Double back am-3

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Sounds brilliant,’ said Mac, losing interest. His real focus was how to use Damajat to find Blackbird.

  The intercom buzzer sounded suddenly and Damajat spoke into it. Rising from his seat he whisked a file off his desk. ‘I’m back in five minutes. Look at this, tell me what you think, right?’ he said, handing Mac two pieces of paper. ‘Let’s talk about what is easy and what is not, okay?’

  As Damajat’s shouts echoed along the corridor, Mac looked down at the procurement lists on the A4 pages and saw the kinds of words he’d memorised in high school chemistry. There were huge volumes of the stuff – this wasn’t a small operation.

  Standing, he walked to the glass and had another look down on the facility. The people in biohazard suits walked about slowly and one person seemed to be running the show. Mac had no interest or expertise in what he was looking at – he wanted to find Blackbird, establish the meaning of Boa and then get out of East Timor before the place imploded. The scene with the militia rapists was not Mac’s idea of a job well done. His job was to collect information covertly and pass it on, and stopping to deal with a bunch of drunken militiamen on the side of the road had been a total screw-up.

  Moving to the door, he listened but heard no voices. He started with a quick search of the ceiling for a security camera and, not finding one, moved to the walls; there was a large day-planner with letters in red texta marked on some of the days, and a portrait of Rudi Habibie, President of the Republic – but no safe behind either.

  Doubling back to check the day-planner, Mac scanned the dates. They were mostly acronyms but he fixed on the box for 7 September: he couldn’t think of any date it corresponded to except it was the day after the results of the independence ballot would be announced by the UN. The box contained a simple diagonal cross in red texta.

  Pausing beside the day-planner for a moment, Mac scanned the rest of the wall, which featured regimental bunting and photos of Damajat in his Kopassus beret, one with Norman Schwarzkopf and another with a big group that included Damajat and an Australian Minister for Defence, which looked like it was taken at the Jakarta Golf Club, and definitely after lunch.

  Under the golf photo was a bronze bust of Soeharto – smiling for once – sitting on a steel security cabinet.

  Moving to the dark wooden desk, there was a diary-blotter, several yellow post-its with messages and numbers scrawled in cursive. Of most interest to Mac was a fifty-centimetre security monitor with six boxes of black and white imagery moving on it. One of the boxes was a lengthwise shot of the corridor outside Damajat’s office, which was empty. Keeping one eye on the corridor camera, Mac checked the three drawers down each side of the foot well. The top two drawers were locked so he pulled at the unlocked ones; there were files in Bahasa Indonesia, old tennis balls that look like they’d been chewed by a dog, personal Visa card statements and a Nokia phone. Turning off the phone, Mac trousered it. Then, checking the last drawer, he saw a small ring of keys. Picking them up, he checked the security monitor again and, moving swiftly to the steel security cabinet, fumbled with the keys, his fingers getting sweaty with panic.

  Voices sounded outside the door and Mac leapt back to the desk, threw the keys in the drawer, shut it with a swinging foot and stood at the window, blood pumping.

  The voices moved on and Mac collected himself, checked the security monitor and grabbed the keys again. The doors opened first time and as they swung open Mac found himself disappointed. What he hoped might have been card-file boxes of agents, assets and suspects – the typical fare for a chief of intelligence – was instead several trays filled with protective foam and tiny plastic vials pushed into slots in a grid pattern. Wondering if anything in that cabinet would interest Canberra, Mac looked over at the security monitor which showed Damajat approaching down the corridor with his cocky walk. Grabbing one of the vials, Mac fumbled with the lock and returned the keys as the major-general burst into the office. Turning from the window with his cup of coffee, Mac smiled, the vial tucked snugly in the tube where his laces wrapped around the heel of his boat shoes.

  ‘So, Mr Davis, that list okay?’ asked Damajat, joining him at the window.

  ‘Right as rain, Anwar,’ said Mac. ‘I can have this freighted out of sixteen different countries. There’ll be no customs intel on this one, if that’s how you want it?’

  ‘That’s how I want it,’ said Damajat. ‘And I need you to start now.’

  ‘Now?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s most urgent.’

  Damajat gave Mac a work-up that contained various billing details, bank accounts and corporate fronts that had to be used and then Damajat grabbed a manila folder and they walked out of the building and into the car park.

