Solomons Seal

Chapter Six

With the guns gone it was as though the ship had been relieved of an incubus, the mood almost carefree as we gathered for drinks in the wardroom before the evening meal. Luke was on watch, McAvoy in his cabin; otherwise we were all there, including Perenna, and nobody referred to what had happened before the RPL had taken the cases from us, talking about other things as though it were best forgotten. ‘We’ll be off Kieta at first light, get rid of those trucks, then go round to the copper port.’ Jona Holland turned to me. ‘If you’ll stand in till midnight, that’ll be it as far as you’re concerned, and you can have a good night’s sleep before going ashore. Luke and I will manage the night watches. I’m very grateful to you for all your help.’ His tone was friendly, his manner almost lighthearted.

Darkness had fallen in a steady downpour of rain, but when I relieved Luke, the island was a black silhouette against the stars and the group flash of the Shortland Harbour light just visible to port. Out on the bridge wing I could smell the land, a damp smell of sodden vegetation mingled with some indefinable aromatic scent. Most of that watch I was thinking about Hans Holland and his offer of a ship. He was buying my silence, of course, but much of my life had been connected with boats, and I didn’t have to like the man, just so long as the driving ambition I had sensed in him gave me the opportunity I was looking for.

Jona relieved me at midnight. There was something on his mind, and he was ill at ease, keeping me there, talking about nothing in particular. And then, when I said I was tired and going to bed, he suddenly came out with it: That job Hans offered you, are you going to take it?’

‘I might,’ I said.

I don’t know whether that was the answer he expected, but he didn’t say anything, just stood there frowning as though working out some complicated pattern in his mind.

‘Why? Does it matter to you?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, not at all.’ He managed a small smile. ‘Good to have somebody I know skippering one of the ships.’ And he turned quickly away to the chart table.

Back in my cabin I stripped, had a quick shower, then fell into my bunk, naked except for a sheet, with the luxury of a whole night’s sleep ahead of me. I dropped off immediately, the steady murmur of the engines like the refrain of a song beating out a vision of Pacific islands. At that moment I was strangely content, a new world opening up before me and a feeling that here was something that I could make my own.

I don’t know what woke me — the door maybe — but my eyes were suddenly open, searching the cabin. A shadow moved in the pale light filtering through the porthole, and I sat up. ‘I’m sorry if I startled you.’ It was Perenna’s voice, a husky whisper barely audible. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I just couldn’t sleep. That’s all.’

I could see her now, standing like a ghost just inside the door, a thin dressing gown held tightly round her.

‘It’s the heat,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Do you mind?’ And then, as though conscious of a need to explain her presence, she added, ‘I don’t know why, but I’m scared.’

‘Scared?’ She was so different from her brother that it hadn’t occurred to me that she could ever be scared of anything. ‘What of?’ I was still only half awake.

‘I don’t know. Everything. The future, what’s going to happen …’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

She came towards my bunk then, moving so slowly, so silently she might have been walking in her sleep. ‘I had an awful telephone conversation with the doctor at the nursing home. Tim was worse, and there was nothing he could do. “Just a matter of time,” he said. That’s why I left Aldeburgh in such a hurry. I felt if only I could get to Buka, I might be able to do something … Stop whatever it was from reaching Tim — destroy whoever it was that was killing him, switch it off.’ She hesitated, then went on, her voice faltering, ‘Now — now that I’m on the last leg of this long journey … I don’t know what I’m going to do-’ Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘I’m so afraid of Buka. And Sapuru. He was there with Hans.’

‘I’ll switch on the light,’ I said. ‘We can talk-’

‘No. No, I don’t want to talk.’ And I knew then she had come to me for comfort, like a little girl afraid of the dark. ‘Can I come in with you — just for a little while?’ She was standing close to me now, and I could smell her: no scent, just her own natural female smell. She slid in beside me, drawing the sheet over her shoulders, her body close against mine. The bunk was so narrow the only place I could put my arms was round her. ‘Just hold me,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t do anything. I just want to be held.’

I could feel her body snuggled close against me, naked under the dressing gown. She was trembling slightly. ‘I keep thinking of Mother. That’s why I couldn’t sleep — wondering whether it would be the same this time. Blood and violence, the worship of ancestors … When I was growing up in the Chimbu area there were still cases of cannibalism. And the fight leaders. There was always fighting somewhere.’ Her breath was hot on my shoulder, her body close against me. She must have felt the beat of my blood, for she withdrew slightly. ‘I’m sorry, it’s not fair.’ Then, with a sudden giggle: ‘I only brought pyjamas, and it’s too hot to wear them.’

I tried to kiss her then, but she turned her head away, lying quite passive. ‘You don’t want to talk, you don’t want to make love, what the hell do you want?’

‘Nothing,’ she murmured. ‘Just don’t do anything. I’m tired.’

‘You said you were scared. What is it? What are you afraid of?’ I was being gentle with her then, the sexual urge in me dying. ‘Is it really what happened when you were last here? Or is it those guns, the fact that your brother is involved?’

‘No, it’s not Jona.’

‘Hans Holland, then?’

She lay there, withdrawn, not answering. But I had felt her stiffen at the name. Pagan bad. The words came back to me. It was such an odd description. And Red Holland’s son brought up after his death in a Buka village. Did that mean a pagan background? ‘Did you know I’d killed a man?’ she said quite unexpectedly. I only just caught the words, her face close against my chest.

‘You don’t want to think about that,’ I whispered gently. ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, and anyway it wasn’t deliberate.’

‘I was fighting mad,’ she breathed. ‘I was covered in blood, and I didn’t care.’

‘It was a long time ago. Stop thinking about it.’

I felt her shake her head. ‘I can’t. There’s Tim … and Jona — he’s such an innocent.’ And then, to distract herself, she began talking about the elder brother, how the sea had been his life ever since he had left school, how their grandfather had encouraged him. ‘He thought he could mould Jona into a likeness of himself so that, when he was gone, there would be somebody left to build up the Holland Line again. He didn’t see that Jona wasn’t made that way, that it wasn’t trade and ships that interested him, but the sea itself.’ Her breath touched me in a little sigh. ‘Since I’ve been on this ship, I think I’ve become more worried for Jona than for myself. He just doesn’t understand the sort of man Hans is.’

‘And what sort of a man is he?’

‘How would I know?’ She spoke sharply, suddenly on the defensive. ‘I’ve no experience, not of men like that — ambitious, driving … ’ She was silent a long time, but I sensed that she was still thinking the question over. Suddenly, with what seemed total irrelevance, she said, ‘Grandpa had a Christian upbringing. He was a morally upright man.’ And she went on quickly, ‘I suppose I’m talking about good and evil. Grandpa was a good man. He may have done things during the war, terrible things — destroying, killing. But that was war. It doesn’t alter my impression of him.’

‘And Hans Holland isn’t a Christian.’

She didn’t answer, lying very still.

‘What happened when he visited you in Aldeburgh?’ I felt her stiffen again. ‘Did you leave him alone with your brother?’

‘Yes. Tim wanted it.’

‘And where were you?’

‘Somewhere — I don’t remember.’

‘In the house?’

‘Of course.’

‘So you could have heard what was said between them — if you’d wanted to.’

‘Yes.’ The word seemed forced out of her. And then in a fierce whisper she said, ‘I won’t answer any more questions. I don’t want to think about it.’

