The Samurai Inheritance

XL

‘My grandfather served in the SAS during the war.’

Doug Stewart’s head came up from the map he was checking. ‘Is that supposed to impress me?’

‘Don’t be so bloody bolshie,’ Jamie snapped as he slipped into the jungle boots Devlin’s people had provided. Since breakfasting in the dark he’d become increasingly nervous about what lay ahead and it wasn’t very reassuring that it appeared his supposed protector was equally jittery. ‘I just meant that I knew what you were on about when you said that would be telling and about the Brits in Vietnam. I read somewhere about a few of them being unhappy about missing out on a proper war and taking “unofficial leave” to join in. Lessons to be learned, and all that.’

‘Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look, your lordship.’

Jamie stared at him. Another man had called him that not so long ago and that man had ended up dead. ‘Let’s get this straight. I’m not your lordship and I’m not your pukka English gent. I went to a grammar school and my mother cleaned the local bank to make ends meet.’

‘With a name like Saintclair? Don’t make me laugh. What did your old man do? A squaddie like your granddad? He must have been at least a general.’

Jamie concentrated on packing the camouflage-green rucksack that matched his Australian army-issue shorts and T-shirt. ‘I wouldn’t know; I never met him.’

‘Now who’s being bolshie?’ Stewart let out a cackle that was interrupted as Keith Devlin marched into the room.

‘Got everything you need, fellas?’

Jamie nodded. The rucksacks were filled with survival gear and enough food and water to last three days. He picked his up, surprised at the weight. He could carry it without too much trouble, but it would take a bit of getting used to. He was just glad Stewart had vetoed the tent and sleeping bags they’d been offered. ‘If it comes to it, we sleep on the ground like the Boogs; and if it rains we get wet. It never did me any harm in Vietnam.’ The security chief gave his boss a significant look. ‘Just one more thing.’

Devlin’s heavy brows came together in a frown. ‘Are you sure you’ll need it?’

‘Better safe than sorry. You’re not the one that’s going out in the long grass, mate.’

After a moment’s hesitation Devlin nodded to Joe who accompanied him. The guard left to return a moment later with a long leather case. He handed it to Doug Stewart. The security chief unzipped the case and whistled as he withdrew four foot of painted steel and black plastic.

‘Just like the old days,’ he chuckled. He turned to Jamie. ‘Your L1A1 self-loading rifle is a precision weapon that is efficient and easily maintained,’ he said, as if quoting from the service manual. ‘Weighs a fucking ton, but it can put a 7.62mm round through a brick wall and still kill the bastard hiding behind it. Eighty rounds of ammo,’ he checked the magazines one by one, ‘but we’re not planning to start a war, so forty will do.’ He tossed two of the magazines to Joe. ‘The Bougainville Revolutionary Army captured hundreds of these buggers from the PNG troops. If we do happen to shoot someone nobody’s gonna be any the wiser.’

Jamie was appalled at the sight of the weapon. He’d fired it on familiarization courses during his time at the Cambridge OTC and he knew just how deadly it could be. This trip had suddenly taken on a whole new dimension. ‘You can cut out the we for a bloody start,’ he bridled. ‘I’m not planning to shoot anybody. I thought this was supposed to be a quick jaunt up a mountain and back down again?’

‘Of course it—’

Devlin’s reassurance was cut off in mid-sentence by Doug Stewart. ‘So if the buggers come at you out of the jungle waving one of these,’ he whipped the machete from the scabbard on his belt with a soft hissing sound and pointed it at Jamie’s groin, ‘you’re just gonna let them cut off your goolies?’

Jamie glared at him and Keith Devlin stepped forward to take his employee by the arm. ‘A word, Doug.’ The two men walked out of the room.

‘Jesus Christ, what have I got myself into this time?’ Jamie muttered as he finished packing his rucksack.

‘You don’t want to mind old Doug,’ Joe said mildly. ‘I think he had a little too much of the jungle juice last night. He likes to cover all the bases, that’s all. Says it’s what got him through the ’Nam.’

