Double back am-3

by Mark Abernethy

  Mac nodded.

  ‘’Cos I tell you, Mr Richard, once ballot is over we gonna finish the troubles and start making the money.’

  ‘The troubles?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Yeah, the communist, okay? We got a plan for them, right, and then we open for business.’

  Damajat got the man on the sofa, who he introduced as Amir, to pour the whiskies, then waved Mac towards the sofa and a couple of armchairs at the back of the office and started yakking about the West Coast Eagles.

  ‘Mick Malthouse can’t leave the Eagles? Surely not,’ said Damajat, referring to rumours in the Australian papers that the coach of the Perth-based AFL team was being wooed by other clubs.

  ‘Well maybe he’s got a better offer, eh Anwar?’ said Mac as he moved towards an empty armchair and watched Amir stretch his big frame into the sofa on the far wall. ‘Maybe there’s a chance to be owner-coach at the Dili Diehards?’

  As Damajat laughed, Mac eased back in his chair and took a glass of Scotch, forcing himself to relax into the meeting. Sipping as Amir made a point, Mac caught a brief look through a gap in the frosted glass around the office. A face in dark Ray-Bans peered through into the office and turned away as Mac looked. Mac had only seen this person in file pictures, but the face and size were unmistakable: Benni Sudarto was lurking outside Damajat’s office.

  CHAPTER 11

  Mac sipped his fifth Bintang as the sun got low in the sky and the mosquitos in the beer garden started their thing. Patting the letter of free passage that Damajat had written for him, Mac was relieved he could now travel anywhere in East Timor and seriously frighten anyone who tried to stop him.

  The Damajat meeting had gone well for Mac, and the commercial interests he was developing with the Indonesian military were a perfect cover for moving around what was a garrison-province: a ratio of one soldier for every forty locals was essentially martial law even if Jakarta hadn’t declared it yet. There was a defeated, abandoned feel to Dili; a sense of hopelessness pervaded – all the cheekiness and openness of the locals was gone. Despite the ballot taking place in two weeks, the East Timorese wouldn’t look Mac in the eye. And there was an energy and arrogance about the Indonesian military that Mac found disconcerting.

  In one made-for-media opportunity, the Indonesian generals had announced the withdrawal of its stationed troops, but the troops who’d been paraded in front of the TV cameras had merely been shipped around the headlands and put ashore further up the coast. From what Mac could glean of that episode, the entire sham had been designed for the Australian media. The Australian government knew about the ruse from its signals intelligence, yet said nothing. Meanwhile, in the mountains and farming districts of East Timor, the army-backed militias were killing, razing and raping at will.

  In Bosnia and Kosovo, the world had united to end atrocities that paled next to what the Indonesian generals did on a weekly basis in East Timor. The Western world – Australia and the United States in particular – had gone along with Soeharto’s Caesaresque dream of a ‘Greater Indonesia’ in 1975 and the results were obvious in Dili. If you gave bullies the green light to behave any way they wanted, then they’d behave any way they wanted.

  Mac had had these arguments with Canberra’s pro-Jakarta ideologues, but they’d built their careers on being pro-Jakarta and they couldn’t suddenly change their minds now. The last person Mac knew of in DFAT who had the stones to challenge the pro-Jakarta clique was Tony Davidson. He used to say, ‘We don’t gather the nice product from Indonesia and the bad product from everywhere else – we simply gather product.’ But Davidson was also the last senior person in Australia’s SIS with an operational background, and when he retired the top ranks of Australia’s foreign spy agency would become wall-to-wall theorists, analysts, managers and academics – all of them politically astute enough to be pro-Jakarta.

  Checking his watch, Mac decided to grab a meal and then get ready for his next assignment. As he made for the lobby the Korean started yelling into his mobile phone again, this time in his native tongue. The bloke was so loud Mac could hear his voice echoing from upstairs.

  ‘The dining room is open when?’ Mac asked Mrs Soares, who told him, ‘Ten minutes.’

