The sea of crushed emeralds around Darwin made the city and its environs appear cool and seductive from the air after the four-hour trip across much of Australia’s flat semi-desert, which covered two-thirds of the continent.
Cardinal had been driven by the desire for justice. Rhonda had supported him. He was aware that her motives were professional, and that there were dangers in becoming a pawn in her plans for an expose. He had seen her ambition, yet he was grateful for her support. She had made him see that if he did not follow up now his guilt and anger would never leave him.
Rhonda had arranged a meeting with Burra and had helped him concoct a suitable cover for trying to meet Bull Richardson. She had used a similar scheme before.
Cardinal had rung a close friend in New York who ran an investment company and cajoled him into letting Cardinal claim he was a representative of the company doing research for big US corporate clients. Initial calls to Richardson’s Darwin base and his property in Arnhem Land had failed to get a response.
The instant Cardinal stepped out of the plane at Darwin airport, he was aware of how deceptive his vision of a cool paradise had been from the air. He was struck by dripping humidity and a temperature that was melting the edges of the tarmac. More than ever he appreciated his ‘Bogart’ hat. He collected his luggage and bustled out of the airport lounge to find a taxi. The lethargy of the locals, who glided about like slugs, was bemusing.
He approached a taxi. The driver indicated the one behind. Cardinal began to get in, but he too jerked his thumb and grunted what sounded like ‘Yabba’. Cardinal worked out that this translated as ‘the Abo’. He became frustrated by the end of the line where there was a taxi with all its windows down. It was empty. He marched to another driver and asked if he could take him to the Casino Hotel.
‘Like to help you, mate,’ the hirsute man said as he rolled a cigarette, ‘but I’ve been booked.’
Cardinal turned again to the last taxi. An Aborigine had appeared in the driver’s seat. Cardinal approached him and repeated his request. He struggled into the backseat, and the driver drove off into the city.
Turn-of-the-century churches, pubs and homes for derelicts were giving way to casinos, hotels and spotless arcades. Darwin was being rapidly transformed and sanitised for the tourist trade. Once known as the Gateway to China, the city had become the Japanese window to the outback. Its population had doubled in a decade, but it was still just one hundred thousand – only a speck in the surrounding Asian landscape where two and a half billion people lived.
He watched the driver’s face in the rear-vision mirror. Cardinal had never seen an Aborigine before. The man would have been no older than twenty-five, but his deep-sunken eyes reflected ten thousand years. Cardinal remembered stories about local blacks. They had left the city days before the Japanese had bombed it in World War II. This kind of evacuation had been repeated just before Cyclone Tracy flattened Darwin in 1974. They had warned the whites about both dangers and had been laughed at.
Cardinal paid the driver when they reached the gaudy green awning of the twenty-storey Casino Hotel. The taxi crawled off as if the rest of the day was going to wait for it. The driver had neither looked at his passenger nor said one word.
Cardinal was relieved to enter the air-conditioned lobby. He checked in at the same time as a bus load of Chinese oil industry people, all over-dressed in lightweight wool suits.
The hotel pool beyond the lobby looked tempting, and Cardinal was considering a swim there until he reached his room on the eighteenth floor. He could see the Arafura Sea just two hundred metres away; this was far more enticing. He changed into shorts, headed for the beach.
The sand scorched his feet through his sneakers as he hurried to the water’s edge. He stripped to his swimming trunks, and noticed that there was not a soul in sight along the vast strip of sand. He could not wait to drench himself in the cool surf and only hesitated to look for shadows of sharks, which he had been told were thick around Darwin.
He was about to plunge in when he heard yelling. He turned to see the taxi driver sprinting towards him waving a stick. Cardinal stood perplexed as the man rushed in up to his thighs and launched the stick at an underwater target. The Aborigine retrieved the stick and held it aloft. On it was impaled a small octopus-like creature that he flicked on the sand. Cardinal squinted at the water in front of him and could see countless others. The man beckoned him out. Cardinal didn’t need a second invitation.
‘One sting,’ the man said, ‘and you’re paralysed in seconds.’ He turned up several suckers. ‘In minutes you’re dead.’ He stabbed it once more and hurled it into the water. Cardinal watched it sink in slow motion.
‘Man-O-Wars,’ the Aborigine added. ‘Nobody swims here for months. They should have told you at the hotel, even if you went out the rear exit.’
Cardinal felt foolish. He thanked the man who turned to go.
‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘Burra will see you.’
Rhonda finished pitching to her producer, bespectacled, forty-year-old Jenny Dunstan, for an Indonesian trip and relaxed in the chair to let the make-up girl ply her trade. Rhonda was about to anchor a weekly live TV programme on current affairs.
‘It’s too hot,’ Jenny said, playing with the fringe of her short-cropped hair. ‘With that ‘D’ notice tagging it, we would never get it to air.’
Rhonda was annoyed. ‘Rubbish!’ she said. ‘I’m sure I can get Cardinal to appear!’
‘What would you ask him?’
‘I would get him to tell it how it is. He would say he arrived to identify his murdered son. We wouldn’t say where he was murdered. Then we would say that Harry Cardinal worked at Lucas Heights and that a work companion of his disappeared in a hurry. We would name her and explain what her field had been.’
‘Then you’re violating that government notice, Rhonda! Don’t you understand? We can be in a lot of trouble for that! No matter what the merits of our thinking it’s in the public interest!’
‘Even if we explain what Hartina’s work was? I thought the ‘D’ was just to cover the murder.’
‘Look! We could get you to put this Yank in front of the camera and bleed his heart out. It would be marvellous stuff. We could get you to explain what Hartina was doing at Lucas Heights. Then our lawyers would move in. They would get the management to consult the government. That would end it. I know. I’ve been there before.’
Rhonda had been jerking her head around so much that the make-up girl complained.
An anxious director poked his head in the door. ‘Christ, Rhonda! You ready?’ he hissed. ‘All your guests, including Her Majesty’s First Minister, are seated, but we haven’t got our host and anchor. You’ve got two minutes!’
