Mac slowly opened his left eye but the pain was so great that he immediately shut it again. Pulling himself into a sitting position as he opened his eyes again, he saw his M16 through the bushes and waited for footfalls or voices. None came and he staggered to his feet, wincing at the pain in his head. His temple wasn’t bleeding but a golf ball had started under his hair. Moving to where he could see over the tree, he looked around. The area looked clear: there were no voices to be heard and the normal sounds of monkeys and birds had returned to the jungle.
His G-Shock said it was 10.49 am which meant he’d been unconscious for about twenty minutes. Finding his feet, Mac retrieved the M16 and scanned the spooky terrain. It was high-canopy jungle which gave fairly good vision but played tricks on the eyes, the slanting sunlight creating phantom humans where there was only trees and wildlife. His heart hammering, Mac moved carefully through the bush, wanting to call out for Bongo and Jessica but not game to identify his position and trigger more violence.
Doubling back to the tree where Jessica had stayed with the children, Mac found a number of bodies in the jungle, their khaki T-shirts with ‘Hali Lintar’ stamped in black, advertising them as local militiamen. But no Jessica – no kids.
Leaning on the tree, he checked and re-checked the rifle as he struggled with his guilt. If he’d followed Bongo’s instincts, gone straight down to the river and dealt with the rapists – rather than arguing about it – then they would have been back in time to look after those kids. His desire for self-preservation had got in the way and he felt terrible. People in his position were supposed to look after the vulnerable and it reminded him of the night his father, Frank – chief of detectives in Rockhampton – had attended a scene where a violent drunk had been trying to scare his wife with a gun by shooting the wall around her. One of the bullets had killed the man’s nine-year-old daughter in her bed. Mac’s Mum, and many women around Rockie, had wanted that wife-basher dealt with years earlier and Frank had taken the episode very hard. He’d blamed himself, which was how Mac felt now.
Deciding to expand his search, Mac headed back down the slope to the river. The rapists and their victims were lying where Mac had last seen them, but there was no sign of the children or his travelling companions.
Trying to pull himself together, he realised there was still time to make Maliana and the meeting with Damajat. Stopping to deal with the rapists had been a disastrous move but if he played it right, he’d still have a shot at locating Blackbird and perhaps salvaging something out of the situation was the best he could expect.
At the road Mac stuck his head out slowly and noticed Bongo’s Camry was no longer parked outside the guard house. Looking left and right down the road he realised the yellow pick-up truck was no longer around and the guard house still looked empty.
The road echoed with the sounds of vehicles approaching and Mac instinctively ducked behind a tree. Checking the M16 for load and safety, his breathing already fast and shallow, he realised he had no plan. What was he going to do? Ambush an army patrol? Hold up a militia convoy? At the same time, he couldn’t wander around in the countryside; he’d already drawn too much attention.
Trying to calm himself, Mac watched as three dark blue Land Rovers pulled up to the guard house and a thickset Anglo man in sky-blues leapt out and walked in the door. Re-emerging, the man put his hands on his hips and looked up the road to where Mac was now standing in the open, waving.
Grant Deavers was not happy at Mac’s appearance and was openly irritated by his story of being jumped by the Lintar militia.
‘I thought we had a chat about the Bobonaro district, Davis? Those Lintars are the worst, mate.’
‘Yeah, mate, I know,’ said Mac, jammed between two Japanese cops on the back seat. ‘But I had this meeting with Damajat -’
‘Major-General Damajat?’ asked Deavers, swivelling around to look at Mac.
‘Well, yeah,’ shrugged Mac. ‘He wanted me to see his set-up. You know how it is. He’s got no sandalwood but he wants me to see his operation.’
Deavers turned, staring at the terrain ahead. As a former intelligence officer in the AFP he wasn’t about to ruin Mac’s salesman cover, not in front of the Japanese cops. The problem with the UN was that the world’s governments saw it as an easy way to get spies into a territory that might interest them, and the fact that Deavers was referring to Mac as ‘Davis’ hinted that he thought the Japs worked for Tokyo’s intel apparatus.
