‘No, but it has happened enough times in the past.’ The AFP woman shrugged. ‘I might also say that the Transnational Crime Coordination Centre was created for just this kind of event – tracking the connection between drugs and terrorism. That has been our focus for a while now – definitely since Bali.’
‘Thanks, Jenny,’ said Niven. ‘We’re not here to tread on anyone’s toes.’
‘Maybe I should say something, Spike,’ said Hugh Greenway, the Minister for Defence. Wilkes had seen him before at various squadron reviews. His nickname was Lurch because he was tall, grey and stooped, like the butler in the old Addams Family sitcom. The jury was still out on whether he was a friend or foe to the armed forces because he hadn’t been in the job long enough. ‘With respect to the AFP and the great work you’ve been doing, the feeling is that what’s going on in PNG could be bigger than any of us have a grip on. We’re all here so that we can hopefully make a useful contribution to the bigger picture.’
Tadzic put her hand up and nodded, a gesture indicating that the AFP didn’t have its nose out of joint.
‘So, Jenny, a question for you directly,’ said Greenway. ‘How much money can they make – selling marijuana?’
Tadzic frowned. ‘From dope? Lots. Of course, it depends how much they can bring in. An ounce of the stuff can sell on the street for hundreds of dollars. From what we can see here, I’d say these people are dealing in hundreds of kilos.’
Greenway whistled quietly.
‘Okay, all this is a little outside my area, so this might seem like a dumb question,’ said Niven, ‘but how easy is it to smuggle in?’
‘I’ll answer that, Jenny, if you like,’ said Hamish Cameron, the customs boss.
WO Wilkes detected a slight Irish accent. The customs chief was around fifty with salt-and-pepper hair and dark features. His knees were jammed hard up against the seat in front of him. Wilkes estimated that he’d probably be well over a hundred and ninety centimetres tall.
Tadzic nodded.
‘On the contrary, Spike, it’s not a dumb question at all. It’s the crux of the problem – to us at customs, anyway. You might not be aware that we have only enough resources to check three out of every hundred containers coming into the country.’
‘You’re kidding?’ asked Niven.
‘Christ!’ Greenway seemed just as surprised.
‘I wish I was,’ said Cameron.
‘I don’t think they’d be bringing the stuff in container loads though, do you, Hamish?’ said Jenny Tadzic. ‘More likely to be bringing it in bit by bit. Dope’s pretty bulky. Fishing boats, light aircraft. That way if some gets found, they don’t lose the lot.’
‘Fair point,’ said Cameron. ‘But if they wanted to make a big pile of cash fast, they’d be better off importing heroin or cocaine.’
‘Let’s not give them any ideas, eh?’ said Griffin. A murmur of mild amusement went around the room. ‘Whatever they do, it’d be hard hiding that kind of money, wouldn’t it?’
‘Sure,’ said Tadzic. ‘That’s certainly something we can chase up, but if anything, the mechanisms for laundering money are far more sophisticated and well hidden than the drugs coming in.’
‘Okay,’ said Cameron. ‘We’ve got a couple of highprofile terrorists raising considerable sums of cash by running guns and drugs.’
‘Correct,’ said the ADF chief.
‘And you say one of these guys is a Middle Eastern explosives expert specialising in suicide bombers?’
There was silence around the table while their imaginations played with the implications of the customs boss’s bald summary.
‘In the absence of hard information we’re going to be doing a lot of creative speculation,’ said Griffin. ‘But that’s not such a bad thing. We may well have stumbled on something here – for once, perhaps, in time to do something to prevent it. You’ve just nailed it for us, Hamish: two terrorists from either side of the world joining forces in our backyard to raise a large sum of money for something. We just have to find out what the hell that something is.’
The meeting went on for another hour before breaking up. But nothing much of interest was added, just a rehash of what everyone already knew. The one question still not answered to Wilkes’s satisfaction was why they’d included him in all of this. They had his report and his job was done. It was time to hit the surf and worry about whether he was going to tan or burn rather than about national security issues. Wilkes stood. He noticed Griffin and Niven exchange a nod.