Rhonda waved a hand as the director disappeared. ‘You win, Jenny,’ she said, ‘but I still want a trip to Jakarta this week.’
‘It’ll have to be a damned good reason.’
‘Give me one.’
‘I could only justify it if you could . . . I don’t know, get into see . . . well, it would have to be big.’
‘Like an interview with President Utun.’
‘Yeah. Afraid they wouldn’t buy anything else upstairs.’
Rhonda jumped out of the chair with her make-up not quite finished. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she called, again taking off the director’s hiss. She made a dash for the studio.
Cardinal rang Richardson’s Darwin business number and delivered his lie again about being a US investment adviser. This time a male receptionist took details and said they would be in touch. Cardinal had the feeling his story would be checked.
He swam backstroke and freestyle in the hotel pool -it was his favourite exercise — and relaxed further with a Japanese massage. He took a salad lunch and returned to his room to find there had been calls from New York and Richardson. Cardinal returned the New York call first and was told by his consultant friend that Richardson’s people had gone to the trouble of finding his private number. They had asked questions about Cardinal.
‘They started selling mining investment opportunities on the phone!’ Cardinal’s friend told him.
He rang Richardson’s number and was surprised to get through to him.
‘I’m flying a couple of German geologists around this afternoon,’ Richardson said. ‘Be at the airport in an hour.’
Before Cardinal could reply he had hung up.
Cardinal found Digex’s hangar where the company’s private jets, light planes and helicopters were housed. He introduced himself to Richardson, who asked him to climb into a two-engine Cessna. Inside were the two geologists who were apprehensive about Richardson piloting the plane. With a minimum of words they were soon speeding along the runway and airborne.
A strong wind bounced the light plane as it climbed to eight hundred metres above the Arnhem Highway, which led to the Aboriginal reserve and the Digex Ginga mine. A snake of stationary trucks could be seen parked at the start of the highway.
‘They’re mine,’ Richardson said, glancing at Cardinal.
‘When do they roll?’ one of the geologists – called Herman – asked. He was tall and muscular, with a crew-cut that contrasted oddly with an unkempt dark beard. It could not hide an out-sized jaw.
‘Tomorrow,’ Richardson said. ‘They’re going to deliver the biggest drill you ever saw to my mine. They’ll return loaded with super-yellowcake.’ The Germans laughed.
‘I’m fair dinkum!’ Richardson said. ‘Normal yellowcake refers to uranium ore that has been milled once at a mine. It looks like yellow sand. But we use a special process to concentrate it. It feels more sticky, although it is still like gold grain. That’s why I have buyers lined up all around the world. We have the best high-grade uranium you can buy.’
On the horizon was a flat, washed patchwork of brown and yellow, broken by the Wildman and West Alligator rivers.
A half-hour later they could make out a formidable brown and purple rock escarpment that lurched from the vast plain.
‘Let’s look at Brockman,’ Richardson said as he accelerated south-west. Minutes later a solitary proud massif loomed beyond the cloud.
‘A terrific ore-body is under that,’ he shouted above the engine. ‘We’re going to get at it.’
Close to the mountain top, he dipped a wing. ‘The Abos believe those boulders are sacred,’ he said sarcastically. ‘They’re green ant eggs according to their Dreamtime legend.’
The plane swooped low across the mountain face and over the six metre-high rocks.
‘The story, gentlemen,’ Richardson continued, ‘is that if anyone goes near the place, the rocks turn into monsters and destroy everything.’
‘It’s a Bad Dreaming area isn’t it?’ Hans, the other geologist commented. Richardson nodded.
‘All the Bad Dreaming places just happen to be where the biggest uranium-ore bodies have been located,’ he said, ‘which means we have a little trouble from time to time.’
‘Have you ever been stopped from a venture by the Aborigines?’ Cardinal asked.
‘No,’ Richarson said. ‘At the moment the local Aborigines say we can’t drill under Brockman. But you must understand them. They’re not dumb natives. No, sir! They make threats. We make an offer for increased royalties to each member of the tribe, along with a little cream for the elders.’
‘Cream?’ Cardinal asked.
‘You’ll notice some of them have nice cars, nice homes in Darwin . . .’
The three passengers held on as Richardson swooped low over the boulders once more.
‘Have you much radioactivity?’ Hans asked.
‘No,’ Richardson replied.
‘Gabon has an almost identical geological formation to this area,’ Hans continued undaunted. ‘I wondered if you ever had natural chain reactions?’
Richardson shook his head, and Cardinal asked what he was talking about.
‘Natural chain reactions can cause nuclear explosions,’ the geologist explained.
‘A natural bomb?’ Cardinal asked, incredulously.
‘Equivalent to the one dropped on Hiroshima,’ Herman remarked. ‘It occurred in the early 1960s.’
They were flying over Richardson’s sprawling mining town dominated by a gaping open-cut hole with an inwardly spiralling staircase. Near it were mills and tailing dams, which held the mine wastes after the uranium ore had been extracted and milled. The Aborigines claimed that seepage of radioactive waste from them had begun to destroy streams and land.
Hans asked if they could see Rum Jungle. Inside twenty minutes they were circling over a group of abandoned buildings – the remnants of a once-thriving mining town.
‘Nothing grows there, I am told,’ Herman said. ‘The area was so polluted in the 1950s that nothing could live there in streams or on the land for 10,000 years at least.’
‘We know how to handle waste now,’ Richardson said. ‘We will be able to restore our mine area.’ He did not see Hans shake his head and wink at Cardinal.
They flew back towards Darwin, but Richardson detoured to his mine again and skimmed low over a long red building. He dipped his wings. A few men in front of the building waved.
‘In there,’ Richardson said, ‘is the greatest single stockpile of high-grade uranium on earth. Enough to make a hell of a lot of bombs!’
As they approached Darwin, Cardinal wondered how he should tackle Richardson about his recent visitors.
‘Are the Indonesians customers of yours?’ he asked.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I read about their visit here.’
