Alice couldn’t sleep a second during the fourteen-hour-long flight from Moscow to Jakarta. She was nervous for the whole time, but as the huge landmass of the island of Java appeared in the left window of the small private jet, she felt more uncomfortable than before. Everything went smoothly so far, which could have meant two things: either Vladimir became a decent man, or there was something to happen before they would land. And Alice knew Vladimir too long to believe in the former.
Her left leg fell asleep so she stood up and moved around in the small cabin. She couldn’t find a comfortable position during the fourteen-hour trip but it didn’t matter: she had to get to Jakarta as fast as possible and if it meant she had to beg Vladimir for the most ragged private jet ever flown, so be it. She moved to the window and looked outside. The plane was flying at about 17000 feet, and thanks for the cloudless sky Alice could see the Indian Ocean stretching out to the distance with countless smaller and bigger islands. They were approaching the biggest of them: Java.
The plane started losing height to prepare for the landing and the huge grey mass of Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. She could see the huge skyscrapers crawling to the skies and the wide highway running through the commercial and business districts. She has been there several times, but now she was to see a whole new face of the city.
The door of the cockpit flew open and a small man appeared. He was one of the mercenaries working for Vladimir and served as the co-pilot on the flight.
“Soekarno-Hatta International Airport?” he asked.
Alice reached for her pocket.
“No. They wouldn’t welcome us.” She handed over a piece of paper to the man. “These are the coordinates.”
The man was examining the numbers for a while and finally nodded.
“I’ll inform the captain.”
“Wait!” Alice didn’t know, why it mattered, but she was too tired to keep up even with herself. “Your name is…?”
“Andrei.”
He bowed, turned around and slammed the door behind him. Alice turned back to the window and tried to gather her thoughts. She knew that normally it would be extremely hard to meet Rahmat face to face, but apparently she was a young, pretty European girl, and he was a perverted son of a bitch. Piece of cake, as Victor used to say. But he wasn’t around anymore.
Before she could think of anything else, the plane started shaking. She looked out the window on the right-side and felt like she was kicked in the stomach: the propeller under the right wing was rotating slower and slower and after a minute it just stopped. There were loud noises coming from the cockpit as she jumped to the door and tore it up.
“What the hell?”
The pilot was too busy keeping the plane in the air to answer, but the co-pilot looked at her nervously.
“We are out of gas.”
Alice felt the kick in her stomach again.
“Out of… what the hell?!” It took her two seconds to put the pieces together. “Vladimir, you greedy asshole!” She grabbed the co-pilot’s jacket with one hand and pulled him out of the chair. As she sit down and fastened her seatbelt she noticed the unmistakable smell of the mixture of fear and sweat in the air. She took a peak to the pilot.
“Andrei, does he speak English?”
He didn’t answer; he was just looking into his hands and mumbling something in Russian.
“Andrei. Andrei!”
He finally looked her in the eye. “No.”
Could be better, she thought, as the plane was shaking and roaring around her.
“What are our odds?”
“We… we are near to your coordinates but without fuel… it will be close. Very close.”
Definitely could be better, she corrected herself but shook her head and flipped one of the switches. This triggered the pilot, who looked at her as he saw a ghost, but as soon as realized that with that switch she adjusted the wings angles of incidence, he nodded in approval.
“Zhenshchina pilot ... Nu, eto ne grozyat khuzhe”
She didn’t know what that meant, but didn’t really care. The plane was losing height in a very fast rate, much faster than it should have been. She pushed some buttons to help the pilot, who was struggling with the stick, and looked out the dirty windshield searching the runway. All she saw was garbage, but it had to be somewhere there.
“Tam! There!” Andrei jumped and started pointing on the left. A second later, Alice could see the small empty field in the middle of the garbage.
“This will be narrow.” She muttered and pulled the lever on her left. The plane took a sharp turn on the left which almost threw her out of the seat, but the field was now in front of them.
The plane was shaking even more and flying so low that the top of the higher palm trees were scratching the bottom of the jet. Alice pulled a last lever and closed her eyes –from now it was up to the pilot.
For a second it was complete silence, like all the sounds were sucked out from the world. And after that a terrible rumbling: metal against stone, machine against nature. The jet was flying over the runway like a stone skipping on the lake, biting huge blocks of stone out of the solid ground. For a second Alice thought it will never end, but eventually the incontrollable piece of metal lost speed and with a last creak it stopped and leaned on the left.
Alice opened her eyes and looked out of the broken windshield. The locals, mostly dirt-covered women and children were already gathering around the jet and gave curious looks to the wreck. The pilot looked at her.
“Welcome to North-Jakarta.”
Alice took her backpack and left the plane. She looked around with dizzy head. The place where she was looked nothing like the Jakarta she has seen earlier. There were no skyscrapers and middle-class cars running the broadways, nor busy businessmen running around in suits and grabbing quick lunch at the local McDonald’s. While the downtown was a truly cosmopolitan city which could have been situated anywhere in the world (except the palm trees, rickshaws and wild monkeys), North-Jakarta became the opposite of that globalized world.