‘If you don’t mind, Warrant Officer, I’d like to talk to you a bit more,’ said the ASIS chief.
Here it comes. Wilkes sat back down and watched the various department heads file out of the room. The two CIA people remained seated. They’d also been asked to stay back after school and Wilkes wondered, what next? He didn’t have to wait long to find out.
‘Okay,’ said Griffin, sitting back in his chair. ‘We have a think tank, which you’ve just been introduced to. We also need an action team. You three will form the core of that.’
Tom Wilkes, Gia Ferallo and Atticus Monroe looked at each other.
‘Now, Tom, I understand you’re on leave for a few more weeks?’
Wilkes nodded.
‘Don’t be surprised if it gets cut short.’
Great, thought Wilkes.
South Java, Indonesia
Duat and Kadar sat in the uncomfortable silence. It was late at night and the air smelled of coconut husks burning in the cooking fires lit around the camp. Duat forced his tongue in and out through the hole left by the missing tooth, rubbing it against the gold incisor. He was tired of the discussion and let his mind wander. Most of the men were asleep but a few groups had assembled here and there to talk, gamble, or to play pool. Several of the men were carpenters and furniture makers, and they’d knocked up a couple of tables. The encampment now, Duat realised, was virtually self-sufficient. Morale was high.
He watched as the silhouettes of two men slowly patrolled a section of the perimeter, their rifles hitched over their shoulders. Recruits had been drifting in steadily in twos and threes, swelling their ranks over the past month as the awareness of Babu Islam spread. And not all of these were poor and uneducated. There were electricians and accountants and even a former air force communications officer amongst them, such was the growing disenchantment with the godless regime ruling from Jakarta. And two days ago, a distant cousin of Kadar’s had arrived at his relative’s invitation. His name caused much excitement: Abd’al Mohammed al Rahim, or ‘servant of Mohammed the merciful one’. The man’s name had an obvious synergy with Babu Islam, the Servants of God, and the men saw this as a potent sign.
Abd’al Mohammed al Rahim had acquired special talents and expertise while in the service of the Saudi army – talents Duat and Kadar could put to good use. But Rahim was sick, with papery yellow skin and black circles under sunken eyes. Indeed, the man had but six months to live due to an accident with the materials he handled. Rahim had been discharged from the army with a pension his wife and six children could not survive on. Kadar had seen to a hefty transfer of funds into his cousin’s account, cementing Rahim’s commitment to the cause. Kadar requested that separate quarters be built for Rahim and that a personal assistant with medical knowledge be assigned.
Duat heard Rahim’s coughing drift across the open ground on the night air. Six months – well within their timetable. Duat’s thoughts about Rahim turned naturally to the area outside the camp’s main perimeter fenced off with barbed wire, signs warning of the presence of mines. There were no mines here, but there was something infinitely more dangerous buried beneath the soil. A pall seemed to hang over the area and, indeed, even the weeds had chosen not to grow back as if aware that death had made its home in this patch of earth.
Rahim was a chemical weapons expert whose knowledge was essential to their plans, and his timely arrival felt like a confirmation that God Himself was on their side. Babu Islam’s bank accounts had also grown
in size and the zeros on the statements were for numbers once beyond Duat’s imagination. The marijuana bartered for guns in PNG had been easy to sell to middlemen. There was no need to risk distribution, and the business had netted close to twenty million US dollars. The accounts would again swell considerably when this money was used to fund the second phase of the plan. And yet…Duat eyed Kadar Al-Jahani sitting opposite, while he drew on a kretek cigarette.
Everything was heading in the right direction, so why in Allah’s name would Kadar want to put their ultimate goal at risk? Just to make an impression? The silence had hung uncomfortably in the air between them for long enough. ‘Kadar, we are now brothers in this enterprise. Trust me when I say that this time you are wrong.’
‘So you keep saying, Duat,’ said Kadar Al-Jahani, implacable.
‘We are doing well. You are right in that,’ said Duat. ‘Our numbers grow and we now have the money for training and equipment. But do not forget where we’re going, my friend.’ Duat’s thoughts again centred on the patch of ground sewn with warning signs.
