‘Do not move or speak,’ a guard instructed every new arrival.
Annie, Lorenzo and Cara obeyed. But others didn’t, to Annie’s disbelief. Almost immediately after they sat down, a burly Russian man who’d hidden a mobile phone in his underwear was summarily outed when it rang. The guards pushed him to the floor, bound his hands behind his back, then marched him from the café. Two others—an injured Korean man who moaned too loudly, and an Indonesian man who asked too many questions—were ordered to dig a toilet trench outside using small trowels. Neither of them returned. Not long afterwards, a fidgety Australian man was told by those seated around him to sit still or you’ll get us all killed.
The majority of captives sat rigid and silent. Some wept quietly, their faces drawn with fear. Many were injured, lying beneath tables stacked at the rear of the room, propped along walls, or slumped against strangers.
When some time had passed—Annie couldn’t guess exactly how long—and no further captives were delivered to the café, Annie counted sixty-eight people, including Remy and Janelle. Her joy at spotting them in a far corner was moderated only by concern for Janelle, whose head was lolling about like a rag doll. The Frenchman had used his ceremonial sarong to cover her and his shirt as a makeshift bandage on the back of her neck. He wore a running singlet and gym shorts now. Only once had Remy acknowledged Annie, blinking in recognition before quickly lowering his head to avoid the guards’ scrutiny.
While pins and needles crept across her legs and lower back, Annie kept waiting for something to happen. What was going on outside the animal sanctuary? Would they be rescued soon? How would she run, if she had to? She cursed her own tired, defective body.
After several tense hours, the light at the café’s entrance began to fade. With the darkness, Annie’s sense of desolation grew. It must be too difficult or risky, she realised, to try to get them out. Or perhaps there was some other reason, one she couldn’t fathom from inside the park, why it was impossible to rescue them.
Not long after sunset, the little boy Cara was holding cried out in pain, and one of the guards whirled around. Cara looked stricken as he approached.
‘Lengannya patah,’ she explained, before he even reached them.
The guard looked surprised at Cara’s fluency, then leaned over to inspect the boy’s arm. After a moment, he nodded and moved away.
As he did, an agitated elderly man called out to him in German, while his daughter tried to quieten him. The old man paid her no heed, pointing at the guard and speaking in an accusatory tone.
‘Keep your father quiet,’ commanded the guard in English, but the old man kept haranguing him.
Finally, after several more warnings, the guard dragged the old man up by the arm and escorted him to the entrance. When his daughter burst into tears and ran after him, the pair of them were marched away by another set of guards who materialised, seemingly out of thin air. How many guards are there? Annie wondered despairingly.
She watched the two guards patrolling the café’s entrance now, with their long rifles and filthy bandanas obscuring their faces. Stopping sometimes to share a cigarette, or to check their mobile phones. There must have been more of them stationed elsewhere in the animal sanctuary, and they seemed to be taking turns to guard the hostages in the café. Hostages. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, this was the only word to adequately describe their situation.
Lorenzo sat against the wall on Annie’s left, his eyes closed. He was not asleep, however; he kept crossing and uncrossing his legs, evidently uncomfortable on the hard floor. The spasmodic sound of helicopters overhead prompted him to open his eyes at intervals, perhaps anticipating a rescue. She wanted to talk to him, but dared not disturb the silence.
On Annie’s right, Cara sat cross-legged, holding the Indonesian boy in her lap. He couldn’t have been older than three, Annie guessed, and made no further sound, despite his injured arm. Cara sat stroking his face, waving away mosquitos, and watching the guards through half-closed eyes. The position of her head suggested that she was attempting to listen to their brief, softly spoken exchanges.
After hours of sitting deep into the night, Annie’s limbs were leaden and her bladder bursting. She tried to ignore this, along with the relentless refrain in her head that taunted, You’ll never see your children again. Dennis and Charlie and Natalie, her beloved babies who’d once clung to her as if their lives depended upon it, but for whom Oaktree Ranch held little appeal now. She’d served out her major purpose in their lives, Annie knew. If she didn’t make it out alive, they were more than capable of surviving without her.
