Blood Is a Stranger

by Roland Perry

  On the horizon was a flat, washed patchwork of brown and yellow, broken by the Wildman and West Alligator rivers.

  A half-hour later they could make out a formidable brown and purple rock escarpment that lurched from the vast plain.

  ‘Let’s look at Brockman,’ Richardson said as he accelerated south-west. Minutes later a solitary proud massif loomed beyond the cloud.

  ‘A terrific ore-body is under that,’ he shouted above the engine. ‘We’re going to get at it.’

  Close to the mountain top, he dipped a wing. ‘The Abos believe those boulders are sacred,’ he said sarcastically. ‘They’re green ant eggs according to their Dreamtime legend.’

  The plane swooped low across the mountain face and over the six metre-high rocks.

  ‘The story, gentlemen,’ Richardson continued, ‘is that if anyone goes near the place, the rocks turn into monsters and destroy everything.’

  ‘It’s a Bad Dreaming area isn’t it?’ Hans, the other geologist commented. Richardson nodded.

  ‘All the Bad Dreaming places just happen to be where the biggest uranium-ore bodies have been located,’ he said, ‘which means we have a little trouble from time to time.’

  ‘Have you ever been stopped from a venture by the Aborigines?’ Cardinal asked.

  ‘No,’ Richarson said. ‘At the moment the local Aborigines say we can’t drill under Brockman. But you must understand them. They’re not dumb natives. No, sir! They make threats. We make an offer for increased royalties to each member of the tribe, along with a little cream for the elders.’

  ‘Cream?’ Cardinal asked.

  ‘You’ll notice some of them have nice cars, nice homes in Darwin . . .’

  The three passengers held on as Richardson swooped low over the boulders once more.

  ‘Have you much radioactivity?’ Hans asked.

  ‘No,’ Richardson replied.

  ‘Gabon has an almost identical geological formation to this area,’ Hans continued undaunted. ‘I wondered if you ever had natural chain reactions?’

  Richardson shook his head, and Cardinal asked what he was talking about.

  ‘Natural chain reactions can cause nuclear explosions,’ the geologist explained.

  ‘A natural bomb?’ Cardinal asked, incredulously.

  ‘Equivalent to the one dropped on Hiroshima,’ Herman remarked. ‘It occurred in the early 1960s.’

  They were flying over Richardson’s sprawling mining town dominated by a gaping open-cut hole with an inwardly spiralling staircase. Near it were mills and tailing dams, which held the mine wastes after the uranium ore had been extracted and milled. The Aborigines claimed that seepage of radioactive waste from them had begun to destroy streams and land.

  Hans asked if they could see Rum Jungle. Inside twenty minutes they were circling over a group of abandoned buildings – the remnants of a once-thriving mining town.

  ‘Nothing grows there, I am told,’ Herman said. ‘The area was so polluted in the 1950s that nothing could live there in streams or on the land for 10,000 years at least.’

  ‘We know how to handle waste now,’ Richardson said. ‘We will be able to restore our mine area.’ He did not see Hans shake his head and wink at Cardinal.

  They flew back towards Darwin, but Richardson detoured to his mine again and skimmed low over a long red building. He dipped his wings. A few men in front of the building waved.

  ‘In there,’ Richardson said, ‘is the greatest single stockpile of high-grade uranium on earth. Enough to make a hell of a lot of bombs!’

  As they approached Darwin, Cardinal wondered how he should tackle Richardson about his recent visitors.

  ‘Are the Indonesians customers of yours?’ he asked.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I read about their visit here.’

  ‘They want me to get involved in joint oil exploration on our two countries’ boundaries,’ he said. ‘I’m not that interested, but my wife arranged it.’ He glanced at Cardinal. ‘She’s Javanese.’

  Cardinal was in two minds about asking anything else.

  Richardson turned his attention to the geologists and spoke to them about his plans for new mines.

  ‘Were there any women in the Indonesian delegation?’ Cardinal asked after a pause.

  Richardson was disturbed by the query. ‘What do you want to know that for?’

  ‘A newspaper report suggested that an Indonesian scientist may have been abducted when the delegation was in Sydney.’