‘Yep, I know how it is – the country’s going into meltdown and you blokes are running around trying to do business.’
‘I had no idea how bad it was till I got into the mountains,’ said Mac.
The Jap cop to his right was staring at him with hard eyes.
‘Konichi wa,’ said Mac, and held out his hand. ‘Richard Davis – sorry about all this.’
‘Konichi wa, Richard-san,’ said the Jap, who bowed and introduced himself as Yoshi, but without taking his eyes off Mac’s, contrary to the Asian custom.
They chatted for half an hour as they made for Bobonaro, Mac letting the Jap subtly test his salesman cover. As the town of Bobonaro came into view, Mac decided it was time to turn it back on Yoshi.
‘So, champion, Keischicho, huh?’ said Mac, using the nickname of Tokyo’s metro police department. ‘You know Shinzo Aso?’
Yoshi’s face was blank.
‘He was in your Keibibu,’ said Mac cheerfully. ‘A captain in section three?’
Yoshi feigned understanding, but he didn’t have a clue. Which was fine, because neither did Mac.
Deavers dropped Mac at the market area in the centre of Maliana. To his left was a three-storey house that looked as if it doubled as a hotel, and across the road locals milled in the shade of an old banyan tree. This was the capital of the Bobonaro region, the border with Indonesian Timor just a mile or two away, and one of the nastiest parts of the world. The Hali Lintar militia – known as a milsa in Indonesian – had been implicated in public beheadings and the cutting out of tongues and eyes. There was no law in Bobonaro, except as laid down by the military – the same military which ran the Hali Lintar militia.
A yellow Toyota pick-up across the road caught Mac’s eye as he walked north. Young thugs in Lintar T-shirts lounged around a stack of M16s on a tarpaulin, staring evenly at Mac as he walked past. Most of the shops were closed and three black water buffalo were wandering along further down the main street. The market area – a thriving hub in most parts of South-East Asia – featured a few blankets on the ground selling seven taros or one chicken. Women in brightly coloured woven skirts drifted about with items on their heads and kids either in slings or running behind. It was an eerie place that lacked the raised voices or kids’ laughter of most markets, and Mac double-checked for his Damajat letter.
Not long after, he arrived outside the Ginasio Municipal Maliana, a large Portuguese-built structure with an indoor basketball-volleyball stadium. Vehicles were lined up on the grass in front of the white concrete veranda at the building’s entrance and Mac’s breath shortened as he noticed Bongo’s silver Camry among the intel LandCruisers and troop trucks. The temperature had risen to a dryish thirty-nine and the midday sun beat down on Mac’s latest injury. Bongo and Jessica were adults who had taken their chances in a volatile part of the world, he reasoned. Mac wasn’t their keeper any more than they were his. Still, the sight of the empty Camry among the Indonesian military vehicles filled him with sadness. You never quite knew what to make of the intelligence that came out of East Timor, but if half of what Mac had heard about the Ginasio was true, it was the Kopassus interrogation centre for the western part of East Timor. The questions had probably just begun for Bongo and Jessica and it would be a very long day for both of them.
‘Mr Richard,’ came a voice and, looking up, Mac realised Amir and the other Kopassus spooks from Damajat’s office were standing in the shade of the veranda.
‘Boys,’ said Mac warmly, still slightly surprised at Amir’s size – it wasn’t everyday that an Indonesian looked down on Mac. ‘Sorry about the delay – I got bushwhacked on the way up.’
Moving into the veranda, Mac shook with Amir as the doors flew open and Major-General Damajat emerged, perfectly groomed, short-sleeved military shirt, gold paratrooper wings clipped to his breast and as chirpy as a boxer about to get in the ring.
‘Mr Richard! Perfect timing,’ he said, slapping Mac on the bicep.
