CANNIBAL KINGDOM Read online

  Garrison rubbed the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t averse to flexing military muscle or even ordering strikes, his record proved that, but he believed in diplomacy first before ordering young men and women into harm’s way. “I still think the trip was the right thing to do,” he said.

  “So do I,” said Barrow, then tapped a folder on the coffee table. “The Ohio numbers are seeing it a little differently. We can talk about it on the plane.”

  “How long do we have?”

  The other man checked his watch. “We’re wheels-up in about ninety minutes.”

  Garrison smiled. “Good, there’s time for a call.”

  His Chief of Staff left the room briefly to talk to an aide, and a few minutes later he returned with a young man holding out a cell phone. “Dark Horse is on the line, Mr. President.”

  An eleven hour time difference separated Garrison from Devon Fox, the fifteen-year-old, only son of the President, code-named Dark Horse by the Secret Service. While it was 9:30 PM in Garrison’s part of the world, it was already 8:30 AM tomorrow at the Harrison School, the preparatory academy in Vermont where Devon spent his academic year. Try as he might to coordinate his calls with his son’s schedule and his own hectic life of responsibility and changing time zones – especially now with the campaign at top speed and less than three weeks to go until the general elections – calls between father and son were often difficult to arrange, and Garrison had frequently misread the time and awoken his boy. Devon was good-natured about it and said he understood, but Garrison still felt guilty. The duties of a President were rarely conducive to a stable family life, and he frequently chastised himself for not being a better father, not only to Devon but to his older sister Kylie.

  “What’s on the agenda?” Garrison asked, smiling for what felt like the first time today. On the other couch, Thomas Barrow busied himself with reading poll results and waved without looking up. “Thomas says hi,” the President told his son.

  “Not a bad day,” said Devon. “I have to turn in an American History paper, there’s a quiz in Latin and I have practice before the match. Kinda a normal day.”

  Garrison could almost hear the boy shrug, and his smile broadened. His son’s “normal” day would be exhausting to a great many adults, but the boy shouldered the load without complaint. Academically the kid was a powerhouse, each of his classes advanced placement, and he maintained a grade point average high enough to keep him on the Dean’s list every semester. But he was no mere bookworm. The practice he referred-to was the school’s basketball team – he was a starter despite his age – and the match was an intra-academy competition where Devon was one of five representing the Harrison School’s chess team. The boy was rapidly becoming a master, and was absolutely surgical with his knights. Garrison couldn’t be prouder.

  “The week after next I have an event in Ohio. I’m going to see if your mom and sister can make it, and I’d like you to be there. Not to do press, just to see you.” Garrison had been compelled to put his family in front of the cameras during campaigns, just like anyone running for office, but he was very protective of his children and did it only when absolutely necessary. Once the election was won, he wouldn’t do it again. This was not one of those times. He just missed his son.

  There was hesitation in Devon’s voice. “By then you’ll be doing what, three states a day?”

  “More like five or six.”

  Another pause, and when Devon spoke his father could hear how uncomfortable the boy was. “I want to see you too Dad, but wouldn’t it be better after the election? Your schedule is packed. Besides, I have papers I need to work on, and I think I have another competition around then. I just…”

  “Say no more, buddy,” Garrison said. “I get it. And school’s way more important.” He heard a grateful sigh his son tried unsuccessfully to conceal. God, sometimes he really hated this job. “No worries. The holidays are coming up fast. We’ll get to spend plenty of time together.” Garrison set down his drink and wished for a Tums.

  They talked a bit longer about school, sports and girls. Did he have a girlfriend? Not really. Nothing serious, anyway, and since he was at an all-boys academy, there weren’t that many opportunities to interact with the opposite sex. Not that he and his friends didn’t make the attempt every chance they got. Then the boy had to go.

  “Love you, Dev,” said Garrison.

  “You too, Dad.”

