On the Java Ridge

by Jock Serong

  The poor girl’s mother, Shafiqa, had wailed and fought as the others lifted her down into the bunkroom when her turn came. She reached for Roya and slapped at Ali Hassan as she unleashed a stream of Persian invective on him. He tensed, wove back from her outstretched hand but did not retaliate. For Carl and Luke, who kept a reluctant hold of her arms, she proved a difficult proposition—lumbering and awkward with her weight tipping forward, lashing out at all who approached and reaching simultaneously for Roya. The child seemed to understand better than her mother how all of this was going to unfold. She hid her distress, spoke quietly in response to Shafiqa’s cries. Foreign words that needed no translation: words of reassurance and calm, a composure that only fuelled her mother’s dismay.

  Isi dodged and evaded and made excuses to ensure she was the last one locked up, an impulse he should understand, as a skipper himself. Where was he planning to go? How would he navigate? Language and his simmering fury prevented her asking. In the wheelhouse, he watched closely as she brought the Java Ridge around and re-set the auto-pilot on a course to the north which would take them between Raijua and Sumba and up to Flores, a long, long shoreline that stretched from east to west like a wall across the ocean.

  Ali Hassan watched over her shoulder, apparently satisfied by the change of course. Then he hustled Isi downstairs and into the bunkroom, pressing her backwards against the mass of bodies already inside. His arm was wrapped tightly around Roya’s shoulders, the knife never deviating from its line across her throat. Isi had only seconds to intervene.

  ‘Roya, can you ask him what he plans to do?’

  In the space between Ali Hassan and Isi, who dared not approach closer, Roya raised her eyes to find his, above and behind her; exposing the curve of her throat, pale and perfect. She translated for Ali Hassan, who responded with a guttural burst.

  ‘He say it is not your problem.’

  Isi persisted. She had to. ‘Tell him we need to head for Australia. We can get help there.’

  When the translation had passed to him, Ali Hassan laughed angrily.

  ‘Now he say you do not watch TV,’ Roya said. ‘Australia not helping boats anymore.’

  She spoke to him softly as he held her, a bird in a fist. The pressure of his grip had not lessened, but he now stopped moving and muttered more gently in response to her. Isi tried to read the cues in their movements. The wildness of his expression was subsiding a little. He nodded in the direction of the adults and spoke to her more loudly.

  Roya’s small voice took on a new kind of authority. ‘He say we not go to Australia.’

  ‘What?’ spluttered Carl. ‘Where the fuck does he think he’s going then?’

  Isi was ahead of him. ‘He’s got the IDs from all the others. He’s probably carrying cash.’ He still had the backpack over one shoulder. ‘Guess he thinks he can disappear. Indo’s a big place, and he hasn’t committed a crime in this country.’

  Another long exchange between Ali Hassan and Roya.

  ‘He say seven Australian. He want seven…’ she hesitated, searching for a word she’d rarely had to use, ‘phone, phones, now. To throw out here.’

  After some rummaging the phones thudded and bounced, one by one, into the stairwell. Ali Hassan gathered them and pointed at a small calico tote bag that lay at the foot of one of the bunks. Leah’s bunk. He waved the knife. ‘Give.’

  Leah stood beside it. She looked confused, then alarmed. ‘No. It’s mine.’

  Ali Hassan waved the knife more urgently. ‘Give me bag! Now!’ He pointed the blade at Roya’s neck and his eyes widened.

  ‘Leah! Give him the bag,’ someone shouted. But Leah didn’t move. Carl darted in from her left and threw the bag at Ali Hassan’s feet. He scooped the phones into it and kicked the door shut. Isi rushed forward to watch through the small porthole in the door, felt him latch it shut. With Roya still trapped under his arm, he pulled a large fire extinguisher off the wall and wedged it between the last of the ascending steps and the door.

  ‘Why the fuck did you let him have that?’ screamed Leah.

  It was the first time anyone had heard Leah raise her voice, and Carl was visibly rattled. ‘It’s a fucking bag princess. Settle down.’