‘Somebody should tell him the war is over,’ the Englishman snapped.

Devlin returned carrying something in a soft leather bag tied at the neck with a beaded cord. He handed it to Jamie. ‘You’ll need this,’ he said. ‘Remember. You don’t make the exchange until you have the briefcase in your hand. Got that?’

Jamie nodded and checked the contents: the Bougainville head nestled in a cocoon of plastic bubble wrap. He stowed it in a separate compartment of the rucksack he’d left empty for the purpose.

‘What about Wyatt Earp?’ he protested. ‘Wouldn’t it be safer to send Joe and Andy with me instead? At least they don’t plan to start a war.’

‘It’s all sorted, son,’ Devlin assured him. ‘I’ve had a word with Doug and nobody’s going to be doing any shooting.’

But when they went out to the Toyota the first thing Jamie noticed was the gun case in the back seat.

Stewart drove in silence, every movement a testament to his anger at whatever Keith Devlin had said to him, each gear change accompanied by a savage howl of engine noise. They left the compound and reversed their route of the previous day until they came to the junction. Someone had moved the roadblock of barrels during the night and the security chief swept past the ‘No Go Area’ sign as if it didn’t exist. As they drove by, Jamie noticed a man standing in the shadow of the trees with a mobile phone to his ear. His eyes never left the Toyota. At first the road was wide enough for two vehicles, but soon the jungle closed in and it became single track, rising steadily to be consumed in the lush green folds of the mountains.

‘All right,’ Jamie said eventually, ‘I think you’ve sulked long enough. Now you can tell me what the plan is.’

‘The plan is to get the job done and stay alive.’ Stewart’s tone was terse and Jamie noticed he spent as much time looking behind him as in front.

‘I’d assumed that. I was hoping for a little more detail.’

He winced as Stewart changed gear with a metallic crunch to take a hair-pin bend that had a stomach-churning drop on the passenger side. ‘This road was built by Bougainville Copper Limited. It takes us up to the Panguna Mine, which just happens to be close to the highest ridge in the Crown Prince mountain range. The old chief, Kristian, has a longhouse about nine miles south, down Takuan way, more or less on the same ridge line. The easiest way to get there is from Panguna so we’ll leave the car there and trek through the jungle.’

‘Nine miles?’

Stewart shrugged. ‘The going’s not too bad, except in a couple of places. I reckon we can be in and out by teatime — if everything works out.’

Something about the way he said those last four words made Jamie wary. ‘Is there any reason why everything shouldn’t work out?’

The road widened again at a sweeping bend and Stewart drew in to the side of the road and switched off the engine.

For a moment the only sound was the gentle tick of cooling metal. Stewart gestured at the greenery that covered everything around them. ‘What I learned about the jungle in Borneo and Vietnam is you can’t fight it, you have to learn to live with it. The people most at home in the jungle are the ones who’ve never known anything else. The minute we step off this road we’re at a disadvantage. You’re an arty-farty city boy who’s got lucky a couple of times and I’m an over-the-hill special forces veteran who’s not so special any more.’ He reached down to his feet and retrieved a bottle of clear liquid, taking a long slug before resuming. ‘Good old Keith has been feeding you the sugar-coated version of Bougainville from the start, and he still is. Y’see, Kristian Anugu isn’t the only person on this island who wants the head. There are at least three other factions who have an interest in it, all for different reasons, and they all outgun us. One of them is an offshoot of the old man’s clan who think they have a better claim. They come from the matriarchal line, so they could have a point. Women were the traditional land holders on Bougainville up till what they call the Crisis, but now the men have the power. It’s no coincidence that the Panguna landowners’ association we’ve been dealing with is an all-male preserve.’ A few metres further up the road a large pig stepped warily into the road and Stewart paused as he watched three small piglets follow it across the tarmac and disappear into the jungle on the far side. ‘That could have been supper.’ He grinned, but his voice quickly turned serious again. ‘Then there’s the government of Papua New Guinea, who by now are aware that Devlin Metal Resources’ master plan for the reopening of Panguna will cut them out of the loop. Whatever Keith tells you, these blokes are not going to give up billions of dollars without a fight. Right now, on the other side of this hill, down in the Jaba River valley, there are a couple of hundred small-scale and highly illegal gold-mining operations. About seventy-five per cent of them are run by outsiders, what the islanders here call Redskins, from Papua New Guinea. What if some of these miners aren’t miners at all, but PNG spies, or worse, PNG special forces soldiers in disguise? Way back when, I helped to train some of these guys and if they find out we’re on the way to see Kristian it kinda ups the ante.’

