Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery)

by Martin Roth

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It’s funny the things you notice first. For some reason I looked straight at Alberto’s hands. So many emotions were associated with Alberto - fear, hatred, the thirst for revenge - so I guess it was fear that shot to the surface of my brain first. And it was his hands that I had most feared.

  Alberto was not much taller than me, and a little stockier, but his hands were huge and powerful. It was those mighty hands that had pushed me down on the torture rack and applied the straps. Those big leathery hands had punched and slapped me. I had every reason to fear them.

  So now as Alberto stood before me, I looked straight at his hands. They hadn’t gotten any smaller.

  He smiled. “The Little Australian,” he said in English, then he switched to speaking in Bahasa. “Now you really are an Australian. And still making trouble. Still fighting for lost causes.”

  “My country is free.”

  “But for how long?”

  He had hardly changed at all. His face was round and dark. I knew he could flash a winning smile and his deep black eyes were capable of conveying surprising warmth when they weren’t concealed by dark glasses. You had to get to know him - as Briony and I had - to appreciate his cruel nature.

  He was still wearing the cream slacks and Hawaiian shirt he’d had on at La Rue.

  I looked him in the eye. “My country is going to be free a lot longer than you, once the Australian police catch you. How did you get into this country, anyway? There’s a law against vermin.”

  “Your friend Grant provided a lot of help.”

  “And so you killed him.”

  His face turned hard. “He was interfering with our campaign. Our struggle. Otherwise he would have been left alone. Just like you, Little Australian.”

  Once more I began struggling with my emotions. At some level within my consciousness I felt again that I wanted to lunge at Alberto and grab him around the throat, even despite the continuing presence of the armed guard.

  Yet deep in my heart something restrained me. It was like looking at those old photos of me on Melissa’s living room wall. I knew they were me, I could even remember the occasions when they were taken, yet somehow they didn’t portray the same me as now. My lust for revenge had become a piece of the past. It was an object I could look at and recall and feel some emotions about, like a teenage love letter, but it was no longer a part of the present me. At least, not entirely.

  I answered Alberto: “You try to dignify your fight by talking about campaigns and struggles. But what you’re talking about is rape and murder and terrorism. That’s all you ever cared about. And now that you’ve lost you want revenge. Even more than half-a-dozen years later.”

  “We have a cause. Perhaps you think that East Timor is yours. It’s not. It’s part of Indonesia. One day we will have it back.”

  “We’re an independent country. We’re part of the United Nations. We’re recognized by other countries around the world.”

  “One day East Timor will return,” he said simply.

  “But really it’s about revenge. Haven’t you heard of forgiveness?”

  He laughed. “You were brought up by American Christians. Is that something they taught you?”

  Briony stood up from the bed. She couldn’t understand any of this. She gave a mock yawn. “You guys seem to have a lot of catching up to do. Why don’t you just keep talking, and I’ll go for a walk.” She brushed against Alberto. He immediately pulled a gun and pushed it against her face. She hesitated, then sat back down.

  “I thought forgiveness was universal,” I said.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll tell you about my father. He was a soldier. He thought he had to make me tough, so he used to beat me all the time. He took delight in scaring me. He used to lock me in dark rooms. Sometimes he’d take me for a long walk and then leave me in a rice field and tell me to find my own way home. When I turned thirteen he gave me a gun and said it was time for me to be a man. He took out his own gun and told me that in thirty minutes he was going to start hunting me. He said if I didn’t want that I should shoot him first.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Could you kill your own dad?”

  The question was hypothetical. For once I almost felt a shimmer of pity for Alberto. Almost, but not quite. “What happened?”

  “He fired a few bullets over my head and I took off. I hid in the forest for two days until my sister came and told me to come home. She said it was all a big joke. But I never forgot that. And I could never forgive him in a million years. Never. And I’ve never forgiven anyone else who’s crossed me.”

  “And so you became a mass murderer. A torturer.”

  “War is war. Tell me which war didn’t have torture. On all sides.”

