Savages

by Shirley Conran

  Kerry laughed. “The PDF air force is still minimal. And what would they do if the Russians attacked while we were using both their Otters?”

  The helicopter dipped over dense green undergrowth, then flew north up the coastline. Harry asked his routine business questions.

  “Things are okay at the mine,” Kerry told him. “Production on target, no personnel problems. Everything’s under control in the Nexus compound, and if things turn nasty, we’re prepared. Mount Ida has been quietly turned into a small fortress. Since Raki’s takeover there’s been a dusk-to-dawn curfew, so we don’t allow any of the mine personnel—black or white—into Queenstown after six in the evening.”

  “If there is trouble, what will you do with our personnel?”

  “Remember I told you that Mindo had been promoted? He’s now in charge of our local labor force. If we have to evacuate, it’s his job to get every islander back to their own villages or take them with him up to the Central Mountains. Mindo’s father is an important mountain chief, so everyone will be safe there until things quiet down.”

  “And apart from that?”

  “Nothing to report, except the atmosphere gets more unpleasant every day since Raki was elected President for Life. You’ll see what I mean when you get into Queenstown. There’s been a lot of army looting. The theft and violence are terrifying the civilians, and the rest of this rotten regime is just as corrupt as the army. Raki’s sudden power seems to have gone to his head. He’s behaving like countless other dictators in emerging Third World nations. He hasn’t ordered an ermine-trimmed throne yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one turned up.”

  “I thought Raki was smarter than that,” Harry said.

  “Raki would never have been a chief by birth. Because he grabbed control, he and his ministers now have the sort of power their fathers never dreamed of. It’s gone to their heads. The ministers behave more or less as they please.” He added, “I reckon that Nexus is going to get a lot of resignations and requests for transfers. The wives are being very supportive, but they won’t stand for these conditions much longer.”

  “Has only four months of Raki made such a big difference?”

  Kerry nodded. “Though there’s nothing we can’t handle. My only worry is that you might get into a tough spot. There’s no problem about continuing the air search, but if you insist on staying in Queenstown I’d like you to travel with a couple of guards.” He looked sideways at Harry and added, rather fast, “I’ll be the one to take the heat from Pittsburgh if they lose any more personnel.”

  * * *

  Johno and the eight Australian pilots were waiting in the air-conditioned comfort of Kerry’s office. So was Mindo, who except for his squashed nose looked a bit like the traditional representations of Jesus Christ. He had the same compassionate yet firm expression, long hair and a beard, together with an aura of command. This was not surprising in a man who was the son of a mountain chief, who’d been educated at the Jesuit college in Port Moresby and who had just crossed the line from union leader to management.

  On Harry’s previous trip to Paui, Mindo had been visiting his tribe, so this was their first meeting. As the two men exchanged greetings, they eyed each other with interest. Mindo was even taller than Harry, and said even less. Because of his knowledge of Paui, he had been asked to attend the search-plan briefings. The plans had been decided weeks beforehand.

  “What do you reckon has happened to the missing people?” Harry asked.

  Mindo did not soften his words. “If they heard shooting, they may have hidden in the jungle. Whites cannot survive in the jungle. They would have died.”

  “Do you think they’re dead?”

  “Perhaps,” Mindo said. “But Paradise Bay used to be a big crocodile hunting area. Now nobody wants crocodiles, so the village hunters have no money. The whites may have been captured for ransom. That is your hope.”

  “Then why has there been no ransom demand?”

  “It would not be unusual to wait. Months mean nothing to the islanders. The hunters may have been alarmed when they realized the importance of their prisoners. They may have hidden them far from Paradise Bay.”

  “So what can we do?”

  “Search. And wait,” Mindo said firmly. “My people can handle the land search. Westerners cannot do this.”

  “Then let’s start,” Harry said.