‘They want me to get involved in joint oil exploration on our two countries’ boundaries,’ he said. ‘I’m not that interested, but my wife arranged it.’ He glanced at Cardinal. ‘She’s Javanese.’
Cardinal was in two minds about asking anything else.
Richardson turned his attention to the geologists and spoke to them about his plans for new mines.
‘Were there any women in the Indonesian delegation?’ Cardinal asked after a pause.
Richardson was disturbed by the query. ‘What do you want to know that for?’
‘A newspaper report suggested that an Indonesian scientist may have been abducted when the delegation was in Sydney.’
Richardson was distracted as they got the all-clear for a landing at Darwin. He worked hard at the controls and made a poor approach. The undercarriage dipped as they crossed a road close to traffic beneath them. The Cessna skidded in unnervingly.
After they had taxied to a stop, the geologists thanked Richardson and left.
Richardson took Cardinal aside. ‘Where did you read that report?’
‘One of the Sydney papers.’
Richardson looked directly at him. ‘I’ll have to ask my wife if there was a woman in the entourage,’ he said. ‘She entertained them.’
They began to walk towards the terminal building.
‘I still want to know why you would be interested.’
‘My son worked with her,’ he said, staring at Richardson.
‘Is this really why you’re here?’
‘Let’s just say it coincided with my other interests,’ Cardinal said, reaching out a hand. ‘I’ll be in touch, just in case your wife remembers anything.’
The eight Indonesian paratroopers floated down like leaves. They had been ejected by static line from a CI30 Hercules. A hidden group of onlookers, including Rhonda, used binoculars to watch the activities of the country’s strike force – Kopasanda – at a secret airbase near Ujung Pandang on Sulawesi Island north-east of Java. A mock hijack was in progress. The target was a plane loaded with forty-four gallon drums filled with sandrock.
Rhonda had arrived in Bali after an eight-hour overnight flight from Melbourne, which was going through an early October cold snap. The moment she stepped from the plane’s cabin at Denpasar airport she was suffocated by the cloying humidity. The pungent smell of cloves was distinctly familiar from her tour of duty as a correspondent in Indonesia two years earlier.
As the airport bus approached the terminal, she could see hundreds of locals jostling behind barriers. They were eager to offer the new arrivals baskets, trinkets and clothes, or rides in taxis and bembos. It made Rhonda claustrophobic. She had lived as a child in the Victorian countryside, and even when she left it permanently at seventeen for study in Melbourne, she was never entirely comfortable with city crowds. But Indonesia’s population was another dimension.
She was met by Peter Perdonny, a diminutive Balinese with strong blood ties to the small island of Ambon near West Irian where his mother had been born. He had large intense eyes, a splayed nose and a huge mouth.
Perdonny ran an Australian exploration group operating in the seas around the eastern part of the country’s thirteen thousand island chain. He also belonged to a banned political party.
He had been preparing to spy on the special military activity at Sulawesi and had suggested she join him. Rhonda did not hesitate. He had been a useful source when she was last in Indonesia, and she wanted to see if he could help her with Van der Holland.
From Ujung Pandang, they had been escorted by two armed bodyguards in a Mercedes along a narrow track deep into the dense jungle. Creeping vines, acting like tripwire, impeded the vehicle, and twice the bodyguards had to use machetes to hack it free. The undergrowth’s acrid smell irritated Rhonda and the damp heat forced her to take shallow, forced breaths.
Perdonny wanted to watch the early afternoon military exercises from a hill-top above the training area on an abandoned airfield.
He grinned reassuringly as he handed Rhonda binoculars. She panned away from the paratroopers. On the flat range to her left she could see a group being instructed on the General Purpose Machine Gun, the M60, and Sterling sub-machine guns, which were fitted with silencers.
Rhonda flinched as the staccato sounds of the weapons echoed across the field. Suddenly US Sea Eagle military choppers with their frightening gun mounts emerged from behind a hill and flew over the hill-top.
‘Christ!’ Rhonda hissed, ‘are they looking for us?’
Perdonny shook his head. ‘They’re going to make hot extractions.’
The choppers sent dust flying as they hovered and lowered ropes. Fully kitted armed paratroopers dashed for the ropes, harnessed themselves, and in seconds were hoisted away.
Perdonny guided Rhonda to a point where they could see a cliff-face opposite them about a hundred metres away. Paratroopers were diving down the cliff using fast, controlled, roping movements. But some were less in control than others. They moved too quickly and had to brake hard. This caused them to bash against rocks. Others were over-cautious and finished up suspended thirty metres down and going nowhere. Instructors could be heard yelling abuse at them as they hung twisting and struggling.
Rhonda focused on barracks at the far side of the field, where a squad of fifty was being given unarmed combat lessons.
‘Only half of them are Indonesians,’ Perdonny whispered in her ear. She looked at some of the faces.
‘What are they, Vietnamese?’ she asked.
‘Kampuchean,’ Perdonny replied.
Rhonda lowered the binoculars.
‘Any significance?’
Perdonny was about to answer when their two guards dropped down beside them and hissed warnings. They pointed down the other side of the hill. An armed convoy could be seen weaving its way towards them. Perdonny ordered one of the guards to roll his vehicle well off the road.
‘We have little time,’ he whispered, ‘but I wanted you to see something else.’ He pointed to the centre of the field. Rhonda lifted the binoculars again.
‘The figure in the Mao tunic,’ Perdonny said.
Rhonda zeroed in on him. He was rocking forward on his toes as a military instructor spoke animatedly to him. He grinned to reveal a set of protruding and crooked teeth. The man appeared to be in his mid-fifties. He had black hair brushed back and cut short around the ears, emphasising the saucer-shape of his face, and a flat nose.
‘Who is . . .?’ Rhonda began, but was pushed flat by Perdonny. He put a hand over her mouth. She twisted her head enough to see shadows stalking only twenty metres away and very close to the Mercedes, which was hidden behind bushes. Perdonny eased his hand away. Rhonda felt her heart pound. The guards aimed rifles at the shadows as they came closer. Her eyes widened as Perdonny lifted his Magnum with both hands to eye level. Two shadows multiplied into four, then eight. Rhonda felt they were done for as the shadows took human form.
