Blood Is a Stranger

by Roland Perry

  The minutes ticked by and the cafe patrons forgot they had police company. Cardinal kept watching the cafe entrance for any new arrivals. A group of French tourists milled outside trying to make up their minds what they fancied. When they began to disperse, Cardinal caught sight of a tall dark woman crossing the road. She wavered at the cafe entrance and spoke to an aproned man who cleared a table for her on the sidewalk. She sat down and faced Cardinal’s way. He was certain it was Hartina. So near! he thought in frustration. He watched her eyeing passers by, especially European men, who were encouraged by her gaze. One German stopped and came over to her. She flicked a contemptuous hand at him. The man roared with laughter and rejoined his friends. Hartina kept looking at her watch. Cardinal felt a just controllable urge to call out to her.

  Two men came to the cafe entrance. She turned to look at them. They nodded to her and went inside. Five minutes later they came out with drinks and sat with their backs to Hartina. The aproned proprietor began to encourage more tourists to sit outside as patrons began straggling in and out of other places.

  At one the cafe began taking last orders. Two prostitutes who had been turned away minutes before were prompted to sit down, and the proprietor brought them coffees. They bantered with him and giggled at the unusual generosity. More lights were switched on so that the front awning lit up like a Christmas tree. Cardinal waited and watched from the shadows. At twenty minutes past one, the proprietor began to gesticulate to the two men, whom Cardinal thought were Bakin. The proprietor pointed to the door and tapped his wrist watch.

  The prostitutes asked for more coffee and heckled as the proprietor became angry. Sharp conversation began between Hartina and the two men. She opened her hands and shrugged. A quarter of an hour later all the players began to disband. Hartina was led away and the soldiers began shuffling back to their jeep. Cardinal crept to the landing and watched the vehicles leave.

  He waited until it was two before going down to the alley. He made his way along the road leading to the rear of the hospital. He passed a taxi rank and was tempted to hire one for the short ride, but it crossed his mind that drivers might have been alerted to his possible presence in the city. He walked on to the front of the hospital and stopped when he saw that some police had bailed up a group of European tourists. Cardinal retraced his steps and approached a taxi. The driver was asleep. Cardinal jumped in the back seat and shook him.

  ‘Market,’ Cardinal said. The driver looked at his watch.

  ‘Too early for market,’ the Sundanese driver said in Indonesian.

  Cardinal repeated his request and the taxi crawled off. He crouched as they drove past the police and tourists. Cardinal ordered the driver to stop on the other side of the market from the Mercedes. He got out and waited until the taxi had crawled out of sight before running to his vehicle. Cardinal drove off and only moved into top gear on the outskirts of Bandung. But his progress was shortlived. He soon found himself in a long line of cars all slowing up. He remembered Perdonny’s warning about road blocks. If the city had been sealed off, it would explain the bank-up of vehicles trying to leave after midnight. A few minutes later Cardinal could see the flashing lights of stationary police cars at a block. He turned the car left and switched his headlights on high beam. He could see a steep slope leading to a flatish field. He pulled the car out of the line, rolled to the edge of the slope and stopped. He jumped out and ran down the gradient. He was encouraged by the sight of a thin track away from the road. Cardinal returned to the car and eased it down the slope and onto the track.

  The ground became marshy, and Cardinal was forced to get out and walk ahead to test it. To his horror two cars from the line of traffic had spotlighted him on high beam. They came down the slope and across the path in his direction. He rushed to the Mercedes as the two cars roared passed. Cardinal followed.

  One of the cars became bogged. Cardinal stayed on the trail of the other vehicle, which careered on through the uncertain terrain beyond the road block. Both cars negotiated the slope up by tackling it on an angle at high speed. It took them on to the main freeway to Jakarta.

  Cardinal was exhilarated to be clear and felt bold enough to push on to Bogor. The speedometer bent around to more than a hundred and sixty kilometres an hour, and he was surprised at how well the vehicle stood the strain.

