Java Spider (21 page)

‘Brad Dugdale,’ he volunteered, holding out a podgy hand. He studied them with a mix of suspicion and curiosity. ‘I live on Kutu most of the time,’ he added in explanation.

‘Now, what
we
oughta know is who
you
two are,’ Sawyer asked, eyes hardening. ‘
Newspix
, your e-mail said? What sort of outfit’s that, Nick?’

‘It’s a picture agency. I’m freelance. And Charlie here works for TV news,’ he added, quickly deflecting their attention.

‘Oh really? BBC?’ asked Dugdale. ‘I get over to England from time to time. Might have seen you …’

‘No. The News Channel. We’re on cable. It was us who broke the Bowen kidnap story,’ she proclaimed. ‘And I’m their senior correspondent.’ Bullshit. She felt herself blush.

‘Right! Well, we’re honoured, then,’ Dugdale smiled ingratiatingly.

There was the sound of more thongs on the parquet. A man and two women emerged from the house, short in stature, brown-skinned and with flat Melanesian faces.

‘This is Thomas and Yuliana,’ said Sawyer putting an arm round the man. ‘They just escaped from Kutu in a twenty-foot boat. They’ve both been imprisoned several times by the Indonesian military.’

Thomas wore pale shorts and a patterned shirt, Yuliana a plain pink pinafore dress. The second, older woman went and stood with Dugdale, as if she belonged to him.

‘Glad to meet you,’ said Charlie extending a hand. The couple smiled blankly.

‘They don’t speak any English,’ Sawyer explained. ‘Just the Kutu dialect and a little Indonesian. Teri can translate.’ He gestured to the woman with Dugdale. ‘Thomas and Yuliana are staying a few days. I’ve set up interviews for them with the local press. It keeps up the pressure on our government.’

‘Pressure to do what exactly?’ Charlie asked.

The botanist breathed in as if for a peroration.

‘Give these poor folks a beer first, Jim,’ Dugdale intervened, slipping an arm round Charlie’s shoulders. ‘People can die of thirst round here.’ He guided her to a chair.

‘If you have a Diet Coke …’ Charlie ventured. ‘I … I’d prefer that.’

The woman called Jane turned from the barbecue. ‘There’s some in the fridge, Teri. Can you get them?’

Dugdale’s woman padded into the house and returned with a can for Charlotte.

Sawyer pulled a beer from a cool box and thrust it at Nick. His skin was like tanned leather, his cheeks concave as if he’d spent too long in the sun.

‘OK. Well as you know I’m the rep of KEPO in the Northern Territory. We’ve an office in Sydney which circulates all the campaign literature, but I provide most of the data. Darwin’s become the main refuge for a lot of Kutuans. Timorese too. Some get out legally on passports, others take to the water. When you’ve watched members of your family murdered and tortured, you’ll take almost any risk to escape. These two …’ – he indicated Thomas and Yuliana – ‘they spent fifteen days in an open boat. Food and water was all finished when our coastguard found them drifting. Another day and they’d have died.’

Nick murmured sympathetically, then asked, ‘What’s your campaign aimed at, Jim? What’re you trying to achieve exactly?’

‘To make people aware of what’s going on in Kutu. And through that to pressure our government to do something about it.’

‘Like what?’ asked Charlie.

‘Like putting pressure on the Indonesian regime to stop the torture and the killings,’ Sawyer said, earnestly. ‘And making it illegal for Australian companies to invest in parts of Indonesia where human rights are being blatantly abused.’

Dugdale’s eyes looked skywards. ‘That’s where Jim and I part company,’ he growled, shuffling to the cool box for another beer.

‘Brad has his own little
investment
in Kutu …’ Sawyer explained sarcastically.

‘Really?’ Randall queried.

‘Diving. I run a couple of boats for tourists. Take them to the reefs to look at fish. I employ a few local boys, but the customers are mostly from Oz, and when it comes to air bottles and valves they like it better if they see an Oz in charge of things.’

The woman called Jane turned from her labours at the barbecue. ‘How d’you like your steak, Charlotte?’ she asked in a voice like a strangled cat. ‘Well done or burned?’

‘As it comes.’

‘Good answer,’ Dugdale grinned. ‘That’s what you’ll be given anyway.’

Randall took a long draught of the beer, its iciness numbing his throat. He glanced from one man to the other. Sawyer was simple to categorise; a well-meaning do-gooder, probably somewhat naïve. Dugdale was less easy.

‘What’s your role in KEPO then, Brad?’ he asked casually.

