Why not? Harry wondered, as he trudged up the wooden staircase and walked to his room. Why couldn’t the General complain? What had gone according to plan?
He stood in the doorway and looked around his room, not much larger than a prison cell. To his left, a ragged mosquito net hung from the ceiling above a white iron bedstead that stood on bare boards. At the foot of the bed was a chair, and above it hung a naked lightbulb. The wall to his right was punctured by an uneven row of coat hooks. The window that faced Harry was covered by a gray cotton curtain that sagged from a string, and beneath it stood a washstand, with a white china bowl and jug. Underneath that was a chamber pot, standing beside Harry’s overnight bag. Luckily, the bottle of Chivas Regal was still inside it.
Through the long dark night, Harry lay awake thinking over the previous day’s events. Uncomfortable, frustrated and impotent, tossing under a mosquito net with holes that allowed easy access to any creature with a wingspan of less than six inches, he entertained different explanations for the disappearance of his colleagues but one by one, he had discarded them.
At dawn, on Saturday, November 17, Harry walked onto the back veranda for a breath of fresh air. Blinking his reddened eyelids in the glare of sunlight, he looked below, where the beaten earth of the hotel’s backyard ran down to the St. Mary River. The small area was crisscrossed with clotheslines, on which hung drying sheets.
Beyond the lugubrious garden, Harry could see and hear the cheerful bustle on the river, surging downstream toward the St. Mary bailey bridge, beyond which it flowed into the north side of the harbor. Canoes and small barges, overladen and almost underwater, drifted past small riverside shops that faced the water. Bamboo rafts dodged between them, poled by errand boys and ferrymen.
The river was low. Thick mud glistened on either bank, and in the white heat of the sun, the water stank of ordure. It was used as a dump by the occupants of the boxlike wooden houses on stilts that crowded along the water’s edge. They only had to climb down the ladder to wash their clothes or dishes or void their bowels in the river.
Harry headed for the communal bathroom at the end of the veranda. The shower was not the hard, cold, stinging downpour that would have woken him up. Lukewarm leaks dribbled over his body, fell into a central drain and could still be heard after their disappearance being sucked and gargled by some recumbent giant below the floorboards.
Back in his bedroom, Harry was pulling on his shirt when the night watchman put his head around the door. “Pass he come belong you, master.”
Two long yellow teeth gleamed as Harry tipped him and took the buff envelope, which had already been opened. He drew out a flimsy sheet of paper headed MINISTRY OF POLICE, QUEENSTOWN and quickly read the badly typed document:
Date
13 November 1984.
Time:
19.30 hours, approx.
Item:
1 (one) explosion of touristic fishing vessel “Louise,” registered Queenstown.
Reasons:
Unknown.
Witnesses:
No persons.
List of Missing Persons:
There followed twelve names—the entire Nexus party staying at the Paradise Bay Hotel.
Harry gazed at the one name that stood out to him, as if typed in scarlet: PATRICK, MRS ANNE. His mind refused to accept that Annie was dead. If Annie—the one great love of his life—was dead, then Harry’s hope for life had been crushed in one badly typed line—the hope which, for years, had helped to drive Harry through a life in which he seemed destined never to have a normal, caring relationship with anyone—never to have a mate. No, he refused to accept it. He would not believe that Annie was dead—unless he saw her body.
* * *
His sweaty shirt clung to his back as Harry hurried over the cobblestones of Queenstown Wharf to where a scruffy vessel was docking. Other ships were being loaded or unloaded by a small group of wharfies, who moved as if sleepwalking. They were watched by onlookers, who squatted on the cobbles or sat with their backs against the shaded walls of the shops that clustered around the wharf. The iron grilles had been ripped from the fronts of the boxlike shops and their contents had vanished; their floors were a mess of broken glass, strewn with papers.
Behind the row of shops lay St. Mary’s Hospital, conveniently close to the drinking shops of the wharf, from which, every evening, brawl casualties could be speedily heaved into the emergency ward.
