Blood Is a Stranger

by Roland Perry

  ‘If that’s the angle you want,’ he said angrily, ‘forget it.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was,’ Rhonda said, backtracking.

  ‘Some people would see me as revenge mad, crazy!’

  ‘All I want is to ask questions,’ she said, ‘so we have you on tape.’

  ‘In case I was bumped off, or something?’

  ‘God! Ken! It would be a first-rate insurance policy for you.’

  ‘If anything did happen, it wouldn’t be much good to me, would it?’

  ‘I was worried it could come to this,’ she said. ‘Now you don’t trust me!’

  Cardinal said nothing. He had lost confidence in himself, and it was affecting his attitude to her. His reaction had drawn out her fears and highlighted her conflict of interests. She wanted the story very much, and because it had been given approval from the top of the network, she felt the pressure to deliver. But she also wanted Cardinal.

  ‘You don’t trust me, do you?’ she pressed him.

  ‘It’s not so much trust,’ he said, touching her shoulder. ‘I’m not sure you should be burdened by the truth.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘I don’t think trying to kill an animal like Chan is wrong.’

  ‘But how the hell would you get around that in your documentary?’

  ‘We would make you the central figure,’ she said, her enthusiasm evident. ‘The whole story would be sympathetic to you.’

  ‘I’m not sure I would benefit,’ he said pulling her to him.

  ‘Wouldn’t you do it for me?’ she said.

  ‘I’d do a lot of things for you. I like you very much.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I think I love you.’ He took her by the hand.

  ‘Then you should help me,’ she said. ‘I feel the same about you.’

  He slipped her towelling gown off her shoulders and began to knead them with his fingers. She looked at him approvingly. He kissed her neck and throat in the way he had learned that she liked. The gown swung open, and he craned his neck to her nipples: they had anticipated his tongue’s touch. The gown fell to the floor.

  Rhonda held his shoulders and nudged him so that he rolled onto the bed. She climbed on him and gripped his forearms. Her hands slid to his wrist. She locked her knees against his ribcage. He winced. The bruises from Bum still hurt. Rhonda whispered an apology and let her hands slide to his fingers. Cardinal reached up and massaged her breasts. She slid down to his hips and pushed him deep into her.

  ‘Show me how you feel,’ Rhonda murmured.

  ‘Le plaisir est tout pour moi . . .” he said, and his confidence in their relationship returned.

  ‘Pol Pot is in Paris,’ Webb told Perdonny over the phone.

  ‘How did you learn that?’ Perdonny asked.

  ‘You might be interested in Indonesia, mate,’ Webb said, ‘but I’ve put in a special request to be involved in Khmer Rouge developments. Canberra didn’t know what to give me, so I got in first.’

  ‘You still think something could be done?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just want to be in the right place at the right time.’

  ‘Tell me more about Pol Pot.’

  ‘He’s negotiating with the Frogs.’

  ‘Over what?’

  ‘Only speculation. But the big rumour is that he wants money to go on with. Seems the scientific contingent in the Cardomom Mountains is eating up their dough. You know, equipment, and so on.’

  ‘Will the French get that involved?’

  ‘They are already,’ Webb said confidently. ‘We have to see who pops up in Bangkok.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the camera,’ Rhonda said. ‘Let it find you.’

  Cardinal felt like a witness in court. He had to be careful with every response.

  ‘You were brilliant!’ she said at the end. ‘It’s bloody dynamite!’

  ‘I do want to see how you cut it together,’ he said as they left the studio.

  ‘The minute the editor and I have done it. Promise!’

  They climbed into a waiting limousine. ‘I’ve got to fly to Melbourne first thing in the morning to get on with this, but may I take you to dinner tonight, sir, somewhere special?’

  ‘You’ll have to,’ he said ruefully. ‘I’ve run up a huge account on this vacation island near Ambon.’

  ‘Let me tell you, my darling,’ she said, squeezing his hand, ‘I asked for a fee for you. After your performance today, it will be pushed through without any trouble.’

  Cardinal pulled an ingenuous smile. His mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Aren’t you interested in how much?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Ten grand.’

  Cardinal leant across and kissed her. They reached the Harbour Bridge. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’ll come in handy.’