‘Don’t have one, Nick. I’m just a hanger-on. I support all the human rights stuff of course, but er … I mean who
wouldn’t
when you know what the Indonesian army does to these people.’ He nodded towards the couple who’d fled by boat.

‘But you’re not in favour of stopping Australian investment in places like Kutu …?’

‘I’m a realist, chum. Our politicians won’t take a stand like that. They’re petrified of doing
anything
to upset the Indonesians. There’s two hundred million of the buggers just north of here. If they decide they need our empty spaces and start flooding across in boats, we wouldn’t stand a chance. All the smarmy boys in Canberra want is to be allowed to lick the Indonesians’ bums and hope they leave our continent alone. Now … I admire Jim here for his principles – trying to get our
government
to act tough – but it won’t achieve anything.’

‘But kidnapping a politician might?’

‘Eh?’ Dugdale spluttered into his beer. ‘Now you’re putting words in my mouth.’ He looked momentarily uncomfortable.

‘What’s the kidnap done for KEPO, Jim?’ chipped in Charlie, deciding as the only real journalist present that it was time to assert herself. ‘Good publicity for you or bad?’

‘We’re all keeping well out of it,’ Sawyer snarled. ‘Already had the police round asking whether I’ve got your bloody minister banged up in the house. Let’s get this straight. KEPO is about preserving Kutu. The land and the people. It’s about
protecting human rights
, OK? Now you don’t do that by depriving some other poor bugger of his human rights and sticking electrodes up his dick.’

Jane turned from the barbecue again. ‘Food’s ready folks.’

Dugdale grabbed a plate, draped it with salad and a hunk of bread, then added a charred piece of meat.

‘Come on,’ he urged, remembering guests were supposed to go first. ‘Get stuck in.’

‘Is that why you Poms are here?’ Sawyer whined disparagingly. ‘To pin this kidnap on the poor bloody Kutuans?’

‘Just trying to find out what it’s about, that’s all,’ Charlie soothed.

‘It’s the kidnappers themselves who keep linking it with Kutu,’ Nick reminded him.

‘Yeah, but that’s impossible,’ Sawyer insisted. ‘It can’t be the OKP.’

Dugdale caught Nick’s eye.
Don’t be too sure
, his expression said.

‘Look at those two.’ Sawyer gestured at Thomas and
Yuliana
. ‘The Kutuans are simple folks, not international terrorists.’

Charlotte crossed to the table and picked up a plate. A blackened steak wasn’t what her stomach wanted, but there was no choice.

‘Talk to
them
,’ Sawyer insisted. ‘After you’ve eaten something, do an interview with them. Why not?’

‘Fine,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d like to.’

Nick perched with his plate next to Sawyer.

‘Tell me about the Kutuan resistance, Jim. How does your outfit tie in with them?’

‘We don’t. Separate organisations. We communicate that’s all. There are people on the political side of the OKP at the university in Piri. They’re on the Internet. So we get info from them which we use in our campaigns in Australia, the States and at the UN. But we only give moral support. Nothing financial.’

‘You don’t supply weapons? Explosives to blow up earth movers,’ Nick prodded.

‘No. We do
not
,’ Sawyer glared. ‘I wonder if you folks realise what the OKP’s
massive
guerrilla force amounts to. There’s about eighty blokes up in the mountains, that’s all. Maybe a hundred. They live off berries in the forest, armed with machetes and the odd stolen rifle. Just get
that
image into your heads, rather than some fantasy of jet-setting revolutionaries equipped with cheque books and satellite dishes.’

‘But they’re not without powerful friends,’ Randall persisted. ‘Sympathisers who could have staged the kidnap on their behalf.’

‘Look, I
know
all their friends. And it’s not on.’

Randall glanced up to find Dugdale watching him with intense interest. ‘What’s your view, Brad?’

‘Don’t ask him – he knows fuck-all,’ snapped Sawyer, ripping the ring-pull off a fresh can of beer and putting it to his lips.

‘That’s right,’ Dugdale winked. ‘I only
live
there …’ He finished a mouthful of meat, then put his plate to one side. ‘Look folks, my position’s a little difficult to say the least. I have to make compromises all the time, and that’s what sticks in Jim’s throat. He doesn’t believe in them.

‘Now … in spirit I fully sympathise with what the Kutuans are after – of course I do. Who wouldn’t? I mean they want to keep their land, don’t they? It’s natural. But I don’t get
involved
with their cause like Jim does. I can’t. The Indonesians’ll tolerate us foreigners only so long as we’re useful and don’t interfere. Now, I’ve got a house there, I’ve got my business, and … and I’ve got Teri. So I put a little money in the right pockets to make sure I don’t get hassled, and I button my lips when it comes to politics. If I didn’t, they’d soon kick me out. And I’ve no desire to have to leave the place.’

