Kesalahan Itu (The Mistake)

Closing the rear door of the silver-gray Mercedes 280, the lean Chinese stood to observe it drive back along the mountain road. Down through Cianjur: towards Bogor. Traffic was light at this time of morning, he thought, Wei should clear Jakarta and be in Tanjong Priok by eight o'clock.

Turning his attentions from the highway, he walked at an even, relaxed pace along the gravelled path leading into the wide expanse of the park. The Traveller's Palms and fiery-flowered Bougainvillaea were compliant hosts to an abundance of insect life and multi-hued birds, all of which filled the peaceful early-morning air with a mixture of songs, shrills, whistles, buzzes and clicks that heard individually would perhaps be melodious, but collectively denied harmonious accord and became a cacophony - averitable anarchy of acoustics within Nature's bosom.

The path led down onto a stone-flagged terrace overlooking the north view of the deep valley below Tangkuban Prahu. Resting the brown attaché case at his feet he sat lightly on a granite bench to watch the sun's early orange rays break up the spectral mist languishing in coils about the valley's floor.

He dabbed his forehead with a pale blue handkerchief. So soon after dawn, yet the oppressive heat began to build already. Even here, at two thousand feet of elevation, the humidity of Java was relentless in its task of extracting perspiration from acclimatized pores. The armpits of his white brushed-silk shirt dampened, and he longed for the near-frigid comfort of his Mercedes. Later, business must come first: with all of it's inherent discomforts - as duty demanded and his masters expected.

Glancing at the white-gold Rolex chronometer adorning his left writs, he noted the time drew close to seven. A slight smile moved the thin lips, an ophidian smile. His ears pricked in natural reflex and he turned his gaze to the west. A car started to climb the zigzag highway from Cianjur: along the asphalt-patched surface towards Bandung. Very soon now, he thought, not too much longer to wait.

The almond eyes narrowed to mere slits, virtually hidden within their epicanthic folds, as his visual attentions shifted back across the mist-shrouded valley to Tangkuban Prahu. Only the cretinous Javanese would see an upturned boat within the shape of a volcano: and then name it as such. He shook his head, a giant tortoise, perhaps, but a prahu? No.

Dust rose in a cloud behind the approaching car as it left the Bandung road the started along the unpaved track leading into the park. The Chinese rose from his hard seat and walked towards the vehicle as it drew to a halt in the lower parking area.

'Selemat pagi, Colonel Sumardjono," he spoke as the casually-dressed Indonesian opened the car's door.

"Yes, good morning," Pujadi Sumardjono replied. He stood erect and closed the door, looking around as he did so. "Where is Ho Tang?"

"Ah, Mr. Tang is unable to meet with you on this particular occasion. He has requested that I conduct to-day's business on his behalf."

"I do not know you. Why does Ho Tang send someone I do not know?" Sumardjono inquired nervously.

"Please, let us go and sit. Then we may be at comfort and in shade while we discuss our business," the Chinese suggested in a calm tone. Both men strolled to the stone bench where the lithe Fukienese had earlier awaited the Colonel's arrival.

"Ho Tang telephoned last night. He spoke it was most urgent that we should meet this morning. Yet it is the middle of the month, his ship from Rangoon will not dock in Priok for two weeks yet. He speaks there are matters of great importance to discuss with me. I came here in good faith and Ho Tang is not here. He sends someone I do not know. Why does Ho Tang do this?"

"Please, calm yourself Colonel. I belong to the same business group as Mr. Tang. I am what you might term an auditor: an inspector, perhaps. Certain irregularities have come to our attention concerning the distribution of our merchandise that we feel you may be able to enlighten us with."

Sumardjono fidgeted and commenced to voice protestations. The Chinese laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled. A smile with naught benign held behind it's facade. A smile from dry, thin lips, a cruel smile - the smile of a cunning predator.