  On one winding section he was forced to slow down. Two roadtrains had collided head-on. Rescue workers were struggling to separate the crushed and intertwined cabins where the drivers’ bodies were trapped. A little further on he encountered an abandoned overturned bus. Cardinal slowed to a more manageable speed.

  It was not yet three. He was more than half-way to the airport, and on time.

  ‘How did you trace me?’ the scientist said. He ushered Rhonda into the laboratory at Sydney University.

  ‘I saw you at the crematorium,’ she said, ‘so I found out who the young, handsome friend of Harry Cardinal was. Andrew Shelton Coombes is on quite a few files.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Coombes blushed.

  ‘For calling you young?’

  ‘No, handsome.’

  ‘Don’t get carried away,’ Rhonda said, dead-pan. She giggled.

  ‘I felt you wanted to speak to me.’

  ‘I did, really,’ Coombes said, fiddling with buttons on his white coat. He offered Rhonda a seat near an elaborate gun barrel nosed into a chamber about five metres long and two metres wide.

  ‘You split your time between here and Lucas Heights?’ Rhonda asked, putting him at ease.

  Coombes nodded. ‘I lecture in laser physics here.’

  ‘Have you been warned to keep quiet?’

  ‘The director at Lucas Heights told us anyone caught talking to the press would be fired and face breach of national security charges.’

  Coombes pulled up a chair close to her and ran a hand through his unkempt hair.

  ‘I want your word that nothing I say is attributable to me,’ he said, wringing his hands. ‘Agreed,’ she said. They shook hands. Coombes pointed at the equipment.

  ‘This is a replica of the laser Harry made at Lucas Heights, without the special parts that make his design unique. We use it here to show students how to separate gases in the chamber.’ He stood up and rested his hands on mirrors at the front of the barrel.

  ‘These special dichroic mirrors,’ he said, dismantling one about the size of his hand to show Rhonda, ‘are vital to the laser. Harry Cardinal designed his own. When he died, I was put in charge of the equipment he had designed.’ Speaking in a whisper he added, ‘Four of those mirrors were missing from his laser.’

  ‘Were they stolen?’

  ‘Definitely. I reported it. The police came. There was an inquiry, and it was concluded that Hartina had taken them when she disappeared.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  Coombes shrugged.

  ‘What did you think of her?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t trust her.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You get to know someone’s mentality if you work with them for a couple of years. She only spoke to me when she wanted help.’

  ‘That doesn’t make her untrustworthy.’

  ‘Check when she took out Australian citizenship. It was at the end of her post-graduate research days when she knew she could get a job at Lucas Heights, if she became an Australian.’

  ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘You must understand the significance of her work,’ he said, looking around furtively. ‘She and Harry were at the forefront of an amazing breakthrough in bomb technology.’

  ‘Could you explain it simply? I’m ignorant of all that.’

  ‘There are some advantages to being a part-time teacher,’ he said with a fleeting smile. He turned to the equipment. ‘It’s easy in principle.’ Coombes replaced the mirror and switched on the laser. It began to hum. The gun vibrated, and he handed her a pair of goggles.

  ‘If you go over to the window,’ he said, ‘I’ll d
emonstrate. You can see different hues of a gas, right?’

  Rhonda peered in through a window of the chamber at head height.

  ‘The gas is made up of uranium atoms mixed with fluoride,’ Coombes said. ‘In a moment you’ll see a red beam of light.’ He pushed a button. The beam speared into the gas and caused a flash.

  ‘That was a collision of the laser with certain atoms of the gas. In the gas you have atoms of uranium 235 arid uranium 238. The idea is to collect the 235, because that is the uranium used for nuclear energy, or to make bombs.’

  Rhonda glanced at Coombes.

  ‘What were those flashes?’ she asked.

  ‘The collision is between the laser atoms of a certain wavelength and the gas atoms of the same wavelength. The laser collects the uranium 235 atoms and deposits them on a magnetic grid at the back of the chamber.’

