Ali nodded.
Pat took him to the cabin.
26 / thief!
Pat jerked his head from the pillow. He had heard a soft tap in his sleep and his mind had caught the image of what was happening. The dinghy was touching the Tub, but it shouldn’t be. He glanced at Ali’s bunk and the boy wasn’t there.
He tumbled down, hit Col’s bunk and scrambled up the steps. The ropes to the dinghy were now trailing into the dark water and it was slowly drifting away from the Tub. The shadow of Ali was sitting in the stern, fiddling with the motor. There was hardly any space between Pat’s thought – stealing it! – and the charge across the deck, the vault over the rail, across the long stretch of water to the dinghy.
He crashed down on the middle of the boat, banging his right knee on the thwart, turning to Ali angrily. ‘What the hell –’
But Ali had hobbled to his feet and was trying to push him off the boat. They wrestled grimly, panting at each other, clutching each other’s shoulders as the dinghy rocked violently. Suddenly a dark shadow swept over them and the dinghy reared like a wild horse. They fell apart and thudded onto the edges of the boat.
‘All right,’ Col said, sprawling across the bow. ‘What was that about?’
Pat wiped his nose. ‘He was bloody well pinching the boat!’
Col rubbed his back as he looked at Ali. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘My village ’’ Ali sagged, as if the fight had gone out of him.
‘I said “in the morning”,’ Pat said.
‘Too late, too late.’ Ali held his hurt foot and rocked with the pain. ‘I’ve got to warn them.’
‘The patrol boat,’ Col said slowly.
Ali steadied his eyes on Col’s face. ‘They don’t know.’
Pat looked at Ali and realised that the boy had changed. Before, he had been torn apart by guilt in the death of his father and grandfather and he had wanted to go home, to his mother. Now he still had that guilt but there was a layer on top of that. The people in the village had seen the other fires in the town and over the island, but what had happened out here was very different. Ali had been lying on the bunk just thinking about that, until he knew that he had to warn the village about the General and his killing boat.
Col looked into Ali’s eyes for a moment, then nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll take you.’ He moved to the stern of the dinghy and started the motor with a single pull. When he nudged the Tub with its bow he tapped Pat. ‘Okay, you’re off.’
‘Um, can I stay with you?’
‘Come on ’’
‘After all, I saved Ali.’
Col sighed. ‘You get the word from Matt, okay. And grab some clothes.’
‘Okay. Pat pulled himself up onto the Tub, took a step and sharply looked back. This is a trick!
‘We’ll be here,’ Col said quietly. ‘I’m not going anywhere like this.’
Pat glanced at Col’s underpants and walked towards the cabin. It’s still a trick, he thought. Of course Matt won’t let you go, and Col knew that when he said it. It’s only a trick but there’s no way out of it ’
He climbed down the steps. Still you have to try. ‘Matt?’
A gentle snore drifted about the cabin.
Pat hesitated and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen in the moonlight. He wrote quickly:
Matt, we’re taking Ali home. We’ll be back soon.
Pat
He pinned the note on the side of the hatch, picked up shirts and shorts for Col and for himself and crept onto the deck.
‘How did you go?’ Col said.
‘No worries.’ Pat jumped into the dinghy, avoiding Col’s face.
‘Really?’ Col said in surprise, but he spun the bow and surged towards the black mountain.
27 / the village
Ali held the throttle while Pat and Col shrugged their clothes on, then he tugged at Pat’s shirt.
‘Ah yes.’ Pat was watching the Tub, still expecting Matt to race up on the deck, until it faded into the blackness.
‘Thank you,’ Ali said.
‘Oh,’ Pat faltered. He had called the kid a thief and had fought him for the dinghy. He still didn’t like the kid, but he was here, wasn’t he? ‘It’s okay.’
After that, Ali drooped beside Pat and within five minutes he was asleep against his shoulder. Pat slouched on the thwart, feeling the Malacca token in his pocket and watched the glowing fires on the island as the dinghy crept towards them ’
Suddenly the fires were higher, bigger and angry. He could see isolated outbursts of orange flames climbing towards the silhouette of the mountain above him, but there was a major blaze nearer the water. This last fire filled a street of buildings with flames, coiling black smoke and flashes of bright yellow. He could almost hear the sound.
