Blood Is a Stranger

by Roland Perry

  ‘I will never let my people eat rat,’ Utun bellowed to the mob. The better informed media reporters elaborated on the translation of this comment and explained that it was a deliberate jibe at an infamous declaration by former President Sukarno. He had urged people to eat rat rather than starve.

  The mob gave a moderate cheer, and the vendor overdid his performance by thrusting another sate at Utun. The crowd was building up. Cardinal could see some fights beginning between Utun supporters and Moslem students where his taxi had been. One vehicle went up in flames. Soldiers and police charged in and were scrambling over car roofs to join the battle.

  In the distance along Jalan Thamrin, Cardinal could see scores of soldier reinforcements disgorging from jeeps and trucks. He glanced at the president and then his entourage near the limousine. He could recognise the long-haired figure of Dalan, the president’s mystic, opening the door to get out. He was gesticulating to someone in the back seat. Cardinal watched as Dalan directed the limousine towards Cardinal who could see in the rear. He caught a glimpse of Dalan’s companion.

  It looks like the Asian who had been in Arnhem Land, Cardinal thought. He appeared remarkably like the face in Jimmy Goyong’s portraits. Cardinal elbowed his way to the second front row. He was ten metres from the vehicle. The profile is similar, Cardinal thought. If he would only smile. Bottles and rocks were hurled into the bus depot as the police and soldiers formed a phalanx between Utun’s supporters and the protesters. Cardinal took his eyes off the face in the vehicle as Moslem interlopers in the president’s well-organised crowd raised banners proclaiming Islamic slogans.

  Fights broke out. It was enough for Utun. Flanked by a score of guards, he was bustled into the rear of the limousine with Dalan and the other man. The vehicle drove forward and collided with a barrier, then reversed, disregarding the swirling surge of bodies around it. Cardinal lost his footing as onlookers were jammed against the barriers. People began to panic as they tried to avoid being crushed.

  Cardinal’s bulk helped him shoulder his way through the squeeze until he reached the edge of the crowd near the square. He turned to watch the retreating motorcade under seige from rocks and tomatoes, which splattered and stuck to its windows. Cardinal climbed a barrier to a side street and trotted along with hundreds of others who had broken free of the clog of bodies. He kept moving until he saw a taxi in a street a kilometre from the congestion. He broke into a sprint to beat other people to it. Cardinal tried to climb in, but the driver gesticulated when he saw him and put his foot on the accelerator. Cardinal was left holding the door as the car skidded away. He fell in a heap on the road and had to scramble for the footpath. Unnerved and with bruises for his trouble, he began hobbling away from the square and was overtaken by a stampede of students. Shots rang out. He did not wait to find out if they were warnings or not. A side street promised shelter but it took a second to realise why the students had by-passed it. A tank was coming his way in a tight squeeze against the walls of homes on both sides of the street. He judged that it could over-run him if he tried to retreat, so he threw himself into a closed gateway and squashed his body against it.

  Six seconds later he felt the intense heat from the tank as it crashed its way past to the end of the street. He made a dash in the opposite direction. Cardinal glanced over his shoulder and caught his breath as the tank’s turret rotated. The flame-thrower mounted in it was aimed at him. Cardinal dived for an alley and rolled into it just as the weapon speared a throaty blast of napalm. It settled well short of him, but as he stumbled to his feet, he was enveloped by a rush of hot, suffocating wind. His nostrils and eyes stung as he charged along the alley to Baru Square.

  Oh Jesus! he thought. The square had been turned into a makeshift detention centre. Army staff and police were interrogating demonstrators. Three bodies lay prone and bleeding in the gutter. A young soldier aimed a rifle at him.

  ‘ID!’ he screeched.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Cardinal said as he pulled out his passport. The soldier examined it upside down. An officer marched to them and gave the passport a cursory glance.

  ‘American?’ he said.

  Cardinal nodded and was motioned away by the officer, who returned the document. Cardinal crossed the square and passed a man lying face down in the gutter. He had been shot in the back. The fingers of one hand still gripped a passport.

