Mrs Soares appeared with two big bottles of Vittel and Mac ripped the top off the first and started drinking. After gulping at the refrigerated water for ten seconds, he realised Mrs Soares was still standing there waiting for his order.
‘The chicken, thanks, Mrs Soares,’ he said, pushing the menu back across the table.
‘Make that two,’ came a woman’s voice.
Jessica Yarrow, looking flushed, took the seat opposite without being asked and poured from the second bottle of Vittel into the glass. After gulping at the liquid, she kicked off her yachting moccasins.
‘I can’t believe how hot it is,’ she gasped. ‘How do you cope?’
‘Just gotta keep drinking water,’ said Mac.
Dropping her sunglasses to the table, Jessica drank some more and then rubbed a handful of water over her face and into her hair.
‘Try Dili later in the year,’ said Mac, ‘when we’re building for the monsoon.’
‘What’s the deal?’
‘Deal is forty degrees in the shade – what you guys call one hundred and five. Add to that the ninety-eight per cent humidity and lots of whitefellas just pack it in. They go mad.’
‘You’d probably find me in that bunch,’ she said.
‘Out at the airport at three in the morning, wandering around in your nightie, screaming for a plane?’ said Mac, and chuckled.
‘That’s what happens?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
‘Sure,’ winked Mac. ‘Especially if they have to share a bed with a snorer like me.’
The Nokia glowed in the dimness of Mac’s room as it rang. Reaching over, his face set badly from sleep, Mac saw the display Luzon inc on the screen.
‘Hey, mate,’ he croaked as he answered.
‘Mr Davis, it’s Mr Alvarez here from Luzon Incorporated. About our appointment?’
‘Right down,’ he said, throwing the phone on the bed and heading for the bathroom. Because he knew the cellular system was so easy to intercept, Mac had asked Bongo to stick with a protocol.
Walking into the blistering heat of the garden, Mac saw Jessica readying to leave a table. Saying his farewells to her was Bongo, now a blond-haired man with an earring and big Italian sunnies.
‘Have fun,’ said Mac as Jessica brushed past him.
‘My shout for dinner tonight,’ she said over her shoulder, not slowing. ‘Okay, Richard?’
She was gone before Mac could tell her it was fine with him.
‘Feeling better, sweetheart?’ asked Bongo as Mac sat.
‘Like the hair, Bongo,’ said Mac, nodding at the Filipino’s adventures with peroxide. ‘And the earring too. What’s your cover – Homo from Manila?’
‘Lady man from Angeles City,’ smiled Bongo, extending his big paw.
Shaking, Mac sat and eased back in the chair as Mrs Soares came into the beer garden. Over Bongo’s shoulder, Rahmid Ali was reading a newspaper two tables away.
‘Tell you what, Mr Alvarez,’ said Mac. ‘Man’s not a camel.’
As Mrs Soares walked away with their order for beers, Mac became aware of Rahmid Ali at his right shoulder.
‘Ali!’ said Mac. ‘Care to join us?’
Standing, Bongo put out his hand.
‘This is Manny Alvarez, another sandalwood trader…’
‘And coffee,’ chimed in Bongo.
‘From Manila. We’re just wondering if we’re the luckiest guys for having no competition around, or if we just don’t know the bad news?’
‘I think many businesses not letting people come to Timor for a while,’ said Ali, a hint of anxiety about him. ‘I won’t join you. Just wanted to apologise for offering you my fax number. I wasn’t trying to get you in trouble, Mr Davis.’
Laughing it off, Mac and Bongo watched Ali go as the Bintangs arrived.
‘So, Mr Davis,’ said Bongo, lighting a Marlboro and exhaling into the banyan. ‘What we got?’
Going over his first day and night in Dili, Mac told Bongo about the competing military-commercial interests in Dili – one of which seemed to be run by Kopassus and the other by the mainstream army. Then he admitted to his failed attempt to follow the cut-out, the meeting with Damajat and the Sudarto sighting.
‘If you met Amir, then you met Benni’s younger brother,’ said Bongo. ‘He spent a lot of time in Aceh with Kopassus, but I saw him around Dili when I was bodyguarding the Canadian.’
