by Peter Tonkin
Fritz the casino manager was deputizing for the entertainments officer at the BNI bank on Jalan Rahadi Usman, ensuring that there would be currencies of all sorts available to everyone aboard upon demand. But he also had orders to ensure that he called in at the Pontianac City and Kapuas Palace hotels as well as visiting the airline offices on Jalan Pahlavanand and Jalan Gaja Mada on behalf of several passengers leaving the ship tonight and flying home tomorrow. On top of that, he had agreed to talk to the owners of several specific warung restaurants on his way back aboard in case anyone wanted to eat ashore tonight. Fritz was grudgingly obliging in this, because he felt that, as usual, he had drawn a very short straw indeed. He had refused point blank to enter into the lengthy, complex and expensive negotiations necessary to get all the passengers that wanted to go there into the great park at Tanjung Puting where they were due to enjoy a two-day visit in two days’ time.
Gabriella Cappaldi herself was disposed most decoratively beneath the shade of a palm tree on the white-sand vastness of the beach at Pasir Pajang. Between her voluptuous, bikini-clad form and the distant indigo water, almost every passenger and crew member who could walk seemed to be somewhere on the shore. For in spite of the stultifying workaday atmosphere of a city a-bustle with half a million busy people only a couple of kilometres back along the road, the languorous beach at Pasir Pajang was one of the highlights of the itinerary. On a day like today, the attractions of Pontianac palled. Even the promise of the Dyak longhouse and the Negri Pontianac Museum could tempt no one. But Pasir Pajang was a beach surpassed only by the breathtaking Bandar Laut Bay on Pulau Baya, where they would be lazing within the week. I might arrange an excursion across town after dark when it cools down a little, she thought. But she knew well enough that it wouldn’t really cool down after dark at all, and the hardy souls remaining ashore were more likely to be heading for Korem Place than Jalang Jend A Yani and the Somay Bandang Restaurant or warang. And besides, there was the promise of Dr Hirai’s lecture on Krakatoa - or Krakatau - postponed from yesterday because of the adventures of the afternoon and the medical needs they engendered. And further, it was absolutely vital that she get as many as possible of her hardy charges into Tanjung Puting National Park - to cover up what she and Nic Greenbaum were planning to do, if for no other reason.
‘This is all very well,’ rumbled Nic, breaking into her thoughts abruptly and aptly, even though he was talking to Richard Mariner, ‘but I could be doing this in the Florida Keys or somewhere in Mexico without having dragged my ass halfway round the world.’
‘It’s not quite the same, though, is it?’ countered Robin before Richard could answer for himself. She rolled over on to one elbow, the dusting of sand like caster sugar on the tanned muscularity of her body. Only the best-trained eye, looking closely enough to risk a slap or a right hook, would have seen the network of scars left by various surgeries necessitated by a range of adventures over the years. By the same token, Richard’s long legs looked youthfully untouched, though the metal in his knee joints regularly set off alarms at airport security gates.
‘Well, I’ll grant you it’s prettier than most...’ Nic observed, looking at Robin not quite closely enough to see her almost invisible imperfections, but with the dry double entendre so many women had found almost as hard to resist as his massive fortune.
‘No. I mean it’s part of something wider,’ persisted Robin with calculated innocence, fixing him with her still, cool, grey gaze. ‘It’s part of an experience that comes in a bigger...’
‘Package.’ Nic finished her sentence for her. ‘Yeah. Maybe that’s why they call them package holidays...’ The term was said almost with a sneer. ‘Though as often or not it’s package rape of the environment, one way or another. And all for no real benefit even to the tourist.’
‘That’s not what I mean at all!’ Robin huffed in reply, tricked into an outrage that made her breasts quiver beneath the tiny halter of her top.
‘Granted,’ said Richard, interrupting her forcefully and uncharacteristically, almost as though he had noticed some of this lazy byplay. ‘But think about it, Nic. The last time these people, our fellow passengers, were on a beach it was on Pulau Ubin off Singapore, after they had visited the Bugis Village. The next one they go on will be the beach below Tanjung Puting National Park, if they haven’t elected to trek through the park with the rest of us and overnight at Camp Leakey or wherever. Then Bira Beach at Makassar, though - and this is my point really, though I’m labouring it I know - the hardier souls will probably be off to Paotere Harbour...’
