by Martin Roth
We continued down the steep track, twice sliding on the bark surface and tumbling to the ground in tandem. We were nearly at the bottom when the trees opened again and once more the landscape of trees and river spread out before us. I could even see what appeared to be the remains of an abandoned home.
And it was with a start that suddenly I realized that we were looking down on The Boss, the old derelict house where Rad and many others enjoyed their first kiss.
Could this be Grapper’s hideout? It seemed that it might be.
We got closer to the high fence that surrounded the house. And there they were, Grapper and Jonah, on the other side. Grapper looked exhausted. He was seated on a fallen tree, his body slumped forward. Jonah was standing nearby.
At last I had a clear shot, and it was the easiest of shots—a large man in full view, motionless apart from his heaving belly. This loathsome man, this man I had come to despise in just a few days, was about to be captured.
Holding the gun, I rested my right hand on my left wrist, in a classic shooting stance. “I’m going to shoot him in the shoulder. Then in the leg.”
“Kill him. Kill him. I don’t care.” Miriam seemed to be crying. She was staring hard at the haggard figure. In a cracked voice she pronounced: “Mr John La Vinne. You are a dead man.”
I started.
Then I turned to her. “What did you say?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Get him, Johnny,” said Miriam in a low but urgent voice. “While he’s right down there in clear view. Before he moves…” Her face was flushed. Tears dotted her cheeks.
“What did you say? Just now. What did you call him?”
“His name.”
“I thought it was Grapper.”
“It is, but…”
“You called him something else. What did you call him? I want you to repeat it.”
“It’s his real name. Of course Grapper is just a nickname—what everyone calls him. Johnny, why?”
“Say it again. His real name.”
“John La Vinne.”
“Say it again.”
“What…?”
“Say it again.”
“John La Vinne. I named Jonah after him…”
“And he’s an Australian...”
“Johnny. Quick, you have to get him.”
“You told me he’s Australian. Was he in the army? The Australian army?”
“Johnny, why are you asking…?”
“Was he an Australian soldier?”
“Yes, that’s what he told me.”
“In East Timor?”
“I don’t know. He told me he’d been to East Timor lots of times. He had a special feeling for the place. A passion for the place.”
My mind was swirling. I tried to concentrate. I spoke in an urgent whisper. “Miriam. I want you to walk back up the track and over the hill. There’ll be police everywhere. Probably wondering where you are. I don’t know why they haven’t found us already.”
“Johnny, what are you talking about?”
“Go back. Find the police. Get your arm looked at. And tell them you don’t know where Grapper and Jonah went. That you lost them.”
She looked at me, and then peered down at Grapper, now seated on a log. “I want Jonah.”
“I’ll get Jonah back. I promise. I promise with all my heart. But I have to go and talk to that man.”
“Talk to him?”
“I think my father was John La Vinne.”
“Your father? Johnny, that’s…”
“I have to get in there.”
“Johnny, I can’t believe this. What are you saying? He’ll shoot you. He’s desperate.”
“I’m going down to talk to him. Now quickly, go back to the police.”
“No, I…”
“Go,” I shouted, and I pointed the gun at her. “Now.”
Down below us, Grapper clearly heard my voice. He looked in our direction. I don’t know if he could see us, but he quickly darted from sight.
Miriam’s face was a mixture of anger, confusion and despair.
I pulled away the gun. “Go quickly,” I said. “Before he starts shooting at us. He’s seen us. But don’t tell the police where we are. Say that you don’t know where Grapper and Jonah went. Or me.”
She peered down at the spot where Grapper had been sitting. She looked at my gun and then she looked me in the eye. She seemed about to say something but more tears appeared. Without a word she started moving back up the path to the summit.
I walked down to the bottom of the track and the fence ringing The Boss. I stood behind a tree. Then I cried out: “Grapper, I need to talk to you.”
I waited. There was no response.
“John La Vinne,” I called out. “Lieutenant John La Vinne.”
Again I heard nothing.
I shouted again. “I’m a friend of Miriam’s. I’m not a policeman. I’m from East Timor. My father was an Australian named John La Vinne. I have to talk to you.”
I waited.
Still I heard nothing. I wondered if he had fled after realizing that he was being observed.
I tried again. “I was watching you from up on the track. I have a gun, but I didn’t shoot. I want to talk. I’ll throw the gun over the fence.”
At that moment a powerful arm encircled my neck, all but cutting off my breathing. I felt something hard pushing into the small of my back.
“Drop the gun,” said a harsh voice I recognized as Grapper’s. “Then raise your arms slowly in the air. Do it right now or I shoot.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I dropped my gun on the ground and raised my arms.
The man loosened his stranglehold on my neck. “Move a few steps forward and then turn around slowly,” he said. I did so, and saw Grapper reaching down to retrieve my gun. His own weapon was still pointed at me.
“Over there,” he indicated, pointing about ten yards ahead, further along the fence.
I walked to where he pointed. A fallen tree neatly covered a small hole under the fence.