Yet even as she attempted to reconcile herself to that idea, a quiet tear of protest slipped down Annie’s cheek. She was not done with her children, her dream of being a grandmother one day, her farm, her church, or her circle of friends in Coalinga. She was not done with Bali, or BAF, or her dog Untung.
If Kevin were next to her now, she knew exactly what his exhortation would be. Keep your head down and it’ll be alright, Annie. She could almost feel his presence, as the dimly lit café became blurrier before her eyes. It was surely after midnight, more than sixteen hours since her last insulin injection. She’d never gone so long without it; her tongue was swollen, her head was thumping and her eyelids were beginning to droop.
‘Are you okay?’ she heard Cara whisper.
Annie mumbled something about a diabetic coma. Cara instantly raised her hand.
‘Yes?’ a masked guard asked, keeping his distance.
Cara gestured to Annie. ‘My friend is sick. She has diabetes and needs her medicine. It’s in her bag.’ she translated her own words. ‘Ibu ini sakit, Pak. Dia kena penyakit gula. Obatnya di tas. Boleh diambil, Pak?’
The guard’s eyes widened; he was just as surprised by Cara’s linguistic skills as his colleague had been earlier. He contemplated them both before motioning to Annie to stand up. She couldn’t quite manage it.
‘Quickly,’ urged the guard.
‘I’m trying,’ said Annie, feeling tears welling in her eyes again.
‘I’ll help her.’ Cara passed the little boy to Lorenzo. He barely stirred, nestling against the Italian’s chest.
Even with Cara’s assistance, Annie struggled to stand. She gripped the edge of a table to pull herself to her feet.
‘You are fat,’ said the man, his eyes sneering over his bandana.
‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘I am.’
The man prodded her in the stomach with his rifle, and she thought she might wet herself. ‘Walk,’ he ordered.
They picked their way to the mound of personal items heaped in a pile at the front of the café. Cara lowered Annie onto a chair, then turned and spoke to the guard in a placating tone. He nodded once, and she began rummaging through the pile until she found the small BAF satchel with its distinctive doggy paw prints. As a deterrent to petty theft, Annie had been wearing it all day under her clothes.
This morning I was afraid of pickpockets, she thought.
Cara passed her the syringe kit. ‘Do you need help, Annie?’ ‘No more help,’ snapped the guard.
Annie’s vision swam as she unzipped the small black case. Luckily she’d been injecting insulin for years and could practically do it blindfolded. She reached under her kaftan dress, exposing the flesh of her stomach.
‘Menjijikan,’ muttered the man, turning his eyes away. ‘No see. You go there.’ He pointed in the direction of an amenities block that stood against the park’s boundary wall.
In Annie’s dazed state, it looked far away. Cara rose to accompany her, but the man barked, ‘You not go.’
Cara negotiated respectfully with the man in Indonesian, until finally he muttered something and walked away. She turned to Annie. ‘I can take you to the entrance of the toilets.’
Annie leaned heavily on Cara as they made their way out the café entrance, across the miniature bridge and down three uneven steps. A cobbled path led to the amenities block, some five metres away.
Annie shuffled cautiously into the ladies’ block and across the tiles to the first cubicle. Mercifully, it was a Western-style toilet. She pushed her knickers to her knees; the stream of urine began before she’d even sat down.
On the toilet, Annie exhaled with relief. Then, sitting taller, she squeezed a roll of skin at her midriff between her thumb and forefinger and, removing the lid of the syringe with her teeth, pressed the needle into her flesh. Afterwards, she let the syringe drop to the floor and she slumped back against the cistern.
