‘Please take a seat, Mr McQueen,’ said the girl, hitting a button and holding her hand to her earpiece.
Sitting down, Bongo and Mac clocked the camera on the wall and listening devices under the coffee table. After a minute the girl stood and Mac saw she was athletic, could probably look after herself.
‘Follow me, please, Mr McQueen,’ she said, smiling.
They walked around the corner to a door which the girl opened with a swipe card – a copy of which was in the top right-hand drawer of her desk, hopefully.
Mac recognised the doorway as a disguised metal detector and he was happy he didn’t have his Heckler. The girl gestured for Mac to pass through into an office where a middle-aged Indonesian man, dressed in an English suit and tie, sat behind a desk.
‘George?’ said Mac, recognising the face but under a different name.
‘Mr McQueen,’ said George, a nine-millimetre handgun appearing over the level of the desk. ‘Where is Chloe?’
‘She was shot, last night,’ said Mac, gulping. ‘She asked me to speak with you.’
‘How did you find me?’ asked George, a nervous sheen of sweat appearing on his forehead.
‘Found a trail from the sat phone of a man calling himself Rahmid Ali,’ said Mac.
‘You’re a liar,’ said George. ‘You’re working for Haryono. You Australians are all in his pocket. I warned Chloe to go nowhere near you – and I was right.’
‘I didn’t shoot her,’ said Mac. ‘And thanks to Rahmid, I found out about Operasi Boa.’
‘What is it?’ asked George, shifting in his seat, a man who hadn’t been getting sleep.
‘I’ll tell you what we know, George, but I told my companion that if I wasn’t out in reception in one minute, he should feel free to shoot the place up.’
George squinted into a small video monitor he had on his desk. ‘The big one? That’s your friend?’
‘Yep – name’s Bongo Morales. Want to put down that gun, have a chat with me?’
George pressed on his intercom. ‘Ask Mr Morales to join us, please.’
Putting the gun in his drawer, George Warfield suddenly looked beaten. ‘This has been going on too long,’ he shrugged. ‘If a president doesn’t control the military then he’s not a real president.’
‘You’re trying, and I’m trying too,’ said Mac. ‘There are people who care, but right now my government isn’t one of them. The most important thing is to stop the bio-weapons spraying.’
‘We figured Boa might be bio-weapons, but spraying?’ asked George, confused.
‘They’re going to spray East Timor with a disease that behaves like SARS,’ said Mac. ‘It delivers a super-pneumonia to an entire population.’
‘So Operasi Boa is a pneumonia?!’ he said, face screwed up. ‘Oh my God!’
A beeping sounded from the metal detector and then Bongo walked into the room silently, took a seat on the sofa on the back wall.
‘By the way,’ said Mac, ‘didn’t I know you before you were George Warfield?’
‘I could no longer serve my country as an officer,’ said George quietly. ‘Not after Ambon. When Soeharto left, I wanted to serve the new presidents, be their eyes and ears -’
‘Against an organisation you know very well,’ said Mac, the truth dawning. ‘You’re Bambang Subianto – General Subianto.’
‘Technically, yes,’ he replied flatly. ‘And I want you to know, Mr McQueen, that despite what people may say, not all Javanese think that the East Timorese are non-human, okay?’
‘I understand, General,’ said Mac.
‘We can’t allow the army to depopulate an entire province,’ said the general. ‘The president wants a ballot for independence and that should be what happens.’
‘Agreed,’ said Mac. ‘We can count on yourselves, a couple of Aussies and, of course, the Yanks.’
‘Americans?’ asked the general, suspicious.
‘Yeah – DIA,’ said Mac. ‘They’re with us on this.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said the general, shaking his head. ‘DIA are involved with Operasi Boa.’
‘Involved?’ Mac stammered, sitting up.
‘Yes,’ said the general. ‘Know Lee Wa Dae?’
‘Sure,’ said Mac. ‘He’s dead now.’
‘I know,’ said the general. ‘He was working for DIA. He was an American agent.’
Mac finally overcame his stunned surprise.
‘Defense Intelligence Agency was running Lee Wa Dae? As an asset, double agent, informer? What are we talking about, General?’
‘Double agent is my guess,’ said the general. ‘And perhaps not official. Let’s say there are elements of DIA who are not to be trusted.’
‘You’ve been surveilling them?’ asked Mac.
‘We uncovered Boa by following Wa Dae, and that led to DIA. The Americans tried to wash his file, to accentuate his drug dealings. But as soon as anyone from the President’s office made a bio-weapons connection, the pressure to drop it was immense.’
Mac suddenly realised that Atkins was more advanced than he’d given him credit for.
‘I’m going to try to stop them,’ said Mac suddenly. ‘Can I count you in?’
‘Ha!’ said the general. ‘It may have gone too far. We’re on the verge of a coup and the world doesn’t care so long as the generals win. Just keep the shipping lanes stable, keep China and Japan happy – right, McQueen?’
‘What does Habibie want to do?’ asked Mac.
‘When the world finds out that the Indonesian Army dropped biological weapons on its civilians, Habibie and his administration are ruined – not the generals. We have to find a copy of Operasi Boa, to have something real to put in front of the world community.’
‘We still have time -’ started Mac, but the general lifted his hand, not hearing it.
‘It begins tomorrow morning, McQueen.’
‘We could ring the papers, CNN -’ said Mac.
‘That would sink Habibie even faster,’ the general cut in.
‘Is Habibie safe?’ asked Mac.
‘Physically, yes,’ said the general. ‘But his supporters in the military can’t be open about it. A small group of us run an inner circle that the President can trust, but people have been assassinated, fired, smeared, demoted – you know how it works.’
‘I guess Chloe was the latest?’ said Mac, mind on something else.
‘Yes, she was a patriot,’ said the general sadly.
‘She didn’t have much field experience?’
‘No, of course not,’ sighed the general, swinging in his chair to look out the window. ‘She was my secretary. She was trying to make a difference.’
‘She was a lioness,’ said Mac, feeling emptied.
‘Thank you, McQueen, she’d laugh to hear that,’ said the general.
Deciding it was now or never, Mac pushed his luck. ‘General, when the time comes, would you consider dusting off the fruit salad and pulling rank?’
‘When the time comes?’ said Subianto, shaking his head. ‘If Boa starts when the ballot result is announced, then we’re talking about less than twenty-four hours. What do you want from me?’
‘It might be that only Indonesians can stop an Indonesian crime,’ said Mac. ‘Can we rely on you if it comes down to enforcing the army’s own legal code?’
‘No promises, McQueen,’ said the general after a pause. ‘I have nine grandchildren, and I love them all.’