Nusantara

By Tom Quinn

After dropping out of university, getting a job as a storeman, doing drugs and then splitting up with his wife, Jack, in a fit of depression, joins the Australian Army and is sent to East Timor at the height of the troubles. He “volunteers” for a mission in Indonesia, where the United Nations, with help from the US Navy and the Royal Marines, are trying to rescue a group of foreigners, mostly Europeans, being held hostage by the local rebels. Jack completes his mission only to become the victim of misdirected revenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398481688

Tom Quinn

Tom Quinn was born in Glasgow in 1948. Leaving school at 15, he worked in a shipping line office for some years, becoming involved in the North Sea Oil industry, at one stage, captaining a barge on the River Clyde. He moved to Rotterdam, the world’s largest port, in 1975 where he continued his career in shipping, making regular trips to other European cities. He returned to Scotland and became a founding partner in a small shipping and forwarding company before emigrating to Australia in 1988. In his time in Australia, as part of his work for the oil industry, he has spent time living and working in Melbourne, Darwin, and visiting Singapore, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. In 2000, he won the HarperCollins Fiction Prize for his first novel, Striking It Poor. Tom is married and now lives in Melbourne with his wife, three children and nine grandchildren. He plays the guitar, reads literature, listens to classical music, and occasionally works as a logistics consultant for a major multinational.

Book preview

About the Author

Tom Quinn was born in Glasgow in 1948. Leaving school at 15, he worked in a Shipping Line office for some years, becoming involved in the North Sea Oil industry, at one stage, captaining a barge on the River Clyde. He moved to Rotterdam, the world’s largest port, in 1975 where he continued his career in shipping, making regular trips to other European cities. He returned to Scotland and became a founding partner in a small shipping and forwarding company before emigrating to Australia in 1988. In his time in Australia, as part of his work for the oil industry he has spent time living and working in Melbourne, Darwin, and visiting Singapore, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. In 2000, he won the HarperCollins Fiction Prize for his first novel, Striking It Poor. Tom Quinn is married and now lives in Melbourne with his wife, three children and nine grandchildren. He plays the guitar, reads literature, listens to classical music, and occasionally works as a logistics consultant for a major multinational.

Dedication

To Christine

Copyright Information ©

Tom Quinn 2023

The right of Tom Quinn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398481664 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398481671 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398481688 (ePub e-book)

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First Published 2023

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1

BASUKI STARED AT THE GENERAL through narrow, dark-brown eyes. Haryanto was a distinguished member of the military and Basuki had every reason to be afraid of him.

‘I’m not interested in politics, General,’ he said. He stood up, stretched his small, thin body like a cat and pretended to yawn. ‘I’ve got no education worth mentioning; until I went to jail, I was barely able to read.’

‘We’re not recruiting academics.’ the general smiled from behind his large polished-mahogany desk.

Basuki noticed the straight perfect teeth. Harry Haryanto, small, dapper, good-looking and not yet fifty had short-cropped black hair above a big square wall of a forehead and piercing black eyes. ‘Okay, General,’ he said, ‘but why me?’

‘Your other qualifications have impressed us.’

The little man frowned and then chuckled. ‘You like my resumé, General?’

Haryanto removed the cigarette from between his thin lips and regarded Basuki with grudged admiration. ‘You have a kind of keen animal intelligence,’ he said, ‘and a finely tuned instinct for self-preservation.’

Basuki shrugged. ‘I survived ten years on the island.’

‘Yes, you did, indeed, no small achievement.’ The general tapped the fact sheet in front of him with the index finger of his right hand. ‘Your strategy was successful.’

‘Strategy, General?’

‘Yes. You appear to have killed a number of your fellow inmates before they got the chance to become your enemies.’ The general was amused by Basuki’s look of anxiety.

‘Speculation and lies, General, please don’t believe everything you read in my file.’