When she opened her eyes again, a few seconds later, the bathroom seemed much brighter. She stared at the back of the cubicle door, plastered with some kind of public health message about HIV/AIDS. Standing up to flush, she noticed a high, glassless window above her. Large, rectangular and spanning the rear wall of her cubicle, it was an economical way to deliver light and air into the lavatory. Annie had seen such windows before in many Balinese public toilets, and even in the retreat pavilion at Puri Damai. This one, she noticed, was covered in flimsy chicken wire hung on a few thin nails around its edges. Without hesitating, she climbed up onto the toilet seat and inspected the grille. There was no glue, no staples; she pulled gently at the grille’s edge and it peeled back easily.
Suddenly she heard footsteps outside the amenities block.
‘Already?’ called the guard.
‘Oh.’ She squatted down on the toilet seat. ‘Er … not quite.’
Annie heard Cara talking to the man in Indonesian, her tone conciliatory. Thank God for Cara. There was no time to lose.
Annie stood up again and, murmuring a quiet prayer, climbed up onto the cistern itself. Would it hold her weight? She gripped the edge of the window and peered through the gap. There was a short span of foliage outside the amenities block, and behind that, the top of the boundary wall.
She heard footsteps stalking into the bathroom. The man rapped on the cubicle door. ‘Why you take so long?’
She slipped to the floor with a clatter and pressed the flush. With burning cheeks, she opened the door. ‘Buang air besar,’ she said. I defecated. Applying the first phrase she’d ever learned in Indonesian, signposted on the BAF bathroom wall: Don’t defecate on the floor.
‘Menjijikan,’ the man repeated, pushing her out of the bathroom. She didn’t need a translation to detect his mood.
Cara moved to Annie’s side. ‘How are you feeling now?’
‘No talk,’ said the man. ‘Go back.’
They walked in silence to the café, where they were met at the entrance by another guard. He held up a mobile phone for his colleague to view. After scanning its contents, the guard nodded.
He turned to Cara and Annie, looking back and forth between them. ‘You come,’ he said to Annie. Then, waving a hand at Cara, ‘You stay.’
Annie winced. Where were they taking her?
‘Now,’ he ordered. ‘No bag.’
Annie glanced down at her BAF satchel, her eyes filling with tears. This is it, she thought.
Passing her bag to Cara, she murmured, ‘Il y a une fenêtre dans la salle de bains.’
Cara gave no indication that she’d heard, or understood, Annie’s words. But Annie knew that Cara was fluent in French, and had used it in the hope that neither of the guards would understand. There is a window in the bathroom.
‘Merci,’ Cara called, as the second guard shoved her back towards the café.
She had understood, Annie realised, with a rush of relief. She watched Cara go, feeling suddenly more afraid than she’d ever been. I’m not ready to die.
The guard marched Annie away from the café, past the rubble of the amphitheatre, and along a short path lined with cages that had been blown open by the explosive force. Eerie nocturnal bird calls filled the night air.
‘Faster,’ said the man, nudging the rifle at her back.
It was difficult navigating the cobbled path in the dark. Finally, a large shape loomed ahead, a two-storey domed structure that Annie thought must be the owl house. The guard called out a brief, clipped greeting, and someone responded from the second floor.
Annie’s breath came in short, terrified gasps. Where were they taking her? Was she going to be executed, presumably the fate of the captives who’d been marched away earlier? Would the guard stand her up against a wall and shoot her? She should never have lingered in the toilet scouting for an escape. The guard had guessed what she was doing, and now she would be punished.
The guard pushed in front of her and thrust something into her hand. She stared at it dumbly: a mobile phone.
‘Here.’ He clicked on a torch and shone it onto a piece of paper. ‘I call media. Read the words.’
The guard dialled a number and held the phone to her ear. The words on the page swam before her eyes and her mouth went dry. A woman answered and said something in Indonesian.
‘I am an American citizen.’ Annie began, her voice quaking. ‘I am a hostage at Paradise Animal Sanctuary. I call on the government of the Republic of Indonesia to release Muslim cleric Abu … Marfu’ah … Salihin—’ she stumbled over the name—‘who has been wrongfully detained without charge for eighteen months. It is a violation of human rights and the rule of law in a democratic society. Please consider my request, to spare my life.’
