Indonesian Gold (25 page)

‘Not good,' Kremenchug hedged, ‘our holdings are worth
about forty thousand based on today's close.'

‘Forty thousand?' Baird was mortified. When the shares had
been first posted to escrow, their stock in the company was valued at half a million dollars.
‘Bloody hell,' his voice became harsh, and nasal. ‘What are we going to do?'

‘Eric, listen,' Kremenchug pleaded. ‘Forget Fielding and
those shares for a moment, I've got something else I need to discuss with...'

‘Jesus, Alex!' he cut the other man off, ‘You want me… to
forget that I've lost a quarter of a million fucking dollars… just like that?'

‘Eric, that's not what I meant,' Kremenchug knew this was
not going to be easy. ‘Of course I'm just as pissed as you about the share price but there's
nothing we can do right now.' Kremenchug paused, waiting for some indication from Baird that he
was still listening. And then, impatiently, ‘Eric?'

‘Yeah,' his voice was filled with disappointment. ‘Is it
worth holding onto the scrip?' he asked, referring to their stock in the Canadian gold
miner.

‘I'd hang in there, Eric,' Kremenchug advised, ‘they can't
fall much lower. Anyway, I want to talk to you about another group that is keen for some property
around the Mahakam. They've seen some of the geophysical data and are very impressed.'

‘And so…?' Baird's mind was still locked into calculating
his losses.

‘They have plenty of capital to commit to surveys and
drilling.'

Baird had been listening. He frowned. ‘There's nothing
left over there. It's all been allocated.'

‘What about that Longdamai operation that
folded?'

‘Longdamai?' Baird wondered how Kremenchug was so
knowledgeable about the area.

‘I heard that the locals have passed it back in to avoid
paying the taxes.'

‘Wouldn't surprise me,' Baird had a sinking feeling in his
stomach. ‘From what I hear, they didn't find anything worthwhile.'

‘Sure, Eric, but they wouldn't have had access to someone
with your skills,' Kremenchug decided to change tack, appealing to the geologist's latent
ego.

‘It would be a waste of time,' Baird persisted.

‘Well, check it out anyway. I'll phone you again from
Vancouver, okay?'

‘You don't want me to go back out into that shit-hole
again?' Baird contemplated the prospect of returning to the site, a cold chill touching his spine
as his mind was filled with vivid recollections of his disastrous visit.

‘Longdamai?' it was Kremenchug's turn to be
confused.

‘Anywhere along the Mahakam,' Baird declared. ‘Listen,
Alex, get your clients to have a look at Northern Sulawesi around the Gorontalo area, or even in
Sumatra. There's still plenty of action left in those areas.'

‘No good,' Kremenchug insisted, ‘the client will only
consider East Kalimantan.'

‘Why?'

Kremenchug
hesitated. Baird
may have been boozed to the gills most of the time, but it would be a mistake to underestimate
the man's intelligence. He was not ready to reveal that this prospect would, ultimately, become
part of the BGC operations.

‘I already explained that, Eric. East Kalimantan has a
strong appeal to the investors. They are reasonably plugged in when it comes to mining,
especially in Indonesia. They've considered the other areas. Besides, any action close to BGC's
leases might drive some life back into our stock. Listen,' a thought came to Kremenchug as he
talked, ‘if you don't want to go with Longdamai, then why don't you get down to Mines and
establish what properties are coming up for relinquishment in that general area?'

Baird succumbed to another coughing fit, the racking noise
followed by his delayed response. ‘Okay… leave it with me… I'll get back to you. Where… will you
be?'

‘I'll contact you from Vancouver. I just wanted to make
sure that you will be on deck when I ring.'

Baird detected contempt in the other man's tone. He filled
his nicotine-lacquered lungs with a deep breath and said, ‘I'll be all right… by
then.'

‘Okay, that's it, for now,' Kremenchug hung up and glanced
up at the bank of wall clocks indicating international time zones. There would be no final
boarding announcement for lounge passengers and he knew he was cutting it fine.

****

Baird dropped the receiver into its cradle, thinking about
the call from out of the blue, and how Kremenchug had abandoned their relationship when things
had gone sour with the Canadian company. At the time, Baird had been bewildered by Kremenchug's
decision to vendor in the prospect in question, knowing that any drilling commissioned to
substantiate his earlier findings would only demonstrate that the deposit was not viable. Baird
had received nothing for his efforts other than the few thousands he'd managed to build into the
drilling survey. Kremenchug had justified his actions, explaining that he had hoped to offload
their stock in BGC as the drilling proceeded.

Kremenchug
's plan had
backfired, leaving Baird with his reputation even further tarnished, and an extremely belligerent
Canadian financier by the name of Scott Walters. Baird had picked some work over the next months,
but the income generated from these was nowhere near enough to cover an expatriate's overheads,
living in Jakarta. Kremenchug
had
invited him to join in the ill-fated Meekathara project
in Western Australia. Baird shuddered; faced with the prospect of leaving Mardidi behind he
forwent the so-called opportunity, relieved now that he had not become embroiled in yet another
of Kremenchug's ambitious projects. He drifted back into a shallow sleep undertaking never to get
too dependent on his former associate, ever again.

****

Campbell
had not expected the
Papuan separatist leader to drop the documents on him in such a manner.

‘It is not really appropriate, Tommy.'
At first, Stewart had resisted,

finally accepting the thick folder once his visitor had
made it clear

what it contained.

‘Why not go public with it yourself?'
he had asked.

‘If I give it to those people,'
he nodded his head in the direction of staff waiting anxiously in the outer office,
‘nothing would happen.'

Campbell
felt saddened by the
look of desperation on the Papuan's face. He knew, that by becoming involved, he would once again
jeopardize his position in this country.