‘And the third group.’

‘We’re not certain,’ Stewart admitted. ‘A few Boogs down in Arawa sticking their noses in where they’re not wanted. Maybe not all the former BRA fighters are prepared to dance to Devlin’s tune, or maybe they just want more money. It’s the fact that I don’t know that makes me more nervous about them than all the others.’

‘So that explains the SLR?’

‘That’s right, son. You know what they say: never take a knife to a gunfight. And all of this is without taking into account the Chinks, who have their spies everywhere but tend to do their fighting in the court and the boardroom. They’ve already made one pitch to the landowners’ association that Devlin has seen off, but it won’t be the last.’

At the mention of ‘Chinks’ Jamie wondered whether he should mention his encounter with Lim, but decided to keep it to himself. ‘What I don’t understand is why Devlin didn’t send us with a proper escort. Either more guards or these BRA people you keep talking about.’

The security chief responded with a bark of bitter laughter. ‘The straight answer is that taking more guys like Joe and Andy would make us stick out like your proverbial dahlia on a dungheap and make us more of a target if the bad guys are out there. Likewise, the BRA boys might just get halfway there and decide to take the head for themselves and ransom it back. Like I say, you can’t trust ’em.’

‘If that’s the straight answer what’s the not so straight one?’

‘You go down that road and you could end up in dangerous territory, Mr Saintclair.’

‘Nevertheless …’

Stewart sucked on a tooth while he made up his mind. ‘All right, let’s just say that in the past couple of years Devlin Metal Resources has become what we might call a leaky ship. People in high places are asking awkward questions about subjects they’re not supposed to know about.’

‘I could see how that might make a certain party nervous.’

Stewart nodded. ‘Naturally, your intrepid head of security instigates an immediate investigation and cleans out anyone who’s tainted, even by association. The leaks stop, but the fact that they happened at all might make that certain party look at his hitherto trusted security chief through new eyes. Either he’s past it — after all, he’s getting on a bit, as you’re so fond of telling him — or worse, maybe someone from outside has offered to enhance his pension package in return for privileged access. If it’s scenario number two, you have a big problem. This bloke you’ve trusted with your deepest secrets for the last twenty-five years knows more about Devlin Metal Resources operations than any man alive, even you — you might even say he knows where the bodies are buried, and you wouldn’t be far wrong — because it’s the nature of things that certain aspects of the business have to be done on a deniable basis.’

‘Now you’re making me nervous.’

Stewart restarted the engine and engaged the car’s transmission. ‘So you should be, son.’ He turned to stare at Jamie for a moment before pulling out into the road. ‘Because I find it bloody strange that Keith Devlin decided to choose a desk-bound dinosaur like me to babysit Jamie Saintclair on a jaunt that’s supposed to turn Devlin Metal Resources into the world’s biggest mining company.’

The Toyota crested the brow of a hill and began the gradual descent into a long valley. The only signs of modern civilization since they’d left the junction had been a line of rusting electricity pylons and a few sections of battered crash barrier. Gradually, Jamie became aware of a subtle change in his surroundings. It must be the same sensation explorers felt when they came upon the ruins of a lost civilization hidden deep in the jungle. The first thing he noticed were angles when, till now, the jungle had dealt solely in curves. Then fragments of what could only be buildings appeared, throttled by twisted lengths of vine and liana, or hidden amongst vast, olive-green plants.