"Really it is a simple matter, and one we can dispense with quickly, Colonel," the Chinese reassured his anxious Javanese companion. "When you commenced your business dealings with Mr. Tang some two years ago, it was agreed by yourself to adhere strictly to our policies concerning the merchandise. Is this not so?"

"Yes, I have always done as Ho Tang has asked of me," the Colonel replied with earnest prevail.

"Ah, but during this past month we learn that the product has been adulterated. It has been re-cut with vetsin by as much as four times its original volume."

"But no, this cannot be," Sumardjono protested. "I oversee the weighing and packing of every gram. Nobody can have re-cut the merchandise in our Jakarta facility. It must have been done by the street distributors: the ones I use to sell at the universities and colleges. I shall have them interrogated and this will stop."

"Ah Colonel, we interviewed a certain Memed Zuhri concerning this matter only two nights ago. I believe he is known to you?"

Sumardjono nodded awkwardly, his eyes intense and wide, a slight involuntary dribble of saliva emanated from the left corner of his trembling lips.

"Memed Zuhri hasn't yet returned to your group, of that you are perhaps aware. He now sleeps at the bottom of the harbour in Tanjong Priok. However, before he went to face your omnipotent Allah, he told us of the re-cutting of our product to four times it's volume at your packing plant in Jakarta. He also told us this was carried out at your directions. Of course, he told us many things before this. Untrue things. Yet we Chinese are a patient race. With innovative persuasions, he eventually told us that which we wished to learn."

"I know nothing of this thing . . . . . . this deviousness. I am an honourable man. Please, you must explain this to Ho Tang. He knows me . . . . he will understand that these are lies told by Memed. This thing has been done without my knowing. My people cheat me continually. I am a victim of my own fine generosity: robbed by my own family relatives whom I endeavour to employ. Damn Memed, he is the one who must have re-cut the heroin, not I. It is good he is dead and burns in the eternal hell."

Sumardjono's dark, fleshy face glistened with sweat - the sweat that accompanies profound fear - the fear of an unheralded confrontation - the fear of imminent death.

"You did not make a fine profit from five kilos each month? You thought perhaps twenty-five kilos would be a more substantial return? Ah Colonel, you have unravelled such carefully laid plans. Yes, greed is the ultimate undoing of all weak men. Why, the poor students of Jakarta and Bandung are now more addicted to vetsin than to heroin. Your greed would soon have undermined our long-term strategies to turn your youth into rebellious drug addicts had the adulteration of the merchandise not come to our attentions. You are alike some mischievous kitten at thoughtless play with a ball of wool."

The obvious sarcasm with which the Chine spoke brought Sumardjono's anxiety to a nerve-trembling peak. His hand reached swiftly under his jacket, only to have its movement arrested by his companion's strong, callused fingers. Fingers that grasped the Colonel's wrist and brought an excruciating pressure to bear on the joint of the radius and ulna, causing Sumardjono to shed true tears of pain through his pleading gasps.

The Chinese reached under his victim's light bush jacket and withdrew a pistol from the shoulder holster.

"You come prepared for war, Colonel? Perhaps you realised the Green Pang Triad knew of your alchemic meddling?" the Chinese speculated, relaxing the pressure on Sumardjono's wrist-joint slightly.

"You cannot harm me. I am a Colonel of the Army's Intelligence section. I have a high position of authority and many friends in government." His tirade was interrupted by renewed pressure on his wrist joint.

"Do you think friends can help you here with me, Colonel?" To-day I am to become your nemesis: your own Hasan Ibn-al-Sabbah reborn," the Chinese goaded the quivering Indonesian officer.

"My wife knows I am here this morning to meet with Ho Tang. I have secret files that record all our dealings. It will be Ho Tang who shall suffer if I am hurt. My group will burn you Chinese scum out of Priok . . . . . . . . out of our country forever."
'You have no files Colonel. A man in your position could not afford such a Machiavellian luxury. Yet you can afford a Sumatran mistress, a luxury your wife knows nothing of. That was where Mr. Tang telephoned you last night, at the love-nest you keep her hidden on Rasuna Said. Penthouse apartments on a Colonel's meager salary? Perhaps your mistress knows you come here this morning? Perhaps we shall kill her also."