‘You’re twins, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And his illness — the reason he’s dying … it’s sorcery. That’s what you told me. Don’t you remember?’

‘No.’ She pulled back the sheet and started to get out of the bunk, but my arms were still round her, and I held her.

‘Is that what you’re scared of, that you’ve come out here with one object in mind — to kill the man who put a death wish on your brother?’

I heard her draw in her breath. ‘Do you think I’d kill him?’

‘It’s what you said you’d do, that day I came to do the sale inventory.’

There was a long silence, and then in a whisper she said, ‘Yes, I remember now.’ She drew in her breath, speaking with sudden urgency. ‘But that was just after Tim had gone. It was part of the nightmare. Please believe that, Roy. I was living a nightmare. It’s different now.’

But I knew it wasn’t. It hadn’t been a nightmare. It had been real, so far as she was concerned. It was paganism she was scared of. I started to tell her that I understood, that I knew about the arrowhead and the horrible little doll and that there were ways of dealing with sorcery and evil things like that. I knew nothing about it really, thinking of exorcism, crucifixes, the Christian faith … ‘Please.’ Her hand touched my face. ‘Let’s not talk about it any more. I don’t want to think about it now. I don’t want to think about anything.’ She lay staring at me in the darkness, and the touch of her fingers on my cheek stirred me. I tightened my arm about her, and gradually the tension in her body relaxed. She murmured something, and when I tried to kiss her again, she didn’t turn her head away, only whispered, ‘Let’s get some sleep now.’

Silence enclosed us, only the beat of the engines, and the cabin dark in shadow as she lay there beside me, relaxed now and seemingly unaware of what she was doing to me. Yet I knew she could feel the hardness of me against her. Gently I took her face in my hands and kissed her eyes, her mouth. She didn’t turn away, only whispered, ‘No.’ But her breathing was quicker now, her lips responding, and suddenly she pushed me away. ‘Oh, hell — why not?’ She sat up, slipped out of her dressing gown, and then she was back beside me, and my hands were holding those extraordinary thrusting breasts as she reached down to touch and caress me.

I had never experienced a woman like her, so total in the expression of a passionate nature, so absolutely uninhibited. And yet through it all was a tenderness, the sense of our being one. And when it was over and we lay there, drained and exhausted, I caught the whisper of a sigh as she murmured, ‘Thank you. Now I can sleep.’

When I woke in the morning, she was gone, the sun streaming in through the porthole, steep slopes of tropical green sliding past. I washed and shaved, slipped on a pair of shorts and went through into the wheelhouse. The ship was just emerging from the narrow passage between Bakawari Island and Bougainville. Ahead was a great bay with a curving shoreline and old wooden houses half hidden in the shade of palm trees. ‘Kieta,’ Jona said when I joined him on the upper bridge.

A big yacht lay at anchor off the jetty, some local craft closer inshore, and almost abeam of us was a dusty-looking wharf with a small cargo vessel moored alongside. But it wasn’t the port and the great sweep of its natural harbour that held my astonished gaze. It was the slopes beyond. They were emerald green in the sun, a towering vista of endless rainforests reaching up to pinnacles of grey rock etched sharp against the hard blue of the sky.

There was still a trace of dawn freshness in the air, the sea, the land, everything sparkling in the sun, and Jona standing there with a pipe in his mouth, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and his peaked cap. That’s how I shall always remember Bougainville, the picture in my mind as vivid now as when I first saw it in the lingering freshness of that blazing morning. There was an overpowering sense of magnificence in those endless towering vistas of jungle green. ‘The copper mine is over there, beyond those hills.’ Jona pointed the stem of his pipe towards the forest-clad slopes above Kieta. ‘You’ll get a glimpse of the road they blasted up to it when we move on along the coast to Anewa Bay.’

He ran the ship straight in to the beach, close under the main part of the town, where a little knot of islanders stood waiting. There always seems to be a sense of anticlimax when one finally arrives in port, the contact with the shore and its officials being in marked contrast to the excitement of the landfall, the sense of achievement at the end of a voyage. On this occasion the change of mood was very noticeable. As soon as the bow doors were open and the ramp down a government official came on board accompanied by a police sergeant. Jona did not go down to meet them. He left that to Teopas, waiting with his sister in the wheelhouse. The two drivers sent to take over the trucks remained on the shore.

We watched as Teopas unfastened the back of each truck. The inspection was very thorough, the police sergeant even crawling underneath the vehicles to check the chassis. The Haulpaks, too, were examined. ‘He’ll want to see the manifests now,’ Perenna said.

‘Hans has the manifest.’

‘Then how are you going to explain the trucks?’

To my surprise he seemed almost relaxed. ‘Teopas will tell him we shipped them to help the Co-operative. And Hans has kept his promise; Nasogo is from Buka.’

The official was coming up the ladder now, thickset and very black with a little wisp of a beard and dark glasses. He was dressed in grey-blue trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt that was freshly laundered. Teopas stood waiting close behind him as he shook hands with each of us, murmuring, ‘Joseph Nasogo’, in a soft, gentle voice. Then Jona took them to his cabin, and we waited, the heat and the humidity growing all the time.

At length Perenna asked, ‘What happens if he doesn’t accept Teopas’s explanation?’

I looked at her and gave a little shrug. ‘I’m a stranger in these parts.’ I said it lightly, but there was no answering smile as she stood by the open door to the bridge wing staring down at the trucks. The drivers were getting into them now, and the police sergeant was standing on the ramp, talking to a little group that had collected to gaze at what I imagine they regarded as a pretty odd craft.

Perenna never moved from her position by the open door to the bridge wing. She seemed totally withdrawn inside herself, the tension in her affecting me, so that I wondered whether she was still scared of something or merely locked up in her memories of the place. And then McAvoy appeared briefly, swaying slightly as he stood staring for a moment at the green hills behind the port, his eyes screwed up against the glare. ‘Kapa,’ he muttered. ‘Bloody kapa.’ He turned to Perenna. ‘I suppose you’d gone before this copper thing started?’

She nodded. ‘There was a lot of talk, of course, and they’d started drilling. But I never saw anything of it, nothing had been built.’

‘Well, you’ll see a lot of changes now. Not so much in the rest of Bougainville, and nothing in Buka. But here. Aye, there’s been a great change, an’ all too dam’ quick if you ask me.’ His gaze switched to the little group framed in the open bows. ‘The Black Dogs,’ he growled. ‘Wouldn’t think it to see them now, standing there so peaceable, but this was where they came from. The Rorovana. That was one of the wantoks involved. Nasty fighters, all of them.’

‘This was during the war, was it?’ I asked.

‘Aye. They were the young men of several family groups, all based on Kieta. Claimed they were for the Japs, but what they were after was independence, from the British, from everybody. Caused us a lot of bother, those bastards did, and now they drive great trucks up at the mine or work in the crushing plant. No independence at all, just slaves to machines. And all in less than a decade.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t understand,’ he murmured. ‘The world changed, and then again nothing changed, man being what he is and his nature just the same.’ He stood for a moment, silent, his body sagging as though bowed down by the weight of his thoughts. And then he was gone, back to his cabin and his drink without another word.

It must have been a good half-hour before Jona came back into the wheelhouse, his manner almost jaunty as he saw Nasogo to the top of the bridge wing ladder. Back in the wheelhouse, he informed the two of us that we should tell the Immigration Official at Anewa that our visas would be issued at the offices of the North Solomons Provincial Government in Arawa that afternoon.