Ali stirred against him and flicked his eyes open.
‘Maybe the fires are only around the town, the village could be okay,’ Col said.
Ali shook his head slowly.
As the dinghy slid across the water the blaze spread. Pat realised that he hadn’t seen just a burning street – it was an entire block of streets on fire. The red flames were reflected in the harbour, picking out the black figures of fishing boats as if they too were burning.
Pat stared at the fires, his fingers touching the token. This was like Malacca. Diego’s Malacca. But it wasn’t like he had imagined. It was worse.
Col turned the dinghy away from the flames and aimed for a low headland. Very slowly the flames were blocked by the shadowed cliffs, giving back the cool and the peace to the night. A white bird scudded across the sea in front of the dinghy, dipped for a moment and plucked a racing fish out of the water before reaching a tree. Now it was like any other night.
A faint smile crept across Pat’s face. You could almost forget the fires that you had seen, when you were on this side of the headland. If you can’t see it, then it doesn’t exist, like Diego’s Malacca, terrible, but in the past.
‘I think Col’s right,’ Pat murmured to Ali. ‘Your village won’t be touched. Too far away.’ If you’re lucky.
But Ali sat hunched forward.
Lucky? Pat looked at Ali. He needs it more than you ’ Pat quickly pulled the token from his pocket and shoved it into Ali’s hand.
Ali opened his hand in surprise, saw the token and the shadow of a smile passed over his face.
Matt will kill you ’ Pat thought, and shrugged. Doesn’t matter, he’s going to kill you anyway when you get back.
Ali squeezed his fist as he stared at the dark hill before him and waited.
Pat tried to take away the haunted look in Ali’s face, turning to Col. ‘I can’t see anything wrong with this part of the island at all, can ’?’
Col’s face was a mirror of Ali’s, his eyes locked on something over Pat’s shoulder.
Pat turned back, looked at the black hill. And there was nothing.
Except there was the mountain behind the hill, a great shadow blocking the stars. And there was a full moon floating above it. The moon was blood red, bloated like a whale on a beach and it shimmered. It was shimmering because a curtain of smoke was drifting before it.
But Col and Ali were not looking at the moon anymore. They were looking at the edge of the black hill as it crept sideways.
Pat tried to remember what the island had looked like when he was flying in. There was the leaping tiger on his right, the tiny airstrip ahead, then the rolling hills of banana trees, the cluttered town on the edge of the green water. But there was a long finger of land on the right with a hill sitting across the finger, like a knuckle. On the other side of the knuckle was a small village, separate from the town. A ridge from the mountain chopped the village from the town as effectively as water ringing an island. There may be a track that climbed across that jungled ridge from the town to the village, but it couldn’t be seen from the air.
Now they were moving from the finger to the knuckle – towards the black hill – and the village was behind that.
Ali sucked in a short breath.
The trees at the edge of the hill were catching a flickering light. As if the jungle was beginning to burn.
Col swung the dinghy away from the hill and accelerated, trying to escape that ghost light. But then Pat saw a glimmer on the water, watched it spread. There was fire – angry fire – behind the hill ’
‘Jesus.’ Col turned the motor down.
The patrol boat sat in the water, grey, immense in the gathering of fishing boats. Its polished windows reflected the roaring fires, the hull reflected the gold and red shimmer in the harbour. The General was shouting on the bridge but the boat remained passive, as motionless as a cliff, making it far more menacing. Everywhere else was chaos.
Pat could see four – five – wooden houses blazing, belching brown smoke that coiled down the road and out over the boats on the beach. An open-mouthed woman ran out of the smoke with a small girl tucked under her arm. She kept running the length of the beach until she stumbled over some nets, but there wasn’t anyone coming after her. Several men were running aimlessly, waving machetes and guns ’
Maybe these were the same ragged men he had seen on the bow of the patrol boat the first time?