The soldiers were part of an advance party for the convoy. They made their way to within ten metres. Rhonda was too frightened to take a breath. Her eyes bulged as Perdonny moved the gun in a slow arc trained on one of the soldiers. Two of them stopped. One spoke and another stifled a high-pitched laugh. Rhonda felt dizzy. She wanted to be ill. Then gradually the soldiers moved on.
After five minutes, Perdonny signalled his guards to retreat into the jungle until the convoy had passed. In half an hour they were driving back down the track to Unjung Pandang. The road seemed bumpier on the return ride, and Rhonda fought off nausea.
‘You were very brave,’ Perdonny said. ‘We’re safe now.’
‘For a moment I thought it was time for a technicolour yawn.’
Perdonny looked blank. Rhonda went white and managed a wan smile as she wound down a window. Moments later she vomited.
Burra’s eyes stayed on his son’s face as several male relatives formed a human plateau by crouching on hands and knees. The men danced and chanted in a circle around a nightfire as the boy of fifteen was laid across the backs of his relatives. An uncle stepped from the shadows and knelt beside the boy. He slid his hand under the boy’s penis. An Aboriginal surgeon marched forward and took his place next to the uncle. He inspected the penis, which he had circumcised two weeks earlier. Satisfied that the scar tissue had healed sufficiently, he examined four stone knives, which he rested on the boy’s stomach. His choice was vital. One slip and the boy could bleed to death. If this happened, Burra would have the right to kill the surgeon.
Burra was more concerned with his son’s reaction. He was not to show fear in this last act in his transition to manhood. A flinch or even a whimper and he would be speared to death.
The surgeon bent forward in flickering fire light. The boy braced himself as the knife was placed near the tip of the penis. When their eyes met, the surgeon made two swift movements as the knife was inserted and then run to the scrotum. Burra winced. He had not taken his eyes off his son’s face. The boy’s tight-set jaw jutted hard, but there was not a movement or sound from him.
He was led to the fire where he sat, trancelike, blood streaming down his thighs. The dancing Aborigines quickened their step, and the chant became louder. Even if he bled to death now, he would have achieved manhood. If he lived, nothing would frighten him again. Yet in the next few hours he still had to face the first test of his newly acquired maturity — a long solo trek to his Arnhem Land home.
Burra broke away from the dancing to meet Cardinal who had been driven deep into the bush east of Darwin to witness the ritual, at Burra’s invitation.
‘What did you think?’
‘I thought such things had been banned,’ Cardinal replied.
‘I’ve restored this kind of ceremony for the sake of the tribe. It’s one of perhaps a hundred rituals I have re-introduced into our culture, so our traditions don’t die.’
‘Let’s hope your son doesn’t,’ Cardinal snapped.
‘He’ll make it,’ Burra said, glancing at his son. ‘I take it you think it is primitive?’
Cardinal didn’t reply.
‘The cut was perfect.’
‘What about infection?’
Burra shook his head. ‘If it’s meant to be, he’ll die!’
Cardinal could not hide his disgust but did not wish to argue with the man Rhonda had said was his most important contact in the north.
‘You had better leave,’ Burra said. He turned to the driver. Topfist. See Mr Cardinal back to his hotel.’
Cardinal went to shake hands with Burra, but he walked away.
The hooded guards stood motionless in the tropical downpour. Behind them, the flat, elongated roof of the Bandung nuclear reactor could just be seen through the rain’s grey mist. They were positioned at twenty-five metre intervals around the electronically protected perimeter wall.
The two-hour drenching had flooded Bandung’s boulevards and canals and seemed to have washed away the musty, spicey smells. In their place was a sickly sweetness, like freshly cut sugar-cane. The palms along the street were alive with small red and green galahs. In the grass along the front of the reactor, innumerable grey frogs were leaping in puddles.
Rhonda scribbled notes in the taxi as it cruised past the reactor’s main entrance, which was blocked by a tank.
The driver became agitated. ‘No, please! No please!’ he implored. He was mindful of the armalite rifles slung over the guards’ shoulders.
‘Is it always like this?’ Rhonda asked.
‘No. For a week maybe,’ the driver replied with a nervous glance at her notepad.
Bandung, which was two hundred and fifty kilometres south-east of Jakarta, was the most likely stationing for Van der Holland. The country had six reactors, and this was the best equipped, according to Perdonny. Just as importantly, her mother, Tien, a successful businesswoman, lived in the mountains outside the city. Rhonda had flown there on the pretext of interviewing her about her increasing exports of aluminium to Australia.
The torrent lifted and disappeared like a stage curtain, leaving a clear orange sky against which the mountains looked detached and black. The taxi wound its way higher, and Rhonda could see the pure white columns of steam rising from the crater of Mount Gulunggang. Its slopes were studded with bristles of burnt tree-trunks and layered with mud fanning out like grey cake icing.
Rhonda took some photos. This pleased the driver who appeared to be in awe of the mountain.
The road got narrower as they gained altitude, and the driver, one of Perdonny’s men, knew the dirt track turn-off to the Van der Holland home. It was covered by a green archway of trees that allowed a splintered filter of sunlight after the sudden rains.
They arrived at ornate gates to a house set spectacularly in the side of a mountain. A huge cavity had been blasted so that about a third of the three-level home fitted in snugly; the rest protruded. It was supported by one vertical concrete pylon and another that wedged horizontally into the mountain face. Rhonda got out and strode to an intercom and announced herself. She waited near the gate and soon saw a guard walking along a drive with a submachine gun in front of him. Rhonda could see other guards on a lawn behind him and advancing towards the high, spiked fence. Their weapons made her nervous. She felt the urge to get back in the taxi but was afraid that any movement might make the guards react. As they came closer, she saw that they were dressed in black like the special forces she had seen training at Ujung Pandang. She was intrigued to know why a private home should be guarded by Utun’s own Kopasanda commandos. The gate began to open inward. The guard stopped ten metres from it and barked something in Indonesian at the taxi driver. He reversed his vehicle forty metres.
