents were there.
The clamminess and aromatic smells, nutmeg and cloves, it seemed to him, at Halim Airport added to his mixed feelings of apprehension. The immigration official mulled over his passport.
‘Where you get visa?’ the official asked.
‘Yesterday,’ Cardinal said, mishearing.
‘No. Where you get visa.’
‘Oh, Darwin.’
‘Why you travel to Russia, Poland . . .’ The official flicked over a few pages. ‘. . . Yugoslavia?’
‘I was in London for a few years. It allowed me to travel to these places.’
The official pouted and shunted him through to luggage inspectors. They came across Jimmy Goyong’s sketches of the Kampuchean, and his paintings.
‘What are these for?’ an inspector asked.
‘I’m an art dealer,’ Cardinal said, thinking quickly. He pointed to his immigration card.
‘What is that?’ the inspector said.
‘I deal in art,’ Cardinal said, eyeing the sketches. ‘You know, I buy and sell.’
‘You buy Indonesian art?’ The sketches and paintings were put in a side-pocket of the suitcase.
‘Maybe. I’m a tourist.’
Cardinal pushed his way through the throng and caught a taxi for the twenty-minute ride to Jakarta. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Then he lit a cigar and tried to relax as he watched the passing parade of honking and tooting pedicabs and trucks. Somehow the traffic managed order out of chaos.
Cardinal kept an eye on two open trucks that rattled by gorged with soldiers. His taxi stopped behind the trucks at an intersection where gauche advertising on billboards emulated the worst of western traditions. The taxi was forced to follow the trucks at reduced speed.
Tea plantations, farms and a military reserve quickly gave way to modern hotels, banks and office blocks, which dominated Jakarta’s urban skyline. Four Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald hamburger roadhouses presented a clue to which foreign ideology had predominated since a bloody coup led to the overthrow of Sukarno more than two decades earlier. Another even easier clue was provided by film and video advertising hoardings which proclaimed: ‘Rambo Five – The Final Revenge’. Yet despite the many flags of capitalism, Cardinal noted the still evident communist influence from the 1950s and 1960s. This was symbolised by grotesque monuments, including sculptures of frenetic figures, which reminded him of Moscow and Leningrad.
Cardinal’s taxi followed the soldiers’ truck, which swerved and blocked the road. Four soldiers jumped out of the rear and ran towards an intersection just ahead. A deafening staccato of machine-gun fire followed as they gave chase after two young men who had been painting anti-Utun and pro-Moslem slogans on walls. They tried to escape into a village not far in from the main thoroughfare, and Cardinal lost sight of them. He heard more weapons fire and a scream as if someone had been hit. Vehicles behind the taxi began honking horns and ringing bells. Cardinal could not tell if this was in protest at the vicious army action or because of the traffic hold-up. The soldiers responded by running along between the vehicles and firing off several rounds into the air.
Cardinal chomped on the cigar as he saw the soldiers, who had given chase after the graffitists, returning to the truck. They looked pleased with themselves, and Cardinal thought they behaved as if they had been on a rabbit hunt.
The truck drove off and allowed the snarled traffic to move on. Cardinal tried to make conversation with his Javanese driver about the shooting, but the man either didn’t speak English or was reluctant to talk about it. He did have the temerity to say, ‘Have a nice day’ to Cardinal as he got out of the taxi at his hotel, The Sari Pacific. A sign at its entrance said, ‘Welcome to Jakarta.’
Less than a kilometre along Jakarta’s main road, Jalan Thamrin, Rhonda hurried into the lift of her hotel, the Borobodur, to call Cardinal. At her suggestion, he had booked in at another hotel. She would have preferred him close, but realised she would be under surveillance the minute she came into the open after being with Perdonny. Rhonda did not want to expose Cardinal.
According to the receptionist at the Sari Pacific, he had not yet arrived. She rang the Australian Embassy, and after a short delay was put through to Ambassador Gosling.
‘You should have checked in earlier,’ he snapped. ‘The authorities said you did not book into a hotel last night.’
‘Do they monitor all places in the country?’
‘You don’t understand. I have had to battle to keep you from being held – possibly in prison.’
‘What the hell for?!’
‘They don’t have to give a reason!’
‘I don’t want to argue,’ Rhonda said, calming herself, ‘just tell me when I may leave.’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Tell me — a day, a week, what?’
‘I don’t want to give you false hope, Ms Mills.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Check in this time tomorrow.’
Cardinal was most thankful for six hours’ sleep before leaving his hotel to meet Rhonda and Perdonny at Glodock, the city’s Chinatown.
A calm freestyle swim finishing with a frenetic burst of butterfly refresh
ed him before he took a taxi from the hotel into the city centre. At Perdonny’s request, he was to make another taxi change to avoid anyone who might be tailing him before meeting one of Perdonny’s supporters at a statue out of town nicknamed ‘Hot Hands Harry’. Rhonda had warned him that Utun was expected to make a city appearance for the foreign media, and that this might precipitate riots.
Tanks and police were patrolling the streets when Cardinal left the Sari Pacific just before ten that night. At the main city square – Medan Merdeka – hundreds of Moslem students were on their knees facing Mecca. But the traffic stopped when two hundred police charged and attacked them with batons. More Moslems ran across in front of the vehicles pursued by soldiers. Cardinal sensed more danger than the incident earlier in the day, and he had no wish to get caught in the middle of a triangular battle.
Cardinal threw his fare into the front seat, jumped out and weaved his way through the traffic towards a bus depot where a crowd was gathering. He searched for another taxi. None was in sight. The congestion had blocked off arteries into the square. He was caught in a milling mass.
The bus depot had been cordoned off by barriers, so Cardinal pushed his way through, only to be stopped by police protecting TV crews who were setting up cameras and lights. He had run into an event involving Utun, which was being staged for the media.
Cardinal was about to take on the crowd again when he was distracted by police sirens. He was only metres from the barriers and could see a cavalcade coming around the square heading his way. Utun’s bullet-proof Ford limousine was driven right up to the buses opposite Cardinal. Scores of cameras clicked and whirred as TV and press people swarmed over the depot.
Utun bounced out and the crowd cheered on cue. He strutted over to a street vendor. He bought a sate, sat down on the kerb to eat it with a banana leaf.
‘This is wonderful!’ he declared to the scrawny, bow-legged vendor. Translators explained the president’s golden words to the media.
‘It’s magnificent beef,’ the vendor said, and Cardinal heard this mistranslated as ‘ham’ by an American commentator.
