The flight was terrifying. It seemed to take forever to get airborne and we bounced around in shocking turbulence. We were terrified the gold bars would shift and crush us in the cramped torpedo bay. Perhaps twenty minutes had passed when suddenly the gold shifted to the right, and the plane became unbalanced. I held Ilse in my arms as we descended with the engine roaring fit to burst. The impact was terrible, and I do not know how long we were unconscious, but I woke to the sounds of hammering.

Opening the torpedo bay, I realised the plane was lying on its side on a muddy riverbank. Ilse was still unconscious when I slithered out onto the ground, and the first thing I saw was a silver Luger sitting on top of the body of the pilot. I could hear Heider in the water, working on something. I could barely crawl around the wreckage, but then I saw him. He was sitting inside one of the detached aircraft floats and practising paddling with a palm tree seed pod. I had never fired a gun in anger before. But seeing the monster preparing to escape his crimes, I could not let him go. When Heider saw me pointing the gun, he simply laughed. Whether it was confidence that I would be unable to pull the trigger, or merely acknowledging the irony of fate, I will never know, but I shot him between the eyes and he slipped down into the float and I watched it drift away. A short time later a native man appeared. Thank God there was kindness in his heart.

* * *

The excitement of the gunship crew was perhaps the most sickening thing of all. Having flown back to Kinsame’s village, they attacked without warning, the people below mere vermin to be eradicated, point scores in a giant video game. An image, which would haunt Mia forever, was a mother fleeing below with her baby pressed to her breast, both dismembered when a heavy-calibre round punched through her back. White phosphorus rockets turned panicking families into flaming torches. Only a handful of Kinsame’s people escaped, mostly young men, fit and fast enough to avoid encirclement by the supporting Kopassus ground troops. While killings and torture in Papua were all part of a dirty war that had simmered for decades, this was a massacre without military purpose. Whatever crime they were helping Sura engage in, it was beyond belief or justification.

Numbly, Mia watched from the helicopter doorway as they brought Frank Douglas out of Kinsame’s scorched hut on a stretcher. Already looking stronger, he was propped up on his forearms, eyes staring in disbelief at the carnage.

‘You gutless arsehole!’ he raged at Kapten Alatas, who was dispassionately smoking a cigarette while his men mopped up. ‘Why’d you do it?’

When they loaded him into the gunship, Douglas’s eyes widened.

‘What happened to you, kid?’