‘You mean …’ The Australian gazed at him, open-mouthed. ‘Christ! I believe you would, too.’
I didn’t know what they were talking about, but the words had a curious effect, the Australian with a shocked look on his face and Hans actually smiling. ‘We lose Buka, it doesn’t matter. So long as they can’t land at Kieta-’ He began walking back to the tug.
The last of the aircraft had cut its engines, and in the sudden silence the sound of human voices from the shops and from the market seemed very loud. The freighter had pulled out into the stream. She was very high out of the water, and the slowly revolving prop was making a steady thumping sound as it flailed the surface.
Hans reached the end of the jetty and turned to the skipper. ‘We’ll go across to Sohano now. They’re arranging radio contact with Sapuru for me. President Sapuru! He likes the sound of that. And now that he’s in a fix I guess he’ll do it.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I think so. He’s no alternative now. And you,’ he added as he climbed on board. ‘While you’re waiting for me at Sohano, see if you can raise the LCT on VHF, tell Captain Holland to dump the prisoners anywhere he can and return here immediately. Madehas. We’ll meet him at Madehas. By then we should’ve stopped those bastards in their tracks.’
The tug was manned by one Mortlock and two Shortland islanders. The engineer was from Buin in the extreme south-west of Bougainville. They knew their job, all of them, so that a shout from the Australian skipper and we were cast off with the engine turning over almost before our feet touched the deck. And on the other side we didn’t stay at the Sohano jetty after Hans had leapt on to it, but backed off and anchored out past the first of the water loos that stood like a little wooden bathing machine with its legs in the water. ‘Nobody’s going to rush me, I tell ya.’ And then he was looking at me closely as he said, ‘You think they’ll do it? You think Sapuru’s got the guts? Or will they just lay down their arms?’
‘Do what?’ I asked.
‘Start killing them. Do you think he’ll do it?’ And when I asked who Sapuru was expecting to kill, he stared at me as though he thought I was trying to be funny. ‘Why, the whites, of course. The expats. And don’t pretend you didn’t know. You heard what the boss said. I thought he was bluffing, that’s true, mate. I really did think it was a bluff. But it isn’t, is it? He’s gone to get Sapuru on the air, tell him to go ahead, to start killing. And that frigate, the Dampier, hasn’t a hope of getting here in time to stop it. Do you think Sapuru will do it?’ He was staring at me, nervous and excited at the same time.
‘How the hell should I know?’ I was appalled, aghast at the thought that I had got myself into a position where I could be accused of complicity. ‘I’ve never met the man.’
‘Never met him?’
‘No.’
‘Well, he’s not much to look at, I can tell ya. A dried-up little mummy of a man, a sort of elder-cum-wizard, and very much feared by his people. ‘Fact, they’re dead scared of him, so if he tells them to start killing, the odds are they’ll do it.’
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?’