  There’s more,’ Rhonda said. ‘I’ve got you a first-class return ticket to New York on top of the ten.’

  ‘Why return?’

  ‘Well you’ve got to see the final edit. And there may be a big promotion. We’ll need the star to face the press here.’

  Cardinal thanked her.

  ‘Something is troubling you. Was it the interview?’

  ‘The questions about the Khmer Rouge, the yellowcake and Van der Holland,’ he said. ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before the interview?’

  ‘I wanted to know if you knew anything more.’

  ‘Where could I follow up on that?’ Cardinal said. ‘Couldn’t you let me speak with your source?’

  ‘If I did, he would never trust me again.’

  Cardinal slammed his fist on the arm rest. ‘Where else could I find out about that?’

  The chauffeur glanced into the rear-vision mirror.

  ‘Perdonny, maybe?’ Rhonda said.

  ‘Possibly,’ Cardinal said, ‘or perhaps Spider Webb.’

  ‘What are you planning?’

  ‘I would go to Kampuchea,’ he said, anguish etching itself into his expression for the first time in days, ‘if there was a chance to learn about Harry.’

  The next morning – Rhonda had returned to Melbourne -Cardinal invited Webb to lunch at The Pitts. Gillie greeted Cardinal and, at his request, found a discreet table in a corner.

  The Pitts was a lunch place for Sydney businessmen. Cardinal loathed the all-male atmosphere. The only women there were the young beauties personally chosen by Madame Gillie. She brought Webb to the table.

  ‘Like your choice of help,’ he said to her as he sat down.

  ‘Thank you,’ Gillie said. Her laugh was rich and convincing. ‘They’re all in honour of the figure I used to have twenty years ago.’

  ‘Is Kim Lim working today?’ Cardinal asked.

  Gillie’s smile vanished. ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘I would like to speak with her.’

  Gillie glanced at the guest-list.

  ‘Mr Cardinal, you’re . . .’

  ‘Harry’s father.’

  Gillie hesitated. ‘There won’t be trouble?’

  ‘No, why?’

  Gillie left and returned two minutes later. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Cardinal. I was wrong, she is on duty tomorrow.’

  She wished them a good lunch and, with a sideways glance at Webb, moved off to greet new guests.

  ‘Who’s Kim Lim?’ he asked.

  ‘A friend of Harry’s,’ Cardinal said, his eyes following Gillie. Her nervousness was evident.

  ‘You never give up on Harry, do you?’ Webb said.

  ‘No, because I have more than a gut feeling,’ he said. ‘I believe my son’s alive.’ His hand was busy making an imaginary sketch of the Australian on the tablecloth. More symbols of the psyche. Cardinal withdrew his hand but kept on doodling on his thigh.

  ‘I happen to agree with you,’ Webb said.

  Cardinal was surprised.

  ‘I’m interested in what has happened in Kampuchea. I’ve asked to be assigned to the whole
Van der Holland, yellowcake hijack thing.’

  ‘What’s ASIO’s attitude? What’s the real thinking about it all?’

  ‘I can tell you it’s being monitored,’ Webb said, ‘closely.’

  ‘Is anybody going to do anything?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Try to get them . . . Hartina . . . out?’

  ‘Impossible.’

  Cardinal waited. Webb explained the problems, the French connection. The waitress brought their soup entrees.

  ‘Is it difficult to get in?’ Cardinal asked.

  ‘Have you been speaking to Perdonny?’ Webb said.

  ‘I haven’t seen or spoken to him since we got back to Australia.’

  ‘I was talking about this to him only yesterday.’

  ‘You sound as if you would like to do something.’

  ‘I do. But Canberra won’t budge.’

  Cardinal gazed across the restaurant to the bar. It was a blur. He cracked each knuckle on his hand, his private ritual.

  ‘Your soup is getting cold,’ Webb said.

  ‘Why coudn’t we and Perdonny do something privately?’

  ‘Not with Perdonny,’ Webb said. ‘We don’t get on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You ought to work with him,’ Webb said. ‘Besides, I don’t trust him. He has Russian links.’

  ‘You’re implying he would double-cross us?’

