Savage Harvest Part 8

Tapep took over. "We know this story about Michael Rockefeller," he said. "He was in a boat, and he was coming to visit Otsjanep, and his boat turned over, and he disappeared. That's all we know, and if we knew anything else we'd be afraid to say."

"Why are you afraid?" I asked.

"We are not afraid," he said. "We do not know the story." We were getting nowhere. Or maybe somewhere; he'd said more than he'd said yesterday.

"We must go," said Amates again, a refrain I was getting used to. We got up to leave, and another old man came up to me. Stuck out his hand. I took it to shake it, to say "thank you" in Asmat, and he looked me in the eye and wouldn't let go of my hand. Held it. Held my eyes. Was it my imagination? Or was he trying to tell me something?

THAT NIGHT WE were sitting around candles stuck to the floor when Manu said, "I spoke to a man who said they took the spear that hit Michael Rockefeller and threw it into a deep pool. They were scared of it."

Amates and Wilem talked. "We will go out and see if we can find people to talk," Amates said. "In the dark. Without you."

An hour later, Amates returned; Wilem was still out there somewhere. "Fin and Pep took his skull and hid it. They took it to a small creek up the Ewta and hid it in a tree. A man named Saket told me this. They are afraid to talk about it, in case there's retaliation from other people in the village."

Over four days we got no further. What was being told to us just to fill the void, to sate my insistent curiosity, and what was real? I had no idea. What the man Saket had told Amates, though, was interesting, for it corresponded with von Peij's report that the head had been moved from Fin's house to a tree farther upriver, deep in the jungle. "This head wasn't an Asmat head," Amates said. "It was too much, the people were too afraid."

I wasn't sure what to do next. There seemed no reason to stay longer. The next day no one came to the house; we were left alone, and the calling of further meetings felt pointless. Amates kept saying Dombai's family had the gla.s.ses. I told him I'd pay $100 for them, which seemed like a lot of money, but nothing turned up. There was nothing left to do but return to Agats. As we departed, six men stood on the banks and watched us go, saying nothing, not even waving good-bye.

BACK AT MY hotel in Agats, I fell into conversation with Amates, who seemed sure he could find Michael's gla.s.ses. Bones were everywhere in Asmat; anyone could produce a skull or a thighbone and I'd have no way of knowing who it belonged to without DNA from the Rockefellers themselves. The gla.s.ses would be irrefutable proof that Michael had made it to sh.o.r.e and been killed. Amates wanted to go back to Pirien by himself, talk to Dombai's sons, and see what he could come up with. I should offer $1,000 for them, he said. It seemed like a lot of money, and it made me uncomfortable. But I was exhausted, had lost ten pounds, wanted a hot shower and a break; if the gla.s.ses were real, it seemed well worth it-if the gla.s.ses were real. I gave Amates $300 for travel money and headed up to the Baliem Valley to scope out Michael's old stomping grounds for a few days, then took a break in Bali.

Two days after my arrival, I received a text from Amates. Kokai, the older man from Pirien we'd met in Basim, who had witnessed Lapre's raid and was somehow related to Dombai, had the gla.s.ses, Amates said. If I could get him another couple hundred, he'd return again to Pirien, pick up the gla.s.ses and Kokai, and bring them both back to Agats for me, arriving Friday. It seemed too good to be true. But I had to see it through. In a frantic day of running around Denpasar, Bali, I wired Amates $200 through the Indonesian post office system (the only way to send money to Agats), and texted Ainum, my old taxi driver in Timika, to get me a ticket on the Thursday flight into Agats. At one a.m. I jumped on the overnight flight to Timika. Ainum was there with someone else's ticket in hand, and three hours later I was inbound to Asmat again.

I fidgeted all day Thursday and Friday morning. Finally, my telephone rang Friday afternoon. It was Amates; he'd just gotten a cell signal. "I am on the boat and near Agats, and Kokai is with me and we have the gla.s.ses and he will tell you everything!"

Thirty minutes later, Amates walked into my hotel. Alone. "Where's Kokai?" I said.