‘Interview with Tien Van der Holland,’ Rhonda said feebly. She repeated herself. The guard eyed her with a mixture of suspicion and contempt. He stared at her briefcase and waved his gun at it. Rhonda began to hand it to him.
‘Open,’ he said.
She obeyed.
He poked at the contents with the tip of his weapon and then pointed towards the front entrance.
He followed her along the drive. The gates clanged behind them.
Rhonda flinched and turned around.
The guard motioned her on.
Rhonda felt a prickling sensation down her spine as she looked up at the glass-fronted construction on three levels, the highest of which protruded as a semi-circular balcony. A lift, which ran up the side of the mountain, was the only access to the house.
The guard ordered her to raise her arms and ran his hands all over her. Satisfied, he opened the door to the lift and pushed the button. He stayed where he was and watched her go up.
Rhonda, never one for heights, caught her breath as the lift ascended slowly. It stopped with a bump at a steel door.
No one could break into this place, she thought as she heard three bolts being slid free.
A wizened Javanese servant greeted her with a silent nod. He ushered her to a sweeping staircase to the third level. He left her in a lounge room leading to a glassed-in balcony and a clear view of Mount Gulunggang.
Rhonda moved around the room examining artifacts, many of which were made of aluminium. There was a wall clock with its inside mechanism exposed. A mesmerising contraption made up of miniature girders, springs and ballbearings sat on a hexagonal aluminium table. These and paintings of planets and stars gave the white room a feeling of coolness. Rhonda sat on a sofa on the balcony admiring the view.
‘Miss Mills,’ a soft voice said. She turned to see a tall, fine-boned and handsome woman in her late fifties. Her black hair was sprinkled with grey and she wore a short batik dress. The elegance of her bearing made it look like haute couture.
They shook hands, and Rhonda felt that her face reflected as much Chinese as Javanese ancestry. Rhonda accepted an offer of coffee.
‘I’m here for the Australian-Indonesian trade conference in Jakarta,’ Rhonda began. ‘It begins next week. I was hoping you might consider a TV interview . . .’
Tien listened expressionless until some steaming Javanese coffee was placed in front of them. She picked up a cup and walked to the door of the balcony.
‘I hope you like our volcano,’ Tien said. Her English was smooth.
‘Magnificent,’ Rhonda said. ‘Is it still very active?’
Tien nodded. ‘It is predicted it will destroy even this home one day.’ She smiled fleetingly.
‘One day I may be forced to move. My husband blasted the rock into which he built this home. I had planned to die here. But with his recent death . . .’ She bowed her head. ‘I have lost my love for the place. It is empty without him.’
Rhonda took out her tape recorder and asked questions about Tien’s aluminium business and her husband’s oil concern, and then, when she was opening up more, said, ‘General Utun seems under great pressure these days. He seems to be making desperate moves. Do you feel your organisation could be threatened?’
Tien glanced at the tape recorder.
‘Turn it off,’ she ordered. Rhonda obeyed at once.
‘If that is the style of question you intend to pose in an interview, it will not happen,’ Tien said.
‘I would be interested to hear your views,’ Rhonda said, ‘off the record.’
‘It’s impossible to predict our short or long-term future,’ Tien began, ‘except that survival is a tradition in my family. The Dutch once wanted to take over my family’s business when it began to thrive, but my husband married me and prevented it. During the war, when the Japanese wanted to take control of my husband’s oil interests, my family’s connections thwarted them. My husband was imprisoned. Our factories were burnt down. But we got him out of prison and built again.’
‘How are your family’s relations with Utun?’
Tien looked startled. ‘There was enmity between my husband and Utun. My husband opposed his rise to power. Retribution has been apparent, and steady.’
‘How did your husband die?’
‘The pressures crushed him,’ Tien said. ‘The government put him under stress. His heart gave way . . .’
‘How was he put under stress? How was he pressured?’
‘Utun threatened to nationalise our businesses.’
There was no turning back. Tien seemed about to end the conversation.
‘Is that why your daughter returned to Indonesia?’ Rhonda asked.
‘I have no more time,’ Tien said, standing.
‘Did she come back to Bandung to help you?’ Rhonda said, without budging from the sofa, ‘or was she forced?’
Tien clapped her hands. Servants appeared.
‘Has Utun ordered her back . . .’ Rhonda began.
Tien gave orders to a servant, and a guard was summoned.
‘Is your daughter working on a laser project for Utun?’
‘You’ll have to leave,’ Tien said as she opened the door.
A servant led Rhonda down stairs to the lift, and Tien disappeared. As she went down, Rhonda could see the commando waiting for her.
He was looking down at the faceless body in a shallow grave. It was squatting and blood was dripping on the earth from his thighs. The head looked up and spoke to him. ‘It’s not me,’ it repeated in his son’s voice. Cardinal was bedevilled. Was he speaking with Harry or Burra’s son?
Cardinal awoke and it took him many minutes to accept that he had been asleep, so vivid were the images that tormented him. He had been sweating. He rolled over and switched on a light. It was five. He tried to sleep again. When this was impossible, he wandered down to the hotel pool for a twenty-minute swim, which included an exhausting burst of butterfly. He returned to his room just in time to catch the phone. It was Topfist.
‘Burra wants you to meet someone who may help you,’ he said. Cardinal was surprised. He thought the heated discussion a few hours earlier had thwarted his chances of getting help from the Bididgee leader. ‘He wants to drive you to Cahill’s Crossing.’
‘When?’
‘He’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.’
Thirty-six truck and juggernaut engines coughed to a start as O’Laughlin finished addressing the convoy over a loud-hailer. In the half light, Cardinal and Burra could see the drilling rig, parts of which towered higher than a house.