It was the soldier’s turn to laugh. ‘Oh, not to worry, not to worry. Yes, yes. I quite understand. What you mean is, there was insufficient proof, or that prosecution was regarded as pointless as you were already locked-up in prison.’

Haryanto read aloud from the official record, ‘The prisoner is unmarried and has no family. He has no living relatives; the last, his older brother, Hasan, died some years ago, while the prisoner was serving a ten-year sentence in Nusakambangan maximum-security unit.’

Basuki sat down again and, fidgeting with his hands, gazed out the dusty window to his left, looking beyond the large well-equipped facility bustling with military training activities at the green rolling hills in the distance. He wished he could be there instead of here. This high-security area was the TNI nerve centre; it scared him because it reminded him of prison.

The general, inhaling lightly and puffing small clouds of smoke from his cigarette, finished reading to the bottom of the page in silence and looked up. ‘Did you never try to escape?’

‘The only way to escape from that place,’ Basuki replied, ‘is to be scooped up from the exercise yard by helicopter.’

‘Has it ever been done?’

‘Not as far as I know, but that’s the theory.’

‘I suppose,’ said the general, ‘that anyone with the financial resources to test the theory could just as easily bribe his way out.’

Basuki shrugged. ‘I lacked the contacts, and the cash, so it’s, academic.’

Haryanto smiled again before continuing, ‘It says here that you are thirty-eight years of age.’

‘That’s right.’

The general looked at him in a friendly and concerned way. ‘Where are you living?’

‘With my sister-in-law, Lina. She’s helping me to get back on my feet.’ He gazed impassively at the large silk Sang Saka Merah Putih, the red and white Indonesian flag, draped on the wall behind Haryanto’s desk.

‘Are you Muslim?’ asked the general.

‘Not particularly,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘Depends on who I’m drinking with.’

‘Muslims don’t drink.’

‘That’s what I mean.’ He grinned; there was something fishy behind all these strange questions; he was convinced of it now.

‘Okay,’ said the general, closing the file in front of him with an air of decisiveness. ‘You asked, why you? You’ve been absent from the daily scene for years; out of sight, out of mind. People have largely forgotten you. This is a low-profile job. I need a reliable operator who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty doing what has to be done, a real man, but certainly not a local celebrity. Are you ready to play your social part, Basuki, for the good of the country?’

‘I’ll do anything for money,’ Basuki replied, looking down now at his small strong sinewy hands. He was puzzled; what was Haryanto up to? What did he want? Did he want him and his little gang to stir up more trouble, more civil unrest? Wasn’t there enough of that already? Provoking more trouble would be like throwing water into the sea: What would be the point?

‘Yes, indeed, money,’ continued the general. ‘That is the chief aim of this operation. This is mainly a moneymaking project. I’m in a bit of a fix this financial year. Orco Mining has cut its security budget. Last year those people needed, and paid for, six hundred troops to guard their operation. We’ve always had a significant role in protecting the area of company operations, but this year, for some reason, the company directors in America decided it would be a good idea to cut back by fifty percent. As a result, I’m stuck with three hundred men more than I need, three hundred more than I can afford to pay.’

‘That’s no good, General.’

‘No, it isn’t good, it’s very bad. I urgently need more funds, and, at the same time, I need to demonstrate to the mining company how dangerous it is for them to skimp on security.’ He paused for a second and then said, ‘I need them to see the wisdom of reversing their decision.’

‘I get it,’ said Basuki. ‘You want me to arrange an attack on the mine?’

‘Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous! The mine is one of our vital national assets. And besides, I can’t have your hoodlums shooting at my soldiers; that would be unthinkable.’

‘The township then, the school? Easy targets are best, two or three of my guys with guns could…’

‘No, no, forget it; one has to be subtle, indirect.’

‘What then?’