A few minutes later Nasogo drove off with the police sergeant in a small Japanese car. The engines of the trucks had already been started up. We watched them bump their way down the ramp into the water and up the beach to the road. ‘Well, that’s that,’ Jona said, and there was a sigh of relief in his voice. ‘We’ll be round at the copper port by lunchtime, and tonight we can all have a good lie-in.’ The ramp clanged shut, the bow doors closing. He rang for Slow Astern, and the big winch drum aft began winding in the anchor. The crew were so used to this manoeuvre that orders were unnecessary.

As we headed north between the high green slopes of Bakawari Island and the Kieta Peninsula, I wandered round the ship, mingling with the crew. No solemnness now, the Buka men all smiling. But they weren’t singing at their work, and they didn’t talk. I couldn’t figure out what the mood was, except that I was conscious of an undercurrent of excitement, all of them locked up inside themselves and the bared teeth not so much a smile as a grin of expectancy. I thought I must be imagining it, but when I spoke to Luke, he evaded my questions. All he would say was: ‘Buka pipal bilong old days. For them this mine and all the great development here and up in the mountains is a kind of Cargo.’

We cut north-west through the narrow passage inside the small island of Arovo, and then we were heading just south of west direct for Anewa Bay. Already it was too hot to con the ship from the upper bridge. We were all of us in the shade of the wheel-house, and as we came clear of the Kieta Peninsula, the broad curve of Arawa Bay began to open, with the modern township spread out on the flats behind it, a pattern of buildings and palms all hazed in heat. ‘Used to be a big expatriate plantation,’ Jona said. ‘Now it’s got the largest shopping centre and superstore in the South West Pacific’ And behind the town, merged now into the jungle green of the mountains, were the faint scars of blasting where the highway to the mine hair-pinned its way up to a gap on the skyline. ‘The mine is just over the other side. In a car it takes about quarter of an hour, maybe twenty minutes, from Anewa. It’s low-grade copper mixed with gold and some silver.’ And he added, ‘The taxes paid by that mine are what keep the new state of Papua New Guinea going. Without it they’d be broke.’

‘How do the Bougainville people feel about that?’ Perenna asked.

He glanced quickly over his shoulder, then said, ‘I’m not sure how they feel about it down here, but in Buka they don’t like it.’

‘Rather similar to the attitude of the Scots on North Sea oil,’ I said.

‘No, not at all similar.’ His voice was suddenly sharp. And then to his sister he said, ‘It’s not a question I would make a habit of asking if I were you; some of them are very sensitive on the matter.’ He lapsed into silence then, staring straight ahead, no longer relaxed, the tenseness back in him as though reminded of something he had temporarily forgotten. Abruptly he said, ‘The Provincial Government is over there.’ And he indicated the eastern end of the small bay. After that he seemed to withdraw into himself, and I became conscious again of the oppressive heat building up in the wheelhouse. Even the air blowing in from the open bridge wing doors was heavy and humid. Wisps of cloud were beginning to drift over the green heights as the forest growth gave up moisture to the air.

Anewa Bay was opening up ahead of us, and soon it was possible to make out the details of the shore buildings. The storage sheds and loading wharf for the copper concentrate were on the northern arm of the bay; the power station in the centre and the fuel storage tanks showed as silvery roundels to the south. The only vessel in this very modern-looking port was a small tug moored alongside the wharf. Jona straightened up from the chart table, glanced at his watch and picked up the microphone for the ship’s loudspeakers. ‘Attention, deck crew. Stand by for berthing twelve-thirty hours. I repeat, twelve-thirty stand by.’

Anewa was very different from Kieta. This was the Company port for one of the biggest copper mines in the world, everything mechanically sophisticated, from the pipeline that carried the liquid concentrate across the Crown Prince Range from the mine 16 miles away at Paguna, to the filtering plant and drying kilns. The power for everything, including the mine, even the electricity for the new township of Arawa, came from that one power station with its Japanese turbines humming away close under the green slopes at the head of the bay.

By the time the formalities of our arrival had been dealt with, it was the hottest part of the day, and with no ship loading at the wharf the port fell into a deep sleep, nobody stirring and only the steady roar from the power station turbines and from the drying plant to indicate that the giant up in the hills beyond the Crown Prince Range continued in full production. Just before 15.00 the crew began straggling in twos and threes up the slipway on which our ramp rested to assemble on the quay, waiting for transport into Arawa. Their jet-black skins and fuzzy mops of hair identified them as Buka men. Perhaps that was why Jona refused to let his sister go with them. ‘I’ll have a word with the power station engineer. There’ll be somebody going into Arawa who can give you both a lift to headquarters.’

Above the shimmering green of the rainforest the clouds had thickened, lying heavy over the heights. Teopas joined the little cluster of men on the quay. It began to rain, big heavy drops that seemed to be squeezed out of the humidity that hung over us. Seaward the sky was still a blinding white haze. The truck appeared, one of the two we had put ashore at Kieta. Teopas got in beside the driver, the rest of the crew scrambling into the back for shelter as the rain increased. The truck splashed off down the road past the power station, and ten minutes later Jona came hurrying back along the empty quay under the shelter of a borrowed umbrella. One of the engineers would be going into the hospital at Arawa to visit a patient in about an hour’s time and would give us a lift.

He arrived in a heavy downpour of rain, driving a company car and wielding a large umbrella. ‘Standard equipment at this time of day,’ he said as he escorted Perenna from the bridge to the car which he had parked halfway down the slip. His name was Fred Perry. ‘Same as the old-time tennis star,’ he said without a flicker of a smile. He was Australian, thirtyish and thickset, with sandy hair and sharp features that reminded me of a fox terrier I had once known. He had been with the Company since the first steel girders of the power station had been erected and, with no prompting at all, began telling us the story of its building as he backed up the slipway and headed out on the road to Arawa.

‘You must like it here,’ I said.

He half turned his head. ‘No worse than Tom Price or Parraburdoo. I had a two-year sabbatical up in the iron cauldron country of Western Australia. But I’d rather be in Sydney any day.’

‘You come from Sydney?’ Perenna asked.

‘No, Wagga Wagga.’ And he went on to tell us about the building of the port, all the cargoes of massive machinery that had been shipped in. Once we were clear of Anewa Bay, the forest closed in on us from either side, the rain bouncing on the tarmac, steaming between the primordial green walls, and frogs everywhere — they turned out later to be toads — squat and motionless, soaking up the moisture.

We came to an intersection and turned left. ‘If you’re going up to the mine, that’s the road you take,’ he said. ‘As good a piece of highway engineering as you’ll see anywhere in the world.’ He talked about that for the rest of the way into Arawa, how it had had to take a fifty-wheel transporter to get the 80-ton crusher up to the ore treatment plant. ‘Remember that when you’re driving up. This whole operation is on such a massive scale it’s difficult to imagine what it was like when we started. It was all very primitive then, the people, too. Now we’ve got training and recreational centres, a technical college, everything they could possibly want. The whole concept, right from the very beginning, was that the indigenous people would eventually take over. The concentrator, for instance. It’s the largest in the world and almost entirely operated by local men. The power station, too. They’ve been very quick to learn, though we do lose a lot of them after training. They’re ambitious, and they seem to like doing their own thing. Transport, shops, engineering, construction work, even import-export, any service operation where there’s a demand and they can make money seems to appeal to them. Funny, isn’t it, when you consider that they had very little experience of money before we began this monster operation. Like I say, they’ve caught on bloody quick.’

