Dutch West Indies. There were twenty thousand orphans in the province, casualties of a decades-long struggle between Acehnese separatists and the Indonesian military. Now Al Qaeda terrorists had injected themselves into the mix on the Muslim side, making the situation even more combustible. She had to do something to help these children whom the rest of the world had forgotten.
As she passed over the wetlands, she glanced down and saw the sun glint off the oil slick. A discharge from an oil well in Exxon Mobile’s Cluster II had contaminated the local paddy fields, orchards, and shrimp farms. It had happened before, but this leak looked far more threatening. The widows and orphans in the nearby villages of Pu’uk, Nibong Baroh, and Tanjung Krueng Pase would be devastated. They would have to move to another area for at least six months, maybe a year, their sustenance wiped out.
She was about to flick on the onboard remote camera when a voice spoke in her headphone in heavily accented English. “Welcome to Post Thirteen, Sister Serghetti.”
She glanced starboard and saw an Indonesian military chopper with side-mounted machine guns keeping pace with her chopper. The voice spoke again. “You are going to land on the helipad in the center of the complex.”
She banked to the right and started to climb when four bullets raked the side. “Land immediately,” the voice said, “or we’ll blow you out of the sky.”
She gripped the joystick tightly and dropped lower toward the helipad. She lightly touched down on the platform as soldiers in field greens surrounded her chopper, fingers gripping their M-16s.
They were Kopassus units-Indonesian special forces-based at nearby Camp Rancong, she realized as she stepped out of the chopper with her hands up. Camp Rancong, the site of many reported tortures, was owned by PT Arun, the Indonesian oil giant, which was itself partially owned by Exxon Mobile, which facilitated Post Thirteen.
The wall of Kopassus forces parted as a jeep drove up. It braked to a halt and an officer, a colonel judging by his shoulder boards, stepped out and sauntered over. He was a slim young man in his twenties. Behind him straggled an older, bloated Caucasian civilian, whom by his lethargic and nervous demeanor Serena guessed to be the site’s token American oil executive.
“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.
“The infamous Sister Serghetti,” the colonel said in English. “You speak Acehnese like a native but certainly do not look like one. Your pictures in the media don’t do your beauty justice. Nor hint of your skills as a pilot.”
“I learned on the job, Colonel,” she said dryly in her native Australian accent.
“And which job would that be? You seem to have so many of them.”
“Dropping food and medical supplies to the poorest of the poor in Africa and Asia because their governments are so corrupt that U.N. shipments rarely make it to their intended villages,” she said. “They either disappear or rot on the docks because the roads are impossible to drive.”
“Then you’re in the wrong place, ma’am,” said the American in a southern drawl. “I’m Lou Hackett, the chief executive for this here operation. You should be in East Timor helping the Catholics stand up to Muslims. What the hell are you doing here in a pure Muslim province like Aceh?”
“Documenting human rights abuses, Mr. Hackett,” she said. “God loves Muslims and Acehnese separatists too. Maybe even as much as American businessmen.”
“Rights abuses? Not here,” Mr. Hackett said. He was keenly watching her chopper, now being stripped by a crew of Kopassus technicians.
Serena looked him in the eye. “You mean that’s not your oil slick out there soaking the local shrimp farms, Mr. Hackett?”
“I would hardly call an innocent accident a human rights violation.”
Mr. Hackett wiped the sweat from his brow with an old, worn handkerchief. She noted a logo on it. It was the seal of the president of the United States. A trinket, no doubt, from some campaign fund-raiser.
“So your company didn’t build the military barracks here at Post Thirteen where victims of human rights abuses claim to have been interrogated?” she went on, glancing at the Indonesian colonel. “Or provide heavy equipment so the military could dig mass graves for its victims at Sentang Hill and Tengkorak Hill?”
Mr. Hackett looked at her as if she were the problem and not his oil discharge. “What do you want, Sister Serghetti?”
The Indonesian colonel answered for her. “She wants to do to Exxon Mobile and PT Arun what she did to Denok Coffee in East Timor.”
“You mean break the grip of a cartel controlled by the Indonesian military and let the people sell their goods at market prices?” she asked. “Hmm, now that’s a thought.”
Hackett had clearly had enough. “Hell, if the East Timorese want to be slaves for Starbucks, that’s their business, Sister. But when you threw the military out of the coffee business, they took a special interest in mine.”
“Here’s another thought, Sister Serghetti,” the colonel said, handing her a sheet of paper. It was a fax. “Leave.”
She looked the fax over twice. It was from Bishop Carlos in Jakarta, winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize. It said she was urgently needed in Rome. “The pope wants to see me?”
“The pope, the pontiff, the Holy See, whatever the hell you call him,” said Mr. Hackett. “I’m a Baptist myself. Just call yourself lucky to walk out of here.”
She turned toward her chopper in time to see several soldiers carry away the dismantled cameras from its belly.
“And the people of Aceh?” she pressed Mr. Hackett as the colonel nudged her toward his jeep. He was apparently keeping her chopper. “You can’t pretend this isn’t happening.”
“I don’t have to pretend anything, Sister,” Mr. Hackett said, waving her a smug good-bye. “If it ain’t in the news, it ain’t happening.”
Twenty-four hours later, Serena leaned back in the rear of the unmarked black sedan as old Benito nudged it through the angry protesters and camera crews in Saint Peter’s Square. That she could arouse such strong sentiments seemed impossible. And yet the demonstrations outside were meant for her.
She was only twenty-seven, but she had already made a lifetime’s worth of enemies in the petroleum, timber, and biomedical industries or anyone who put profit ahead of people, animals, or the environment. But her efforts inadvertently left a few of the people she had hoped to save jobless. Well, maybe more than a few, judging by the mob outside.
Dressed in her trademark urban uniform of an Armani suit and high-top sneakers, she hardly looked the part of a former Carmelite nun. But that was the point. As “Mother Earth” she made headlines, and with recognition came influence. How else would the style-over-substance media, the secular world, and, ultimately, Rome take her seriously?
God was another matter. She wasn’t sure what he thought of her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Serena stared through the rain-streaked window. Vatican police were pushing back the crowds and paparazzi. Then, out of nowhere,whap! -there was a loud crack, and she jumped. A protester had managed to slap his placard against the glass:FIND ANOTHER PLANET, MOTHER EARTH.
“I think they miss you,signorina,” said the driver in his best English.
“They mean well, Benito,” she replied, looking at the throngs with compassion. She could have addressed him in Italian, French, German, or a dozen other languages. But she recalled Benito wanted to work on his English. “They’re scared. They have families to feed. They need someone to blame for their unemployment. It might as well be me.”
“Only you,signorina, would bless your enemies.”
“There are no enemies, Benito, just misunderstandings.”
“Spoken like a true saint,” he said as they left the mob at the gate and curved along a winding drive.
“So, Benito, do you know why His Holiness has summoned me to the Eternal City for a private audience?” she asked, casually smoothing her pants, trying to hide the anxiety building inside.
“With you it is always hard to say.” Benito smiled in the mirror, revealing a gold tooth. “So much trouble to choose from.”
Too true, she thought. When she was a nun, Serena was usually at odds with her superiors, an outcast within