‘Is this about Freeport?'
he suspected it was; Freeport was an easy target, not because of its size, but because
of its cavalier attitude towards environmental issues. It was public knowledge that Suharto's
closest associates already controlled a major shareholding in what had become the world's richest
copper and gold mine. Campbell looked up at Tommy Eluay, his heart going out to the man who had
strived to find a forum, any forum to be heard. His country, West Papua had been delivered to the
Javanese, by the United States, through the UN, because of political expedience, fulfilling a
1962 agreement initiated by the United States to avert war between the Netherlands and Indonesia.
The 1969 process of self-determination, executed under United Nation's auspices, provided that
only a thousand West Papuans, all selected by Jakarta, were to vote on behalf of the entire,
one-million population. Now, more than two decades later, the Papuans remained disenfranchised,
and impoverished but, worse still, their lands were now under threat from the deadly tailings and
spills associated with negligent mining practices.

‘Yes. This report reveals the extent of the damage already
evident and extracts of an environmental impact study conducted by the Indonesian Ministry.When
you compare their initial projections with what is now reality, it becomes obvious that whoever
submitted that report was either incompetent, or biased.'

‘Who compiled the report?'

‘Mainly church leaders,'
Eluay's eyes dropped.
‘We don't have so many educated Papuans, Mister Stewart. We
have friends amongst the church who understand these things, including the Bishop of
Jayapura.'

‘Okay,Tommy,'
Campbell
rose and took Eluay's hand in clasped

gesture,
‘I'll accept it on the condition that you
don't reveal that you have given this to me.'

‘Then you'll read it?'
Tommy Eluay appealed,
‘If foreigners sympathetic to our problems can help us take a
stand, Mister Stewart, then we will have a fighting chance.'

Campbell
was not entirely
happy with the Papuan's choice of words. Since the so-called 1969 Act of Free choice which gave
Indonesia control over the vast, four hundred thousand square kilometer, former Dutch colony, the
Free Papua Movement
(OPM) had grown in strength and, although most of the freedom fighters
were mainly armed with primitive weapons, their resistance was fierce and bloody. As
international attention was drawn to their plight, Jakarta initiated even more stringent
censorship over the distant province, preventing the foreign press from presenting an accurate
view of what really was happening there.

‘Yes, Tommy,'
he
promised,
‘I'll read it. But, I won't undertake to circulate it. Okay?'

Tommy Eluay beamed.
‘That's we want, Mister Stewart,
thank you.'

Stewart Campbell escorted his Papuan guest out through
reception, and bade his farewell. As Eluay's back disappeared into the lift, the thought crossed
his mind that the authorities would be aware of Tommy's presence in Jakarta, and that his
activities would certainly be closely monitored by the military intelligence agencies. Stewart
looked up and down the crowded corridor suddenly concerned, realizing that any such surveillance
would undoubtedly report the Papuan's visit to his offices.

****

Stewart Campbell read the report, again, then locked the
document in his desk drawer, speculating that Tommy Eluay would have circulated other copies,
with the intention that these be leaked to the press. Campbell was certain that the damaging
submission would attract international outrage, if the information could be
substantiated.

He examined the black and white photographs and their
captions claiming that the dead landscape was of an area more than fifty kilometers downstream
from where mine tailings were dumped, into the Ajikwa River. The devastation was complete;
Stewart having great difficulty believing that this barren, ghost-like landscape was once
pristine rainforest. The report went on to describe the build-up of tailings and how, daily, a
hundred thousand tonnes were dumped into Papuan rivers. Stewart was shocked to read that the
mine's operators projected destruction of more than one hundred square kilometers of rainforest
before the end of this millennium.

Stewart knew that the Papuans were not alone in their call
for an end to mining companies' indiscriminate dumping of poisons. Yes, it was true that the
Ajikwa River habitat was the most recent of ecological disasters to be caused by the Mines
Department's failure to enforce established guidelines, but he also knew that this would not be
the last. Stewart's thoughts shifted from West New Guinea to Borneo, and the island's pristine
rainforests he had visited along the southern Kalimantan rivers. In his mind, he applied the
projections used by Freeport in their Papuan operations against the number of mining operators
moving into Kalimantan, and was devastated to discover the extent of ecological damage that might
occur, as a result of gold mining activities there. This thought triggered another, and he was
bemused by the fact that he suddenly found himself thinking of the fiery Dayak student he had met
in Bandung, wondering what she would say, given the opportunity to read this report.

His eyes scrolled down to where he had underscored a
paragraph claiming that the prominent OPM leader, Kelly Kwalik, and three of his followers had
disappeared off the face of the earth following their arrest by the Indonesian military.
Reference was made to the Australian Council for Overseas Aid which reported that the four men
had been tortured, and imprisoned, in a window-less Freeport container for more than a month.
Disturbed by the documents' contents and the knowledge that the Indonesian government would
consider such to be subversive behavior, he double-locked Tommy Eluay's submission in the desk
drawer, then advised his staff that he was finished for the day. Threatened by a cloud of
depression, the consulting geologist had the driver drop him off at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, where
he headed to his favorite bar on the fourth floor.

Unbeknown to Stewart Campbell, as he settled down in
O'Reiley's Pub to his second vodka tonic, Tommy Eluay's interrogation was already well under way
at one of the
Kopassus
secret detention centers. Campbell's office had been the first
visited by the Papuan separatist, subsequent to his arrival that day. Eluay had been arrested in
the car park and whisked away by the surveillance team before he could disseminate the remaining
nineteen copies discovered in the case he had been carrying. The officer in charge of the covert
operation was none other than Lieutenant Subandi, this most recent success guaranteeing his
return to flying duties.