The Chinese relaxed his powerful grip on Sumardjono's wrist, and pushed the pistol into the waist-band at the back of his light cotton slacks. He stood upright and turned to look across the park's quiet expanse. Sensing a mute moment in his antagonist's attentions, the Colonel took to his feet. Before he could take a second pace, the Chinese spun on the ball of his left foot, his hand moving in a blurred arc, the thumb striking Sumardjono behind his right ear.

Tottering in mid-stride due the precision karate blow to the nerve centre, the Colonel fell to his knees. The Chinese held him under his armpit and helped him up. Assisting the half-conscious military officer in his steps, he guided him towards the parked car. He leaned the stunned Colonel against the rear door then reached inside for the ignition keys.

Unlocking the boot he swung Sumardjono around, and piled his dazed, protesting form into its untidy confines. The slit eyes gazed across the park: still deserted. With a focus of intrinsic power, his thumb struck again at the same spot behind Sumardjono's right ear. The eyes fluttered then closed. The protestations gave vent to a morbid silence. The laboured gasping ceased. Only the Colonel's left leg tried to defy the physiological truth by the slow tattoo it beat against the boot's interior. The last manifestation of clinical life: the uncanny reflex of death.

Walking unhurriedly over to the stone bench, the Chinese picked up his attaché case, and returned to Sumardjono's car. He laid the case inside the boot, opened its lined confines, and withdrew a half-meter length of bicycle inner tube: which he laid across the stilled cadaver.

Removing the magazine from Pujadi Sumardjono's pistol, he also ejected the breeched round from the chamber. Gripping the copra-nickle bullet between his teeth, he twisted the brass cartridge with his powerful fingers until it separated at the compression joint. Pouring half of the green flakes of the cartridge's charge into his hand, he launched them into the air to be dispersed in anonymity by the morning's breeze. Reversing the process, he then forced the bullet back into the cartridge case. Loading it into the top of the magazine, he reinserted this back in the pistol's grip. Jacking the slide back and forth the half-powered round was drawn into the breech.

From the attaché case, he took a pair of lightweight black leather driving gloves, and pushed his hard hands into their tight confinements. Holding the centre of the length of inner tube rubber against the pistol's barrel, he stretched both ends back in his left hand. Levelling the gun at the dead Colonel's head, he fired. The bullet entered behind the right ear.
No discernible noise, a slight 'phut' - nothing more. The bullet's entry would cover the traces of the actual cause of death that some ardent pathologist might discover during an autopsy. The mark of the assassin was now well-disguised.

The blackened, perforated inner-tube he threw down the steep valley slope. The spent cartridge case followed suit, but farther out and to the east. Closing the boot securely, he swung himself and his attaché case into the car and drove out of the park. Out onto the road to Cianjur and Bogor and the hundred mile drive down and across the sweltering lowlands back to the teeming city of Jakarta.

The Chinese looked back towards the extinct cone of Tangkuban Prahu and smiled. A softer smile now: less predacious and cruel. The only witness to his activities that morning: a long-muted volcano. An upturned boat, left high and dry by the whims of simple folk-lore.

Crime exists in many diverse forms. Yet each crime and its perpetrators are enemies of the society that lays the laws which guide civilisation's passage through history. Perhaps it is true we endear a private, albeit begrudging, respect for certain elements of the criminal fraternity.
The master peterman who opens sophisticated bank vaults after bypassing their complex alarms, to escape in complete anonymity and enjoy his ill-gotten gains. The confidence trickster selling non-existent medieval European castles to archetype, gullible Texan tourists with more money than common sense.

Yes, these are the heroes of felonious legends. They who harm only the pockets of insurance companies and the preposterously wealthy – the rich and shameless. They who never carry weapons in stealth, nor would or kill for personal gain.

