“The man himself,” Amanda murmured. “I’m honored.”
“Well,” Christine responded sourly, “at least that eliminates the worry of a suicide pilot or five pounds of plastique under your seat.”
Amanda waved the intel off “I promise I won’t sit in the back row in the movie, and if he claims he’s run out of gas, I’ll remember to hit him where you told me. See you tonight, Chris.”
“Oh, really? You think?”
Feeling exceedingly antsy, Christine looked on as her friend checked off ship with the Carlson’s OOD and descended the gangway. Harconan awaited Amanda at the quayside, and even at a distance he looked hellishly handsome. Beyond listening range, the intel read the exchange of gesture body language that followed. Harconan’s air of flamboyant gallantry, which would have seemed forced in another man, flowed naturally, and Amanda, with the blood of her Virginia belle ancestors, could flirt with the best when she put her mind to it.
“You look worried, Little One.”
Nguyen Tran had come up beside her on the forecastle, keeping his voice low so as to not be overheard by the gangway watch.
On the dock Amanda and Harconan were walking away toward the waiting helo. “I am,” Christine murmured. “Please tell me I am stuffed full of blueberry muffins to think that somehow this is a really bad idea?”
“I’m not sure.” Tran’s eyes narrowed as he followed Amanda and the taipan with his gaze. “I doubt that Harconan would be foolish enough to harm your captain or do anything to draw suspicion onto himself. Still… do you know what the name Makara means?”
“No, what?”
“In Indonesia, the Makara is a legendary sea creature with two facets to its being: It has the beauty and grace of the dolphin, but the teeth… and soul… of the shark.”
The Eurocopter lifted off and cut across the waters of Benoa Harbor and the narrow spit of the Bukit Badung Peninsula before turning north west to parallel the coast. Amanda, who was not a pilot herself but who had spent a great deal of time in the company of aviators, noted the surety of the suntanned hands on the helicopter’s controls and the way Harconan seemed to merge with the aircraft in flight. Again she had to be impressed.
The tangle of cheap surfing resorts and coastal tourist villages thinned out rapidly, the cliffs lifting along the seaside and the great central mountains of the island interior rising as they headed inland. Soon a green and elegant terrain was passing beneath the helo’s pontoons, the valleys and even hillsides sculpted for rice cultivation, the flowing webwork of interlocking terraces seemingly made for aesthetics as well as for practicality. Interspersed among the fields were the farming communities, at the center of each the pura desa, the village temple, the bale agung, the village assembly ground, and the sacred banyan tree.
“This is more like what I thought Bali would be about,” Amanda commented into her interphone head set.
“It is,” Harconan replied. “This is the real Bali. The sprawl on the southern peninsula is someone else’s idea.”
“Whose?”
“Let me give you a hint. One of Bali’s former Javanese governors had the nickname Ida Bagus, or Okay, for his propensity for authorizing any development project that would bring in fast tourist dollars.”
“And the Balinese have nothing to say about it?”
Harconan arched a dark eyebrow behind his sunglasses. “Of course they do. Just as much any other non-Javanese in Indonesia. ‘We are many, but all are one,’ as our national motto says. Only somehow the one from Jakarta always seems to end up giving the orders to the many.”
“And this status quo is accepted?” Amanda probed.
“For the moment. The Balinese are by nature a mystic people, spiritual and artistic, until the gods tell them to be otherwise.”
“The gods?”
“Quite so. Look back over your right shoulder: See that tallest mountain to the northeast?”
Amanda studied the impressive volcano with its snowy cloud cap through the cockpit bubble. “Yes, it’s beautiful. What about it?”
“It’s called Gungung Agung. Back in 1965, during the last days of the Sukarno regime, a great religious ceremony was held here on Bali, the Eka Dasa Rudra, purification and balancing to bring man and nature into harmony. It is only supposed to be held once precisely every one hundred years. However, Sukarno, in order to impress a convention of travel agents, ordered the ritual be held ten years early.
“In the middle of the ceremonies, Gungung Agung over there exploded in its most violent eruption in six hundred years, killing sixteen hundred people and devastating one quarter of the island. The Balinese saw it as a sign that Shiva was displeased with them for allowing outsiders — in this instance, the island’s Communist faction — to come among them and disrupt the ways of the gods.
“In September of that year, when the coup was attempted and the Communist party of Indonesia was outlawed, the Balinese turned on them as well. But here it was unique. Here it wasn’t a political massacre; it was an exorcism of demons as ritualized as any temple ceremony. For the most part there was no rampage, no mass slaughter in the streets, as there was elsewhere in the islands. The Communists were allowed to bathe and don white ceremonial clothing and were led politely and without hate to their execution. Fifty thousand of them out of a population of two million.”
“My God, and you think it could happen again?” Amanda’s own words reminded her of the conversation she had shared with Stone Quillain about Krakatau a few days before.
“Let’s put it this way, my good Captain,” Harconan replied. “Were I a Javanese official, a Chinese hotel owner, or an Australian tourist, I would look hastily to my plane reservations should old Gungung start rumbling again.”
He banked the helicopter out over the sea. “I’m taking us out over the ocean. We’re coming up on the West Bali National Park, and I don’t like to disturb the bird sanctuaries.”
A few minutes later they rounded Cape Lampumerah, at the north western tip of Bali. Two islands could be seen then off the north coast, emeralds in a sapphire sea. “The one to the east is Menjangan,” Harconan pronounced. “It’s part of the National Park. The one ahead is Palau Piri, and it is my home.”
The Island of Princes was far more impressive in real life than in aerial photography. As the helo angled toward the flashing reception beacons of the island helipad, Amanda could only gaze awestruck as the complex of elegantly modern buildings and golf-course-smooth lawns rose toward her. Ian Fleming should have seen this, she thought wryly.
An elderly yet straight-spined Chinese in a black business suit awaited them in the ivory-tiled entry foyer of the main house. “Welcome home, Mr. Harconan,” he said with a slight inclination of his head in a faultless and accent-free English. “And welcome to you, Captain Garrett. You honor House Harconan with your presence. May your stay with us be a pleasant one.”
“Thank you.” Amanda suddenly wished she were wearing a skirt in stead of slacks: A curtsy seemed the only appropriate response to such a welcome.
“Amanda, I would like you to meet Mr. Lan Lo,” Harconan said with real affection in his voice. “My factotum, main functionary, and the only reason I’m a millionaire.”
The expression of repose on Lo’s face didn’t alter. “That is, of course, a gracious exaggeration, Captain.”
“Never argue with your employer, Lo. I say you are indispensable. Has everything been prepared for our guest?”
“Of course, sir. Luncheon will be ready in forty-five minutes.” Lo turned slightly to face Amanda. “Would you care to bathe first, Captain?”