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for it with khaki flight jackets, the same type used by military pilots. Timbu and the politicians threw on jumpers. Most of the locals ignored the cold, going about their business near-naked. Some of the older folk and the youngsters had grey blankets wrapped loosely around their shoulders. The days were hot, but the nights cool.
    ‘Ples bilong yu?’ asked the chief as he took a seat beside Wilkes. Where are you from?
    ‘Mipela bilong Ostrelya,’ said Wilkes, a bit of pidgin coming back to him.
    ‘Yu marit o nogat?’ asked the chief, making small talk.
    ‘Mi no marit,’ said Wilkes, hoping the question was not a prelude to the chief offering him a daughter. ‘Mi gelpren,’ he said.
    The fact that Wilkes had a girlfriend seemed to satisfy the chief, who then turned away to answer a question Pelagka put to him about the health of his people.
    The PNG soldiers kept to themselves, friendly but uninvolved. Eventually, dinner came. Wilkes and his menweren’t keen on eating the local food and would have preferred to stick with their ratpacks – pre-packaged ration packs – but both the chief and the politicians had been insistent. The first course arrived on bark platters and consisted mainly of baked sweet potatoes, and various cooked taro roots and bananas. Then came the meat.
    ‘Mmm, delicious,’ said Ellis, tucking in before anyone else. ‘What is it?’
    Timbu asked the chief.
    ‘Longpela pik,’ said the old man.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Man,’ said the interpreter.
    ‘Oh,’ said Ellis with a full mouth. And then the penny dropped. ‘What?’ He spat the mouthful into the fire, and wiped his mouth and tongue on the front of his shirt.
    The chief rocked with laughter then spoke animatedly.
    ‘He says his village has never practised cannibalism,’ Timbu translated, ‘but that plenty of villages in this area have, even up to fairly recently. He says there are rumours the village that attacked them today still practises it occasionally, but personally I doubt that.’ Timbu turned to the chief and said, ‘Mipela laikim tumas dispela kaikai na longpela pik.’ We enjoyed the meal, especially the long pig.
    ‘Can you ask the chief why they were attacked today?’ Wilkes asked.
    ‘Already have – payback. No one can remember how it all started. They’ve been fighting back and forth for years. Only now, one side has guns. Back when they used spears, there’d be a few injuries, the occasional death. Now it’s not unusual for ten or fifteen men to be killed and the samenumber wounded in a simple skirmish. And then there are all the accidents with firearms, like we saw today.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Wilkes.
    ‘What happened when these men chased the others into the jungle?’ asked Beck.
    Timbu spoke at length with some of the young men who had gone on the raid, the conversation becoming quite excited.
    ‘They didn’t get anywhere near the other village,’ he said. ‘It’s a good day and a half’s trek away, maybe more, through the jungle and over a high ridge to the north-west. There was a bit of a skirmish in the trees not far from here, which is where the man took a bullet in the foot. They broke off the chase because they came across a party of Asians they believed were heading to the enemy village. These people from over the border in West Papua have a bad reputation for being cruel and vicious, so the men came back.’
    The Australians looked at the faces of the people around them. Most were smiling broadly, innocently. Wilkes knew he couldn’t do anything to help them. It’s not your fight, Tom. ‘Did you say a day and a half’s journey from here?’
    ‘Give or take.’
    Wilkes was due to go back on leave after this job, along with the rest of his men. They’d bloody well deserved it. He’d had a few plans to go away with Annabelle, his ‘gelpren’. If he were a few days late, would that matter? He knew the answer to that – yes, it would. ‘Timbu, you say you know these hills. Do you