The Timor Man (70 page)

As the engine responded to its driver's desire for speed the car raced away into the darkness of the night, leaving behind the bodies of all of Stephan Coleman's servants and a grim message of what now lurked in the shadows waiting. Just for him.

 

In a distant village school thousands of kilometres from the killing fields of East Timor, the young children sat happily singing the chant which assisted them to remember their lessons. The children's eyes followed their teacher's arm as she conducted them.

One by one, they would shouted in unison as the individual province's names and numbers were called out for them to remember and, one by one they repeated the corresponding phrase in consequential order as they passed from the special areas of Jakarta and Jogjakarta, “
One, two
” they chorused as the teacher continued through the many provinces of Sumatra and Java, “
ten, eleven
” and Bali, across the wide expanse of sea to Kalimantan, “
fifteen, sixteen
” and Sulawesi, “
twenty-three, twenty-four
” and then down through the Eastern Tenggara states to Irian, West New Guinea, “
twenty-six
.”

The children were pleased when they reached the last and twenty-seventh province in the sequence.

But the children were also happy because their teacher had explained to them they had new brothers and sisters in the new province and they should be proud that these people had become one under the Indonesian flag to strengthen their
Republik.

The children all shouted in rehearsed chorus the name of the distant province which had become Indonesia's latest acquisition, the twenty-seventh province. And the sound of their voices could be heard drifting across the valleys, echoing though the hills, beyond the mountains and in every corner of the archipelago as Indonesian children everywhere chanted the new province's name for the world to remember.

‘Timor-Timur, Tim-Tim!'

‘Timor-Timur, Tim-Tim!'

The Present

 

Jack Brindley leaned his thin frame against the bar and sipped the cold Tiger beer. Things had certainly changed in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as the world now knew the vibrant river port. Communism had all but died and the collapse of the USSR had ushered in a new era of hope as, one by one, even the former communist satellite countries opened their borders to Capitalism.

Vietnam
had been no different from the others. The country had been at war for most of the millennium fighting Kublai Khan, the Chinese in the north, the French Colonialists, the Americans and their Allies. Not to mention their incursion into Cambodia, or Kampuchea, as it was more commonly known. Vietnam's market economy had leapfrogged, not unlike Indonesia's in the late Sixties and early Seventies
.
Foreign investment had pumped much needed millions into the war-torn economy, developing infrastructure, paving the way for domestic growth.

Jack Brindley had seen this all before. He had been a merchant banker in Jakarta during Indonesia's heady years and now resided in Saigon as a financial consultant to one of the major investment houses. Today, as usual, he was holding court in The Shakes Pub, a pseudo English bar overlooking Me Linh Square across from where the old Bank of America building had stood near the roundabout on Phan Van Dat Street.

Vietnam
's revamped investment philosophy, Doi Moi, had been introduced by Vo Van Kiet during the preceding years. Consequently, demolition teams had moved in and destroyed large sections of this part of the city making way for hotels and offices to cater for the rapid increase in demand.

Jack watched the freighters pass along the congested Saigon river. These huge ships, with tonnages of up to twenty thousand, sailed up the river more than thirty nautical miles before berthing in the crowded river port. As they sailed past, majestically, they created a strange illusion that it was possible for one to reach out and touch the huge structures.

Several of Saigon's hard-core expatriate drinkers stood alongside the financier, only too pleased to be seen in his company.

Vietnam
's sudden change to a market economy attracted entrepreneurial types from all corners of the globe. The last recession in the West had encouraged opportunists to depart their own shores and investigate South East Asia. Vietnam's potential attracted a wide variety of these dubious characters, including a few former politicians from Western Australia who, after completing their brief period of incarceration in the Fremantle Prison, had fled their native country.

Vietnam
's overseas image was that of a last frontier and this, coupled with its recent violent history, caused tourists to flood into the country. They had came to visit the land made famous in so many Hollywood movies over the last twenty-five years.

The contrast between Hollywood fantasy and the grim reality of everyday life in Vietnam shocked the naive visitor. Filth and misery were everywhere. Blocked gutters, broken footpaths, beggars lining the streets and pickpockets on all the main thoroughfares. Saigon presented an entirely different picture than they had anticipated. Even Dhong Khoi, with its string of boutique coffee shops, bars and Vietnamese restaurants, was not spared.

Violence was endemic. Mutilated bodies were often left lying on the footpaths until the early hours of the morning when they were removed by some passing truck.

Robbery was rife. Life was cheap.

Outside the hospital's dirty walls, groups of people gathered in silence. To the uninitiated, they might appear to be anxious friends or family waiting for news of some loved one. In fact, these people were Saigon City's mobile blood bank. The group would congregate and wait until approached by a distressed soul, desperate for a blood type for their child or relative and then the donor would haggle over the price. The price of blood depended not only on rarity of type, but the gravity of need.

