Solomons Seal (29 page)

‘Is that why you've been looking for me?'

‘Yes.' He nodded towards the wharf with the LCT lying alongside. ‘I want you to take her out right away, a run up the coast to Buka.'

I heard Perenna give a little gasp. Then she had moved between us. ‘Where's Jona? What's happened to him?'

‘He's drunk.' His voice came in a whiplash, full of contempt. ‘He's no good, Perenna. No guts.' Her shoulders sagged, and he stepped past her, facing me. ‘Well, now's your chance. If you want a job with the Holland Line …' He stood there, staring at me.

No point in asking him why he needed the ship taken to Buka so urgently, I'd find that out soon enough. And if I refused … I could see his face now, tired and edgy, full of nervous tension, and his eyes lit by an inner glow, excitement overriding exhaustion, the adrenalin still running. ‘Well?' His hand reached out impatiently, gripping my arm, propelling me towards his car.

‘Why not Luke?' I asked. ‘Or Mac?'

‘Don't trust them,' he snapped.

It was no moment to obstruct the man, the whole
island in his grasp and only a skipper needed to take the ship up to Buka. ‘What's it worth to you?'

He laughed then, a sudden explosion of nervous relief. ‘A future. That's what I'm offering you.'

‘Cash,' I said quietly, and I saw Perenna's mouth open, anger chasing disbelief.

‘No cash,' he snapped. ‘Just a stake in something big. Bigger than you'll ever be offered again.'

‘And the cargo?' It was the cargo that would dictate my terms.

He jerked me round, his face thrust close to mine, and suddenly that description of his father flashed into my mind again. ‘Yes or no? Make up your mind.' He saw my hesitation, his eyes suddenly smiling as he released my arm. ‘You'll know about the cargo soon enough, so let's go.' He nodded to the car.

Behind me I heard Perenna say, ‘It's Jona's ship.'

‘Is it?' He laughed, pulling open the rear door and jerking his head for the two of us to get in. Teopas sat in the front with him, and as he drove off, he said, ‘What's happened here tonight has been brewing a long time. You'd have to have lived with these people to understand. It's their whole future. Just remember that. Also that I'm a businessman. I'm involved only to the extent that—' His words were cut short by the sound of a shot. Even above the noise of the car I heard the clang of the bullet on steel, the whine of its ricochet, followed by shouts and then the sudden staccato rattle of automatic fire, a noise like calico ripping. A single scream was followed by an appalling silence.

‘Shit!' Hans Holland thrust his foot down, swinging the car fast round the end of the slipway and out on to the open area of the loading wharf. No sound now, no movement, the ship still and silent except for the hum of its generator as we drew up at the gangway and tumbled out. Teopas was first on board, talking to one of the crew, who was holding a machine pistol pointed down into the tank deck. A thin wisp of blue smoke curled up from the short barrel. ‘Some polis,' Teopas reported. ‘They try to climb out.'

By then I was across the gangway and looking down at the cargo held captive in the tank deck. There must have been upwards of a hundred men down there, police and officials, all of them black, no whites. The loading lights were on, and they were standing very still, well clear of the ladders, most of them facing aft so that the whites of their eyes flickered in the glare. At the foot of one of the starboard ladders three men lay in a pool of blood, one of them with his face smashed in, still kicking out with his feet, his back arching. Nobody took any notice. Half the crew seemed gathered on the catwalks, all armed and chattering away like sparrows. Death meant nothing to them. It seemed to mean nothing to me either, not for that moment, the whole scene strangely unreal. Even the human cargo on the tank deck seemed determined to ignore it, a space left round the bodies as though the cause of death could be contagious, their minds, all their attention, focused on the after part of the ship
as Hans Holland stepped forward into the gleam of the deck lights.

He moved fast, almost dancing forward on the balls of his feet, like a ballet dancer, or an actor making his entrance, then standing, suddenly quite still, staring down at the mass of men below him, his silence, and his stillness, increasing the effect. He spoke to them briefly, in their own tongue, his voice high and harsh, then silence again, staring down at them, allowing time for the words to sink in. Finally he turned abruptly and moved out of the glare back to where I was standing. I've told them – the next man trying to escape, they will all be shot.' He nodded to the guards posted on the catwalks. ‘They'll see to it you have no trouble. They've been well trained.'

