Blood Is a Stranger (18 page)

Cardinal's taxi followed the soldiers' truck, which swerved and blocked the road. Four soldiers jumped out of the rear and ran towards an intersection just ahead. A deafening staccato of machine-gun fire followed as they gave chase after two young men who had been painting anti-Utun and pro-Moslem slogans on walls. They tried to escape into a village not far in from the main thoroughfare, and Cardinal lost sight of them. He heard more weapons fire and a scream as if someone had been hit. Vehicles behind the taxi began honking horns and ringing bells. Cardinal could not tell if this was in protest at the vicious army action or because of the traffic hold-up. The
soldiers responded by running along between the vehicles and firing off several rounds into the air.

Cardinal chomped on the cigar as he saw the soldiers, who had given chase after the graffitists, returning to the truck. They looked pleased with themselves, and Cardinal thought they behaved as if they had been on a rabbit hunt.

The truck drove off and allowed the snarled traffic to move on. Cardinal tried to make conversation with his Javanese driver about the shooting, but the man either didn't speak English or was reluctant to talk about it. He did have the temerity to say, ‘Have a nice day' to Cardinal as he got out of the taxi at his hotel, The Sari Pacific. A sign at its entrance said, ‘Welcome to Jakarta.'

Less than a kilometre along Jakarta's main road, Jalan Thamrin, Rhonda hurried into the lift of her hotel, the Borobodur, to call Cardinal. At her suggestion, he had booked in at another hotel. She would have preferred him close, but realised she would be under surveillance the minute she came into the open after being with Perdonny. Rhonda did not want to expose Cardinal.

According to the receptionist at the Sari Pacific, he had not yet arrived. She rang the Australian Embassy, and after a short delay was put through to Ambassador Gosling.

‘You should have checked in earlier,' he snapped. ‘The authorities said you did not book into a hotel last night.'

‘Do they monitor all places in the country?'

‘You don't understand. I have had to battle to keep you from being held – possibly in prison.'

‘What the hell for?!'

‘They don't have to give a reason!'

‘I don't want to argue,' Rhonda said, calming herself, ‘just tell me when I may leave.'

‘I don't know yet.'

‘Tell me — a day, a week, what?'

‘I don't want to give you false hope, Ms Mills.'

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘Check in this time tomorrow.'

Cardinal was most thankful for six hours' sleep before leaving his hotel to meet Rhonda and Perdonny at Glodock, the city's Chinatown.

A calm freestyle swim finishing with a frenetic burst of butterfly refreshed him before he took a taxi from the hotel into the city centre. At Perdonny's request, he was to make another taxi change to avoid anyone who might be tailing him before meeting one of Perdonny's supporters at a statue out of town nicknamed ‘Hot Hands Harry'. Rhonda had warned him that Utun was expected to make a city appearance for the foreign media, and that this might precipitate riots.

Tanks and police were patrolling the streets when Cardinal left the Sari Pacific just before ten that night. At the main city square – Medan Merdeka – hundreds of Moslem students were on their knees facing Mecca. But the traffic stopped when two hundred police charged and attacked them with batons. More Moslems ran across in front of the vehicles pursued by soldiers. Cardinal sensed more danger than the incident earlier in the day, and he had no wish to get caught in the middle of a triangular battle.

Cardinal threw his fare into the front seat, jumped out and weaved his way through the traffic towards a bus depot where a crowd was gathering. He searched for another taxi. None was in sight. The congestion had blocked off arteries into the square. He was caught in a milling mass.

The bus depot had been cordoned off by barriers, so Cardinal pushed his way through, only to be stopped by police protecting TV crews who were setting up cameras and lights. He had run into an event involving Utun,
which was being staged for the media.

Cardinal was about to take on the crowd again when he was distracted by police sirens. He was only metres from the barriers and could see a cavalcade coming around the square heading his way. Utun's bullet-proof Ford limousine was driven right up to the buses opposite Cardinal. Scores of cameras clicked and whirred as TV and press people swarmed over the depot.

Utun bounced out and the crowd cheered on cue. He strutted over to a street vendor. He bought a sate, sat down on the kerb to eat it with a banana leaf.

‘This is wonderful!' he declared to the scrawny, bow-legged vendor. Translators explained the president's golden words to the media.

‘It's magnificent beef,' the vendor said, and Cardinal heard this mistranslated as ‘ham' by an American commentator.

‘I will never let my people eat rat,' Utun bellowed to the mob. The better informed media reporters elaborated on the translation of this comment and explained that it was a deliberate jibe at an infamous declaration by former President Sukarno. He had urged people to eat rat rather than starve.

The mob gave a moderate cheer, and the vendor overdid his performance by thrusting another sate at Utun. The crowd was building up. Cardinal could see some fights beginning between Utun supporters and Moslem students where his taxi had been. One vehicle went up in flames. Soldiers and police charged in and were scrambling over car roofs to join the battle.

In the distance along Jalan Thamrin, Cardinal could see scores of soldier reinforcements disgorging from jeeps and trucks. He glanced at the president and then his entourage near the limousine. He could recognise the long-haired figure of Dalan, the president's mystic, opening the door to get out. He was gesticulating to someone in the back seat. Cardinal watched as Dalan directed the limousine
towards Cardinal who could see in the rear. He caught a glimpse of Dalan's companion.