The forest fell away, the road opening out to a rain-drenched view of buildings widely spaced on the flat of a valley floor. ‘Arawa.’ He pointed out the shopping centre and superstore as we turned right off the Kieta road, left by the swimming pool, then skirted the edge of the residential area till we came to the hospital. The rain was still bucketing down, and when he had parked, he turned to me. ‘It could go on like this for a couple of hours or more. You’ve got a licence, have you? Then you’d better take the car.’ He gave me directions to the Provincial Government Headquarters. ‘Pick me up when you’re through.’ He was seeing a fellow engineer who had been operated on for appendicitis and didn’t seem to mind how long he stayed. ‘Eddie is pretty well recovered now. Eddie Flint. They’ll know at the desk where to find me. And I’ll leave you the umbrella. You’ll need it.’

He ran for the entrance, and I moved into the driving seat beside Perenna. He had told us where we could get instant pictures taken in the shopping centre, and when we had them, I drove to the Provincial Government offices. By then it was near their closing time, but even so the waiting room was still crowded, and we were the only whites.

I noticed him as soon as we entered the room. He was the centre of a little group in the corner by the window, all of them short, barrel-chested men with bare splayed feet like shovels and heavy broad-nosed features. He was dressed in immaculate white shirt and shorts, white stockings and black shoes, but he was of the same ethnic type, broad-shouldered and stocky with a large, heavily boned head. He stood out from the others, not just on account of his dress, but because of the brightness of his eyes, the vitality in his face, his dominant personality. One of his group nodded in our direction, and he turned, his mouth open on a word, staring. And Perenna, beside me, said on a note of surprise, ‘I know that man. I’m sure I do. It’s Tagup. He’s one of the Chimbu tribal chiefs from the Kuamegu area.’ And she started towards him.

The man detached himself from his group and came over to her, smiling now, his hand outstretched in greeting. On the pocket of his white shirt a silver shield gleamed. I watched the two of them for a moment as they greeted each other, the white girl with the orange-red cap of hair and the black man from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea in his white European clothes. They made a strange, contrasting pair. Then, as they continued talking, I went over to the desk clerk and explained our business. He said he would see the Immigration Officer as soon as he was free, and I lit a cigarette and took up a position against the wall where I could survey the room. I didn’t go over and join Perenna. It didn’t seem important, not then, and anyway, they were talking in a mixture of Pidgin and some local language. After a few minutes the man from Papua New Guinea was called away to lead his group into one of the offices, and Perenna rejoined me, excited at this unexpected renewal of contact with the people she had grown up amongst. ‘It was Tagup. A marvellous man! I was telling him about Tim — I knew he’d understand, and I thought he might help me-’ She broke off abruptly, hesitated, then went on quickly in an artificially light voice. ‘He’s one of their fight leaders. I didn’t expect to find men of the Chimbu people here, and he is from a village quite close to Kuamegu. As a kid I used to cheer them on.’ She laughed. ‘It’s rather like a football match really, a sort of fight display, a show. Unless they’ve really got something to fight about; then it’s serious. But he’s a Councillor now. That’s the silver shield he was wearing.’

‘What’s he doing here then?’ I asked. ‘He’s not looking for a labouring job surely.’

‘No, he says he’s come to find out what the magic is the whites have discovered here that is making so much money for the PNG government, and also for the Chimbu people who come to work in Bougainville. He says it’s disrupting village and clan life, that men who are no better than rubbish men — he called them that — come back with money to buy pigs and cassowaries and are able to display more property at the sing-sings than the chiefs and elders.’ The clerk caught my eye and indicated the door marked Immigration. ‘He was very concerned about it,’ she said.

‘Disturbs the village pecking order?’

She nodded, and I pushed open the door for her. ‘It’s a very complex, very paternalistic social structure, and if it is undermined, there’ll be chaos. They’re fighters. They’re a fighting people …’

It was almost 17.30 when our passports were finally stamped and we went out to the car. The rain had eased, but humidity remained heavy, the daylight fading so that we could see lights in Arawa glimmering through the trees. In the bay behind us there was nothing visible at all. ‘Is it always like this?’ I asked Perenna.

She nodded. ‘Most days the humidity builds up to rain by late afternoon. It’s different in Buka. Buka is comparatively low, but this is a very mountainous island.’ I knew that from the chart. The Crown Prince Range was over 5,000 feet, and there were other mountains along the spine of the island that were a thousand or more feet higher. ‘As soon as the sun sets and it starts getting cooler, the rain gradually exhausts itself. You’ll see. A couple of hours from now the stars will be out, and it will be a lovely evening.’

We got into the car, and I started the engine. ‘What do you plan to do,’ I asked her, ‘now that you’re here and you’ve got your visa? Will you just stay on the ship with your brother, or are you going to get a job?’

She didn’t answer for a moment, sitting very still and gazing ahead through the clicking windscreen wipers. ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured huskily. ‘I had it all planned — when I was on that cruise ship. If Tim was ever well enough to look after himself, I was going to come out here and look after the business side so that Jona wouldn’t have anything to do but run the ship. And when you got me that money … ’ She was smiling. ‘Well, it seemed like an omen, everything suddenly simple and straightforward, and those stamps a symbol of good luck for a change. But now … ’ The smile had faded. ‘Now it all seems different, so many things I don’t understand. Jona, for instance. He’s not a bit as I remember him. He used to be so carefree. And Mac …’ She hesitated, shaking her head. And then, her voice livelier: ‘Better drive back to the hospital. I think Fred will have had enough of his friend’s operation by now.’ She turned to me, smiling again, her mood suddenly relaxed, almost intimate. ‘I’ve got quite a lot of Australian dollars left, and the Immigration Officer said they were just as good currency as the local kina. If we can find a decent restaurant, I’d like you to have dinner with me.’

‘This isn’t our car,’ I reminded her.

‘No. But I’m not spending the evening listening to how they built one of the greatest mines in the world. There’ll be taxis.’ Her hand touched mine. ‘If not, we can thumb a ride or else walk. Or don’t you want to walk me home to my ship?’

Her eyes were laughing, a direct invitation. I put my arm round her and kissed her. The softness of her mouth, the leap of my blood at the feel of her through the thin cotton shirt — I suddenly had other ideas. ‘If he’s tired of his friend, he can always chat up one of the nurses.’ I was trying to recall a suitable place to park. Two blacks passed, a man and a woman, both of them huddled under an umbrella. I put the car into gear and drove out of the parking lot on to the narrow ribbon of tarmac. The glare of headlights showed ahead, tree boles became moving shadows, the lights swung, undipped and blinding. It was a truck, and as I pulled in to the side to let it pass, just before dipping my headlights I caught a glimpse of the driver.

I heard the catch of Perenna’s breath, and suddenly she reached across and flicked the dipper back to high beam. The truck was barely twenty yards away, and I saw him clearly, his teeth showing in a big grin, his broad face frowning in concentration under his woolly head of hair. It was the bos’n’s mate, a man called Malulu, and Teopas was sitting in the cab beside him. The truck roared past us with a sudden burst of acceleration, the same truck that had come down to the port to pick up the crew, and turning my head, I saw the back of it was full of men.

