Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery)

by Martin Roth

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I could feel myself weakening.

  As well as my broken bones I was suffering a strained wrist and a leg wound that seemed to be turning septic. The bruises on my face meant one eye was almost entirely closed.

  This was all nothing new, of course. In the mountains of East Timor I had often been wounded. But always I recovered quickly, even with just cursory treatment. This time I was deteriorating. I was surely getting old.

  I lost track of time. Meals - always leftover fried rice - arrived sporadically. Sometimes the guards allowed me to visit the toilet. The rest of the time they left me sitting on the cold concrete floor in the garage, bound to the center post like a pig destined for the village feast.

  On about the third night of my confinement, Alberto and his men with great deliberation began stuffing the back of the pink florist’s van with packages, all wrapped in thick brown paper. It was a time of tension. At one point the youngest of the men stumbled while carrying a package, and the others all screamed abuse at him.

  Then I watched as they used bolts to attach to the interior of the van a specially prepared false bottom – a sheet of hard metal - that covered the packages.

  When they were finished Alberto turned to me. “You need one last visit to the toilet?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’ll want to go when you learn what’s going to happen to you.” He looked around at his men. They guffawed obligingly. Then he nodded to a couple of them.

  They had clearly rehearsed this. With speed and precision they taped my mouth. Then they unwound me from my tethering post. My feet and wrists were still bound. Two of them picked me up and slid me head first into the back of the van, onto the metal false bottom. They attached more rope to my ankles and tied this to hooks on the inner paneling of the van. They threw some blankets over me, then on top they spread something with the fragrance of flowers.

  “We are placing lots and lots of wreaths on you, Little Australian,” said Alberto. “It is very appropriate. Though I wish we didn’t have to tape up your mouth. I would have enjoyed a chat with a countryman. But we don’t want you screaming out if the police should happen to stop me. You’ll have no choice but to listen to me.”

  I was left alone for thirty minutes or more. I was lying on my back, my hands behind me. I could barely move. I tugged at my bindings. As expected, they had done a professional job. My chances of escape seemed remote.

  Then the men must have returned. From my spot under the blankets and the wreaths I heard shouts and what may have been soft singing. Someone opened the van door and started up the motor. Slowly we began to move.

  “I hope you can hear me, Little Australian,” Alberto called out. I had noticed that the driver’s compartment was separated by a small window from the luggage area where I was confined. “It’s a bonus to have company on a mission like this.”

  I pulled at my bindings again, and felt them tighten. In the darkness I had the distinct sensation of being entombed in a coffin.

  “You know what day it is today?” called out Alberto. We were driving quite fast. “It’s Anzac Day. I’ll tell you something interesting. I asked Tom which was the holiest day in Australia. He told me it was Anzac. Except he said it wasn’t a religious day at all. He said Australians aren’t religious. But I don’t believe him. Everyone in the world is religious in their own way. Don’t you agree?”

  I did, actually. But I wanted to hear more about the wreaths.

  I recognized a kind of nervous tension in Alberto’s voice. It was the excitement that came at the launch of a major mission. I recalled the feeling of exhilaration we had experienced in East Timor when we set off on a dangerous operation. It was almost palpable. There would be strange giggling. Men would hold hands. A few people would talk incessantly, until told to shut up.

  The same mood had affected Alberto. Excitement mixed with nervousness. He was clearly going to talk non-stop. In some ways that was a relief for me. I wanted him distracted. It was my only chance of escape.

  I tested again my bindings. And then I made a discovery. Sticking up from the floor of the van, just barely within reach of my fingers, was one of the bolts used to attach the false floor. It had a jagged edge, probably no more than half an inch wide. But I reckoned that if I jerked my body back and forth over it I could work on cutting the cord around my wrists. And as I was almost certainly out of the line of Alberto’s sight, through his rear-vision mirror, he was unlikely to notice.

  Painfully I maneuvered into position over the tiny metal edge, and started vibrating my body. Tears came to my eyes and I nearly screamed out, as each jerk sent rivets of fire shooting up my broken finger.

