‘It’s dangerous,’ Joko warned, but ready to impress if she said it was okay.
‘Just catch up with them,’ she shouted, the wind now bringing tears to her eyes.
‘Hang on!’ Joko warned, pulling back behind a slow moving minibus, just in time.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Angela complained, gripping and squeezing his waist painfully. Joko did not hesitate. He pulled out wildly and overtook the vehicles ahead, narrowly bringing disaster upon them when oncoming vehicles ground to a halt to avoid smashing into the two.
‘Aduh,‘Gela,’ Joko cried out, ‘let them go!’ Angela could feel Joko trembling and reluctantly decided to let it go.
‘Just drive us to the crater,’ was all she said, releasing her grip from around his waist.
They continued on for a few minutes, slowing to a halt when they came upon the scene where Didi’s bike had hit a patch of gravel, spinning both rider and passenger through the air into the broken asphalt surface. Incredibly, both had landed safely without any injury other than pride. Angela climbed off Joko’s machine hurriedly, ran across to where her friend was sitting up against the side of the road, and grabbed her by the shoulders.
‘Are you all right?’ she shook her gently, more angry with herself than Nani for what had happened.
‘Enggak apa-apa,’ Nani answered, reassuring Angela that she was not injured. Others had begun to arrive at the scene, most dismounting to see what had happened.
On the far side of the road Didi was still dusting himself down, bragging to his friends, apparently not in the least concerned about Nani’s possible injuries.
‘Didi!’ Angela called, rising slowly and walking towards him, measuring her steps as she did so. Several of the youth’s friends turned, Angela’s determined, and to some, familiar pose, warning them to stand back. Didi looked up, saw Angela before him, and smiled stupidly just as the palm of her hand hit him squarely on the side of the jaw – deliberately avoiding the lethal point of contact. Without so much as a whimper, Didi collapsed to the ground, unconscious. Angela then turned on her heel, and went back to Nani’s side.
‘Joko,’ she addressed the flabbergasted student, ‘can you take us both back home?’ He looked over at the still form lying alongside the road, back to Angela, then threw one leg over his machine and nodded.
‘Come on,‘Ni,’ she called, affectionately, helping her friend straddle the bike.
****
In her two years attending the Bandung Institute Angela had avoided forming intimate relationships, remaining dedicatedly focused on her studies. In consequence, she was branded cold and distant, the many, rejected young men on campus confused by her apparent lack of interest in their sex. Angela had been tempted – the campus was studded with handsome, young men, but she remained on track and, apart from occasional, group casual outings, was rarely seen in the company of boys. Apart from occasional visits to Jakarta during semester breaks, when she would travel to the capital together with Nani by train, Angela remained in Bandung.
She had returned to the Longdamai, Mahakam village only once since commencing her studies and as the end of the second year came to a close she became impatient to be reunited with her father, and extended Penehing family. Contact with the village had been maintained via weekly radio hookup, courtesy of the Dean. Communication was invariably difficult, interrupted when weather conditions deteriorated, their conclusion often leaving Angela angered by the absence of more modern facilities to link the isolated communities in Kalimantan to the outside world. With a growing awareness of the disparity between the wealthy, Javanese elite and their provincial cousins, Angela realized that the Penehing people would remain neglected and without adequate representation as long as their voice went unheard. Wise beyond her years, she also understood that there was little that the Dayaks could do to rectify this situation, against the powerful, centralist government in Jakarta.
As she matured, so did Angela’s appreciation of the special gift she had inherited, the ‘tenaga-dalam’ or inner force phenomenon always evident in her family line. And, under her father’s guidance and instruction, she had acquired a sound awareness of the responsibilities she would one day assume. Introverted and calm, coupled with a strict and rigid temper, Angela emulated Jonathan Dau in every way, her devotion and commitment to the Penehing Dayak as determined as her father’s. Inseparable in mind and spirit, Angela became a perfect copy of the mould; her father’s philosophies, spiritual and metaphysical beliefs, all becoming her own.
As a teenager, Angela had already understood that her people and their environment were clearly under threat by the destructive forces of commerce, and centralist government policies. When she first saw the devastation visited upon Dayak traditional lands, she’d cried, the imagery contributing to her decision to follow her father’s footsteps in the fight against those who would destroy the pristine forests and fields. She sought her father’s advice and decided to study those disciplines associated with the earth sciences, believing that this direction would not only enhance her understanding of the issues, but would provide her with credentials for the future when she took up the fight against those who would destroy the Dayak environment.
Angela had learned that annual, widespread forest fires, blanketing most of Kalimantan and reaching as far as Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, were primarily the result of the expanding, Indonesian palm oil industry, controlled by the First Family and their business associates, Borneo’s corporate arsonists. Prior to her departure from Longdamai, millions of hectares of forest and grasslands had been burned to clear land for the planting of palm. In private, many amongst her fellow students discussed how firmly ensconced all three generations of Suharto’s family had become within the industry. The state-owned, palm oil plantations sold their production of crude palm oil to the state logistics agency, BULOG, at incredibly low prices. In turn, this organization made substantial profits from sales of its cooking oil, the benefits flowing to Suharto-linked conglomerates owned by Sino-Indonesian businessmen, and generals.
But, of even greater concern to Angela, was the systematic destruction of her environment’s tropical peat land. Central government policies promoting the conversion of peat, swamp forests to agriculture had significantly reduced Kalimantan’s natural ecosystem. She knew, that at current levels of conversion, millions of hectares of peat land swamps would be devastated at the expense of the Dayak people – and the myriads of wildlife, not least amongst which was the orangutan.
During her years studying away from home, Angela’s commitment to her people had never swayed, her determination to return to the Mahakam to assist the Dayak communities foremost in her mind. Determined to maximize the benefits of her academic achievements for the betterment of the Dayak people, Angela Dau continued her conscientious role as an honor student and, to the dismay of the community of male undergraduates, remained aloof to their persistent advances.
Chapter Six
November 1993
Perth – Australia
Sharon Ducay’s eyes ran over the headlines again, the tingling sensation she experienced one of acute excitement. She stared at Alexander Kremenchug’s photograph, convinced that her choice had been appropriate, her investigations suggesting that this man had more skeletons than cupboards to hide them in. Sharon finished dressing and, while waiting for him to call from the hotel lobby, browsed the articles again.
Newspaper headlines reported that trading in Pursuit Minerals had been suspended. The publicly-listed company owned controlling stock in the Meekatharra gold leases which had, over past weeks, been the darling of the West Australian stock exchange. Suddenly, it was all over, the suggestion that arrests would be made sufficient to cause the shares to collapse within minutes, photographs of Kremenchug and the two prospectors accused of spiking the original drilling samples, splashed across the front page. Accusations of insider trading, criminal