The Scoop

by Terence J. Quinn

  I winched up the sails to slow the sloop down in the heaving swell. While we waited for the patrol boat to arrive, Annie and I jumped up and down like Irish dancers, jigging and stomping as we watched the pirate ship disappear into the great blue beyond. Moments later, the navy cruiser swooshed up alongside us, its frothy wake roughly buffeting The Scoop. We went to the stern rail, my arm around Annie’s narrow shoulders, both of us grinning at each other like maniacs. The forty-metre patrol boat, the KRI Viper, finally settled in a commotion of foam, bubbles and rippling waves. I noticed the grey superstructure was bristling with weapons and comms equipment. The noise was deafening as its klaxons blared and indecipherable orders boomed from its loudspeakers. I threw them a line and we put a couple of fenders down between the two boats. For the first time in weeks we were safe.

  ‘Jonno, you’re bleeding again!’ In all the drama, Annie had only just noticed that I was wounded. Before I could tell her that I had actually been shot this time, an officer dressed in a dark grey uniform with black epaulettes and a black beret came on board with three ratings. He was unsmiling but not hostile. Two of the sailors immediately moved past us and headed to the saloon. I pointed to the fast disappearing stern of the pirate ship and said, ‘Look, pirates.’ The short, slim naval officer continued looking at me and put one hand up, looking stern. ‘ID. Passport!’ He held out his other hand. The third rating stood impassively, an automatic rifle held flat across his chest.

  ‘But they’re bloody pirates,’ I said, louder.

  ‘You give passport,’ he repeated.

  Sighing, I gave Annie’s arm a squeeze and went below to get my stuff from the main cabin. There I found the two ratings searching drawers and lockers. Shit, I thought, I hope they don’t find the cash. Feeling slightly unsettled, I returned to the cockpit where Annie was trying to explain that she didn’t have ID. The man didn’t seem to understand. ‘Passport,’ he kept saying, his hand still outstretched, fingers snapping.

  I handed my passport to him just as the two ratings below shouted something. The officer gave us an angry look and gestured for us to go below with him. There the two seamen stood to attention, the pirate leader’s three cases open on the table in front of them. One reached over and picked up a solid-looking package and said something harshly in Indonesian. It looked suspiciously like dope of some sort, covered with a yellow plastic wrapped in duct tape. There were several other similar bricks stacked on the table. Suddenly the atmosphere sunk to sub zero and a pistol appeared in the officer’s hand.

  ‘What the bloody hell? Where did that come from?’ I looked at Annie but her face registered the same shock I felt. Then I saw it – the three cases all had false bottoms. The pirate must have hidden the drugs there.

  ‘No, wait, I can—’ I blustered but the officer silently pointed the pistol at me and motioned for me to sit down beside a white-faced Annie. ‘Jeez, talk about from frying pan to fire,’ I whispered as we both put our hands in the air. In my wounded condition, that was rather a painful thing to do.

  64

  ‘NGENTOT! EEK! Jancuk!’ BangBang screamed out a bitter spray of curses and hit the wheelhouse door savagely with the parang clutched in his fist. ‘I don’t fucking believe it! A few minutes more and we have the bastards.’ He hit the door a second time. ‘Ngentot! Fuck!’

  Part of the pilothouse roof was missing where the rocket had struck and Mamat had been killed but the Crimson Tide was still operational. BangBang knew he was lucky that he had been on the foredeck when the rocket hit. He now had the helm.

  Where the fuck did that naval boat come from? I must have been too busy running down the mongrels to see it, he thought. He had dimly registered the fishermen in the distance but they were of no consequence. The patrol boat was another matter; its speed and firepower were vastly superior to the Crimson Tide’s.

  That morning when he made out the blurry shape of the boat against the darker coastline, he’d given Mamat a thumbs-up and shouted, ‘Go, go, go!’ Grinning, Mamat had steered the pirate ship forty-five degrees to port and increased its speed to the max. As the Crimson Tide had carved out a path towards the yacht, leaving a wake of foaming sea, BangBang had lit a cigarette with one hand, the other holding the binoculars to his face. Got you, he breathed, as the sailboat came into sharper focus and he was able to make out the features of both the mysterious blond anjing dog and the white jablay bitch that he now recognised through the powerful Canon glasses. Her? Amazing. How was she still alive? And now they were together. That would make his revenge even sweeter.

