Both men nodded.
“Then what are you guys doing here? This hotel has been requisitioned. It is now an army barracks.”
“May we put our arms down?” Harry asked.
“Yeah. How did you get here?”
“By helicopter.” Harry rotated his aching shoulders. “We are business friends of General Raki, who will vouch for us. We are looking for a party of important Americans who were staying at this hotel.”
“Ah.” There was a slight pause.
The officer said, “This place was empty when we landed. The lights were on, but there was no staff.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They probably ran away. When the islanders sense trouble coming, they scram.” After a slight pause he added, “You better ask in town. Go to the chief of police. I want you out of here immediately. My men are disappointed there hasn’t been any fighting. They’re hard to control after a battle, but a lot harder to control if there hasn’t been a fight. I’d better come back to the airstrip with you.” He spoke rapidly to the corporal in Spanish, then jerked his head toward the hotel entrance. “Come on, let’s go.”
When they reached the edge of the airstrip, the officer said, “Have a good trip. Don’t come back.” He hesitated, then asked, “You really are friends of General Raki?”
Harry said, “Yes, business friends. We have been for many years.”
The officer looked slightly worried. “The General cannot complain. Everything went according to plan.”
“So I understand,” said Harry. “Thanks. Let’s get out of here, Kerry.”
The pilot had started up as soon as he saw the group appear. Seconds after the two men scrambled into it, the helicopter swung into the air.
The pilot had been wondering whether to go for help. After hearing what had happened to them he said, “You blokes were lucky. Very lucky. Bloody lucky.”
* * *
Kerry took two armed Nexus guards and an interpreter with him when they drove to Queenstown.
The yellow Toyota jeep, its hood heaving up and down as it crashed along the corrugations, bumped over a road that had seen better days, and that only a vehicle with a four-wheel drive could navigate.
After realizing that the Nexus party had truly disappeared, Kerry’s first reaction was incredulous horror, followed by a swift guilty flash of relief that Harry, his boss, had been present at that nasty scene, so the responsibility would not be Kerry’s. This thought was followed by acute anxiety. Why did it have to happen in his area?
Emotion would have to wait. He and Harry had bottled up their rage and grief. Both men realized that only fast thinking followed by equally fast action might trace the fate of their missing companions.
The yellow Toyota jeep jounced over unpaved streets with no sidewalks, gummed up with every sort of filth. Skinny dogs and scrawny chickens lay motionless in the sparse shade, or added to the many shriveled turds that dotted the road. The few stores at the side of the road gaped open and empty, showing smashed fixtures inside.
As they approached the rusting girders of St. Mary Bridge, an untidy crowd of frightened-looking women headed toward them, away from town. They carried cloth-wrapped bilums on their backs; all their possessions were in these string bags. On the far side of the bridge, a burned-out truck was crumpled against the girders, a charred corpse dangling from the driver’s seat. Just beyond it, Kerry nodded toward a four-story concrete building.
“I hear the National Hotel is being used as a temporary military headquarters. A lot of the mercenaries who landed with Raki have been billeted there.”
The Toyota turned to the left, toward Victoria Square. In contrast to the road they had just left, this narrow alley seethed with traffic; pushcarts, farm carts drawn by oxen and a couple of ancient trucks jostled in line. Beyond, the market square was strangely normal. As usual, the narrow alleyways around the square were jammed with haggling shoppers.
Harry said, “They don’t seem to know there’s a war on.”
“The war was yesterday.”
On the north side of Victoria Square stood the trim white Barclays Bank, a small Palladian-style building with green-painted steel shutters. On the west were the ministry buildings—rectangular blocks of cracked concrete, the barred black windows gazing across the dusty palms to the houses of parliament and the supreme court. On the south side of the square, the police station was flanked on one side by the customs office and on the other by the post office.
The only building not firmly locked and shuttered was the police station. Inside it, opposite the entrance, a police sergeant sat on a battered desk. Behind him was a row of narrow, barred cells—each one just large enough to cage one person. Every cell was full, and the stink was overpowering. To the left of the sergeant, the wall was stacked with ammunition boxes; to his right, a small group of soldiers squatted on the floor, playing a gambling game with dried beans.