"Home. He's tired. I'll bring him back here at six-thirty."

"The gla.s.ses?"

"I have them!"

I had purposefully avoided showing him a photo of Michael wearing his gla.s.ses. Although almost no one in Asmat wore them, and Michael's were distinctive 1960s-era gla.s.ses with big black frames and thick lenses, I hadn't wanted to give Amates an opportunity to find something similar.

"What do they look like?" I said.

"They are big!" he said. "Thick."

My heart hammered. I couldn't believe it. Proof. The first concrete evidence of Michael's fate, evidence that would tie him to the village.

That evening Amates arrived. Kokai was with him, as well as another older man named Beatus Usain and one of Amates's brothers. If Kokai had looked wild in Basim, here in Agats he looked as feral as a wild bat. His clothes were filthy, and he smelled like sweat and smoke and damp. A bag of dangling c.o.c.katoo feathers hung on his chest.

I broke out the packages of Lampion, the tobacco they loved, and pa.s.sed them around. We rolled cigarettes, smoked, gazed at each other. "So," I said, "tell me the story. How was Michael Rockefeller killed?"

Kokai looked at me, stone-faced. Started talking in his gravelly voice. "The American tourist came to Otsjanep, and he was there three days. He promised to build a big post here, and said he'd go to Agats and come back. On his way back here, his boat overturned and he was never seen again. Zegwaard came with the Bible, and we are Catholics now. I remember meeting him; he patted me on the head and said I should go to school."

It was the same boilerplate story they'd told before. Nothing new, and always immediately segueing into the Bible. Amates exploded. "They said they'd tell me the story," he said, "so tell it, not this!" The past was the past, nothing bad would happen, Asmat were now friends with America, and on and on, but Kokai just sat there staring at me, sweating, swallowing, saying nothing.

Finally, I asked about the gla.s.ses. Kokai reached into a bag and brought out a bundle wrapped in dirty cloth. I opened it.

A pair of 1990s-style plastic wraparound sungla.s.ses.

"No!" I said. "These are not the gla.s.ses. These are modern. They are not his gla.s.ses."

The tension in the room was so high it might have been a horror movie. We all drew long drafts off our cigarettes. Rain pounded on the tin roof. The room was stifling, sweat soaking all of us.

The old man next to Kokai, Beatus Usain, spoke. "I am a teacher," he said. "Kokai is the catechist in Pirien. We are Catholics now." He paused, waited, wanted to make sure I understood that. He had short hair, a strong cleft chin, and cheekbones so high they might have been stuffed with rolls of pennies. He was bold and handsome. "Pep and Fin were at the mouth of the Ewta River. Look,' said Pep, a crocodile.' " He paused again, so Amates could translate, the first time that had ever happened. "But it wasn't a crocodile, it was a man. He was swimming on his back. He saw them and stood up and yelled, Help me Tuan! Help me Tuan!' Pep drove his spear into his side. They took him to the Kali Jawor."

"Who told you this story?" I said.

"Pep was my uncle," he said. "He looked just like me."

I asked who was with them, about Ajim and the head, but he would say no more. Kokai didn't move, didn't speak, sitting like a statue, smoking. They wanted to leave.

I thanked them, said maybe we could talk more tomorrow, and they were gone.

I didn't know what to make of it all. The gla.s.ses had been a bold attempt at making a fast buck. Maybe even they'd come from Amates, not Kokai, but I didn't think so; Amates seemed as surprised and p.i.s.sed off as I. Kokai had nothing, none of the Asmat did; they were dirt poor. I had offered a lot of money. Either Kokai didn't have the real gla.s.ses, or they were so sacred-or he was so frightened-that no amount of money would make him part with them. As for the story, it wasn't much, but it corresponded with the original reports of van Kessel and von Peij in its most essential elements.

I was still pondering it all when Amates returned early the next morning. He was full of additional small details. They'd killed Michael and eaten him at the Kali Jawor, he said, and planted some of the bones under a clump of bamboo. The head they'd placed in a hollow of a tree, far up the Ewta. We should give Kokai a necklace of dogs' teeth and a stone ax, he said; that might make him talk more.