  The bunkroom was plunged into gloomy silence despite the crowd. They could hear Ali Hassan moving off through the interior of the cabin; the mismatched sounds of his frenetic movement. Carl was standing on a camera case at the skylight halfway down the room, inclining his head so he could peer through the narrow opening.

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s gone down the stern…he’s…he’s tossed the bag overboard.’ The whole room was listening intently to him. ‘So there go the phones.’ Leah had her head resting on the frame of the bunk.

  Isi turned to her. ‘Why didn’t you just give him the bag, Leah? He could’ve hurt Roya.’

  She lifted her head. Her eyes were black with despair.

  ‘Because my insulin pen’s in it.’

  Ali Hassan ran Roya up the external steps to the wheelhouse and pushed her into a chair. He pointed the knife at her as he backed away a couple of paces, his message clear. Roya didn’t dare move.

  There was another fire extinguisher up here, mounted behind the door. He took it and raised it over his head, one fist wrapped around its neck. He held it aloft a moment or two, selecting his target, then brought it crashing down on the console, fragments of glass and plastic flying in all directions. He swung at the panel again and again, not with rage but with apparent calculation. Chrome edgings twisted and speared upwards; the timber backing was revealed in bright splinters.

  What’s he doing now? Roya asked herself. He picked up the handset that was connected by a coiled cord to the console, clicked the button on it a couple of times, held it to his ear. Then he tore it from its mooring and threw it out the window. It landed with a faint splash on the sea. Roya understood now—he was getting rid of all the ways they could talk to the outside world.

  There was a small screen mounted upright on the console, aligned so it would be visible directly above the helm. Ali Hassan considered this for a moment, reading the same strange word Roya was reading, embossed on the casing: RADAR. He hefted the fire extinguisher again, this time striking sideways. It broke off clean and tumbled from its perch to swing on the ends of its coloured leads.

  He pointed the knife at her again—a reminder—then stepped out the door of the wheelhouse and locked it behind him. She watched him climb the steel frame of the doorway, gripping the heavy painted hinges with his toes. The soles of his feet had picked up a dusting of white deck paint. Roya sat perfectly still, listening to his footfalls on the roof above her.

  Isi had joined Carl at the skylight now, awkwardly cheek to cheek. They could see Ali Hassan on the cabin roof.

  He stood upright for a moment, as if even he could appreciate the majesty of the view, high above a placid ocean in the sun.

  ‘Fucking idiot’s already looking for land,’ muttered Carl.

  ‘No he isn’t,’ Isi replied. Ali Hassan sat down, braced his feet against the tallest of the three radio aerials and began kicking out at it. The aerial refused to budge, so he stood again and bent it down with both hands, monkey-swinging until it broke, dropping him with a clang on the metal surface of the roof. He threw the broken piece overboard.

  ‘He knows what he’s doing,’ said Isi. ‘That was the HF. It’s the one with the longest range.’

  Next he moved to another, thicker aerial. This one he studied for a moment, then simply unscrewed the base and lifted it out of its mount. It went into the sea, trailing its umbilicus of electrical cable. A third, smaller aerial broke off in his hands with little pressure. Now he produced a spanner from the pocket of his shorts and began working on the one remaining fixture on the cabin roof: a small satellite dish. It took him some time to loosen the three bolts but eventually it too splashed into the water beside the Java Ridge.

  Carl had reached an arm out through the slender
opening in the skylight. His fingers found the assembly that held the cover in place. He was watching Ali Hassan carefully as he explored.

  ‘What are you doing?’ someone asked.

  ‘We don’t have to put up with this,’ he muttered. He produced a multi-tool pocket knife, opened the pliers and passed it from the hand that was inside to the one that was feeling around on the deck. Isi watched him: she could see he wanted to be useful, but he couldn’t understand the futility of what he was attempting. She knew every screw and bolt on the Java Ridge’s deck. She’d painted them. Not one of them was going to yield to a pocket knife.

  But he twisted and squeezed, feeling his way, tongue compressed in the corner of his mouth. The bunkroom crowd were transfixed by his efforts. Isi watched through the gap without commenting; thinking how if it was Joel doing this she would’ve been into him. Is that really achieving anything?

