Indonesian Gold (17 page)

‘Hi, Didi,'
Nani took advantage of the situation and climbed on, wrapping her arms around his waist as the T-125 Stinger coughed back into life. Didi attempted to throw dust at those in close proximity as he drove away but failed at this as well.

Angela patted her companion of choice firmly on the back.
‘Don't get any ideas. Okay?'
she demanded, Joko eagerly nodding agreement as he too kicked the bike into gear and followed the others. He had seen her throw opponents around, twice her weight as if they were dolls, and had no misconceptions as to why Angela had selected him for her ride.

****

Didi had made it quite clear to others that Angela was his; the major difficulty with this was that he had failed to convince the independent Dayak student that this should be so. They had never dated, Angela constantly sending reminders that she was not interested. Angrily, he tore down through Bandung's streets, narrowly missing pedestrians, mobile-roadside stalls and the occasional beggar being led across the narrow streets.

‘Slow down, Didi!' Nani screamed; her pleas ignored by Didi as his mind remained clouded with Angela's humiliating putdown. Within minutes, they had left the others well behind, Nani hanging on for dear life as they tore through the City of Universities' outer suburbia, climbing quickly through the winding road which twisted its way up to the Tangkaban Perahu lookout. Nani clung tighter and tighter, wishing now that she had not misled Didi about the date. Nani knew that Angela would not go with Didi and had banked on this, hoping to manipulate the event so that she could take Angela's place. Now, Nani regretted her decision, terrified that Didi's anger would be the end of them both.

****

‘Can't you go any faster?'
Angela urged, the wind dragging her fine, black hair in a long, twirling tail behind.

‘It's dangerous,'
Joko warned, but ready to impress if she said it was okay.

‘Just catch up with them,'
she shouted, the wind now bringing tears to her eyes.

‘Hang on!'
Joko warned, pulling back behind a slow moving minibus, just in time.

‘What are you waiting for?'
Angela complained, gripping and squeezing his waist painfully. Joko did not hesitate. He pulled out wildly and overtook the vehicles ahead, narrowly bringing disaster upon them when oncoming vehicles ground to a halt to avoid smashing into the two.

‘Aduh,‘Gela,'
Joko cried out,
‘let them go!'
Angela could feel Joko trembling and reluctantly decided to let it go.

‘Just drive us to the crater,'
was all she said, releasing her grip from around his waist.

They continued on for a few minutes, slowing to a halt when they came upon the scene where Didi's bike had hit a patch of gravel, spinning both rider and passenger through the air into the broken asphalt surface. Incredibly, both had landed safely without any injury other than pride. Angela climbed off Joko's machine hurriedly, ran across to where her friend was sitting up against the side of the road, and grabbed her by the shoulders.

‘Are you all right?'
she shook her gently, more angry with herself than Nani for what had happened.

‘Enggak apa-apa,'
Nani answered, reassuring Angela that she was not injured. Others had begun to arrive at the scene, most dismounting to see what had happened.

On the far side of the road Didi was still dusting himself down, bragging to his friends, apparently not in the least concerned about Nani's possible injuries.

‘Didi!'
Angela called, rising slowly and walking towards him, measuring her steps as she did so. Several of the youth's friends turned, Angela's determined, and to some, familiar pose, warning them to stand back. Didi looked up, saw Angela before him, and smiled stupidly just as the palm of her hand hit him squarely on the side of the jaw – deliberately avoiding the lethal point of contact. Without so much as a whimper, Didi collapsed to the ground, unconscious. Angela then turned on her heel, and went back to Nani's side.

‘Joko,'
she addressed the flabbergasted student,
‘can you take us both back home?'
He looked over at the still form lying alongside the road, back to Angela, then threw one leg over his machine and nodded.

‘Come on,‘Ni,'
she called, affectionately, helping her friend straddle the bike.

****

In her two years attending the Bandung Institute Angela had avoided forming intimate relationships, remaining dedicatedly focused on her studies. In consequence, she was branded cold and distant, the many, rejected young men on campus confused by her apparent lack of interest in their sex. Angela had been tempted – the campus was studded with handsome, young men, but she remained on track and, apart from occasional, group casual outings, was rarely seen in the company of boys. Apart from occasional visits to Jakarta during semester breaks, when she would travel to the capital together with Nani by train, Angela remained in Bandung.

She had returned to the Longdamai, Mahakam village only once since commencing her studies and as the end of the second year came to a close she became impatient to be reunited with her father, and extended
Penehing
family. Contact with the village had been maintained via weekly radio hookup, courtesy of the Dean. Communication was invariably difficult, interrupted when weather conditions deteriorated, their conclusion often leaving Angela angered by the absence of more modern facilities to link the isolated communities in Kalimantan to the outside world. With a growing awareness of the disparity between the wealthy, Javanese elite and their provincial cousins, Angela realized that the
Penehing
people would remain neglected and without adequate representation as long as their voice went unheard. Wise beyond her years, she also understood that there was little that the Dayaks could do to rectify this situation, against the powerful, centralist government in Jakarta.

As she matured, so did Angela's appreciation of the special gift she had inherited, the
‘tenaga-dalam'
or inner force phenomenon always evident in her family line. And, under her father's guidance and instruction, she had acquired a sound awareness of the responsibilities she would one day assume. Introverted and calm, coupled with a strict and rigid temper, Angela emulated Jonathan Dau in every way, her devotion and commitment to the
Penehing Dayak
as determined as her father's. Inseparable in mind and spirit, Angela became a perfect copy of the mould; her father's philosophies, spiritual and metaphysical beliefs, all becoming her own.