"Wouldn't he rather have money?" I said.

"No," Amates said. "Let's go to the Kali Jawor and look. I went there when we went to find Kokai, and there is bamboo at the end of the river."

I felt that I was at risk of embarking on a never-ending wild-goose chase. Gasoline for the boat cost $10 a gallon, plus the boat itself and Wilem and Amates, and food and tobacco for all of us; going back to the Kali Jawor would cost me hundreds more.

And there was this: fifty years. There was no way we'd find bones in the Asmat mud under fifty years of bamboo growth and rains and tides. A necklace of dogs' teeth cost hundreds of dollars, a stone ax the same-I could see it going on forever, and I had no idea if the information I was getting was accurate or what they were making up to keep the profitable business of Michael Rockefeller going. My visa was running out, my money was gone. I felt like I was getting lost in a jungle-a jungle of information and myth and story.

It was time to go home.

22.

January, February, and March 1962

SAUER (LEFT), SON OF SAMUT, KILLED BY MAX LAPRe, AND THE HEAD OF THE JISAR JEU, LOOKS AT PHOTOS TAKEN BY MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER IN THE UNFINISHED JEU, PIRIEN VILLAGE.

IN PUBLIC, OFFICIALS moved quickly to put the case of Michael Rockefeller to rest. On December 20, 1961, one month after Michael disappeared, the Dutch New Guinea court of justice announced its intention to register his death. The next day Platteel sent his secret cable to Bot, informing him of van Kessel's and von Peij's reports that Michael had made it to sh.o.r.e and been killed. Nevertheless, that very same day Platteel officially ended the public search for Michael, cabling Nelson Rockefeller: "The entire area has been extensively searched by various parties in close cooperation with local inhabitants, even any rumors were thoroughly investigated. . . . After having examined all reports I regretfully have to inform you my decision to end the unsuccessful search as I feel that not anything more can be done."

Nelson Rockefeller immediately called a press conference announcing Platteel's decision and making public his response. "All of us in the family will be eternally grateful to you for . . . the complete and exhaustive search undertaken by your government. You went way beyond the call of duty in your efforts and we will always find comfort in knowing that nothing was left undone."

Behind the scenes, though, a new search for Michael was just beginning, albeit reluctantly. The reports that van Kessel sent to the government, which made their way to Herman Tillemans, the Church's apostolic vicar (then the highest Catholic official in Dutch New Guinea), were the last thing anyone wanted to hear. Van Kessel and von Peij named fifteen men as having body parts belonging to Michael, with another thirty-five present at the scene-the political structure of the largest village in southern Asmat, all of its most important men. If they had killed Michael Rockefeller and the Rockefellers knew, well, something would have to be done. But what?

At the height of colonialism, in places like the Belgian Congo or British India or even Dutch New Guinea, the response to the killing of a white might have been simple-an armed raid, villages burned, men dragged away to uncertain and extrajudicial fates. A swift, merciless, and violent reprisal-a lesson taught, as Max Lapre might have said-would have been in order.

But times had changed, even since Lapre's raid in 1958, just four years before. The Netherlands was still trying to convince the United States and the United Nations that Dutch New Guinea was an orderly place with a functioning government and that the Netherlands itself was an able and enlightened manager. And Michael Rockefeller was no ordinary white man. If he had been killed-and eaten, as described by van Kessel and von Peij-it wasn't a simple case of one or two guilty men who'd committed a cut-and-dry immoral anomaly and who could be identified and arrested, but a whole village doing what it considered just, carrying on its culture, a culture under intense outside pressure to change at a time when those very cultural elements were being celebrated by people like Nelson Rockefeller and his new museum.

