Solomons Seal (37 page)

Murder! What else could you call it? It wasn't even indiscriminate bombing, as in Northern Ireland. True, the motive was political, and almost anything, it seems, can be justified these days if that's the motive. But to hold people hostage and then shoot them down in cold blood … Or was a revolution the same as war? Did the writ to kill cover innocent civilians? We were still
arguing about it when the distant whine of aircraft engines started up again.

By then the sky had lightened and the rain had eased up, a breeze blowing down the narrow tideway, wind against current so that the surface of the Passage was ruffled with little breaking waves. The noise of aircraft engines was steady for several minutes so that I guessed they were taxiing out to the runway. Then, suddenly, the noise increased as, one after the other, they took off and rose above the palms like insects on a string. I thought they'd taken off to fly back to Port Moresby for reinforcements, but instead of heading out to the west, they banked and came straight across Chinaman's Quay and the Buka Passage heading south-east. ‘Kieta,' the Australian murmured unbelievingly. ‘They're headed for Kieta.' He turned and stared across the water at the Sohano jetty, which was deserted. ‘Something's wrong,' he muttered. ‘Kieta should be blocked.' He reached for the radio, switched on and began fiddling with the tuning as he slipped the headphones on. ‘I'll try the normal air channel. See if they're talking.' His fingers checked, his face concentrated as he listened intently.

Then he nodded and switched the loudspeaker on: ‘ … just hear you. Over … That's better. ETA over Arawa thirteen-twenty-five. Have your helicopter in position a thousand feet above the downwind end of the chosen section. Okay? … Yes, as a marker. We'll come in below him. If the road is not clear he's to switch his nav lights on and fire red warning flares. Okay? Over … Yes, as soon as the boys are out,
we'll turn straight round and take off downwind … Thanks, Paguna. If the rain stops, the road surface shouldn't be too bad. We'll contact you again as we approach Arawa. It's important about the vehicles, remember. They don't want to footslog it in the heat. Over and out.'

He switched off. ‘Something Holland never thought of, them using a road.' He shook his head. ‘He should've. A road surface would be a damned sight better than some of the fields I've seen those Friendships land on in Australia.' He got up and peered out of the window. The time was 12.52. There was nobody on the jetty, apart from two kids playing tag in the light drizzle, and the path down to it from the radio station and the hospital was deserted. ‘Well, he'd better hurry up, or I'm off back to Anewa. Think they'll give me a medal for bringing their tug back safe and sound?' He grinned at me, running his fingers through his blond beard. ‘Pity. We might've finished up driving ships as big as tankers, with nice cosy quarters, a bar on board and women. Oh, well … ' He gave a little shrug, reaching for the packet of cigarettes lying on the window ledge. ‘No sweat as far as I'm concerned, but Hans Holland now – wonder what he'll do? Finished here, ennee? Be lucky if they don't stand him up against a wall and shoot the—' Footsteps sounded on the companionway, and he turned. It was Perenna.

‘Shoot what?' she asked. ‘What's happened?' And when we told her, she stood staring out at Sohano, her face pale and dark shadows under her eyes. ‘So it's all
over. He's lost. Lost everything. He'll be sent to prison.' She turned, groping for the helmsman's chair, and sat down. ‘Oh, my God! It's no place for a man like Hans.'

It struck me as odd at the time, and it still does, but in that moment her thoughts were not for the men who had been killed to no purpose, or the expatriates in Bougainville whose lives were threatened if Sapuru didn't capitulate, or even for her brother. They were for Hans Holland, as though he were some sort of exotic butterfly that couldn't exist in the strict confines of a prison cell.

I can't remember what we talked about, the three of us huddled together in the wheelhouse, waiting for the arrival time of the planes over Arawa. I don't think we said very much, the time passing slowly as the rain finally stopped and the sun began to burn through the thinning cloud layer. At 13.15 we were tuned to the same VHF channel, but hearing nothing except static, the skipper switched to the shortwave frequency used locally. On this we caught disconnected snatches of talk. The reception was very bad, but a scattering of words came through: ‘Opposition' was one of them, also ‘good landing' and ‘cars at the bridge, thank God … ' And then at 13.34, very clearly, came the words ‘four of us airborne now, course two-four-five and climbing to sixteen thousand. Our ETA … ' The rest was lost, fading into a crackle of static.

