‘We’re not certain,’ Stewart admitted. ‘A few Boogs down in Arawa sticking their noses in where they’re not wanted. Maybe not all the former BRA fighters are prepared to dance to Devlin’s tune, or maybe they just want more money. It’s the fact that I don’t know that makes me more nervous about them than all the others.’
‘So that explains the SLR?’
‘That’s right, son. You know what they say: never take a knife to a gunfight. And all of this is without taking into account the Chinks, who have their spies everywhere but tend to do their fighting in the court and the boardroom. They’ve already made one pitch to the landowners’ association that Devlin has seen off, but it won’t be the last.’
At the mention of ‘Chinks’ Jamie wondered whether he should mention his encounter with Lim, but decided to keep it to himself. ‘What I don’t understand is why Devlin didn’t send us with a proper escort. Either more guards or these BRA people you keep talking about.’
The security chief responded with a bark of bitter laughter. ‘The straight answer is that taking more guys like Joe and Andy would make us stick out like your proverbial dahlia on a dungheap and make us more of a target if the bad guys are out there. Likewise, the BRA boys might just get halfway there and decide to take the head for themselves and ransom it back. Like I say, you can’t trust ’em.’
‘If that’s the straight answer what’s the not so straight one?’
‘You go down that road and you could end up in dangerous territory, Mr Saintclair.’
‘Nevertheless …’
Stewart sucked on a tooth while he made up his mind. ‘All right, let’s just say that in the past couple of years Devlin Metal Resources has become what we might call a leaky ship. People in high places are asking awkward questions about subjects they’re not supposed to know about.’
‘I could see how that might make a certain party nervous.’
Stewart nodded. ‘Naturally, your intrepid head of security instigates an immediate investigation and cleans out anyone who’s tainted, even by association. The leaks stop, but the fact that they happened at all might make that certain party look at his hitherto trusted security chief through new eyes. Either he’s past it – after all, he’s getting on a bit, as you’re so fond of telling him – or worse, maybe someone from outside has offered to enhance his pension package in return for privileged access. If it’s scenario number two, you have a big problem. This bloke you’ve trusted with your deepest secrets for the last twenty-five years knows more about Devlin Metal Resources operations than any man alive, even you – you might even say he knows where the bodies are buried, and you wouldn’t be far wrong – because it’s the nature of things that certain aspects of the business have to be done on a deniable basis.’
‘Now you’re making me nervous.’
Stewart restarted the engine and engaged the car’s transmission. ‘So you should be, son.’ He turned to stare at Jamie for a moment before pulling out into the road. ‘Because I find it bloody strange that Keith Devlin decided to choose a desk-bound dinosaur like me to babysit Jamie Saintclair on a jaunt that’s supposed to turn Devlin Metal Resources into the world’s biggest mining company.’
The Toyota crested the brow of a hill and began the gradual descent into a long valley. The only signs of modern civilization since they’d left the junction had been a line of rusting electricity pylons and a few sections of battered crash barrier. Gradually, Jamie became aware of a subtle change in his surroundings. It must be the same sensation explorers felt when they came upon the ruins of a lost civilization hidden deep in the jungle. The first thing he noticed were angles when, till now, the jungle had dealt solely in curves. Then fragments of what could only be buildings appeared, throttled by twisted lengths of vine and liana, or hidden amongst vast, olive-green plants.
‘Panguna,’ Stewart said laconically. ‘The world’s biggest scrapyard.’ They drove towards the centre of town and the ruins became more visible. Vast complexes of skeletal iron that had once been factories. Workshops a hundred times larger than anything Jamie had seen in Arawa, stripped of their roofs and walls, but still with the massive crushing machinery inside. His eyes were drawn to the blue-white flash of a welding torch and he saw a small group of men eyeing the car suspiciously from the shadows of some former mill or smelter.
‘Looters,’ the security boss announced. ‘We stay out of their way.’
At last the half-buried industrial landscape gave way to wrecked and looted apartment blocks and houses, tennis courts and the empty blue rectangle of a large swimming pool that, given the climate, must have been the most popular place in town. Stewart pointed to a vast concrete building that had been the mine’s administrative headquarters, but, like everything else, was once more being consumed by nature. Jamie was suddenly overwhelmed by the certainty that he was seeing the future; a chilling foretelling of the day humankind got its comeuppance and disappeared from the earth.