  She could see Ali Hassan climbing down from the cabin roof with his back to them. But the sea was so flat, so mirror perfect, that the small taps and bumps of the knife’s contact on the steel fittings carried far enough to reach him. He stopped and turned around.

  Ali Hassan could see clearly what Carl was trying to do. He leapt down the gangway and crossed the deck in an instant. In his hurry to get the pocket knife back through the opening, Carl bashed his knuckles on the lip of the cover and dropped the knife onto the timbers. By then, Ali Hassan had reached him and he plucked the knife with a look of vindication on his face and threw it overboard. He produced the wicked kitchen knife again, held it to his own throat and mimed a cutting motion. Then he pointed the blade at Carl, yelling words that were just shapes and sounds, undiluted fury.

  Carl retreated and wound the skylight down a little. He peered out, summoning defiance. He looked ludicrous to Isi: the yapper behind the fence, cowed by a Rottweiler on the street. The hot, damp air from the crowded room rushed past their heads and out the opening. This bullshit was not going to be the answer. Carl slumped down on a pile of bags beneath the skylight. Leah regarded him sceptically.

  ‘What?’ he said, looking back at her. When she didn’t answer he added ‘And what the fuck was that with the insulin? Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

  ‘It’s no one’s business but mine,’ she responded. ‘Did you tell us all about your medical history when you stepped on board?’

  He looked contrite, for just a second. ‘I thought you were just…’

  ‘Neurotic? Of course you did.’

  ‘So what happens to you now?’

  ‘Guess I’m in a fair bit of trouble. Ask the doc.’ She tilted her head towards Finley. The surgeon had sat quietly next to Tim Wills’ head since they’d been confined to the bunkroom, only leaving him occasionally to check someone who complained: eyes, infected cuts, nausea. He looked to Isi as though the ordeal in the tent had depleted him.

  ‘It’s not my area,’ he said. ‘But if she’s type 1’—Leah nodded—‘then she’s going to go into DKA within about thirty-six hours. Depends when she had—’

  Leah looked at her watch. ‘Three hours ago.’

  ‘Okay. So maybe a little longer then if there’s still some insulin in your blood. I take it there are no other diabetics on board?’ He looked around the room. No one responded. ‘After that,’ he sounded uncharacteristically apologetic, ‘it’s irreversible.’

  Isi looked out the skylight again. Ali Hassan hadn’t moved from where he stood. He appeared to Isi to be deep in thought, looking back at the stern and the Zodiac on its crane. Now he stepped that way, over the hatch, and sank the big knife into the inflatable hull, ripping it forward so that the whole air chamber was laid open. He moved around it, stabbing and slashing at each separate compartment in the red hull until the heavy rubber hung limp in the sun.

  Ali Hassan returned to the wheelhouse, anger and adrenaline compressing his features.

  Roya hadn’t moved. She felt a responsibility she couldn’t place. Even at knifepoint, she had a measure of freedom the others didn’t have: a hostage rather than merely a prisoner. She watched him working on the electronics mounted under the roof: a series of grey steel boxes, held into mounting brackets by large wingnuts. With one eye on her and the knife jammed in the back of his trousers, Ali Hassan worked his way along the row of them and removed each one, heaving them over the side as he went.

  She watched the knife as he moved. The grip was a kitchen grip, not something designed for fear like the Talibs would carry. She was meant to be scared of this knife, and she was. But for an instant it took her back to the kitchen at home with her mother, fingers slipping over washed vegetables, a pot boiling steam onto the window. Talking, asking questions as they came to her; her mother answering and interrupting herself. Pass me the oil. Careful with your fingers.

  The things he’d thrown from the roof were aerials, she figured. So whatever these boxes were, they were connected to the aerials and weren’t much use without them. But Ali Hassan clearly wasn’t done. Slowly and methodically he made his way through all the cupboards and compartments of the bridge, turning things over in his hands and considering them. Occasionally he would toss them overboard—more often he left them where they fell. He held a cigarette lighter to Isi’s carefully compiled logbook and watched it smoulder on the floor.