It looks like the Asian who had been in Arnhem Land, Cardinal thought. He appeared remarkably like the face in Jimmy Goyong's portraits. Cardinal elbowed his way to the second front row. He was ten metres from the vehicle. The profile is similar, Cardinal thought. If he would only smile. Bottles and rocks were hurled into the bus depot as the police and soldiers formed a phalanx between Utun's supporters and the protesters. Cardinal took his eyes off the face in the vehicle as Moslem interlopers in the president's well-organised crowd raised banners proclaiming Islamic slogans.

Fights broke out. It was enough for Utun. Flanked by a score of guards, he was bustled into the rear of the limousine with Dalan and the other man. The vehicle drove forward and collided with a barrier, then reversed, disregarding the swirling surge of bodies around it. Cardinal lost his footing as onlookers were jammed against the barriers. People began to panic as they tried to avoid being crushed.

Cardinal's bulk helped him shoulder his way through the squeeze until he reached the edge of the crowd near the square. He turned to watch the retreating motorcade under seige from rocks and tomatoes, which splattered and stuck to its windows. Cardinal climbed a barrier to a side street and trotted along with hundreds of others who had broken free of the clog of bodies. He kept moving until he saw a taxi in a street a kilometre from the congestion. He broke into a sprint to beat other people to it. Cardinal tried to climb in, but the driver gesticulated when he saw him and put his foot on the accelerator. Cardinal was left holding the door as the car skidded away. He fell in a heap on the road and had to scramble for the footpath. Unnerved and with bruises for his trouble, he began hobbling away from the square and was overtaken by a stampede of students. Shots rang out. He did not wait to find
out if they were warnings or not. A side street promised shelter but it took a second to realise why the students had by-passed it. A tank was coming his way in a tight squeeze against the walls of homes on both sides of the street. He judged that it could over-run him if he tried to retreat, so he threw himself into a closed gateway and squashed his body against it.

Six seconds later he felt the intense heat from the tank as it crashed its way past to the end of the street. He made a dash in the opposite direction. Cardinal glanced over his shoulder and caught his breath as the tank's turret rotated. The flame-thrower mounted in it was aimed at him. Cardinal dived for an alley and rolled into it just as the weapon speared a throaty blast of napalm. It settled well short of him, but as he stumbled to his feet, he was enveloped by a rush of hot, suffocating wind. His nostrils and eyes stung as he charged along the alley to Baru Square.

Oh Jesus! he thought. The square had been turned into a makeshift detention centre. Army staff and police were interrogating demonstrators. Three bodies lay prone and bleeding in the gutter. A young soldier aimed a rifle at him.

‘ID!' he screeched.

‘Take it easy,' Cardinal said as he pulled out his passport. The soldier examined it upside down. An officer marched to them and gave the passport a cursory glance.

‘American?' he said.

Cardinal nodded and was motioned away by the officer, who returned the document. Cardinal crossed the square and passed a man lying face down in the gutter. He had been shot in the back. The fingers of one hand still gripped a passport.

Cardinal reached a street that spoked out from the Merdeka Square. He was reluctant to return to it, yet he could see cars near the other end. He spotted a taxi and this time tore money from his wallet and waved it as the car
sped past. It reversed up onto the pavement, forcing Cardinal to take some quick sidesteps.

He and the driver began a bizarre barter as shots were fired close by. Cardinal tossed twenty dollars on the driver's lap, and jumped into the back seat. He told the driver to take him a roundabout way to the intersection containing Hot Hands Harry five kilometres from the mayhem in the city centre. On the way, Cardinal, hands shaking, had difficulty lighting a cigar. He looked in the mirror at his black face smeared with fall-out from the tank's flame thrower. His eyes were wide from shock and fear, and he felt a tightening knot in his stomach he could not remember experiencing since his combat days in Korea.

Cardinal was sorry he had to leave the safety of the taxi when they arrived at Hot Hands. It was a five metre high muscular male figure holding a flaming torch. Some foolhardy person had painted the nickname across its base in ridicule of the fledgling nation's symbol of uncertainty.

Cardinal paid the driver and dodged traffic to stand in the middle of the intersection under the statue. He had been there less than a minute when he noticed a vehicle parked down a side street. Its lights were dipped twice in a pre-arranged signal. Cardinal hurried across to it. The driver, called Bani, a lean, middle-aged native of Ambon with tufts of grey hair, threw away a cigarette.

‘Mr Carnal?' he asked.

‘Goddamn near enough,' Cardinal said, getting into the front seat. The man eased the early model Holden into the steady stream of traffic.

‘You rate,' he said, ‘but you arrive.'

Cardinal wasn't sure if the observation was that he had ‘arrived' or that he was ‘alive'. He settled for either thought as the man threaded his way across the city to the Chinese section of the east city slums.

Following instructions from Rhonda, Cardinal left the car and the driver near a petrol pump and made his way on foot into the heart of Chinatown. He was an hour late
when he arrived at the restaurant. By then he had been caught in a torrential downpour, which sent the locals scurrying to cover their barrows and stalls and slide out awnings.

Cardinal was searched by guards at the entrance and then ushered in. It was crowded and smoke-filled. Rain on the rickety tin canopy sounded like machine-gun fire. He squinted at the darkened interior and caught the welcome vision of Rhonda moving towards him. She smiled and gave him a warm kiss and a hug.