She caught hold of my arm, her head twisted round, her voice urgent: ‘Were they all from the ship? What are they doing here? This road only leads to the Provincial Government offices and on down to the shore. Do you think there’s a café there or a liquor store?’ She was staring at me, suddenly very tense, so that I wondered whether she, too, had seen the glint of metal among the packed bodies. It had only been a glimpse in the red glow of our rear lights and I couldn’t be sure … ‘I think we should go back,’ she said.

‘No.’ I parked the car and switched off the engine. Darkness closed in on us, the trees dripping. ‘You wait here.’

But she was out in a flash. ‘If they’re up to something, I want to know.’

I turned on her, facing her across the roof of the car. ‘Just do what you’re told. Please. Get in the driving seat and wait for me.’ I didn’t stop to see what she did. I just started back down the almost dark road, moving quietly and stopping now and then to listen. I could hear the sound of voices, and then shadows emerged out of the gloom ahead. They were moving in a bunch down the road towards me. I slipped in among the trees and watched as the people from the waiting room hurried past. They were talking amongst themselves, but I couldn’t understand what they said, only that they seemed excited about something, constantly glancing back over their shoulders.

When they were beyond the bend, I stepped back on to the road. My watch showed that it was now after 17.40. They could have been ordered to leave because the offices were closing and their excitement no more than anger at having to return next day. But somehow it hadn’t sounded like that. And when I turned the next bend, and was in sight of the headquarters, there was nobody in the parking lot, the official cars still standing dark and empty and all the lights on in the offices. The truck was parked outside the main entrance. Its lights were off, and I could only just see it. Had I been mistaken? Was this merely some sort of a deputation to the local Commissioner? Beyond the truck a man moved in the shadow of the trees. I wouldn’t have seen him except that the entrance door had been opened and for a moment he was illumined in a shaft of light.

I knew then that I had not been wrong. The light glinted on the short barrel of the machine-pistol cradled on his arm. A voice spoke, and he moved towards the door. It was the driver, Malulu. I retreated softly into the shadows, wondering whether to wait for some confirmation of what I was beginning to fear or drive straight to the police. But all I had seen was a man with a gun. Hardly sufficient to convince them of a hold-up, or perhaps the kidnapping of a senior PNG official.

And then a light suddenly blazed out from a darkened room on my side of the building. There was a shout, the sound of feet on a wooden floor, and the window was flung open, a man starting to climb out. He saw me and hesitated. A door banged. He turned his head, his mouth opening in a scream, but the scream was cut short as the outline of his head and shoulders was jerked away from the window. I heard the soft thud of a blow, a gurgling gasp, followed by a dragging sound, then silence.

The light went out, and I stood there, shocked into immobility. Malulu came round the corner of the building and stood looking over the parked cars. Then he went back to the main entrance. I began to move cautiously through the trees bordering the road. As soon as I reached the bend, I stepped out of concealment and began to run.

I met Perenna coming towards me. ‘I thought I heard a shout. That Chimbu chief — Tagup …’

‘Get back to the car,’ I told her. ‘Quick!’

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ She was running beside me. ‘Tagup said they had been ordered out of the office they were in, all of them, by a gang of armed men.’

We had reached the second bend. The car was still there, and no sign of anybody near it. ‘Get in.’ I flung myself into the driving seat and had the engine on and the car moving before she had shut her door. ‘What else did your Chimbu friend tell you?’ I switched the headlights to high beam. ‘Did he know what they were up to?’

‘No. He didn’t seem to understand what was going on. He was worried about the safety of his people. He’s a redskin, you see …’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Anybody from Papua New Guinea. They’re lighter-skinned, and it seems there’s been trouble between them and the Bougainvilleans.’ We reached the main road, and I turned right, towards the town. ‘Was it really a hold-up? What happened?’

I told her briefly, and by the time I had finished we were at the first house. I parked right against the entrance, jumped out and beat on the door. A woman answered it. ‘May I use your phone, please?’

She looked at me, startled, a small pale face under a fringe of dark hair. ‘Why? Has there been an accident?’

‘Excuse me.’ I pushed past her. ‘Where is it?’

‘The phone?’ She seemed slightly dazed. A record player was blaring in the background. ‘It’s over there, by the kitchen. But you can’t use it. Not now.’

‘Why not?’

‘Something’s gone wrong with it. Sandra — that’s my daughter — she was trying to ring a friend. Then I tried, but it’s out of order, I guess. I’m sorry. Can I help at all? If it’s an accident … ’

‘I’ll try the next house,’ I said, and left her standing there with her mouth agape.

It was a man who answered the door this time. He worked in Community Relations and knew the number of the police. But when he tried to get it for me, he found the phone was dead. ‘Looks like there’s a fault in the line for this part of the town. If it’s urgent, you’d find it quicker to drive there.’ He started to give me directions, but now that I was faced with people in their houses, living their normal lives, I was beginning to realise how difficult it was going to be to convince anyone of what I had seen.

‘I’ll go direct to the hospital,’ I said.

‘It’s an accident, is it?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Anything I can do? If you’ve run down one of the indigenes-’

‘No. It’s something else.’

He stood in the doorway, watching me as I drove off, a puzzled, uncertain look on his face. ‘We’ll go to the hospital,’ I told Perenna. ‘We can get Perry to ring the police from there.’

‘You didn’t get them then?’

‘No. His phone was out, too.’

She was silent for a moment; then she said quietly, ‘Do you think we’ll find all the phones are out?’

The same thought was in my mind, but it was something I didn’t want to think about. ‘We’ll know when we get to the hospital.’ I was wishing now I had told the man what had happened. In Community Relations he might have known if there was any trouble brewing. I glanced at Perenna, sitting tight-lipped beside me. ‘Did your brother give you any hint about what those guns might be used for?’

‘No.’ And she added quickly, ‘He’s not involved. It’s Teopas.’

I didn’t say anything, knowing that Teopas was a man who obeyed orders. He would never have planned a raid on the Provincial Government offices. I should have brought that Community Relations man with me. Phil Brewster. That was the name he had given me. The hospital showed up ahead, and I turned into the entrance.

At the reception desk I asked for Perry. ‘He’s with a patient of yours, Eddie Flint.’

The woman picked up the house phone, spoke to somebody and then said Mr Perry would be right down. I asked her to get me the police then, but she said, ‘I’m sorry. The outside lines are out of order.’

‘Since when?’

‘About quarter of an hour.’ She glanced up at the wall clock. ‘We haven’t been able to contact anybody since before six.’

We waited in silence until Perry appeared. ‘You’ve been a hell of a time.’ He was smiling, relieved that we had finally turned up. ‘What happened? Did you lose your way?’

‘Let’s get out to the car,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you what happened as we drive to the police station.’ And I hustled him out, Perenna talking quickly all the time, telling him about the two houses we had stopped at to telephone. ‘All the phones are out, even the hospital.’

‘That’s a matter for the telephone engineers, not the police.’

‘Don’t talk, just listen.’ I pushed him into the passenger seat. I don’t know why. It was instinctive, not reasoned. I just didn’t want him to drive; his reactions were too slow. He protested, of course, but by then I was behind the wheel and had the engine going. ‘Just tell me where to go.’ And as I followed his instructions, I gave him a brief account of what I had seen at the Government offices.

He didn’t believe me, of course. ‘An armed band?’

And then Perenna in the back seat was telling him what the Chimbu man had said.

‘You don’t want to believe anything they tell you,’ he said. ‘They’re plain stupid. Rock apes, that’s what we call them.’