‘Who trained them for you?' The question was a prevarication, an avoidance of the one I knew I had to ask.

He shrugged, gave a little bark of laughter. ‘Vietnam left a useful legacy of unemployed deserters floating around in the Pacific.'

‘And the rest of those men down there … ' My voice trembled. ‘What are you going to do with them?'

‘That's your problem.' He was already climbing the ladder to the wheelhouse, Teopas close behind him. He paused, looking down at me over the handrail. ‘Till you reach Queen Carola. There you land them on Hetau and the Co-operative takes over. Got it? And you return here with whatever cargo they give you.' He went on up to the wheelhouse, still issuing instructions to Teopas. I followed, pausing on the bridge
wing. Perenna had gone in search of her brother. I was alone for a moment, looking down at my cargo and the guards with their pistols, the same Japanese machine pistols we had uncovered in those crates. God! It had been neatly organised, and Jona Holland just about the only hitch.

I was still standing there when they brought him out, drunk and barely conscious, his eyes glazed as I tried to speak to him. They carried him down to the car, and Perenna went with them. Hans Holland was suddenly back at my side. ‘Just remember this,' he said, his vitality brimming over. ‘A few days, and Bougainville will be independent. Then we can expand, raise money, buy ships, get moving.' And he wasn't talking like that to bolster his courage.

‘You really believe you'll get away with it?'

He laughed, clapping me on the shoulder, his mood infectious. ‘Think about it on the run up to Carola. The whites employed at the mine, the redskins from PNG, all of them locked in on this island, hostages for the reasonable behaviour of the other parties to the independence negotiations. And when it's all settled, I'll have the contracts for the shipping out of the concentrates. Think about that, too. You could do very well out of this night's work.' And he added, ‘But just in case you don't see it that way, Teopas will be sailing with you.' He stared at me a moment, a hard, calculating look, then turned abruptly and went down to the car.

The ship's engines had already started up, the deck vibrating under my feet, and there were men up for'ard
standing by the warps. Teopas came out of the wheel-house. ‘Let go now, Kepten?' His broad face grinned at me from under the beetling brow and the mop of fuzzy hair.

I nodded and went into the wheelhouse. Luke was already there, looking sullen. ‘You take her out,' I said to give him something to keep him occupied. One of the Buka crewmen was standing beside the helmsman with a machine pistol gripped in both hands, the same man who had let loose that shattering deadly burst of fire. There would be another in the engine-room; even the men hauling in the warps were armed.

The time was 03.21 as we steamed out of Anewa Bay, the stars still bright, the sea calm with a light breeze from the north-east. We cleared Bara shoal on a backbearing, passed the Takanupe light close to port, and quarter of an hour later, we were out through the gap between the Kuruki and Banaru reefs and had turned on to our course of 325° to pick up Cape L'Averdy at the north-eastern end of Bougainville. The black outline of the mountainous spine of the island was clear against the stars, and in less than an hour we could identify the volcanic mass of Bagana and the higher peak of Balbi beyond it.

In ordinary circumstances it would have been a night to dream about, the sea so quiet and the ship ploughing serenely through the diamond-bright velvet of the darkness under the Southern Cross. But the armed crewman in the wheelhouse, the others on the catwalks, the mob of captives huddled like slaves on the tank deck … everywhere I looked there was
something to remind me of the situation we had left behind. The simplicity of it, the speed, the organisation! In just a few hours it had all been over, the copper mine unprepared and held in pawn, the Administration, all the services, taken over, the airport out of action. An armed landing at Kieta or Anewa, anywhere along the coast, would be met now by a warning that the lives of Australian and other expatriates would be at risk. And Perenna and her brother, would they be at risk, too? Were they now hostages for the safe delivery of my human cargo to that island off the Queen Carola anchorage?

I learned a lot about myself that night, my mood introspective, which is something quite unnatural to me. Normally I act without too much thought, taking things as they come. But now there was Perenna. For the first time in my life I was emotionally involved with another human being, and it made a difference – made me think.