As a teenager, Angela had already understood that her people and their environment were clearly under threat by the destructive forces of commerce, and centralist government policies. When she first saw the devastation visited upon Dayak traditional lands, she'd cried, the imagery contributing to her decision to follow her father's footsteps in the fight against those who would destroy the pristine forests and fields. She sought her father's advice and decided to study those disciplines associated with the earth sciences, believing that this direction would not only enhance her understanding of the issues, but would provide her with credentials for the future when she took up the fight against those who would destroy the Dayak environment.

Angela had learned that annual, widespread forest fires, blanketing most of Kalimantan and reaching as far as Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, were primarily the result of the expanding, Indonesian palm oil industry, controlled by the First Family and their business associates, Borneo's corporate arsonists. Prior to her departure from Longdamai, millions of hectares of forest and grasslands had been burned to clear land for the planting of palm. In private, many amongst her fellow students discussed how firmly ensconced all three generations of Suharto's family had become within the industry. The state-owned, palm oil plantations sold their production of crude palm oil to the state logistics agency,
BULOG,
at incredibly low prices. In turn, this organization made substantial profits from sales of its cooking oil, the benefits flowing to Suharto-linked conglomerates owned by Sino-Indonesian businessmen, and generals.

But, of even greater concern to Angela, was the systematic destruction of her environment's tropical peat land. Central government policies promoting the conversion of peat, swamp forests to agriculture had significantly reduced Kalimantan's natural ecosystem. She knew, that at current levels of conversion, millions of hectares of peat land swamps would be devastated at the expense of the Dayak people – and the myriads of wildlife, not least amongst which was the
orangutan.

During her years studying away from home, Angela's commitment to her people had never swayed, her determination to return to the Mahakam to assist the Dayak communities foremost in her mind. Determined to maximize the benefits of her academic achievements for the betterment of the Dayak people, Angela Dau continued her conscientious role as an honor student and, to the dismay of the community of male undergraduates, remained aloof to their persistent advances.

November 1993
Perth
– Australia

Sharon Ducay's eyes ran over the headlines again, the
tingling sensation she experienced one of acute excitement. She stared at Alexander Kremenchug's
photograph, convinced that her choice had been appropriate, her investigations suggesting that
this man had more skeletons than cupboards to hide them in. Sharon finished dressing and, while
waiting for him to call from the hotel lobby, browsed the articles again.

Newspaper headlines reported that trading in Pursuit
Minerals had been suspended. The publicly-listed company owned controlling stock in the
Meekatharra gold leases which had, over past weeks, been the darling of the West Australian stock
exchange. Suddenly, it was all over, the suggestion that arrests would be made sufficient to
cause the shares to collapse within minutes, photographs of Kremenchug and the two prospectors
accused of spiking the original drilling samples, splashed across the front page. Accusations of
insider trading, criminal conspiracy and gold fraud were raised in the press and on television
and, based on historical evidence, Sharon surmised that Kremenchug had been behind the ambitious
scam. That he had been the one to alert the authorities with respect to the fraud had, at first,
puzzled her. Then, as the story unfolded in the press, it became clear that Kremenchug had bailed
out of the scheme, when falsified documents and tainted soil samples extracted from the
Meekathara tenement had come to light. In the days preceding the suspension of Pursuit Minerals
shares, millions had changed hands. Now, it would seem, Kremenchug had decided to forgo further
participation, the paper losses he would incur, enormous. For Sharon, the timing could not have
been better.

Sharon
had spent most of
November and early December preparing the ground for her approach to Kremenchug. Information she
had gathered over the past year had led her to believe that he would be the perfect choice for
the project she and the general had in mind. Sharon had finally caught up with Kremenchug in
Perth within days of her arrival from Manila. Arranging an introduction had not been difficult
once Sharon had alluded to the strong interest her Filipino associates had expressed in
Australian and Indonesian gold prospects. They had met at his Dalkeith home in Circe Circle,
Sharon's beauty and practised charm captivating Kremenchug from the start. Their initial
discussion had led to others over a number of weeks, during which Sharon laid the groundwork for
Kremenchug to visit the Philippines and meet the General to discuss their proposition. She was
quietly confident that he would take the bait; particularly now he had come unstuck with this
latest venture in Western Australia.

The phone rang; it was Kremenchug.

‘Shall I come up?' he tried, pleased when she
agreed.

‘Sure,' she said, ‘I'm in 1109. I'd prefer to have this
discussion away from the general public, especially as you have your charming face on most of
today's tabloids. We can have coffee and sandwiches in the room if you wish.' Sharon checked her
makeup one more time, the door chime announcing Kremenchug's arrival as she finished touching up.
She showed him in, her guest nodding approval at the junior suite's view.

His eyes fell to the bed. ‘Don't believe everything you
read in the newspapers,' he moved across the room and slumped into the settee, his worried face
awash with the troubles of the day.

‘How bad is it?' Sharon asked, sitting cross-legged on the
bed, a cigarette dangling from her hand. She wanted to be certain that his involvement would not
drag undue attention to her own project.

‘Well,' he started to explain, ‘I'm not confident that the
company will recover all of the money we paid over to the two prospectors. Anyway, it's out of
our hands now. The police will most probably lay charges against them.'

Sharon
wished there was a way
of asking how much of his own capital was involved, her sources suggesting that Kremenchug rarely
dipped into his own pocket which, in her mind, would mean that there would be some very unhappy
partners, out for blood. ‘We had hoped that you could come to Manila before Christmas or even the
New Year. How will this affect your visit?' she indicated the newspapers spread across her
bed.