This Is Not a Game (11 page)

 

 

Desi, that would be great.

 

 

I took a scuba vacation in Bali a few years ago. Maybe I can contact those people and see if they know anyone with a boat in Jakarta.

 

 

You guyz are acting like this is real.

TINAG, my friends. TINAG.

 

Dagmar plunged into the water, bubbles erupting around her. She arched her back, feeling the bubbles stream along her legs and the sensitive flesh of her neck, and rose through the dark water until her head broke the surface.

The night loomed around her, silent, the stars muted by wisps of cloud.

She began her laps. Arms, legs, lungs in synchrony, the warm water a midnight dream.

Her future, even her continued existence, was a question mark.

Swimming nightly laps was a defiance of that uncertainty, a statement that she was still an actor on her own stage. That there was still something in which her own will could alter events.

Even if it was just swimming, at night, hidden from the world.

 

Sorry, but I’ve worked the Bali dive boat connection, and it didn’t
pan out.

 

We might try sportfishermen. Do you think any of them would have
a Web site?

 

I’ll check.

I’ve been doing some thinking. We’ve got three possibilities for getting
Dagmar out of Jakarta. Air, water, land.

If we use an aircraft, the aircraft has to find a place to land, and
then we’ll have to move Dagmar to that place by car or bus or some
other form of ground transport. In addition, the Indonesian military
isn’t allowing anyone into their airspace, so any aircraft runs a risk
of being shot down.

If we use a boat, then we still have to bring Dagmar to the boat by ground transport. It’s not clear whether the Indonesian navy is blockading Jakarta by sea or how effective the blockade is.

If it’s possible to move Dagmar out of Jakarta by ground transport (say, by bribing or otherwise coming to an understanding with the military), then even if she doesn’t leave the country, she would be safer than she is now. Even though she’d still be in Indonesia, she’d be outside the area of complete chaos.

Have you considered a seaplane or flying boat?

No, I hadn’t. Good idea.

I have an uncle who’s being evacuated with the Indian nationals today or tomorrow. Once he’s out of Jakarta, I will try to contact him and find out if there’s anyone we can contact.

I got lucky with the silat connection! My friend’s teacher is affiliated with a school in Jakarta. He’s checking with them.

Great news!

We might be able to hook Dagmar up with her own bodyguard of martial artists! How cool is that?

“How are you, darling?” asked Tomer Zan.

“I’m trying to keep my chin up,” Dagmar said.

“That’s good. I just wanted you to know that we got another helicopter. It’s a Spirit, it’s got a much longer range than the Huey, so we’ll be able to stage from farther out at sea.”

“Good to know.”

“It’s on its way from the Philippines now. So we should be set in just a few days.”

“What happened,” Dagmar asked, “to the old helicopter?”

“Yes. Well.” Dagmar sensed considerable reluctance. “It was trying to land on our ship, and the winds were gusty, so it crashed into the superstructure. So we need a new ship and a new helicopter.”

“Was anyone hurt?” Dagmar felt the depression that propelled her words.

There was a brief silence, and then, “The crew of the helicopter was killed. There were some injuries on the ship, too, because there was a fire. The radio room got burned—that’s why we didn’t hear from them.”

It seemed to Dagmar as if her heart slowed, extending the long silence between beats. The breath that she drew into her lungs took an eon. Then time seemed to speed up as she hurled the words into the world.

“Oh Christ, I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s not your fault, darling,” Zan said.

Dagmar didn’t answer.

“We’re professionals,” Zan said. “All our people have been soldiers. We understand the risks we take.”

“
I’m
not a soldier,” Dagmar said. “Nothing’s prepared me for this.”

“We’re coming to get you,” said Zan. “That’s what you need to think about.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

“We’re coming soon.”

After the phone call came to an end, Dagmar closed her eyes and fell into a dark, liquid sorrow, a grief the temperature of blood.

I’ve found a boat and a captain. He’s a fisherman named Widjihartani, and he operates from a port in West Java called Pelabuhan Ratu. It’s something like five or six hours from Jakarta by sea.

He’s willing to take a passenger anywhere, provided his fuel and time are paid for. All the way to Singapore, if we want.

He says that Jakarta is technically under a blockade by the navy, but they let fishermen through because they are too necessary to the economy to let them go under.

 

 

Is Widjihartani his first name or his last name? Are you sure he’s reliable?

 

What do they call him for short?

 

Widjihartani is the only name he’s got. Lots of Indonesians have only one name.

I spoke to him on the phone. His English is pretty good, he takes tourists out for fishing and sightseeing.

He seemed pretty clearheaded, really. But he didn’t know how he could afford the fuel, and with the banks in the state they are, it’s unclear how we can get money to him.

 

I found Pelabuhan Ratu on Google Earth!

Can we set him up with a PayPal account? Then we could put money into it, and he could withdraw it whenever the bank lets him.

 

I’ll check.

 

From the restaurant, Dagmar could see the Indian nationals evacuating, the line of helicopters parading neatly across the horizon.

The Chinese were going out in the morning, by sea, and the Singaporeans the next day. Even little
Singapore
could stage a proper evacuation, complete with a landing by their elite Gurkha troops.

The only nationality that wasn’t evacuating, besides the Americans, was the Australians. The Indonesians were still angry at the Australians over Timor and weren’t letting Australian ships into their waters.

