The Easy Day Was Yesterday (35 page)

‘You nearly burst out laughing? How do you think it was for me? That silent period was excruciating. I had to use everything I had not to laugh!’ Twenty minutes later, a policeman arrived and asked if I was up to walking back to the prison. I said I’d give it a go and off we went. Sallie and Martin were going to visit with Bala, but agreed to visit me later instead.

Back at the prison, I thanked the police officer and returned to my cage. Loud Talker came in and we talked for 15 minutes about life. He seemed to be a smart guy who could do so much more than working in a prison. His brother was a lawyer and his sister a magistrate. During our conversation he quoted Nietzsche, Freud and the Bible — even though he was a Hindu. He told me I’d be going to the hospital today — it had been decided. I thanked him for his help, gave him three clip-on kangaroos for his children, and asked him how long it would be before I was moved. He said a few hours and then said goodbye.

Satya came into my cell to ask how it went in court. I told him that I was being moved to the hospital and that I hoped I wouldn’t be back. He told me he expected to be released in a few days. I thanked him for his friendship, kindness and guidance and told him I’d send him a letter when I got my feet back on the ground in Sydney. I then asked if he could translate for me while I spoke to the old man.

The old man was already sitting in my cell with a look of concern on his face — he wasn’t sure what was happening. I asked Satya to tell the old man I was being moved to the hospital today and that I probably wouldn’t be back. I thanked him for everything he’d done for me and told him that I wouldn’t have coped as well as I had without his fatherly kindness. Tears welled in the old man’s eyes.

‘You have given me hope that I will someday return to my wife and children,’ he said. ‘I assumed my life was over when they sent me here. Then you came and I knew you were a special man and important too. Then I helped you and I felt very honoured. You have become the son that I desperately miss. I have worried for you so because you have lost weight and you are sick too much,’ he continued with tears now flowing down his checks as he reached out to place a hand on my cheek. ‘I will miss you greatly when you are gone and will not know what to do with myself. These past weeks have gone by quickly because I had you to take care of. May God lead you safely back to your family and bless you forever,’ he finished and wiped his tears with his sarong.

I felt bloody awful for the old man and wished I could take him with me. He was such a genuinely good guy and I liked him a lot. I had been paying him, but only with miniscule sums of money every few days and even then he usually spent the money on sweets, and once on warm milk, hoping I’d eat and put on weight.

Satya rose to leave and I walked with him telling him I’d see him before I left. The old man went to leave behind Satya, but I grabbed his arm and gestured for him to come into my cell again. At the court this morning when Sallie had confirmed I’d be going to the hospital I asked her to give me some money so I could give it to the old man. He needed at least 2,000 rupees for his defence in court. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a bundle of rupees. I wanted to cover his court costs as a minimum. I also wanted to ensure he had money so that when he was released he had some money to get all the way back to his village. I also didn’t want him to arrive home empty handed so, in total, I gave him 10,000 rupees. That was about $250, which was nothing when I considered what he had done for me. The tears started falling again. He was beside himself. I think it had been a long time since he had seen so much money. He came from a very poor village and 10,000 rupees was equivalent to about six months’ pay. If I had $1000 I would have given it to him.

Loud Talker came back to my cell with Manish and said the police were waiting to escort me to the hospital. I grabbed all my gear, but Loud Talker told me to leave my mattress and fan and to only take the things I would need. He said the cell would be locked and all my belongings would be secure for when I came back. I won’t be back, I thought, but you can have all this shit anyway.

So, with two plastic bags with clothes, medicines and bottled water, I stumbled towards the administration building. When I got there I looked at the police escort who looked pretty bloody serious. They had their shackles and rope ready and I panicked. I thought about my phone, which was nestled neatly right behind my balls. Amazingly, it never moved, but I was certain they’d search me. They had to. How could I go to a hospital with all this stuff and not be searched? I didn’t want them to find the phone because I knew the consequence was 12 months added to my sentence, and it would also look bad for Bala, so I told them I felt sick and had to go to the toilet.