  He had smiled. ‘Here I am, I’m coming to get you. No one help you now.’ He could taste it. Victory. Vengeance. He would get it all back. His precious possessions, his future. And he would have his revenge on this bangsat that had the temerity to steal from him.

  All that had been less than an hour ago. Then, he had been ecstatic. Relieved. Triumphant. Fuck, they had been that close to running them down. The man and the woman were cowering in the cockpit awaiting the inevitable. He replayed the horrible scene again in his mind: the skiff blowing up and then, at the very last moment, his arms braced against the console as they readied to ram the fragile yacht, the heavily armed patrol boat had appeared as if by magic. Horrified, BangBang had urgently signalled the helmsman to cut away from the yacht as the naval craft charged towards them. The rocket had been a nasty surprise but thankfully the navy had not fired more.

  And now he was the one on the run, heading west into the Indian Ocean, putting as much distance from the gunship as possible, hoping it would not pursue them. His wealth stolen, his hopes and dreams turned to ashes. More importantly, his life was fucked. The syndicate would be pitiless.

  ‘You are dead man walking,’ he whispered to himself.

  PART FOUR

  I never knew until that moment how bad it could hurt to lose something you never really had.

  The Wonder Years

  65

  THE POLICE van’s windows were blanked out and we couldn’t see anything of the city as we sped through the chaos of Jakarta’s central district. But we could certainly hear it and smell it: the honks and hoots, the sirens and shouts, the screeching tyres and the acrid aromas from a zillion food stalls. The stink of diesel and drains added to the raw, ripe pungency of eleven million human beings living on top of each other. The van was travelling as fast as any vehicle could in that choked, constipated metropolis; in its barely lit confines I could feel Annie shaking gently. I put both my hands on hers to comfort her, both pairs of handcuffs clinking together as I told her yet again not to worry, we’d sort things out.

  Earlier, on board the patrol boat, we had been left alone, handcuffed and humiliated, in a small, windowless room. There was a bench down one side with a long cushion on it; a table and two chairs were the only other items of furniture. Occasionally someone would come in and look at us without saying anything, including an older guy adorned with gold braid and an authoritative air about him who I took to be the ship’s commanding officer. He had kindly allowed Annie to go to the toilet and clean herself up; I noticed she had some of my blood on her face. Meanwhile one of his men took a squiz at my wound. It looked worse than it was. The bullet had torn a chunk of flesh from my right shoulder but had not caused major damage. It was painful but not life threatening. After the rating had cleaned, stitched and dressed the wound, he gave us some water but no food. A pity – after all the excitement, I was hungry.

  The navy blokes had all been decent enough but had kept their distance, clearly suspecting us of being drug smugglers. Presumably they thought our skirmish with the pirates had simply been a case of thieves falling out. A drug deal gone wrong. I could still hear Cody spitting out the potentially lethal consequences for drug smugglers. Jeez, I thought, just my luck to be innocent of this when I was no longer even using the bloody stuff. And I cursed the fact that Annie was now facing a new threat.

  I hoped the navy wouldn’t find the other spoils. The diamonds were well hidden in
a pipe in the bowels of the engine room; it would be a miracle if they were found. Meanwhile, I’d hidden the bearer bonds in plain sight among a pile of charts tidied away in a cockpit locker. Somehow I didn’t think the Indonesian forensics people would be as rigorous as the slick professionals you see on television shows.

  I had left the pirate leader’s cash in the same place that Cody had found my coke stash. There was about twenty-five thousand in US dollars plus a load of other notes in foreign currencies. If they found that, so be it, I could easily claim I needed it for travel purposes. But the dope was the real issue. How could we prove that we had nothing to do with it?