‘Panguna,’ Stewart said laconically. ‘The world’s biggest scrapyard.’ They drove towards the centre of town and the ruins became more visible. Vast complexes of skeletal iron that had once been factories. Workshops a hundred times larger than anything Jamie had seen in Arawa, stripped of their roofs and walls, but still with the massive crushing machinery inside. His eyes were drawn to the blue-white flash of a welding torch and he saw a small group of men eyeing the car suspiciously from the shadows of some former mill or smelter.

‘Looters,’ the security boss announced. ‘We stay out of their way.’

At last the half-buried industrial landscape gave way to wrecked and looted apartment blocks and houses, tennis courts and the empty blue rectangle of a large swimming pool that, given the climate, must have been the most popular place in town. Stewart pointed to a vast concrete building that had been the mine’s administrative headquarters, but, like everything else, was once more being consumed by nature. Jamie was suddenly overwhelmed by the certainty that he was seeing the future; a chilling foretelling of the day humankind got its comeuppance and disappeared from the earth.

And that was before he saw the mine.

He’d had glimpses of bare earth and rock through the trees on the way down into Panguna town, but only now, as Stewart drew up at the side of the crater, was the true vastness of one of the world’s largest industrial sites or, depending on your point of view, greatest acts of ecological vandalism, truly apparent. It was an enormous pit, big enough to swallow the entire City of London and still have room for afters. Sharply stepped inner slopes were scattered with hundreds of rusting pieces of machinery. Jamie thought it was probably the ugliest, harshest and most desolate piece of real estate he’d ever laid eyes on, yet it still contained elements of beauty that took the breath away. Half a kilometre below, in the centre of the drab brown crater, a copper-blue lake shone like a brightly polished jewel fed from the innumerable streams that carved gullies in the steep walls. These, he now saw, were also tinged with blue where the copper ore was directly exposed to the air. A row of what looked like dead beetles caught his eye and he realized he was looking at a line of parked trucks that must have been used to carry the ore from the mine to the processing plants. Stewart saw the direction of his gaze.

‘There are forty-five of them and they weigh one hundred and seventy tons each. Everything was mothballed the day the mine closed and unless it’s been pinched or dismantled it’s still here. Like I said: the world’s biggest scrapyard.’

‘It’s incredible.’ Jamie heard the awed shake in his voice. ‘That’s the only word for it. As if the world ended, but nobody told us.’

‘It definitely ended for the Moroni.’ Stewart accompanied the words with a bitter laugh. ‘Their village was somewhere right in the middle, but about on the level with that mountain over there.’ He pointed to a hill that towered above the level of the mine walls. ‘The mine company — with the help of the Australian government, I might add — shipped them out lock, stock and barrel and stuck them down on the coast. A few years later they were burned out of their new houses by the PNG Defence Force. Whatever Moroni means in their language it definitely isn’t good luck.’

‘You sound as if you have some sympathy for them? I have to say I find that a bit unlikely.’

‘Maybe it is,’ Stewart conceded. ‘But I have my reasons. I’ve got twenty-five years in this business, son.’ His eyes turned solemn as they surveyed the massive crater below. ‘Most of it’s been spent stopping Keith Devlin’s workers pinching anything they could lay their hands on. We had the occasional idiot breaking in to steal a truck or an excavator, but the mines in Australia were mostly places where there were no people. Oh, the Abos would complain that some bit of bush was their old man’s special dreaming place and try to hit us for a bit of compo, but they had another fifty thousand acres to get lost in and nobody paid too much mind. They’d get an axe and a knife from stores and be on their way. This was different.’ He turned to meet Jamie’s gaze. ‘They conned these people and stole their land, and not content with that they destroyed their way of life. The least they could do was to give them a decent amount of cash to start again and to build the kind of places BCL built for its own people. Instead, they filled the pockets of the politicians in Port Moresby, and maybe in Canberra, too.’ Without warning his face split in a grin. ‘And then the Boogs surprised them. They thought they could bulldoze the islanders out of the way, but Francis Ona and his mates fought back, and by Christ didn’t they show them something? I’m a fighting man, Saintclair, and I respect fighters. These guys fought with spears and home-made rifles against helicopter gunships and somehow they won. They tormented the enemy by night and lured them into ambush by day. When the choppers flew in to carry out the wounded they took out the pilots or the motors. The PNG didn’t have the stomach for it and eventually they left. That was when they stopped the medicines and food supplies coming in, which on a tropical island is the equivalent of biological warfare. The world abandoned the buggers, but they still stuck it out. Sure, I have sympathy for them, I even admire them, but that isn’t going to do them any good in the long run.’