Burra had taken him on a short detour to check on the departure of the convoy for the Aboriginal reserve. They parked in an all-night roadhouse and petrol station about a kilometre along the Stuart Highway heading east out of Darwin. The truck headlights went on and the convoy began to roll.
‘Twenty-five cops counting the chief,’ Burra said. ‘It’ll take them seven hours. We can do it in six. It’ll be slower than normal. I’m taking a caravan to attach to our home at the reserve.’
Cardinal thought he should clear the air one way or another before their journey began.
‘You asked me what I thought last night,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if it upset you. But I had to be honest.’
‘Rhonda Mills made a good documentary on me,’ Burra said coolly. ‘I owe her a favour. That’s why I’ll help.’
‘Did she tell you why I have come here?’
‘No,’ Burra said. ‘She just said you were interested in knowing about the Indonesian visit.’
He paused and added, ‘She tells me you’re an art dealer. I want to introduce you to a prospective client. You help him sell his paintings, he’ll help you.’
Burra turned his vehicle around and sped back to his apartment in an ugly block on the outskirts of Darwin. He attached his caravan to his ute and lay on his back to secure the pinion linking the two vehicles. Then he prepared the canvas flaps in the back of the ute. Later they would provide shade. As dawn settled over the north, the sun promised a boiling day.
Cardinal was put in the back with Burra’s mother-in-law, Judy. She was skeletal and wrinkled, and her hair was lank and grey. Judy’s eyes shone with intensity from a worn face. In the front seat next to Burra was his shy wife, Elaine, and their two children, three-year old Gabby and baby Nia, fourteen months. The boy, all eyes and teeth, was intrigued with Cardinal and insisted he sit in the back with him. Gabby pushed and prodded the stranger for several minutes, much to everyone’s amusement. Burra told Cardinal it was typical of Aboriginal children.
‘They are more alert and tactile than white kids,’ he said. ‘They learn everything about their environment far quicker. He could survive alone in the bush.’
Cardinal had doubts about this but could see the sharpness in the child’s eyes.
‘They also have better memories,’ Burra said. ‘Forty thousand years have taught us very young to remember landmarks in the bush, smells and certain signs to guide us. It has been necessary for survival.’
Cardinal gazed at the plains of dark green and yellow, a patchwork broken by clumps of paperbarks and pandanas. They had come sixty kilometres by seven-thirty in the morning; the heat was fierce. Flies were becoming an irritation, and Cardinal was becoming proficient at the Australian salute. He longed for the corked hat that Burra was wearing.
The flaps at the back of the ute were released; cool drinks from an ice box handed around.
‘See buffalo?’ Judy said to Cardinal with a nod towards the bush. It was the first time she had spoken in an hour. Cardinal squinted but couldn’t see any animals.
‘Keep your eyes on the horizon,’ Burra said. Minutes later Cardinal could make out a grazing herd close to the road. Judy spoke again, this time in her own language.
‘She says there will be a storm tonight,’ Burra said, and then had to swerve the ute and caravan to avoid two buffalo, which had strayed onto the road.
‘Useless bastards!’ Burra called after them as they hardly moved their massive frames.
A mob of kangaroos dared to pace the ute for a hundred metres or so, and then veered off into the bush. Cardinal had never seen one before, and he was fascinated. Burra slowed the ute, and this encouraged two of them to come closer to the vehicle. They bounded along beside them for about a kilometre.
‘They’re Big Reds,’ Burra told him.
‘They have to be more than six feet tall!’ Cardinal said, holding back a flap to get a better view. Their hop developed into a rhythm as strong back legs thrust them forward and their big tails acted as a counterweight to their bodies.
There’re a lot of them,’ Cardinal said.
‘There are about forty-five million. That’s about three for every human,’ Burra said, ‘which the government says is a plague.’
‘Do you hunt them?’
‘Only for food. Never for sport.’
‘Do you use a rifle?’
‘I have tried to get my people to avoid using bullets and use the traditional ways with spears and boomerang. But they can all afford rifles.’ Burra paused to glance at Cardinal. ‘Do you shoot?’
‘Not animals. Clay-pigeon.’
‘You good?’
‘I keep my eye in.’
The next landmark was the Arnhem Highway where they encountered dead kangaroo and buffalo, which had collided with roadtrains. Their rotting carcasses gave off a stench like open sewage, which lingered a kilometre past them. Burra spent some time speaking to Judy and Elaine.
‘Judy says you are searching for someone,’ Burra said, taking his eyes off the road for a few seconds. ‘She reckons you’re a hunter.’
Cardinal was surprised. If his manner registered this, it was running ahead of his conscious feelings. He was determined to do all he could to understand why his son had died.
Judy’s comments returned his thoughts to his mission. His eyes fixed on the horizon. It danced in the heat. Kangaroos and vehicles ahead seemed to vapourise in it. Cardinal’s mind filled with the images of the nightmare and the faceless corpse.
Cardinal was distracted by Gabby who wanted to go to the toilet, and baby Nia’s crying. Burra decided to stop at the next pub where they could buy drinks for the rest of the journey.
Just over the Adelaide River, they pulled into a pub named after it, where a sign said, ‘Last quality watering hole between here and the Alice.’
Although it was not yet ten, there were trucks and roadtrains parked outside. Burra told his family to use the toilets at the back.
‘You stay here,’ he told Cardinal.
‘Can’t I help?’ he said pulling out his wallet.
He thrust forty dollars into Burra’s hand.
‘Prefer you to stay here,’ Burra said ‘to look after the family.’
Cardinal frowned.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘This is redneck country,’ Burra said. He turned and disappeared into the main bar.
Cardinal stretched his legs. He decided to visit the toilet before the family returned. On the way back, he glanced into the bar. Burra was arguing with a barman. Several heavyweight drivers perched on stools were throwing abuse at the black. Cardinal hurried around to the pub’s front entrance. The drone of talk fell away as Cardinal entered, and the hum of three old-fashioned ceiling fans could be more easily heard. There was a smell of sweat from a dozen uncovered torsos. He moved close to Burra.