Those of the corrupt ilk of the late Colonel Pujadi Sumardjono and his Fukienese assassin, Danny Goh: they belong to the offal of civilised society. The pariahs of an established humanist culture. The scum we would commit to Hell's eternal fires without the slightest compunction. They, the dross, who feed avidly on human frailty: who prey upon those weaker. Parasites that refuse to perform honest labour when their pockets can be filled by nefarious means.

The brothers Sutopo, Udaya and Azir, were such a pair. Maggots bred on the charnel wastes of Jakarta's corrupt streets. Weaned on the knowledge that empty hands should not be proffered in supplicant gestures. Better to thrust those same hands into the pockets of affluence. Any pocket that contained more than their own.

Yes, Udaya and Azir Sutopo. Two perfect examples of the unscrupulous, miscreant youth inhabiting the streets of Jakarta. Escaping detection in their crimes so rarely, yet escaping arrest and prosecution with repetitive certainty through the medium of corrupt police at every rank, who would willingly share a criminal's spoils: provided they amounted to me than a few hundred rupiah.

And there they sat: resplendent in their designer jeans and tee-shirts, and wrap-around sun-glasses; under the shade of a half-mature Acacia bordering Jalan Sudirman and the expanse of the Ratu Plaza car park. Waiting. Waiting for fate to present them with that day's opportunity of a good profit for a minimal exchange of sweat in return. Afoot for the day's evil.

"There", Azir spoke, pointing across the car park. "See the Chink just parked the Toyota Crown? Dumb prick left the driver's window down."

They watched the gray-haired middle-aged Chinese enter the ground level of Ratu Plaza then turned their eyes to stare at the parked, defenceless Toyota that cried out to be stolen.

"We give him five minutes then take his wheels," Udaya informed his brother. "We get a good price for the Crown in Merak, Kadiro likes big Toyotas. He'll pay well for that one, Azir.

Danny Goh entered the toilet cubicle of the male convenience on the ground floor of the plaza. Removing the fine gray wig from his head, then the thick framed clear spectacles, and finally the leather driving gloves, he placed them all into the attaché case resting across the toilet bowl cover. Vacating the cubicle he adjusted his own black hair in the washbowl mirror, and walked out into the plaza's arcades: joining the milling throng of mid-morning shoppers.

Stepping onto the escalator, he rode up to the second level. Striding evenly to the tinted glass windows facing the car park, he stood looking down at the Toyota Crown below. He didn't have to wait long: the passage of a mere three minutes. Two youths approached the vehicle, opened the driver's door via the medium of the rolled-down window, slipped inside, and within seconds had started the engine and drove out onto Jalan Sudirman.

Danny smiled inwardly as he walked to a public telephone booth a few meters away. Picking up the handset, he dialled a memorised number and spoke rapidly in fluent Bahasa Indonesian. Replacing the phone in its cradle, he descended to the ground floor and hailed a taxi on the forecourt.

"Tanjong Priok", he informed the driver, and they drove away to become just another vehicle plying for road space and speed on the busy, smog-shrouded highways spanning Jakarta.

As Urdaya Sutopo drove steadily out of the city, toward the west-bound expressway, and Merak, Azir rifled through the glove compartment and door pockets of their newly-acquired asset. He had piled quite a collection of duty-free cigarette packs, cassette tapes, and road maps into a plastic carrier bag before his deft, searching fingers touched on the cold metal at the bottom of the passenger door pouch. A happy gleam lit his semi-literate eyes as he withdrew a blued pistol from its hiding place and turned it lovingly in his hands.

'Shit, that's a nine millimeter Pindad!" exclaimed Urdaya, glancing from the road ahead to the firearm in his younger brother's hands. "Is it loaded?"


Azir fumbled with the magazine catch before it clicked free. Pulling it clear of the butt he counted the rounds through the perforated sheet metal of the clip.
"Eleven bullets, Urdaya," he informed his brother.