  ‘Don’t be blinded because he came along for the ride when we got you out of bloody Bum,’ Webb said. ‘I flew that plane in and out. I shot that boat out of the bloody water!’

  ‘I’m most grateful to both of you,’ Cardinal said.

  ‘You realise that the Vietnamese are Russian puppets?’ Webb began again. ‘One word from dear Robert to his Russian mates about a little expedition into the mountains with the Khmer Rouge, and we would have Vietnamese gunning for us the second we got off a plane in Bangkok!’

  ‘I wondered about his Russian links.’

  ‘He set you up in Jakarta.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You got to the Soviet party courtesy of Perdonny, didn’t you?’

  ‘He told you about that?’

  ‘Yes, when we got back here. He probably got the Russians to influence Tien Van der Holland to come too.’

  Cardinal munched a roll. ‘Are you saying he got her to lie about Chan?’

  ‘Well, someone must have,’ Webb said, opening his palms, ‘if your son is alive.’

  ‘It seems that Tien may have double-crossed me to protect her daughter,’ Cardinal said. ‘She expressed her fear that Chan would double-cross Utun. And he did.’

  ‘Probably right, and you were used by Perdonny to destabilise Utun’s regime. If you had been caught, it would have upset Utun’s relations with the Americans.’

  ‘Maybe. But I wanted to go after Chan. Perdonny backed me all the way and followed through.’

  There was an uneasy silence. Cardinal asked Webb if he was thinking of going into Kampuchea.

  ‘Yeah, I am giving it thought.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I used to be in the SAS,’ he said. ‘I went on innumerable two, sometimes, one-man patrols in Vietnam and Kampuchea. I know the terrain. I reckon a good reccy could be done to see if we could get Van der Holland, and your son — if he’s there – out.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Cardinal said, his eyes rivetted on Webb.

  ‘Look, mate,’ he said, with a fatherly smile, ‘I admire your guts. But you’ve been through a lot. Hell, it’s only a week since you were half-dead.’

  ‘It’s two weeks since the torture,’ Cardinal said. ‘Sure I’m still a bit sore here and there, but I’m running and swimming and exercising daily. Within a week, I’ll be good as new.’

  Webb’s smile faded. ‘No, it would be too dangerous,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’d never be given time off.’

  ‘I thought you were your own man,’ Cardinal goaded him. ‘Why can’t you just take leave? You said yourself you wanted to go in.’

  ‘It’s not on, mate,’ Webb said as if to terminate the subject: just as their main fish courses were served. ‘You would be better off returning to your art gallery.’

  Cardinal thought his tone snide. But he was used to Webb’s nature.

  ‘I’ll send you a dirty postcard,’ Webb said, ‘if we learn anything about Harry.’

  ‘Well, God bugger me dead!’ The stooped and wiry Willow Wilson muttered as he ushered Rhonda into his terrace home in Preston near Melbourne, a single-fronted red brick, with a tiny, neat garden on busy Kramer Street. His skin was leathery from years exposed to the scorching sun. A cigarette hung from one corner of his mouth.

  ‘You’re doin’ a story on Ken Cardinal?’ he said. He introduced Rhonda to his jut-jawed wife Raelene.

  ‘We would like you to talk about him,’ Rhonda said, settling on a floral sofa. ‘What he was like in the Korean war:

  Rhonda accepted an offer of tea from Raelene. Wilson lifted the top off a Fosters bottle.

  ‘You going to put this on the telly?’ the man asked. ‘Jeez, I better be careful what I say.’

  ‘He’ll blather his mouth off for you,’ his wife assured Rhonda, ‘no worries.’

  ‘I got some pictures out for you,’ he said. ‘Want to see them?’

  ‘Great!’ Rhonda said. While Wilson fossicked in a drawer, she looked around the room. There were framed shots of Australian sports heroes.

  ‘That’s Cardinal,’ he said. He stood over her, smelling of sweat and tobacco. ‘He had more guts than a tennis racket factory. We were mates.’ He pointed to others. ‘That’s me, and that’s me other mate, Ernie Stone.’

  ‘Can we use these in the story?’