‘Well, shit,’ said Mac, sipping at the cold beer. ‘He’s bigger than Benni.’
‘Amir’s scholarship at Northwestern?’ said Bongo. ‘That was for wrestling, brother. These people don’t fuck around.’
‘Nice family,’ said Mac.
They talked it through and Mac admitted he needed to see the note in the drop box and then collar the cut-out. The rest of the gig would follow from that.
‘Okay,’ nodded Bongo. ‘I got an idea. But if Benni’s in Dili, then he’s still my priority, right?’
‘Sure, mate. Got a car?’ asked Mac.
When Bongo gave him a what the fuck do you think? look, Mac got to his feet and stretched. But Bongo didn’t move.
‘Had a chat with the girl,’ the Filipino mumbled, peeling the Bintang label.
Mac sat down again. ‘Oh, yeah?’ he said, sensing trouble.
‘Yeah, Mr Davis, and she’s a nice girl.’
Nodding, Mac waited for it.
‘She’s Canadian and she’s looking for her father,’ said Bongo, slugging at the beer but not taking his eyes off Mac.
‘Look, mate…’
‘It’s a sad story, and she’s gutsy for coming down here,’ said Bongo. ‘But let’s not promise this girl something that might get all of us killed.’
‘Shit, mate, I -’
‘I don’t understand you Anglos,’ interrupted Bongo as he rose from the table and flicked his cigarette butt. ‘You think you are the only ones who get horny?’
CHAPTER 14
Bongo came out of the Chinese general store with a pack of smokes and a small paper bag. Flicking his rupiah change to the kids in the shade of the awning, he got into the Camry. They drove south-east for a few blocks before Mac looked into the paper bag and found several strings of large red firecrackers, the ones called ‘Thunder Bangers’ when Mac was a kid.
‘Diversion, huh?’ said Mac, nervous.
‘Keep it simple, McQueen – what I tell the Yankees.’
Passing the Dili Stadium, they turned left into the boulevard fronting the main gates to the Santa Cruz cemetery. Forty metres on, Bongo stopped the car and left it running to keep the air-con blasting.
‘Meet you at the north wall,’ said Bongo, lighting a Marlboro and checking the rear-view mirror. ‘Reckon you got five minutes, seven at the outside. And remember, brother – wait for my signal.’
Nodding, Mac slipped out of the car and onto the footpath, then Bongo did a U-turn, and headed back to downtown. Mac tried to cross the road casually, resisting the urge to run. There were slow-moving locals in the shade, a few mini-horses pulling their little carts and a handful of Timorese on pushbikes. Making it to the trees against the cemetery wall, Mac hid in the shade, feeling ragged from nerves and the intense heat. He’d dehydrated and exhausted himself in West Papua, and he should have taken a week off to recharge. But here he was again, talking to himself and losing track of time while he tried to work.
Two minutes later, Mac heard shouts and saw smoke rising over the houses from two blocks away. He waited, and waited, and then they started: a few bangs at the start, and then multiple noises, like a gunfight. One minute later a Brimob troop of four ran out the main gates, babbling excitedly as they cocked their M16s. Mac wanted to get running, find the gravesite and retrieve the message but the call didn’t come. As he made to key his phone and call Bongo, the phone rang.
‘Give it thirty seconds, brother,’ said Bongo.
‘Really?’ panted Mac.
‘Yep…’
As Mac waited, another troop of four Brimob stormed out of the cemetery.
‘Didn’t want to run into them, right, Mr Davis?’
‘See you in five,’ answered Mac, and set off.
Scaling the wall he landed in the shelter of the trees. The locals in the graveyard – mostly women, children and grandparents – mobbed together like sheep waiting for the wolf to show itself. In the massacre at the Santa Cruz cemetery in 1991, more than two hundred Timorese mourners had died after Indonesian soldiers and their irregular ‘teams’ had opened fire.
So the locals didn’t feel safe in the cemetery anymore, and Mac was with them on that. He watched as they flocked towards the south of the cemetery, which put them further from the site Mac was focused on. When the ground in front of him looked clear, he broke his cover and stealthed through the plots. Making good time, he reached the twentieth path and paused behind a white crypt with a gold-painted crucifix over the door. Panting, he cased the area while the firecracker bangs continued.