‘So you don’t believe in Keith Devlin’s brave new world?’

Stewart stared at him. ‘I hope I’m around to see it.’

They drove round to the far side of the mine and parked behind an abandoned shed, where they unloaded the Toyota. At this height the temperature was a little lower, but the humidity correspondingly high and by the time they’d finished Jamie could feel the sweat pouring down his back and into the band of his camouflage trousers. He shrugged on his pack and strapped on a belt with a machete and water bottle attached. Doug Stewart did likewise and hefted the L1A1, ignoring Jamie’s look of disgust. The Englishman pulled out his mobile phone and was perplexed by the lack of a signal.

‘You can forget that up here,’ Stewart said. ‘Might as well leave it behind. And before we get out into the bush we need to set some ground rules. First, water. We’re going to be sweating a lot of it out so we need to rehydrate regularly. On the other hand, drinking too much can bring on water intoxication, which can kill you. So you drink when I drink, or if you feel the need, ask. Got that?’

‘All right,’ Jamie agreed. ‘I don’t see any problem.’

‘We’ll see.’ Stewart showed his teeth in a shark’s grin. ‘Second, all the land around here is owned by clans, that is extended native families. As you’d expect given the situation with the mine, land ownership is a sensitive issue and they can be touchy about strangers venturing too close. Normally, I’d have contacted these people in advance, but that would have alerted the whole island. If we meet anybody, or anybody hails us, you freeze and let me do the talking. No aggressive moves.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Listen, son,’ Stewart jabbed him in the chest to make his point, ‘this is no bloody joke. That’s the jungle out there and the jungle will kill you if you don’t take it seriously. We get a scratch anywhere, even the kind of thing you’d ignore back in the real world, we smother it in ointment at the next rest stop, because, believe me, the last thing you want is a tropical ulcer. You stay close to my back and keep your eyes peeled. If we hit any really rough stuff we’ll take it in turns to cut our way through.’ He pulled out a compass and handed it to Jamie. ‘Here, this is a spare. In case we get split up this is what you do. We’re gonna head south-east for about three hours until we hit a little plain in the headwaters of the Pagana River. You’ll know you’re in the right spot because there are two distinctive hills to the west of the plain, like gateposts. Kristian Anugu’s longhouse is right between them and his clan has plantations and gardens scattered across the plain.’

‘That all sounds deceptively easy, Doug old boy,’ Jamie looked out over the rumpled carpet of jungle-clad hills that stretched for mile upon mile, ‘and I’m sure you know exactly where we’re going. But we both know the reality is that once we’re in there we won’t be able to see more than twenty feet in any direction, and the broken ground means we aren’t likely to travel in a straight line.’

Doug Stewart shook his head in exasperation. ‘In that case, Jamie, old boy, I’ll make it even simpler for you. See that notch in the hills on the other side of the valley?’

Jamie screwed up his eyes and he could just make out some kind of deviation in the forest canopy. ‘More or less.’

‘Well, that marks an old trading trail from the Moroni days and it runs from here, through the Pagana Plain all the way to Buin. You follow that feature until you hit coconut and cocoa plantations; proper cultivated ground. Somewhere around there, you’ll find people. Any one of them will guide you to Kristian Anugu.’

‘But how will I ask them, I don’t speak Tok what’s-it?’

‘Oh, it shouldn’t be too difficult. All you have to do is keep repeating his name and looking gormless.’

Jamie managed a wry smile. ‘I think I can manage that.’

‘Then let’s go. Tarzan, your jungle awaits.’