I heard the angry intake of her breath. ‘I’d have you know, Mr Perry, that I was brought up with the Chimbu people-’

‘There’s police headquarters now,’ he interrupted her, pointing to a white building away to our left. ‘Do you really expect them to believe that there’s some sort of a plot-’

‘They’ll soon find out when they get over to the Government offices.’ Perenna’s voice was controlled now, but very tense.

I was swinging left into the parking area, and then I slammed on the brakes. Standing by the front entrance was a closed truck. ‘A Dodge, isn’t it?’ I was remembering the trucks I had seen on Hans Holland’s RPL.’

‘What is it?’ Perry asked. ‘Why have you stopped?’ His voice was pitched a shade higher, suddenly nervous.

‘I think that truck belongs to the Buka Trading Co-operative.’

‘Then they must be delivering something. There’s no reason to believe-’ His voice cut off abruptly in a gasp. A group of policemen were coming out of the building, their hands above their heads. Two men armed with machine-pistols followed. I switched off our lights, leaving the engine running, and we watched as the policemen were herded into the back of the truck at gunpoint. Then everything suddenly went dark.

I glanced back over my shoulder. Not a light showed anywhere in Arawa. The township was in total darkness. I heard Perry mutter, ‘Christ! They’ve got the power station.’

With the engine just ticking over, and in low gear without lights, I turned the car and felt my way back on to the road. Government headquarters, the telephone exchange, the police and now the power station. The thing that had been in the back of my mind, that I had feared all the time, had happened. It was a coup, a carefully planned coup. ‘Now we know what those guns were for.’ I turned to glance back at Perenna. ‘Did your brother know?’

‘Of course he didn’t.’ But there was no conviction in her voice.

I didn’t say anything, remembering that first night when I had found him drinking alone in the wardroom. He may not have known, but he’d had a pretty good idea. No wonder he had been scared.

‘What do we do now?’ She was leaning forward so that I felt the urgency of her breath on my ear.

‘Get a message out.’ I switched the lights on full and started driving. It was a loosely sprung car, the road-holding poor, but it had a big engine, and out on the main road I got her moving. I glanced at Perry sitting hunched in his seat, his face pale and frightened. ‘Where’s the transmitter — up at the mine?’ He nodded. ‘And they have emergency generators?’

‘Yes.’ Suddenly he grabbed hold of my arm. ‘Do you think — those men — do you think they’re up at the mine already?’

‘That’s something we won’t know till we get there,’ I said as we crossed the bridge over the Bovo River. The town was behind us now, the trees closing in. The road still steamed, but the rain had stopped, and there were fewer toads. ‘Shouldn’t there be some traffic on this road?’ We hadn’t met a single vehicle.

He nodded. ‘It’s usually quite busy at this time of the day. Men going home-’ He hesitated. ‘Perhaps we should go down to Anewa and check at the power station. There may have been a breakdown.’

‘Does that happen often?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Well, then-’ The speedometer was reading eighty. At any moment we would reach the intersection where the mine road came in from the left. I eased my foot on the accelerator. Suppose they had a road block there? Or had they sealed the mine road higher up?

‘How many work up at the mine?’ Perenna asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It varies. But several thousand.’

‘What about whites? At any rate, men with cars. How many would normally be coming down at this time of day?’

She never got the answer to that, for suddenly, clear in the headlights was a figure in a white shirt and carrying a furled umbrella standing in the middle of the road. He stood facing us, signalling us to stop and pull in to the side. A rope was stretched across the roadway between two oil drums, and in the middle was a large noticeboard. ‘Have you got a torch in the car?’ I asked. The man appeared to be unarmed.

Perry reached into the glove locker and handed me a powerful plastic torch. I stopped with my bonnet close against the rope barrier. The board had the words BRIDGE BLOCKED — PLEASE PROCEED ANEWA FOR INSTRUCTIONS painted on it with an aerosol spray. The man came up to my side, leaning down to peer in at the window. ‘You go to Anewa, plis.’ His face was broad and very black, his hair standing up like a golliwog’s.

‘That’s where I’m going,’ I said.

White teeth showed in a big smile. ‘Gutpela. Anewa okay.’ And he went to the oil drum on the left, undid the rope and pulled it clear. The glow of a vehicle showed through the trees coming from the direction of Anewa. I switched off my lights and called him back to my window. ‘That notice,’ I said. ‘The bridge isn’t blocked. We’ve just come over it.’

Uncertainty showed on his face. ‘I’ll remember you,’ I said, shining the torch full in his eyes. And then, while he was still blinded, I slammed the gear lever home, pushed my foot hard down and, with the engine roaring, shot away from him, the tyres slithering on the wet surface as I took the sharp turn on to the mine road. I did it without lights, only switching them on when I was out of range of any pistol he might have been carrying. ‘How far to the mine?’

‘Ten miles, I’d say,’ Perry said.

‘And the surface?’

‘You don’t have to worry about that. Tarmac all the way.’

The road stretched ahead of me, straight and smooth, the gradient only slight, so that I was again doing eighty in top gear. ‘When do we start climbing?’

‘Some miles yet. Then it gets rapidly steeper as the road claws its way up the side of the mountain. You need to be careful then. There are a number of hairpin bends and a nasty drop on the left.’

Perenna leaned close to me. ‘That man. Did you recognise him?’

‘No. I find these black faces confusing. He was from Buka, wasn’t he? That very black glossy skin and hair. Why? Is he one of your brother’s crew?’

‘Not Jona’s. But I think I saw him helping to shift those cases on to the RPL.’ And then she tapped me on the shoulder. ‘There are headlights now, down the road behind us.’

I glanced in the mirror. They were just coming into sight round a shallow bend, presumably the vehicle coming from the direction of Anewa that had allowed me to make it on to the mine road without lights. ‘Is it gaining on us?’

She was twisted round in the back seat, watching it. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said at length. ‘In fact, it looks more like a truck. The headlights are too high off the ground for it to be a car.’

Either they had made certain of the Administration and the port before moving on to the mine or else we were going to find ourselves trapped. The jungle of green growth bordering the road did not look at all inviting as a way of escape, and higher up there would be scrub and rock and precipitous slopes. The gradient was already getting steeper, a breeze blowing off the tops and the road drying. Stars were beginning to show, so that ahead, beyond the gleam of the headlights, I was getting glimpses of the crest of the range etched as a jagged line against the night sky. We crossed a bridge over a rock gulley. Nothing visible to the left, just the blackness of a sheer drop.

‘Can you still see that vehicle?’ I asked Perenna.

‘Just a glimpse now and then. And I think there are two of them, but they’re a long way away now.’

The first real bend was coming up, the tarmac running into gravel on the broad verge as the road swung round to the right. ‘Must be a good view from here.’

‘Wait till you get to the big hairpin just short of the pass,’ Perry said. ‘You can see the whole coastline from there, all the lights.’ He waited till we were round the bend. ‘I was forgetting the power had been cut off.’

Steep, blast-hewn slopes of red earth and rock rose above us, lightly clothed by regeneration. ‘When we get to the top, how far to the mine?’

‘Not far. A mile, perhaps a little more.’

‘And the offices, where are they?’

‘They’re the first thing you come to, on a sort of plateau overlooking Paguna.’

‘Will the mine manager be there, do you think?’