  The four twin-engine Piper Cherokees had been hired months earlier from one of the two charter firms at Port Moresby. Harry would have preferred planes with floats, but they weren’t available; however, the Cherokees were new aircraft. They would grid-search the island, each towing a hundred-foot banner that read, in black on white, MAKE SMOKE HARRY NEXUS. Harry hoped that if the Nexus party was being held prisoner, the most optimistic of the possibilities, then one of that tough, smart bunch of international executives would surely, somehow, be able to set something alight.

  Paui measures two hundred and fourteen miles at its longest point and seventy-four miles at its widest point—bigger than Belgium, three times the size of Connecticut. That is a lot of land to search, he told himself.

  Each of the four Cherokees was going to search a quadrant of the island and fly over it at normal search speed, which was 60 miles an hour. They would fly to a grid pattern. Each pilot had already marked up his large-scale map into small squares; each square measured 7.5 by 7.5 miles, an area of 56.25 square miles, which would take about an hour to search. To search Paui should take 266 flying hours. Allowing a maximum of ten hours flying time per day, this meant a total of twenty-seven search days—roughly seven days per aircraft; an extra day for insurance meant eight days per aircraft.

  They were due to start the search on the following morning, March 2, and finish it on the evening of March 9; the pilots would return to Port Moresby on the morning of March 10.

  On March 2 and 3 Johno, in the ungainly Duck, would carry out a coastal search. At search speed, he would slowly fly above the 554 miles of coastline, after which he would stand by as the spare pilot.

  On March 2 Harry, in the Nexus helicopter, would travel to the area immediately south of Paradise Bay, where he would start a dinghy search of the coastline. He would be accompanied by an armed interpreter who spoke the local language and Pidgin. At all times, Harry would be in contact with the helicopter pilot.

  After the briefing, Kerry and Harry flew to Queenstown in the Bell.

  As the helicopter flew over the endless green carpet of jungle, Kerry said, “You’ve lost a lot of weight, Harry. Feel all right?”

  Harry nodded. Not only was he as lean as a stick, but the skin was drawn taut across his high, flat cheekbones. He looked tense and tired.

  Kerry also noticed something else. “You’ve got another gun. Isn’t it a bit small?”

  “It’s what American cops use,” Harry said. “A snub-nosed Thirty-eight Special, Smith and Wesson. If it’s big enough for them, it’s big enough for me. It’s big enough to stop a man, not just nick him.”

  “Talking of being stopped, the guards on the roadblocks tend to get drunk and they’re potentially dangerous from late afternoon onwards,” Kerry warned. “Try not to go out alone, and always take plenty of cigarettes with you. Carry your passport too, of course—you’ve got a permanent visa, haven’t you? Good.”

  Irritably Harry said, “I’m not a child.”

  “We’ve had to double security at the mine and at the compound,” Kerry said.

  “Yeah, I read your report. But nothing has actually happened to warrant any action, right? You’re just worried that something might happen?”

  “Not worried, Harry, scared. Things have changed a lot in four months.”

  * * *

  The ride from Queenstown Airport to the town was spine-rattling. Harry winced as he said, “I’d have been up here more often if Raki had definitely agreed to negotiate. But he wouldn’t arrange a meeting.”

  “Don’t worry. Raki knows the mining concession doesn’t run out until the en
d of June, and he knows that we’re ready to talk as soon as he is ready,” Kerry said.

  “Jerry Pearce thinks the Heads of Agreement should be signed by the first of April, latest. The Legal Department will need at least three months on it. Otherwise, we’ll have to close the mine temporarily.”

  “That gives us only three weeks for discussion, Harry.”

  “So what? Raki’s always been a last-minute negotiator.”

  “And now he holds all the cards,” Kerry said. “Let me tell you how he won the election. To begin with, he held it at the end of December, when much of the island was impassable, due to flooded rivers and landslides.”

  As they drove through a forest where yellow orchids hung from dark green trees, Harry listened to the long list of blatant fraud and corruption. Kerry concluded, “And in areas known to be unfriendly to Raki, soldiers held target practice outside the polling stations; not surprisingly, few people voted.”

  “Did anyone vote Democratic?” Harry asked.

