Blood Is a Stranger (27 page)

‘The important thing is for you to get out of Jakarta. Bakin is looking for you.'

Cardinal watched Perdonny intently. He had lost his appetite.

‘There's a train to Bandung at three-thirty. I think this is the best way out.'

‘Why not by car?'

‘Every route out of the city is blocked.'

‘Then won't they check out the trains too?'

‘They'll check people getting on in Jakarta, but we can get you on the train on the city outskirts.'

Three hours later Perdonny ordered Bani to cruise past the main Gambir train station.

He passed Cardinal some binoculars as they waited for the guard to buy a ticket. The station was crowded with scores of workers pushing crates and trolleys. Cardinal bit his lip as he caught sight of military people waiting for trains, with hundreds of other travellers. There were two small groups of Europeans.

‘See those people under the clock?' Perdonny said to Cardinal, who adjusted the binoculars. Some Europeans were the subject of activity. Passports were being fossicked out of luggage and handed to Javanese men in dark glasses.

‘Bakin,' Perdonny said.

Cardinal cursed.

‘If they're checking people here,' Perdonny said, ‘they are unlikely to be doing it along the track.'

The guard returned with a ticket just as the train pulled into the station. There was a rush of hundreds of passengers to get on and off. Perdonny ordered his driver to beat the train to a station forty kilometres south-west of Gambir.

They passed a block at a road leading out of the city on the main route to Bogor but did not have to move through it. Perdonny scribbled down an address in Bandung.

‘I've sent my assistant to Bandung by plane,' he said. ‘She'll wait for you there. We'll have a car for you to drive back to Bogor at three tomorrow morning.'

‘What happens if I have to get off the train in a hurry?' Cardinal asked.

Perdonny began sketching a rough map of the train route. He marked key stations, bridges and tunnels and noted the approximate times through them.

‘If you have to get off before this point,' Perdonny said, underlining a spot about half-way, ‘you will have to find your own way to Bogor. After that, you must wait another two hours until you're through the mountains. To get off
in the high country would leave you with little chance of making it to Bogor.'

Cardinal pocketed the map. They pulled up at the small station where a handful of travellers, all Indonesians, waited. He shook hands with Perdonny, thanked him.

‘I'll ring you at Bandung,' he said as Cardinal grabbed his suitcase from the trunk.

Cardinal waited ten minutes until the train rumbled in. He glanced back to see Perdonny wave from his vehicle.

All the carriages were full, and people were spilling into the aisles. Cardinal moved through three carriages, found a place to stand, and hoisted his case into a luggage rack. The carriage was hot and stuffy with only a couple of the many roof fans working.

Cardinal hurled his suitcase into a rack and found a seat at the other end of the carriage in a cubicle occupied by a young family. The train pulled out of Gambir. The woman sitting opposite Cardinal pushed out a firm breast and began feeding her baby. He looked out the window at a village in the jungle by the tracks. Women were washing cjothes in a canal. An old man was having his hair cut outside a hut on stilts. Cardinal began to wonder about Harry. I just might have a chance to find out if he's in Bandung, Cardinal thought. The rush of animation and green gave way to rice fields and children riding buffalo, then the yellow-brown earth of a cemetery.

The train curled south through alluvial lowlands of the Surakarta basin of east Java for about twenty-five kilometres to the first stop in the small town of Suka.

He felt his stomach tighten as he spotted six militia and one man in plainclothes and tell-tale dark glasses waiting on the platform. Cardinal prayed that they would not get on the train. He craned his neck to look along the platform. The one Cardinal assumed was a Bakin officer seemed to be speaking officiously to the train guard. To Cardinal's horror all the militia and the Bakin man began to climb aboard.

His instincts were to make a run for it. But he judged that by the time he scrambled through the carriage the train would be well underway. Besides that, the militia carried hip-holstered guns.

Cardinal slipped his wallet and passport into a side pocket of the suitcase and moved a few paces from it. The militia were moving down the carriages checking the IDs of some Indonesians. When they entered his carriage, he had his back to them. The Bakin officer took his time eyeing each cubicle as the militia did their job. He ignored Cardinal as he brusquely cleared people from seats in the cubicle nearest him. The officer, a nuggety, thick-necked man, came over to Cardinal.

‘Passport?' he asked crisply.

Cardinal feigned surprise. ‘My Embassy suggested I leave it with them in Jakarta.'

‘Which Embassy?'

‘British.'

‘You American?' the officer asked in clipped, shorthand English.

‘No, British.'

You got on in Jakarta?'

‘Yes.'

‘What are you looking for?' Cardinal asked.

‘An American terrorist.'

‘What has he done?'

‘Which hotel you stay at in Jakarta?' the officer asked, ignoring Cardinal's question.

‘Borobodur.'

‘Where you go?'

‘Bandung.'

The officer seemed disconcerted. He pointed to the empty cubicle.

‘Sit,' he said. Cardinal obeyed. The officer sat opposite him.

‘Why you go Bandung?' he asked. He pulled a silver cigarette-case from a breast pocket. He had not removed
his glasses. Cardinal found it off-putting. He put his own sun glasses on and pretended to look out the window. The officer repeated the question.

‘I'm a tourist,' Cardinal replied.

‘Which hotel you stay at in Bandung?'

‘The Savoy Homann.'

The officer clapped his hands. One of the hovering militia handed him a notepad and pen.

‘Name?'

‘Carson.'

‘What?'

‘Keith Harold Carson.'

The officer repeated each word slowly as Cardinal carried him through the name.

‘Dangerous for tourists,' the officer said. ‘We take you to Savoy Homann.'

