Java Spider

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Sumoto,’ he asked out of the blue. ‘You know him, Dedi? General Dino Sumoto?’

  Charlie perked up her ears. Something else Randall hadn’t told her about.

  The Kutuan’s reaction was instant. He flexed his hands and blew through pursed lips. ‘Bad man, bad man,’ he muttered. ‘When he boss KODAM Twelve, that when we begin have troubles. Anybody who against KUTUMIN, Sumoto send soldiers to take him and beat him. Mayjen Sumoto, he want the mine very much, because it make him very rich. He buy land cheap, then sell to KUTUMIN for big profit.’

  ‘I see. But he’s not here now. Has a new job. In Jakarta.’

  ‘Ya …’

  There was a yes, but in the way Dedi said it. Then he tensed up, hunching his gorilla shoulders and stepping on the brake.

  A roadblock. They’d reached the site for the new harbour. Soldiers in the road with automatics, levelled at their windscreen. Beyond, they could see heavy trucks manoeuvring. Somewhere nearby a pile driver thumped rhythmically.

  When they stopped, a policeman in dark glasses and knife-edge creases came to the window. He stared in to see what they had with them, checked Dedi’s papers, then shoved open the rear door.

  ‘Paspor,’ he asked. ‘Where you go?’

  ‘To the beach. Diving.’ Randall pointed to the gear in the back. The policeman nodded. He flicked quickly through their passports like a man just going through the motions.

  He knew all about them. Been told they were coming. The realisation made Randall uncomfortable. Shouldn’t have surprised him. Intel had repeatedly proved their thoroughness.

  They were waved through. The road traversed the construction site. Giant earth movers levelled the shore and rust-red, steel piles reached into the sea for a new jetty. The site was dotted by sandbagged sentry posts, with roofs of palm fronds. To their right a new road of red earth cut a swathe through the lush foothills which rose sharply to a ridge of dense forest.

  Good bandit country.

  Beyond the harbour, a large area set back from the shore had been cleared of trees.

  ‘For power generator,’ Dedi explained. ‘They say it to make electricity for all people of Kutu, but we don’t believe. It only for the mine, for places where mine workers live. They all Javans. No work at mine for people of Kutu, because they say we lazy,’ he added bitterly. ‘But not true. They afraid we sabotage mine because we no want it here.’

  Afraid with justification, Randall guessed. Dedi’s bitterness revealed precisely where his sympathies lay.

  A second checkpoint as they left the site, then the tarmac ended and the road turned to dirt. The trees thinned and a broad beach of fine sand curved away to the left. The minibus bumped on to a long wooden bridge that crossed a dry river bed.

  ‘KUTUMIN going to use this river to wash poison from the mine into the sea,’ Dedi announced acidly. ‘Diving finished here then.’

  ‘Hey, can we stop a minute?’ Charlie asked. ‘I’d like a shot of this.’

  Dedi hummed uncertainly. He looked behind to see if they’d been followed.

  ‘Quickly, quickly,’ he told her.

  Charlie got out with the camcorder and took some shots to illustrate the environmental impact of the mine. Something on tape, even if she never used the shots. Made her feel better.

  They continued, the track cutting inland through dense vegetation and hamlets of thatched, wood-framed houses. In the bare earth yards, small pigs dug for roots under flame-flowered trees. Then the road dipped again. They’d crossed an isthmus and the wide blue sweep of the coast was back in view. Islands of black rock lay a kilometre or two off the coast.

  Charlie was brooding about the name that Randall had come out with, her suspicions growing like algae.

  ‘Who’s General Sumoto, Nick?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘Bloke who used to run this place, chuck,’ he replied curtly.

  ‘That much I gathered, ducky. But why were you asking about him?’

  Nick turned to her. ‘Nothing special love, honest.’

  Like hell, she thought. Later. She’d try him again later. Ahead lay Santa Josef.

  According to the guidebook, the village had been settled two hundred years ago by Portuguese missionaries as a fever treatment centre. Today it was a decrepit huddle of semi-derelict houses, with the church and sanatorium set back from the road at the far end.

  They passed through it, then Dedi swung the minibus on to the beach and stopped by a giant fig tree.

