Carter heard the back door open and close and a set of light footsteps tread across wooden floorboards toward the kitchen.
The kettle boiled. Thomas bowed his head over the pot.
9
Wayan Gusti, Thomas’s latest protégé, stood in the doorway holding his head high. When Carter had last seen him a year and a half ago, Wayan was a shy, slightly built sixteen-year-old Balinese boy. He’d developed into a fine-looking young man. He wore loose black trousers, a cutaway white cotton T-shirt and a black bandana wrapped around his forehead. His cheeks shone with a light sheen of sweat, suggesting he’d been working out. The muscle definition of his arms and chest was impressive. He’d developed strength and power to complement his natural agility and speed.
Wayan looked at Carter with a mixture of judgement and censure, suggesting he hadn’t forgiven him for disappearing without saying goodbye.
Physically he looked ready to become a sanjuro, the name given to the order’s elite field operatives. But Carter, who’d been the youngest member to graduate as a sanjuro in the order’s history, wondered whether he yet possessed the emotional and spiritual maturity required. They were a warrior’s most important qualities and were the hardest to master.
In his left hand Wayan carried a staff made from bamboo, a batang, the most versatile of the pencak silat weapons and a favorite of Carter’s. Wayan held it like it was an extension of his body.
A good sign.
Carter stood up and was surprised at how tall Wayan had grown. He was nearly six foot, only a couple of inches shorter than himself.
Carter extended his hand. “Good to see you.”
The young man shook it without enthusiasm. “Thomas says you’ve become a full-time surfer. You like that?”
“It has its moments.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I needed some space.”
“You could’ve at least said goodbye.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
They stood in an uncomfortable silence. Carter knew how much the younger man had looked up to him and understood his disappointment and hurt.
“Has Thomas sent you into the field yet?” Carter asked.
“He says I’m not ready. But I’m in the process of proving him wrong. Are you coming back?”
“That wasn’t the plan when I woke up this morning.”
“So you’re just going to keep drifting like a surf bum when there’s important work to do?”
Carter didn’t know what to say to that.
“We need you,” Wayan told him.
“Enough,” Thomas said, walking toward the table carrying a wooden tray with a Chinese teapot and three small cups on it. “Fetch Carter a T-shirt. We need to get down to business.”
Wayan left the room. Thomas placed the tray on the table and turned his attention to Carter. “As Erina has undoubtedly informed you, changing fortunes and the alignment of the stars mean your services are again required.”
Carter sat back down and rested his forearms on the table. “Whether I like it or not?”
“I believe I have your best interests at heart.”
“Really?”
“Your trouble is you’ve lost your faith. You are no longer governed by your duty and the flow of the universe.”
Carter folded his arms and said nothing.
“Rather,” Thomas continued, “you give every indication of following only the dictates of your ego. The order’s principles apply to every aspect of your life, not just when you’re on assignment.”
“The reason I left had nothing to do with me questioning the principles,” Carter said. “It was the way you tried to impose your will on me and force me to do things I didn’t believe in. You’re still doing it, even now.”
“There is something much bigger going on here. The order needs you. This work is your calling, whether you realize it or not.”
“And you still won’t listen to a word I say.”
“There has to be a chain of command. We each have to know our place within the chain. Life without faith, duty and discipline is meaningless.”
Thomas had been saying much the same thing since they first met at his Bangkok dojo when Carter was fourteen years old. The young Australian boy had been rebellious on the surface, but deep down, an insatiable hunger for guidance and order drove him. The dojo became his sanctuary, the only place in the chaotic city where he felt safe and at peace.
Up until then he’d been an outsider in Bangkok. The local kids had found out about his mother and called her a filthy junkie. Carter felt compelled to defend her honor, like he had at Lennox, and constantly fought against bigger and older local boys who saw him as a loner and a soft target with no one to back him up.
After a few months of intense training he began to combine what he learned at the dojo with his natural talents and instincts on the streets to stunning effect. The boys soon stopped taunting him about his mother and his attackers left him alone. But he made no friends.
Thomas poured the steaming tea into each cup with silent reverence. The powerful aroma of fresh ginger and aniseed and the formality of Thomas’s ceremony brought back a flood of memories.
Moving to Bangkok and meeting Thomas had changed his life forever. His mother had instigated the relocation from the country quiet of Lennox Head to the sleaze of the Patpong district — officially to teach English as a second language, unofficially for the smack, which was pure and cheap. More than once he’d come home to find her passed out on the couch with a needle sticking out of her arm. Two days before his fifteenth birthday she took an overdose and died.
As Carter had no living relatives in Australia, Thomas used his influential government contacts to become his guardian and introduced him to the order’s strict training regimen and full range of mystical arts. It was a comprehensive and very different education to what he would’ve received in Australia.
On his eighteenth birthday, he became a fully fledged member of the order and was inducted as the youngest ever sanjuro.
Thomas placed a cup in front of Carter. “Every disturbance has a spiritual cause. A man isn’t an island. Tell me, how have you been faring on your own without a connection to a higher source?”
Wayan walked back into the kitchen and handed Carter a grey T-shirt.
He put it on, then took a sip of hot tea, savoring the sharp taste of his favorite blend, and said, “Let’s move on from my moral and spiritual shortcomings and get to what this is about, shall we?”
10
Carter placed his cup back on the table and asked, “Has someone issued a fatwa against the order?”
“Indeed they have,” Thomas said. “The Sungkar clan have issued an edict saying the order is guilty of murder and we are enemies of God and Islam. A clan-controlled mufti has issued the fatwa, meaning a death sentence hangs over every one of us.”
In his last few years working for the order, Carter had plenty to do with the Sungkar clan. It was one of many powerful family organizations in Indonesia; such clans had controlled large sections of cities and entire villages for hundreds of years. It was impossible to sell a cup of tea in a clan’s domain without paying a protection fee.
This wasn’t a big deal in Indonesia, where petty extortion and corruption were an ingrained part of society. For the most part the clans were relatively harmless and fulfilled the useful role of maintaining law and order.