by Mark Lee
Again the translation and this time Cristiano looked uneasy. He said something in Tetum and his men pulled Daniel and Sister Xavier across the tennis court. Cristiano followed and they began to talk.
Julia stood up, covering her breasts with her arms. The knife blade had scratched a line down her neck and upper chest. Blood trickled across her skin. She ignored the wound, ignored everything but Daniel standing in the shadows with Cristiano.
Five minutes went by. The burning Land Rover had lit up the area, but now the flames were dying down. Militiamen pulled doors and cracked window frames from the destroyed restaurant and used the wood to build a bonfire. A man with a flashlight searched through the crowd. He avoided the children and focused on the elderly villagers. I assumed that he was looking for a particular person to kill.
Cristiano shook his head and began to walk away, but Daniel followed him, speaking with a soft, coaxing voice while Sister Xavier translated. Finally, there was some sort of agreement and Daniel returned to us. He unbuttoned his cotton work shirt and gave it to Julia. Daniel’s blue undershirt was dark with sweat. When he embraced Julia, she closed her eyes and shivered as if a spasm of pain was passing through her body.
“It’s going to be all right. I think we’ve got a deal.”
“What do they want?” I asked. “More guns?”
“They need a way out of here. Cristiano knows the guerrillas will ambush them if they take the road to West Timor. So I offered them a boat ride.”
“What kind of boat? Indonesian?”
“Anything that floats. We can use the Seria. The big argument was about weapons. But Cristiano agreed to disarm before they go on board.”
“What about the villagers?” Julia asked.
“You have to get them out of here tonight. You and Nicky put the weakest people in the truck and lead everyone back to Dili.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to be a hostage. They’ll kill me if a boat doesn’t show up by sunset tomorrow.”
“You can’t do that.” Julia looked frightened. “It’s too dangerous.”
“This is our only option. We don’t have anything else to offer them.”
“What if we can’t get back to Dili?”
“It’ll be difficult, but you can make it. When you reach the port, go immediately to the Seria. Don’t waste your time with General Bates or anyone else at Interfet.”
“He might want to send in troops,” I said.
Daniel nodded. “That’s the one thing that could get me killed. Just tell everyone to follow the plan. Captain Vanderhouten can get the Seria down here in a few hours. We’ll keep the boat in deep water and ferry the men out. There’s a rubber raft on the stern. It’s big enough for five or six passengers.”
Julia tried to argue with Daniel, but one of the villagers started screaming. We turned around and saw the man with the flashlight holding an old woman while his two friends knelt beside her. One of the militiamen pulled a machete out of his belt, gripped the woman’s jaw with one hand and forced her mouth open. He swung downward with a quick motion and smashed the machete handle into her mouth. She spat blood out, lay on her side and moaned. The man with the machete stood up with his prize—a gold tooth.
Sister Xavier turned to Julia. “Come and help me, Dr. Cadell. We’ll get them ready to travel.” The two women moved to the middle of the crowd and the nun spoke to her parishioners. Julia kept glancing over Daniel. I knew that she was worried. Over the years, she had dealt with looted food shipments and dust storms that grounded all the supply planes. Trucks broke down. Nurses caught malaria and returned home. The only reliable expectation was that nothing ever followed the plan.
Daniel started the church truck. The wheels spun around, digging up sand as he drove onto the cobblestone walkway. When the truck was pointing up the hill, I reached into the back and grabbed a cardboard box. We tore it into strips, covering the three dead soldiers, then went over to the wounded men. Corporal Mainla had been hit in the back with shrapnel and his shirt was wet with blood. He was unconscious and breathed with a wheezing sound. Private Rai had a dislocated shoulder and a gash in his forehead. Looking dazed, he knelt by Mainla and spoke softly. Julia returned with her medical bag. She cut off Mainla’s shirt and covered the wound with a wad of gauze and a bandage. “That’s all I can do,” she told Rai. “There’s not enough time. Not enough light.”