Crossing the path Mac walked in a crouch between the plots, irritated that the cemetery was so spotless that there wasn’t even any long grass or wild shrubs to hide in. The twenty-first path looked different by day, but Mac was alone and the locals had moved a hundred metres away. Mac crept towards the Salazar grave, trying to stay lower than the surrounding headstones.
Crawling the last few metres, he got into the lee of the casement and lay flat on the brown grass around the plot, listening for vehicles or footfalls. Raising his head slightly, he realised the bangs had stopped but the smoke was now high in the sky. Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself to his elbows and slid the casement sideways, opening it easily to reveal the cavity.
Which was empty.
Mac paused for a second, the ramifications pounding in his head.
‘It says,’ came a voice very close by as Mac started in surprise, ‘ She’s not here. In case you’re wondering.’
Very slowly, Mac turned his head away towards the neighbouring gravestone, and found himself facing a small Colt handgun that was gripped firmly in a beautifully manicured hand. Rahmid Ali’s other hand screwed up a small piece of paper and threw it at Mac. It bounced off his damp forehead as he lifted his hands in surrender.
‘This is a little dramatic for me, Mr McQueen,’ said his captor. ‘Can we talk now?’
Staying as still as he could, Mac let Ali talk. Since being let loose on his first work-alone assignment six years earlier, Mac had dreaded the moment a Chinese or Indonesian agent got hold of him and demanded answers. He’d trained for it, thought about it and done all the mock exercises, and for good measure, he’d never tried to establish the identity of other field guys. He’d cultivated his own ignorance so if someone really wanted to pull his teeth and get intimate with the crocodile clips, they’d get a few corporate front addresses and nothing more. Now, sitting in Santa Cruz cemetery, a bit zonked from dehydration and the heat, he wasn’t sure he had the fortitude for an interrogation.
‘Things aren’t what they seem,’ smiled Ali, gesturing Mac up with the Colt.
Standing slowly, Mac let Ali expertly frisk him, taking the Beretta from his waistband and the Nokia from his breast pocket. Then, feeling a small push, he moved out onto the path and waited for instructions.
‘Get your hands down,’ said Ali. ‘Go right.’
Mac did as he was told, his brain racing for the options. Either Ali was going to torture him and get one or two basic answers, or he was going to take him into the trees by the wall and execute him. Either way, Ali was heading to the wall where Mac was meeting Bongo. Would Bongo come looking for him? Probably not, mused Mac. Having created the diversion, Bongo would want to be heading away from the fire. He wouldn’t even get out of the car.
Entering the shade of the trees, Ali kept his distance and gestured for Mac to sit down against the wall.
‘Please listen,’ said Ali, voice controlled. ‘You must hear something.’
Pulling a folded sheaf of white A4 paper from his back pocket, Ali tossed it at Mac and shook a cigarette from a soft pack.
‘Read it,’ he said, as he lit up and inhaled.
There were three pieces of paper, stapled at the top left corner. The first page bore the Indonesian Army crest of a large eagle, wingtips touching over its head, a red and white shield on its chest. At the head of the document was the heading OPERATION EXTERMINATION, with the injunction in large bold type: GENERAL STAFF – EYES ONLY.
Scanning it, Mac picked up the gist from the intro and the headings. It seemed the Indonesian military intended to intimidate the Timorese population out of voting for independence; they were going to kill, imprison and deport pro-independence figures and their families, and if the ballot still favoured independence rather than integration into the Republic, the military and its militias were going to destroy public infrastructure, destroy crops and livestock, burn villages and
…
Mac had to shake his head, get his eyes focused. The heat and fear were killing him.
Having wasted the villages and their farms, the military would engage in mass deportations of East Timorese to West Timor – the Indonesian side of the island – and Irian Jaya. The document was chilling; East Timor was a subsistence economy. If you wiped out the villages, the livestock and the crops, you’d be looking at a famine. The Indonesians had already killed a third of the East Timorese population since their invasion in 1975. Adding famine and mass deportations was a blueprint for genocide.
Throwing the paper on the soil beside him, Mac shrugged.