  Of course I couldn’t. “The war’s over. We have our country. Don’t you think at some point the fighting needs to stop?”

  “The war is still continuing.” He banged a fist against the wall. “The war is still continuing.”

  I was thinking hard about how I was going to escape. Alberto was ruthless. He had presumably murdered Grant, and he would not hesitate to kill me. But I also wanted to find out what was going to happen. I thought about what Tom had told me, about Albert Lake about to get a twin. Presumably some kind of bomb blast. “So to get revenge on your father you’re going to blow up some buildings in Melbourne?”

  Alberto smiled. “Beware the roar of the tiger,” he said simply. He looked at Briony, who was slumped back on the bed, apparently quite bored. “You like whores, don’t you?” he said to me. “Your mother. Your wife.”

  “Jacinta? Don’t talk about my wife like that.”

  “You know what I mean. She was a whore.”

  “If you didn’t have that gun in your pocket and a goon by the window you’d have my knee in your groin by now.”

  Alberto’s face mixed menace with enjoyment. “I’m surprised you never realized what sort of girl she was.”

  I bristled. I felt as if my hair was standing taut. I stood. Briony looked at us, clearly aware of the tension, even if she couldn’t possibly understand what we were saying. “She was not a whore,” I said.

  “Where do you think we picked her up?” asked Alberto. “From the brothels of Jakarta. That’s where.”

  My body felt cold and sweaty. I was like an animal ready to fight. What was he saying? I looked at him hard. “Who picked her up? What do you mean?”

  “I picked her up. Rather, I picked her. She was young and fairly pretty and best of all she came from Dili. Her family had been relocated and so had lost their land. They ended up in Jakarta looking for work. They were broke. They couldn’t afford to keep her. So she did what lots of girls have done in similar circumstances. She found her way to Kramat Tunggak. She went to work in a bar. Servicing the men.”

  “No.” I surprised even myself with the vehemence in my voice. I was standing just six feet from Alberto, and the gunman raised his weapon towards me. But Alberto himself remained quite relaxed. He seemed even jocular.

  “I’ll tell you something, Little Australian,” he said. “You were the man we wanted to capture most. You were the terrorist we were most fearful of. So we set a trap. A honeypot. She was the bait. But we didn’t realize you were a man of such virtue. You didn’t want to sleep with her. You fell in love, and you wanted to marry her. It was even better than we’d planned. You told her all your secrets.” He laughed. “How’s your memory of that time?”

  Not too good. My brain was a mire of confusion.

  “Didn’t you notice that as soon as you got married you started getting beaten? Do you remember that ambush of yours against a convoy leaving our base at Liquica? And we killed every one of your men? Jacinta told us all about that. And you know how we raided your ammunition store at Maliana? Jacinta again. Pillow talk from you. You weren’t very discreet were you?”

  I felt my world collapsing around me.

  “We could have pic
ked you up anytime. Jacinta always kept us in touch with your movements. But we preferred not to risk a big shoot-out. So when we decided it was time to bring you in we just pretended that we’d captured her. She’d done her job well. You were besotted with your young wife. You came charging in to rescue her. It was an easy job to take you. Unfortunately you then escaped. We were furious, I can tell you. I wasn’t able to stop my men from killing your bride. I had my way with her first, of course. Plump little thing, wasn’t she? But well developed in the right places. I have some happy memories.”

  Alberto sounded almost wistful, as if recounting a canoeing excursion on the Yarra River.

  I don’t recall what happened next. Briony told me later that I looked so mad she thought steam would come from me. Ignoring the armed guard I apparently charged into Alberto with such force that I propelled him into the plaster wall, making a giant crack. Then I tried to gouge out his eyes with my fingers while biting his ear and kneeing him in the groin. Briony said it was like watching two possums fighting. More armed men came running in, but no one dared shoot me in case they got Alberto. So they had to drag me off, and then they punched and kicked me until I was a groaning mess on the floor. Then they punched and kicked me some more and threw me - literally threw me - into a room with the window boarded over, and left me there with Briony.