  Richardson was distracted as they got the all-clear for a landing at Darwin. He worked hard at the controls and made a poor approach. The undercarriage dipped as they crossed a road close to traffic beneath them. The Cessna skidded in unnervingly.

  After they had taxied to a stop, the geologists thanked Richardson and left.

  Richardson took Cardinal aside. ‘Where did you read that report?’

  ‘One of the Sydney papers.’

  Richardson looked directly at him. ‘I’ll have to ask my wife if there was a woman in the entourage,’ he said. ‘She entertained them.’

  They began to walk towards the terminal building.

  ‘I still want to know why you would be interested.’

  ‘My son worked with her,’ he said, staring at Richardson.

  ‘Is this really why you’re here?’

  ‘Let’s just say it coincided with my other interests,’ Cardinal said, reaching out a hand. ‘I’ll be in touch, just in case your wife remembers anything.’

  The eight Indonesian paratroopers floated down like leaves. They had been ejected by static line from a CI30 Hercules. A hidden group of onlookers, including Rhonda, used binoculars to watch the activities of the country’s strike force – Kopasanda – at a secret airbase near Ujung Pandang on Sulawesi Island north-east of Java. A mock hijack was in progress. The target was a plane loaded with forty-four gallon drums filled with sandrock.

  Rhonda had arrived in Bali after an eight-hour overnight flight from Melbourne, which was going through an early October cold snap. The moment she stepped from the plane’s cabin at Denpasar airport she was suffocated by the cloying humidity. The pungent smell of cloves was distinctly familiar from her tour of duty as a correspondent in Indonesia two years earlier.

  As the airport bus approached the terminal, she could see hundreds of locals jostling behind barriers. They were eager to offer the new arrivals baskets, trinkets and clothes, or rides in taxis and bembos. It made Rhonda claustrophobic. She had lived as a child in the Victorian countryside, and even when she left it permanently at seventeen for study in Melbourne, she was never entirely comfortable with city crowds. But Indonesia’s population was another dimension.

  She was met by Peter Perdonny, a diminutive Balinese with strong blood ties to the small island of Ambon near West Irian where his mother had been born. He had large intense eyes, a splayed nose and a huge mouth.

  Perdonny ran an Australian exploration group operating in the seas around the eastern part of the country’s thirteen thousand island chain. He also belonged to a banned political party.

  He had been preparing to spy on the special military activity at Sulawesi and had suggested she join him. Rhonda did not hesitate. He had been a useful source when she was last in Indonesia, and she wanted to see if he could help her with Van der Holland.

  From Ujung Pandang, they had been escorted by two armed bodyguards in a Mercedes along a narrow track deep into the dense jungle. Creeping vines, acting like tripwire, impeded the vehicle, and twice the bodyguards had to use machetes to hack it free. The undergrowth’s acrid smell irritated Rhonda and the damp heat forced her to take shallow, forced breaths.

  Perdonny wanted to watch the early afternoon military exercises from a hill-top above the training area on an abandoned airfield.

  He grinned reassuringly as he handed Rhonda binoculars. She panned away from the paratroopers. On the flat range to her left she could see a group being instructed on the General Purpose Machine Gun,
the M60, and Sterling sub-machine guns, which were fitted with silencers.

  Rhonda flinched as the staccato sounds of the weapons echoed across the field. Suddenly US Sea Eagle military choppers with their frightening gun mounts emerged from behind a hill and flew over the hill-top.

  ‘Christ!’ Rhonda hissed, ‘are they looking for us?’

  Perdonny shook his head. ‘They’re going to make hot extractions.’

  The choppers sent dust flying as they hovered and lowered ropes. Fully kitted armed paratroopers dashed for the ropes, harnessed themselves, and in seconds were hoisted away.

  Perdonny guided Rhonda to a point where they could see a cliff-face opposite them about a hundred metres away. Paratroopers were diving down the cliff using fast, controlled, roping movements. But some were less in control than others. They moved too quickly and had to brake hard. This caused them to bash against rocks. Others were over-cautious and finished up suspended thirty metres down and going nowhere. Instructors could be heard yelling abuse at them as they hung twisting and struggling.