  He switched off the machine. Rhonda took off the goggles and frowned. ‘What’s the significance of the development?’ she asked, frowning. ‘Is it the speed, the accuracy . . . ?’

  ‘Until now we have needed a mountain of equipment and buildings to extract the U235 via the gaseous diffusion and other methods,’ Coombes remarked dropping his voice. ‘This laser is what you journalists might call the real ‘Pandora’s Box’ of the nuclear age! Any terrorist or country that wants to go nuclear can do it! All that’s needed is the design, one scientist in the field, and a chamber no bigger than this lab. Then bombs can be mass produced!’

  Rhonda didn’t have a follow-up question. Her mind was on Chan’s Khmer Rouge, and this triggered her constant worry about Cardinal.

  Rhonda would not have noticed the van if she had not been forewarned by Cardinal of the vehicle that tried to run him off the road in his first days in Sydney. Since then, wherever she went in the city, she noted suspicious vehicles, and sometimes took down number plates. The sight of the green VW, with its dark one-way windows, send a shiver through her.

  Rhonda asked her taxi driver to pull over to check if they were being followed. They were. She managed to scribble down the van’s number, and then asked the driver to take her to a police station.

  When they were near it, the van disappeared. Rhonda made a complaint. Hours later she rang the police to see if they had traced the van. According to a senior officer, the registration did not exist.

  ‘Look, I didn’t make a mistake!’ Rhonda said.

  ‘You must have, Ms Mills,’ the officer said.

  ‘The taxi driver checked the numbers too.’

  ‘So, it probably had false plates. Did it have any other markings?’

  ‘I can tell you it wasn’t a bloody bread van!’

  ‘There’s nothing else we can do, I’m sorry, Ms Mills.’

  The thought of being followed, and the conversation with the police left her uneasy.

  The sound of feet crunching on gravel woke Cardinal. A second later he was startled by a stern face peering at him through the Mercedes window. It was a security guard at tiny Bogor airport. Cardinal had slept in the car after arriving at four and finding the hangar locked up.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ the guard asked.

  Cardinal sat up and pointed to lettering above the hangar entrance. ‘Have business with Ausminex,’ he said, opening the car door.

  ‘Who?’ the guard said, switching to English.

  ‘Mr Webb,’ Cardinal said, rounding each syllable. ‘Ausminex.’

  The guard frowned and his left hand slid to a gun-holstered belt.

  ‘Spider Webb,’ Cardinal said. ‘I come to see . . .’

  ‘Ahh, Spider!’ the man said. His face broke into a broad grin. ‘He come at six. You half hour early.’

  Cardinal’s fears were mitigated as the guard unlocked the hangar door and began to slide it across, exposing the company’s fleet of planes. Cardinal drove the Mercedes to the Beachcraft as instructed by Perdonny. He tried its cabin door, but it was locked. He hoisted his suitcase from the trunk of the Mercedes and placed it under the plane.

  A late model Saab stopped outside the hangar. Webb bounced out, an overnight bag in hand.

  ‘You’re on time,’ Webb said with a strong handshake. ‘I like that.’ Webb unlocked the cabin door and lifted Cardinal’s case in.

  ‘Weather’s good,’ he said. ‘We’ll be off in fifteen minutes. We’re first out this morning.’ Webb taxied out on the deserted runway and used binoculars to focus on the control towers.

  ‘Buggers aren’t even awake yet.’

  ‘Does that mean we have to wait?’

  ‘No bloody fear.’ Webb adjusted his headphones.

  ‘Do you want me to hide in the back?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In case I’m seen.’

  ‘Don’t worry, mate. The guard has already seen you. Won’t make any difference.’

  Minutes later they were airborne without any official clearance.

  ‘Next stop Bali,’ Webb said, ‘we hope.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Webb held up a hand. ‘Something’s going on,’ he said. Webb looked concerned. ‘Bali’s not on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Place is crawling with militia. Something’s being set-up for somebody. We’ll go for Ambon.’

  ‘Why can’t we go straight for Darwin?’