  Cardinal reached a street that spoked out from the Merdeka Square. He was reluctant to return to it, yet he could see cars near the other end. He spotted a taxi and this time tore money from his wallet and waved it as the car sped past. It reversed up onto the pavement, forcing Cardinal to take some quick sidesteps.

  He and the driver began a bizarre barter as shots were fired close by. Cardinal tossed twenty dollars on the driver’s lap, and jumped into the back seat. He told the driver to take him a roundabout way to the intersection containing Hot Hands Harry five kilometres from the mayhem in the city centre. On the way, Cardinal, hands shaking, had difficulty lighting a cigar. He looked in the mirror at his black face smeared with fall-out from the tank’s flame thrower. His eyes were wide from shock and fear, and he felt a tightening knot in his stomach he could not remember experiencing since his combat days in Korea.

  Cardinal was sorry he had to leave the safety of the taxi when they arrived at Hot Hands. It was a five metre high muscular male figure holding a flaming torch. Some foolhardy person had painted the nickname across its base in ridicule of the fledgling nation’s symbol of uncertainty.

  Cardinal paid the driver and dodged traffic to stand in the middle of the intersection under the statue. He had been there less than a minute when he noticed a vehicle parked down a side street. Its lights were dipped twice in a pre-arranged signal. Cardinal hurried across to it. The driver, called Bani, a lean, middle-aged native of Ambon with tufts of grey hair, threw away a cigarette.

  ‘Mr Carnal?’ he asked.

  ‘Goddamn near enough,’ Cardinal said, getting into the front seat. The man eased the early model Holden into the steady stream of traffic.

  ‘You rate,’ he said, ‘but you arrive.’

  Cardinal wasn’t sure if the observation was that he had ‘arrived’ or that he was ‘alive’. He settled for either thought as the man threaded his way across the city to the Chinese section of the east city slums.

  Following instructions from Rhonda, Cardinal left the car and the driver near a petrol pump and made his way on foot into the heart of Chinatown. He was an hour late when he arrived at the restaurant. By then he had been caught in a torrential downpour, which sent the locals scurrying to cover their barrows and stalls and slide out awnings.

  Cardinal was searched by guards at the entrance and then ushered in. It was crowded and smoke-filled. Rain on the rickety tin canopy sounded like machine-gun fire. He squinted at the darkened interior and caught the welcome vision of Rhonda moving towards him. She smiled and gave him a warm kiss and a hug.

  ‘You didn’t need to tidy up for the occasion,’ she said, eyeing his filthy appearance.

  She took him by the hand and led him to Perdonny, who was tucked away in the corner behind a mountain of half-eaten dishes.

  ‘You had us worried,’ Perdonny said. He pulled out a chair.

  ‘I had me worried,’ Cardinal said and then related the harrowing last hour.

  Rhonda offered him tea and food. He declined for the moment.

  ‘The man needs whisky,’ Perdonny said.

  ‘The man needs scrubbing.’ Rhonda laughed.

  Perdonny snapped his fingers and waiters ran to him. When the drink arrived, Cardinal poured himself a double, consumed it and then eyed the food. As the alcohol calmed him, he began to pick at some chicken.

  ‘We have some good news,’ Rhonda said, trying to humour him. ‘Robert has been able to get a file on the Kampuchean.’

  Cardinal remembered he had one of the sketches with him. He pulled out the crumpled page and smoothed it on the table. Perdonny made room for photos he
pulled from a pocket.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ Cardinal asked.

  Perdonny explained how he had planted a contact inside the Khmer Rouge camp at the old Embassy building.

  ‘I think they are the same bloke,’ Rhonda said. Cardinal told them about the man in Utun’s limousine.

  Perdonny poured them both more whisky.

  ‘You say you have a file on him?’ Cardinal prompted.

  ‘As yet, very thin,’ Perdonny said. ‘No one has much on these Kampucheans.’

  ‘ “These” Kampucheans?’