Relieved to be out of the hard glare of the sun, Harry entered the door of the emergency ward. Beyond it, the empty white-tiled reception area looked strangely similar to the dining room of the Hotel Independence, although perhaps a trifle cleaner.
Looking for a receptionist, Harry walked down the corridor, turned a corner and almost bumped into a white-overalled Chinese nurse, who clutched a green clipboard. Harry asked her where he could find the casualty ward.
“The whole hospital is a casualty ward at the moment.” The nurse sounded tired and under strain. “Upstairs in the main ward we still have seven military casualties. The rest have been treated and discharged. Only a few civilians are still here; most of them have either died or been treated and sent home.”
“You look as if you’ve had a tough time,” Harry sympathized.
“Oh, not bad. Not compared with ’Eighty-three, when there was real fighting.” She looked almost regretful. “This time casualties have been light, and the soldiers behaved well afterwards. Few rapes and hardly any atrocities, except for President Obe and a few of the ministers.”
“Was the man in the mining accident brought here?” Harry asked.
“The Nexus white? Yes, DOA. Came in last Tuesday, just before the fighting broke out. I was about to go off duty.”
“I’m responsible for him. Where is the body?”
“Normally it would have gone in the morgue, but at the moment I can’t say. Ask the hospital registrar. His office is just inside the main entrance, on the other side of the building.”
Harry went to find the registrar who offered to show him the way to St. Mary’s Hospital Morgue. It wasn’t like the morgues that Harry had seen in TV police dramas, where corpses were covered by sheets and kept in drawers, like office filing cabinets. The St. Mary’s morgue was set in the basement of the hospital and was simply a big, walk-in refrigerator, like a butcher’s; on either side corpses lay on shelves. They were all black, except for Brett.
The color of an altar candle, Brett looked even more hand-some now that his anxious-puppy look had been wiped way. Beneath the fair eyebrows, his eyes were closed, his neatly chiseled nose and mouth looked as if they had been carved from Carrara marble, his crisp, red-gold hair still looked alive and oddly incongruous, like a wig on a beautiful statue.
Harry had wanted to see with his own eyes what had happened to at least one of his missing colleagues. Now he stared down at the cold, tangible proof that Raki had misinformed him, and possibly lied to him. Brett couldn’t have been killed twice on the same day, in two places, seventy miles apart. But Raki wouldn’t have known, while crossing the ocean in his invading flagship, that there had been an accidental death at the mine.
From his pocket Harry pulled the official police report of the boat explosion at Paradise Bay. There it was, typed, BRETT ADAMS. He lifted the hospital label tied to Brett’s ankle. It read BRETT ADAMS.
Of course, Raki could say that Brett’s name had been accidentally typed on the list—an understandable error in view of the week’s happenings. But as he looked at Brett’s pale face, Harry realized what had been nagging at him. It was ludicrously unlikely that after Brett’s tragic death the Nexus party at Paradise Bay would suddenly have chosen to go for a pleasure cruise at sunset. Arthur would probably have told Brett’s wife. She would have been in tears. At least one of the other wives would have been comforting her. Someone would have been arranging for Suzy to fly home with the body. Probably they would all have decided to return to Pittsburgh. They certainly wouldn’t have set off on a joyride
around the bay, Harry told himself.
He gnawed his upper lip. In the last twenty-four hours events had been occurring too fast for him to think straight—the disappearance of his colleagues, Brett’s death, the disturbing scene at Paradise Bay and then last night’s revolting amputation.
Perhaps Raki truly didn’t know what had happened, and had too much on his plate to pay attention to the Nexus disappearances. But if Harry assumed that Raki did know what had happened to the Nexus group, then either Raki was deliberately denying knowledge of something unpleasant because he didn’t want to be held responsible for it or because, for some reason, in some way, he had deliberately arranged that disappearance….