He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t say.’ We were into a double bend now, and when we were round it and snaking out over a black drop, he added, ‘Normally he’d have left by now. Like the rest of us, he lives in Arawa. But with the power off, he’s probably still there. A power failure means the crushers, the concentrator, all the vital machinery comes to a standstill. That’s a major crisis as far as he’s concerned, so he’ll be around somewhere.’

As I went into a long curving right-hand bend, I was thinking that if I were managing one of the biggest mines in the world, and the power and telephone systems failed, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting in my office. I would be out making sure something was being done about it. The slopes to the right of us were so sheer they had been terraced. We were running out to the long buttress of an outcrop, another black void opening up below us, the outline of the tops very close, and as we approached the next backward loop, I slowed the car, stealing a quick glance to the left. Far below in the dark void I could see the road up which we had climbed, a tiny thread of tarmac lit by headlights. Two vehicles, a long way behind now.

‘They’re moving very slowly,’ Perenna said. ‘And they’ve closed up. They’re almost head-to-tail.’

I drove on round the loop. Old trucks, full of armed men — it would take them at least ten, perhaps fifteen minutes to grind their way up to where we were now. I slipped into bottom gear, my foot hard down as the road rose steeply to skirt an outcrop that faced to the right. We were almost at the top. Round the outcrop, we were into a defile, and suddenly we were on the level, our speed increasing as I went up through the gears, and Perenna’s voice behind me saying, ‘Strange, we haven’t met a single car.’

‘Not strange at all,’ Perry answered her. ‘A power failure causes a lot of problems. They’ll all be staying up here trying to cope.’ And then to me: ‘It’s downhill for about a mile, and then there’s a cut-off to the left. The offices are there.’

Lights glimmered in a great bowl in the mountains. Driving fast now, I couldn’t see any details, but I got the impression of a scarred and terraced crater, a sort of moonscape. The road dropped quickly, a glimpse of trees, and suddenly the cut-off was there, the shallow slope of roofs beyond. ‘Left now,’ Perry shouted, and I slammed on the brakes, tyres slithering as I made the turn, and then we were up on a plateau, and I had stopped at steps leading to the veranda of a long, low single-storey building.

‘This it?’ Perry nodded, his door already open.

We rushed in, the three of us, to be faced by a young woman looking cool and neat. But when Perry asked for the mine manager, she informed him that he had flown to Melbourne two days ago. ‘Then we’d like to see Mr Tooley.’

‘I’m afraid he’s busy right now.’

‘Is he in his office or not?’ I asked her.

‘No, I’m afraid-’

‘Just tell us where he is then. It’s urgent.’

‘I’m not sure. I know he was going down to the concentrator first. There’s a power failure, you see, and the telephone-’

‘Who’s in charge here?’

‘Well, nobody really. I think I’m the only one here now. They’re all down at the mine.’

The mine area, when we got down into it, was huge. It was an open-cast mine, a stupendous gravel pit of an area with huge drag cranes shovelling ore into the Euclids and Haulpaks that lumbered like mammoths over the dirt road. We spent an exasperating ten minutes wandering round the massive complex of the concentrator with its electrolytic tanks, driving from one dusty building to another, before we finally ran him to earth at the pit workshop.

He was a tall, rangy Canadian, and he didn’t take it in at first, his mind on other things. ‘Are you trying to tell me there’s been some kind of an uprising?’ That was after I had described what we had seen at police headquarters. Then he turned to Perry. ‘You’re one of the power station engineers. Why the hell didn’t you go down to Anewa and see what the situation was for yourself?’

Even with the power off and the telephone out, I don’t think he would have accepted our version of what had happened if I hadn’t told him about the arms we had trans-shipped off Shortland Island. That finally convinced him. ‘Christ!’ he muttered as he got into the car with us. ‘Bloody politics! We try to keep out of politics, but it’s there all the time, waiting to trip us up.’ By the primary crushing plant I had to pull in to let one of the Haulpaks past. ‘After all we’ve done for them, the work we’ve put into this place. Turn left here.’ We were on to the exit road then, climbing in zigzags up towards the Administration block. ‘Do you think they’ll be there now?’

I glanced at my watch. Twenty minutes since we had stopped at the offices. ‘Bound to be.’

‘What do you plan to do?’ Perenna asked him.

‘Talk to them, I suppose. Find out what they want. What the hell else can I do?’ And he added, ‘If it had been trouble with those Highland labourers of ours, I could understand. The Administration has had trouble with them before.’

‘Have you any weapons up here at the mine?’ I asked.

‘Of course not. We run the mine, that’s all. This is PNG territory. They’re shareholders in it, and they look after the Civil Administration. It would happen when Bill is away in Melbourne. I’m just a mining engineer. I’m not interested in politics.’

At the cut-off to the offices I stopped the car, suggesting that he and Perry went in on foot. ‘We’ll wait for you here in case you want to get out in a hurry.’

‘Okay. If we find they’ve occupied the offices, I’ll send Fred back. See if you can get him down to the power station. I’ll be staying here.’ The two of them went off up the road, their figures blending into the shadows. Perenna and I sat there in the darkness waiting. Ahead the tree-covered outline of the pass was a black shadow against the sky. The murmur of the mine was just audible from the dust bowl behind us. There was no other sound.

‘Do you know where the transmitter is?’ I asked. But of course she didn’t. I was thinking about that, certain it must be somewhere up here where the radio mast would be clear of the mountains, when I saw a shadow moving down the road from the offices. I switched on the ignition, the lights showing Perry running towards us.

They had found the offices just as we had left them, the girl still there on her own. No vehicles had driven in from the coast. They had tested the telex, and it was still working.

‘Has he sent a message out?’

‘No.’

‘He doesn’t believe us, is that it?’ I started to get out of the car, but he stopped me.

‘He wants me to go down to Anewa and check on the situation there. He refuses to do anything until he knows for sure, but if I don’t report back by ten tonight, then he’ll send that telex.’ He got in beside me. ‘What do you think has happened to those trucks that were following us?’

‘We’ll soon know.’ I started the engine, then hesitated, wondering whether to go up to the office myself and get Tooley to send to Port Moresby while it was still possible. But what would he tell them? In his shoes I would be reluctant to stick my neck out on the hearsay of a young engineer and two strangers. Nobody likes making a fool of himself, and anyway, perhaps it wasn’t part of the plan to cut off all communication with the outside world. ‘Let’s see where they’ve got to,’ I said, and drove off up the road to the pass.

We reached the head of the pass, came out of the defile and started down round the buttress to the loop that ran out on to a shoulder of the mountain. When I reached the hairpin, I switched off the lights, pulled on to the verge and stopped the car. Far down the shadowy scar that marked the twisting line of the road tiny figures moved in the glow-worm lights of two vehicles drawn up side by side. I turned to Perry. ‘Isn’t that where the road goes over a gulley?’

He nodded, sitting tense, his head thrust forward as he peered through the windscreen.

The stars were very bright now, the mountain slopes dark in shadow. If they intended to cut the mine off from the coast, that was the obvious place to do it. ‘Are there explosives down at Anewa?’

‘Probably.’ He nodded. ‘We use a lot of explosives for blasting the ore. Yes, I think there’s bound to be some in store at the port.’

‘And this road is the only way out?’

‘There’s the old tote road, also a rough track that follows the line of the Jaba River to the other side of the island. And of course, we’ve got helicopters. But as far as vehicles are concerned, yes. If they blow the road and set up a guard post, then the mine is virtually sealed off from the port.’