  ‘I make boat ready,’ he said stiffly, opening the rear doors. ‘Maybe you like take walk now?’ He nodded towards the church. Behind it, through a dip in the distant ridge they saw the far-off, smoking crater of Mount Jiwa.

  They approached the long, low, stone-built sanatorium. From inside came the sound of children chanting. The central doors had been hooked open to let air circulate. Inside, the once-white walls were flaking and stained. A bespectacled nun in mid-blue habit bustling along the corridor jumped at the sight of them.

  ‘Selamat pagi,’ Nick smiled.

  ‘Selamat pagi,’ she replied, pushing the glasses up her broad, flat nose.

  ‘Saya mencari bapak Pius Naplo.’

  Randall hoped his Malay made sense. He’d asked for the priest. She beckoned with a downward motion of the hand. They followed her.

  The dark terracotta floor tiles needed sweeping. On the left were dormitories. Some had iron-framed beds, others just soiled mattresses side by side on the floor. There was a smell of urine.

  Then out into the sun’s glare again, across a paved yard to a small modern house. The sister opened the fly screen and tapped on the door frame. The Kutuan who opened it had short, curly hair and gold-framed glasses. Mid-thirties, he wore a plain shirt and dark trousers.

  The nun spoke a few words in Kutun then left them.

  ‘You want speak me? I am Father Pius Naplo,’ he asked, agitated. His English was heavily accented. He beckoned them into a small office, equipped with fax machine and a PC.

  Randall explained they were journalists.

  ‘They allow you in?’ Naplo looked surprised.

  ‘We’re here as tourists,’ Charlie added.

  ‘Ah. Of course. Then take much care. Why you come to me?’ he asked, his knowing eyes belying the innocence of his query.

  ‘The British government minister who’s been kidnapped …’ Randall explained.

  ‘Mr Bowen.’ He waved a hand towards his hardware. ‘I keep in touch. Internet.’

  ‘So we heard. From Jim Sawyer.’

  Naplo gave a nod of recognition.

  ‘Father, we want your help. Something mysterious happened last night. A document belonging to Stephen Bowen was put under the door of our hotel room.’

  Naplo’s face gave nothing away.

  ‘A driving licence. It seemed like a message from his kidnappers. As if they were giving us proof that he’s here on Kutu.’

  Suspicion crossed the priest’s face like a squall.

  ‘Why you come tell me this?’ he demanded. ABRI intelligence was not beyond using foreigners as spies.

  ‘Because we think whoever did it must work for Soleman Kakadi …’ Charlotte explained carefully. ‘And we thought you could help us find him.’

  Naplo raised his hands in a feeble protest. ‘Me? Why? I am priest. We care for orphan children here.’

  ‘… orphans of the OKP,’ Nick pointed out. ‘You must be in touch with them.’

  Naplo stared down at his empty desk.

  ‘When you see Jim Sawyer?’ he checked.

  ‘Yesterday. He said to contact you rather than Junus Bawi because you hadn’t been arrested recently.’

  A thin smile crossed Naplo’s face then vanished again.

  ‘You think it is Soleman Kakadi who take prisoner Mr Bowen …’ He sounded as if they’d confirmed his own fears. He glanced at his wristwatch and then through the window as if looking out for someone.

  ‘It looks that way. Won’t know for sure until we ask him.’
r />   Naplo seemed undecided. He tapped his finger nails on the desk, then stood up abruptly.

  ‘The man who bring you here, the guide, what his name?’

  ‘Dedi. He works …’

  ‘I know him …’ He made up his mind. ‘Wait here please.’ He pushed open the door and crossed the yard to the orphanage.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Charlie whispered.

  Randall shook his head. He looked round the room. Against the back wall a low bookcase contained UN Human Rights Commission reports and a handbook from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Above it hung a print of a madonna.

  Three minutes later the priest strode back across the courtyard, dressed now in a white cassock and clerical collar. He wasn’t alone.

  The Kutuan who followed him wore dark-framed spectacles and was exceptionally thin. The white shirt he wore hung from him as if it had been put on a frame to dry.

  ‘Hello,’ he said in a soft, nervous voice, offering his hand. ‘My name is Dr Junus Bawi.’