  The chalk under his door hadn’t been pushed back to the wall and the Doublemint stick was exactly as Mac had left it. Cranking out twenty push-ups and fifty sit-ups, he had a quick shower with very poor pressure, and dressed in fresh clothes. Then he lay on the bed thinking through what he wanted to do and how hard he was going to push things. He wanted to get an early night and walk out to the cemetery at Santa Cruz before dawn. It wasn’t a perfect way to trace Blackbird, but it was a start: get eyes on the cut-out, follow him and get him talking. For now it was the only approach he had.

  What he knew for certain was that finding the Canadian was going to have to be dropped from his unofficial task list. The entire feeling in Dili was extremely dangerous and if the priority tasking was Blackbird and Operasi Boa, then he’d have to leave the Canadian to someone else.

  Was he scared? Damned right he was.

  The dining room was small and only three tables had been set. Mac took the table at the far wall, wanting a better observation point over Rahmid Ali. He expected Ali to have recovered from the morning’s conversation, and be ready to try another tack.

  The specials blackboard said that ‘Baucau Chicken’ with rice was the chef’s recommendation for the evening. Chicken in East Timor was prepared in the spicy Portuguese style and was usually – for some reason – served cold. There’d be plenty of chances for cold chicken at the roadside warung that infested East Timor so Mac chose the fish of the day and asked for a beer.

  The Korean announced his presence even before entering the dining room, yelling into his phone as he walked in and looking around with studied contempt. Putting the phone to his chest, the Korean faced Mac with his bottom lip slack, eyes yellowed with hard liquor.

  ‘That it?’ he asked, pointing at the specials board with his cigarette.

  Giving him a wink and a nod, Mac decided not to engage the Korean in actual conversation. Snorting at Mac and then shaking his head in disbelief, the Korean swaggered out of the dining room leaving a fug of smoke and BO.

  Relaxing into his chair, Mac mentally prepared his next twenty-four hours, trying to forget Benni Sudarto peering through that window at the Damajat meeting. Mac reckoned there was a fifty per cent chance he’d been made and it remained to be seen what Sudarto was going to do about it. Would he assign a tail, let Mac run? Would he shut Mac down and start pulling teeth? Feed him up with bullshit and send him back to Atkins with tall tales designed to confound Canberra? Or was he just keeping an eye on who Damajat was entertaining?

  Slugging at the beer, Mac wondered how long he could keep his nerves at bay with alcohol. Catching a movement from his right Mac put his beer down. Expecting Ali, Mac found himself looking at a woman instead – early twenties, blonde and very attractive.

  ‘Is this the dining room?’ she asked in a North American accent, the set to her face making the question into a joke.

  ‘Actually, it’s the broom closet but we hide them away when we hear there’s an American coming to stay.’

  ‘Special treatment for special guests, huh?’ she smiled, open and natural.

  ‘Nah,’ drawled Mac. ‘Just means we can charge more for the room.’

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ she said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘What can I say?’ said Mac, standing. ‘You guys’ll pay anything.’

  The woman laughed and Mac took a step forward, offering his hand. ‘Richard – how do you do?’

  ‘Jessica.’ Her handshake was firm. ‘Don’t tell me – went sunbathing, fell asleep on one side?’

  Touching the scorch mark on his cheek, Mac retorted. ‘Cheeky Yanks!’

  Sitting, he gestured for her to join him. ‘No sunbathing on this trip, I’m afraid – here to buy sandalwood, of all things. And you?’

  ‘I’m Canadi
an, actually,’ said Jessica, turning serious as she sat, ‘and I’m looking for my father.’

  CHAPTER 12

  Slipping through the tropical darkness, Mac stayed in the shadows of the trees that lined most of the avenues in Dili. It was 3.58 am according to his G-Shock and he was making good time, slipping along one of the minor streets behind the Dili Stadium, heading inland from the harbour.

  Dressed in a black sweatshirt, dark baseball cap and Levis, he blended with the background and the moonless night as he alternated between running across open ground and waiting behind cover, heading quietly southwards.