  Annie was still dressed just in my shirt. It was torn, dirty and decorated with dried splotches of my blood. I had tried to assure her that everything would be okay, that we would be able to explain everything. That at least we were still alive and the pirates had gone for good. But she just sat there sunk in depression, her eyes dull, the looming prospect of what she faced in Jakarta weighing heavily on her. Once I thought I heard her humming a tune; it sounded like a hymn that had been sung at my aunt’s funeral a long time ago.

  ‘What if they don’t believe me?’ she suddenly said. ‘I don’t have any ID, three people close to me are dead and I have zero proof that any of it happened the way that I say it did. The pirates are long gone and, unless we can persuade the authorities that the drugs belonged to them, we are both going to be in the shit. Especially me.’

  ‘They’ll believe us. It’s too incredible a story for it not to be true. Besides, why would we have attracted their attention with the distress flare if we had anything to hide?’

  ‘Because we would be dead if we hadn’t,’ she said bitterly. I wanted to put an arm around her but couldn’t because of the handcuffs. So we lapsed into a sombre silence as the big patrol boat took us speedily towards our fate. Once she turned to me and said: ‘Jonno, once this is all over – if it is ever over – will we see each other again?’

  ‘You bet. I’ll take you to Sans Souci. We’ll have lunch at Omeros on the Beach and watch the sailboats on Botany Bay. I might even take you out for a spin.’

  ‘Not sure I ever want to set foot in a boat again.’ Then she had lapsed back into silence.

  The navy guys handed us over to the cops at Tanjung Priok, the main Indonesian naval base fronting Jakarta Bay; ironically only a couple of kilometres along the harbour road from the Pantai Mutiara marina where I had berthed The Scoop just a few weeks and several lifetimes before. My poor boat, I thought. Between the storm and the pirates, The Scoop had taken a real battering. I hoped the Indonesian authorities would not tear her apart looking for more contraband. Once this is all over, I’ll make sure she gets a full makeover, I resolved. I suddenly remembered Wagga was still on the boat. Fingers crossed he’s found a good hiding place, I thought.

  After an hour’s staccato mix of speeding and braking through the clogged streets, the van stopped and I heard a barrier being raised. We started up again but just a few seconds later, we came to a full stop and the engine died.

  ‘Here we go.’ I gave Annie’s hands a final caress. ‘Chin up, whatever happens, it’s still better than being caught by the pirates again.’ I saw a brief glimpse of a pale smile when the overhead light came on as the rear doors opened. And then they pulled her out and she was gone.

  66

  INSIDE THE building, I was put in a cramped, windowless cell reeking of disinfectant that failed to mask the underlying odours of piss, vomit and faeces. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here, I thought. There were seven other men sardined in the small space – about five metres square. They stared at me with ill-disguised malice. Great, just what I bloody need right now.

  But my main concern was still Annie: I hope the bastards are treating you okay, I thought. After about an hour I was given some food, not the steak I had been lusting after in my dreams but more of the same fare I’d existed on for weeks at the island: rice and microscopic bits of fish. Not having eaten for I don’t know how long, I scooped it up with my dirty fingers and devoured it before any of my cellmates could help themselves.

  Then I was taken to be strip-searched, fingerprinted and photographed. As I gazed into the camera, I was suddenly conscious that I hadn’t washed in a while. My hair was shaggy and raspy blond stubble covered two thirds of my face. I was still dressed in just a singlet, shorts and thongs. My appearance must have offended my jailers because I was given a fetching thin cotton jumpsuit to wear. It was a faded orange, several sizes too small and my arms and legs stuck out comically. The garment’s tight crotch gave me a serious wedgie as I walked.

  I kept trying to tell my captors that I was an innocent party, a decent Australian and please, please could I speak to a lawyer. Not surprisingly, the officers hardly looked at me as they went about their business. They uttered nothing other than simple grunts as they gestured for me to bend over, roll my digits in ink, and smile for the camera. I’m joking about the last one, but it all seemed banal, like a scene from Midsomer Murders. Then I was given a perfunctory medical; as they took samples of my blood and urine I was ridiculously proud that they wouldn’t find a single trace of dope in my system. The doctor tore off the dressing and examined my gunshot wound. He grunted with appreciation at the naval rating’s handiwork before cleaning and dressing it again.