And that was before he saw the mine.
He’d had glimpses of bare earth and rock through the trees on the way down into Panguna town, but only now, as Stewart drew up at the side of the crater, was the true vastness of one of the world’s largest industrial sites or, depending on your point of view, greatest acts of ecological vandalism, truly apparent. It was an enormous pit, big enough to swallow the entire City of London and still have room for afters. Sharply stepped inner slopes were scattered with hundreds of rusting pieces of machinery. Jamie thought it was probably the ugliest, harshest and most desolate piece of real estate he’d ever laid eyes on, yet it still contained elements of beauty that took the breath away. Half a kilometre below, in the centre of the drab brown crater, a copper-blue lake shone like a brightly polished jewel fed from the innumerable streams that carved gullies in the steep walls. These, he now saw, were also tinged with blue where the copper ore was directly exposed to the air. A row of what looked like dead beetles caught his eye and he realized he was looking at a line of parked trucks that must have been used to carry the ore from the mine to the processing plants. Stewart saw the direction of his gaze.
‘There are forty-five of them and they weigh one hundred and seventy tons each. Everything was mothballed the day the mine closed and unless it’s been pinched or dismantled it’s still here. Like I said: the world’s biggest scrapyard.’
‘It’s incredible.’ Jamie heard the awed shake in his voice. ‘That’s the only word for it. As if the world ended, but nobody told us.’
‘It definitely ended for the Moroni.’ Stewart accompanied the words with a bitter laugh. ‘Their village was somewhere right in the middle, but about on the level with that mountain over there.’ He pointed to a hill that towered above the level of the mine walls. ‘The mine company – with the help of the Australian government, I might add – shipped them out lock, stock and barrel and stuck them down on the coast. A few years later they were burned out of their new houses by the PNG Defence Force. Whatever Moroni means in their language it definitely isn’t good luck.’
‘You sound as if you have some sympathy for them? I have to say I find that a bit unlikely.’
‘Maybe it is,’ Stewart conceded. ‘But I have my reasons. I’ve got twenty-five years in this business, son.’ His eyes turned solemn as they surveyed the massive crater below. ‘Most of it’s been spent stopping Keith Devlin’s workers pinching anything they could lay their hands on. We had the occasional idiot breaking in to steal a truck or an excavator, but the mines in Australia were mostly places where there were no people. Oh, the Abos would complain that some bit of bush was their old man’s special dreaming place and try to hit us for a bit of compo, but they had another fifty thousand acres to get lost in and nobody paid too much mind. They’d get an axe and a knife from stores and be on their way. This was different.’ He turned to meet Jamie’s gaze. ‘They conned these people and stole their land, and not content with that they destroyed their way of life. The least they could do was to give them a decent amount
of cash to start again and to build the kind of places BCL built for its own people. Instead, they filled the pockets of the politicians in Port Moresby, and maybe in Canberra, too.’ Without warning his face split in a grin. ‘And then the Boogs surprised them. They thought they could bulldoze the islanders out of the way, but Francis Ona and his mates fought back, and by Christ didn’t they show them something? I’m a fighting man, Saintclair, and I respect fighters. These guys fought with spears and home-made rifles against helicopter gunships and somehow they won. They tormented the enemy by night and lured them into ambush by day. When the choppers flew in to carry out the wounded they took out the pilots or the motors. The PNG didn’t have the stomach for it and eventually they left. That was when they stopped the medicines and food supplies coming in, which on a tropical island is the equivalent of biological warfare. The world abandoned the buggers, but they still stuck it out. Sure, I have sympathy for them, I even admire them, but that isn’t going to do them any good in the long run.’
‘So you don’t believe in Keith Devlin’s brave new world?’
Stewart stared at him. ‘I hope I’m around to see it.’