  A light flashed down the street from two blocks away, and Mac ducked behind a frangipani tree. Waiting, all his senses on high alert, he watched the Brimob SWAT van turn into the deserted street and move slowly towards him. A Brimob officer’s head and shoulders stuck out the top of the roof and swivelled a searchlight through the darkness as it approached. Ducking for cover, Mac used the lee of the frangipani to crawl into a stormwater culvert that ran the length of the avenue. Lying in the dog shit and rotting leaves he held his breath as the diesel growl of the Brimob truck came alongside his position. He exhaled, relieved, as it kept moving, ‘I Will Always Love You’ echoing out of the vehicle’s radio, sung rather painfully by an Indonesian male. One of the eternal wonders of the universe was why Indonesian men felt the need to record songs associated with Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Olivia Newton-John.

  Dusting himself off, Mac got in behind the frangipani tree and watched the Brimob truck fade into the distance and then turn right – probably scouting for kids around the stadium.

  Feeling naked without his gun, Mac kept a steady pace from one hide to another as he continued on. Heading left into a larger avenue, he became exposed to streetlights and crossing the dusty street to the sanctuary of the darkness on the other side, his panting and footfalls seemed to echo down the empty avenue. Suddenly a light went on in a mansion somewhere behind the trees he was hiding in. Mac froze as an Indonesian woman in a housecoat stepped out onto her veranda, not six metres away, and made a high-pitched musical call. Two cats darted out of the shrubbery and shot past the woman’s calves into the house like a couple of lightning bolts.

  Pulling back into the house and shutting the door, the woman killed the lights. Mac gulped down the stress and moved on.

  Using a small banyan to get himself to the top of the cemetery wall, Mac lay along the top of it for ten minutes, assessing the ground. There was no movement, no whispers and he couldn’t smell cigarettes or aftershave. Sliding down the opposite side of the wall, he found one of the walkways and moved swiftly to the main road of the cemetery. Staying twenty metres off the main track, he dodged and weaved through the tombstones and fenced plots until he located the twenty-first path. Finding it, he counted seven gravesites until he was looking at the drop: a modest plot, squashed between two larger ones.

  Holding back for a few minutes, Mac waited for movement, wishing he hadn’t drunk so much beer the night before. Pretty girls with a ton of charm sure did make the world go around, but they didn’t help with work the next day.

  Satisfied that he wasn’t walking into an ambush, Mac found a decent-sized tree and created a hide with a sight line to the drop box and also a view of the cemetery’s main road. Placing the water bottle on his ‘chair’, Mac left the hide and moved at a crouched jog to the main road, scuttled across it, wanting to check on how observable the water bottle was to those approaching it.

  Moving to the other side of the cemetery, he numbered off the side paths until he was on the thirty-fifth on the right, and then numbered the plots back to the seventh on the left. Breathing deeply, he stayed still, waiting for movement or sound. The only action came from the trees where a bat was feuding with a bird. Fumbling in the dark, he ran his hands over a white marble gravesite and headstone. It was immaculately maintained, just like all the plots at Santa Cruz. The crypts were whitewashed, headstones were scrubbed and polished, there were no weeds and the edges were all trimmed. Mac marvelled at how the world’s poorest and most oppressed people so often had the most beautiful graveyards. He’d seen the same in Phnom Penh and Rangoon. Was it stupidity or defiance?

  There were no moving parts on the grave cover or the headstone, and for a second Mac wondered if he was at the wrong site. Counting it back again, he confirmed he was at the right grave; then he lay down and got his face closer. Behind the headstone was a steel box with a lid and as Mac moved closer in the dark he saw the lid was padlocked.

  ‘Fuck!’ he mumbled.

  Hitting it with his fist in frustration, he was about to move on when he realised the whole box had rocked. Pulling the box back on its hinge, Mac saw a dark canvas bag and, opening it, he found the radio and the plastic-covered frequencies. He rummaged under the machine until his fingers wrapped around a solid object. Pulling it out, and holding it in front of his face, Mac smiled at his find: a Beretta 9mm handgun with a replacement mag secured to the grip with a rubber band.

  The drop box proved simpler. The marble casement slid sideways, revealing a cavity about the size of a shoe box. Mac dropped his note in it and slid the casement back to its original position. Then he grabbed one of the red flowers from a neighbouring grave and put it into the stainless-steel cup that was bolted into the headstone just above the engraving of SALAZAR, E UGENIO C LAUDIO.