If that was so, had Raki tried to conceal the manner in which the Nexus group had disappeared? Suddenly, in the chill of the silent morgue, a colder chill snaked up Harry’s spine as another thought occurred to him. How had Raki known that Harry should have been one of the missing party? And why?
If Raki had deliberately planned to kill the entire Nexus group, then he would have also expected Harry to die, and perhaps still wanted to kill him. Perhaps the Nexus group had been deliberately killed by Raki in revenge for the bribe payments that had been stopped. Payback was a more potent reason for violence on Paui than in any Sicilian vendetta. But Raki wasn’t a Mafia hood. Harry told himself not to be melodramatic.
Or had Raki tried to make Harry believe that the Nexus people were dead—when they were still alive? Was Raki holding them prisoner? For ransom? Harry knew that Raki’s main motivation was greed, and he also knew that running your own private army was undoubtedly an expensive hobby, but surely Raki would not have imprisoned the Nexus group for ransom money? Raki stood to gain a lot of easy money from Nexus.
No, if Raki was holding them prisoner, it was more likely that he had planned to hold the group hostage for barter—as insurance, in the event his revolution failed. Important Americans might be useful as bargaining chips. Harry remembered the black heads stuck on poles outside the palace gate. He couldn’t guess what plans Raki might have made, but if he knew his man, there would certainly have been several contingency plans for escape in the event of failure.
Harry paused in his reasoning, and looked at Brett’s peaceful face. Again, he wondered why the Filipino officer at Paradise Bay had been so keen to get Kerry and him back to their helicopter. The officer’s troops had been rough, but not uncontrollable; there had been no further trouble from them after the officer had snapped an order. They had behaved like sulky hunting dogs, disappointed but obedient. He remembered the final words of the officer on the airstrip. “The General cannot complain,” he had said. “Everything went according to plan.”
Had that been a statement of the general situation? Had he meant that Raki had pulled off his coup, and should be happy? Or had it been a specific statement, referring to the landing at Paradise Bay? Or an even more precise reference to the disappearance of the Nexus party? Surely you didn’t consider that everything had gone according to plan if you were in charge of the spot where the leaders of the island’s biggest, richest and most important business had all disappeared? Unless that was exactly what had gone according to plan. Unless that was why Raki couldn’t complain.
The white-coat registrar touched his shoulder, and Harry followed him out of the morgue. He stood in the sweltering heat of the hospital corridor as the door was locked behind him. Suddenly, Harry’s back felt very vulnerable.
Swiftly, he looked over his shoulder. But, of course, there was no gunman behind him and Harry felt like a fool.
* * *
Mrs. Chang’s ivory telephone smelled strongly of stale magnolia. When Harry telephoned, Kerry wasn’t at the Mount Ida office, he’d been called home. Harry redialed. Kerry explained that Betty was a bit upset because she’d had a row with Cookie. She’d caught him scrubbing the fish with carbolic soap, which Kerry reckoned was overdoing the hygiene.
Harry said, “For God’s sake, our top executives disappear and you chatter to me about fish.”
Kerry said stiffly, “My wife’s been under a helluva strain, Harry. You know perfectly well that I’m doing all I can. You should try dealing with Air Niugini, about shipping a corpse back to Pittsburgh. You should try filling in details in triplicate for the American Consulate in Moresby. You should tell Jerry Pearce what to do when he phones from Pittsburgh demanding instant action every five minutes. You should try running a bloody mine after a coup d’état.”
“Sorry, Kerry. I guess yesterday upset us both. Now, who, unofficially, is most likely to know what’s going on on this island?”
“Mindo,” Kerry said instantly. “The miners’ spokesman. He’s just told me that the day after the invasion, small groups of militiamen with two-way radios were helicoptered all around the island, to talk to the villagers. Mindo seems pretty sure that Raki has informers all over the island. Apparently this rural grapevine has identified all the strongly Democratic supporters, and they’re being taken to Queenstown for questioning, one area at a time.”
“Do the militiamen take them in?” Harry asked.