Lethargically, the sergeant drummed his booted feet against the wooden desk as the Nexus interpreter spoke.
The sergeant shook his head, stared straight ahead and continued to bang his feet against the desk.
Kerry stepped forward and offered the sergeant a pack of cigarettes. The drumming stopped. The sergeant spoke to the interpreter, who turned to Kerry.
“He says we must make our inquiries at the Ministry of the Interior. But everybody there is on holiday, because of the soldiers.”
“Tell him we would like to see the chief of police.”
“He also is on holiday. It is best to be on holiday while the soldiers are in town. Maybe, master, you speak with him. He is a sergeant, so he can speak English, if he wants to. And more cigarettes.”
Kerry stepped forward and greeted the sergeant. “Upi noon! We seek news of some missing people, important top-brass Nexus people. Friends of General Raki.”
Without a word the sergeant held his hand out.
Kerry placed two packs of cigarettes in it. The sergeant stuffed them down his tunic and again held out his hand.
Slowly, Kerry counted out two Australian five-dollar bills. Too much money could be self-defeating; if the information sought was thought to be very important, then an islander would not part with it. Kerry leaned over the desk and slid the money into the top drawer. The sergeant followed every movement of this universal language of persuasion with a blank expression.
Kerry asked, “May we speak with the chief of police?”
The sergeant shook his head.
Harry started to gnaw his upper lip. He knew that to expect logic would only increase his frustration. The priorities and reasoning of the islanders differed totally from those of a Westerner, and neither could clearly understand the other’s viewpoint.
Half an hour later, it was made clear to the sergeant that the two whites had no more cash or cigarettes.
Harry felt in his pockets, which he’d restocked from his shoulder bag. He said, “How about a pack of cards?”
Card playing is illegal in Paui, because the loser at a card game often kills the winner. A pack of cards is therefore a highly desirable possession, treasured above money, because it is a steady source of income. The islanders play a gambling game called Lucky, which is impossible for whites to understand—the biggest winner is always the man who rents out the illegal pack of cards.
Slowly, reluctantly, the sergeant shook his head.
Harry produced a second pack of cards and put both packs on the desk—but not in the drawer. All three men knew that two packs of cards were worth far more than a hundred dollars; the sergeant could sell one pack for forty dollars cash, and then rent out the other pack in perpetuity.
“Maybe I fix.”
Harry pushed one pack of cards toward the sergeant. “You get the other pack when I get a reply.”
“Okay, I send pass to General Raki’s palace guard, tell him good news. You give me two dollar for guard.”
* * *
“For the last time, no,” Harry said to Kerry as they stood outside the police station in
the white glare of the sun. “We’ve got to split our approach. You write the report and take it up with the U.S. State Department.” Kerry would work through the U.S. Consulate at Port Moresby, because Paui was in their area.
Harry added, “You also handle it officially at the local level, Kerry. Clearly I’m not going to find out anything if I’m stuck behind barbed wire at Mount Ida. So I’m staying in Queenstown. By myself. Might do a couple of things that wouldn’t be officially appreciated. My aim is to see Raki face to face, and when I do, I’ll be safe. Raki knows he has to deal through me if he wants to renew or expand the Nexus concession. If he doesn’t want to deal with us, then there’s nothing much I can do about it. But if he wants a fast, easy deal, with quick cash, then he’ll continue our association. In which case he won’t want me harmed, so that’ll be some sort of protection.”
“You’re the boss, Harry. I’ll send someone down with your gear.”
“Send me another gun, and some cash and cigarettes as well, Kerry. You’d better hang on to the rest of my money. Which hotel do I stay at?”
“There’s no choice. The army has taken over the National, so you’ll have to stay with Ma Chang at the Hotel Independence. Make sure you ask her for the second-class price.”
“Why?”