  Rhonda focused on barracks at the far side of the field, where a squad of fifty was being given unarmed combat lessons.

  ‘Only half of them are Indonesians,’ Perdonny whispered in her ear. She looked at some of the faces.

  ‘What are they, Vietnamese?’ she asked.

  ‘Kampuchean,’ Perdonny replied.

  Rhonda lowered the binoculars.

  ‘Any significance?’

  Perdonny was about to answer when their two guards dropped down beside them and hissed warnings. They pointed down the other side of the hill. An armed convoy could be seen weaving its way towards them. Perdonny ordered one of the guards to roll his vehicle well off the road.

  ‘We have little time,’ he whispered, ‘but I wanted you to see something else.’ He pointed to the centre of the field. Rhonda lifted the binoculars again.

  ‘The figure in the Mao tunic,’ Perdonny said.

  Rhonda zeroed in on him. He was rocking forward on his toes as a military instructor spoke animatedly to him. He grinned to reveal a set of protruding and crooked teeth. The man appeared to be in his mid-fifties. He had black hair brushed back and cut short around the ears, emphasising the saucer-shape of his face, and a flat nose.

  ‘Who is . . .?’ Rhonda began, but was pushed flat by Perdonny. He put a hand over her mouth. She twisted her head enough to see shadows stalking only twenty metres away and very close to the Mercedes, which was hidden behind bushes. Perdonny eased his hand away. Rhonda felt her heart pound. The guards aimed rifles at the shadows as they came closer. Her eyes widened as Perdonny lifted his Magnum with both hands to eye level. Two shadows multiplied into four, then eight. Rhonda felt they were done for as the shadows took human form.

  The soldiers were part of an advance party for the convoy. They made their way to within ten metres. Rhonda was too frightened to take a breath. Her eyes bulged as Perdonny moved the gun in a slow arc trained on one of the soldiers. Two of them stopped. One spoke and another stifled a high-pitched laugh. Rhonda felt dizzy. She wanted to be ill. Then gradually the soldiers moved on.

  After five minutes, Perdonny signalled his guards to retreat into the jungle until the convoy had passed. In half an hour they were driving back down the track to Unjung Pandang. The road seemed bumpier on the return ride, and Rhonda fought off nausea.

  ‘You were very brave,’ Perdonny said. ‘We’re safe now.’

  ‘For a moment I thought it was time for a technicolour yawn.’

  Perdonny looked blank. Rhonda went white and managed a wan smile as she wound down a window. Moments later she vomited.

  Burra’s eyes stayed on his son’s face as several male relatives formed a human plateau by crouching on hands and knees. The men danced and chanted in a circle around a nightfire as the boy of fifteen was laid across the backs of his relatives. An uncle stepped from the shadows and knelt beside the boy. He slid his hand under the boy’s penis. An Aboriginal surgeon marched forward and took his place next to the uncle. He inspected the penis, which he had circumcised two weeks earlier. Satisfied that the scar tissue had healed sufficiently, he examined four stone knives, which he rested on the boy’s stomach. His choice was vital. One slip and the boy could bleed to death. If this happened, Burra would have the right to kill the surgeon.

  Burra was more concerned with his son’s reaction. He was not to show fear in this last act in his transition to manhood. A flinch or even a whimper and he would be speared to death.

  The surgeon bent forward in flickering fire light. The boy braced himself as the knife was placed near the tip of the penis. When their eyes met, the surgeon made two swift movements as the knife was inserted and then run to the scrotum. Burra winced. He had not taken his eyes off his son’s face. The boy’s tight-set jaw jutted hard, but there was not a movement or sound from him.

  He was led to the fire where he sat, trancelike, blood streaming down his thighs. The dancing Aborigines quickened their step, and the chant became louder. Even if he bled to death now, he would have achieved manhood. If he lived, nothing would frighten him again. Yet in the next few hours he still had to face the first test of his newly acquired maturity — a long solo trek to his Arnhem Land home.

  Burra broke away from the dancing to meet Cardinal who had been driven deep into the bush east of Darwin to witness the ritual, at Burra’s invitation.

