Lying back, gazing at the ceiling of his bungalow, Mac listened to the television reports of East Timor being overrun my violent militias. Atkins had given him two days off before starting on the Banda Sea assignment, a rest he needed. What he hadn’t needed was being banned from entering East or West Timor.
The meeting had gone well if keeping his job was the measure of success. Atkins had played him perfectly, even avoiding the issue of asking Da Silva to destroy the Boa document. Mac was certain that Atkins had made the call as Cedar Rail, and given the order to destroy the document – he and Greg Tobin were the only people who knew the call signs and coded sequences for running the ASIS assets in this part of the world.
Mac wasn’t ready to let things go until he’d achieved some objectives. First, ask Davidson who he’d told about Mac’s hunch that the copy of Operasi Boa was in the old drop box in the Resende. Second, find a phone log that showed Atkins made that call to Da Silva. Most important, try to stop Operasi Boa before the weather was right and they started spraying that crap on civilians.
Keying his replacement Nokia – the one in his pocket had died during the swim to the DIA boat – Mac tried Davidson. It was almost 2 am in Auckland, so Mac left a voicemail message.
Then he tapped into Canberra’s secure lines and got Leena, the researcher, on the line again.
‘They got you on the night shift?’ asked Mac after she’d cleared his credentials.
‘I’ve lost track,’ she said.
‘I’ve got a mission for you, Leena – I need you to tap our best contacts in TI, find the source of these calls between six and nine, this morning, to these numbers, okay?’ asked Mac, before reading Da Silva’s mobile phone and work lines, given to him by Jim. ‘Then I need you to check the Dili home number of Augusto Da Silva – big D – and give me every phone call made to that number during the same period, okay?’
‘Okay, Albion,’ said Leena. ‘You on this phone?’
‘Yes, hear from you soon.’
Lying back on the bed, Mac tried to work it out. With Moerpati and Rahmid Ali dead, he’d lost his connection to the Indonesian President’s own intel operation. The assassins had basically smashed it, and almost taken Jim and Mac along for the ride. The assassination of Augusto Da Silva removed the person who had written Operasi Boa and Mac had no doubt that Blackbird was either dead or so scared for her life that she’d never resurface.
He had ways of going forwards, but had no way to the Indonesian President’s operation.
Or did he?
Rolling off the bed, he went searching through the pockets of his chinos, coming up empty. Cursing his haphazard filing system, Mac tried to remember: he’d shown Davidson a list of the names, phone numbers and addresses associated with Rahmid Ali, and Davidson had said that none rang a bell. Then he’d pocketed the list, taken it back to the hotel…
Rummaging though his main wheelie suitcase, which had been sitting at the Natour for a week, he pulled out the plastic pillow filled with US dollars and found his piece of paper from his first phone session with Leena. Flattening it on the writing desk, he took another look, through new eyes. The addresses he had for Andromeda IT and the entities associated with the phone calls made from Rahmid Ali’s phone were still there: he had an address in KL and one in Singapore. There was also the extension of the chief of staff’s number in the presidential building. Mac had dismissed it as being too high profile, but now he might have a look at it.
But first, he took a quick shower and restored his hair colour, using an N10 blonding rinse.
After drying off, he lay down and sleep came fast.
The Nokia’s singsong ring tone woke him from a nightmare of Mickey Costa scratching at the glass door.
‘Yep,’ he rasped into the phone, trying to sit up but so bruised he was only able to roll onto his side.
‘McQueen!’ came the man’s voice, South-East Asian accent with a touch of American. ‘That you?’
‘Yeah,’ whispered Mac, still half asleep but fully dressed. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Bongo, brother,’ roared the big ape cheerfully. ‘Time for a beer?’
‘Shit, Bongo,’ laughed Mac, relieved and happy. ‘Thought you’d carked it.’
‘I’d what?’
‘Dead, mate.’
A pause, then, ‘You being funny?’
‘No, mate,’ laughed Mac. ‘I’ll tell you about it.’
Walking to the Bar Barong through the fragrant evening air of Denpasar, Mac felt elated. He didn’t make many friends in his profession, and most of them were embassy colony types – cops, customs and diplomats. The idea that Bongo was dead had affected him more deeply than he was comfortable with, and finding that he was alive was like a gift. And not just because he liked him – but because right now he needed someone on his side. Someone who knew how to look after himself.
Standing at the end of the bar that Mac always held up, Bongo was nursing a beer and watching TV when Mac arrived.
‘Hey, bro,’ said the big Filipino as they gave each other an open-palm handshake. ‘Been fighting again?’ He nodded at Mac’s facial injuries.
‘Should see the other bloke.’
‘I’m telling Mum,’ said Bongo, ordering a Tiger for Mac. ‘So you thought I was dead?’
‘Saw a photo – Moerpati and a headless corpse with the Conquistador crucifix. Thought it was you, mate.’
Laughing, Bongo slapped him on the back. ‘Lots of Catholics got the tattoo like that.’
Bongo listened to Mac recount the events of the past two days.
‘That’s bad news about Moerpati,’ said Bongo. ‘Very bad.’
‘Why?’ asked Mac.
‘Because Moerpati’s the Soeharto clique. He’s from the right family, made the right marriage, had the right connections – he’s New Order, head to toe.’
‘So, he gets killed?’
‘Yeah, it means there’s another power base in Jakarta thinks it’s strong enough to move on the New Order – and that kind of fight is no good for anyone.’