Sawyer snorted. ‘Course he doesn’t! There’s a few thousand rich mining executives about to descend on Kutu, and they’ll all be looking for someone to take them scuba diving …’

Charlotte noticed the refugee couple looking uncomfortable and out of it. ‘Maybe I’d better have that chat with Thomas and Yuliana,’ she suggested.

‘Teri’ll translate,’ Sawyer replied quickly. ‘That’s why she’s here.’

Charlotte grouped some chairs together at the far end of the stone terrace.

Randall retrieved his Pentax from Charlie’s camera bag. First he took pictures of her with the refugee couple, then quick shots of Sawyer and Dugdale while they weren’t looking.

He put the camera away and drifted back over to them.

‘So what are your plans, Nick?’ Dugdale asked,
putting
a matey arm on Randall’s shoulder then flopping down next to him.

‘Going to Kutu on the six o’clock flight this evening. As a tourist,’ Randall told him.

‘Are you? Well I’d advise you to behave like one, chum. They’ll be watching you. And the first time you do anything that doesn’t fit, they’ll have you in for questioning. You heard about the BBC bloke, did you?’

‘Not any details.’

‘Went in Monday night. Also posing as a tourist. Arrested Tuesday morning trying to get to see Junus Bawi at the university. Him and about three other journalists. All being expelled today. You’ll probably see them coming off the plane that you’re getting on tonight. There’s only one flight a day.’

‘I realise it’s not going to be easy,’ Nick replied, dispirited.

‘Are you errm … together?’ Dugdale asked, out of the side of his mouth. He pointed to Charlotte. ‘I mean
together
, you know.’

‘No.’

‘Pity. Might have helped. People on their own stand out in Indonesia.’

Randall glanced across at Charlie, engrossed in her interview. Not only were they not a couple, Charlotte wasn’t even
going
to Kutu. He turned back to Dugdale for more details.

‘What’s the procedure when you land at Piri?’

‘They look at you. On the tarmac, in the terminal, there’ll be people watching. Men staring at you. At passport control they’ll give you a sixty-day tourist visa, so long as you can give the name of a hotel you’re staying at and have a ticket out. They want to be sure you’ll leave again.’

‘And after passport control? They do a body search?’

‘If they think you’re media they might, but normally,
no
. They always search your baggage. Don’t carry anything political – books and the like. And nothing pornographic. They’ll pinch that for themselves.’

‘Right. Then after customs, you’re on your own?’

‘On Kutu you’re never on your own. They’ll be watching all the time. The guy who gets you a taxi will be working for the police. In the street they’ll come up and ask you where you’re going. Always with a big smile like they’re just friendly. Shaking intel off is going to be your biggest problem.’

Nick felt the gnawing of despair. On his own he’d be a sitting target.

Charlie came over and touched his arm. ‘Can I have a quiet word?’

‘Sure.’ He stood up and followed her across the terrace.

‘Wouldn’t mind filming an interview with this couple. They’re good,’ she whispered. ‘Just one problem. I need help with the camera.’

‘I’ll have a go.’

She dug into her grey ‘trick’ bag and pulled the Handycam from its concealed pocket.

‘The thing’s perfectly normal I think, apart from the connections on the back for the sneaky stuff.’

Nick turned it over in his hands, conscious of Dugdale watching him.

‘Got a tripod?’

‘Yup. And a pair of clip mikes.’

He worked out the gear, then set it up. The couple from Kutu looked curiously detached.

‘They’ve done this before,’ Charlie confided. ‘About a hundred times by the sound of it. Every TV station in Australia!’

‘Keep Teri’s face out of it, OK?’ Dugdale called anxiously from the other side of the patio. ‘Don’t want anyone knowing it’s her doing the translating.’

Nick clipped microphones to the man’s shirt and the woman’s pinafore top. He checked the camera alignment and pressed the start button.

‘Camera’s running.’

‘Thomas,’ Charlotte began, ‘tell me what happened to you when you protested about the destruction of your village.’

She nodded to Teri to translate her question.

Solemnly the man began to talk, crinkly black hair shiny with oil, skin the colour of roasted coffee beans and small black eyes that gave short, sharp clues to the distress he’d suffered. Then he paused. In a voice that betrayed her nervousness Teri began to translate.