‘The plan is simple. I want you to abduct some Western tourists from Batulu, Europeans I mean, not Americans, say four or five, and hold them for ransom. Once the money is paid over it would be wise and indeed advantageous to kill them: Drive the message home to our friends in America. We shall both make some good money and, at the same time perhaps convince Orco Mining to see the error of its ways.’

On his way home on foot Basuki began thinking about how and when to implement Haryanto’s plan. The details were of no concern to the general, he had made that plain enough. It was up to Basuki to be creative and careful, and to carry the scheme through promptly.

Although he was instinctively afraid of Haryanto, Basuki nevertheless saw him for what he was, a ruthless greedy egotistical bastard. Ruthlessness and avarice he could understand but these military-career types were a mystery, a strange combination of corruption and national pride. They were power-hungry hypocrites, morally inferior to poor honest criminals like himself. I’m okay, he thought, compared to Haryanto. In many ways I’m better than him, I need nothing, and nobody, I exist and that’s that. For me it’s enough to be Basuki, but that guy – ha! – he has to be a look-at-me soldier, an officer, he has to be a decorated general just to prove to himself that he’s a man. Everybody knows that he’s desperate to become head of the army; it’s like a worm gnawing away at his heart; he wants the job so much it’s killing him. Innocent people will have to die just so that bastard can have another promotion and wear the fanciest hat.

The idea of death reminded him of what the general had read out about his older brother, Hasan, the only person he had ever really cared about. He slowed his pace and, for a while, remembered his childhood. He missed his brother and was still furious at him for dying while he was in prison.

After Hasan’s death Basuki’s sister-in-law, Lina, had reluctantly settled down to life as a hard-working widow and proprietor of the Hotel Indra, a cheap brothel in the oldest most rundown quarter of Pambonkota. She was poor, practically penniless, and not in a position to help her unfortunate brother-in-law by employing him when he got out of jail. She did however provide him with a roof over his head. With a sort of resentful gratitude Basuki did what he could to support the business, often forcibly recommending it to his criminal acquaintances.

It was almost 11 PM when he got back to the Indra. He could smell the drains. The mere sight of the place depressed him and recently he had begun to stay away from it as much as he could. Hotel Indra, Hotel Heaven, an idiotic name, thought Basuki irritably, for this miserable house of sin.

The small back room next to the kitchen on the ground floor, which Lina had allocated to him, was claustrophobic, no bigger than his prison cell. Every morning, from his bed, he could hear the gurgling of the greasy water running down the kitchen drainpipe; he hated it. He had been living there since he got out of prison six months ago and was waiting for his fortunes to improve so that he would be able to rent a place of his own. His sister-in-law annoyed him too and made him feel redundant, even impotent, when she was, on-duty as the madam-cum-manager.

As he approached the dilapidated building, he saw Lukman sitting on the wooden steps that led up to the entrance. The young man was holding a bottle of beer in his right hand and gazing down at the dusty ground in front of him. He looked morose, as if worried about something. Lukman was Javanese and had come out from Surabaya, as a baby. He was dark skinned, tall and overweight with short straight hair and a long pear-shaped face.

Lukman puzzled Basuki. So much wasted energy! Although he was ignorant of history and politics, Lukman seemed to spend a lot of his time hating a very large part of the world’s human population, a variety of people under several categories, racial, religious, and national, or, at least, he believed that he hated them. As far as Basuki could make out Lukman didn’t discriminate; he loathed and detested all of them in equal measure, Whites, Jews, Christians, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, Australians, Americans, especially Americans; it didn’t matter; they were all to blame; foreigners and infidels; Indonesia was going to the dogs because of foreigners and infidels.

It was late. The night air was clammy and damp. The cicadas were making an enormous din. As Basuki got nearer, he saw Lukman finish off the last of the beer in one long gulp, place the empty bottle on its side, and set it spinning. Indonesia was spinning too, spinning out of control, entire provinces were in turmoil, Aceh, East Timor, Irian Jaya, East Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan. Sometimes it seemed as if the whole world was in turmoil. Indonesia was in big trouble and the little guys like Basuki and Lukman were paying the price. ‘Hai, Lukman,’ he called out as he strolled towards him. ‘What’s new?’