For a moment, watching the Indians go, Dagmar felt a spasm of pure hatred for her own nation. Her country had lost the ability to do anything but make fast food and bad Hollywood blockbusters. Every city would have its very own Katrina, and the United States of America in its greatness and piety would do nothing before or after. At the embassy they handed out lies as if they were the White House budget office.

Even the saving of human life had been privatized. If you could afford your own security outfit to rescue you with its helicopters, then you were granted life; if you couldn’t, you were beneath your nation’s notice.

For a brief, fierce instant she wanted to see her own country burn, just as the Palms had burned.

Then the anger faded, and she looked down at the fried rice that was her supper.

Dutifully, she ate it to the last grain.

LadyDayFan, can you set up a fanfic topic?

 

Fanfic? You want to write fan fiction about Dagmar?

 

Yeah. She’s cool.

 

 

Well. This is against my better judgment, but
here you go
.

 

“Where are you from?” asked the young man with the halberd.

“Los Angeles.”

“That is near Hollywood?”

“Yes.”

“That must be very interesting.”

Dagmar understood that in the Q-and-A conversations favored by the Indonesians, both sides were supposed to ask questions.

“Are you from Jakarta?” she asked.

Paying her ritual morning visit to the concierge—which, following Zan’s advice, she did at a different hour each morning—Dagmar had discovered that the hotel was now guarded by men with medieval weapons. They wore kilts over baggy pants, with short jackets, round pitji hats, and sashes in bright primary colors. The outfits of the young men were black, and of the older men, white. They carried long knives, spears, sticks, and blades on the ends of sticks. They clustered by the hotel entrances and smiled and bowed at anyone walking by. They were making a clear effort not to seem threatening.

Mr. Tong had never reappeared, and his place seemed taken permanently by the young woman in the Muslim headdress. She told Dagmar that the hotel had hired a group of martial artists to secure the hotel.

“What is your group called?” Dagmar asked. Maybe Tomer Zan would know something about them.

“We are the Tanah Abang Bersih Jantung Association.” The young man touched his chest. “Bersih Jantung means ‘pure heart.’ ”

“And the other part?”

“Tanah Abang? That is our kampung—our neighborhood, near this hotel.” He looked at her with curiosity. “Do you like Miley Cyrus?” he asked.

“Miley?” Dagmar said. “I think she’s swell.”

 

“Bersih Jantung?” asked Tomer Zan that evening. “How do you spell it?”

“It means ‘pure heart,’ ” Dagmar said.

“What is the attitude of these people?” Zan asked. “Are they disciplined? Do you feel safe around them?”

“They seem friendly. They like Miley Cyrus, for heaven’s sake! There are some older men in white who give the orders. They’re trying not to be scary.”

“That’s good. Just remember that this can change at any second. You should be alert to any sign that their attitude is changing. Remember, these are the people that invented the word
amok.
Well, actually they call it
mataglap,
but
amok
is what they mean.”

Great,
Dagmar thought.
Let’s by all means look inside that silver lining to find that all-consuming black hole.

“How’s the helicopter?” she asked.

“It should be in Singapore tomorrow,” said Zan.

Dagmar wondered whether to tell Zan about the amateur efforts to rescue her that were centered on the Our Reality bulletin board, efforts she had been following online with great attention.

She decided against it.

Let them compete,
she thought.
Let the free market system prevail.
Besides, she thought that Zan probably wasn’t into fan fiction.

 

My friend has checked with his school’s silat guru in Jakarta, and
he’s willing to help Dagmar. As an act of charity, they’ll take her in
and share their food with her, and they’ll take her anywhere that
doesn’t involve danger to their own people.

Their style is called Bayangan Prajurit Pentjak Silat. My impression
is that they’ll take money if we give it to them, but their religion
obliges them to do charitable acts, so they don’t insist on being
paid.

Here’s the problem. Dagmar’s hotel is being guarded by a group
that Bayangan Prajurit doesn’t get along with. The hotel guards are
allied with the military, and their organization is headed by a general.
Bayangan Prajurit are pro-democracy and they won’t cooperate
with the hotel guards in any way.

Anybody have any ideas? Do we have to get Dagmar away from her
own guards?

 

By the next morning a food shipment had arrived, and for breakfast, Dagmar gorged on Southeast Asia’s finest, freshest, most glorious fruit.

The military were providing food to their allies in the city, and the Bersih Jantung were willing to supply the hotel. Dagmar presumed there were vast bribes involved, money shifting around offshore, where the banks still worked.

There was an upside, Dagmar supposed, to dealing with a corrupt military.

 

“What’s the word?” Dagmar asked.

“Whatever the word is,” said Tomer Zan, “it’s not a good one. Our people have had a chance to look at this helicopter, and it’s a piece of shit. The maintenance logs are incomplete or nonsensical or forged in some obvious way, and it’s clear we’ll have to do a complete overhaul on the machine before we dare fly it out to you.”

The dry monsoon, which had ceased to be dry, spattered rain against her hotel window. Dagmar let the space of three seconds go by in order to demonstrate to Zan her displeasure.

“How long will the overhaul take?” she asked.

“Depends on whether new parts are required. And of course, what parts.”

Dagmar let more time pass.

“Why don’t you hire one of the helicopters that took the Indians or the Japanese out?”

“They were military aircraft, darling. They don’t rent them.”

“Zelazni Associates has an air division,” she said. “I saw it on your Web page. Can’t you fly me out in one of your own aircraft?”