Gulping, Mac turned to follow Damajat, determined to stay ashamed and alive. It’s not your fight, he told himself as he slid into the black LandCruiser. Not your fight.
The lunch was fancy Javanese seafood rather than Timorese peasant cooking. The table looked out over the collection of large white buildings in the middle of the Maliana bush that were known collectively as Lombok AgriCorp.
‘So you see, Mr Richard, these communist are dangerous,’ said Damajat, with a theatrical Javanese look of concern. ‘I tell the foreign journalist, but they not listen!’
The Kopassus spooks and a couple of scientists who shared the table laughed at Damajat’s insistence that the Lintar militias who Mac had blamed for the lump on his head were in fact Falintil guerrillas. Mac had included Bongo and Jessica in his story, based on the theory that the best lies are built on truth. Where he diverged from fact was in telling Damajat that he had met them at the Turismo and hitched a ride to the south coast to meet with sandalwood growers. When they had left the car to check on something, Mac had stayed in the car and only left when he heard gunfire. He told them that when he’d entered the jungle to investigate, he was immediately hit with a rifle butt.
‘You saying that the Falintil communists wear Lintar shirts,’ asked Mac, pretending to be aghast, ‘so that the militias get the blame?’
‘For sure!’ said Damajat, opening his eyes wide in a liar’s tell. ‘That what I’m trying to say!’
It sounded like the reverse of the story where the militias burned houses while wearing Fidel Castro T-shirts, hoping that the locals would think that Falintil was attacking them. But Mac decided to keep that one to himself.
‘Well, I guess the army will have to take control at some point, eh Major-General?’ mumbled Mac, not knowing what else to say.
‘So true,’ said Damajat, his face darkening. ‘I tell politician, we have tried the soft talk – time now for the hard hand.’
The tour through the Lombok facility was a waste of Mac’s time. The massive coffee bean roasters smelled great and the bulk packing room looked clean and busy as the beans were consigned to Melbourne, Athens and Dubai – all the places where coffee was consumed dark and strong. Though the villages and crops were burning, the Indonesian generals were still making their cut on East Timor’s biggest cash crop. It had nothing to do with sandalwood statues of Mother Mary and it didn’t look like the kind of facility where the Indonesian military would keep a traitor like Blackbird. If anything, the presence of a coffee-packing facility might be a front for criminal activity. The world’s crime lords had used bulk coffee shipments to mask a variety of contraband over the years: drugs, diamonds, firearms and children, depending on whether the beans originated in Africa, South America or Asia. Mac’s real agenda was to stay close to Damajat, get his trust, keep him talking and find a way to Blackbird. He doubted that Lombok AgriCorp was it.
Standing back at the LandCruiser, Mac started getting edgy. He wanted a ride back to the Turismo, to a hot shower and a cold beer, without being stopped at roadblocks or shot at by militias. He was going to reconnect with the cut-out – the lawyer he’d cut loose – and find another way to get to Blackbird. There was always another way, and in the process he might be able to do something for Bongo and Jessica. But for now, he was more concerned about his own safety. The Bobonaro district was malevolent, and Mac wanted a firearm.
Damajat walked towards Mac, deep in conversation with Amir Sudarto. Stopping, they looked at Mac, then Amir peeled away so that he and his henchman stood at his nine and three o’clock as Damajat walked straight at Mac. Keeping his shoulders soft and his breathing deep, Mac waited for it, but being unarmed he did not like his chances.
‘Perhaps we should drop the pretence, Mr Davis,’ smiled Damajat, smarmy but dangerous.
‘Pretence?’ said Mac, his heart pounding in his tonsils as he saw Amir push up his trop shirt to expose the SIG Sauer on his right hip.
‘Yeah – see, we know who you are, Mr Davis,’ said Damajat, putting an arm over Mac’s shoulders and steering him towards another, larger building. ‘And I think it’s time we talked about some real business, okay?’