  “Our first military action on Australian soil is going to be for Anzac Day,” said Alberto. “There’s a dawn service and then a big military parade. It all starts in a few hours. You want to know what’s going to happen? This van is full of explosives. With a lot of flowers and wreaths as cover. It’s about an hour’s drive to the city. I’ll be leaving the van parked near the parade route. The explosives will be set off as the parade is passing.”

  We were moving now at great speed. I felt cool, even with the blankets and wreaths piled on me. I waited for him to tell me that I would be set free after we arrived. But he didn’t.

  “You keep helping us, Little Australian. Did you realize that? Do you believe in fate? That some things are destined to happen? In East Timor you were our main target. We wanted to catch you more than anyone. So we arranged a trap with Jacinta. And you ended up marrying her. Thanks to you we learned the names of most of your fellow soldiers and their hideouts. We didn’t get you, not until now, anyway, but you were forced to escape.”

  Everything he said was true.

  “And now you have come to help us again.” The van swerved and braked, and I heard Alberto cursing. “It’s true that you have forced us to change our plans a little. But the result is that you will be blown up with the van. You’re going to end up in little pieces. It’ll be assumed that you - one of the leading East Timorese rebels - were driving this van on some kind of suicide bombing mission. The Australian authorities will probably find out that you were smuggled into Australia. Perhaps just for this purpose. And so the Timor rebel movement will get blamed for blowing up the Australian army on Anzac Day.”

  I felt near despair.

  “You know something, Little Australian? You were the fighter we all feared the most.” His voice contained nostalgia. “That’s why we went to so much trouble to capture you. And then when you escaped, well, I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone else. I was scared. I knew you’d be coming to get me. And I knew you might be successful. I left the island for a couple of months, until I was sure you were no longer around.”

  My entire body was in agony. Death had its attractions. But I continued to jerk my body up and down. I could only assume the cord was fraying.

  “I respected you. After we came to Melbourne I learned that you were here too. I could have killed you any time. But this is war, and you were no longer a soldier. So we left you alone. I knew that Grant Stonelea was your friend, so after we had to kill him I phoned you and warned you not to get involved. Of course I still feared you a little. But we were so much stronger that you were no real threat to us. It was for your own good that I warned you to keep away. I really didn’t want you to be involved. I didn’t want to have to kill you.”

  My hands were wet and sticky, certainly from sweat and presumably from blood as well. The jagged piece of metal was probably cutting my bindings, and it was also certainly slicing my skin. Perhaps my veins as well.

  We sped along in silence, then Alberto began a series of reminiscences. “That time your men attacked our checkpoint at Aileu. Brilliant. Caught our guys asleep. You got four of them, then escaped clean away.” He could have been discussing a football tournament.

  Knowing that I was soon to be blown to bits, Alberto was welling with generosity. He couldn
’t help marveling at all our wonderful exploits against his men.

  “All those caves and underground tunnels you had in the Matebian mountains. Like fortresses. That was brilliant warfare. Real professional. We had to bomb the place with napalm, like the Americans did in Vietnam, and we still couldn’t get you out.”

  But you killed thousands of villagers, I wanted to say.

  He suddenly changed the subject. “What did you think of that quote from the Bible? The one I stuffed in your friend’s mouth? All about how if someone gets hurt he should take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and a life for a life. Did you know that I sometimes read the Bible?”

  I didn’t, but nothing much could surprise me about Alberto.

  “If you want to understand your enemy you have to understand their religion.”

  We drove on. Increasingly we stopped, presumably for traffic lights. Then Alberto announced: “Nearly there, Little Australian. Five or ten more minutes and I’ll be saying goodbye.”

  It was as if he had spoken some magic words. I felt the cord around my hands start to give. With difficulty I twisted my wrist, and it snapped. My hands were free.

  But my legs were still bound together at the ankles, and also tied to hooks on the van. With at least one broken finger and a strained and bleeding wrist I wondered if I could undo all the bindings in just the short time remaining.

  I squirmed beneath the blankets and flowers and reached down to my ankles. I pushed my fingernails into the cord and tried to untie them. But the knots were resistant to my efforts. It was hopeless. I moved my hands around the floor of the van, trying to locate another metal bolt, or anything else sharp.

  That was when the van screeched to a halt.

  And then it started to shudder and shake and I heard a loud bang.