"Pull the slide back, there might be another one in the breech," Urdaya instructed, his eyes intent on the road ahead.

Azir fiddles clumsily with the pistol until the slide locked back on the safety catch. He picked up the ejected live round from his lap, and finally succeeded in pushing it into the head of the clip.

"One round gone, but we've still got twelve rounds there," Urdaya spoke excitedly. "I think we go and shoot that bastard prick Arif Susilo to-night, and his fuck-brain cousin Buddy. Then they know they don't screw around with the Sutopo brothers no more. I think I shoot that cunt Arif through his cock then he can't make any more passes at my girl. I'll teach that smart fuck now we've got a gun. You can shoot Buddy through the knees. You like that Az'?"

Azir giggled, and saliva bubbles formed on his full lips as they both fantasizes what damage they could now inflict on their enemies. Azir felt the stirrings of an erection inside the tight confines of his denim jeans. Joy, he thought, this gun gives me the same turn-on as fondling a girl's tits.

The main highway now ran into the west-bound expressway, and as Urdaya steered the Toyota onto the twin-lane expanse of straight asphalt neither of the brothers noticed the police patrol car sat in the cool shadows of the tollgate building. Yet the driver of the white police vehicle took careful note of their license plate as they sped away westwards, and reported his observation to Jakarta headquarters via his two-way radio.

A half-hour of fast driving brought Urdaya and Azir into sight of expressway's final kilometre, to where the road became a secondary affair on it's winding path towards Merak, on the Straits of Sunda.

"Army patrol!" yelled Azir, as they drew close to the exit toll.

"They won't bother us, brother. They only search for Chinkie terrorists: shit-head communists," Urdaya assured.

As the traffic flow slowed to pass through the army check-point, Azir jammed the pistol into the waistband of his jeans, and covered it with the tee-shirt. They drew alongside the check-point. A sergeant in fatigues tapped against the driver's window. Urdaya wound it down.

"Where do you travel to?" he inquired.

"We're going to see some friends in Merak," Urdaya replied.

"Pull your vehicle over to the side here", the sergeant ordered.

Urdaya's eyes met Azir's, and fright caused the panic that jammed his foot hard down on the accelerator pedal. The car roared forward, the first gear range a high-pitched whine, through the check-point. As Urdaya slipped the clutch to engage second gear a volley of automatic assault rifle fire erupted from behind them: shredding the rear tyres of the car. The Toyota swung wildly, and Urdaya was unable to steer away from the hard shoulder barrier, which the front of the car duly struck.

The panic- stricken brothers swiftly vacated the car and were about to flee on foot when several fatigue-clad soldiers alighted from a moving jeep and halted their intended escape. Machine pistols covered them from all angles.

Azir grabbed the pistol from his waistband, and held it in both hands: pointing directly at the approaching sergeant's chest.

"Drop the hand-gun fool!" the NCO commanded. "Drop it now - or my mend will open fire!"

"Azir, drop the gun!" Urdaya pleaded.

Azir shook in panicked fear and fumbled the pistol in his hands, though kept it pointed at the advancing sergeant's chest. He pulled back on the trigger but nothing happened. They he realised the safety catch was still engaged, and shifted his grip to release it.
As the safety unlocked, and he raised the pistol again, a burst of automatic fire lifted him from his feet. The impact threw him back across the bonnet of the stolen Toyota. Azir rolled down the front of the car, leaving its paintwork smeared with dark red arterial blood, and thudded lifelessly onto the hard shoulder.

"You, down on your knees!" the sergeant shouted at Urdaya. "Your hands in the air . . . . now!”

The surviving brother obeyed with rapid accord, his hands thrown high and fingers spread widely apart. He stared down at Azir's sanguine corpse, tears rolling from eyes that emanated a confusion of pity. Urdaya lacked the emotional development to reason logically why his younger brother lay perforated and devoid of life. Insha'Allah was perhaps his only muted thought at that moment in time.