Here was everything that couldn’t fit in the new world.
A man separated from the crowd and approached Alice. He looked like any other Indonesian with dense, black moustache and haggard look.
“Miss Lane?”
She nodded. More and more people were gathering there, the women left their outdoor kitchen and children stopped running around just to see her. She could barely distinct the faces from the colorful piles of garbage stretching in the streets as far as she could see.
“I’ve been told to greet you. I am Aditya Dharmawan and I will take you to him.”
“Thank you” she exhaled.
Aditya took a look on the plane.
“Rough landing?”
“Just the usual.”
He laughed.
“I see. This way, ma’am.”
The crowd gave way to them and Alice could feel a hundred pairs of eyes on her as she passed by them. Some were left the others and were following them, but she didn’t mind: all she wanted was to get to Rahmat and get the object from him.
“He won’t receive you” Aditya said quietly.
“I’ll make him.”
“He doesn’t speak English.”
“I’ll make him.”
As they turned around the corner they got to the main street of the slum. It was no more than a mildly clear path between the houses built of trash, for the railway was running through the slum there. Children were playing in the dust; three of them were climbing on the two ends of a cart and used it as a teeter. Alice was amazed by their pure happiness. She passed women holding their children in one arm and stirring a bowl of water in an improvised outside kitchen. The only building that stood out in this endless wave of garbage was something that looked like an abandoned hotel.
“He is in there.”
The door was guarded by two thugs. They started smiling as they noticed Alice.
“Tell them I’m here to pleasure Rahmat” she whispered to Aditya. She was disgusted by the idea, but there were so much at stake.
“Apa itu Aditya? Eropa wanita untuk bos?” said one of the guards to Alice’s companion.
“Ya. Sesuatu yang baru.”
They lowered the gun and let them enter the door.
The room inside was supposed to be the reception of the hotel, but now it served as a grotesque throne room. Debris and rubbish covered the floor. The room was filled with armed men sitting around tables and playing Indonesian or Chinese chess and poker drinking rum and smoking cheap cigars. Alice wished she could had been invisible, but the men didn’t pay too much attention to them. Some nodded towards Aditya, but that was all.
In the middle of the room stood the throne and Rahmat was sitting in it. He was fat as a pig and couldn’t take his eyes off of Alice. He said something in Indonesian and Aditya answered.
“Tell him I’m here for the Object”, said Alice.
“Dia ada di sini untuk objek.”
Rahmat suddenly lost interest in them. He made a hand gesture towards the soldiers.
“Membuat mereka keluar dari sini.”
Alice didn’t wait any longer. At the moment the all the men in the room jumped up and reached for their gun, she drew two pistols pointing into two directions.
“I need to talk to you.” She was standing in the crosshairs of about forty men, but she was looking at the slumlord.
“Membunuhnya.” He said quietly. She knew this one: kill her.
“Victor is dead”, she shouted as loud as she could. If she was late…
Rahmat raised his hand.
“You are lying”, he said.
“I am not. You are the last keeper.”
She has never seen a face change so quickly: the greed and lustfulness for blood disappeared and fear and despair took their place. “Lower your guns” he said finally. “Everybody, out! Now!”
It wasn’t until fifteen seconds and they were alone. Even Aditya left the room after Alice nodded him. Now she looked the slumlord in the eye and started speaking very slowly. “Victor is dead. His Object is destroyed. You are the last keeper. You left the Order, but you kept the Object. I need it now.”
Rahmat lubberly stood up and walked breathing heavily to the cabinet on the left. He opened it and showed Alice. There were about fifty selves, each containing around fifty books. They all looked the same.
“It is here, but only I know, which is the one you are looking for. Which is the… Object, that made me the king of this place. It gave me power. You can’t expect me to give it up.”
Alice knew she mustn’t withdraw.
“You are the king of what? Rubbish? Garbage?”
“Still more than you have. More than Victor had.”
“If you don’t give it to me, it is over. Not just your little kingdom, but the whole world.”
He was breathing intermittently as he walked back to the throne and collapsed on it.
“I know. I know. But I can’t.”
Alice looked around and suddenly she understood.
“That’s why you sent your soldiers out. You have been waiting for me. You want me to end your misery.”
Rahmat didn’t answer, just exhaled and inhaled slowly.
“Thank you.” Alice realy meant it.
“Hold it up on your way it. They will fear you too much to hurt you.”
She nodded and stepped to the cabinet while she aimed with her gun. It was a silent kill. At that moment the bullet hit Rahmat’s skull, one of the books shone up. Alice reached for it and hold it up high as she exited the room.
The soldiers were waiting outside and she could see the horror on their face as she passed by. She checked the time. Only one minute ahead of the plan. Aditya appeared next to him.
“Now what?”
“Now I save the world.”
At that moment a train appeared from around the corner. A bunch of people were hanging on its side and were sitting on the top. Alice started to run next to it and finally grabbed one of the handrails. She waved goodbye to Aditya but by that time he was lost in the garish hills of garbage.
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