“If you pay first-class tariff, you’ll get godawful colonial food—brown Windsor soup and thin slices of overdone beef in gravy, with vegetables that have been boiled to death, followed by rice pudding. If you choose the second-class menu, you’ll get wonderful Chinese food.”
“I don’t expect fancy cookery in the middle of a military coup.”
“Ma Chang wouldn’t let a nuclear holocaust disturb her operation. Let’s go.”
* * *
Since the sixteenth century, when Portuguese navigators first sighted the island of Paui, European explorers had sailed around the coast, naming the most prominent geographical features after their kings, their queens, their politicians and themselves. As a matter of custom and inertia, these names mostly stuck; such landmarks as the Victoria Highlands and Stanley Heights continued to be so called, but Queenstown’s oldest hotel, a once-white clapboard building surrounded by a wooden veranda, was particularly sensitive to political changes.
When the Dutch annexed Paui in 1828, the newly built hotel was named “The Amsterdam.” When the first Christian missionary arrived, after the British took over in 1873, the hotel was burned down, rebuilt and rechristened “The Victoria.” In 1914, when the Germans occupied Paui and the nearby islands, a new signboard was hastily painted to read “Der Kaiserhof.” When the British returned in 1919, the board that hung over the rickety glass-paned door read “The Imperial.”
In the twenties and thirties, the hotel had been a popular meeting place for the English colonials who ran the cocoa, coffee and copra plantations and supervised the gutting of the beautiful sandalwood forests that covered the Central Mountains and the Victoria Highlands. These gentlemen regularly received “pink tickets” from their wives entitling them to an evening out with the boys at the Imperial. One by one, they were beaten by the hot, humid and insect-infested climate, where books had to be fumigated every six months and tearful wives eventually gave up trying to make a cozy home. So they retired early, to a bungalow in Balmain, Sydney, a bungalow in Oxshott, Surrey, or a residential hotel in Earls Court, London, where they could fade out their lives playing bridge in an atmosphere of leisurely, if dusty, gentility that strangely resembled the dear old Imperial.
There had been no need to change the name in 1942, when the Japanese invaded Paui, but after the liberation in 1945 the hotel was rechristened the “Roosevelt Hylton.” In 1963 it metamorphosed into the “Kennedy-Hylton,” until in 1973 a similarly named hotel group threatened to sue. As this coincided with the Grant of Self-Government, a new signboard was swiftly painted. Mrs. Chang acquired the “Hotel Independence” in 1976. In 1984 it was still in pretty much the same condition as when she purchased it.
The two men walked up the steps to the wide, wooden-floored veranda that ran around the hotel. Inside, in the sepulchral gloom of the lobby, wicker chairs were grouped around low, dark-red lacquered tables, each with a fringed and beaded lamp hung above it. Beyond them, Harry could see a bar, which, he was later to discover, had a separate exit to the veranda, for flinging out undesirables. To the rear of the entrance lobby was the reception desk, a light-colored square on the wall behind it indicating that a picture had recently been removed.
To the right of the reception desk was a flight of wooden stairs, and beyond that Harry could see, through the open door, a deserted dining room. Like a European urinal, it had white-tiled floors and walls, and the small tables were covered by white plastic cloths. Harry could sniff the lingering aroma of Peking duck.
Just inside the hotel entrance and to the right, was a little alcove stuffed with dark, elaborately carved Victorian furniture. In the middle of it shone the jackdaw-bright, black eyes of a Chinese woman clad in violent pink satin pajamas; she might have been any age between thirty and sixty, but she certainly did not weigh under two hundred pounds. The elaborate dark furniture that surrounded her was a contrast to the bare efficiency of the rest of the building. On either side of her pink bulk stood two small tables, upon one stood a Monopoly board, upon the other was a modern ivory telephone.
“Come in, man,” Mrs. Chang said sharply. “I can’t think why you expected to see anybody important on a day like this; they are either dead or have hurried to visit their country estates upriver. Very prudent.” She glanced at the Cartier tank watch that was strapped on her fat little wrist. “The sun is getting quite near the yardarm. I expect you would like a cocktail?” She clapped her hands briskly. “Freddy! The martini cart!”