“Through there,” he said. “Under the fence. Then walk forward and sit on the ground. Don’t turn around.”
I stooped down and clambered under the fence. Emerging on the other side I walked about ten yards forward and sat, right before the ruins of the old house, a stone structure like a miniature castle. I could hear him behind me, also pushing himself through the hole. His breath was labored.
“Go through that doorway,” he commanded.
Ahead of me was an entranceway to the house. I stood and walked through into a roofless room, and there sat a boy on some kind of concrete ledge. He looked up, but no emotion—joy, surprise, or anything else—seemed to register.
“Hello Jonah,” I said. “How are you?”
He shrugged. “I’m all right.”
“He’s a good kid,” said the guttural voice. “Doesn’t complain. Does what he’s told. I’m letting him play games on my iPhone. I’ve disabled the phone function.”
I looked at the man, standing in the doorway, still panting, his gun aimed at my heart. For the first time I was seeing him close-up and not obscured by a tree.
My impressions of a couple of days earlier were correct. This was a powerful, heavily built man who had added considerably to his bulk but in all the wrong places. His big face carried layers of flab such that his chin disappeared into his neck. His belly pushed through his shirt, and bounced like that of a sumo wrestler. A surprising amount of white hair remained, but it was cut short and stuck out from his sweating head in a whirl of comical trajectories.
I could imagine that in his younger days this would not be a man you crossed. I could see him with cigar and dark glasses, standing in the jungle, hands on his hips, supervising weapons deliveries.
In fact, I wouldn’t want to cross him now. He was surely at least seventy, yet his arm around my throat indicated that he still enjoyed awesome power.
He looked back at the sharp slope from which I h
ad descended. “I hope you’re not with anyone. Not being followed.”
“No, no.”
“Pity for them if you are. From here I can see right up the hill.” He waved an arm in the general direction. “It would be pretty hard for anyone to surprise me. And down the other side”—he waved his arm again, in the other direction—“I can see the track down to the river.”
I sat next to Jonah, on what seemed to be some kind of hard concrete foundation stone. “Grapper, listen. I’ve come to talk to you. I have to talk to you. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Sit on the ground.”
I obeyed. He sat on a fallen tree that at some point had clearly crashed down into the derelict house. He had his gun trained on me, but he also had a view of the hill and the zigzag track.
“Please listen,” I said. “My mother got pregnant to an Australian named John. In East Timor. And I found a newspaper clipping about an Australian soldier, a lieutenant named John La Vinne, in East Timor about the same time. My name’s Johnny Ravine. My mother always told me my father’s name was John Levine or Ravine or something like that.”
He stared at me for an inordinate amount of time. He was still panting. I wondered if he needed to process all I had related. But another thought struck me—that he was tired and possibly a little senile. At last he spoke. “I was a lieutenant in East Timor. Before the court martial.”
“And you had a girlfriend? She got pregnant?”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Please tell me that’s what happened.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Maria.”
“And her village?”
“Mehara.”
He shrugged. “Maybe that was it.” He went silent again. Was he becoming choked with emotion, as I was? My brain was in confusion. I had dreamed for so long of meeting my dad, Lieutenant John La Vinne. Somehow in my imagination I envisaged a tall, possibly blonde, exuberantly handsome man who would welcome me in a tearful reunion. But certainly not this…this vagrant, this sweating derelict, this killer and kidnapper.
He looked hard at me. “What did you say your name was?”
“Johnny Ravine.”
“And your mother gave you that name?”
“Kind of. It’s what everyone called me. She said that my father’s name was something like that.”
“And what did you say a few days ago—that we’d met before? In East Timor?”
“About twenty years ago. You smuggled yourself in and supplied us with a huge store of weapons. At a desperate time for us. You possibly saved us. I think the history of our country might have been different without you.”
The flattery seemed to be having an impact. I thought I even saw the hint of a smile curl across his damp, leathery face.
He stood. I thought he might be coming to sit with me. But he moved to a concrete wall. Leaning on this he still had a view of his captives and the hill. He spoke in a low rumble. “I was a young specialist soldier. I was trained in counter-insurgency. I was part of a small team sent from Australia to help the Portuguese against Communist rebels. I even studied a bit of the local language. But I found it was a poverty-stricken hole. The Portuguese didn’t care about the place. I actually thought the Communists might make life a little better for the people. I was a little too out-spoken about my beliefs. And I also got involved in a bit of gunrunning.” Again I spotted the hint of a smile.
“To the Communists?”
“To anyone. I was a young guy. I needed adventure. So I found myself court-martialed and kicked out of the military. But before all that happened I got a young lass pregnant.”
“Maria.”
“Maria. She was a beautiful girl. I loved her. I loved her very much. I planned to marry her and take her back to Australia. But then I was shipped back home and locked up. I didn’t know how to contact her and even if I’d known I couldn’t have done anything.”
Tell me more. Tell me more. This is what I wanted—no, what I needed to know. I wanted so much for him to come and sit on the ground with me. I glanced at Jonah. He was back playing some game on the iPhone. His dad’s early years held no fascination.