‘What’s there?’ asked Nic sharply, with a slight frown and an unconscious glance across to the recumbent Gabriella which perhaps only Robin really noticed.
‘More Bugis,’ answered Richard. ‘Real Bugis this time. What there is left of them. Proper old-fashioned Orang Laut in their praus. Men, women and children who were supposed never to come to land, like the wandering albatrosses of the Southern Ocean. Paotere is supposed to be the closest the Bugis ever get - loading and unloading their cargoes for trading around the islands and their own floating villages and townships. Literally - town ships. Not like in the Bugis Village in Singapore, prettified up for the tourists. Paotere may be loud and ill-organized; it may stink to high heaven. But you can really get an idea of the old pirate history of the place. There’s something of the old danger still there. Just the hint that if things went wrong...’
‘What,’ teased Robin, ‘you mean the Bugis man would come and get us?’ She pronounced Bugis in the correct way - Boogey - as though she were speaking French.
Richard gave a half grin. ‘It’s where the Boogey Man started out from,’ he warned. ‘They were the originals. Ruthless, deadly, stop-at-nothing, murderous pirates. Whispering out on the evening breezes from secret bays and secluded river mouths in all the local islands and coasts around the Java Sea, searching for prey. Sneaking silently aboard unwary ships in the night watches armed to the teeth with sword and kris, splitting skulls, slitting throats, stealing valuables and spiriting children away to raise as new generations of pirates. They scared the wits out of Conrad, Raffles, Rajah Brooke...’
‘You see?’ Robin turned back to Nic. ‘You simply don’t get stuff like that in Key West or Cancun!’
‘Must have given J.M. Barrie a nasty turn too,’ countered Nic, refusing to be impressed. ‘Sounds a lot like Never Never Land to me. Maybe we’ll find Peter Pan in Tanjung Puting...’
Richard and Robin exchanged a secret smile almost as intimate as the glance that Nic had shot Gabriella earlier. It was a kind of synchronicity - the whole conversation. For they themselves had been entangled in an almost fatal case of piracy not far from here ten years or so ago. And, if they didn’t know anyone local called Peter, or Wendy or Smee, they really did know a captain whose name was Huuk.
‘Krakatau lies at the heart of the Sunda Strait. Here, at six degrees, six minutes and twenty-seven seconds of south latitude, one hundred and five degrees, twenty-five minutes and three seconds of east longitude. I have found that people generally do not realize how close it is to many islands and land masses. I have talked to people who believe that it is simply somewhere in the sea, east of Java, and that the people who were killed and maimed in the most famous series of explosions, those of 1883, must have been living on the island itself. This is to misunderstand utterly the enormity of the actual event. In 1883, the year of the catastrophic explosions of the 26th and 27th August as recorded in Rogier Diederik Marius Verbeek’s classic contemporaneous record, people visited the island for a range of reasons, but no one actually lived on it. Krakatau, then, as now, was one of the most active volcanoes of all...’
Richard gave up his search of the faces in the audience for Nic’s. Then he eased himself back in his seat as Dr Hirai’s earnest words swept over him. Replete with prawn and piglet, he was suddenly sleepy - in spite of several cups of excellent coffee. Feeling him move, Robin stopped looking so suspiciously for Gabriella and leaned in towar
ds him. Their arms and shoulders rubbed gently together, his covered in crisp cotton and hers naked. She hoped he wasn’t as sleepy as he looked. The view from their balcony was magnificent, especially now that the moon was rising; and she had plans to make good use of it for some renewed romance tonight, even if Tai Fun was riding at anchor with the black sails safely furled.
If the view from the upper decks of Tai Fun’s stern was breathtaking, it was as nothing compared with the view from the bridge at Jalan Gajah Mada. The centre of the span here commanded a vista looking north-westwards over the confluence of the Landak and the Kapuas Kecil rivers, down towards the delta of the Sungai Landak and the sea.