  ‘Yeah, no worries, as long as I get ‘em back.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Wilson said. He sat on a rocking chair. His eyes flicked to the cricket on the television.

  ‘First of all,’ Rhonda asked, ‘what was he like? What were your impressions of Cardinal?’

  ‘A really good bloke. The best. The sort of guy you would trust with your life. And 1 bloody did a couple of times. He saved my life, twice.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Cardinal and I were captured when our platoon crossed the Taedong River into Pyongyang – North Korea’s capital.’

  ‘What were you doing in an American platoon?’

  ‘I was a deserter from the Aussie army,’ he guffawed. He poured himself more beer. ‘We all rushed to the frontline. Anyway, we were captured, sec. We were ambushed. Couple of days later two Koreans marched us up a hill to shoot us, right? Shoot us so that we fell into a mass grave.’

  Rhonda kept thinking how this would look on camera. Her eye told her that Willow Wilson would be a winner. He sipped his beer and coughed hard.

  ‘Ken said something like, “They’re going to bump us off up there,” see, and this Korean prods him with his bayonet, and Ken says,“I’ll take the bigger one on my right.” See, the Koreans didn’t know what we were saying, but they didn’t want us talking.’

  ‘How did you feel?’

  ‘How did I feel? Jesus! I was petrified. My brain was going numb, and I kept saying to myself, This is it, mate! Your number’s come up in the frame. Willow Wilson, retired hurt, one bullet in the head!’

  Rhonda couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘I remember my knees knocking when we reached that grave. A lot of bodies, well, the flesh was gone. They were bones. I wanted to turn and run, but my legs wouldn’t have carried me.’

  ‘What was Cardinal doing?’

  ‘He was dragging his feet, see. He was pretending to be, well, lethargic, like he was resigned to what was about to happen. Then he struck like a bloody lightning bolt. He kicked one of the Koreans in the nuts and went for his throat. This distracted the other one long enough for me to jump him. I ran him through with his own bayonet. Cardinal throttled this guy, strangled him.’ He sipped his beer in silence.

>   ‘Then we threw their bodies into the grave,’ he said, ‘where we should have been.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then we pissed off, but we were captured again by the Chinese, on 26 November 1950. I remember it well because all the Americans were celebrating Thanksgiving when the Chinese hit us. And I mean hit. That was the battle of Kuni-Ri. A few days later we were smashed again at Changchon River. The Chinese took thousands of prisoners. Cardinal collected two or three bullets, as I recall. At least one in each leg, anyhow.’

  Wilson stared blankly at the television. ‘We were driven like cattle in sub-zero temperatures across mountains into Manchuria.’

  The Death March.’

  ‘That’s the one. About half of us survived. A lot died in the camp we ended up in. That was where Cardinal really saved me. A lot of prisoners cracked and confessed to war crimes. But Cardinal taught me bloody calculus! He burnt it into my brain forever. Me, a dummy that left school at thirteen! It kept our minds on other things. He was a terrific inspiration. Psyched some of us to resist our interrogators. And it worked. We never lost morale.’ His voice trailed off as if he had dried up. Wilson looked straight at Rhonda. ‘Do you want me to go on?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I was wondering how you found me?’

  ‘Cardinal had your address. He is in Sydney.’

  ‘Love to see him.’

  ‘When this story is put together.’

  ‘That’s great. How is he?’

  ‘Alive, thanks to your nephew. Ken wanted to let you know that Spider Webb saved his life.’ Rhonda stopped.

  ‘Nephew? I haven’t got a nephew.’

  Rhonda looked at Raelene. ‘Your wife’s brother’s son . . .”

  Wilson’s wife shook her head. ‘Raelene hasn’t got a brother. What was this guy’s name again?’

  After sprinting along the beach, Cardinal raced Webb into the choppy surf. A handful of board-riders were braving the waters further out. The two men struggled to beat the vicious under-tow that had closed the beach for the morning.

  Cardinal quit first. He lay heaving on the sand: Webb battled on.

  ‘You’re no iron man,’ Webb said to Cardinal when he came out, ‘but considering your age and what you’ve been through, I’m surprised.’

  ‘Thanks, Hercules,’ said Cardinal, saluting. He unwrapped a cigar.