  As the leader of the free world disconnected, feeling like a greater parental failure than he had before starting the call, his Chief of Staff hung up his own cell phone. “We’re going to walk the lobby for the cameras,” Barrow said, “then it’s straight to Air Force One.”

  Garrison nodded. “Let’s go home, Tommy.”

  Near the door to the suite, a Secret Service agent spoke into his cuff mike. “Devil Dog is coming down.”

  -3-

  SOO YIM

  Jakarta – October 18

  They were opposites; one a long-legged Swede with blue eyes and hair so blonde it was nearly white, the other small and compact, dark-haired and dark-eyed, a South Korean girl with perfect skin and dazzling white teeth. Both were young and strikingly attractive, though it was the blonde – so tall and exotic in this land of small, dark people – who drew the most attention.

  At two hundred fifty eight million, Indonesia was the fourth most populous country in the world, and half that population lived on the main island of Java, most of them here in the capital city. The frenetic swarm of life in Jakarta flowed steadily around the sidewalk café where the two women sat dressed in breezy clothing and shielded by a table umbrella from an early morning sun. It promised to be another withering, humid day.

  “I swear, if I have to see one more temple or market I’m going to scream,” said Soo Yim, watching an endless stream of bicycles churn past on the street. Small cars and trucks competed with the two-wheelers, close to each other and driving too fast. The air was filled with honking horns, the barking of dogs, calling vendors, a traffic cop’s whistle and the incessant clamor of someone banging on a metal pot. The smells were even more varied; a blend of strange foods being cooked and engine exhaust.

  “I know,” said Alexa. “They’re all starting to look the same.”

  The two women were flight attendants for Pacific Trans Air. Young and single, they caught the extended, international runs, and their travels had taken them to many of the world’s most exotic locations. They’d long ago lost track of the places they’d visited and the sights they’d seen; museums and castles, ancient ruins and cultural celebrations, historical sites and temples, oh so many temples. Both had become jaded, and although the nightclubs were fun in many parts of the world, even these were losing their allure.

  Soo Yim watched as a truck driver screamed for a bicyclist to get out of the way. The bicycle had a big basket strapped to its tail, and the enormous goose being carried within honked its annoyance back at the driver.

  “So what do you want to do?” Alexa asked. They were on a layover, due to fly to Paris but not until tomorrow. They had the day to kill.

  “I don’t know,” the South Korean said, shrugging. “I want to do something different. A real adventure.”

  Bhandri moved up and down the sidewalk, shaking a cardboard sign and chewing the inside of one cheek. His eyes darted across the crowds, searching for foreigners. He was short and leathery, dressed in cut-offs and a khaki shirt, sandals and a straw hat. Though only forty, a hard life in the Indonesian sun had caused him to look twenty years older. Nicotine stains had turned his teeth and fingers yellow.

  His nephew Faisal was back at the Jeep, the fourteen-year-old making sure it wasn’t stolen from its spot by the curb. The Jeep. It belonged to his cousin, and although he was allowed to use it on occasion, today he’d taken it without permission. His eyes swept the busy street, locked on a police car, and watched it glide past. His cousin wouldn’t report it stolen, would he? Bhandri was more than willing to cut him in on a portion of t
he day’s profits. If he saw any profits, that was.

  It had been five days since he’d made any money at all. Not afraid to work, he often sought employment as a day laborer assembling toys in a plant outside the city or toiling in the sun at the tea fields. When those jobs were unavailable, he tried to pick small, usable goods from apartment building Dumpsters, cleaning them and offering them for sale at one of Jakarta’s markets. Often, at least when he was allowed to use the Jeep, he ran unlicensed tours for foreign tourists, as he was trying to do now. Work of any kind was scarce, and Bhandri hadn’t eaten in three days.

  “I want to do something different,” he heard someone say in English. “A real adventure.” Bhandri’s head snapped in that direction, and he spotted the two young women drinking bottled water at an umbrella table. He moved to them quickly, keeping to his side of the low, wrought-iron fence separating the sidewalk from the café, looking around for hotel security that, if they found him harassing guests, would drag him into an alley and beat him with bamboo canes. He didn’t see the telltale blue blazers and radio earpieces anywhere, so he moved in, wiggling the cardboard sign that read, TOURS.