  Back at his hide, Mac took a seat, lay back and wondered where the assignment was going. He’d kept the note in the drop box quite vague; he didn’t like drop boxes at the best of times. The note asked for a Blackbird meet, and was signed ‘Albion’.

  It made him feel vulnerable so he was going to even things up a little. How long he could wait was another thing entirely.

  His mind was on other things, too. Jessica Yarrow had walked into that hotel like a flash flood. It had totally floored him – he’d been so ready to sidestep the whole Canadian issue that he’d simply reduced Bill Yarrow to the Canadian, trying to convince himself that the man didn’t matter. But he did. You couldn’t use someone like Yarrow as a local asset, have them risk their life for intelligence, and then walk away because he’d been caught by the bad guys. It wasn’t the Australian way.

  Now the sun was fully up and the searing heat of South-East Asia was gathering intensity. Mac finished his water and was happy for some shade, although he could’ve done without the centipede crisis. They were everywhere in the undergrowth and he had to shift his hide twice to escape the little bastards.

  Visitors came and went from the cemetery as the morning progressed. They painted, they cleaned and they socialised; they brought flowers, they strummed guitars and sang songs. Meanwhile, Mac hid among the trees, sweating profusely as the humidity raced to keep up with the temperature. At 10.03 am Mac took a quick pee-break and turned back to see a Timorese man moving towards the drop box. His heart rate rising, Mac got down into a crouch, slipping the Beretta into his waistband at the small of his back. The man – white baseball cap, tallish and middle-aged – walked past the drop and continued for another ten plots. Then, looking around, seemingly casual but doing a full sweep, he moved back the way he’d come and stopped at the Salazar grave.

  His pulse pounding in his temples, Mac tried to stay composed. Dropping to his knees, the man looked around again, moved the casement lid sideways, trying to hide the manoeuvre with his body. His hand came back, went into the right pocket of his chinos, pulled something out and then the lid was back in place and the man was on his feet.

  Panting with nerves, Mac watched as the man took the red flower out of the cup and left the grave, wandering along as if he had all the time in the world. As the cut-out retraced his steps onto the main road, four Brimob cops in tan fatigues strolled into the cemetery, one of them with a German shepherd straining on a leash. Gulping, Mac watched the cut-out check the threat and keep walking. Smart guy, thought Mac as the cops totally ignored him, lost in some joke they were carrying on.

  The morning was alm
ost blown. Mac couldn’t check the drop box with Brimob in the graveyard and he was faced with either following the cut-out or waiting half an hour until the Brimob cops moved on and then grabbing the note from the drop box.

  If Mac wanted to make contact with the cut-out, he’d have to stay in the cemetery until he could clear the box.

  There were several pressures on Mac’s time, not all of them official. Jessica had talked deep into the night. He’d heard about growing up in Canada and student life at UCLA, but one thing had stuck in his mind and he winced at the memory. She’d held his hands and wept with appreciation when he’d said one of the dumbest things he’d said for a long time: ‘I’ll help you find your father.’

  CHAPTER 13

  Mrs Soares had a message for Mac when he got back to the Turismo. It said, Luzon Inc. samples arrive at 2 pm.

  Looking at his watch, Mac groaned. He had two hours to hydrate himself and get a kip before Bongo turned up. He was exhausted.

  Folding the message and putting it in his pocket, he asked Mrs Soares for two large bottles of water and a lunch menu, then headed for the beer garden. Relaxing at his table in the shade of the banyan, Mac cased the hotel’s internal balcony that wrapped around two sides of the garden like a dress circle. The upstairs areas seemed abandoned, but that didn’t mean no one was up there.

  There was a garden tap with a green hose looped over it. Mac knelt and washed his face and neck and then let the cool water run through his hair. The cemetery drop had been a washout. Brimob patrolled the place on regular loops and Mac hadn’t been game to break cover and clear the box. It would have to wait for the evening, and now he’d lost the cut-out too. Mac liked to have information and he liked to have more of it than the other guy.