The Australian switched off. ‘Course two-four-five, that means they're headed back to Port Moresby, don't it?'

I nodded. ‘Papua New Guinea, anyway.'

‘And just time to get back to Kieta again before nightfall with another eighty or so soldiers.' He was on his feet, calling to his crew to get the anchor up. ‘I'm not hanging around here any longer. I'm on my way.' He winked at me, his teeth showing brown nicotine stains against the bleached hairs of his beard. ‘A good law-abiding citizen, that's me, bringing the company's property back where it belongs. And don't you say anything different, mate, or I'll shop you for a gun-runner.'

The engines were throbbing away, the anchor coming up, and Perenna was on her feet, saying, ‘You can't just leave him.'

‘Can't I?' He laughed. ‘Look, miss. He had it all sewn up, the future, everything. But now it's all fallen apart, and he's in the shit, ennee? Right in it up to his neck, so I aim to put as much space between him and me—'

‘He's coming down to the jetty now,' I said.

He turned, staring at the shore.

‘So what are you going to do?'

‘Oh, hell!' he said. ‘I dunno. Take him to Madehas, I guess. That's where he said.' And he swung the wheel over, turning the tug's bows towards the Sohano jetty. ‘Can't leave him on Sohano to be picked up by the Army. They're bound to commandeer the ferry and send a section over to grab the radio station.'

‘Where's Mac?' Perenna asked.

‘That little monkey-faced man with a bladder full of liquor? He's coiled up in the big hawser aft, sleeping it off. You coming back to Anewa with us, miss?'

Her head jerked up, her expression suddenly changed. ‘Yes,' she said sharply. ‘Yes, of course.' Then she was silent, looking straight ahead, watching as the bows sidled towards the jetty where Hans stood facing us, very still and watchful as though events had made him suddenly suspicious of everyone and everything. The Australian slid the tug alongside so that its bulwarks barely touched the wood, and almost before Hans had stepped on board he had the prop in reverse and we were backing out into the Passage, the bows already swinging so that when he went ahead, they were still turning towards Minon. ‘You still want to go to Madehas?' he asked.

Hans didn't answer immediately, standing just outside the open door to the caboose, his eyes not seeing anything, only his thoughts. At length he turned his head and said, ‘Did you manage to raise the LCT?'

‘Yep. Passed on your message.'

Hans nodded. He had his shirt outside his trousers. It was almost dry now, and like that it was only when he moved I could see the shape of a gun stuck into his waistband. ‘Another hour then, and Jonathan should be back.'

‘Thank God for that,' Perenna breathed, and the Australian said, ‘Depends what he decides when he's heard the news, doesn't it? He might head straight back to Anewa like I'm going to do soon as I've dropped you.'

Hans looked at him, his silence and the contempt in his eyes saying more than words. ‘Put me ashore at Madehas,' he said finally. ‘The north of the island,
below the house.' He turned to me. ‘And you'll come ashore with me. I want that letter.'

That he should have remembered it, with all that had happened – that really did strike me as very strange. Then, as we passed through the narrows between the Minon and Buka Island markers, I forgot all about it, Perenna pulling me to one side and saying, ‘Have you seen his eyes? He's desperate. I'm afraid he'll do something terrible.'

‘Nonsense,' I whispered.

‘You just look at his face. That shut look. And he's got something under his shirt. A grenade?'

‘It's a gun.'

‘You can't be sure. It could be a grenade—'

Her voice had risen slightly, and he turned, quick as a cat. ‘What's that you say?'

‘Nothing.' The freckles on her face showed very clear against the pallor of her skin, her eyes wide as she stared straight into his face.

He smiled, but it was more of a grimace, reminding me of ancient gargoyles. ‘Who put the curse on us, Perenna? Eh? Who was it? My father, your grandfather – or somebody further back, some devilish Holland we don't know about? And Red Holland – my father – murdered by your grandfather. Nothing went right for them, did it?' His voice had risen, the words spat out between clenched teeth. ‘And now, ten years' work, ten years' preparation, coaxing, organising, building for a big future, and what happens? It goes sour on me, a ghastly failure, and just because a gorilla from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, a man who
should be back in the Dark Ages living in a goddam cave, comes down from Paguna with two or three hundred followers armed with pangas, telling Sapuru he's magicked their jobs away and for that he's going to put a bigger magic on him. That's what he said, a bigger magic – because he's more than a fight leader, he's a sorcerer and capable of bigger magic than Sapuru. And you know what?' He thrust his face close to Perenna's, staring at her, his eyes gone wild. ‘It was you they wanted. Yes, you. If I didn't bring you back to speak for them, they'd tear every Buka man in Arawa limb from limb and eat them at the biggest sing-sing since before the first missionary came.'