Arrest the fifteen men named? Arrest all fifty who'd been present? What if they resisted, as they surely would? What if the whole village tried to defend them? How many police and soldiers might be necessary? How many people might die, mowed down by men armed with modern weapons? And if the government did manage to arrest anyone, what then? Subject an illiterate group of naked Stone Age warriors to a moral standard and administrative process that were totally incomprehensible to them, all while the Dutch insisted they didn't even practice headhunting and cannibalism any longer? Perhaps most important, how were they to deal with the motive? How to admit that the whole thing had been set in motion by Dutch administrative officials themselves, by a Dutch patrol officer's wanton killing of five people?

It was an impossible tangle. Arresting the men involved risked vicious bloodshed and alienation of the entire village (if not all of Asmat), both from the government and the Church, while the Netherlands was still making its case in the UN. It risked exposing the Luns Plan as absurd. It risked alienating the United States, whose support the Netherlands needed if it had any hope of maintaining control of its colony.

Van Kessel had been pus.h.i.+ng for a trip home to Holland, and the Church wanted him out fast. Though he had been living among the Asmat for years and spoke their language, he was considered a rogue, a man who had never followed his superiors. The Church wanted to replace him as soon as possible with Anton van de Wouw. Tillemans, his superior, wrote van Kessel. "From the Resident I got approval to see what you have written about Mr. Rockefeller. You have to admit it is a little bit extraordinary that you did not also submit this to me. However, I hope you are extremely cautious, so you or Father van de Wouw will not get into trouble because of this, and therefore the mission will not fall from grace with the population."

At the end of January 1962, Tillemans quizzed van Kessel closely about details of his report and then sent a series of letters to both von Peij and van Kessel. When I met von Peij in Tilburg in 2012, he said he'd remained silent about the case out of loyalty to his superiors. "I wrote my bishop and he forbade me to talk, to tell the story. The government felt ashamed, and the bishop [Tillemans] agreed, so the government was always silent, and I said nothing. But I have no doubt. I was in Asmat for six years and then in Merauke until 1991, and I am certain."

The original letters from the time, on apostolic vicar letterhead, back him up. "In the matter of Mr. M. Rockefeller I urgently request you to be extremely cautious," Tillemans wrote again to von Peij and van Kessel. "The notes I received from van Kessel show it is a public secret. Still nothing is published about it in the newspapers. I would regret it if the first messages to enter the world came from the side of the mission. So I want to ask both of you not to bring into publicity what you know and that which you are convinced of what happened. Just leave the scoop of talking to someone else. In time it will be revealed."

On behalf of the Dutch New Guinea resident, Eibrink Jansen, Tillemans requested a report from Alphonse Sowada, an American Crozier father who would, in 1969, become bishop of the newly created Catholic diocese of Agats. "What is most puzzling to me," Sowada wrote, "is the belief that the Asmat should kill and consume Michael Rockefeller. To my knowledge, the Asmat people in their past history have never killed, much less consumed the flesh of an individual of white extraction. Why should they start at this late date when they have had ample opportunity to do so in the past? To this day, even with intensive Western contact in a few of the Asmat villages, the prevalent belief among the Asmat is that the white man is an ancient ancestor newly arrived to many benefits to the people. On a number of occasions I have been called a Mbji, namely a creature from the spirit world. For me, then, it seems quite improbable at this early stage in their development that the Asmat people would wish to kill, and further, possess the courage to kill a white man."

Sowada, however, was newly arrived; he had been in Asmat for only six months. He had never been to southern Asmat, neither Otsjanep nor Omadesep, while von Peij and van Kessel spoke the language fluently and had been on the ground in those villages for years. And both priests were convinced that Michael had been killed-and eaten-by the men from Otsjanep.

Von Peij, more conservative than van Kessel, was afraid for his own safety; he wanted a response from the government and wrote to Tillemans on February 3. "I received your letter in relation to this and will follow your advice [about keeping quiet]. I can understand they want to keep this hidden from the outside world. However, n.o.body can convince me that this was not what happened." If the government acts "as if it never happened, they are committing a crime. This is my honest conviction. In Ndanim, a good village where people are very satisfied with their dumb catechist, the . . . catechist shot a dog, which had just bitten his chicken to death. And then the villagers told him: Man, watch out a little, that Tuan from America was killed in Otsjanep and n.o.body did anything in response. . . .' So, unrelated to the outside world, something has to be done in Asmat. I'm somewhat afraid that what happened to Rockefeller might happen to me or a catechist too if one does simply neglect these killings."