Grapper continued: “It was a few years later, after I got released and after I could make some money, that I set off for Asia. I wanted Maria badly. It took forever in those days to get into East Timor but I managed and I went back to her village. The people there chased me out. They hated me. I think they’d have killed me. I spent days trying to talk to someone—anyone—to find out what happened, and at last a couple of old ladies told me she’d had a baby who’d been adopted out, or something like that. They talked about missionaries, but I was never able to locate any missionaries. They didn’t know what had happened to Maria. Said maybe she was a prostitute. Maybe she was dead. No one knew, and no one wanted to know. Getting pregnant to a foreign soldier—she’d brought such shame on her family.”
He still continued to scan the environs for intruders.
“I could never settle down after that,” he resumed. “I had a couple of marriages to Asian girls, but they didn’t last long. I got involved in all sorts of ventures. Import, export. Then I became a gunrunner again. I used contacts from my Australian army days to procure weapons. A lot of stuff from Australia, until we got caught. That turned me into a wanted man. I couldn’t return to Australia. I lived in Thailand most of the time, but sometimes I was in Singapore, sometimes Japan, even Korea. I moved around. I supplied arms to groups all over Asia. Tamil Tigers, Karen rebels, whatever. The break-up of the Soviet bloc meant a big increase in supply. I could source from there. But I always had a heart for East Timor. Because of Maria.”
More, more. I want to know more. “How did you get that name? Grapper?”
He was looking around again. “Don’t know,” he said vaguely. “Probably back in the army days. Some smart-alec playing around with my name—Vinne, vine, wine, grape. Came up with Grapper.” He was staring intently up at the hill.
Then he pointed his gun at me again. “Someone’s coming. Are you sure you didn’t tell anyone?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“We have to move.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I was amazed at this old man’s powers of observation. I guess that was how he had stayed alive so long. I peered up into the hills. Yes, I too could make out at least a couple of figures, possibly more, walking down the track. They were still at least one hundred yards above us, slightly obscured by swirling smoke, and even at a rapid clip it would certainly take them five minutes or more to zigzag their way down to us.
“Get up,” ordered Grapper, waving his gun in the direction of the river. “Start walking.”
We obeyed. Behind us he went to the ledge where Jonah had been sitting and from somewhere underneath retrieved a backpack. “You can carry this,” he said to me. “Supplies. In case we don’t make it back. I have another spot down the river.”
He directed us to another part of the fence and out through a hole. Then we walked down a narrow dirt path towards the river. I could see that he was limping badly.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” I said. “But Miriam knows we’re here. I asked her not to talk to the police. But she wants Jonah back so badly. And I don’t think she trusts me anymore.”
“Yes, Miriam.” Grapper talked as he limped, his voice now hoarse. “A great dreamer. Jim told me he needed someone to take over his work. Thought his daughter might be just the one. But first she had to learn all the details; what was really going on. So he sent her to Asia to meet me. I was supposed to gently reveal everything. But it didn’t take more than about ten seconds to realize that she was just an idealistic romantic. Quite naïve. Thinks we can all live together in flower power harmony. She’d have been hopeless. I did Jim a favor by getting her pregnant. Not that he thought so.”
We arrived at the river. I guessed that walking downstream would take us to the road on which I had arrived with Rad, Miriam and R
ohan four days earlier.
“This way,” said Grapper, pointing in the opposite direction.
I turned and glanced at him. Even walking he still had his gun trained on me. “Look…Grapper”—I so much wanted to call him Dad, but that just didn’t sound right—“can’t you let Jonah go? You’ve got me instead. Miriam is going crazy.”
“I have a feeling I might be needing a bargaining chip.”
“But now you have me. I came to you on my own accord, remember. I’m not going to escape.”
“Two beats one in my book.”
I sighed. “Look, please, you really have to give yourself in. You’ll be protected, now that I’ve found you. I’ll get a good lawyer. You can trust the Australian legal system.”
I left unspoken the obvious point—that he had almost certainly killed Pastor Jim Rezall and had kidnapped Jonah, not to mention shooting a police officer. He was an old man. He would never leave prison alive.
“I’m not dying in prison,” he said, reading my thoughts.
“I’ll help you,” I said. “Really I will.” Help him do what? I had no idea. I just knew that I wanted to help him. “Just surrender to the police. I’ll look after you.”
“I’ll be charged with murder. Plus whatever else is still hanging over me from years ago. Anyway, even in prison the Ukrainians will get me. I’ll go down fighting here. Take two sons with me, instead of one.”
“But what are your plans? Where are we going? What are you going to do next?”
“I have to get the money.”
“I’ll get the money for you.” How? I had no idea.
“I need it urgently.”
“Miriam was serious about getting you the two hundred thousand. She was re-arranging her house mortgage.”
“That’s just to get Jonah back. Not to help me. And now she’s gone to the police I can’t contact her.”
“But what else can you do? Rob a bank or something?”
“I’m thinking that’s probably what I’ll have to do.”