I held my stomach, pushed the door open and went to the squatters. Once inside I pulled my phone apart and removed the sim card and stuck it in my pocket. I then pulled the battery cover off the phone and forced that down the filthy, shit-clogged drain. I stood on the phone a few times to destroy it totally. I then pushed my phone down into the hole as well. But then my phone got stuck and wouldn’t budge in or out. It was stuck right there for all to see in the toilet drain. It was under an inch of water and had as much old shit stuck to it as my hand did. Nothing I can do now, I thought, so I left it right there. I wish I really had needed to go because I would have backed one out right on top of it. I did the best I could, washing about five years’ worth of shit from my hands. I was disgusted with myself, but thought this was a better option than having the phone found during a search. Now I worried that a prisoner would dig the phone out from the drain and they’d come for me anyway. Fuck me, nothing was easy.

As we walked back through the yard under the gaze of all the prisoners, Satya approached me for a final goodbye. Thankfully he didn’t extend his hand to be shaken, but did promise to keep in touch. Back inside the administration building the cops took control of all my possessions and then fitted the shackles. I complained that they were too tight. The police looked at me with an expression that said, ‘fuck you, white boy, suffer’. These guys were not the same friendly guys at the courthouse. They were clearly Siddiqui’s men. But the Warden intervened and told them to loosen the shackles a little. They weren’t built for comfort because they were perfectly round in shape, but unfortunately the wrist is not that shape so they dug in on the sides. Oh well, I was a prisoner after all. The shackles had a rope attached between my hands that was about six feet long. So the cops led me by the rope like a dog on a lead to the open police jeep parked in front of the administration area, but still inside the prison front gate. The cop car was similar to the old jeep that had brought me from the border three weeks back. I got in the back seat and a cop sat either side of me with their rusty old .303 rifles wedged in between their knees. The driver placed my plastic bags behind my seat and we drove to the hospital.

These cops were trying to be the bad guys. I sensed that Siddiqui had given them orders to make life difficult for me. I imagined them driving to some deserted spot where they’d shoot me in the back and then say I tried to escape. The cop sitting to my right just kept staring at me with a look of disgust on his face. I looked back at him a few times and then looked away as he continued to stare. Hang on, I thought, I’m not going to cower to these fools, so I stared back at him with a look that said ‘fuck you’. These blokes were going to give me a touch-up for sure, but I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of beating me mentally. ‘Anything wrong, mate?’ I said to him while looking straight into his eyes. We seemed to be locked in a staring competition until he eventually looked away. It was strange situation — like a Mexican stand-off. It reminded me of the time I was a security adviser for a gold mine in the Solomon Islands. But that was a completely different sort of stand-off.

I finished working in PNG at the end of 1999. In fact the managers decided to give my job to a qualified local. Of course I was pretty pissed off, but these things happen for a reason and, given the adventures that followed, I’m glad it happened. Armed with the Bachelor’s Degree that I had just completed after four years as an external student, I found myself looking for a job for the first time in 15 years. That’s when reality struck: very few Australian companies were concerned about security and most had no need for a security adviser. It was a good thing for world peace I suppose, but crap when you needed a job.

A few months later I jagged a job as the security manager for a gold mine in the Solomon Islands. You bloody beauty, I thought. This looked like a great opportunity and I couldn’t wait to get stuck into the job. As my then wife, Toni, and the kids drove me to the airport I heard a news report on the radio about a sectarian war erupting between the two main tribes in the Solomon Islands. They went on to say that the airport was closed, Honiara was on fire and the Australian Navy was mobilising to evacuate foreigners. Unbelievable. Just my luck. I turned the car around and went home.

A few months later, the Administration Manager from the mining company called and said they wanted to get back to the mine, but the first step was to get back to Honiara and to the office to make preparations and could I go with them? Of course I could; I needed to work and thought that I could still salvage a job out of this. I learnt that I would accompany the Mine Manager and the Administration Manager; the navy had evacuated both during the unrest.

Landing in Honiara was like flying into a set from an old Vietnam movie. There was smoke, buildings were burning and the streets were generally deserted. Men patrolled the streets in Toyota 4 x 4s with machine-guns strapped to the roll bar. It was chaos and I wondered how the city functioned at all. Anyone with money or thought to have money was told very clearly they had to give it to the Malaita Eagles Force (MEF — the group from the island of Malaita that controlled Honiara). Anyone refusing to pay was savagely beaten or murdered.

