Chapter 1

      Nathan Seda Jakarta — January 1965

      Lightning cracked yet again, signalling there would be no break in the tropical storm. The city began to choke as rain fell incessantly creating chaos with the traffic. Trucks, buses and cars remained stuck where they had broken down under the deluge, their electrical systems saturated and rendered useless. Scores of drivers waded through the deep and filthy flows which threatened to carry the abandoned cars over the roads into the flooded canals.

      The downpour continued throughout the day, threatening to close the capital, as most major roads became small rivers feeding shallow lakes which had suddenly appeared where once there had been parks and fields.

      The air was thick with the musty damp smell of the rain. Humidity rose to unbearable levels.

      The more congested intersections would remain blocked for hours as children played in waist-deep ponds covering the Capital’s pot-holed protocol roads. Electricity flow would have ceased almost immediately rain had commenced. Without power there would be no water — the irony of being without adequate water while rain flooded the city was not lost on the Capital’s inhabitants.

      The transition from Dutch colonial rule to Independence had thrust the archipelago’s one hundred and fifty million people into a political and economic quagmire peppered by religious rivalry and diverse cultural differences.

      Soekarno’s brilliant use of rhetoric, and support provided by the military, enabled him to take the helm of the world’s fifth most populous country, a land rich in unexploited natural resources.

      The national philosophy, the Panca Sila , provided for five basic principles around which the people were expected to build their way of life. This philosophy eased the racial and religious tensions which otherwise might have caused civil war. Although the country had the world’s largest Moslem population, political power was determined more by ethnic rather than religious considerations. Leaders from Java, the most heavily populated island, controlled the country’s numerous and politically unstable provincial centres.

      The sky remained ominously dark. Lightning flashed again, striking the unfinished skeleton of the Wisma Nusantara building overlooking the British Embassy. Jalan Thamrin, Jakarta’s main protocol avenue, ceased to function.

      Canal water flowed along the footpaths bringing with it unmentionable sewage and the occasional dead animal. Since seasonal maintenance was invariably neglected the kali, or drains, could never handle the sudden downpours. Putrid garbage and human effluent flowed into the streets and through the houses. Pedestrian traffic disappeared as the footpaths became increasingly inundated.

      Houses built along the avenues adjacent to these canals always suffered the fierce odours from these sewage streams. Jonguses waited apprehensively as the rivers of foul waste threatened their masters’residences. Instructions were given to female servants, the babus, to stand-by to clean up after the occasional vehicle which passed immediately in front of a residence, throwing small waves into the well kept yards, creating havoc.

      Most resident foreigners were members of the Diplomatic Corps. Their houses were grand old Dutch designed mansions built during the colonial times to provide for the numerous Dutch colonists. Now they were occupied by career men and women, many enjoying their first posting overseas.

      Expatriates, generally speaking, were provided with vehicles. Transport was expensive and car smuggling was practised in many of the Third World Embassies to compensate for the poorly paid civil servants’meagre incomes. Drivers ferried their masters to and fro, enjoying considerable privilege within the domestic ranks of the expatriate household. The wet season was, however, when these drivers