‘Oh, hullo, Basuki. Nothing much, I guess. How are you? What did the general have to say?’

He shrugged. ‘Usual stuff, politics; he wants us to make some special trouble for the tourists.’

‘Yeah? What kind of tourists?’

‘Westerners of course, Europeans.’

‘And about time too, that’s what I say; pleasure-loving swine.’

Basuki looked up at the half-open front door. He hesitated to go in but it was getting late and he was very tired. ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning,’ he said uneasily. ‘Good night.’ He climbed the three wooden steps and went inside to go to bed.

A moment later Tiger, Lukman’s friend, a short-sighted 24-year-old with a permanent limp and long thin arms, emerged from the door of the hotel and stood beside him hungrily smoking a cigarette and biting his nails, saying nothing. Tiger, whose favourite pastime was setting fire to things, rarely had anything to say; he didn’t speak because he didn’t think; he looked and felt and touched and smelt, but he didn’t think; his stupidity caused him no anxiety.

Lukman picked up the empty beer bottle, lobbed it like a grenade into the nearby bushes and got to his feet. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Get the others. Let’s go find a Chink to beat the crap out of.’

2

THE LITTLE GIG, bouncing heavily on the waves, was tied up alongside the great motionless hull of the aircraft carrier. One at a time, the three of them descended the steeply inclined companionway hanging on like drunken crabs all the way down to where they had to risk their lives by jumping across a meter-wide void onto the tiny bobbing vessel. Two tall black American sailors were still on board. One of them was topping up the fuel tank from a twenty-five-gallon drum while his companion chewed gum and stared at them with flat uninterested eyes. They waited for the sailors to finish. Eventually they departed, without saying a word.

Jack, green with nausea, and with a mouth still tender from the effects of dental treatment, clung onto the gunnels to keep his balance while Odinbe offered him some last-minute advice. He was fascinated and repulsed by the African’s big rubbery lips. ‘There are any number of possible scenarios,’ said the little man, enunciating all his words very distinctly, ‘and we cannot plan for every contingency, so once you’re ashore, how you achieve your mission is up to you. To be honest, we’re sort of hoping that the Pahits might take you prisoner. That would be excellent.’

Gerasimof, big, hairy, and avuncular, then gave the young Australian, who was quite unresponsive, a crash course in seamanship. In particular, he showed him how to scuttle the craft when he judged the time was right.

Jack felt awful. Gerasimof’s words reached him in a jumble, which he didn’t listen to. Finally, the fat Russian handed him a sealed plastic wallet. ‘Strap this to your body before you abandon ship,’ he said. ‘It’s ten thousand US dollars in fifties and hundreds, plus twenty million Rupiahs.’ The big man’s fierce nostrils and eyes were as dark as his beard. Jack thought of Rasputin; he detected something dangerous despite the apparent bonhomie.

‘You’ll be operating in an area the size of Bucovina, Jack, so try to get hold of a car; hire one or buy an old banger. For God’s sake don’t use public transport. Oh, and one last thing,’ the big Russian added gruffly, ‘We’re not asking for printed receipts, but you will be expected to account for money at the debriefing.’ He stopped himself from adding, ‘If there ever is one.’

It was time to push off. Gerasimof pointed to where the sun was going down on the horizon and started the motor. Jack sat down and placed his trembling hands on the tiller. Odinbe unhitched the line and said, ‘Remember the words of General Patton, Jack, Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.’

He took a deep breath to steady himself. They wished him luck and jumped for their lives. With still half an hour left before dark, Agent Blue was successfully deployed in the field, bravely heading for Pambon Jaya, West Pambon. Phase one of the operation was complete. Tomorrow the UN delegates would depart for Singapore where they would await developments in the comfort of their five-star hotel.