  ‘He’s a Khmer Rouge,’ Perdonny said, leaning forward. ‘One of their key people.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘He is only known as Chan, although that may not be his Kampuchean name. He was one of Pol Pot’s right-hand men. In 1975 Chan was in charge of liquidating about one million of his own people, maybe more. They were the so-called professional classes, which included anyone who was basically literate. Chan is about sixty-five. He was trained in France in the early 1950s first as a scientist, then later in languages. We believe he studied at the Sorbonne. He got involved with Pol Pot in Paris where they were part of a small clique.’

  Cardinal downed his fresh whisky.

  ‘China and the US have been supporting the Kampucheans against the Soviet Union, and the Vietnamese,’ Perdonny said. ‘The Kampucheans include a loose alliance of Prince Sihanouk’s forces and the Khmer Rouge.’

  Cardinal began to fill his plate with food. His hunger for information quickened his appetite.

  ‘So you are telling me the US has a link with the Khmer Rouge?’ he said, with a glance at Rhonda. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘That’s because you’re an ail-American boy, Mom, apple pie and the flag,’ Rhonda said. ‘We did see Blundell meet this guy last night.’

  ‘I prefer pecan pie,’ Cardinal replied, keeping his cool, ‘but how could we get mixed up with people like that?’

  ‘Your country is so determined to fight communists it will use the worst elements of the ideology to do it,’ Perdonny said.

  Cardinal didn’t like the remark. He began to eat.

  ‘Tell me more about your interview with Van der Holland,’ he said to Rhonda.

  ‘She’s not Utun’s biggest fan,’ Rhonda said. ‘Tien implied that Utun’s pressure on their business operations killed her husband.’

  ‘Then Hartina may be here against her will?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘I’ve got to speak with her.’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ Rhonda said, looking at Perdonny for support. ‘Her home is heavily guarded.’

  ‘But you got in,’ Cardinal said. ‘She is the only one who really knows what happened at Lucas Heights. Hartina could tell me if this guy Chan was involved with Harry’s death.’

  ‘There’s a chance I could arrange something,’ Perdonny said. ‘Each year Tien goes to the Soviet Union’s October Celebration at the Embassy. Perhaps if Hartina was to receive a special invitation, you could meet her there.’

  ‘How would I get there?’ Cardinal asked.

  Perdonny worked up a smile. ‘I could arrange that.’

  Perdonny organised one of his men to drive them to the edge of Chinatown where a taxi was waiting.

  ‘How well do you know Robert?’ Cardinal asked Rhonda. The taxi took them on a cautious route through the city which bore the scars of the night’s battles. Overturned cars were smouldering. Fire fighters and police were everywhere, and the streets emptied of civilians as they drove closer to the city centre.

  ‘I trust him,’ she said.

  ‘I can see that,’ Cardinal said, ‘but can I?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘As journalist and spy, you too can be mutually beneficial.’

  ‘Perdonny is no spy!’

  ‘Pardon me. Intelligence officer then?’

  ‘You didn’t like what he said about the Americans.’

  ‘True,’ Cardinal said ‘but that’s not what I mean.’

  ‘You can trust Robert.’

  Cardinal lit a cigar.

  ‘Apart from Canberra, who else does he spy for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘C’mon Rhonda! You must have some idea.’

  ‘I’ve never asked.’

  ‘I think he probably works for the Russians.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘For one thing, he is anti-American.’ Rhonda protested.

  ‘So how come he says he can arrange for Tien to be at a Soviet Embassy Revolution party, let alone me – an American?’ Cardinal said.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It may to me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It depends on what I do here.’ The whisky had tired him. ‘Still, if he can get me to see Hartina, that will be a start.’

  ‘And if you do, and she confirms that Chan was responsible for your son’s murder, what then? What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You can hardly go to your own Embassy.’

  ‘Well I sure as hell won’t be going to the Russians for help!’ he snapped.

  Rhonda sensed a frustration in Cardinal’s mood, which she guessed might spill into desperation. She had not seen that side of him.

  ‘Would you want to see Chan dead?’ she pushed.

  ‘Sure, I would.’

  ‘Would you do it yourself?’

  ‘Hey, what is this?’ Cardinal said angrily. ‘You getting a great story?’

  ‘No!’