He had been talking so fast spittle had formed on his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and turned to me. ‘You think you're going to marry this little bitch and make the Holland Line your own, eh? Oh, I heard all about you and what happened on the trip over. But you'll never do it, not if you've any sense. Let the ships, the name, everything, sink into oblivion – like the old
Holland Trader.
' His voice had quietened as though he were beginning to come to terms with what had happened. ‘Maybe that's the answer.' He had turned away and was staring for'ard towards the house, which was just coming into sight on the high ground at the north end of Madehas.

Nobody spoke after that, the only sound the swirl of water at the bows and the background hum of the engines. Perenna looked very shaken, almost cowed, and suddenly I was seeing her in quite a different light, not as a highly attractive, sensual woman, but
as somebody with very real problems that made her vulnerable. The broadened nose, the fullness of the lips, the thrusting breasts, the way she walked even and the way her hair fitted her head like a cap – it was all there, traces of a mixed blood, the people I had seen in the market and at the quayside shops.

She saw me staring at her and half reached out her hand, a timid gesture that was retracted almost before it was begun. I felt a sudden surge of emotion – pity, love, compassion, I don't know what it was. She lowered her head as though in embarrassment, and for that moment the sensuality of her body, its ability to arouse me, all my previous feelings for her were quite lacking. And then she lifted her head again, her eyelids, too, so that our eyes met, and something passed between us, something deep and personal. She lowered her eyes again, but squared her shoulders as though strengthened by some resolve. ‘Are you going up to the house with him?' she asked.

‘Perhaps. I don't know.'

Hans heard me and said, ‘You haven't any choice. I want that letter.'

‘I'll come with you then,' she said.

He turned on her. ‘You'll do as you're told and stay on board till your brother arrives.' We had left the last marker astern and were approaching North Madehas. ‘You wait here for the LCT,' he told the Australian. ‘As soon as you've put Miss Holland aboard, then you're free to head for Anewa.'

‘You'll remain at Madehas, will you?'

Hans nodded.

‘So what do I tell them down at Anewa?'

Hans gave a quick, humourless bark of a laugh. ‘Don't reck'n you need me to coach you. You were coerced. I brought you up here against your will. At gunpoint, was it?' He smiled. ‘You're a two-timing sodding bastard, aren't you?'

‘Just impressionable.' The Australian's teeth showed brown in his beard as he reached for the engine controls. I never did discover the man's name. A relief driver, that's how he described himself. The revs dropped, and we slipped through between the shallows to the north and the reef arm reaching out from Madehas.

I didn't see them anchor. I was down below, getting the letter from my bag and slipping it in with the dollars in my hip pocket. If Perenna hadn't been there, I could have said I'd made a mistake and handed it straight over to him. I didn't want to go back to that house, and certainly not with Hans Holland. There
was
something evil about it. I had felt it when I was there with Mac, a brooding menace hanging over it. And to go there now with a man whose world had collapsed … but I had no alternative. I had said the letter was still in the house, and if I produced it now, he would know I had shown it to Perenna.
Pagan bad.
Mac's words came back to me as the chain rattled out and I climbed the ladder to the wheelhouse.

The dinghy was already over the side. Perenna looked at me, a wide-eyed stare. But she didn't say anything. No last-minute appeal to me not to go, and I knew then she was scared – scared of what he would
do if he discovered she knew the contents of that letter. And neither of us understood why it mattered so much to him. ‘You ready, Slingsby?' He was waiting for me out on the flat rounded stern where the Mortlock man with the jet-black skin was holding the painter. As I went to join him, seeing the bulge of the gun under his shirt and myself unarmed, I wasn't feeling all that confident. And what made it worse, the sun was coming out, everything fresh and sparkling after the rain. For the first time since I had arrived in the Buka Passage I was glad to be alive and in such a place.