  Mac wanted to push for a Blackbird connection before leaving.

  ‘You know, Anwar,’ said Mac, trying for a tone that was at once authoritative and obsequious. ‘This is not going to be a problem from my end, but maybe we should talk about the security of your organisation.’

  ‘Security?’ said Damajat.

  ‘Yes. I prefer not to know what the development program is up here,’ said Mac, ‘but all it takes is one set of loose lips in your operation, and then we have customs sniffing around our containers and the whole thing goes pear-shaped.’

  ‘I see what you’re saying,’ said Damajat, motioning for Amir’s driver to escort Mac to the car for a lift back to the Turismo as arranged. ‘But you should not be concerned, Mr Davis.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ said the major-general, slightly raising the manila folder in his hand. ‘We have friends where it counts.’

  CHAPTER 21

  Mac turned the corner of the warehouse to find Amir Sudarto leaning against the waiting LandCruiser, his black SIG Sauer aimed at Mac’s chest. As Mac slowly raised his hands, the driver pushed him in the back, making him stumble forwards.

  ‘Well,’ said Mac, seeing there were two soldiers beside Amir. ‘This’ll certainly be a secure ride.’

  As the two soldiers closed in from his sides, Mac lurched to his right, grabbed the driver by the wrist and swung him into the other thug. Caught by surprise, the soldier pulled up his gun as Mac leapt over the driver and lunged at the soldier’s throat, grabbing it with his right hand as he got his left hand on the gun wrist.

  Falling to the dirt, Mac twisted so he landed on the soldier then headbutted the bloke’s teeth. Using his momentum, he ripped his right hand away from the throat and got both hands on the soldier’s gun hand. Pulling up, Mac aimed the captured gun – hand and all – at Amir and pulled back on the soldier’s trigger finger as his assailants advanced.

  Nothing. Not even a click.

  Sudarto walked up and trod on Mac’s left wrist, preventing Mac from rolling away. Then Amir Sudarto’s gun came down between his eyes.

  ‘So,’ said Amir, smiling. ‘They say you were in army, but don’t know what safety is, right?’

  The driver laughed, but the other soldier on the ground touched his bloody bottom lip and spat at Mac.

  Amir’s smile suddenly hardened. ‘Time for chat, right, McQueen?’

  They dragged Mac through the shower block of the Ginasio, into a dank room with a concrete floor and high frosted windows with wire through the glass. The Kopassus thugs made him kneel at one end of the room, hands and ankles wired behind him and wire flex around his neck. Then they walked away, leaving Mac with his fears.

  Mac’s old footballer’s knees started to seize on the wet concrete as the blood dried in his nose. Forcing himself to keep his breathing regular, he worked it through: Amir Sudarto knew his name, which meant they’d levered the truth out of Bongo or got a surveillance shot of Mac and run it past some corrupt friendlies, most likely CIA or NICA. Or perhaps Amir was sent to do the dirty work by his big brother, Benni. There was a chance that Benni Sudarto was running a separate operation with a different agenda to that of Damajat and his commercial masters. Mac had no idea what it was, but the fact that Amir
had grabbed Mac in the car park – not in the Lombok AgriCorp building – suggested a side venture.

  Mac tried to think quickly about what Amir wanted and how far he’d go to get it. The Indonesians had already retrieved his phones and the materials that Damajat had given him, but the leaked documents from Rahmid Ali were hidden in Bongo’s Camry.

  Sounds of beatings and pleading echoed throughout the vast building. People cried, men yelled; women screamed, voices threatened and hard objects hit soft flesh. Mac didn’t expect to walk out of the Ginasio.

  Voices came closer and then there were footfalls in the shower block and Amir Sudarto was standing in front of Mac. One of the soldiers from the car park – the driver – put a shallow box on the wooden slat seat. Mac could see his own phone, Damajat’s Nokia and the list of items to be procured.

  Sitting down on the slatted seat in front of Mac, Sudarto stretched his thick legs in front of him, taking his weight with his arms, muscles flexing under his green trop shirt.

  ‘Tell me what I need, McQueen, and I’ll make it fast and… relatively painless, okay?’

  ‘Can we define relatively?’ said Mac, the wire flex digging into his larynx.