  He had touched a sensitive issue. She was thinking ahead to a scoop. His insight disturbed her, for his elusive charm was somehow having an effect on her. There would be a conflict of interests if she got too close. She had his trust, and that was vital if he was going to co-operate in any news story.

  The driver began to pull over.

  ‘Hey!’ Cardinal said, ‘we want the . . .’ He could see a police vehicle and a jeep with soldiers in it close behind them. ‘Shit!’

  Two policemen yelled abuse at the driver, who bowed his head in apology.

  ‘The curfew,’ Rhonda whispered to Cardinal. ‘I think they’re angry because of that.’

  ‘Bastards,’ Cardinal mumbled and got out of the taxi before she could restrain him.

  ‘Anyone speak English,’ Cardinal said.

  ‘Me do,’ one of the soldiers said, as three policemen approached Cardinal.

  ‘Near enough,’ Rhonda said, with a nervous giggle.

  ‘Okay,’ Cardinal said to the soldier, ‘tell these guys, I hired this man. It was my fault he came through here at this hour. I was very late. Got it. My fault.’

  The soldier explained. An argument began between the police and the soldiers.

  ‘Please,’ Cardinal said, addressing the soldier, ‘can’t you take us to our hotel? We want to get off the streets.’

  The soldier waved him back into the taxi. He spoke curtly to the police and then motioned the taxi on. The soldiers’ jeep followed them on the couple of kilometres to Rhonda’s hotel.

  ‘Don’t come in,’ she said. ‘They’ll be monitoring my movements.’

  Cardinal leaned towards her. ‘Sorry we argued. It’s just that I’m not prepared to trust any of these Intelligence people.’ He caught her by surprise by kissing her full on the mouth. She was embarrassed, and she began to get out.

  ‘I did that for the audience,’ he said. ‘Better they think we’ve had a good night out.’

  ‘Yes, but with a tongue kiss?’ Rhonda quipped. She gave him a whimsical smile and moved off to the front entrance. She turned to watch Cardinal’s taxi and its escort of soldiers and police crawl off along Jalan Thamrin. Rhonda pushed through the revolving door and headed for the lift. She was conscious of movement either side of her.

  ‘Ms Mills?’ a voice said from behind. She turned to see a thick-jowelled Javanese in dark glasses. Moments later she was surrounded by other men.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, feeling alarme
d.

  The man stepped forward and held up an ID that she did not recognise. She assumed they were police.

  ‘We would like a word, please.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Rhonda said, standing her ground.

  She spoke loudly and looked around at the reception desk. One clerk had his head buried in a register. Other staff seemed to have made themselves scarce.

  ‘Police.’

  Rhonda made a move towards the clerk and called for his help. Two of the men grabbed her by the arms and dragged her to the lift. The clerk watched but made no move to help.

  The distant roar of engines shattered the stillness of the night. A Hercules transporter, winging low over Arnhem Land, aimed for the airstrip at Richardson’s Ginga mine. The hastily assembled runway lights were on full for the landing. A minute after touching down it nosed up to the building known as the vault. The hatch was lowered. Fork-lift trucks began hoisting steel drums into the plane.

  Burra’s son Silas could see the activity from a vantage point high on the escarpment where he and four others had made camp. Burra had asked them to keep watch through the night because of unprecedented moves at the mine in the twenty-four hours since the trucking convoy had been turned away from the Aboriginal reserve.

  Bididgee people had spotted the arrival of light planes and the coming and going of Richardson’s executive jet. Burra suspected that Richardson might try to get the yellowcake out by truck and roadtrain again, and he had kept fifty of his people on shift around the clock at Cahill’s Crossing to block any such move. An airlift had seemed unlikely because the runway had only been built for light planes. But just in case Richardson had become desperate, Burra had sent the observers.

  They watched in awe as forty black uniformed figures filed down a ramp from the front of the cabin and formed a circle around the Hercules. They stood motionless with rifles resting on their hips as an equal number of Richardson’s mine staff filled the plane with the drums, which Silas and the other Aborigines knew contained the precious golden uranium ore.

  Silas told his companions to keep watch while he made a fifteen kilometre dash by jeep to the Bididgee township to alert his father.