Kadar sighed. This was becoming an old refrain. ‘Duat, do you believe Indonesia is ready?’
This was the crucial question and both men knew it. Moreover, both men knew the answer – it was not something Duat could lie about. ‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Well, then…’ said Kadar, opening his arms in a gesture that said, ‘Why are we discussing this?’ ‘Look, Duat, you’re right. Things are going well for us, but we can’t stay up here hiding in the hills forever.’
‘I know that,’ Duat said angrily.
Kadar tried a different tack, and somehow managed to keep the condescension out of his tone. ‘We’ve come this far, Duat, because we have support from without. But it is not unlimited and I feel a change in the wind. If that support is undermined or, worse, withdrawn entirely, then everything we have both worked for will disappear like smoke.’ He illustrated the point by clawing at the blue tendrils curling from the end of his burning cigarette.
Duat asked himself again whether he trusted the man sitting opposite. He could kill him now, take the money and the men, but he knew that would be stupid, impetuous. Perhaps if he met these mysterious contacts of Kadar’s, he’d be more willing to trust…And yet, Kadar and he had agreed right from the start on this division of responsibilities – on a division of command. Have I been tricked?
Kadar, too, was considering whether he should just shoot the man opposite, or persevere. This was his strategy, his idea. It was going so well. If he killed Duat, he himself would not get out of the encampment alive. While he had relationships with a few of them, the men were largely loyal to the Indonesian. And where was the glory in such a death? ‘Duat,’ he said, grinding the cigarette into the leg of the table and sending a shower of red embers to the earth, ‘aside from amassing wealth, we have done nothing, achieved nothing. We are at the beginning of our enterprise, really, the very start…’
‘Kadar, in the past you’ve used an analogy: that to set off a large explosion, it must be done with a smaller charge, a primer. But the primer you’re suggesting will bring the whole world down on us.’
Kadar Al-Jahani thought he saw a glimmer of compromise. ‘So what if we were to do as I suggest, but not claim responsibility for it?’
Duat had considered that. ‘So then what would be the point of it?’
‘The people we need to impress would know and at this moment, that is all that matters,’ said Kadar.
Perhaps, thought Duat…We would need to shift the camp simultaneously…
‘It’s time to move anyway.’
Duat sucked on his tooth. ‘Do you believe your plan can work?’ he said, somewhat mollified.
‘Mohammed, may His name be praised, is with us.’
‘Do we have the right man?’
‘I believe so. His name is Dedy.’
Duat nodded. Good choice.
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
The waitress’s pencil was poised above the pad.
‘We’ll also have two dozen oysters to share. Tom?’
‘Two dozen?’
‘Yeah, don’t think you’re off the hook yet, bucko,’ said Annabelle, a mischievous twinkle in her luminous blue eyes, a flute of French champagne resting on her bottom lip. She took a sip and set the glass down. ‘You’ve been away one month three days, and a girl has needs, you know.’
‘Okay then, two dozen it is. Thanks,’ said Wilkes, trying to hold back the smile and failing.
The waitress couldn’t hide her smirk. ‘Thank you,’ she said as she pencilled the order on her pad.
‘Now, where were we? Oh yes, in bed – me on top, you begging for mercy,’ said Annabelle.
Tom Wilkes’s cheeks hurt. He’d worn that smile all day. It was good to be home and in his girlfriend’s arms. His eyes swept over her and her beauty again took his breath away, exactly as it had when he met her two years ago at a defence forces open day. She was doing an outside broadcast at the time. Along with the rest of the squadron, he’d been attracted to her at first glance.
She was wearing the blue dress, his favourite. The colour matched her eyes. The fact that it was tight and short also had something to do with his fondness for it. She never exercised, except for a half-hour walk three mornings a week. She didn’t need to. Her metabolism, the envy of all her girlfriends, kept her looking like she worked out every day of her life.
Annabelle Gilbert had become one of the bestrecognised faces in Townsville. She read the six o’clock news, consistently the city’s highest rating television program and enjoyed by a huge male audience. Jokes were made about that at the station, but Annabelle was used to the attention.