We stayed at the Mendana Hotel which was located right on the beach. It was actually a nice place and, on the beach side of the hotel, it was easy to forget a war was going on. One night the Administration Manager knocked on my door and showed me a note he’d just been given by reception. The note demanded that $40,000 dollars be paid to the MEF tomorrow at 12.00 noon at the office. The payment was compensation for the police officers who had been killed or injured when the Isotabu Freedom Movement (IFM — the tribe controlling the areas surrounding the mine and most of Guadalcanal) had attacked the mine site. We convened in the Administration Manager’s room to discuss the note and our response. We decided that compensation was not warranted and that this was obviously just an attempt to extort money from the largest company on the island.

The next day I sat in the office as the Mine Manager worked on his computer. The office was located at the King Solomon Hotel in an annex that fronted the street. The Administration Manager was chatting to an Australian turned local in the restaurant. I looked up and, through the glass door, saw MEF members walking towards the office. I told the Mine Manager what was coming just as the MEF member pushed the door open and said, ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ the Mine Manager replied, still typing away on his computer. ‘Compensation bilong mi,’ replied the MEF guy in Pidgin.

‘We won’t be paying compensation,’ the Manager said as he turned to face the MEF guy.

‘YOU PAY! YOU MUST PAY!’ The MEF guy was now screaming.

I remained seated watching all this happening, mentally willing the Mine Manager to just go easy.

‘You have your answer, so goodbye,’ said the Mine Manager as he swung back around towards his computer.

Shit, this isn’t good, I thought.

‘YOU SMART MOUTH TOO MUCH!’ yelled the MEF guy.

‘You have your answer, now get out,’ said the mine manager with his back still towards the MEF guy. The MEF guy turned, flung the door open and left, but I knew this wasn’t the end of it, probably just the beginning. I got up and followed him through the door, telling the Mine Manager to stay and the girl in the office to call her contact in the police. The police contact was a bloke who had been in a senior position prior to the war, but it meant very little now.

As I stood in front of the office I watched the MEF guy run to his Hilux, rip open the passenger door and grab his SLR. Walking back towards me, he chambered a bullet by cocking the weapon. Fucking excellent, I thought, now I earn my money. The MEF guy stopped in front of me, maybe six or seven metres away. He pointed the weapon at my chest and said, ‘Get out of the way.’

‘No, I can’t do that, and you know you don’t want to do anything stupid either.’

‘Are you the bodyguard?’

‘No, I’m here helping them, so we can all get back to work. And that includes getting your people back on the job as well.’

‘Mister, get out of my way.’

‘You know I can’t do that. Why don’t you let me buy you a drink at the restaurant and we can discuss this problem?’

‘Mister, either move or die.’

I put my hands in front of my body saying, ‘This is not something you want to do, mate.’

‘Prepare to die, mister,’ said the MEF guy as I watched him twist his feet into the dirt in preparation for the impact. I took a half-step back to try to defuse the situation, but the weapon followed and I saw him move the safety catch to fire. He seemed to be mentally willing himself to pull the trigger.

‘Hey mate, think about what you’re doing. If you cause any problems for me or the boss, the Australian military will be here in force and you will be arrested and put in gaol for a long time. You don’t want that and neither do I, so let’s discuss this.’

Just then, and right on time because I think my argument meant bugger all to the lunatic, the Administration Manager and the expatriate he was chatting to in the restaurant came around the corner and took in the scene. The expat guy came straight over and touched the MEF guy on the shoulder and whispered something to him. The MEF guy lowered his weapon and glared at me for what seemed like an eternity before returning to his vehicle. At the same time the policeman showed up but, as he had no power, his presence was useless. I returned to the office and saw that the Mine Manager had been peering through the window. He stepped aside and said nothing to me. I called the Australian High Commissioner across the road and got his answering machine. I left a message explaining the situation. It was vital that we had the High Commissioner’s support as he also had a team of armed Federal Police providing security to the High Commission staff and now I needed them to help me. The High Commissioner called back about 10 minutes later, which was about the time my pulse descended below 200 beats per minute. He agreed to help and offered four federal agents to assist when required.