  ‘Too dangerous. The Indonesian airforce has been buzzing our commercial carriers. Don’t trust the bastards an inch.’

  When they had levelled off at three thousand metres, Webb removed the headphones.

  ‘You fought in Korea?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, why?’ Cardinal replied.

  Webb grinned slyly. ‘Ever remember a Willow Wilson?

  ‘Sure, I do. Willow Wilson and Ernie Stone. I fought with them.’

  ‘Willow’s my uncle. He’s married to my father’s sister.’

  ‘How in the hell did you know that I knew Willow?’

  ‘After Perdonny pushed me about taking you to Darwin, I began to think about your name. I haven’t known too many Americans, but I had heard your name. Then it twigged. My uncle often used to speak about you when I was a kid. I pestered him to tell me about his war adventures. Your name used to come up all the time. Uncle Willow said you were a bit of a hero.’

  ‘Willow and Ernie were mates and mentors. I was just a kid of seventeen. They had fought in the second world war. They were real pros.’

  ‘Those adventures caused me to join the army,’ Webb said, ‘because all I ever wanted to do was what you’d done. I really wanted to join the Australian SAS, but you always had to have a regular army background to get in.’

  ‘Ever seen action?’

  ‘Plenty in Vietnam,’ Webb said, ‘and elsewhere.’

  ‘You know your uncle was a deserter,’ Cardinal said.

  ‘Bullshit!’

  ‘I’m not kidding. We heard that the Australians had landed a battalion in Korea and the next thing we learned was that every one of them had deserted. It’s the truth,’ Cardinal said with a laugh, ‘but let me tell you, everyone of them had deserted to join us at the front line.’ Webb’s eyes sparkled as Cardinal added, ‘They were the best brawlers I ever knew. Boy! They never stopped it. If they weren’t smashing the enemy, they would be beating up among themselves. They were crazy!’

  ‘Are you going to look Willow up?’

  ‘If I have time,’ Cardinal said.

  They flew on over some low cloud, and Cardinal felt a surge of freedom.

  ‘I hear you got Chan.’

  ‘Did Robert tell you that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Webb said. ‘That was a pretty gutsy effort, mate.’

  ‘Is Chan dead?’

  ‘Nobody seems to know. But Perdonny reckons somebody is. They buried someone in the embassy grounds late yesterday. Did you do it alone?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Did Perdonny help you?’

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Cardinal snapped.

  ‘Okay, pal,’ Webb said. ‘Keep your shirt on.
’

  The cloud began to get darker and soon they were being bounced around. With little warning they found them’ selves in a vicious electrical storm. It thoroughly tested Webb’s considerable flying skills. Cardinal hung on grimly as the pilot fought the controls. The strain showed as perspiration formed rivulets from Webb’s forehead to his chin.

  ‘Yell if you see rock!’ he shouted above the thunder. ‘We’re bloody close to mountains!’

  Cardinal strained to see through the rain obscured windows and cloud.

  ‘That was the worst I have ever been in!’ Webb said. The plane slipped into calmer skies.

  ‘Glad you didn’t tell me before,’ Cardinal said.

  Webb laughed.

  They flew on untroubled for an hour.

  ‘Ambon,’ Webb said, pointing to an island ahead. He began nosing the plane down from a terrace of flimsy cloud. The Beachcraft made a tight turn to avoid a mountain that guarded the airport, and then made a smooth landing. Webb taxied from one side of the field to the other in search of a landing space.

  ‘Lot of military people in this morning,’ he said, ‘but we should be okay.’

  The German Shepherd stood crouched in front of Perdonny’s villa, its lip curled, as a Subaru sedan pulled up. The driver sounded the horn, and moments later a guard and servant were at the front entrance.

  ‘Put that dog away,’ a smartly dressed Javanese in the back seat said angrily, ‘or we’ll have it shot!’

  The guard spoke to the dog, which trotted to the side of the villa with some reluctance. It twice stopped to look at the men getting out of the car and had to be cajoled by the guard into continuing on to the pool area.