Expatriate numbers had grown to several thousand boosted by the recent influx of oil and gas companies anxious to develop the offshore fields of Vung Tau and Da Nang. Many had come and gone, discouraged by the difficulties in dealing with a socialist government still suffering extreme xenophobia. Most of the foreigners who pioneered Vietnam's emergence from the dark corridors of a mismanaged Communist bureaucracy were well-versed in the Orient's confusing ways before venturing into the now vibrant economy. Not that Vietnam didn't still suffer from the long period of stagnation caused by the crippling embargo placed on it by the American Government.

Deep warning blasts sounded downstream as one of the large freighters approached the port. A flotilla of small canoe-style ferry boats scurried quickly away from the oncoming giant's threatening bow wash.

Brindley ordered another round of drinks for everyone and the fat, ebullient bartender waddled over to pour a beer into his glass before the others. Quickly and efficiently, the waitress replaced the used glasses with clean chilled ones. All, that is, with the exception of Brindley who liked to hang onto his seasoned glass. He had a theory that glasses too chilled or washed in the wrong detergent would make the beer flat. It suited him to be the odd man out. He enjoyed the additional attention. Brindley was about to raise his hand to call for a packet of cigarettes when he sighted the tall pale foreigner at the other end of the bar.

Brindley observed the other man. “And a drink for my friend over there too George,” he said, indicating the man sitting at the end of the bar.

The affable barman served the beers and delivered a generous measure of whisky to Stephen Coleman, merely indicating with his finger that the order had come from “Mr John”, the tall thin gentleman standing in the group next to the darts area.

Coleman raised his glass in salute and drank. He could not remember the man's name but he dimly recollected the face and build. ‘Dimly' was very appropriate, he thought wryly. He was not altogether clear just how many drinks he had consumed already in the course of that day. He no longer bothered to count. Not that he was an alcoholic, he easily deluded himself, it was just that he had not been able to get it all together again and, he worried, time was running out.

How old was he now, forty-nine? No. That was last March! And now it was March again. So, he decided, confused by the mental haze, he would now be forty-eight! He laughed privately at his own joke. He checked his whisky and observed that it already needed replenishing. Pleased with himself at not yet having broken through the magic ‘fifty,' Coleman gestured to George to bring him another drink and, waving his hand in a circle, indicated that he wished to buy a round for everyone present.

The bartender wobbled back down to the other end of the bar and organized drinks for the group.

“I tell you, he had millions!” the fat bearded New Zealander whispered.

“Bullshit!” the Australian challenged.

“Actually,” the British born financier offered, “no one really knows just how much he did have, but I will say this,” he paused for added emphasis, “it was considerably more than reports would have it.”

The group absorbed the information occasionally glancing over in the direction of the man sitting alone at the long bar. The conversation was typical banking fraternity gossip, each attempting one-upmanship over the others present. By offering opinions and observations without substance, they often irretrievably damaged the reputation of the unfortunate subject.

“What did he do with it then?” the Australian inquired, probably keen to discover a potential investor in his new project.

Brindley raised his glass and sipped slowly before replying. “No one really knows.”

“Is that the guy that was deported from Indonesia about ten years back?” the Australian persisted.

Brindley considered this before replying.

“Alittle longer than that, if my memory serves me correctly, and I don't believe he was actually deported. Stories regarding situations such as the one in which he became embroiled obviously become distorted with time.”

Brindley paused to drink then continued. “Stephen Coleman carried a very big stick, as they say, before he stumbled. There were many who were pleased when he finally fell out of favour and lost, or appeared to lose, the lot.”

“What happened?” Bruce Point the New Zealander eagerly asked.

“He was involved very deeply, or so the story goes, in an arms scandal revolving around the Timor fiasco back in the late seventies, or it could even have been the early eighties. At the time he went into hiding, and disappeared from Indonesia when it became a little too hot. Now he pops up from time to time in the most surprising places.”

“Bloody hell!” the fat Kiwi announced, “A gun-runner!”

“Keep it down a little, Bruce.” Brindley admonished.

The men turned their heads to see if Coleman had noticed, but he appeared to be lost in thought.

“When his group started to crumble,” the well informed Brindley continued, “there was also some unsavoury gossip concerning his wife.”

“And?” prodded one of the men.

“Well, I am not sure. It has been a long time and quite frankly, I believe that his private life should remain just that. The long and the short of it all is that he disappeared about that time. Although the stories have been embellished over the years, I never found the man to be anything but hard-working and reasonably friendly when I knew him back in those times.”

All heads had once again turned in the direction of the Australian sitting alone. Stephen looked up and caught their glances. He just smiled thinly, ignoring their obvious stares. It had happened before.

 

During his years of relative seclusion he had often encountered knowing glances and whispering voices when he ventured into the drinking dens frequented by expatriates. He remembered how in Mandalay, one afternoon, a complete stranger had walked up to him and accused him of unspeakable acts, abusing him so savagely that he had been totally bewildered and at a loss to defend himself. And now, here in old Saigon his past had followed him again, judging from the inquisitive stares from the group off to his right.