A fisherman was chased by two of the ragged men onto the beach. He darted between the beached boats then into the sea. A man with a feather in his hat – and this time Pat knew him – was jogging through the village with a flaming torch, pushing it against houses, carts, nets, anything he came near. The flickering light from the torch distorted the man’s face, but the feather was distinctive, a long bent peacock feather – the surly taxi-driver from the airfield. There were no uniforms – no police, no army soldiers, navy seamen – in the burning village, only shouting men with weapons, and running people.
Col was keeping the motor alive, but only just. It was shuddering as the dinghy pushed slow ripples across the flat water.
Ali stood up, rocking the boat. ‘What are they doing?’
Suddenly a long-haired woman rushed out from a house that the taxi-driver was trying to burn, swinging a broom at his head.
‘Ibu!’ Ali cried.
The taxi-driver stumbled backwards, waving his torch erratically. For a moment Ali’s mother was in charge, driving him down the dirt track then turning back to beat the flames on the roof. But a ragged man ran round a corner of the house. She hesitated, threw the broom at the man and ran into the burning village.
‘Go! Go!’ Ali hissed in desperation.
Col jerked his head up, looking at Ali and then at Pat, with hunted eyes. ‘I don’t think –’
Ali dived from the dinghy.
‘Ali!’ Col and Pat shouted together.
He ignored them, swimming towards the beach, as if the patrol boat was not in his way.
Col bit his lip. ‘Don’t shout again.’ He watched the patrol boat for movement, but nobody seemed to have heard the yell.
Ali thrashed like a torpedo at the boat for a tense few minutes, then he turned away from its bow and disappeared in the dark.
‘Oh God, Sorrento,’ Col whispered. He swung the dinghy into the open water.
Pat watched the burning village without looking at Col. He wanted to yell at him, why didn’t you go in? Why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t we chase him? Why ’
But he didn’t shout the words because he knew the answers.
Col wanted to go in, to go right under the bow of the patrol boat, to go to that beach and the machete-men. You saw it in his eyes just back there. He didn’t go because you were there. Because you jumped into the dinghy. He had no choice at all.
Pat shifted his eyes to Col’s rigid face. ‘What is Sorrento?’ he said.
Col looked at him and blinked. ‘Sorrento?’ For a moment he seemed to have forgotten a memory. He frowned, his lips chasing a word. Then his eyes steadied.
‘Sorrento is a beach town in Victoria. Very nice place. But ’ Matt had his thing about keeping his secret and I have mine.’
‘Oh.’
Col looked at Pat for a moment. ‘It was a long while ago. Was a bit older than you, then. It was night, late night. I’d gone off with a mate, chasing moon surf, lovely night. We finished, I left my board in the mate’s flat and I was walking home. Then a kid ran into me on a corner. A small kid with spider-legs and frightened eyes. I grabbed his shoulders to steady him and he said, “Please ’” Then he looked back. There was a bunch of kids – maybe five – hammering up to us. He swung around so I was between him and the running kids.
‘And I said: “Hey, I’m not getting into this!”
‘Then the kid broke away, running across the road and turned at a corner. The bunch passed me, shouting as they ran after him. I watched them lurch across the road and swing around the corner. I didn’t stop them, I didn’t yell at them, I didn’t go after them, I didn’t even phone the cops. I did nothing.’
Pat looked at Col and waited.
‘Yeah, well ’ Next morning that kid was found on the beach. Dead. Beaten. I never found out why it happened. I don’t know whether the kids were ever caught. But it really didn’t matter. I could have stopped it. And that has to stay with me all my life.’
28 / choice
They could see Matt at the bow of the Tub for a long time as the dinghy crawled across the grey sea. He was as unmoving as the drums.
‘He looks worried,’ Col said.
Pat hunched. Now it starts. Well, get on with it. He took a short breath. ‘I don’t see why. I left a note.’
‘A note?’
Now he throws you over the side. ‘Yeah.’
‘I thought you spoke with Matt.’
‘He was asleep. I didn’t wake him.’
Col pressed his lips together, and that was it.
But Matt waved the note at Col as the dinghy approached. ‘Was that your idea, Col?’
‘A misunderstanding,’ Col grunted as he slid the dinghy against the Tub.