He was truly terrified by the open sea; it scared him, stretching away on all sides, bottomless and limitless. Apart from the short voyage on the troop ship from Darwin to Dili, in his whole life, he hadn’t ever been out of sight of land and the sheer isolation frightened the life out of him.

The bow of the small boat reared against the fading horizon and fell back splashing drops of seawater into the air then rose again and fell, rose, and fell. Rigid with fear and acting against all his instincts he surged forward into the unknown.

Behind him the USS Abraham Lincoln had fallen below the horizon. The sun was going down. For a while the sea was like shimmering grey silk, but darkness fell quickly. He sailed on into the warm night wondering what he was supposed to do if he came across reefs, sandbars, or crosscurrents in the darkness.

‘He speaks Bahasa Indonesian,’ the major had told them confidently, standing there on the deck of the carrier in his polished boots and neatly buttoned uniform with his chin jutting out, ‘that’s why he volunteered.’

Pambon Jaya appeared gradually as a black silhouette against a starry sky. Scattered lights defined the shoreline. He looked at his watch and decided he had come far enough; it was time to cut the engine. He didn’t wait. He was too afraid. He scuttled the boat immediately. It started to sink beneath him. Seawater gurgled in at his feet becoming louder and more threatening with every second. He licked a crust of salt from his trembling lips. Shaking with fear and agitation he tied his white runners together, stuffed his grey woollen socks inside them and hung them around his neck. Abandoning everything except the precious watch and the money he guessed at the direction of the nearest point of land and dived headlong into the Indian Ocean.

He surfaced, filled his lungs with air, and began the long swim to shore. He was on a secret mission; the whole thing seemed ridiculous. He thought of McNamara and Smith and their clumsy attempts to quiz him about his orders in the mess deck.

As he swam steadily towards the beach through the soft warm undulating waves the thought occurred to him that he was risking his life in the service of an obscure acronym: UNOCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, what a joke! He was suddenly infuriated; it was his life that was being put on the line, not Major Shaw’s, not Captain Hofmann’s, not Vladimir Gerasimof’s, or Byron bloody Odinbe’s, but his! Nobody was asking the semi-literate CIA blokes, McNamara and Smith, with their reflective shades and thin lips to risk their precious American lives.

He could feel himself becoming angrier with every stroke. He tried to regain some calm by thinking of home, about his old mates, Dave and Loggo, about Trish and the eighteen months of happiness they had shared, a loving relationship that had ended in mutual disappointment; regret slowly replaced anger.

His mind wandered back home, to the new, recently purchased, house in Melton, to his lovely kind-hearted Trish, her overly protective brothers, her manipulative mother, her boofhead bastard of a father. Trish, a tall shapely medical student with the most beautiful hazel-brown eyes imaginable, was the favourite daughter of the South Yarra Papadopoulos family before she and Jack had met at a barbeque in St Kilda, fallen in love and got married within a month to the shock of both family and friends.

Dr Papadopoulos and his wife had made no attempt to welcome the non-Greek Jack, with his one-parent western suburbs background into their large close-knit clan. On the other hand, Jack’s mother, Karen, was delighted at the thought of her working-class son marrying into a wealthy family from South Yarra. Jack genuinely loved his beautiful new bride. But something inexplicable had happened and it had all gone wrong. Was he really an emotional retard? Surely not?

He made it ashore without being eaten by sharks or stung to death by box jellyfish and began a damp sleepless night under a banyan tree near the beach. All he had was the clothes he was wearing, a white sweatshirt and dark grey cargo pants. He swatted a mosquito and looked at the watch. It wasn’t yet midnight. Shit, he thought, there would be hours more of this. He lay down on the soft warm sand, closed his eyes and listened to the sea, but sleep was impossible. Why was he here? He hadn’t volunteered at all. Like a fool, he’d spoken up and admitted that he knew