  Finally I was put, still handcuffed, in an interview room with a scuffed, stained Formica table and four chairs that looked like they had come from the staff canteen. As a reporter, I had seen many similar rooms in police stations over the years. The room felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked from its bland, shabby, utilitarian interior. A uniformed policeman stood in one corner, arms folded across his barrel chest. They had taken my watch so I could only guess at the time: must be a bit after midnight, I decided. I wondered how Annie was getting on; presumably she was being subjected to the same process.

  Several minutes passed before the door opened and two men came in. One wore the same style of uniform as the other policemen, although he had more insignia on his chest and shoulders. His hair was cut short and his dark face was flat and expressionless. The other man was a completely different fish. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt of some abstract floral design that hung over his black trousers. He had a small, wispy goatee beard; his hair was spiky and his thin face was small and pointed. Strangely, he was smiling, a gleam of mischief in his black eyes. Despite myself, I warmed to him. Of the two, he must be the good cop, I decided. They both sat down opposite me.

  The more casually dressed policeman opened the batting. ‘Mr Bligh, Jonathan Bligh,’ he started. ‘Hah. I am Senior Police Inspector Haka Waseso of Badan Reserse Kriminal department of National Police. We police Narcotics and Organise Crime.’ I didn’t think it politic to point out his unfortunate slip of the tongue. He didn’t introduce his colleague. Instead I watched him as he picked up my passport and waggled it at me.

  ‘You famous man. Big writer. Why you do this thing with drugs, hah?’

  I said resolutely: ‘I have nothing to do with drugs. There’s been a mistake. We were attacked by pirates. I am an Australian citizen and I demand to see someone from the Australian embassy. And a lawyer,’ I added for good measure. It sounded a bit feeble, even to my ears, and the cop looked suitably unimpressed.

  ‘Where am I anyway?’ I asked.

  ‘Mabes Polri – Indonesian National Police headquarters. Now, you tell us who you deal with and maybe go better for you, hah?’

  ‘I told you, I know nothing of the drugs. They belonged to pirates. They were hidden in false bottoms in the cases. We had no idea the bloody stuff was there.’

  ‘Hah. Why you take cases?’

  ‘Because they assaulted Annie - the lady you arrested with me – on the island. That was where they took her and her friend after they murdered her husband. We wanted to punish them for what they did. We were going to hand the cases over to you guys when we reached safety.’

  And so it went on for hou
rs. The same questions, the same answers. I tried to tell them everything that had happened – the storm, my time on Rehab Island (omitting the bit about cold turkey, of course), the pirates arriving, their two captives and a sketchy account of the ordeal the two women had endured. I explained how we had escaped from the cut-throats and how they had nearly caught us again before the navy came to our rescue. And no, I did not know who they were exactly. Only that they were murderers and thieves. I told my interrogators to check out the blueprints in the case. They surely proved what I had been saying about them being pirates.

  Eventually, I kept losing the thread of the questioning and began to blabber, telling them I hadn’t slept for two days and I had the right to make a phone call. My inquisitor was clearly of the opinion that I had no rights whatsoever and he persisted in asking the same bloody questions until my head finally slumped on my chest in weariness and I simply refused to say another word.

  Some time later – I had no idea how long – I was taken back to my cell. The other men were asleep on the filthy concrete floor, most curled up in the fetal position, snoring, coughing or grunting in their sleep. There were no mats, far less beds. The prisoners used their arms as pillows. The only available scrap of space was in the corner next to the malodorous bucket that acted as our toilet. I sat there, pinching my nose and trying not to think about what might happen if any of the others woke up. Before long, the guards came to take me back for yet another grilling. This time I refused to answer any questions; instead I kept asking to see Annie. After several more hours of stalemate, there was a knock on the door. The uniformed cop opened it and had a conversation with whoever was there. He came back and whispered something in the ear of Waseso or ‘Inspector Hah’ as I’d come to think of him.