‘Everything okay?’ he asked.
‘Bastards won’t serve me,’ Burra said.
‘We need drinks,’ Cardinal said. ‘There’s still a way to go.’
Burra took him by the arm.
‘C’mon, mate,’ he said. ‘This is trouble.’
Cardinal went up to the bar and asked for cans of Swan beer and Solo. The barman’s eyes met his, but he went on serving others.
‘Tinnies,’ Burra whispered. ‘You ask for tinnies.’
‘Sorry, barman,’ Cardinal said, ‘I should have asked for tinnies.’ The barman still didn’t react. ‘Why is it that everyone truncates everything in this country?’ Cardinal asked. ‘Chocolates are choccies, Carnations are carnies, tins of beer are tinnies . . .’
‘It’s our way,’ the barman snapped.
‘When in Rome, eh?’ Cardinal said with a grin.
‘If you don’t like it, mate,’ the barman said, ‘you can leave with the boong.’
‘It’s not that I don’t like it,’ Cardinal said with equanimity, ‘but somehow “tinnies” doesn’t sound too macho. It sounds more effete. You know, the way faggots speak.’
‘Faggots?’ the barman said, wiping the bar vigorously, ‘you mean pooftas?’
‘Yup,’ Cardinal said, looking around the bar, ‘like I said, faggots.’
‘I wouldn’t go saying that in here, mate,’ the barman said.
‘I didn’t say anyone in here was a faggot,’ Cardinal said. ‘If you or anyone else in here is a faggot, then I apologise.’
The barman’s jaw twitched. He eyed Cardinal’s attire of denim shirt, jeans, sneakers and that stylish white hat. It was not Territory rig. Most of the men wore brown or khaki shorts and thick socks inside lace-up boots. Filthy sleeveless vests predominated.
‘I think you’d better leave,’ the barman said, his face going crimson. Cardinal repeated his order.
‘You a septic tank?’ one of the drinkers said. His behind swallowed the bar stool. He had short-cropped red hair and was the biggest man in the room. Other drinkers sniggered at his remark. Cardinal took it in good humour.
‘Yup, I’m a “Yank”,’ he said.
Burra had retreated to the door.
‘Which part?’ the barman asked.
‘New York.’
‘Never heard of it,’ the redhead said, sipping his beer. ‘Is it near Carnarvon?’
This brought grunts of appreciation from other drinkers.
Burra came over to Cardinal and suggested that they leave. ‘That’s Mad Mick Malone,’ he said quietly to Cardinal, ‘a mean bastard. Don’t rile him.’
‘Mick asked you a question,’ the barman said.
‘Have you heard of Paris?’ Cardinal said goodnaturedly. ‘I lived there for a couple of years.’
‘You mean Paris, New South Wales?’ Malone said.
Cardinal laughed. ‘I did see a film about that Paris.’ It was all about these cars that ate the townspeople.’ He looked straight at Malone. ‘Get a good feed in here, wouldn’t they?’
Malone snorted. Cardinal took the opportunity to repeat his drinks order. The barman scowled.
‘I’ll get your order when the Abo leaves,’ he snarled.
‘Let’s go,’ Burra said.
‘I’m buying,’ Cardinal said, tapping himself on the chest.
‘I don’t serve boongs and foreigners, Yank,’ the barman said.
Cardinal put some money on the counter.
‘You’re not welcome,’ the barman said, pointing at Burra. ‘You’re bloody trouble!’
Cardinal’s manner changed.
‘You’ll serve me,’ he said aggressively, ‘or I’ll get the police. They’ll be here with the convoy soon.’
The barman hesitated. He glanced at Malone. Then he selected Cardinal’s order from a refrigerator and banged the drinks on the counter. Cardinal collected the tins and bottles and picked up his change.
‘Like your lipstick,’ Malone said, pointing to Cardinal’s protective cream.
‘It’s the hot sun,’ Cardinal said, resuming his act of equanimity. ‘I don’t like getting a lobster face.’ He paused to look at Malone. ‘And I really hate rednecks.’
The bar fell silent.
‘See you guys,’ Cardinal said with a half salute. He strolled out behind Burra who shouted at his family to get in the back of the ute. Two blacks who had been annoying Elaine retreated as Burra jumped into the driver’s seat. Cardinal climbed into the passenger seat.
‘There you go, tiger!’ he said to Gabby, handing drinks through to the family. Burra began to reverse the ute. Malone and two other heavies lumbered from the bar. The big man hurled his can of beer. It hit the canvas flap and fell to the ground spilling its frothing contents. Burra backed into the road. Two other cans were hurled. They crashed into a side of the caravan. Burra changed gear and drove off. He kept an eye on the rear-vision mirror.
Burra spoke to his wife for a minute or two in their own language. He asked about the blacks who had been pestering her, and she explained that they were harmless drunks. Burra tried to make up time by driving faster. The caravan began to pull.
‘Go slower!’ Elaine said.
‘Don’t backseat drive me!’ Burra snapped.
Elaine looked at the bouncing caravan. ‘There’s something wrong!’
Burra put his foot down defiantly. The caravan jerked violently, and he had trouble controlling the ute. He brought the vehicles to a halt. Cardinal jumped out to help Burra check both vehicles. Burra examined the pinion and chains linking the two vehicles. Cardinal lay on his back to get a closer look. He slid his hand over the pinion screw. ‘Found the problem,’ he said, pointing to a plastic pinion that was worn through.
‘I used a normal screw,’ Burra said.
‘Another mile or so,’ Cardinal said, shaking his head, ‘we would have had an accident. Who the hell would do that?’
‘If we had crashed,’ Burra replied, ‘we would never have made it to Cahill’s Crossing before the convoy. That would have suited Richardson. He wouldn’t care that much if there was a bloody confrontation between the convoy and my people.’
‘They must have done it at the pub,’ Cardinal said.
Burra rummaged in the back of his ute and emerged with a spare pinion screw. Cardinal helped him fit it.