  The dilapidated green minibus clattered up a rutted track into a banana plantation, then cut through gum trees towards the hills. Age and the elements had turned the machine’s once shiny paint a dull matt.

  At the back sat a terrified woman and a boy still below the age of puberty. The woman dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.

  ‘My wife and my son,’ Junus Bawi murmured, turning his head towards them. Randall and Charlie were wedged beside him on the middle seat.

  Father Naplo was driving. ‘Hospital about one hour from here,’ he told them, over his shoulder. ‘Malaria, leprosy … You will see our work – and the valley that KUTUMIN want to fill with water.’

  ‘Soleman Kakadi – he’s at the hospital?’ Randall checked.

  ‘No. But not far away from the village,’ Bawi confirmed. ‘He will send someone to take us to him.’

  Bawi had revealed he was on the same mission as they were. To find Kakadi. When Randall had told him of the sudden unexplained appearance of the driving licence, he’d looked sad. It seemed to confirm his fears about the depths to which his former partner had sunk. Yes, the licence could have come from Kakadi, he’d said. OKP sympathisers were everywhere, even in hotels watched by intel. Easy for someone to have got the licence to them.

  ‘You think he’s got Stephen Bowen?’ Randall checked.

  ‘I fear it … I fear it is true, because, you see, ABRI thinks it. When they interrogate me …’ He looked away and bit his lip. ‘… not just me but everyone they arrest, they ask them where is Kakadi, where the Englishman? It is the reason I am here now. Because if Kakadi has done this, then it is urgent that I see him again. To tell him it is an evil thing. A thing against our people. ABRI is using it as a reason to beat us. To torture us. They will use it as a reason to turn their most terrible weapons against us.’

  With his straight black hair, his heavy, earnest spectacles and his naïvely determined chin, the professor had the look of a missionary.

  ‘Did they torture you when they arrested you on Monday?’ Charlie asked softly.

  The question was too abrupt. It pushed Bawi to the verge of tears. ‘My son,’ he choked, inclining his head towards the rear seat. ‘They … they beat Obeth to try to make me talk.’

  Charlie stole a glance behind. The boy was hunched forward, clinging to a handrail, his mouth set in a grimace of pain. Had to have some of this on tape, she told herself, but couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  The minibus reached the crest of a ridge, overlooking a wide sweep of coast behind them. Then it turned a corner. Straw-roofed houses straddled the road in a straggly village where barefoot women in long skirts carried firewood on their heads.

  ‘Your wife and son,’ Charlie asked suddenly. ‘Why did you bring them with you?’

  ‘Not safe for them to stay,’ Bawi explained. ‘You see, ABRI does not permit me to leave Piri. But I had to – to talk with Soleman. The only way to get out without being stopped was by fishing boat, last night. If Dana and Obeth had stayed, ABRI would have beaten them to make me come back. So it is better they are with me, even if now we are all exiles.’

  ‘You’re not going back to Piri?’ Charlie asked.

  Bawi stared through the window, seeing nothing, his mind in the back of that army truck on Monday night, looking back at his house, picturing with vile accuracy what Captain Sugeng was doing to his wife.

  ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘We shall stay in the valley that is to be filled with water. With the people who live there, and if it is the will of the spirits we will die there.’

  Charlie’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s awful,’ she breathed.

  Bawi turned away so she wouldn’t see his eyes.

  The track became rougher. The forest began to envelop them, intensifying the sense of gloom and despair which Bawi’s brooding presence cast upon them.

  ‘Soleman Kakadi,’ Randall asked gently. ‘You and he were close friends once?’

  Bawi stared ahead. For a moment Randall thought he hadn’t heard him.

  ‘It was four years ago that geologists discovered Kutu is rich with gold and copper. When the news spread, village headmen came to Piri to see the island’s leaders,’ he began, as if it was a well-rehearsed speech. ‘They knew there would be a problem. The Kutuans in authority on the island had been put there by the Indonesian governor as puppets. Men who were told what to say and were paid for it. Those so-called leaders of ours said Kutu people wanted the mine, despite knowing that most islanders were against it.