Zegwaard agreed with von Peij. "Everywhere it's a.s.sumed that Rockefeller Junior was killed by the people of Otsjanep," Zegwaard wrote Eibrink Jansen on February 14. "The fact that this hasn't had any consequences, that there hasn't been any reprisal whatsoever, makes them feel free and able to act with arbitrariness in all kinds of circ.u.mstances without being punished for it."

Van Kessel wanted to contact Michael's family and even go to America to tell them in person what he knew. Tillemans, 150 miles away in Merauke, was adamant. "I want to ask you to make clear to Father van Kessel," Tillemans wrote to van Kessel's boss, the provincial superior, on February 28, 1962, "that there has to be absolute discretion regarding the case of Rockefeller. Bringing these s.a.d.i.s.tic colored stories into the world is in n.o.body's interest. He can prove nothing. . . . Leave it to the Governor [Platteel], who is completely informed about all this and who knows more than van Kessel can possibly expect. Or more than what he thinks is pa.s.sed on by me.

"I reject his plan to go to America and will not give my approval. Also, correspondence with Mr. Rockefeller, tempting or not, must be forbidden. This case is way too precarious for him to get involved in.

"The governor and Resident of Merauke are worried about irresponsible behavior of priest van Kessel. I hope he will spare the mission unpleasantries. He asks for clemency with the village that would have committed the murder. Father Van Pey [sic] calls for immediate measures against that village etcetera etcetera. Let him have faith in the people who bear the responsibility for this. It is not up to Father van Kessel."

Three days later, Tillemans sent another letter to the provincial superior. "I rely on you to forbid van Kessel to go to America, whatever the circ.u.mstances might be and to forbid him to correspond with the family Rockefeller too."

Tillemans's letters read like the defense of pedophiles in the Church, or like Penn State's reaction to accusations against its football coach Jerry Sandusky. How could such a thing be possible? There's no proof. The rumors could damage our reputation. Better to say nothing. Protecting itself was, of course, standard Church operating procedure, as revealed in a December 2011 report by the Dutch Conference of Bishops and the Conference of Dutch Religious Orders, detailing the abuse of more than twenty thousand children by Dutch priests and lay workers between 1945 and 2010. The Church rarely investigated these allegations, and when it did, the most common punishment was a quiet transfer. In New Guinea, by the end of January, van Kessel was s.h.i.+pped back to Holland, replaced by van de Wouw.

For all of its public denials, however, the Dutch government took van Kessel's and von Peij's reports seriously. Although the government had informed the Rockefellers that every stone had been peered under and the case had been closed, Eibrink Jansen decided to dispatch Dutch patrol officer Wim van de Waal to Otsjanep to investigate, along with nine armed Papuan police. On March 4, Father van de Wouw sent Gabriel (van Kessel's former a.s.sistant, who was now working for him) to Otsjanep with the pretext of building a house there for van de Wouw, but really in hopes that he might hear something further about the murder and to prepare the villagers for the coming of van de Waal and the police.

On March 23, Father van de Wouw wrote Tillemans that "Gab did not pick up anything in Ocenep [sic] that would point to the murder of M.R., nor the opposite," and that van de Waal and the police would arrive the following week.

Tillemans responded, cautioning van de Wouw: "If you get new information on the case of Rockefeller then be careful, because the topic is like a cabinet of gla.s.s. Of course, as long as there is no proof one keeps saying that one didn't know anything, and rightly so. If you find any proof don't mention this to anybody! Please, everything via me. So no messages to other priests or KvK [Kees van Kessel] in the Netherlands. Keep silent in Agats too. I really ask you to keep this case strictly confidential in separate letters with a double envelope and the word Secret' on the inner envelope."