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought such things had been banned,’ Cardinal replied.

  ‘I’ve restored this kind of ceremony for the sake of the tribe. It’s one of perhaps a hundred rituals I have re-introduced into our culture, so our traditions don’t die.’

  ‘Let’s hope your son doesn’t,’ Cardinal snapped.

  ‘He’ll make it,’ Burra said, glancing at his son. ‘I take it you think it is primitive?’

  Cardinal didn’t reply.

  ‘The cut was perfect.’

  ‘What about infection?’

  Burra shook his head. ‘If it’s meant to be, he’ll die!’

  Cardinal could not hide his disgust but did not wish to argue with the man Rhonda had said was his most important contact in the north.

  ‘You had better leave,’ Burra said. He turned to the driver. Topfist. See Mr Cardinal back to his hotel.’

  Cardinal went to shake hands with Burra, but he walked away.

  The hooded guards stood motionless in the tropical downpour. Behind them, the flat, elongated roof of the Bandung nuclear reactor could just be seen through the rain’s grey mist. They were positioned at twenty-five metre intervals around the electronically protected perimeter wall.

  The two-hour drenching had flooded Bandung’s boulevards and canals and seemed to have washed away the musty, spicey smells. In their place was a sickly sweetness, like freshly cut sugar-cane. The palms along the street were alive with small red and green galahs. In the grass along the front of the reactor, innumerable grey frogs were leaping in puddles.

  Rhonda scribbled notes in the taxi as it cruised past the reactor’s main entrance, which was blocked by a tank.

  The driver became agitated. ‘No, please! No please!’ he implored. He was mindful of the armalite rifles slung over the guards’ shoulders.

  ‘Is it always like this?’ Rhonda asked.

  ‘No. For a week maybe,’ the driver replied with a nervous glance at her notepad.

  Bandung, which was two hundred and fifty kilometres south-east of Jakarta, was the most likely stationing for Van der Holland. The country had six reactors, and this was the best equipped, according to Perdonny. Just as importantly, her mother, Tien, a successful businesswoman, lived in the mountains outside the city. Rhonda had flown there on the pretext of interviewing her about her increasing exports of aluminium to Australia.

  The torrent lifted and disappeared like a stage curtain, leaving a clear orange sky against which the mountains looked detached and black. The taxi wound its way higher, and Rhonda could see the pure
white columns of steam rising from the crater of Mount Gulunggang. Its slopes were studded with bristles of burnt tree-trunks and layered with mud fanning out like grey cake icing.

  Rhonda took some photos. This pleased the driver who appeared to be in awe of the mountain.

  The road got narrower as they gained altitude, and the driver, one of Perdonny’s men, knew the dirt track turn-off to the Van der Holland home. It was covered by a green archway of trees that allowed a splintered filter of sunlight after the sudden rains.

  They arrived at ornate gates to a house set spectacularly in the side of a mountain. A huge cavity had been blasted so that about a third of the three-level home fitted in snugly; the rest protruded. It was supported by one vertical concrete pylon and another that wedged horizontally into the mountain face. Rhonda got out and strode to an intercom and announced herself. She waited near the gate and soon saw a guard walking along a drive with a submachine gun in front of him. Rhonda could see other guards on a lawn behind him and advancing towards the high, spiked fence. Their weapons made her nervous. She felt the urge to get back in the taxi but was afraid that any movement might make the guards react. As they came closer, she saw that they were dressed in black like the special forces she had seen training at Ujung Pandang. She was intrigued to know why a private home should be guarded by Utun’s own Kopasanda commandos. The gate began to open inward. The guard stopped ten metres from it and barked something in Indonesian at the taxi driver. He reversed his vehicle forty metres.

  ‘Interview with Tien Van der Holland,’ Rhonda said feebly. She repeated herself. The guard eyed her with a mixture of suspicion and contempt. He stared at her briefcase and waved his gun at it. Rhonda began to hand it to him.

  ‘Open,’ he said.

  She obeyed.

  He poked at the contents with the tip of his weapon and then pointed towards the front entrance.