  ‘So the villagers who feared they would lose their land decided they must find another way to oppose the mine. They came to see us at the university – I and some colleagues, we were well known for defending the Kutuan culture and language against the Indonesian president’s wish to make us like Javans.

  ‘One of those village headmen who came to see us was Soleman Kakadi. He was a little older than me and he was strong. When he spoke, people stopped what they were doing and listened. He and I had many long talks. Out of them was born the idea of Organisasi Kutun Pertahanan with the two of us as leaders, he representing the farming people and me – well, representing the intellectuals, I suppose. The OKP was a cultural organisation. It had to be. Real political activity is banned in Indonesia, as you know. We gave ourselves the task of trying to make environmentalists around the world understand how much of Kutu would be destroyed by the mine. We had some success. But the pressure was not enough to change anything. A year ago KUTUMIN was given the rights to develop the mine.

  ‘Something else happened at that time. Soleman Kakadi was having much trouble from ABRI. The soldiers used to search his village for weapons – he had none then. But they would break things and search the women by making them undress in front of all the men.

  ‘Then Kakadi was told that his village which was close to the sea must be evacuated, because KUTUMIN needed the land for the workers coming to build the mine. Soleman refused to allow this. He was arrested and beaten. While he was in prison, ABRI burned down the village. Kakadi’s people were given some money as compensation and taken to another island. Some, it is true, were happy to go – in every community there are people who can be bought – but many were not.

  ‘When Soleman was released from prison and learned what had happened, he came to see me. He was on fire with anger. His lands were gone and his family too. The money given for his crops was an insult. He came to me and said, Junus we must now fight. Talking is no good. We are losing. The only way to stop the mine is with guns and with explosives.’

  Bawi sighed. It had been a policy of madness and desperation that Kakadi had embraced. But he now understood the passions that had driven him to it.

  ‘He asked me to get help from my contacts in other countries. Asked me to arrange for weapons and uniforms to be smuggled into Kutu so that he could create a guerrilla army. I told him this was impossible. That nobody would help us that way. And that it was not right. Fighting, killing was never right. He was angry. He said
I was like the rest. That I had been bought by the Indonesians. Then he left. That was the last time I saw him.

  ‘One month later an ABRI supply convoy was ambushed. Crossing a bridge in the open country – Kakadi and his men had weakened it. The trucks fell into a river. That’s how the OKP guerrillas got their first guns.’

  He fell silent. There was no more to be said.

  But there was more. Randall sensed it. Some other clue in this.

  ‘You said it was ABRI that took away Kakadi’s land,’ he asked softly. ‘What did they do with it? They gave it to KUTUMIN?’

  For the first time, Bawi allowed a smile to cross his lips.

  ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘They don’t give anything. They sell. The commander of KODAM Twelve – he sold Kakadi’s land to KUTUMIN. People say he made millions of dollars for himself.’

  ‘General Sumoto …’ Randall breathed.

  ‘Oh. You know of him?’ Bawi asked, surprised.

  ‘Beginning to …’

  Charlie put a hand on his arm. ‘Please tell me, Nick …’ she begged. ‘Just who is this guy Sumoto?’

  Suddenly they were hurled forward as the priest braked sharply. Through the windscreen they saw the trail in front was blocked by logs.

  ‘Christ, it’s an ambush!’ Randall growled, ducking instinctively.

  Father Naplo looked unperturbed however. He killed the engine, then held up a hand for silence. Forest sounds replaced the grind of the motor; leathery leaves rattled, birds shrieked high in the canopy. Beyond the barrier, Randall spotted the conical muzzle of a machine gun poking through the scrub, and behind it, a pair of eyes.

  Naplo listened through the open window, his ear turned the way they’d come, listening for some noise that would say if they’d been followed. Nothing. After more than a minute, four men in combat fatigues rose from the foliage clutching rifles.

  The priest turned to his passengers in triumph. ‘These are Soleman’s men,’ he beamed.

  One came forward to shake the priest’s hand, his wild black eyes firing darts of suspicion at the two white passengers. His face was thin and aboriginal, his features half hidden by hair and beard.

  Naplo explained in Kutun who the strangers were, then the patrol leader grinned, exposing teeth stained red with betel juice. He reached in through the windows with rough, earthy hands.