The simplicity of it! No supplies, no spares, nothing — until terms had been agreed. And what was it they wanted? The mine couldn’t grant them independence. Perhaps it was money? ‘How much does the mine pay the Papua New Guinea government by way of taxes?’ I asked him.

‘I wouldn’t know. I suppose it’s in the yearly report. There’s royalties as well as tax. I’ve heard it said that in all it amounts to a third of the PNG annual revenue.’

‘So the islanders would be pretty rich if they could get their hands on it.’

‘Yes. But how could they possibly do that? They don’t control the armed forces in Papua New Guinea, or the police. Bougainville comes under the PNG government, and that’s in Port Moresby.’ He sat there for a moment longer, staring intently at the lights on the road below. Suddenly he opened his door and got out. ‘I’ll drive now.’ He came round to my side. ‘I suggest you and Miss Holland wait here. No point in risking your necks. If I don’t get through, then you can walk back to the mine.’ He had pulled open my door. ‘Come on. It’s my car, my problem.’

‘What do you propose to do?’

‘Talk to them, find out what it’s all about.’ His voice was tense, and by the look on his face I knew he had made up his mind. ‘If they won’t let me through, then I’ll come back and pick you up.’

I got out of the car. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But don’t do anything stupid. They’ll be armed.’

He nodded, settling himself in the driving seat. Perenna got out. ‘Why are you doing this? You don’t have to. Leave it to the manager.’

He gave her a nervous little smile. ‘I happen to believe in what we’re trying to do here. We’ve achieved so much.’ And when she started to argue, he said, ‘Believe me, I know. I lecture in my spare time at the Technical College.’

He started the engine then, and she seized hold of my arm. ‘Stop him,’ she said urgently, her face white in the glow of the lights. ‘He doesn’t understand. They’re from Buka, and this is Cargo. The mine is the biggest Cargo they’ve ever had.’

He smiled at her again, trying to appear confident. ‘I’ve been here six years altogether. I guess I know as much about these people as anyone. I’ll be all right.’

‘Just one thing,’ I said. ‘You mentioned an old tote road. Where is it?’

‘About halfway between here and those trucks. It crosses the highway at the second loop of the double hairpin. But it hasn’t been used in years. If you’re thinking of walking out … Here, take the torch.’ He passed it to me, and then, with a quick wave of the hand, he started down the hill.

‘You should have stopped him.’ Her hand was still on my arm, and I could feel her trembling. ‘He doesn’t realise what they’re like. Cargo is magic. It’s like a religion. They’re not open to reason when they’re in the grip of it. If he tries to stop them, they’ll cut him to pieces.’

‘Better sit down,’ I said. ‘Nothing you can do about it now, and we may have a long, rough walk ahead of us.’

We sat there on the gravel verge, watching the blaze of his lights dwindle as the car swung down under the scarred terraces of the mountainside. They disappeared for a time behind the buttress that hid the double hairpin, then came into view again, a tiny glow now as he came on to the final straight before the gulley. He was driving fast, and the figures moving in the lights of the truck froze. I thought I saw the glint of a gun barrel; then he was slowing down. Finally he stopped, the car’s lights shining on the little group in front of the trucks. They waved him back, but he was out of the car now and walking towards them.

Time passed — a minute, perhaps two, the huddle of men moving closer to him. One of them held a gun. I saw it distinctly as he ran past him, and Perry, turning, was suddenly engulfed. I couldn’t see him after that. ‘The fool!’ Perenna breathed. ‘The stupid, quixotic fool!’

‘He’ll be all right,’ I said. But I wasn’t at all sure. It depended how tensed up they were. But at least we had heard no sound of a shot.

His car was driven on past the trucks and parked down the road. After that there was a burst of almost frenzied activity. It went on for about ten minutes, and then the trucks were started up and manoeuvred back and forth until they were turned and could be driven down to park behind the car. We waited, certain of what was going to happen as tiny figures straggled down the road to crouch in the shelter of the vehicles. Suddenly the road surface burst upwards in a flash of flame and smoke. The sound of the explosion followed, a protracted, rattling boom that reverberated against the mountain slopes and slowly died away in the distance.

‘Well, that’s that,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘You going back to the mine or coming on with me to find that tote road?’

She didn’t seem to hear, still sitting there, her eyes wide and shocked, a frozen look on her face. ‘They’d never have thought of that on their own.’ She looked up at me. ‘It’s all been so carefully planned — the arms, the way they’ve taken over the vital centres, everything. But what does he hope to get out if it?’

‘Who?’ I was still gazing intently at what was happening on the road below.

‘Hans, of course. It has to be Hans. The arms, the trucks, the timing … ’ Her voice was low and husky, barely audible. ‘But why? What does he want?’

I wasn’t at all certain about that myself. There was no smelting operation on Bougainville. The gold and silver weren’t separated from the copper; it was shipped out as a mineral concentrate. I had checked that with Tooley. ‘Bulk cargo contracts, I imagine. According to your brother, when he was in England, he was looking for another ship.’

She didn’t seem to take that in, sitting hunched on the gravel, grasping her knees. ‘Power,’ she whispered. ‘He’s a man who wants to dominate everything — everybody.’ A shudder ran through her. And then, not looking at me, still in a whisper, speaking her thoughts aloud: ‘He fascinates me and appals me … he’s … ’ She seemed to choke on the words, falling silent, her mood tense, overwrought. I sat down again, and she gripped hold of my hand, very tight. There was a long silence, and I waited, knowing she wanted to tell me something, needed to explain. Finally, in a small voice, she said, ‘Roy. I’m scared — scared of him, of myself — everything. How’s it going to end?’ And under her breath she murmured, ‘God, what a mess!’

I was still waiting, expecting her to tell me what it was that so appalled her. But she just sat there, wrapped in silent misery. In the end, I asked her about the day he had visited them at Aldeburgh. I knew it had to be that. ‘Tell me what happened,’ I said gently.

She shook her head slowly. ‘No.’ She was like a child lost in darkness, some terrible darkness of her own making. I shifted my position, put my arm round her shoulders. She was shivering, but not with cold. ‘One day perhaps …’ And she turned to me, burying her head in my shoulder. ‘Don’t ask me, not now. Not till I’m ready.’ She was crying now, crying because something had happened, something in that house that could never be wiped from her memory. ‘Hold me. Just hold me.’

I held her, and gradually the shivering ceased. After a while she lifted her head and pulled away. ‘Silly of me.’ She had her handkerchief out and got quickly to her feet. ‘I’m sorry. I get these moods sometimes.’ Her voice was firmer. ‘Maybe it’s the mixed blood. We’re a bit of a mixture, you know.’ She said it with forced gaiety. ‘Come on.’ She reached down and took hold of my hand, pulling me to my feet. ‘Let’s see what that old tote road is like.’

‘It will be badly overgrown,’ I warned her. ‘Probably take us all night to reach the ship. Are you sure you want-’

‘The ship! Of course. I’d almost forgotten.’ Her face, her whole mood was suddenly brighter. ‘If we can find Jona, he can take us out of here.’

I didn’t think Jona would be much help, but I didn’t tell her so as we started down the road. The trucks were driving off now, leaving the car still parked there, just visible in the starlight. And when the glow of the trucks’ lights had finally been swallowed up in the night, there was no glimmer of light anywhere, the world a darkened silence, broken only by the distant murmur of water and the periodic croaking of frogs or toads.