The squawk of a hornbill shattered the moment. A puff of wind caressed his cheeks and he turned and looked downstream; his eyes followed the black hornbill’s flight along the narrow river’s course, before her form blurred amongst the towering, giant forest trees. The dukun remained paused, alert, and when he recognized the hornbill’s familiar cry, he knew then that the interlopers were near.
Jonathan Dau offered a brief chant before he cautiously lifted one foot then another, moving at surreptitious pace while proceeding across the rickety, twisted, ageing twine-and-bamboo suspension bridge strung perilously across the narrow gorge, and over the cascading falls far below. Suspecting that wandering forest ghosts, those lost souls known to roam the misty, upper-river reaches remained in observance he decided that it would not be prudent to linger there. Jonathan Dau quickened his pace and, with determined steps, soon left the dangling bridge well behind. He entered deep into the forest where in compatible blend, his image fused with the sun-blocked landscape. Now in perfect harmony with the surrounding spirits, Jonathan Dau, chief shaman to the Aoheng, Penehing tribe made his way downstream to where the reported sighting had been made.
****
Eric Baird accepted that swatting the mosquito would be a waste of energy. By the time the insect’s blood-drawing presence was obvious, the damage would already have been done. He raised his hand perfunctorily, missed, sighed then moved his body forward to restore circulation to a now bruised, near-calloused backside.
The expedition had, without doubt, been the most disastrous he had ever undertaken in his years spent dragging his frail, thin frame through Indonesian leech-infested, swamps and jungles. He sighed, again, his despondency due more to the absence of his companion, Mardidi, than the overwhelming obstacles encountered since leaving the young and ailing Javanese, two days downstream. Mardidi had succumbed to yet another malaria bout just days before and Baird, albeit reluctantly, was obliged to leave his personal assistant behind. Baird pushed ahead to maintain the punishing survey schedule. An experienced expatriate geologist, Baird valued the advice and experience of field assistants, wishing now he had not acted so hastily in moving this far upstream without reliable guidance.
He listened to the longboat crew’s mumblings and, although unable to understand their dialect, their mood reflected their misgivings at having ventured into unfamiliar territory. The three-man crew consisted of Modang river-Dayaks, whose temperament had become visibly hostile as their party progressed upstream, following un-charted tributary systems that fed the great Mahakam River. They were now in Penehing territory, the Dayak tribal group known for their mystical powers, derived from decapitating their foes. Baird, questioning his own judgment at having undertaken this expedition without his partner, drifted off into a troubled review of events which had brought him to this relatively unexplored place.
****
Baird’s survey party had left the provincial capital, Samarinda, a week before where he had made final arrangements for the expedition, sending Mardidi on errands to purchase supplies from the city’s well-stocked stores. They had flown from Jakarta to Balikpapan, and then traveled by minibus between these two coastal cities, which served as communications and business centers for the wealthy province.
Borneo ’s diverse cultures and local economies were well known to Eric Baird. East Kalimantan exports exceeded four billion American dollars annually, ninety percent of which being generated from oil and natural gas products. Huge plywood factories, owned and operated by presidential palace cronies, dotted the landscape, while diminishing forests were grave evidence of their success. Baird, who had conducted surveys across the greater part of Central and East Kalimantan, had trudged through snake-filled swamps, found Samarinda’s crossroads environment, a city where Chinese millionaires conducted business on mobile phones and carpetbaggers lined the streets, dull and uninviting.
Founded by Bugis warrior-merchants who had sailed their perahus across the straits from southern Sulawesi in the early 18th Century, Samarinda’s isolated population had since exploded as a result of oil and gas discoveries, exceeding a quarter of a million by the 1990s. As the point of departure for all river travel inland, the city’s merchants maintained a generous flow of goods, their small stores boasting the latest in electrical equipment smuggled from neighboring Singapore and Hong Kong. Here, where the Mahakam River Bridge splits the capital in half, huge log rafts heading for nearby mills exacerbate conditions amongst the dangerously congested river traffic as ships of all sizes maneuver their way through precarious lanes. Fiberglass, aluminum and timber speedboats crashed over each other’s wakes as they streaked across the brown, choppy waters, their overpowered outboard engines screaming warning of approach. Downstream, where the river opened into a wide delta before flowing into the strait of Makasar, smaller craft hauled huge, succulent river-shrimp from nets strung across the myriad of channels crisscrossing the delta area.
Baird has been sent out to reconnoiter an area identified by airborne geological surveys as promising, an area yet to be taken up by any mining interests. His mission was to walk over the target area taking samples for analysis, make a general assessment of the geology and attempt to establish dialogue with local tribesmen regarding their concessions. His brief included identifying properties with gold potential, both alluvial and hard rock deposits – areas that could easily be acquired from traditional owners, and would withstand an independent geological survey inspection. The expatriate geologist’s knowledge of Indonesia’s mineral opportunities was unique, having spent almost twenty years plodding across the country’s fields, valleys and swamps, checking terrain and examining deposits as a freelance geologist. With the surge in general exploration over recent years, his services had remained in demand, his fortunes improving beyond expectation until he had become involved with Alexander Kremenchug, a flamboyant expatriate would-be-mining entrepreneur. Now, as he approached his fortieth birthday, Baird was desperate to recover from his financial slump, determined now to rebuild the fortune lost through his association with Kremenchug.
Being au fait with the methodology devised by many of these investors, Baird had been closely associated in a number of speculative arrangements with Canadian and Australian interests. A plethora of less viable, foreign mining companies had swamped Indonesia over the past decade, eager to participate in the country’s growing mineral boom. Baird had acted as consulting geologist to a number of these entities many of which, he discovered, could barely pay for his services let alone establish a bona fide mining operation. Nevertheless, he needed to recover his losses, and accepted whatever work came his way.
His role as geologist often required his participation in negotiating with all levels of Indonesia’s mining fraternity, from village peasant to senior government bureaucrats. He would venture into relatively unknown areas believed to bear significant gold or other precious mineral deposits, conduct a general survey, and then submit his report to the client. Practice dictated that in the event Baird’s report was in any way promising, negotiations with the traditional rights’ owners would be concluded, followed by a formal application being processed with the Department of Mines. The foreign participant would then make announcements to their own Exchanges hoping that the Indonesian gold frenzy would drive their shares up and beyond par value. Depending on the viability of the find, Baird would often instruct his stockbroker to buy into the relevant miner’s stock before any announcement could be made, selling whenever he acquired advance information relating to drilling results.
In 1988, the year following his disastrous losses, desperate, Baird had agreed to support Alexander Kremenchug’s proposal to acquire a number of local, Kalimantan gold leases, and offer these as equity in future, Canadian public company floats. Apart from identifying prospects based on geological formations, Baird was also responsible for convincing the traditional owners to surrender their concessions in exchange for future payment, once mining had commenced.
Baird had set out, surveying available areas around Palangkaraya in Indonesian-Borneo’s