They drove round to the far side of the mine and parked behind an abandoned shed, where they unloaded the Toyota. At this height the temperature was a little lower, but the humidity correspondingly high and by the time they’d finished Jamie could feel the sweat pouring down his back and into the band of his camouflage trousers. He shrugged on his pack and strapped on a belt with a machete and water bottle attached. Doug Stewart did likewise and hefted the L1A1, ignoring Jamie’s look of disgust. The Englishman pulled out his mobile phone and was perplexed by the lack of a signal.
‘You can forget that up here,’ Stewart said. ‘Might as well leave it behind. And before we get out into the bush we need to set some ground rules. First, water. We’re going to be sweating a lot of it out so we need to rehydrate regularly. On the other hand, drinking too much can bring on water intoxication, which can kill you. So you drink when I drink, or if you feel the need, ask. Got that?’
‘All right,’ Jamie agreed. ‘I don’t see any problem.’
‘We’ll see.’ Stewart showed his teeth in a shark’s grin. ‘Second, all the land around here is owned by clans, that is extended native families. As you’d expect given the situation with the mine, land ownership is a sensitive issue and they can be touchy about strangers venturing too close. Normally, I’d have contacted these people in advance, but that would have alerted the whole island. If we meet anybody, or anybody hails us, you freeze and let me do the talking. No aggressive moves.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘Listen, son,’ Stewart jabbed him in the chest to make his point, ‘this is no bloody joke. That’s the jungle out there and the jungle will kill you if you don’t take it seriously. We get a scratch anywhere, even the kind of thing you’d ignore back in the real world, we smother it in ointment at the next rest stop, because, believe me, the last thing you want is a tropical ulcer. You stay close to my back and keep your eyes peeled. If we hit any really rough stuff we’ll take it in turns to cut our way through.’ He pulled out a compass and handed it to Jamie. ‘Here, this is a spare. In case we get split up this is what you do. We’re gonna head south-east for about three hours until we hit a little plain in the headwaters of the Pagana River. You’ll know you’re in the right spot because there are two distinctive hills to the west of the plain, like gateposts. Kristian Anugu’s longhouse is right between them and his clan has plantations and gardens scattered across the plain.’
‘That all sounds deceptively easy, Doug old boy,’ Jamie looked out over the rumpled carpet of jungle-clad hills that stretched for mile upon mile, ‘and I’m sure you know exactly where we’re going. But we both know the reality is that once we’re in there we won’t be able to see more than twenty feet in any direction, and the broken ground means we aren’t likely to travel in a straight line.’
Doug Stewart shook his head in exasperation. ‘In that case, Jamie, old boy, I’ll make it even simpler for you. See that notch in the hills on the other side of the valley?’
Jamie screwed up his eyes and he could just make out some kind of deviation in the forest canopy. ‘More or less.’
‘Well, that marks an old trading trail from the Moroni days and it runs from here, through the Pagana Plain all the way to Buin. You follow that feature until you hit coconut and cocoa plantations; proper cultivated ground. Somewhere around there, you’ll find people. Any one of them will guide you to Kristian Anugu.’
‘But how will I ask them, I don’t speak Tok what’s-it?’
‘Oh, it shouldn’t be too difficult. All you have to do is keep repeating his name and looking gormless.’
Jamie managed a wry smile. ‘I think I can manage that.’
‘Then let’s go. Tarzan, your jungle awaits.’
XLI
Jamie hated the jungle with all the loathing and passion he’d feared, but he decided he hated Keith Devlin even more. No matter his apparently altruistic plans for the future of Bougainville and its people, Devlin was a malignant human being who manipulated everyone within his orbit. He’d noticed it first with Nico, the successful young Australian lawyer who’d brokered his deal with Leopold Ungar. Assured and urbane, Nico become uncertain and fearful in Devlin’s presence, like a dog worried the next thing he’d feel was the whip. Jamie knew he would never have dared cross swords with the odious Madam Nishimura if it hadn’t been for Devlin’s veiled threats against Fiona and Lizzie. And now it was happening again. He was out of his element and he knew it. For no good reason, Magda Ross’s face appeared in his head. He missed the air of calm competence she brought to every tough situation and she would be familiar with the Bougainville jungle. The feeling was quickly replaced by a familiar pang of guilt when he realized that her competence wasn’t the only thing he missed about her. Something fell down the back of his neck and he slapped frantically at the back of his shirt. And things were about to get worse.