In the darkened silence of the wheelhouse, the course set and nothing else to do but let thoughts chase one another through my mind, I found myself in a state of uncertainty. I knew I ought to do something, try to gain control of the ship, free the human cargo. It was Perenna's ship as much as her brother's, her name on the stern, her capital locked up in it. But then there were moments when I was able to persuade myself that the whole thing was a political matter where the divisions between right and wrong are blurred and principles depend upon circumstances. When a man like Hans Holland takes the plunge,
risking all on one wild attempt to alter the balance of forces to his personal advantage, then I suppose there are always people like me who will throw overboard any principle they ever had in the hope of bettering themselves.

Oh yes, I learned a lot about myself in the small hours of that calm, quiet night.

But then Teopas had the three bodies thrown over the side, an action that altered my perspective, so that as the night wore on, sleepily steaming along the coast of that high-backed Pacific island, my mind dwelt more and more on the heroics of action, weaving fantasies that had no basis of reality. I knew damn well I wasn't going to do anything heroic. I was going to drift along with events, deliver those poor devils to Hetau and steam back again, hoping there'd be something in it for myself, and without too much risk.

I tried to pretend that it was because I didn't care who ruled Bougainville, that I was just a visitor caught up in something that didn't concern me. Why should I stick my neck out when for all I knew the Buka people, and those Bougainvilleans who supported them, had right on their side? But deep in my guts I knew it wasn't that. There was a side of my nature that said, Make the most of it, seize the opportunity. I could just see myself captain of a big ore carrier making the run up to Japan or across the Pacific to California with a shipload of concentrates. That side of me admired what Hans Holland was doing, admired his determination, his ruthlessness, his efficiency. And
in a few years I could be Marine Superintendent, in charge of a whole fleet of ships. Why not?

Dreams, all dreams, fantasies woven by a tired brain. I was just a pawn, useful to replace a man who had drunk himself into a stupor rather than do what I was doing.
I could use a landing craft man.
He hadn't said anything about ore carriers, only that it was a chance to become part of something big. So why build castles? My eyes were closed, and I was rocking on my feet, thinking suddenly of Perenna, the flash of anger and despair as I had asked the price of cooperation. If I did what I was told and stayed with Hans Holland, would she stay, too? Would she accept it? For the sake of the Holland Line, her brother – me? And there was Hans. Hans with his boundless vitality, his essential male dominance. I thought of that wretched little house and shuddered. The first masterful man she had met in ages and she had fallen flat on her back with her brother lying desperately ill in the next room. I pictured that scene, that bed, the mask hanging over them.

A hand was tugging at my arm, and I opened my eyes. It was Luke. ‘Cape L'Averdy,' he said.

I went to the porthole, my eyes wide, peering into the night ahead. The stars were paling over the mountains. Dawn was approaching. ‘There!' A flash low down on the horizon. I counted six, and it came again, almost dead ahead and the ship's bows swinging across it. I checked the course and then handed over to him, telling him to wake me when we were abreast of the Cape, which would be about 08.00. There would just
be time for both of us to get a couple of hours' sleep before we started the run through the Buka Passage.

In the alleyway a guard sat with his machine pistol resting on his knees, his back propped against my cabin door. He was a young man, his eyes closed, sleeping peacefully, and I hesitated, suddenly alert as I considered whether I could get the pistol from him. But his hand was on the butt, and as I moved softly towards him, some animal instinct seemed to trigger off the mechanism of his body, his dark eyelids flicking open. In one quick, flowing movement he was on his feet, wild-eyed and the gun pointing, his finger on the trigger.

I smiled at him, holding my hands wide, and went through into my cabin. It was hot and I was tired, but sleep didn't come easily, my mind active. I was thinking of the Buka Passage, all that had happened there during the war, and the Hollands, that house of theirs on the island of Madehas, wishing Perenna were with me, that this was a different sort of voyage and we could stop for her to show it to me. But then, of course, the memories of her grandfather, and of the yearly visits made when she was a child, were now overlaid by the tragedy of her mother's death. The Passage, Madehas, Kuamegu in Papua New Guinea – all the past of the Hollands. And that house in Aldeburgh, The Passage – was that nostalgia, or had the name some deeper significance? Four hours and I would be in the Passage. There, somewhere, I felt, must lie the key to the chequered past of this strange family.