  ‘Don’t be funny,’ said Sudarto, the trace of an American accent a reminder of his stint at Northwestern. ‘We’re in this situation, right? But we’re both soldiers, and I’ll give you the fast way if you cooperate.’

  ‘Thanks for the offer, but it sounds too much like suicide, maybe euthanasia. And I’m Catholic – see what I mean?’

  Sudarto’s nostrils flared and he looked away.

  ‘What brought you up here?’ asked Sudarto.

  ‘Major-General asked me for lunch, remember?’

  ‘What were you looking for in his office?’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘So what’s this?’ said Sudarto, reaching over and picking up Damajat’s Nokia.

  ‘It rang,’ said Mac, shrugging and stalling for time.

  Sudarto bounced his thumb across the keypad of the phone. ‘No it didn’t. Last received call 11.39 this morning.’

  Looking down at Sudarto’s black Hi-Tec boots, Mac concentrated on his breathing and remained silent, stony-faced.

  ‘Major-General Damajat keeps his phone in his desk, so what were you looking for?’

  Mac shrugged it off again, trying to find a part of himself that wasn’t swamped with fear.

  ‘What about Dili?’ asked Sudarto, pulling a cigarette packet from his breast pocket and fishing one out with his teeth. ‘What’s happening in Dili?’

  ‘Looking for sandalwood opportunities, and -’

  ‘Come on, McQueen,’ snapped Sudarto. ‘We’re past all that.’

  The accepted style of interrogation in the intelligence community was to ask a number of narrative and factual questions over and over, find the inconsistencies and work at them. While working at the inconsistencies you suddenly dropped a clanger into the dialogue to surprise and confuse the interviewee. Mac expected a clanger in the next few minutes to try and knock him off his game.

  ‘Do you know a man called Alphonse Morales?’

  ‘No,’ said Mac.

  ‘Known to most people as Bongo?’

  ‘I may have met him, I don’t -’

  Sudarto gestured to his sidekick and a black-and-white eight-by-five print was suddenly thrust in front of Mac’s face. It was a telephoto shot of Bongo at the wheel of the Camry, with Mac shutting the passenger door. Mac’s mind completed the picture – it had been taken just before he’d crossed the road to the wall of the Santa Cruz cemetery.

  ‘Oh, you’re talking about Manny? Manny Alvarez?’ said Mac, using Bongo’s NICA cover at the Jakarta Shangri-La.

  ‘Don’t be clever, McQueen,’ snapped Sudarto, lunging forwards and backhanding Mac across the face so hard that it sent him sprawling sideways.

  The sidekick picked him up, put him back in the kneeling position, blood again pouring from Mac’s nose onto the concrete.

  ‘I met Manny when he was a concierge at the Lar,’ continued Mac, ‘and he agreed to do some driving for me in Timor.’

  Lunging forwards again, Sudarto hit Mac with a backhand-forehand combo, spraying blood across the room. Although he stayed upright this time, Mac wondered how many of the heavy strikes he could take.

  He was in big trouble: the Bongo connection put the conversation right back in the meet that had gone wrong, where the older Sudarto brother had shot Bongo. It meant the Sudartos had connected all the dots – the Canadian, Blackbird and Operasi Boa – which had led him to Mac. But was there anything else? What else did he know? What more could Amir Sudarto want from him that he didn’t know already?

  ‘Let’s talk about the cemetery,’ said Sudarto, sucking on his smoke.

  ‘The cemetery?’

  ‘Yeah, McQueen. Santa Cruz.’

  ‘It’s a nice place.’

  ‘Nice?’ said Sudarto.

  ‘Yeah – it’s a pretty place,’ said Mac.

  ‘Sure, it’s pretty, McQueen,’ said Sudarto, looking straight through him. ‘But maybe you meet someone there?’

  Oh fuck! thought Mac, since Amir could only be referring to Rahmid Ali and his approach in the cemetery.

  Trying to control the adrenaline that hammered in his temples, Mac realised his position was much worse than he had first thought. Benni and Amir Sudarto, and Kopassus intelligence, had discovered Mac in Dili because they’d been tailing Ali. They’d been tailing Ali because he represented the new President Habibie, whom the military wanted to hobble before democracy could break out.

  Mac’s pain and fear deepened as he suddenly saw his predicament: he’d gone and put himself in the middle of a turf war between the Indonesian military and their president.