Matt arched an eyebrow as he looked at their faces. ‘Well you delivered Ali, no troubles?’
‘It’s bad in the village,’ Col said quietly. ‘The General was there with his patrol boat.’
‘Oh.’ Then Matt shrugged. ‘But you weren’t shot at?’
‘No. Not us ’’
Matt waved Col away. ‘Tell me later. I’m going back to bed.’
That’s all? Hey, he didn’t kill you, Pat thought. But there’s more, isn’t there? ‘Um, I gave Ali the Malacca token.’
Matt swung around. ‘What?’
‘It was his grandfather’s. It was a family lucky charm. I thought he needed it more than we did.’
Matt looked at Col and began to smile. ‘That’s fine, Pat. Like you said, Ali needs it. We don’t need it anymore.’
He walked towards the cabin.
Pat woke to a soft creaking of timber and a distant murmur. A grey light washed the cabin, there were no sun shafts that welcomed him in the early morning but he could see everything clearly. He dressed slowly as his memories of the long night tumbled past.
He climbed out of the cabin into a grey world. The grey shimmering metal sheet of the sea merged with the grey clouded sky and there was no sign of the island. As if there had never been a mountain with a leaping tiger, or a town or a burning village. Or even Ali.
Matt and Col were squatting on a couple of tanks, talking low.
Col was shaking his head. ‘– too inexperienced for a start. And that note dodge ’ you’d have to keep an eye on him down there all the time just in case he pulls another of his clever tricks.’
Pat dipped his head.
Matt looked up. ‘Pat.’
Col nodded at him, his face grim.
‘Come over.’ Matt smiled at him as he beckoned. ‘Lovely weather, hey?’
Pat avoided Col’s eyes. ‘I’m lost. Where is everything?’
‘Drizzle, sea mist,’ Col said. ‘We will get wet eventually.’
‘Either way.’ Matt said lightly.
Col grimaced. ‘Matt wants to take you
down into the deep water. I don’t.’
Pat nodded, then slowly raised his head. ‘You’ve found it!’
‘There’s something down there,’ Col said cautiously.
‘It is there!’ Matt leaned forward. ‘Look Pat, I may be wrong about this. Col may be right and Beth will skin me when she finds out. I wouldn’t have thought of it before, but you are a bit of a shark down there. And you’ve been solo at night and saving Ali. It all counts.’
‘But it’s dangerous in the deep.’ Col said.
‘You took him into a war, for Christ’s sake!’ Matt said.
Col pressed his lips together.
‘That was my fault,’ Pat mumbled.
‘Yeah,’ Matt said. ‘And why did you do it?’
‘I wanted –’
‘You wanted to see Ali home – especially after rescuing him. You can’t let go, I know. And I should have taken Ali home myself. He’s a mate, and I will have to fix it with him.’
‘You were tired.’
‘Groggy is the word.’
‘Do you know what it’s like in the deep, Pat?’ Col said. ‘It is bloody cold, and worse, you don’t think well with the nitrogen thundering round your blood. It’s like you’ve drunk a dozen cans of beer. You saw Matt on the deck and that was afterwards and out of the water.’
Matt nodded. ‘We won’t be long this time, but yes, it’s going to be tough. But we may be about to find the world’s greatest treasure ship and I thought you’d like to be in at the moment. Well, what d’you think?’
Pat looked at Col and his pressed lips. He doesn’t want you down there, because of the danger and because he doesn’t trust you anymore. It’s different with Matt. He thinks you’re okay and he wants you to be there with him. Like we were mates.
He took a breath. ‘Let’s go.’
Matt grinned. ‘Dad and Son, treasure hunters.’
29 / the wreck
Pat sprawled across the eight tanks in the dinghy – only a single tank remained in the Tub. Col untied the painter and stepped down into the dinghy as Matt pulled the long rope, and the dinghy slid silently from the Tub towards the yellow buoy. Besides being connected to the Tub, the buoy was held with a grapnel on the other side of the chasm, and was a third line. This line – not more than an ocean fishing line – dropped into the black hole, maybe leading to an ancient ship. Maybe.
Treasure Hunters Page 13