  Kerry laughed. They left the high trees of the jungle behind them and briefly drove past cultivated land. “Also not surprisingly, Raki was elected President for Life.”

  They could now see ahead of them the forlorn corrugated-tin shacks of Shanty Town.

  Harry leaned forward and peered out. “I’ve never seen so many soldiers in Queenstown!”

  Kerry said quietly, “Some people around here still remember a time before 1975, when the island didn’t have a rotten army and did have a good police force. Now we no longer have a police force, just the new so-called Defense Force, now enlarged by Filipino mercenaries and every young tribesman that Raki could raise.”

  As they approached Ma Chang’s hotel, Harry noticed that a new apple-green board hung above the entrance doors. Bright blue letters read, “Presidential Hotel.”

  “What’s wrong with young tribesmen?” Harry asked.

  Kerry said, “At first, the young recruits from outlying tribes behaved reasonably, but now they’re hungry, rarely paid and encouraged to steal food and money at the roadblocks.”

  “Are there many roadblocks?”

  “You might pass three within a mile, and they stop every cart and bicycle. If you haven’t a ransom, you risk being badly beaten with boots or rifle butts. They spend the money on drink. And you know what they’re like when they’re drunk.”

  Harry knew the islanders had very weak heads and were not charming drunks. They were aggressive, boastful bullies and could be very cruel. Ears were cut off, noses slit open and eyes gouged out.

  “The fun starts at dusk, Harry,” Kerry warned. “You’ll hear banging on trash can lids and empty oil drums, and sporadic gunfire from those khaki juvenile delinquents. Don’t underestimate them just because they look young. They’ve got real rifles, and they steal real ammunition from their own armory. Most are very good shots. They’re given a few weeks’ shooting practice, then they’re handed an AK and a pair of boots, told they’re soldiers and that it’s their job to protect the President and use their wits to feed themselves. So people are killed every night. Dogs start eating the corpses before their families can find them.”

  “I can see why you didn’t put in a full report before I arrived,” Harry said. “I’d have found this hard to believe.”

  He jumped down from the vehicle and looked up and down the unusually quiet road. The town felt sullen; menace hung around the buildings like an invisible thundercloud.

  In the hotel foyer, a large, touched-up photograph of President Raki now hung behind the reception desk; tinted pink cheeks curved in a benevolent smile beneath eyes as calmly merciless as those of any Roman emperor.

  Harry was greeted by an overpowering whiff of magnolia.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Scott.” Mrs. Chang looked up from the Monopoly board, where Freddy was reluctantly selling Broadway.

  “Any news, Mrs. Chang?” Harry asked.

  “I received the insurance lists of the valuables belonging to the missing persons, including watches. I was most interested to notice the value of Mr. Graham’s watch. Let me see, ten percent of the value is the usual insurance repayment price, is it not? Minus the hundred and seventy dollars you have already paid me, of course.”

  “Have you been able to locate any of the other watches?”

  “Not yet. As you know, it is unwise to be too specific in our search or to offer too generous a reward. People have been killed for less than a watch. However, they know that my boy Ronnie will pay more than usual for good secondhand watches. So the market price has already risen.”

  * * *

  As usual, the bar looked as if it had been the scene of a truly gargantuan drunken brawl. The only occupant was Bill, the retired planter who felt that Robert Louis Stevenson had wrecked his life with false promises of tropical allure.

  “So you’re back,” he said to Harry. “Is it true you’re going to search again and cover the coastline by yourself?”

  Harry nodded.

  “You want to be careful,” Bill said. “Especially round the southern tip of the island. They’ve got bloodthirsty bastards with nasty customs down there. Millions of dollars were spent looking for that millionaire’s son, the one that disappeared in the sixties. He was never found, and we all know why. I heard that the first search expedition found the villagers still wearing his clothes. So watch out you don’t end up an hors d’oeuvre wrapped in banana leaves.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Care for a beer?”

  “Thanks, mate. I know it’s not my business, but do you really think there’s any chance of finding them out there, after four months? Because nobody else does, chum.”