  His native tongue was Bhasa, but he understood English well enough to get through a conversation. “I have adventure,” he said, smiling and shaking his sign. “Sacred place.”

  Soo Yim eyed the little Indonesian. “I’ve seen plenty of sacred places. No thanks.”

  Bhandri’s grin widened. “Special place. Forgotten. No one go there. Very ancient.”

  Alexa looked at the little man and curled her lip. To her friend she said, “He looks sketchy. Tell him to go away.”

  “No one goes there?” Soo Yim asked, leaning a bit forward in her chair. Bhandri knew he’d hooked her.

  “Yes, yes! Hidden place in Puncak Mountains, two hours away. Tempat Berbicara Mati. You hear the dead speak there.”

  Soo Yim started nodding, but Alexa gripped her friend’s hand. “You are not going out into the jungle with this guy. He’ll chop your head off and leave you by the road.”

  “That’s why you’re going with me,” said Soo Yim, smiling. “And the boys too.” She quickly negotiated the price of a day trip with Bhandri, then led her friend into the hotel to get ready, and to tell their pilot and co-pilot that they were all going on an adventure.

  Bhandri sprinted back down the sidewalk to get the Jeep.

  The Jeep was an older Willys, a version extended to seat six, its tan paint losing the fight against darker splotches of rust. The engine knocked when it was idling, but at traveling speed it ran well enough. A canvas canopy patched with duct tape shielded its occupants from the intense morning sun.

  Expansive green tea plantations stretched away on both sides of the highway as Bhandri drove them toward the dark green Puncak Mountains, the upper elevations still heavy with morning mist despite the sun. The women who had chartered the excursion chatted in back, riding with his nephew and one of the airline pilots. The other pilot rode in the front seat beside Bhandri, snapping pictures with his phone. All four foreigners wore wide-brimmed hats, linen shirts and pants and sunglasses. They all smelled of sunscreen, something Bhandri had never once applied to his skin.

  Not quite two hours outside of Jakarta, Bhandri took them off the highway and into the jungle spreading outward from the base of the Puncaks, making his way down muddy, rutted roads that narrowed and worsened as the Jeep climbed higher. He was still worried about taking it without permission, but more worried about how he would explain a broken axle to his cousin, wincing every time the vehicle bounced madly through a crater made by the rain or jounced over a fallen log. Even more than this, Bhandri was terrified that the foreigners would see through his fraud.

  He knew nothing about where they were going, and his “historical” tales about their destination – told during the drive from Jakarta – were complete fabrications. He had only been to this place once before, finding it accidentally one day while scouring the jungle for primitive artifacts he could sell to tourists, climbing the mountain in the hope of finding a place unexplored by other scavengers like himself. And indeed, he had found it.

  The place frightened him, and the crude illustrations on the walls (who knew how old they were, but they were clearly ancient) had given him nightmares. It was those drawings that gave him the idea to call the place Tempat Berbicara Mati, ‘the Place where the Dead Speak.’ Like his stories of ancient tribes and rituals, the name was a fabrication as well. Bhandri had always been too preoccupied with survival to learn much about his country’s history.

  They are foreigners. They won’t know the difference.

  In the back, the women were talking animatedly, especially the Korean girl, calling out bird sightings or marveling over the thickening jungle. The road grew increasingly overgrown, and Bhandri focused on his driving, searching for the marker he had left beside the road so that he might find the place again. Had the rains washed it away? Had the jungle grown over it? The little Indonesian sensed that he was close – had to be, for the men were growing impatient – and strained to spot his marker among the trees to the right.