Daniel and I picked up the corporal and laid him in the back of the pickup. Private Rai climbed into the truck and crouched beside Mainla. “Keep his head to one side so he won’t choke on the blood,” Julia said. “Good. That’s good. Now put your hand on his chest and try to feel his breathing.”
Private Rai touched Mainla’s chest. “He has a wife and six children. A man with so many children should not die.”
Daniel and I loaded the weakest villagers onto the truck bed, pushing them up against Mainla’s body. Small children went on the tailgate or were squeezed into the truck cab. Julia found an old man who could drive and he got into the truck with the frightened children. “Espere, por favor,” she said in Portuguese. Wait. Please. Don’t start the engine. A little girl began crying and Julia hugged her, whispering softly.
Daniel wrote something on a sheet of notepaper. “Take this, Nicky.”
“What is it?”
“My will. Julia gets the farmhouse. You get my car.”
“No.”
He stuffed the paper into my shirt pocket. “Take it anyway.”
“We’ll get the Seria down here as fast as we can. Vanderhouten will do anything for money.”
Daniel smiled as if we were back in Rome together. “That’s the lovely thing about greedy people. They’re predictable.”
Some of the villagers were arguing with Sister Xavier. She turned away from them and returned to the truck. “They won’t go, Dr. Cadell. They think we’ll be killed at the bridge near the mercado. Four years ago, the Indonesians murdered nineteen people there and threw their bodies into the river.”
“It’s their choice to stay here, “said Julia. “We can’t force them to come along with us. If we just start walking—”
Cristiano screamed and waved his rifle. The bonfire was getting bigger and the shadows of his men glided across the bodies of the dead soldiers. “He says we have to go now,” said Sister Xavier. “He says we are traitors and he wants us out of his sight.”
Daniel kissed Julia on the forehead and the lips, then they held each other for a few seconds. I turned away from them, toward the fire, but the image stayed with me. We were caught in a flood with Daniel in the water and Julia on land. She was holding him, holding tightly, so that he wouldn’t be swept away.
“Let me stay with you,” she said.
“That’s not part of the agreement.”
“We shouldn’t have come here at all.”
He shook his head. “You had to do this and I had to be with you.”
Cristiano shouted again and the old man started the truck. “I’m sorry,” I told Julia. “But we need to leave.”
Daniel let go of Julia. “Don’t worry. I can handle this. Just talk to Vanderhouten and get the ship down here.”
The old man shifted into first gear. The engine made a metallic screeching sound as it began to move up the cobblestone walkway. The crowd of villagers held back for a moment, then began to follow Sister Xavier. It was like watching a jellyfish, pushed back and forth by the currents, until it flowed off in a new direction.
Daniel smiled and waved good-bye. A little boy started to fall off the tailgate of the truck and Julia reached forward to catch him. When I looked back at the bonfire I couldn’t see Daniel anymore.
THE WALK BACK to Dili is not a coherent memory. None of the refugees spoke and the noise from the truck seemed more real than our bodies. If the truck had stopped, if the engine had failed, our group might have dissolved into the darkness that surrounded us.
I remember the first bridge and the second bridge, the tidal flat
and the dark mounds of the salt ovens. At some time during the journey I picked up a little girl and started carrying her. Her body was tense and rigid; she clung to my shirt with both hands. Eventually she went to sleep and I slung her over my shoulder like a sack of rice.
Julia seemed to be everywhere, her worried face moving in and out of the shadows. “Everyone’s so tired,” she whispered. “I don’t know if we can make it.” And then she would hurry over to encourage someone who had stopped walking. More bodies were loaded into the back of the pickup. People sat on the roof of the truck cab with their legs on the windshield and others lay facedown on the hood. The truck looked like a moving sculpture of limp bodies; there was so much weight that the tires flattened and squeaked as they rolled across the asphalt.
We lost eight refugees during the journey. I still don’t know if they died or if they lay down in a road ditch and went to sleep. The night seemed to go on forever, but when we stopped to place one more body onto the truck I noticed that most of the stars had vanished. The sky had turned a dark purple and a faint strip of light glowed on the horizon. Still holding the little girl on my shoulder, I maneuvered the camera out of my bag, stepped across the road, and took three quick photographs of our weary procession.