The word was about to get out, however. On January 13, 1962, a Dutch priest working in Asmat, W. Hekman, wrote his parents back home in Arnhem a note full of salacious details. Michael Rockefeller, he told them, had been speared and eaten by villagers from Otsjanep, in revenge for the men shot to death by police a few years before. The names of the men who still had his bones were known. An American woman had been eaten too (this wasn't true). And no one could go to the village or else they, too, would be killed and eaten. The parents leaked the letter, which exploded across the a.s.sociated Press wires during the third week of March. On March 27, Jan Herman van Roijen, the Dutch amba.s.sador to the United States, cabled his foreign ministry. "Press reports from the Netherlands mention a message which a Dutch missionary allegedly sent to his family . . . that Michael Rockefeller did indeed reach the New Guinea coast, but was eaten there by the natives and that his skull and bones would have been preserved. For the benefit of the office of Governor Rockefeller, who contacted this emba.s.sy in this connection, it would be appreciated if I could be informed about the source and the value of these reports."

Joseph Luns, the foreign minister himself, replied to van Roijen the following day. "Similar rumors also circulated previously in a small circle in Dutch New Guinea," wrote Luns. "These rumors were contradicted as being completely unfounded by . . . the Apostolic Vicar of Merauke [Tillemans]. Any rumor in that regard has been investigated thoroughly by the resident of New Guinea, F. R. J. Eibrink Jansen, and the content of them have been called entirely incorrect." It was cla.s.sic government denial. In reality, the apostolic vicar, Tillemans, had shown no interest in investigating the case, had relied on the opinion of men who hadn't been anywhere near the events, and had done everything he could to silence von Peij and van Kessel, the only two men who were on the ground and had been in Asmat longer than any other white there. As for the thorough government investigation, Eibrink Jansen believed the reports were serious enough that he was sending van de Waal and a gang of policemen to Otsjanep the very week the news. .h.i.t the newspapers, an investigation that hadn't even begun yet.

Nevertheless, the denials did the trick: the next day newspapers around the world reported that there was no truth to the rumors.

Meanwhile, van de Waal built a police post in Otsjanep and settled in. Slowly, he began ingratiating himself into the village, giving gifts of soap to the children, tobacco to the men, helping the men build wooden walkways over the mud and swamp. "It must have been strange for the people there," he told me, sitting around his dining room table on the Spanish island of Tenerife, where he'd lived since 1968.

At seventy-three, van de Waal looked fit and strong, with a salt-and-pepper goatee and deep blue eyes. He was a man comfortable in his own skin, and comfortable in foreign places-he had been married to a Spanish woman for decades-with a quiet self-confidence and sure-footedness that would have served him well in a place like Asmat. He hadn't said a word about the case in fifty years. But the case, and his time in Asmat-a young man's exotic interlude-had always remained with him. He showed me meticulously organized loose-leaf binders filled with original doc.u.ments, including a bill of sale that he'd gotten from Rene Wa.s.sing for the catamaran, as well as photos of him and the Asmat and of Nelson and Mary in Pirimapun. "The Asmat in Otsjanep didn't understand why I was there," he said. "It was a complicated village, and they feel like talking about these things brings them bad luck, so I had to do everything little by little and smoked with them and gave them gifts, and eventually we started talking about old murders and headhunting and who had been killed, and when I'd tell them a story they'd say, Yes, that's correct.' "

He concentrated on the Pirien jeu, which he considered to be the most moderate, telling them that they were free to speak, that there'd be no recrimination if they did so. Finally he asked who killed Michael Rockefeller. "The answer," van de Wouw wrote Tillemans in early May 1962, "fell right out of their mouths."

"So far the information does not exactly match with what is in the report of Father van Kessel. Because Ajim would have been the one who stabbed M.R. to death on the sh.o.r.e (report K.V.K. [Kees van Kessel]: Pep stabbed him to death, from out of the proa, with a fis.h.i.+ng spear). Also, the distribution of the head and bones is not the same as in the report. The shorts would have been buried in the mud at Kali Jawor. M.R. was then eaten and Ajim would have sucked out the brains.