From somewhere behind her great pink bulk appeared a handsome, shy islander, barefoot and wearing only a pair of white shorts.
“Freddy and Bobby are my secretaries.” Mrs. Chang airily waved her left hand to another similarly handsome young islander. Freddy had a torso like Superman’s without his leotard, and Bobby’s build was almost as impressive; both men were nearly as tall as Harry. They didn’t look pure-blooded islanders—they probably had an eighth Chinese blood, which meant that the natives wouldn’t want them, and neither would the Chinese.
Mrs. Chang said, “Bobby handles the cash. Tell him if you wish to change money.”
“We’ve just lost our money,” Harry said ruefully.
“Ah! I also lend money. At two percent a day in unusual situations, such as this.”
Mrs. Chang turned to Bobby and said, “Bugger off and fetch the cashbox.” Bobby scooted off.
“Take a pew, both of you.” Mrs. Chang rested her feet, in yellow satin slippers, on her red plush footstool and looked sharply at the men, alert as a thrush on a branch. Her sallow skin was stretched tight across her face, then fell in a series of dewlaps to her collarbone.
Kerry said, “I won’t stay, thank you. I must get back to Betty.”
Mrs. Chang hollered toward the kitchen, “Only one olive, Freddy.” She turned back to Kerry and said, “I hope all is okay with your dear wife.”
“She’s fine. Writing a thesis on island religions. Gives her something to do.”
Mrs. Chang giggled, “Oh, my goodness, a bugger of a task.” Her English included phrases picked up from the English importer, as well as his lady wife whose children she had cared for long ago in Singapore.
Freddy came dashing back with a well-equipped drinks cart.
“Will you be shopping for gifts?” inquired Mrs. Chang.
Nothing had been further from Harry’s mind, until Mrs. Chang added, “General Raki’s wives and children all landed two hours ago to show that everything is back to normal. Business as usual.” She leered at Harry. “May I suggest twice as many gifts for the new young wife and Raki’s number-one wife. The old girl is the daughter of a powerful tribal chief and must be respected. I have some excellent lengths of silk.”
Harry knew
it was a waste of time to buy gifts for anyone’s wife. On Paui a female was about as influential as a chicken. But he intended to leave no stone unturned, and that included the cultivation of the goodwill of Mrs. Chang. He suspected there was more to Mrs. Chang than met the eye.
* * *
On the sticky tarmac of Presidential Avenue the traffic thinned as Harry’s Toyota reached the avenue of big mango trees that stand like sentinels on either side of the road leading to the Presidential Palace. Before 1975, the dilapidated colonial villas behind the trees had been occupied by white administrators and high-grade technicians; now, these rundown houses were heavily surrounded by barbed wire to protect the men who ran Paui.
Just before the Presidential Palace, Harry passed the former Colonial Club. In the days when it took two months by sea to get home to Britain for the six-month leave that you were entitled to every five years, the Colonial Club was where gin slings had been sipped, bridge played and foxtrots danced to wind-up gramophones; now, it was the noisy home of the new Minister of the Interior.
Whereas the rest of Queenstown was languidly lapsing into decay, the high wall that surrounded the presidential compound was in excellent order, except for the curlicued black iron gates, which had been torn off their hinges and left lying on the grass just inside the entrance.
Flies clustered, shining like black sequins, around five football-sized lumps stuck on top of five poles that had been thrust into the ground: these were the heads of the late President Obe and four of his unluckier ministers. The Minister of Finance and the Minister of Commerce and Industry had escaped in the presidential helicopter, the pilot of which had been receiving regular payments against just such an eventuality.
The Toyota jeep slowed, then stopped about fifty yards from the gate. Harry climbed down very slowly, put up his hands and cautiously walked toward the guards. They wore olive combat uniforms, soft khaki caps with hard peaks and laced, rubber-soled jungle boots.
When challenged, Harry showed his official appointment pass and also his passport, which was studied by the guards, page by page, from back to front, right way up and upside down. They were clearly illiterate, and recognized only Harry’s passport photograph.