It started to rain.
People talk about the heavens opening, but in Bougainville a shower was more like being caught underneath an emptying swimming pool. Jamie was soaked to the skin before he even had the chance to reach for his waterproof. His clothes stuck to his body as he trudged miserably on, the trail – little more than a dirt scar in the thick grass – turning to glutinous mud beneath his feet. Soon the trail wasn’t a trail at all, just an emerald strip of knee-high grass between the trees, filled with ferns and shoulder-high, razor-edged spiky leaves that sliced tiny cuts in the skin of his bare arms. Doug Stewart led with his rifle at the port across his chest, setting a pace Jamie struggled to match. The conditions had no effect on the Australian and his eyes alternately scanned the ground ahead and the wall of trees and vines that sloped upwards to left and right. Every hundred paces brought a gully to struggle down or a steep ridge to climb, each thousand a river to ford, filled with slippery rocks that were ankle-breaking booby traps.
As the canopy thickened the rain faded and eventually stopped completely, the constant rush replaced by a silence vastly more unnerving. Stewart halted and raised a hand for Jamie to do the same. For twenty seconds or more he stood with his eyes closed, tasting the quiet with his ears the way a dog tests for scent with his nose. When he was satisfied, they moved on, but he repeated the exercise half an hour later.
‘Five-minute rest,’ he whispered.
Jamie staggered to a grateful halt, panting with exertion. Stewart unhooked the water bottle from his belt and took a three-second drink. Jamie matched him gulp for gulp and had to avoid the temptation to continue. The security boss leaned against the barrel of his rifle, drawing the breath deep into his lungs. Jamie was about to take a seat under a tree beside him when the Australian’s fingers twisted into his T-shirt to drag him upright.
‘Don’t you know anything?’ he grunted. ‘If you sit down, it’s only more difficult to get up again. Stand tall and suck in that oxygen
. Water and air, that’s your fuel, but you’ve got to get that air into your lungs.’
Jamie leaned against the tree instead and, imitating the Australian’s actions, carefully treated every scratch on his arms. After what could only have been three minutes, Stewart straightened up and headed off down the trail. With a curse and a groan, the art dealer followed.
Jamie’s image of the jungle included brightly coloured birds and potentially dangerous animals. Lizards and, he suppressed a shiver, scaly, thin-lipped, bead-eyed, enough-poison-to-kill-you-ten-times-over snakes. Yet this jungle was curiously devoid of life. All he saw was the occasional insect, although they included an ebony millipede the length of his forearm and butterflies that ranged between the size of a poker chip and a soup plate. A soft rush in the distance had just signalled the next river when the Australian froze and his eyes swivelled to the tree canopy. Jamie followed his gaze, aware that something wasn’t right, but not sure what it was. They stood frozen while the seconds lengthened. Eventually, Jamie’s eyes caught the flutter of a small brown bird flitting through the highest canopy.
It seemed nothing, but Stewart was already on the move, picking up the pace although, Jamie noted, not lengthening his stride pattern. The sound of the river grew louder and when they reached it the Australian stopped and beckoned Jamie close. ‘When you get to the middle,’ he whispered, ‘you turn, walk very carefully ten paces downstream and wait for me. Got that?’
Jamie nodded. This was no time for questions. The river was close to thirty feet wide with steeply sloping banks of gravel. He scrambled into the water and complied with the directions, disturbing the river bed as little as he could. When he reached the spot the security chief had indicated he turned and watched curiously as Stewart completed the crossing. When the Australian reached the far side he did an odd little dance, moving from side to side as he crossed the patch of loose stones. Once into the grass he moved quickly, planting his feet very deliberately for fifty paces, then marching from the path up into the trees for a count of ten. Jamie watched him stop and turn. Stewart scanned the path on the Panguna side of the crossing, before even more deliberately walking backwards down the slope. When he reached the flat he continued, parallelling his original tracks until he reached the river again and walked downstream to reach the Englishman.
The Samurai Inheritance Page 30