  He found a bright orange plastic package that Roya recognised instantly from watching football on television. Flares. She didn’t know why anyone would have them on a boat.

  He locked Roya in again and disappeared briefly. She pressed her nose to the window of the wheelhouse and saw him standing at the rail below, using the knife to slice each of the flares lengthwise. He held them over the side and watched as they spilled iridescent orange powder onto the drowsy sea. The air was so heavy and limpid that the colourful mist hung there as the boat drew away from it. It drifted neither left nor right. It just descended like a swarm of something until it rested on the water’s surface.

  MIDDAY, THURSDAY

  Canberra

  Cassius was on the phone to Rory. He was avoiding the desk phone for the time being, and Waldron’s diversion had rendered his mobile useless. So Stella had given him her SIM card with a handful of his most valuable numbers saved onto it. It felt treasonous at first, but he was grateful. Stella and her casual pragmatism—she’d borrowed another phone from her sister and said she’d get by.

  Earlier in the morning he’d been making calls to Sydney: to the head of department, to Core Resolve, to Coastwatch. Each time he instructed Stella to find another number, she made tut-tutting noises down the phone. They’ll have your nuts for this. The expression surprised him—she mentioned my nuts—and he wasn’t sure if he should pull her up on it. But in the small guerrilla campaign he had begun she was as game as he was, and considerably more skilled. By eleven he had set in motion everything he wanted, which was when his thoughts turned to his son.

  Today’s nanny, a different one from yesterday, had taken Rory to Questacon in the morning and was aiming for the National Gallery in the afternoon. Questacon admitted the chook, in line with their enlightened views on animal rights, but the gallery refused and there was a stand-off with security at the front desk. Other than that, the kid had apparently enjoyed his day.

  Rory wanted to know if Cassius was going to come home early (Cassius nearly laughed) and would he be on the TV for anything tonight? Cassius found himself spinning the wheels conversationally: it was his life’s habit to wind up any phone call as fast as he could, but he felt a need to listen to the boy’s voice. The curling inflection and odd little detours of his speech brought the image of his face.

  He understood very little of Rory as a person—his hopes and pleasures and worries. He was merely the boy, an abstract idea he processed by reference to his own life: one of its many passages. I am a father. He had to actively consider the notion that Rory might have an independent existence of his own. Cassius was sure that he loved Rory because that was what fathers did: there was no occasion for deeper reflection o
n the matter. And yet something lingered, unexplained.

  The boy’s happy chatter washed over him until Stella darted in, making an urgent motion with a finger across her throat. The thumb of her other hand was pointing over her shoulder. Cassius apologised to Rory and cut the call; the desk phone immediately lit up. Waldron.

  ‘Yes, Kevin.’

  ‘PM’s on his way. About the boat thing. Put away any sharp objects.’

  Cassius hung up again as Stella fled and the PM absorbed the doorway. He took two giant steps into the room and slung a manila envelope on the desk.

  ‘Open it.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Open the envelope.’ The PM was closing the room towards Cassius like a heavyweight looking to land a haymaker. ‘Open the fucking thing.’ He pointed.

  Cassius did as he was told and tore the top off the envelope. A pile of large photographs spilled out. They were identical: pictures of what he now knew to be Dana Island. The only difference between the prints was the time stamp in the lower right corner. Calibrated to some standard that meant nothing to Cassius, he could tell nevertheless that they were taken two hours apart. There were—he counted them—twelve shots. He laid them in order across the desk and saw the light fading into pale blues and greens, then back to pinks and mauves as the sun died in the west. Darkness, and then the process repeating in reverse.

  ‘That’s yesterday, right? And that’s your island, Cassius. No people. Huh? No people. No boats, no fucking tents, no bodies. Nothing, mate. You owe me an apology.’

  Cassius suddenly felt more tired than he ever had. ‘For what?’

  The PM plunged forward, ramming a thick finger into the desktop. ‘For fuckin…for sniffing around like a randy little bitch in heat.’

  ‘What?’ The PM’s head loomed uncomfortably close across the desk. Cassius focussed on the black hairs that sprouted from the nearer nostril.