Mark Abernethy - Double back

A middle-aged receptionist with a beehive hairdo asked Mac to take a seat when he introduced himself, then picked up a phone and pushed a button. As she rattled off a reminder, Mac pushed the white gauze curtains back slightly and observed the Kopassus spooks at the Camry. The standing one said his goodbyes and walked into the military building as two of the men in the car opened their doors and got out to stretch on the footpath, their SIG Sauer handguns obvious beneath their trop shirts. The driver leaned out his window and said something, and the two standing on the footpath looked up and started across the street towards the Watu Selatan building.

Releasing the curtain, Mac exhaled in a hiss of tension. This was not how the first contact of an assignment was supposed to go. He had an entire three weeks to be tailed, tricked, trapped and interrogated. They hadn’t even got him drunk or sent him the pretty girl, and the Kopassus spooks were already coming at him like a scene from a spaghetti western.

A short Javanese man swept into the reception area, the long sleeves of his batik shirt unusual for Dili. ‘Mr Richard!’ he gushed as he held out a business card. ‘Adam Moerpati – manager – so nice to meet.’

Responding with his own card and gushy greeting, Mac took in the guy’s expensive dental work, which was the kind the Jakarta elites had done in Singapore. As they moved down a cool hallway and into Moerpati’s office, his new best friend asked about the flight and the hotel.

‘Turismo?!’ said Moerpati, with a theatrical Javanese shrug, gesturing for Mac to take the sofa. ‘For a man of your success, not the Resende?’

Mac loved the way the Javanese wrapped an insult in a compliment.

‘Well, you know, Mr Moerpati – they book me where they book me,’ said Mac.

‘Adam, please,’ said Moerpati, offering a box of cheroots and putting one in his own mouth. ‘I get you good rate at Resende,’ he winked. ‘No worries.’

Taking Moerpati through the costs and freight charges with the Panamanian and Mexican icon-makers, Mac explained that his company wanted to dominate the Australasian icon trade and that if they could get better margins from East Timor along with the better shipping rates, he’d like to talk about a deal.

Mac used his basic technique of mixing vagueness with specificity to draw the man closer. Businesspeople felt their souls were appreciated when you could recite a few basic unit volume and margin figures about their trade and allow them to embroider the general comments with their own insights. By the time the receptionist brought the coffee, Mac knew Watu Selatan intended to keep trading after the independence ballot and that the Jakarta elites believed East Timor would not be allowed to entirely secede from the Republic.

Finishing his second cheroot, Moerpati admitted that Mac’s visit was well timed. ‘We had Canadian here, wanting to deal,’ he confided.

‘So where is he?’ asked Mac. ‘Should I be speaking with this guy?’

‘No, no,’ laughed Moerpati. ‘He gone, right? Now you here!’

‘So – he’s gone,’ smiled Mac, keeping it light. ‘To Kupang? Denpasar?’

‘I not know,’ the other man said. ‘The peoples come – the peoples go. Who know, right?’

The Kopassus spooks were waiting for Mac outside the building as he emerged into the heat of the afternoon. The larger of the two asked Mac’s name, confirmed that he was staying at the Turismo, and asked him to follow.

There was little chance of escape; Mac might have been able to disarm the one to his left, shoot both of his escorts, drop the Camry driver – who was still behind the wheel – and make his getaway in the heisted car. But to where? Timor was an island under military guard, with one soldier for every forty occupants. There were three roads out of Dili and military roadblocks everywhere. So, keeping a smile on his face, Mac decided to bluff it out, even as his gut churned with fear. When Canberra know-it-alls pushed their arguments for appeasing the Indonesian government, they never quite grasped reality. They weren’t the bastards getting their feet broken or having quick-lime rubbed in their eyes – the appeasers were never going to physically suffer from their own strategy.

As they got to the entrance of the headquarters across the road, the driver of the Camry got out and followed them into the building. They climbed a set of stairs – one spook in front, two behind – and emerged on the first floor. To Mac’s left was an admin section staffed by women and for a split second Mac feared that he was being brought to confront Blackbird in her workplace. This was where ASIS had been gleaning some of its best intelligence on the Indonesian Army’s intentions for East Timor.

But they turned right, walked silently down a long hall with several windowed doors and stopped at the one marked M AJ -G EN. A NWAR D AMAJAT. Mac tried to remember Damajat’s role from Atkins’ work-up. He couldn’t be certain, but thought the Kopassus commander was the head of the intelligence taskforce in East Timor.

As Mac was wondering who he had to kill to get a large glass of Pepto-Bismol, the door swung back and his escorts waved him through. Inside the large office a fit-looking military man in his mid-fifties leapt up from behind his desk, listened as a spook whispered in his ear, and then came at Mac with an oily eagerness.

‘Mr Richard – Anwar Damajat, at your service, sir. Welcome to Dili and sit please,’ he said, smiling and gesturing Mac towards a leather club chair in front of his desk.

Mac’s heart beat in his temples as he became aware of a large man sitting on a sofa against the rear wall. He fought with his fear, telling himself to breathe slowly, just like they’d been taught in the Royal Marines all those years ago. It had been drummed into them over and over: if you could control nothing else in your environment, then control your breathing. It could be the difference between life and death.

‘Firstly, Mr Richard, let me ask you a question,’ said Damajat, sitting behind his desk once more. ‘You look like a smart man.’

‘Thanks,’ smiled Mac, his stomach doing somersaults.

‘So why you doing business with those idiots at Watu Selatan?’

There was a pause and Mac focused on Damajat’s thumb, which was gesturing back over his shoulder. Then Damajat’s face broke into a big smile and he and the spooks started laughing. Heart thumping, Mac managed a smirk as Damajat came around the desk and slapped him on the left bicep. ‘Don’t tell me, Mr Richard – that old thief offered you free nights at the Resende, right?’

Allowing the tension to wash out of him, Mac played along with the joking. Damajat didn’t want to torture him – Damajat represented Watu Selatan’s rival, the Anak-Poco Group, which specialised in construction and had such a brutal hold on the local workforce that Anak-Poco guaranteed project completion on time and on budget – an unheard of event in the Indonesian construction game.

‘You forget about sandalwood toys, Mr Richard,’ said Damajat, handing Mac a glossy Anak-Poco brochure. ‘You tell your people in Australia to bring the money up here to Timor, right? This like new Surfer Paradise, okay? Like a Noosa, yeah?’

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.