The other talk about Annabelle at work, most of it behind her back, regarded her boyfriend, Tom Wilkes. Rumour had it he was more than just a soldier. Townsville was a military city, host to the Ready Reaction force and other elements of Australia’s crack operational combat units. It was well known that he was SAS, and maybe something beyond that. Annabelle never fuelled these rumours. Indeed, it was the one sticking point in their relationship – Tom’s career.
‘Surely it’s my turn to be on top, Belle,’ he said. ‘In fact, we can skip dinner if you like. I’m happy just to eat you.’
That made Annabelle blush. Tom knew how to push her buttons. ‘Okay, you win. Let’s change the subject, we can come back to this by candlelight later.’
Under the table, Tom discreetly ran his fingers along the skin of her calf muscle. ‘You sure, Belle…?’
‘Phew, it’s hot in here, isn’t it?’ she said, fanning herself with her hand.
‘No,’ said Tom, teasing. ‘Okay, later then.’ He withdrew his hand and Annabelle cleared her throat and shifted on her chair.
‘Hey,’ she said suddenly, ‘we haven’t toasted your promotion.’ She picked up her champagne. ‘Congratulations, Warrant Officer.’ Their glasses came together with a tinkle.
‘Thanks, baby. There’s something else I’d like to celebrate.’
‘What’s that?’ There was nothing else that she could think of. She looked down between his hands and saw the light blue box. The blue box. She swallowed, somewhat in shock. This was her dream. A perfect sunset by the sea with the man she loved, and a ring from Tiffany’s. He’d been a little strange on occasion throughout the afternoon’s lovemaking. She’d put it down to the job he’d just returned from. As usual, he’d told her nothing about it. At least he’d come back this time with no scars that she could find. But no, he was anxious because he was planning to pop The Question. Annabelle stared at the box and was momentarily paralysed with fear. Maybe it wasn’t a ring,
maybe it was…earrings.
‘Well, go on,’ he said. ‘Open it.’
‘Nothing you want to ask me first?’ she said.
‘Do you want me on bended knee?’
‘No,’ she whispered, her eyes sparkling like aquamarine in the golden late afternoon light.
Wilkes opened the b
ox in front of him and then turned it around so that Annabelle could see the flawless onecarat stone. ‘Annabelle, will you marry me?’
The answer was not something she had to think about. ‘Yes, Tom, I’d love to marry you.’ Annabelle and Tom leaned forward and kissed each other, the warm breeze blowing off the shore break. Annabelle took the ring from the box and placed it on her finger. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘my brand. How did you know?’
‘Oh, only the barrage of hints you’ve given over the past year.’
‘It looks good on me, don’t you think?’ She held her hand away and examined it, tilting her head from side to side, appraising it.
‘Doesn’t everything?’ he said, sipping his beer.
‘So, when?’
‘When what?’
‘When will we get married?’
That one caught Tom completely on the hop. When? Jesus, he had absolutely no idea.
‘It’ll take a while to get the wedding guest list together, venue, church, organise relatives. Nine months, minimum,’ she said. ‘And what about the army? Will they release you?’
‘Sorry?’ Tom suddenly felt like he was tied up in a car careening down a hill, out of control.
‘If we’re going to get married, you’ll want a steady job.’
‘Hang on a sec,’ said Tom. ‘Don’t I already have one of those?’
‘Maybe one that’s a little less full contact?’ She ran her finger down his cheek, chasing the scar. ‘Look, I know the ANTV Network has been after a military analyst, what with all the things going on around the world at the moment. I could talk to someone. What do you think?’
Tom Wilkes wasn’t thinking at all. He was panicking, and that was not a state he was given to. He rubbed the flat of his hand across the top of his head.
‘Two dozen oysters natural,’ said the waitress with a knowing smile and a not-too-subtle wink at Wilkes as she placed the stainless-steel platter on the table between them.
‘I’ll just have two. You have the rest, darling.’ Annabelle gave him the look of a hungry predator. ‘You’re going to need them.’
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