Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

I thought he would have forgotten the letter by now, but as we walked along the wooden boards to the tug, he started asking about it again. ‘Who’s read it? Yourself, McAvoy — anybody else?’

‘What’s it matter?’ I was wet and irritable, my shirt sodden. ‘It happened seventy years ago, maybe more.’

‘Perenna.’ He stopped there, staring at me hard, his face so close to mine I could see every pale line of the crease marks in his skin, exaggerated by the water streaming off his bare head. ‘What about Perenna, has she read it?’

I shook my head slowly, something in the expression of his eyes warning me. ‘No,’ I said.

‘You didn’t show it to Jonathan? No, you couldn’t, of course. But anybody on the LCT? Who else has seen it?’

‘I’ve told you, nobody. Just myself and Mac, that’s all.’

‘You’re lying.’ He stood there in the rain, staring at me, and suddenly, for a moment, he was a different man. There was something in his eyes, a sort of madness — or was that my imagination? I seemed for a second to be looking into his soul, into pools of unfathomable darkness. A trickle of water reached my crotch, and I shivered.

‘Okay,’ he said, his voice and manner suddenly normal again. ‘As soon as I get back from Sohano, we’ll go over to Madehas — you, me, Perenna, McAvoy, too. I want that letter, understand? Meanwhile, you stay on board.’

Hans took the ferry, the Barreto Chebu , across to Sohano, one of his Buka guards going with him, and while he was away, a truckload of armed men came in from Queen Carola. Their weapons were World War II rifles, and they sat nursing them in the back of the truck, staring out at the rain, none of them doing anything except relieve themselves against the banyan tree. The Barreto stayed moored to the Sohano jetty, which was only just visible through the rain.

The rest of the morning passed slowly. The tug was primarily a harbour tug, and the quarters, entered by a companionway at the back of the little caboose of a wheelhouse, were cramped and pretty basic. Perenna and her brother, as well as Hans, had spent the night dozing with their clothes on in the tiny saloon. Now she was lying curled up on the bench beside the small mess table. I don’t think she was asleep, but she didn’t speak to me. The incessant rain and lack of sleep had affected us all, the rain particularly.

About 10.30 we moved to the bunkering wharf close by the market and took on fuel. With no truck-load of armed men to stop me, I thought it an opportunity to slip ashore, but I was stopped by the fair-bearded Australian skipper. ‘Much as my job’s worth to let you go wandering in the bush, mate.’ He wasn’t armed, but there were armed men at the Cooperative he could call upon, so I stayed with him in the caboose. He was aiming to make his fortune backing the new Sapuru regime, and Holland he regarded as a guy who was going places. ‘Got it all planned, finance for ships, everything. Stick with him, mate, and you won’t go wrong.’ Half an hour later we were back at the jetty.

At midday we picked up a news bulletin on the radio. The Australian government had ordered the frigate Dampier , on fishery protection duty off the Barrier Reef, to proceed at once to Bougainville to stand by to evacuate Australian civilians. Papua New Guinea was reported to have sent an ultimatum to the rebel Council of the Sapuru regime giving them until noon to release all prisoners and hand over power to the legitimate administration; if not, the forces at present standing by would be ordered to take the necessary action to restore the legal government. Since the time was now four minutes past midday and no reply had been received from the rebel regime, it was presumed that military action would be taken. Preparations for such an eventuality had already been made. There followed an eye-witness account from Port Moresby of troops embarking in the harbour, also an announcement that Air Niugini Fokker Friendships were being requisitioned to act as air transports.

Then, right at the end of the news, there was a news flash:

A report has just come in that security forces of the PNG administration in Bougainville recaptured Buka airfield in the early hours of this morning. The time limit for surrender of power by the rebel regime having expired, we understand that the airlift of troops to Buka, the island to the north of Bougainville that is virtually a part of the mainland, has already begun. We will keep listeners informed as soon as we have further news.

Within minutes of that announcement the little Barreto had cast off and was sidling across the tideway towards us. Somewhere in the distance a shot was fired. I thought it came from the direction of the airfield, but then there were more shots, a sporadic outburst of firing that clearly emanated from the rising ground in the vicinity of the Administration buildings.

Hans Holland had already seen the truckload of men waiting, and he was shouting somebody’s name as the ferryboat bumped alongside and he jumped on to the jetty and went running towards the truck. A stocky jet-black man, bare-chested and with a great shock of hair, climbed out of the cab. They stood there for a moment, the two of them in the rain, Hans’s voice loud and angry, the other’s soft and sullen. Finally the man from Queen Carola got back into the cab, and the truck drove off. ‘They should’ve moved on the airfield an hour ago,’ the tug skipper said. ‘Looks like they’ve lost the initiative now.’

Hans was walking back towards the tug, his head bent, oblivious of the rain. He was walking slowly, pausing every now and then to turn his head and listen to the sound of firing, which continued very sporadically. He reached the bulwarks and climbed on board, then stood there a moment as though undecided. The skipper stuck his head out of the caboose window. ‘You heard the newscast, did you, boss?’

Hans nodded. ‘Yes. And the stupid bastards have got themselves cut off-’ He seemed to take a grip on himself, his mouth shut, his lips a hard line. Water poured off him as he came slowly down the deck. The firing had ceased now, everything quiet except for the sound of the rain and the faint hubbub of voices from the shops across the road. He stood listening for a moment outside the caboose door. ‘That firing — from the Sub-District office, wasn’t it?’

‘Reck’n so.’ The Australian pushed open the door for him. ‘Sounds like the police have captured it now.’

He nodded, still listening intently, his shirt and trousers clinging to him, his head lifted and his eyes staring at nothing with great intensity. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Still plenty of time. If those aircraft really did take off … What is it — five, six hundred miles? They’ll be nearly two hours yet.’ He looked at the pair of us, and suddenly that cocky jauntiness was back. ‘Come on. We’ll grab a truck and some arms and get out to the airfield. Three trucks. That should do it. Three trucks parked on the runway should stop them, and in this rain …’

He was already heading back along the jetty, and such was the magnetism of the man that we were both out of the caboose and actually running after him when we heard it. At first we didn’t stop. It was coming from behind us, out of the west, a soft whisper like a line squall whipping up the sea. It grew steadily, swelling to a solid, high-toned cacophony of sound that we must have identified at the same instant, for we stopped in our tracks, all three of us, standing there listening, our eyes searching the leaden overcast beyond Sohano, beyond Minon. And suddenly, there it was, coming in low over Madehas, the roar of its engines getting louder and louder.