The convoy passed over the bridge, between two shabby canal-side warehouses with red tile roofs, and into a residential area. The principal streets were laid out in a grid, but the smaller streets, very narrow, crept and zigzagged between apartment blocks. There were bright plastic awnings, lines hung with laundry, flags, umbrellas-anything, Dagmar suspected, to provide shade. Broken plaster showed that the buildings were made of red brick, with roofs of metal or worn red tile. The structures were old and sagged a bit, sinking into the soft ground. Zigzag cracks demonstrated that bricks were a very poor construction material in an earthquake zone. The tile roofs often had green plants, and even small bushes, sprouting from the crumbling red clay.

The vehicles passed a small neighborhood mosque and drew up in front of a long building. The brick walls had been plastered and painted white, with neat, bright blue and red lettering. Dagmar recognized “Bayangan Prajurit” amid other words she didn’t know.

Doors opened. Abu Bakar opened Dagmar’s door, and said, “Please.”

The building turned out to be the group’s training hall. The place was scrupulously clean. Racks for weapons stood along the walls, half of them empty. A large photo of a distinguished-looking man, perhaps the style’s founder, stood on one wall between a pair of Indonesian flags.

A group of women sat on a raised platform at one end of the room. Cooking smells brightened the air. Dagmar felt her mouth begin to water.

Dagmar removed her shoes at the entrance along with the others. The boy in the wife-beater shirt brought in her baggage and placed it by the door.

Dagmar looked at the springy split-bamboo floor, ideal for percussive exercise, and reflected that in Los Angeles, fashionable homeowners would have paid a lot of money for a floor just like this one.

She turned to Putri. “How long are we staying here?”

“Till the boat comes. The boat won’t come till night.”

“How will we know when the boat arrives?”

“The captain will call on his phone.”

On his satellite phone. Of course.

“Please,” said Putri, waving a hand in the direction of the circle of women. “We thought you might want to eat.”

“Thank you!”

Dagmar approached the platform eagerly. The women looked up at her-they were young girls in their teens under the direction of an older woman, and they had prepared a large pot of rice and a number of other dishes set in a circle around the rice bowl.

One of the girls gave Dagmar a bowl, and she was prepared to seat herself with the others when a thought struck her. She turned to Putri.

“Food must be scarce here,” she said. “I don’t want to take anyone’s food.”

Putri absorbed this, then nodded.

“That is kind of you,” she said. “But in our kampung we have food. One of those gudangs we passed-storage places?”

“Warehouses?”

“Yes. Warehouses. One of the gudangs was full of rice. So now we have a lot of rice, and the head man of our kampung can trade this rice for other kinds of food.” She smiled. “So we are poor here, but not starving.”

“Is Abu Bakar the head man?”

“No. That is Mr. Billy the Kid. You may meet him later.”

Dagmar was hungry but couldn’t keep the question from her lips.

“Billy the Kid? Is that a name his English teacher gave him?”

“No,” Putri said patiently, “it’s his Indonesian name. American names are very popular here, and Mr. Billy the Kid was named after a character played by Paul Newman in the cinema.”

Dagmar could think of no response but a nod.

Dagmar moved to seat herself with the other women, who gladly made room for her. She noticed that several of the young girls carried knives in their belts, and she was pleased that women were allowed to study martial arts here, in a Muslim country. No one had imposed burkas on these women, not yet.

The food was lovely, and carefully prepared. Dagmar praised it extravagantly. Her stomach had shrunk in the day and a half since her last meal, and that helped her eat slowly. The girls were talkative, and those who had English were eager to practice it. Dagmar answered the usual questions and asked questions of her own.

Time passed. The young men wandered in and out. Abu Bakar talked with the older woman, who Putri said was his wife. Dagmar looked out the rear window and saw an undeveloped area, partly under a shallow lake, that stretched from the rear of the building toward an industrial district in the distance. There was a petrochemical smell-perhaps the lake was used for dumping.

The kampung, backed up against this desolate area, with its canal and drawbridges, was practically an island. That made it very defensible, assuming of course that anyone ever found it worth attacking.

The sun drew close to the horizon. The evening call for prayer went up from the neighboring mosque, but those in the training hall ignored it as if it were nothing more than birdsong.

If you were religious enough to pray, Dagmar supposed, you were probably in the mosque already.

As the muezzin fell silent, Dagmar approached Putri. She reached for one of the pockets where she had stashed some of her money, opened the pocket button, and offered Putri three hundred dollars.

“Could you give this to Abu Bakar for me?” she asked. “For the poor people in the kampung?”

Putri was astonished. For a moment her English deserted her, and she could only nod. She walked to Abu Bakar and gestured for Dagmar to follow. Putri handed Abu Bakar the money, and the two conducted a rapid conversation in Javanese. Then Abu Bakar turned to Dagmar and held out the money.

“He says,” said Putri, “that you don’t have to pay. We are doing this for the sake of our own-” She paused, then made a valiant attempt at the proper English. “For our spirit. For our own development.”

Dagmar’s mind spun. She had wanted this not to be noblesse oblige, a round-eyed female handing out hundred-dollar bills like tips. She genuinely liked these people; she wanted them to be well.

She put out a hand and pressed the bills back toward Abu Bakar.

“For the children,” she said. “For medicine and-whatever.”

Putri translated. Abu Bakar thought for a moment, then gravely put the money into a pocket.

“Thank you, Miss Dogma,” he said.

A cell phone rang. Dagmar recognized a ring tone by Linkin Park. One of the young men answered, then gave the phone to Abu Bakar.

In a few moments everything was motion. Dagmar found herself back in the white sedan with Putri and Abu Bakar, her luggage in the trunk. The convoy moved out, traveling under running lights on the blacked-out streets. They crossed another drawbridge out of the kampung, then turned north. Abu Bakar was back on his cell phone, talking to his friends and allies.

Bags of rice were exchanged, and the group passed through a roadblock into another kampung. The cars passed young men carrying spears and wavy-edged blades. Taillights glowed on the red brick buildings.

The convoy passed through an industrial area, factories looking out with rows of blind glass eyes. Dagmar caught sight of a tank farm off to the left, glowing eerily in the moonlight.

The convoy came to a canal, and a roadblock on a bridge. The cars paused on the deserted road. Dagmar saw a Coca-Cola sign hanging loose on a shuttered fast-food place. The lead car moved up to the roadblock; there was some shouted Javanese, then there were cries and martial yells. Dagmar’s heart lurched as she saw moonlight on sharp blades. There were the bangs of weapons striking the car, and then taillights flashed and the car came roaring back as fast as it could come, a mob in pursuit. Abu Bakar yelled out orders. His young driver faced to the rear and put the car in reverse, his face all staring eyes and moist lips. He couldn’t move until the rearmost car reversed, and the rear car wasn’t moving.