  There it was; a pair of branches lashed to a trunk in an X, a small animal skull shoved down onto one of the uprights. He’d used the skull thinking it would add a macabre touch, and it had worked; the women pointed and whispered excitedly. He stopped the Jeep and shut off the knocking engine.

  “We are here,” Bhandri said, turning in his seat and smiling at his guests. “We walk now.”

  Faisal shouldered a backpack holding bottles of water, and Bhandri took a machete and a flashlight from the Jeep, leading them up the jungled mountainside, away from the rut that could no longer even be called a road. The airline crew followed, the girls talking incessantly. The small Indonesian spoke to his charter about snakes and trees, made up stories about how the ancient tribal people had lived at the base of this mountain, anything he could think of as he picked his way upward through heavy foliage, chopping at vines and brush.

  They climbed for an hour, stopping frequently so the foreigners could rest, until Bhandri came to a halt beside a large, mossy rock with the image of a stern face carved into its surface.

  “This is King Anjasmara,” he lied, running his hand over the image. “He ruled these lands a thousand years ago, and was much loved.” Bhandri had taken the name from the host of a popular Indonesian game show on television. “King Anjasmara named this a holy place to honor the dead.”

  The women touched the mossy face. The pilot took another picture with his phone.

  The little tour guide looked up at a rock ledge another fifteen feet above, swallowed hard and led them up to it. A narrow cave opening was set in a rock face just behind the ledge, and Bhandri snapped on his flashlight, forcing a smile. “Must be quiet now. You hear the dead speak.”

  The Korean girl hopped with excitement and squeezed one of the pilot’s arms. The tall blonde simply looked at the guide with vague disgust.

  He led them inside, panning the flashlight around a small cavern with high walls and a crack in the floor at the back. It was significantly cooler in here, quiet except for a constant, muted whispering.

  “I hear them!” Soo Yim gasped. “I hear the dead speaking!”

  Bhandri smiled, ignoring the skeptical looks of the men and the rolling eyes of the blonde. It was the Korean girl who’d paid for the charter, and as long as she was happy, that was what mattered to Bhandri.

  “It’s water you’re hearing,” said the blonde, pointing toward the back of the cave.

  Bhandri moved between the tall girl and the Korean, looking at her and pointing upward, raising the beam of his flashlight and revealing the horrors depicted on the walls.

  “Oh my God,” whispered the blonde, putting a hand to her mouth.

  “Fuck…” the pilot with the phone said, then switched on his flash and took a picture.

  Soo Yim stared at the cave drawings, drinking it in. Their guide had been right; it was like nothing she had e
ver seen in her many travels. Blood and horror, she thought. Both featured prominently in the ancient depictions. There were images of skulls piled high, people quite clearly feeding upon one another, even on children, and images of blank-eyed tribal people tearing others apart. Over it all, arms outstretched, was a massive, silver-eyed entity that could only be a god, grinning with a mouth full of sharpened teeth. The scenes made her skin crawl, but she shivered with delight. This was an adventure.

  “Come, come,” said Bhandri, waving them toward the crack at the back of the cave. The sound of water running deep in the crack no longer sounded like whispering. It was more of a babble now. “This was holy water to Anjasmara’s people,” he said, expanding the lie. From his nephew’s backpack he produced a dented tin mug tied to a long length of twine, and lowered it into the crack. He’d come up with this idea only this morning, thinking it would add to the experience. “The ancients drank from here so they could hear their ancestors speak, and to honor the gods.” Bhandri pulled the twine back up (hoping it had reached the water he heard far below) and gripped the dented cup, now half-filled with clear liquid.

  “No way,” said Alexa.

  Both pilots shook their heads, but one snapped a picture of Bhandri holding the cup.

  Soo Yim stepped forward, holding out her hands.

  “Don’t,” said Alexa, grabbing her friend’s elbow. “Do you want dysentery?”

  The Korean girl pulled away and took the cup. “It’s a natural spring, that’s all. How do you think people here get their water?”

  “From bottles, if they’re smart,” said Alexa. “Like you’re not being.”