  “Nexus doesn’t give up easily,” Harry said.

  “The buzz is, you need legal evidence of their death,” Bill said. “Otherwise the life insurance claims of the relatives have to wait seven years.”

  Harry nodded.

  “But why are you doing it?”

  “This is my area and I’m responsible for it. It’s my job,” Harry said, thinking of Annie.

  * * *

  The following morning, March 2, Harry started his coastline search in the Nexus helicopter. He couldn’t use the Duck because it carried only two people and Harry needed an interpreter. From Paradise Bay he planned to move north and work around the island in a rubber dinghy with an outboard. A search-and-rescue project always starts where the missing persons were last seen.

  Allowing for visits to villages, cigarette distribution and chat, Harry could only count on covering fifty miles of coastline a day. He would keep in touch with Roger, the monosyllabic helicopter pilot, by means of a flare launcher pocket pen. When Harry screwed a cartridge into the base and pulled back the firing knob on the side, the launcher shot a small magnesium flare two hundred feet into the air. Harry had nine flares. If a flare was not fired from the jungle below promptly every hour, the pilot was to radio Mount Ida for help.

  Harry started his search just south of Katanga village, where his questions were met by blank stares and head shakes.

  When the black dinghy puttered past Waterfall Bay the distraught women were burying Jonathan. There was no lookout at the camp during the funeral service. Grief-stricken, the women did not even hear Harry pass.

  On March 3, exhausted and covered with insect bites, Harry returned from the second day of his coastline search to be told that President Raki had granted him an interview, for exactly ten minutes at exactly seven o’clock that evening.

  Upon his arrival at the palace, Harry was searched, then escorted to the President’s office. Harry noticed the forlorn air of the previously immaculate garden. The flowerbeds were bare, bushes and trees had been mutilated to provide fuel for bonfires, which had scarred black patches on the parched lawn. As they passed beneath the trees, bats flew out in a filthy swirling cloud and a yellow splat of bat dung, the color of rotten mango, fell on Harry’s forearm.

  “Good luck,” one of the soldiers said.

  The palace had gone from ramshackle t
o derelict. Along the wide corridor which led to the presidential quarters, a length of fire hose trailed on the soggy, stained purple carpet. The nozzle hung over a red fire bucket. The amiable soldier who believed in good luck said, “Toilet water tap no good, get water in bucket from fire hose.”

  Raki wore an elaborate white uniform, similar to that of a British Admiral of the Fleet in tropical waters. With what seemed genuine concern, the President inquired about the progress of Harry’s search for the missing Nexus group. The President would talk on no other subject and firmly avoided discussing the renewal of the mining concession or even fixing a definite date to discuss it.

  Harry left in a rage.

  * * *

  On March 7, after another four fruitless days of coastline search, Harry was again summoned to the palace. For this meeting Raki wore only a scarlet lap-lap around his waist. He was clearly in excellent physical condition, muscular and fiat-bellied.

  Sitting behind his elaborate desk, the President again firmly refused to discuss the renewal of the mining concession. With every appearance of genuine concern, he said, “The urgency is to find these missing friends of yours, Mr. Scott. Surely this is more important than business? Your friends are not the only missing persons. Our people are also in constant communication with the Japanese and British consulates at Port Moresby, for it appears that four other tourists and a member of the hotel staff are also missing from the Paradise Bay Hotel.” He threw the missing person photographs down on his elaborate Louis XVI-style French desk and absentmindedly with a dagger started to gouge bits of inlay from the desktop.

  “You have heard no news at all, sir?” Harry asked.

  Palms outward, both Raki’s hands flew up to shoulder level. “I wish I could be more helpful, but as you know, our investigations revealed nothing. I hoped that you might have some news for me, Mr. Scott.”

  Harry shook his head.

  An irritable note crept into the President’s voice. “Then life must go on, Mr. Scott, don’t you think? The Minister of Tourism—you remember my brother Envo?—is seriously concerned about the attention your search is attracting in the foreign press.”