  CHAPTER 22

  The beating continued until blood ran from Mac’s face and his left inner ear throbbed.

  ‘I told you,’ shouted Mac through mashed lips. ‘He collared me in the cemetery while I was checking on the radio transmitter. You don’t have a telephoto of this?’

  ‘Tell me again, McQueen,’ said Sudarto. ‘Start from the beginning.’

  ‘He called himself Rahmid Ali, he walked me at gunpoint into the trees against the wall of the graveyard and interrogated me about being in Dili.’

  ‘Say where he from?’

  ‘No – I assumed BAKIN,’ lied Mac. ‘He kept on about a company called Ocean Light in Dubai and what he called the “Singapore transactions”. I told you this!’

  ‘Singapore transactions?’ sneered Sudarto, losing control and not happy about it. Good interrogators had their theories confirmed; they weren’t necessarily wanting new information.

  ‘Yeah, Amir – that’s what he kept pushing me on. I had a SIG in my face, and it was all about these Singapore transactions and Ocean Light, and -’

  ‘What else, McQueen?’

  ‘That’s it. He was angry, kept demanding why Canberra would send a Treasury investigator to Dili.’

  ‘You Treasury?’

  ‘No, mate – and I have nothing to do with this IMF shit, okay?’ said Mac, referring to the International Monetary Fund consultants helping Indonesia with the Monekris, who’d been making unpopular demands about corruption and collusion under the cover of IMF policies.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, I didn’t get to hear the end of his story because Bongo sorted it,’ said Mac.

  ‘Bongo?’

  ‘Yeah, he, you know…’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Sudarto.

  There were sounds from outside and Amir and his sidekick exchanged glances.

  ‘We’ll get to the bottom of that one when Benni gets here, right?’ said Amir, glancing at his watch.

  ‘Benni?’ said Mac, trying to keep his neck straight so the wire didn’t dig into his Adam’s apple.

  ‘Yeah, McQueen, he wants to talk to you.’

  Lighting a cigarette, Sudarto cocked his head to another sound outside the building and shot a look at the other
spook, who left the room to investigate.

  ‘There’s a blonde girl, McQueen,’ said Sudarto. ‘Pretty. She your girlfriend?’

  Mac smiled, his back now in spasm from his awkward kneeling position. ‘No, she’s looking for her father.’

  ‘Father?’ said Sudarto, facetious. ‘Can’t go losing your father.’

  ‘She suspects foul play – she’s in Timor to find him.’

  ‘She registered at the Turismo as Yarrow,’ said Sudarto, narrowing his eyes at Mac. ‘Her passport’s Canadian, address in Los Angeles.’

  ‘She’s at UCLA,’ said Mac.

  ‘Good cover, eh McQueen?’

  ‘Look, Amir,’ said Mac, trying to sound forceful, ‘she’s not in our world, okay?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘She’s a girl scout, a civvie whose father dropped off the map a few weeks ago and she can’t get answers from the Canadian or Indonesian governments.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she ask the Aussies?’ said Sudarto, smiling now, enjoying himself.

  ‘Mate, whack me for the Canadian, okay? It’s over, you win the back nine – whatever. But, shit!’

  ‘So she just good friend with Bongo, too?’

  ‘Bongo’s with me, bodyguarding – he’s freelance these days, right?’ said Mac, trying to breathe out his pain.

  ‘Really?’ said Sudarto, picking up the envelope with the photos. ‘So all these people, from Australia, United States and Philippines – they just meet at Turismo and all these coincidence happen, right?’

  ‘Amir, I’ve asked that girl three or four times to leave the island, swear to God, and I told her not to go into the mountains. I found her at a cafe in Aileu – she’d hitched a ride with the UN for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘She got mind of her own?’

  ‘Knows everything there is to know,’ said Mac.

  Pulling another eight-by-five black-and-white from the envelope, Sudarto glanced at it and then held it in front of Mac’s bleeding face.

  ‘Taken four days ago – Denpasar,’ said Sudarto, exhaling smoke.

  Mac’s heart sank as he looked at it: a telephoto shot of Jessica Yarrow, dark sunglasses and a white polo shirt, talking with a man under a Bintang umbrella at an outdoor cafe. Mac knew how to cover his feelings and use a poker face, but his mouth must have gaped.