On the right hand, the land heaved up into the heights of Pontianac East, falling forward into the point of land where the multiple roofs of the Mesjid Jami and the Istana Kadriyah rose majestically. The traditional buildings seemed to burn amongst the grey concrete of more modern and practical masonry, catching the last of the afternoon sun, then exchanged their gilt for diamond as darkness brought myriads of bright traditional lanterns out. Beyond the point, Pontianac North rose again beyond the busy, boat-filled river confluence that was in many ways the heart of the city.
On the left Pontianac South became Pontianac West and reached out towards the sea. But the confluence, the river and the delta claimed the sight, in a great riverine sweep that reached somehow timelessly away to the sea and the lower sky.
An hour ago, the sun had spent a quarter of an hour tumbling gloriously down the sky in the abrupt, almost casual glory of a tropical - equatorial - sunset. The bludgeoning white-hot disc had taken on shades of orange, almost of ochre. Then, as it settled into the city’s haze, it had turned abruptly crimson, gathering to scarlet in the lower sky. The cloudlets that would have told Larsen of an approaching weather system only served to enhance the glory as the sunset seemed to turn them into rubies and garnets scattered across the velvety French-blue sky. The sun seemed to hesitate like a modest bather before it plunged into the curve of sea, transforming in an instant - for an instant - from ruby to emerald as its rays gleamed through the water.
Then it was night.
Nic Greenbaum and Gabriella Cappaldi stood like any tourists awed by one of the world’s great sunsets. But their conversation was too earnest and businesslike for them to be mere travelling companions struck by a wonderful view, even though they had bumped into each other here apparently by accident. She was returning from lengthy negotiations needed to arrange for the visit of nearly fifty hardy tourists to the Tanjung Puting National Park in two days’ time. He was wandering back, oddly on foot, from a lonely visit to the Museum and the Dyak Longhouse close beside it. Amused, if the truth be told, by the way the longhouse had brought Richard’s romantic talk of Bugis pirates to mind. For if there was a people more fearsome than the legendary Orang Laut seafarers, it was the original orang-utan Dyak forest warriors.
Nic and Gabriella’s earnest conversation continued for more than an hour as the sudden, sticky darkness revealed a fairy-tale world of lights where massive, low-hanging stars and stark, workaday street lighting settled cheek by jowl into the broad bright surface of the river. Where ferries bustled hither and thither like hives of multicoloured glow-worms. Where running lights and riding lights reflected each other in inverted constellations. Until the full, fat moon began to rise across the black sky with all the lazy sensuality of the season and the time - equalling in feminine mystery and promise what the sun had so casually and briefly shown in its dying glory. A shooting star curved across the heavens above it like Icarus falling in flames.
‘I don’t usually sleep with my employees,’ said Nic Greenbaum at last. ‘But with you I think I’ll make an exception, in spite of the obvious risks.’
‘With a man of your reputation, it’d probably be more suspicious if you didn’t make a move on the entertainments officer. Really get your money’s worth in entertainment if nothing else.’ Gabriella paused for an instant, a half-smile on her full lips, seeking his hooded eyes in the shadows of his face. Then, ‘In the city or back aboard?’ she asked throatily.
‘Better be the city. I don’t want to give too much away. The Mariners already suspect more than I would like. I don’t want them involved, unless...’
Gabriella nodded decisively, then turned and led him southwards. ‘We’ll have to be up early,’ she warned him. ‘Tai Fun sails with the first tide tomorrow and if we’re not aboard then it’ll really ring some warning bells.’ As she talked, she guided him decisively through the thinning crowd of pedestrians homeward-bound. At the south end of the bridge stood the Kapuas Palace Hotel, a walk of less than a hundred metres.
And she had a suite reserved here for the night, which they would share - after she introduced him to the man from the Luzon Logging Company who was currently awaiting them in the bar.
Chapter 14: Council
‘Aid? There will be no aid!’ Chief Councillor Kerian’s voice was shrill with outrage as it echoed around the council chamber above the heads of Pulau Baya’s full council. ‘How much aid arrived after the great tsunami five years ago? And how long did we have to wait then?’