"At the first arrival of the A.A. (van de Waal) and the H.P.B. in Otanep [sic] . . . Ajim would have collected all the corpora delicti, chopped them up in pieces and threw them away behind his house.

"Supposedly the information above was already sent to the Resident via the H.P.B. in Agats. However, I may repeat that the investigation has not yet come to an end.

"But A.A. is of the opinion that the Resident will not intervene before any real evidence can be handed over (possibly: shorts, skull or teeth). Without a doubt this case will have serious consequences for Lapre, because when asked, the involved men from Otanep [sic] will say it is a murder out of revenge for the folks that were shot dead by Lapre at the time.

"At last, I have to add to all this that I have tremendous respect for the peaceful way of acting of our young A.A. The case can surely be entrusted to him.

"Priest van Kessel was truly convinced of Ajim being the main instigator of this and lots of prior murders and that the inhabitants of Otanep [sic] would not accept the arrest of this unsavory character (also in appearance, comparable to Pep and a few different leaders). This also became clear in the investigation by A.A."

Van de Wouw also reported that Otsjanep was brazenly carrying on its headhunting traditions, and that in the beginning of May a woman and a young girl from Warkai, a small village between Otsjanep and Omadesep, had been killed by men from Otsjanep, with two additional people injured.

At the end of three months in Otsjanep, van de Waal asked the men to hand over Michael's remains. "I needed proof, not just names," he said. They took him into the jungle, dug in the muck, and produced a skull and bones, the skull bearing no lower jaw and a hole in the right temple, the hallmarks of remains that had been headhunted and opened to consume the brains. "There are so many bones in Asmat, and I wanted to ask about the gla.s.ses," he told me, "but that was too dangerous." Van de Waal radioed Eibrink Jansen in Merauke. "I had a new radio, and it was scrambled so no one could listen in. I told him what I had, and he said he'd send someone to pick it up."

Soon after, Rudy de Iongh, the newly appointed Dutch patrol officer in Agats, arrived. Van de Waal handed the remains over in a cloth sack. "He was very afraid; he came with a patrol vessel and a heap of policemen armed with machine guns.

"That was the end of the story," he said. "I stayed two more weeks, and then Eibrink Jansen said I could leave and go back to Pirimapun, and that's what I did."

He never heard another word about the bones or anything else connected to Michael Rockefeller, except from a Dutch ironwood dealer who had accompanied de Iongh to collect the bones. The dealer told him that the remains had been given to Eibrink Jansen, who'd given them to a dentist in Merauke before sending them to Utrecht, in Holland. It was now June 1962.

"The political situation was becoming awkward," van de Waal said. Indonesian paratroopers landed in Merauke at the end of the month to pressure the UN to make the Dutch government withdraw, and all women and children were sent home to Holland.

The struggle for control of West Papua was ending. The Dutch were capitulating, and van de Waal was soon sent to Merauke. "I was never asked to make a report of my time in Otsjanep," van de Waal said, and in meetings with Eibrink Jansen, "we never, ever, touched upon my investigation."

Today no records in the Dutch government archives mention van de Waal's a.s.signment to Otsjanep, his time there, or the bones he turned over-the only written mention of it appears to be in van de Wouw's letters and in a highly aggrandized account by de Iongh in a colonial history of the Netherlands published in the 1990s.

"Why are there no government records?" van de Waal asked. "If there was no proof, it would have cost the government nothing to just tell the truth-that we'd spent three months in Otsjanep and had tried. But they did nothing, because [the truth] would have been very bad for the Dutch case, and that's why they wanted to keep it secret."

In September 1962, the UN ratified the New York Agreement, which transferred Dutch New Guinea to a United Nations Temporary Executive Authority (and then Indonesia eight months later). The Netherlands had lost its colony, and van de Waal sailed for home. "I never talked about it publicly," he said in Tenerife, shrugging his shoulders, holding a ca.s.sowary bone dagger. "I guess no one's going to be hurt by it now."

PART III.

23.