LITMIR.BIZ

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geologist strolled lazily back to his tent, changed into field clothes then went down to the longboat, mystified by the absence of the boatmen. Assuming they had wandered off in search of game, he prepared breakfast for himself, demolishing a can of corned beef whilst he waited. With coffee on his mind, he lit the portable primus then sat on his haunches waiting for the water to boil. Half an hour passed before Baird concluded, that for the boatmen to leave their vessel unattended this long, something had to be amiss. Aware that it would be foolhardy for him to leave the camp until they had returned, the invitation for them to steal everything in his absence too great, he strolled back down to the longboat, calling out as he approached. There was no answer. Annoyed, Baird climbed down into the boat and went searching for the missing cartons of cigarettes. He flicked the loose cover tarpaulin to one side and froze.

      Both crewmen lay stretched out, their faces grim evidence of how they had died. Baird leapt backwards, stunned, and fell overboard. Desperate, he groped his way up the muddy bank tearing nails from flesh as he slipped and slid, finally making it to his feet and ran towards his tent, terrified that whoever had murdered these men might still be lurking close by. Realizing that was no place to hide Baird stopped in his tracks, and stared around. Fear gripped his heart; in moments he was shaking with shock.

      ****

      The shaman had followed Eric Baird’s movements fascinated with the foreigner’s behavior. He had removed the deadly darts and placed his victims’ bodies in the vessel, expecting Baird would decamp immediately upon discovering the dead crewman. The Dayak chief had considered killing the foreigner, but reasoned that an expatriate death would only bring grave consequences, for all. That he had taken the lives of the two boatmen in no way troubled the chief; the Modang had brought the white man to a sacred site and desecrated the soil by establishing camp there. He was deeply distressed that the outsiders had selected this location, and his concern that others would follow and disturb ancestral spirits in their quest for gold, prompted his next step. The shaman removed his clothing and extracted his father’s golok from its leather sheath. With the machete raised in one hand and the blowpipe in the other for effect, he let forth a most terrifying call, and started running towards Baird.

      The Australian heard the blood-curdling scream, and his jaw fell. When he realized that this savage looking creature meant danger, he snapped alert and ran back towards the river, slipping and sliding down the embankment. He scrambled on board the longboat, released the lines then climbed over the boatmen’s bodies in his haste to get to the engines. He hit the starter – dismayed when the engine coughed and died. He punched the button hard, again, with the palm of his hand, a wave of relief flooding through his body as the outboards caught, and roared into life.

      Standing further along the riverbank Jonathan Dau continued with his show, dancing around like the proverbial wild man of Borneo, yelling and cursing in his native dialect, waving the intimidating machete in the most menacing manner until Baird disappeared from view. Satisfied that the intruders were done with, he strolled back to where he had disrobed, dressed quickly then commenced the two-hour journey back to his village, through the densely timbered forest.

      ****

      The shaman moved with stealth along familiar paths, arriving at a point overlooking the most idyllic of river-island settings, where he took a moment to rest. From his vantage point on the ridge, he could clearly see across the waterfall-fed streams to his Longhouse village, a complex community building perched high on tall stilts, half-encircled by a limestone ridge. Spray rising from the waterfall on his left painted a welcoming rainbow across the sky, and the shaman offered a prayer of thanks to the mid-morning. Villagers tended fields towards the center of the island, while children played at their heels and, downstream, where the river rejoined to become one again, a pocket of thick forest remained, untouched. In the distance he could see a longboat approaching, carrying supplies to the isolated tribe.

      The chief moved down the path to the river’s edge, passing through a naturally carved cavern hidden behind the waterfall, to emerge on the other side unseen. He crossed a rope and bamboo suspension bridge, acknowledging the guardian statues on either side. They had been placed there at the entrance to the longhouse by his forefathers to protect those inside against evil spirits. He stepped onto the boardwalk that followed the riverbank – the Perkins diesel’s steady thump, thump, thump drifting up the gorge informing him that the elders were watching television, inside.

      Jonathan entered the long, carefully planned dwelling unbuckling the golok in his stride, and was greeted by a chorus of voices acknowledging his return. He smiled, and joined his extended family, taking the privileged position reserved for the shaman in the communal room. There, he sat, comfortably cross-legged on a tikar mat, with the others, watching a European soccer match final via satellite, the parabolic dish mounted conspicuously outside.

      ****

      Eric Baird managed his way back to the transit station, but not before finding the courage to dump the two bodies overboard not far from where they had been murdered. Any investigation would not only complicate matters with respect to his client’s acquisition of the general exploration area, but might possibly require his returning to the site. With an image of the wild, screaming bushman fresh in his mind, Baird opted to disguise the truth. He would fabricate a story that would be credible.

      The authorities accepted his well-rehearsed and convincing story of how the boatmen had died. He remained at the transit station until Mardidi was well enough to travel, taking advantage of the delay to prepare a fictitious report for survey work he did not complete.

      The pair returned to Samarinda where Baird paid one thousand dollars compensation to the boatmen’s families, the money gratefully received, the widow of one kissing his right hand in gratitude as her oldest child looked on, in bewildered grief – the boy’s chest filling with pride when Baird explained that his father had died courageously, whilst attempting to save his drowning companion from the mighty Mahakam’s currents, when a overhanging branch had knocked the man into the river.

      Baird never revealed the true events to anyone; not even to Mardidi. Upon his return to Jakarta the following week, he submitted a copy of his report to the Indonesian Mines Department with recommendations that the area further east might be deserving of further exploration activity. Baird had no wish to ever return to the scene of his wild encounter, deciding then, that in the event Alexander Kremenchug was successful in putting a deal together with the Canadians, he would find a reason not to return to this site. Baird had copied an earlier report from his files; the data compiled some years before during a survey of terrain, relatively similar to the target area. He understood that Kremenchug needed a positive result from this initial survey, and he was only too happy to provide one. Baird collected twenty-five thousand dollars for his efforts and an undertaking from Kremenchug that he would be included in any vendor’s share issues, once an investor had acquired the property.

      By an accident of bureaucratic blunder and Baird’s misleading submission to the Mines Department, Jonathan Dau’s spiritual grounds remained untouched for another two years, when a group of Samarinda businessmen discovered that the stretch of river land had not been assigned to any of the mining companies. Nine months after these local entrepreneurs acquired the exploration rights, they, too, abandoned the prospect, when a number of calamitous survey expeditions earned the area a fierce reputation, and was then considered taboo.

      And along the Upper Mahakam reaches identified as Longdamai, this isolated pocket of land became known as Longdamai Sial – a place cursed, even in tranquility.

      ****

      Chapter Two

      November 1989

       Jakarta

      The instant the traffic slowed to a grinding halt, deformed children, the maimed and crippled, lepers and blind beggars all appeared as if by command. Many were guided, pushed or dragged between rows of stagnated vehicles by their helpers, most seemingly oblivious to the choking exhaust fumes that consistently blanketed the capital’s congested arterial roads. Street urchins swarmed through the grid locked traffic, skirting amidst the carcinogenic-pumping machines, hands outstretched to the privileged within their chauffeured,

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