‘Thank you,' Cardinal said flatly.

The officer snapped orders. Two of the militia sat in the cubicle, the other four continued their work along the train.

Cardinal reached for his cigar case. There were three cigars left. He lit one and was about to put the case away when the officer asked Cardinal to give it to him.

‘Gold?' he asked as he fingered the case and played with the catch. Cardinal nodded as the Bakin man eyed the embossed initials: KHC. He glanced at his notes and handed it back. Cardinal pretended to stare out the window and puffed at the cigar. He felt he must try to escape.

‘You have bag?' the officer asked him after twenty minutes without conversation.

Cardinal shook his head. ‘I was only planning to stay a night.'

‘You have money?'

Cardinal pulled a roll of Indonesian money from his coat pocket.

The Indonesian leant forward and inspected it.

Cardinal could feel his suspicion growing. The dark
glasses hid the man's eyes, but Cardinal could see from his facial expression that they were flicking around the carriage, probably trying to work out which case might be his. Cardinal tried to make conversation with him. When he had finished his cigarette, Cardinal offered him a cigar. The officer accepted it.

‘American?' he asked, fondling the cigar as if it might be booby-trapped.

‘No, Cuban,' Cardinal said with a smile. I bought these in London.'

‘Where in London?'

‘St James's. Have you been there?'

‘I went with the president,' he said arrogantly.

Cardinal acted as if he was impressed. ‘His personal security?'

The man nodded. ‘I toured London.'

‘Wonderful place,' Cardinal said.

A boy came around with a food trolley. Cardinal bought chicken sandwiches and a can of Coke and asked where they were from. The Bakin officer was Javanese. He asked Cardinal what he did for a living. Cardinal said he worked in advertising. He named the company his wife had worked for in London. The officer wrote it down and asked for his home address. Cardinal gave him his old address in West Hampstead and detected a slight thaw in his attitude. The two militia next to them began to sleep and an hour passed without further chat.

The train swept south-west and stopped at the city of Bogor. About fifty people got off but were replaced by another hundred travellers for the journey west to Bandung. The train then cut through tunnels in the rugged Rembang plateau, and the several times passed unsteadily over flimsy bridges spanning ravines between the volcanic mountain cones a thousand metres high.

Cardinal felt increasingly trapped. It would be difficult to get off the train, but not impossible, if he could escape his unwanted escort. If there was a chance to jump off, he
thought it had to be when the train slowed to a crawl to negotiate bridges.

Cardinal made calculations based on the map Perdonny had marked for him. The last tunnel was the longest at four minutes. It ended forty kilometres south of Bandung, which meant that he could feasibly get to that city by hitching a ride if he escaped close to a road.

The drink and food trolley returned. Cardinal asked for a sandwich and some coffee and paid for it. The officer did the same.

Cardinal stretched his neck to see out the window. As the train curled through a pass, he could see a tunnel opening in a mountain ahead. He sipped his coffee, put the cup down and stood up.

‘May I go to the toilet?'

The Bakin officer looked up at him for several seconds.

‘Toilet?' Cardinal repeated, pointing to a door.

The officer still stared but nodded and barked an order at one of the militia next to them. He followed Cardinal to the toilets, both of which were occupied. Cardinal shrugged at the militia, glanced back at the watching officer and stood waiting, within reach of his suitcase.

As they were plunged into darkness. Cardinal grabbed his case, swung it down and stepped around several people to the end of the carriage. He slid the door across and moved outside, making sure not to let it crash back. He slipped into the next carriage and stumbled his way over bodies. He heard the door slam shut as he edged outside again. He was two carriages away from the end of the train. He hurried to the beginning of the last one as the train began to slow down, which was the signal that it was coming out of the tunnel. Cardinal judged that the place the officer had been sitting would be out of the dark.

He leant his body out of the train between the last two carriages ready to jump as soon as he saw daylight. But he had to check himself. The train had moved out the other side of the mountain and on to a bridge, and he was looking
down over air and a river cradled thousands of metres below.

The moment the last carriage reached the other side, Cardinal threw his case clear, jumped and landed inelegantly on his back. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed the case and dashed for the undergrowth. He glanced over his shoulder as he heard the train shunting to a halt.

He charged further into the jungle. Someone shouted orders. Shots echoed over the ravine. Cardinal hurried on, his case over his shoulders.

After twenty minutes of crashing aimlessly, he stopped and lay flat, his chest heaving. He pulled out Perdonny's map and judged he was close to a road into Bandung. The city seemed about thirty kilometres south-west. The sun was setting in a fast slide into some distant gorge in a fierce splash of red, blue and black. He waited a few precious minutes until he had recovered and then set off in the direction he thought the road might be, using the sun as a rough reference. By chance he found a path and he stuck to it, for darkness was gathering fast. It led to a road.

Cardinal stayed under the cover and moved up a hill until he reached the brow. He let an old car pass him before he moved onto the road. At first he was encouraged by the sight of more vehicles winding their way towards him. But when he squinted at the bottom of the hill, he could see a police car. In the fading light he could just see figures fanning out into the jungle from which he had emerged.

Cardinal was cornered. He could either abandon his case and push on, or try to hitch a ride. He decided to hitch. He let two cars pass by and then moved out of the scrub to flag down a third. Instead of stopping it changed gears and sped past him. He kept his eye on the activity below and tried again, this time giving the oncoming vehicle much more warning of his presence. It swerved by. Cardinal stayed on the road and was nearly collected by
an old truck. The driver braked hard. Cardinal stepped around to the window and looked square in the face of a bristly old man who looked at him uncertainly.