Two troopers frisked him down for weapons then handcuffed his arms behind his lower back. The sergeant prised the pistol from Azir's tight death grasp and examined it closely: removing the magazine to ascertain its contents.

"This pistol is Fabrik Sendjata Ringan," he stated pointedly to Urdaya. "Where did you steal it from?"

'We found it in the car, sir. Truly we did," Urdaya replied in a voice that held none of it's earlier confidence.

The sergeant eyed him intently then searched the interior of the vehicle. Removing the ignition keys from the column he walked round to the boot and opened it fully to the late morning light. He beckoned his corporal, who joined him at the car's rear.
"Bring the little shit here!" the sergeant ordered his troopers who held Urdaya. They dragged him stumbling around the car. Urdaya cried out in abject horror when his eyes fell on the bloody corpse bundled up inside the car's boot.

"Please sir, please. I know nothing of this man . . . . we stole the car in the city only one hour ago . . . . we are only thieves, not murderers," Urdaya babbled pathetically.

"The pistol your companion was armed with has one round spent. Is the bullet from that round in his head?" the sergeant asked in a tone of definite growing anger, and pointed to the body prostrate within the boot. "This man who you and your companion have murdered . . . . whose car you stole . . . . was an officer of the army! The police received a telephone call an hour ago from the person who saw you attack the car's owner, and shoot him with a handgun in the head. They saw you load the body into the car's boot, then drive away."

The sergeant paused in his tirade, as though to search for logic or reason within Urdaya's staring, open-mouthed face. A face grown deathly pale. A face slowly coming to terms with the acute realities of stark fear.

"By the Prophet, you young fool! You were seen in the act. The vehicle's registration was run through a police computers and an alert issued before you reached the expressway. What fanatic fatalism exists in your mind to let you believe you can escape the reach of our retribution?"

"Perhaps your young friend and yourself are communist terrorists? Perhaps this is from where your fatalism . . . . . your nihilism springs from? May Allah judge you accordingly," the sergeant spoke the final sentence with quiet reservation, then raised the pistol retrieved from Azir to Urdaya's head and fired once. A three-inch circle of flesh and bone erupted from the back of Urdaya's skull as the nine millimeter bullet made its exit. His body fell dead at the troopers' feet.

"Clear this mess up, and then report to me back at the barracks," the sergeant ordered his corporal, then boarded the jeep and sped away onto the eastbound carriage-way of heat-hazed asphalt.

Sergeant Najoan knocked on his Major's office door then entered the spacious room. The fat, fleshy-faced major looked up from the documents cluttering his rosewood desk.

"Sir, the informant who rang police headquarter was correct," the sergeant began.
"We intercepted the two terrorists in Colonel Sumardjono's car at the west end of the expressway to Merak. They were both killed while resisting arrest. The Colonel's body was in the boot of his car. He had been shot through the head, with his own pistol we presume."

"You did very well sergeant, but I expected no less from you," the major commented. "I feel that your overdue promotion might now be secured on the strength of such positive results in this case. Let me have a full, typed report on the incident by morning: ready for the chief of staff's meeting."


The sergeant saluted and vacated the office: leaving the major alone at his desk. He contemplated the tips of his pyramided fingers for some time before shifting his concentrated stare to the telephone at his right quarter. Lifting the handset his short, fat fingers keyed in a number with a Tanjong Priok area code. As the phone was answered by the receiving party, the major spoke quietly.

"Colonel Sumardjono was murdered this morning by two communist terrorists. They were, in turn, both shot and killed while resisting arrest. At present, I am acting as commanding officer. I expect to be promoted to the late Colonel's rank and position within the next twenty-four hours."

"Ah, that is the most pleasing of news to my ear, Major Muljani," replied Mr. Ho Tang. "I am certain the arrangement we discussed last evening will prove most beneficial and satisfactory for us both. Thank you for informing me of these latest developments, and my truest congratulations upon your imminent promotion."