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.’