‘A bio-weapon’s no good for us, either,’ said Mac. ‘The scientists tell me it’s based on SARS – gives the victims a fatal pneumonia.’
‘Fucking Koreans,’ said Bongo, shaking his head. ‘They been chasing this shit for years. It’s like an obsession.’
‘What about the Indonesians?’ asked Mac.
‘Yeah, it’s the money behind it,’ said Bongo, collecting the new beers and handing one to Mac. ‘Money rules everything in Asia, and the Koreans know that. We were once looking into this immunisation program in Cambodia, in my NICA days,’ he said, referring to the Philippines intelligence agency. ‘But it weren’t no immunisation program, brother – least, not like we’d know it, right?’
‘What was it?’
‘It was the Cambodian army testing a disease on these mountain peasants.’
‘So it’s the same as East Timor?’ asked Mac, casing the bar.
‘All the lines worked back to North Korea, to the cash from Poi Pet and accounts at the military’s banks – it’s sick, brother, what some people do for the money.’
‘The thing I can’t work out,’ said Mac, ‘is where it goes from here.’
‘Easy,’ said Bongo. ‘The Javas take the money but then they have all this bio-weapon, right?
‘Yeah – but what do they do with it? That Lombok plant was a big facility, they were set up to make tons of the stuff.’
‘Have a look at your Operation Extermination again,’ said Bongo. ‘Remember we were reading it in the car, on the way into the hills that morning?’
‘Yeah,’ said Mac.
‘Extermination has already begun, brother, it’s on the TV every night. And it’s all about deporting Timorese to West Papua – what they call Irian Jaya, right?’
‘Sure.’
‘So, get the undesirables from Indonesia in one place, and then…’ Bongo made a throat-slitting gesture. ‘The bio-weapon developed in East Timor can now be used on the bigger problem – the Timors and Papuans, all in one place.’
‘That’s sick,’ said Mac, discounting Bongo’s opinions as exaggeration.
‘That’s Indonesia, brother.’
Mac told Bongo he needed him for a week, and the payment would be whatever was in the casino bag from Poi Pet. Agreed, Bongo fixed Mac with a grin.
‘So, McQueen. How’d we go with Jessica?’
‘Oh, you know,’ said Mac, inspecting the Tiger label.
‘Do I?’ asked Bongo, drinking but not taking his laughing eyes off Mac.
‘What can I say, mate? She’s gorgeous and funny and – you know – can’t ask for much more, right?’
‘You gonna take it further?’
‘Mate!’ said Mac, not wanting to go into it.
‘You know, McQueen, if you gonna come out and say who you are, brother, then you gotta do it now, right? Don’t do what I did.’
‘What did you do, Bongo?’ asked Mac.
‘This girl, when I was stationed in Hong Kong, right?’
‘In the NICA days?’
‘Yep – Shari was an Indian girl, father was a big businessman, and I’m – well, you know,’ hurried Bongo, not wanting to talk about old identities. ‘I can’t tell her who I really am and she’s beautiful, brother!’
‘Yeah?’ asked Mac.
‘Oh, man! Forget it,’ smiled Bongo, shaking his head and going quiet with the memory. ‘We loved each other, bro.’
‘Bongo Morales? In love?’ laughed Mac.
Nodding and looking away, Bongo’s face changed slightly. ‘Worst decision of my life, McQueen.’
‘How did it end?’
‘Controller wanted me to work her, and I couldn’t do that. So about six weeks after I met her a new gig came up and I caught a plane,’ said Bongo, looking into his beer. ‘That was ten years ago. I was twenty-nine, thought I was hard – and now? I think about her every day.’
They were quiet again, Mac praying Bongo wouldn’t cry.
Then the Filipino bounced back. ‘Hey, how did this become about me? Jessica! She liked you, brother – I know it, man.’
‘Yeah, well I liked her too,’ said Mac, trying to smile.
‘What?’ asked Bongo, his teeth flashing against his tanned skin. ‘You give her your number?’
‘No.’
‘Your address?’
‘No.’
‘Make some plan?’
‘Nope,’ breathed Mac.
‘I can’t believe that,’ said Bongo. ‘I picked her – she really liked you, man!’
‘Well, she wrote me a letter,’ said Mac.
‘Yeah?’ laughed Bongo. ‘Tell!’
‘I can’t, mate.’
‘Come on – it’s not that embarrassing.’
‘No, I mean I can’t… I didn’t read it.’
Pausing, Bongo tried to get it. ‘So, it was the kiss-off, huh? Nice to meet you, but…’
‘No, mate,’ chuckled Mac, his face heating up like he was a kid and his mother was telling him off. ‘I didn’t read it.’
‘Okay – I’ll read it for you, McQueen, you big cat,’ he said, flicking his fingers for the letter. ‘Come on.’
‘Can’t,’ said Mac, looking out of the bar.
‘Why not?’
‘’Cos I chucked it, mate,’ admitted Mac.
‘What? In the trash?’ said Bongo, incredulous.
Nodding, Mac tried a nonchalant shrug.
‘Oh, man!’ said Bongo, slapping his palm on the table.
‘What?’ asked Mac, face burning.
‘You Anglo men are something else, brother,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘One of these days your women are gonna rise up and kill the lot of you, swear to God.’
‘Yeah, well…’ said Mac, gulping at his beer.
‘You chucked it? That’s cold, brother,’ laughed Bongo. ‘That’s cold.’