Second Strike

CHAPTER 17

The Cruiser was overheating by the time they could see the lights of Medan so Tom asked Mac if they could stop at the family compound rather than continue to the Sunshine Tours depot in the city.

Mac said, ‘Sure, why not?’

‘There’s a feed in it for you,’ Tom said with a smile as they pulled through farm gates and crawled up a long drive to a series of houses and sheds.

While Tom and Johnny went into the house, Mac lingered outside, made his calls. Joe Imbruglia wasn’t answering so Mac tried Ari, who picked up on the fi rst ring.

‘McQueen, where are you?’ said the Russian.

‘Nice to hear your voice again too, mate. Where are you?’ Mac replied.

‘Look, we have to talk, yes?’ said Ari. ‘I’ll be in Medan tomorrow morning.’

‘So call me then.’

‘First thing,’ said Ari.

Mac hung up and checked his clean phone for messages. There was one from Viktor, saying he was calling from a payphone as Mac had asked, but was leaving a cell phone as an after-hours number.

Mac wasn’t going to use that number – all nuclear scientists and engineers were constantly under surveillance from their governments or their employers. It was a simple rule, and what he needed to ask Viktor could be the kind of thing that brought heat from the friendlies.

Mac decided to let it go until morning and start all over again.

The Hukapas’ cook had made fi sh curry stew, with rice and rotis. Mac washed up and when he came back to the family table there was a tall Maori girl, mid-twenties, walking back from the fridge with several bottles of Tiger arranged between her fi ngers.

Johnny grabbed one of the beers from her and beckoned Mac over.

‘Macca, this is my sister, Mari. Don’t think you guys have met.’

Mac shook her hand, which was wet from holding the beers, and said, ‘G’day. Alan McQueen.’

‘Well, Mr McQueen,’ said Mari smiling as they sat down to eat,

‘not one of our little Elmer Fudds are you?’

‘I’m sorry?’ asked Mac.

‘Watch it mate, she’s a vet,’ said Johnny, teasing.

‘You know, Macca,’ continued Mari. ‘Shoot a rare animal, go back to the suburbs and tell all the boys at the golf club what a man you are? That great white hunter crap -‘

‘Marama!’ snapped Tom. ‘Cut it out. This is Frank McQueen’s boy.’

‘I don’t shoot animals,’ said Mac calmly.

‘Well that would be a fi rst for a white man.’

‘I said cut it out, girl,’ growled Tom, his presence now fi lling the room. ‘Mac’s got nothing to do with the hunting rackets, so don’t blame him for it.’

Taking his fi rst mouthful of fi sh, Mac felt better and took a slug on the Tiger. ‘Rackets?’ he asked, not wanting to divide this family.

‘Don’t get her started, mate. She’s the Mad Vet of Medan,’ chuckled Johnny, and got a backhand punch on the biceps from Mari for his trouble.

‘Well, since you asked,’ Mari began.

‘No you don’t, girl,’ Tom interrupted. ‘Not while I’m eating.’

‘I’ll show you later, Macca,’ said Mari quietly. ‘If you’re up for it.’

‘Okay,’ said Mac, shovelling his food.

‘Okay,’ said Mari, while Johnny smiled and shook his head at Mac.

‘Sorry about before, I assumed you were a hunter,’ said Mari as she opened the door of the large shed adjacent to the house. Animal noises erupted as they entered. ‘This is the surgery.’ She nodded at a series of cages at the back and a surgery table and dispensary in front of them.

She was calmer now than she had been in the house. ‘Look, you don’t have to see her,’ she said. ‘I get upset and make people witness this stuff, but it’s not fair really – it’s not your problem.’

Mac shrugged. ‘Well I’m here now – let’s have a look.’

Following Mari down an avenue of cages, he saw all sorts of monkeys, a Siamang, a couple of orang-utans and a large dark creature lying in a stall near the back. ‘Sumatran rhino,’ said Mari, noticing Mac’s interest.

They stopped at a large wire-sided cage lined with dark straw. It was a stunning sight: an adult tigress lying on her side sleeping with two cubs buried in her teats. One of the cubs looked up at the visitors, yawned and then repositioned itself back in the mother’s tummy.

There was something wrong with the tigress’s back legs, which were heavily bandaged. From what Mac could see, there were hip-to-ankle splints under the bandages.

‘Hunting rackets,’ said Mari. ‘They catch a tiger, bust their back legs so they can’t run, and then some dickhead from Germany or the States is taken on a safari through the Sumatran jungle.’

‘What?’ said Mac, slightly confused. ‘They shoot the tiger? When she’s in this state?’

‘Of course – they pay ten thousand American dollars to do it. The locals can’t resist.’

‘That’s crazy,’ mumbled Mac, embarrassed.

‘They call it hunting.’

They sat in the large cool area at the front of the vet surgery, sipping on cold beers from the fridge and swapping stories. Mari had grown up in Perth, gone to the University of Western Australia and had been planning to work in a vet surgery before clubbing in with some other people to buy their own practice and do the whole huge-mortgage, husband-and-two-kids trip. She’d come to visit Tom and Johnny in Sumatra one Christmas and become involved with a group, Vets Without Borders, who rescued tigers and orang-utans and other distressed wildlife.

‘I never really left,’ she shrugged. ‘It sort of became my life. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll turn into the crazy animal spinster of Sumatra.’

Mac was supposed to say that he doubted that would be the case with such a pretty and smart woman, but he didn’t. ‘Yep – that could easily be it.’

She fl ashed him a nasty look and he winked, laughed.

She laughed too, reluctantly, and leaned forward on the table.

‘I really like you, Macca,’ she smiled. ‘But I’m not going to sleep with you, okay?’

Mari found Mac a camp bed and a loose Indian cotton sheet and Mac slept very deeply in the vet surgery, the whimpering of the tiger and her cubs echoing into his dreams.