‘While you were inside with me,’ he said, ‘two blacks distracted my family round the side of the pub. That gave some of Richardson’s boys the time to make the switch.’
‘Some of his men were there?’
Burra nodded. ‘At least two at the bar. Mad Mick Malone is on his payroll.’
They climbed into the ute. Burra opened the glove box in front of Cardinal. There was a carton of bullets. Burra pointed under the seat. Cardinal leaned forward and could see a rifle.
‘It’s there,’ Burra said, ‘as a last resort.’
Rhonda was excited as she was escorted into the main conference room of the Jakarta Palace, President Utun’s working residence. The ceiling was embossed and painted with a history of the country’s kings and rulers. The emphasis was placed on the God King of the fourteenth century, from whom Utun claimed to have been reincarnated.
The president strutted in flanked by guards and his omnipresent mystic, Dalan. Utun wore dark glasses and a brown general’s uniform. The embroidered epaulettes had five gold stars, and the front of his jacket featured sixteen different kinds of military insignia and medals, which he had given himself for his heroism during the republic’s revolutionary years in the 1940s. He was sixty-five, and short and stocky, typical of his region. He had thick black eyebrows, a flat nose with wide nostrils, and a broad, mobile mouth.
Utun’s face broke into a grin, and he embraced Rhonda like an old friend. He had given press conferences while in opposition, and Rhonda, then a foreign correspondent, had attended them.
‘You look beautiful,’ Utun said, holding her hands, and studying her gold harem pants, ‘just beautiful.’ He fondled the ropes and tassles of her tunic belt before ushering her to a seat at a sixteenth-century carved wooden table from central Java.
‘And those earrings!’ he said. They were also gold, and they glinted when her head moved. It was Utun’s favourite colour.
Four servants brought in breakfast on ornamental silver trays. Utun had had a penchant for bagels, cream cheese and salmon ever since having had them on a trip to New York.
‘Ask the sort of questions you would with a camera here,’ he said as he noticed Rhonda’s tape recorder, ‘then we can discuss what I would like or not like said.’
Coffee was poured, and after munching on a bagel for a moment, Rhonda began with an innocuous query about when Utun was planning a trip to Australia.
‘Next year,’ he replied, ‘especially if all the girls are like you.’
Rhonda flinched and forced a smile. Sexist pig, she thought, I’ll fix you.
‘Mr President, why have you closed down all except one newspaper?’
‘They broke the laws of censorship.’ His English was uncolloquial and mellifluous.
‘What laws? Didn’t you do it just because they criticised you?’
Utun excused himself and spoke in Indonesian to Dalan, who played with his shoulder-length hair as he gave him advice.
‘You are aware of our national security problems,’ Utun said finally. ‘We cannot let the media or papers encourage subversion.’
A half hour later, when breakfast was over, Dalan left.
‘We have heard stories of opposition parties being persecuted,’ Rhonda said when she and Utun were alone. ‘Have you instigated any measures to curtail the opposition’s democratic rights?’
This wiped the leer off Utun’s face. He denied it, rambling on about democratic tolerance and his fairness to the opposition. He stood up. Rhonda thought she had gone too far. But his grin returned.
‘We can continue this later,’ he said. ‘I want to show you the Palace.’ Rhonda gathered her tape recorder and briefcase and followed him into a corridor highlighted by a gold fresco. Utun reached for her arm.
‘You blend in so well here,’ he said, squeezing her wrist.
When Utun led her into the living quarters where servants scurried in and out of high-walled rooms, she felt apprehensive.
‘Where is Madame Utun?’ Rhonda asked.
‘In Bali.’
Rhonda glanced back along the corridor. Two Palace guards were following. Utun stopped outside gilt-inlaid double doors.
‘We have just finished re-decorating the master bedroom,’ he said. ‘I would love to see what you think of it.’
Rhonda hesitated as Utun let go her arm and pushed the doors open. She couldn’t believe that he would try anything. After all, she thought, I could destroy his reputation.
The bedroom was vast. Its walls were covered in green and gold silk. A massive chandelier hung from the ceiling above a canopied king bed draped in lace.
‘Well?’ Utun said.
‘I think all Australians would love the colour combination,’ she said. She had not moved into the room. The two guards were close behind her.
Utun beckoned her in.
‘I would like to finish the interview,’ she said.
The guards took her by each arm and pushed her into the room. Her briefcase fell on the floor. Utun picked it up.
‘We can continue just as well in here,’ he said.
The guards retreated, pulling the doors behind them. Rhonda heard a click as they were locked in. Utun came close.
‘I want you,’ he mumbled.
Rhonda went to speak, but her mouth went dry, and she stopped in mid-sentence, scared that she might provoke him further.
Utun lunged at the ropes of her tunic, and she struggled with him, making it fall open, exposing her breasts. Utun pinned her against a wall and ran a hand over the crutch of her pants. He was snorting with excitement. He grabbed at her hair, and the clips holding it in place were wrenched away. She slapped him hard across the face. He sucked in his breath.
Rhonda ran to the door and tried to get out.
Utun called for the guards. The two men burst in. They dragged Rhonda to the bed and held her down. Utun shed his jacket, tie and shirt. The guards tightened their grip on Rhonda as Utun fell over her, his trousers unzipped. He ordered the guards out and began to rub himself all over her. He was having trouble getting an erection.
‘You must fight me!’ he said shrilly. ‘Resist me!’
‘I really don’t see the point,’ Rhonda mumbled.
Utun punched her on the shoulder. She struggled with him. He hit her again. She slapped him. He rolled on to his back, holding his face. He grabbed her round the neck. Rhonda tried to knee him in the groin but caught his stomach. She broke free and slipped off the bed. Utun sat up. He looked ready to stalk her, but fell back on the pillows, his chest heaving.
‘Guards!’ Utun screamed, ‘Guards!’
They charged in again. Rhonda was pulling on her pants. They hesitated.
Utun was blubbering. He waved his hands and squeaked, ‘Let her go’.