‘Enough to rebuild the old city of Baya, and then to build the new one,’ answered Prince Sailendra, almost rising from his ceremonial seat beneath the island’s emblematic flag at the end of the chamber. Restrained, perhaps, by the knowledge that it was the new city that had been swept away now. He settled into the carved and gilded ivory under the baleful gaze of woven clouded leopard in its prau. Met the equally baleful gaze of his chief councillor. ‘And the fisheries at Bandar Laut Bay,’ he continued. ‘And oh so much else, and well you know it, Councillor Kerian. And if we had to wait a little while, that was because we were much lower on the list of priorities than some of our neighbours - and lucky to be so!’
‘Even so, it is as well that we do not have to wait for this aid! This charity from all the larger neighbours who would rather consume us than help us stand alone. Aid from China, Japan, Europe and America. Aid at a price...’
‘We are aware, Councillor Kerian, of the speed with which the employees of your various companies have joined the rescue programme. We are aware of how much the council as a whole has already invested in bringing men and machinery from their own private concerns to join the larger municipal and national effort...’
‘Helping ourselves, Prince Sailendra. Helping ourselves in the old way, before we began to hold out our hands for aid.’
Sailendra leaned forward, quite ready to take Kerian on, head to head, filled with some as yet vague fear that the councillor would lead them all into danger and disaster if he was allowed to have his head. All too well aware that it was Kerian’s grandfather who had urged his own forebears to stand alone against the Japanese - and nearly lost the island altogether. But just as he opened his mouth to carry on, he felt a gentle tugging at the island-cotton sleeve of his shirt.
It was Parang. ‘News,’ said the secretary. ‘I think you should come, Your Highness.’
Parang was not technically allowed in the council chamber and technicalities were high on the list of procedure since Kerian had become chief councillor. So the news must be important. Sailendra raised his hand and then stood up, his heart suddenly pounding. Perhaps this was indeed news of the international aid for which he had been praying since the message went out last night.
‘I am called away, Councillor Kenan,’ said Sailendra formally. ‘You must continue this meeting in my absence, of course. But may I urge care and caution.’ He glanced pointedly up at the island’s symbolic standard hanging limply in the hot morning air above his head. ‘Like the clouded leopard which is the symbol of our island, let us not leap into action until we can see clearly where the leap will take us.’
Sailendra turned to follow Parang out of the council chamber, with Kerian’s riposte ringing in his ears. ‘But remember, fellow councillors, the leopard is only one part of our heritage. We are not only Bayan, we are Bugis. The Bayan leopar
d stands in the Bugis prau - to remind us that when the land becomes too dangerous, then we can always look to the sea.’
The messenger was the last that Sailendra might have expected. She was a young marine biologist whose main function was to advise the men who maintained the prawn fisheries at Bandar Laut Bay. ‘What is it?’ he asked at once, frowning.
The biologist’s name was Nurul and she had been educated at Jakarta University, completing her doctorate in marine biology at the university’s marine department. She considered herself a woman of the world. But of an Eastern world, perhaps. On the one hand, the frown of the prince came close to cowing her. On the other hand, the frown of a man she had last seen standing beside Johnny Depp on Bandar Laut beach almost made her faint. ‘You come, Your Highness; you see.’
‘I am in a meeting with the full council, Dr Nurul,’ Sailendra countered more gently. ‘And I am only there because that meeting itself is vital enough to call me away from the rescue work in what little is left of the city beyond the river. Is your information that important?’
‘Your Highness...’ Her expression was more than enough. Kerian, the council, the work in the flooded wreckage beyond the river, all would have to wait.
The Toyota that lay beneath the landslip with the heliport and so much more was merely the best of the vehicles available to Sailendra. It was by no means the only one. There was at the very least the royal Rolls-Royce so beloved of his father - so impossibly expensive to keep in running order that it stood rusting uselessly in the palace garage, beside the Second World War jeep that General Mac Arthur had left behind. Also, nowadays, hors de combat. But these antiques were not alone. There were several occupied parking spaces in the royal garage. One of which was empty.