We reached the section of road close to the ocean and I could hear the waves falling on shore. The old man driving the truck stuck his arm out the side window. “Acabou a gasolina,” he said in Portuguese. Out of gas. The needle had fallen well below the last line on the gauge, but the engine didn’t stop and we kept going. I don’t know if a deceptive fuel tank rivals the loaves and the fishes, but it felt miraculous at that moment. We kept walking, a little faster now, and Venus appeared—a clear point of light in the sky.
We stumbled past a thicket of bamboo, came over a hill, and saw two Australian armored personnel carriers parked in the middle of the road. A few soldiers jumped down and stood there with their rifles, but they didn’t approach us. We probably would have marched the last four miles into Dili if the old man hadn’t stopped the truck and switched off the engine. The refugees sat down in the middle of the road. An old woman appeared and took the little girl from me as the soldiers approached Julia.
“I’m Dr. Julia Cadell. These people are from the town of Liquica.”
“That’s a bit of a distance,” a sergeant said. “You walk all the way here?”
“Yes. And they can’t go any farther.” Julia’s voice was raspy, but she spoke with a brisk, formal manner. “I want you to get on your radio and contact the UN medical team out at the airport. Tell them that you have over three hundred fifty refugees and they need to come here with food, water, medical care, and transport.”
“No worries, ma’am. We can do that.”
“Two wounded soldiers are on the truck. Load them onto an APC and we’ll get them into Dili right away.”
They carefully lifted Corporal Mainla out of the pickup and placed him inside the armored personnel carrier. Private Rai sat on the floor next to his friend as we roared down the road to the Interfet camp.
Some tents had been set up as a hospital. An army medical team ran out with a stretcher and the wounded soldiers were taken away. It took over an hour to find the Australian colonel who was the commanding officer at the camp. Julia explained the situation in Liquica, warning him not to send troops into the town until the militia was gone.
It was about eight o’clock in the morning when we left the camp with some Portuguese soldiers on their way into Dili. They dropped us off at the Governor’s Office and we hurried to the wharf. Julia was exhausted, but she spoke quickly. Make a deal with Vanderhouten. Yes. That was our first objective. Did a ship’s engine need to be warmed up? Did I know anything about engines? She had a car when she was a medical student that had to be warmed up in the morning. But it was cold in England and warm in East Timor. Did that make a difference? It must make a difference. Can’t waste time for an engine.
She took a took a deep breath and squeezed my hand. “Sorry, Nicky. I’m talking nonsense, aren’t I?”
“It’s okay. We’re both tired.”
“We’ve got nine or ten hours to get down the coast to Liquica.”
We climbed up the Seria’s gangplank and found Richard and Billy eating breakfast near the stern. Julia spoke to both of them in a flurry of words, describing the situation and insisting that the ship leave as soon as possible. “Of course,” Richard said. “We’ll do everything we can.” Then he took two steps back and let Billy get the details.
“They’ll give up their weapons,” Julia said. “Daniel worked out a deal. Tell them it’s safe, Nicky. We just have to get there as soon as possible.”
We walked up the deck to the wheelhouse where Captain Vanderhouten stood drinking coffee. The captain’s face formed a sympathetic mask while Julia and I described the problem. Vanderhouten nodded and mentioned the Seria’s owners, a mysterious group of men who had warned him not to risk their property in dangerous activities.
“If it was up to me, I’d go right away,” he said. “But of course I have a responsibility to my shareholders.”
“What shareholders?” asked Julia. “You don’t have any shareholders. You’re a smuggler.”
Vanderhouten put down his coffee cup and tried to look offended. “Dr. Cadell, I am a graduate of the Rotterdam Shipping and Transport College. I placed third in a class of eighteen.”
“I don’t give a damn what you did! Get this ship moving! Right away!”