“Yes, but not all of them. A few militia remain to have a quiet chat with the village elders about village needs … more dried milk for the toothless elders, another twelve-gauge shotgun for the tultul—that’s the second man of the village. Until now, only the headman has been allowed to own a gun.”
Harry said, “Raki obviously isn’t relying only on military force.”
“No, this infiltration at village level seems to be a civic effort to win over the rural population.”
“So if we offer a really big reward for any information, the militia groups might be keen to earn it. We’d have an instant network combing the country for us.”
Harry’s next call was to his friend at the American Embassy in Canberra. Richard had plenty to tell him.
“Our procedure is always the same in these situations,” Richard explained. “Contingency plans are always changing, but the first stage in any emergency that concerns vanishing Americans caught up in foreign political disturbances is to get the maximum information about the people concerned.”
“What sort of information?” Harry asked. “Complete biographies, or just their reasons for being there?”
“Both,” Richard said. “The next stage—provided we’re not dealing with a terrorist government—is for the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate to arrange negotiations with the new government.”
“When do they get around to searching?” Harry asked.
“The third step is to organize the land or sea search, in cooperation with the country in which the disappearance has taken place. As the Nationalist Party on Paui isn’t a terrorist government, the U.S. Consulate at Port Moresby can negotiate with it,” Richard said. “They’ll ensure that all necessary searches and inquiries are made.”
Harry said, “Sounds like slow death from strangling by red tape.”
“Wrong,” Richard said. “The consulate has already drawn up a plan of action.” He explained it in detail, concluding, “The State Department has already set up a task force to coordinate all information from Paui sources, Nexus sources and from relatives. Apparently, the guy in charge of the task force in Washington has spent two years at our consulate in Moresby and is already acquainted with the new President of Paui.”
“How do they expect the relatives to help?” Harry asked.
“By keeping out of the way,” Richard said firmly. “All relatives have been advised to channel information and queries through the Nexus headquarters in Pittsburgh.”
Harry said, “Yes, they’ve set up a special office to deal with this.”
“And we understand that the Nexus office on Paui will organize its own search party which will keep in close contact with the State Department task force.”
After that Harry tried, unsuccessfully, to telephone Jerry Pearce. He decided to wait for Jerry’s return call in the bar of the Hotel Independence.
In the almost empty b
ar a couple of rickety tables were surrounded by broken, backless chairs. A planter’s chair, similar to the one in Harry’s living room, still had four stumps, but no extending arms to heave your legs over. Behind the bar, a broken green shade clung to the lightbulb over the flyblown mirror, which was cracked in a thousand spiderwebs. A row of thick tumblers stood on top of the bar, but there wasn’t a bottle in sight. The ceiling fan, shaped like an antique aircraft propeller, shuddered away. In spite of this slight movement, the air in the bar was hot and sticky.
“Last time the boys got playful, Ma Chang decided to leave it that way.” The explanation of the decor came from a lean, bald man hunched over a barstool; he looked as if it had been some weeks since he’d removed his blue shirt and jeans. He waved toward a plump, sandy-haired man in the corner who was scribbling on a shorthand pad. “That’s Sandy over there. He’s the Moresby stringer for a group of Sydney newspapers. He also operates under a different name for an American newspaper group, as well as Associated Press and the BBC. So the poor bastard has to write every story four times in four different ways. Gets writer’s cramp in both hands.”
“You don’t get writer’s cramp in your hand, mate, you get it across your shoulders.” Sandy stood up, stretched and scratched the Viking-red, matted hair that showed beneath his open shirt. He had the amiable but sharp look of a man who was going to charge one glass of beer, bought by somebody else, to four different expense accounts as double whiskeys.
Harry thought, I don’t want him interfering, I don’t want to give him any information—but just possibly this man knows what happened on this island last Tuesday evening.
Sandy looked at Harry. “You the bloke from Nexus who went to Paradise Bay yesterday?”
Harry nodded.
“Heard they turned you back.”