I didn't hire a guide. How hard could it be? You just went up until you could go up no more. Admittedly there were a few false starts in the forested trails, and a couple more past the treeline on the barren lava crags that rose to the top, but I made it. Two weeks on the Annapurna Circuit had toughened my legs so much that this low-altitude ascent felt like a walk in Golden Gate Park. The lava was razor-sharp, but that just meant my boots gripped it more firmly.
The top was a U-shaped wall around the central crater, like a castle wall surrounding the treasures within. The interior of the crater was lushly green. There was a distinct smell of rotten eggs, and at one point I smelled burning rubber and looked down to see my boots bubbling on one of the hot rocks. Only a few meters separated me from magma, I reckoned, quickly stepping away.
The last eruption had been some twenty years ago, and historically speaking, Gunung Batur was about due for another, saith the Lonely Planet. Looking down I could see a half-dozen black frozen-lava rivers running all the way to the lake. I wondered how it felt to live in Toyah Bungkah, knowing that any day you might be immolated by a river of searing lava. I guess not that different from living in San Francisco, knowing that you're next-door neighbour to the San Andreas Fault.
I climbed back down and hitched a ride back up to Penelokan with a friendly French cyclist named Marc. Three bemos and three hours later, at nightfall, I was back in Kuta Beach, at the Internet World cafe, reading the latest addition to the Thorn Tree conversation.
BC088269 11/10 04:07
Green. And a ski mask.
How you been, Paul?
It was him all right. It was the last line that gave me shivers. That friendly how-you-been. As if he knew me. As if my copycat The Bull II theory was correct. I should have felt triumphant, but I felt frightened, and looked around in the cafe as I read it, as if he was right there, watching me.
Then I checked my email. Talena reported that the latest message was from a different IP number and that I should come home now. I reread it. She had not mentioned what the new IP number was.
It was 8 PM Indonesia time. I couldn't remember if that made it 8AM or 6AM or 10AM or what in California. Also I was too pissed off to care. I found a Home Country Direct phone, gave the AT amp;T operator my credit-card number, and called her at home. It rang three times and went to the machine. I pushed Next Call and dialed it again. And again. The third time, she picked up.
"Whosit?" she croaked.
"It's Paul, how's it going, what's the new IP number?"
"What?"
"You said there was a new IP number but you didn't tell me what it was."
"Paul… fucking… fuck. Do you know what time it is here?"
"No."
"It's four in the fucking morning."
"Well, I'm sorry. Now what's the number?"
"Fuck you, you obsessive shit! I was trying to sleep!"
I swallowed and admitted to myself that I was arguably being a little rude. "I'm sorry. But, look, I flew halfway around the planet for this, and I need your help."
"Aw, fuck. Call me back in five minutes." And the line went dead.
I went and got a green Fanta. My favourite soft drink, tragically unavailable anywhere in the world outside of Southeast Asia. Africa had had a whole rainbow of various Fanta colours… except for green. I gave her seven minutes and called her back.
"Hi, you annoying rude little shit wake-up caller," she said, but she sounded grumpy rather than angry. Her voice sounded tinny.
"And a top of the morning to you too."
"You having any luck over there?"
"No," I said.
"Good. Come home."
"Talena. Just give me the new number. I'm sure you have it already."
"Yes, I do," she said. "But I'm not going to give it to you. You're just going to use it to get in trouble."
"Talena… " I hesitated. "Look. There were actually a couple of things I never told you, because they just sounded totally crazy."
"Well. You sure pick a good time to fess up."
"I think I may already know this guy. And I think he might have already come after me on the trail in Nepal."
There was a pause and then she said "You better unpack that a lot."
I told her about my copycat truck-killer theory, and about how the man in the ski mask had pursued me on the trail, which I hadn't mentioned before for fear of sounding paranoid.
When I was finished she said "So your pet madman has already tried to kill you and you're going after him again?"
"Yeah," I said. "But, listen, I know what I'm going to do when I find him."
"Yeah? What's that?"
"Nothing," I said. "If I see a face I recognize I'm going to turn right the fuck around and come straight back to California that same day. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred thousand rupiah."
"Well, I'm glad to hear your sanity is leaking back to you in dribs and drabs."
"But I need to know if I'm right," I said. "And if I'm right I need to know who it is. And to have even a chance of that I need you to give me the new IP number. Please."
"He might have left Indonesia, you know. What if the new number's in China? You going to follow him there?"
"No. Then I'm going to sit on the beach for a week and come home."
She thought it over. Then she thought it over some more. As I opened my mouth to plead my case again she said: "All right. On one condition."
"What's that?"
"That you email me every single day like you promised to do. There was no email yesterday."
"I'm calling you now," I protested.
"That's not yesterday."
"It is my time."
"Okay. Listen up. You are to call or email me every single day, my time, with any and all information that you have. Or there will be hell to pay, believe you me. Oh, and you are also to tell me, right this very second, absolutely anything else that you have left out of the story."
"Email every day," I promised. "And I haven't left anything else out."
"If you have, you better hope The Bull gets you before I do," she warned. And then she gave me the number.
"Goodbye," she said.
"Wait," I said.
"What now?"
"I just realized. I guess I have left something else out."
"Tell me," she said.
"It's just… you know how I said that a friend of mine was murdered two years ago?"
"Yes?"
"She wasn't just a friend," I said. "She was my girlfriend."
"Your girlfriend."
"Yeah."
"Paul?" she asked, and her voice was husky.
"Yes?"
"Please, please, please don't do anything stupid. Please. Try to come back in one piece."
"That's what I'm best at," I said, trying to be jaunty.
"Don't you make a fucking joke out of it," she said sharply. "Don't you fucking joke. Promise me you won't do anything stupid. Promise me when you see him you'll turn around and walk away."
"I promise," I said.
"You better take care of yourself."
"I will. Bye."
"Bye."
I hung up and stared at the IP number I had written on my hand. I didn't know if I could keep my promise. If the number did lead me to the killer I didn't know what I would do. What I had told her was the truth, my plan really was just to get a name and then get the hell out. But that was only a plan. I didn't know what I would actually do. I wouldn't know until it happened.
The new number led me to The Sukarnoputri Cafe, Mataran, Lombok, Indonesia.
Chapter 14 Tetebatu Blues
The 10AM ferry eventually left at 2:30PM. But it was worth the wait. The ocean here was the purest blue imaginable. Like the green of the islands. It was as if only Indonesia used the real colours, and everywhere else had washed-out imitations. It took only four hours to reach Lombok, the next island over in Indonesia's endless chain, roughly the same size as Bali but according to Lonely Planet very different, Muslim not Hindu, poorer, more rural, not near as heavily traveled. My kind of place. The ferry was stuffed to the gills with about three hundred people, two-thirds of whom were backpackers. There were only four lifeboats and I thought uneasily about the occasional reports from Indonesia of Hundreds Dead In Ferry Disaster. But there was no disaster. We got into Lembar port in the middle of an astonishingly beautiful sunset, the sun enormous and crimson, the sky littered with pink cotton-candy cloud-dragons, the ocean so blue it was nearly purple.