Don Brown - The Malacca Conspiracy

Asmoro certainly didn’t believe in her parents’ God, but maybe Kristina did. Perhaps she had now been redeemed.

With fireworks crackling and cannons booming and the throngs of the masses cheering, someone tapped her shoulder.

Perhaps the tap of an angel.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” She turned and saw a young, slim Indonesian army officer. At least she thought he was an officer. “General Suparman Perkasa would like to meet you.”

“General who?” she had asked.

“I am Captain Taplus,” the army man had said. “General Perkasa is chief of staff of the Indonesian army. I am on the general’s staff.”

She looked up into the presidential box. The rotund army man in the green uniform was looking down her way, smiling and slowly nodding. And then, a wave of his hand.

“The general would like to meet you and requests the honor of your company for a private lunch at his quarters.”

She had turned and glanced at Elizabeth Martin, whose blonde hair blew softly in the warm Indonesian breeze. “It is up to you,” Elizabeth said with both a raised eyebrow and a smile. “If you would like to go meet the general, your job will wait. It’s entirely up to you, my dear.”

In retrospect, she knew Elizabeth was trying to give her a way out. And a voice had screamed on the inside of her that she should decline the invitation at that instant and return to her domestic duties at the Martin household. But there, at that moment, in the tropical sunshine of her native land, she stood on the precipice of a decision. It was as if her feet were upon two cliffs, and the cliffs were inching farther apart, leaving below her a deep chasm from which she would never survive if she did not choose. And indeed, it had proven to be a decision between two worlds. She had glanced back into Elizabeth’s eyes one last time, but when the breeze brought an alluring whiff of the handsome young captain’s cologne, she turned back and looked at him, so utterly manly in his uniform, and then across the street at the general, still nodding and smiling and sitting next to the president. She knew in that instant that, both her country and the prospect of an exciting new life were calling her.

She had stood, and in an oxymoronic moment of nervousness blended with the starry-eyed excitement of a schoolgirl first in love, accompanied the captain to a private dining room at a nearby military base. Thirty minutes later, the rotund man in the green uniform came through the doors and began a relationship in which he could simply snap his fingers and have her there at his powerful whim, and then send her away for days until he needed her again.

Not that she totally objected. The benefits had in some respects been mutual. A poor girl transformed overnight by the trappings of power and luxury!

Despite it all, the emptiness in Kristina’s soul was not fulfilled. She felt like a part-time concubine, switching back and forth from the luxurious trappings of the general’s quarters to her meager government apartment.

She had tried mustering the strength to talk to the priest about it, but ran away, as she had done all her life.

She shuffled over to the door, cracking it slightly open. Light poured in from the hallway. She looked and saw no military servants on the second floor. The voices came from downstairs.

Hugging the wall, Kristina tiptoed slowly toward the spiraling staircase. She reached the open area by the top of the staircase and peeked around the corner of the wall for a look down.

All the lights were on-the great chandelier hanging over the main entryway of the house was burning brightly. Lamps were burning on tables on each side of the foyer.

The two military aides who normally stood guard in the first-floor foyer were nowhere to be seen.

A silver rolling tray, with an assortment of bottles filled with liquors and wines, had been parked beside the door opening into the general’s study. Some of the bottles were empty. Others looked half-empty. The tray had not been there when the general had summoned her to bed two hours ago.

General Suparman Perkasa’s voice boomed loudest. He was laughing and kept saying, “We’re rich.” The other voices were not as clear.

She took one step down the staircase. Then another. An invisible magnet was drawing her, inexplicably, closer to the foyer. She did not know why, but she sensed that danger lurked behind that door. Yet something would not let her turn around.

Her foot touched the bottom step. The cold chill of the tile sent a prickle up her calf and leg.

“Let’s get some more liquor!” the general said. The door, now just three feet from her, started to move. She darted into the black crevices of the dark dining room, just across the foyer from the study.

A creaking sound, the sound of the door to the study being slowly pushed open, cut through the foyer. Kristina wedged her body into the front, upper corner of the dining room.

The clicking of leather shoes across the tile floor.

“I will try some more of that Russian vodka!” a voice demanded. Clinking. Clanking of bottles and glasses.

“Then vodka it is!” The voice of the general.

“How nice of you to give your staff the night off, General!”

“They are members of the army,” General Perkasa said. “Their loyalty may still be with Santos. For now, he is still their commander in chief. We cannot risk having anyone outside of this circle hear anything. They will all know soon enough. There’s plenty of vodka. Anybody want rum?”

“Scotch, please,” a voice said.

“Coming right up,” the general said.

“Thank you, General.” The voice of the doctor.

“Thank you, General.” An unfamiliar voice.

“We can discuss the Santos problem later. But for now, I propose we have a toast,” the general said. “To one hundred million dollars apiece!”

“To one hundred million dollars apiece!” said another voice.

“And to millions and billions for our cause!” another voice said.

“To millions and billions!” More clanking glasses. More laughter and revelry.

“Yes, to our cause!”

“To the Islamic Superpower of Indonesia!”

The clanking of glasses. More laughter. A moment of silence.

“General.” The voice of Perkasa’s sidekick, Dr. Guntur Budi, struck a solemn tone.

“What is it, Guntur?”

“I know that we had agreed to discuss this later, but an overwhelming foreboding compels me to bring this up now.”

“My dear Guntur. You sound disappointed that you have become one of the richest men in Indonesia.”

“I am a physician, my general. My commitment is to a greater cause. I wish to give my money to our cause.” A pause. “Perhaps we could close the doors again.”

Thank God. The doors creaked, and she heard them shut. Perhaps she should scurry back up the steps. But she could not go. Not yet.

“You were saying, Guntur.” The general’s voice was muffled, but still audible.

“I was saying, General, that I am aware of the strategic military plans to attack the presidential palace with our own forces, but I wish to present a better alternative.”

“A better alternative?” Perkasa raised his eyebrow. “Doctor, I know that you are brilliant, but in addition to being Indonesia’s finest physician, are you now telling me that you have also become a military strategist?” Perkasa asked this in a half-mocking tone, chuckling as he appeared to pause and swig down liquor, and eliciting the laughter of others at his mock indignation.

“My dear general,” Budi was saying, his voice solemn, obviously not acquiescing to the collective joviality of the moment. “The problem is that if military action is taken directly against the presidential palace, and you ascend to power in the wake of such action, then you will be viewed as the head of a military junta that could damage your credibility with a number of nations around the world.”