“We’ll pay for this service,” I said. “Perhaps we could negotiate a price while the ship gets ready to leave the harbor.”
“The Seria can’t leave, Mr. Bettencourt. You haven’t been listening to me. As much as I wish to help, I must not violate the trust of my shareholders.”
Julia took a step toward the captain. “If we don’t go, they’re going to kill Daniel.”
“Nicky, take Julia out on deck.” Richard spoke in a bland manner, as if he was talking to the cleaning staff at his office. “Billy and I will talk to the captain.”
I glanced over at Billy and he nodded his head slightly. Holding Julia’s arm I coaxed her out of the wheelhouse. The ship’s cook brought us coffee and two bowls of rice, but Julia refused to eat anything. When Collins and Briggs appeared on deck I told them what was going on.
“Sorry, pal. Can’t go. Won’t go.” Collins said. “Playing nursemaid to a mob of militiamen is definitely not in our contract.”
“To hell with your contract,” I said. “Take your gear and get off this ship.”
“You didn’t hire us,” Briggs said. “We don’t answer to you.”
“If you did, I would have fired you two weeks ago. You’re both cowards.”
Briggs flexed his shoulder muscles. “This little ratbag just insulted us, Tig. I think he needs a lesson.”
They both came toward me, but I was ready. I wanted to hurt someone—kick, gouge, and bite like a crazy man. I had to do something that would release the furious energy in my brain.
Billy stepped out on deck and realized what was going to happen. “That’s enough of that,” he said.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Collins said.
“Sure it does. Now get out of my sight before I break every bone in your grubby little hands. You know how that’s done, Tig? I know how it’s done. Because I’ve done it. A couple times.”
Billy took a quick step toward them like a boxer moving across the ring and they retreated down the hatchway to their sleeping area. Billy smiled at me. “Jesus, Nicky. I can’t believe it. You were going to fight ’em.”
“What happened?” Julia asked. “What did Vanderhouten say?”
“He’s going to do it. We had to give him all the money in our pockets and now the little bastard wants Mr. Seaton’s personal check.”
Billy walked to the wheelhouse and returned with a leather checkbook. He went back into the cabin and Richard came out a minute later. “Okay. We’ve got an agreement,” Richard said. “He
’ll transport everyone for twenty thousand English pounds.”
“Thank you, Richard,” Julia said. “I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Richard touched her arm, then turned to me. “You got film in your cameras, Nicky?”
“Sure. Everything’s working.”
Richard smiled, thinking about a seat in Parliament, maybe even a cabinet post. “Take lots of pictures when we get to Liquica. It’s going to be a dramatic day.”
CAPTAIN VANDERHOUTEN SLIPPED Richard’s check into his money belt, then came out on deck and started giving commands. The ship no longer carried much cargo; it had been unloaded during the last two days. When the engine started up, we could hear a hollow, vibrating sound. The crew cast off the lines and Vanderhouten backed the ship away from the wharf. The Seria turned in the water like a large, slow creature, then pushed its way through the waves.
I picked up the uneaten bowl of rice and brought it over to Julia. She stood near the bow, staring at the coastline. Now that the ship was moving she was calm and focused on the next part of the plan.
“You better eat something, Julia. It’ll make you feel better.”
Julia took the bowl and picked at the food with some chopsticks. “It was wonderful how you carried that little girl, Nicky. Every time I looked around, I saw the people on the truck and that child in your arms.”
“I hope she’s okay.”
“When we return to Europe, you and Daniel are going to be my special projects. First, I’m going to teach Daniel how to sing. He loves music, but he’s a terrible singer.”
“We’ll take group lessons. Start a chorus.”
“I’ve planned something different for you. I’m going to fix you up with a girlfriend.”
“Stick with Daniel’s singing,” I said. “That’s a realistic goal.”
“We can put your photo up in the London underground. Wanted: a suitable partner for an American photographer who’s brave, loyal, and kind.”
“What about plump and stubborn, yet sexy?”
“You can write your own ad, Nicky. I’ll get all the letters and pick out the most promising.”