‘Proud of yourselves?’
‘Not me, McQueen,’ said Ali. ‘The generals.’
Mac wasn’t sure what that meant. ‘Is this new?’ he asked, nodding at the papers on the ground.
‘You read it before?’ asked Ali, still steady.
‘Well, I think we’ve come to conclusions about -’
‘Have you seen that document?’ Ali insisted, his eyes on Mac’s.
‘No,’ said Mac, ‘but the generals releasing their documents in English is a nice touch, Ali. On a silver platter for the Australians to go running off on a wild-goose chase.’
‘We translate them,’ said Ali. ‘And get them to your guys at the section in Jakarta.’
‘Really?’ said Mac, surprised.
‘Really.’
‘This one?’ asked Mac.
Ali paused, exhaled his smoke and finally broke his stare with Mac. ‘No, McQueen – not this one.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because your people aren’t interested,’ said Ali.
Mac blinked hard to maintain concentration. ‘You said we – who are you, Ali?’
‘I’m working for the President.’
‘Oh really?’ scoffed Mac. ‘Don’t tell me, personally working for Habibie, that it?’
Ali stared back, no comment.
‘Okay,’ said Mac, slightly intimidated by a direct approach from the President’s office. ‘What do you want?’
‘We need enough people in your DFAT and ASIS, and your armed forces, to see this. It’s genuine.’
‘Why not go direct to the Prime Minister’s office?’ asked Mac, confused now. Presidents dealt with prime ministers, not with spies crawling around in cemeteries, pretending to be sandalwood merchants.
‘No use,’ said Ali and shook his head. ‘The Australian government has been swayed by the generals’ propaganda, and the President is in no situation to stop this Operation Extermination. He wants a genuine ballot and a peaceful transition to independence if that’s what East Timor wants.’
‘He told our Prime Minister that?’
‘Sure,’ smiled Ali. ‘The ballot is being held at your government’s urging, remember?’
Mac nodded. ‘So the generals undermine the President, and -’
‘And your government sides with the generals, tells the world that the militias are not connected to the military, that it must be rogue elements, right?’ Ali said. ‘The President can’t do this alone from Jakarta – he needs Australian government help. I
f the Aussies will change, the Americans will also change their East Timor posture.’
‘Shit,’ said Mac, sensing a trick. ‘You’re good, mate. You’re very good.’
‘I can’t do anything more, except ask you to get this to the right people – people with open minds, if they still exist.’
‘So, you BAKIN?’ asked Mac, meaning Indonesia’s version of the CIA.
‘No,’ said Ali, lighting a new cigarette. ‘I was Kopassus intel -’
‘Oh, great,’ said Mac. ‘Now I’m feeling comfortable.’
‘But I became a military attache and then diplomat under Soeharto, and I spent a decade in France in private business.’
‘So?’
‘So, I was asked to come back by my president – he needed an untainted intelligence operation that answered only to him. An inner circle.’
‘Secret too, right?’ smiled Mac.
‘I’m still alive aren’t I?’
Mac mulled on how quickly Ali would be assassinated if the generals knew he was doing secret intel work for Habibie.
‘So why me?’
Ali laughed, and looked down at the handgun that was still steady at Mac’s heart. ‘There is a Javanese saying that you need a pure heart to be a pure warrior.’
Now Mac laughed. ‘Mate, I’m no warrior – you know exactly what I am, so spare me the Asian proverbs.’ His head swam with the possibilities: did Indonesia have a person in Canberra or at the Aussie Embassy in Jakarta? Who had fingered Mac as a man not with the pro-Jakarta program?
‘You have the papers, they are genuine,’ said Ali, looking around for an exit. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but you may as well hear it. I believe, from sources on the general staff, that the document I gave you is a false flag for another campaign.’
‘False flag? Inside the general staff?’ said Mac.
‘Maybe. They get the order signed off, so they’re legal and they cover themselves,’ said Ali. ‘But there’s either sections of the orders that most of the general staff haven’t seen, or there’s ambiguous clauses that let the rogues do what they want – you know how it works, McQueen.’
‘Sure, so what operation is being hidden by this false flag?’ he said, nodding at the document.
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