She began to cry, and the woman on the other end started speaking in rapid Indonesian. The guard snatched the phone from Annie and listened for a while, before speaking into the phone himself. His tone was agitated, and Annie’s dread mounted. After a while, a voice could be heard speaking English on the end of the line, but the guard simply hung up.
‘Walk,’ said the guard, tucking the phone into his pocket.
Tears leaked from Annie’s eyes as she lumbered on in the darkness. Why had she survived the amphitheatre explosion only to be executed now? She began reciting Psalm 23 under her breath. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …
But there was no solace in recitation. Her two Fs, faith and focus, recoiled like beaten dogs in some unreachable corner of her mind. There was no divine plan for her life, she realised now, no rationale for human suffering. If God actually existed, he wasn’t at Paradise Animal Sanctuary.
‘Stop,’ ordered the man.
Annie obeyed and looked up at a solid iron gate. Two more men appeared out of the shadows, also wearing bandanas. The three conversed in whispers, looking at a mobile phone. Then one of them approached the gate while another moved into position at one side. Suddenly she understood what they were going to do: execute her and throw her body beyond the gate.
‘Why me?’ she sobbed, appealing to the guard next to her.
‘Because you are old and fat and useless.’
The gate slid open, barely half a metre. Annie felt the cold muzzle of the rifle behind her left ear.
Kevin.
‘Walk on,’ the guard ordered.
Annie shuffled forward.
Let it be quick.
A sharp blow between her shoulder blades thrust Annie out through the gate, and she stumbled and almost fell. Straightening up, she stood rocking on her feet, squinting against a thousand brilliant lights trained upon her. She glimpsed a cavalcade of vehicles and a sea of lanterns, yet everything was deathly quiet.
Instinctively, she raised her hands above her head. The iron gate slammed shut behind her and she jumped.
Seconds later came a blaze of blinding flashes and a hundred hands jostling her. As she swayed on her feet, a familiar face moved into her dazed view.
‘Kevin?’ she murmured.
‘Ibu Annie!’ he said.
It was Pak Ketut, flanked by men in uniforms pressing themselves into a human ring around them both.
Ketut’s arms caught her as she fainted.
‘Ibu Annie?’
Dark chocolate pools peered at her, beneath an anxious brow. How kind those eyes are, she thought.
‘Pak Ketut.’ Her
own voice sounded otherworldly.
A stinging sensation in the back of her hand made her look down; an IV drip protruded from it. Reality rammed into her consciousness then; the animal sanctuary, the explosions, the men in bandanas. The anticipation of execution, followed by her inexplicable release. She looked down at the rest of her body, covered by an off-white bedsheet. With a trembling hand, she lifted it up; every part of her seemed to be intact. Relief flooded her, tinged with a creeping sense of guilt. She had survived, but others had not.
She tried to sit up.
‘Please, do not move,’ said Pak Ketut. ‘You have had a big shock.’
She smiled weakly at this understatement.
Pak Ketut returned her smile, and suddenly she began to weep. Great breathless sobs that made Pak Ketut frown in concern. He reached out to pat her arm, and she took his hand, gripping it tightly. As if to check that he was real, that she truly had escaped. Except that she hadn’t, she reminded herself. Her captors had let her go.
‘What day is it?’ she asked, looking around the room. How long had she been in hospital?
‘Still Thursday.’ His tone was soothing. ‘Just after midday. They released you this morning, around three o’clock. You have been asleep all morning.’
‘I need to call my children,’ she said.
‘I have already,’ said Pak Ketut. ‘They know you are safe. I found some contact numbers at Puri Damai. Natalie called back straight away.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, tears still trailing down her cheeks. ‘Pak Ketut, tell me everything you know.’
He looked uncertain. ‘The doctors said …’ He glanced over his shoulder as if one of them might burst in.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Is it over yet?’
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