Mark Abernethy - Double back

‘Well maybe he’s got a better offer, eh Anwar?’ said Mac as he moved towards an empty armchair and watched Amir stretch his big frame into the sofa on the far wall. ‘Maybe there’s a chance to be owner-coach at the Dili Diehards?’

As Damajat laughed, Mac eased back in his chair and took a glass of Scotch, forcing himself to relax into the meeting. Sipping as Amir made a point, Mac caught a brief look through a gap in the frosted glass around the office. A face in dark Ray-Bans peered through into the office and turned away as Mac looked. Mac had only seen this person in file pictures, but the face and size were unmistakable: Benni Sudarto was lurking outside Damajat’s office.

Mac sipped his fifth Bintang as the sun got low in the sky and the mosquitos in the beer garden started their thing. Patting the letter of free passage that Damajat had written for him, Mac was relieved he could now travel anywhere in East Timor and seriously frighten anyone who tried to stop him.

The Damajat meeting had gone well for Mac, and the commercial interests he was developing with the Indonesian military were a perfect cover for moving around what was a garrison-province: a ratio of one soldier for every forty locals was essentially martial law even if Jakarta hadn’t declared it yet. There was a defeated, abandoned feel to Dili; a sense of hopelessness pervaded – all the cheekiness and openness of the locals was gone. Despite the ballot taking place in two weeks, the East Timorese wouldn’t look Mac in the eye. And there was an energy and arrogance about the Indonesian military that Mac found disconcerting.

In one made-for-media opportunity, the Indonesian generals had announced the withdrawal of its stationed troops, but the troops who’d been paraded in front of the TV cameras had merely been shipped around the headlands and put ashore further up the coast. From what Mac could glean of that episode, the entire sham had been designed for the Australian media. The Australian government knew about the ruse from its signals intelligence, yet said nothing. Meanwhile, in the mountains and farming districts of East Timor, the army-backed militias were killing, razing and raping at will.

In Bosnia and Kosovo, the world had united to end atrocities that paled next to what the Indonesian generals did on a weekly basis in East Timor. The Western world – Australia and the United States in particular – had gone along with Soeharto’s Caesaresque dream of a ‘Greater Indonesia’ in 1975 and the results were obvious in Dili. If you gave bullies the green light to behave any way they wanted, then they’d behave any way they wanted.

Mac had had these arguments with Canberra’s pro-Jakarta ideologues, but they’d built their careers on being pro-Jakarta and they couldn’t suddenly change their minds now. The last person Mac knew of in DFAT who had the stones to challenge the pro-Jakarta clique was Tony Davidson. He used to say, ‘We don’t gather the nice product from Indonesia and the bad product from everywhere else – we simply gather product.’ But Davidson was also the last senior person in Australia’s SIS with an operational background, and when he retired the top ranks of Australia’s foreign spy agency would become wall-to-wall theorists, analysts, managers and academics – all of them politically astute enough to be pro-Jakarta.

Checking his watch, Mac decided to grab a meal and then get ready for his next assignment. As he made for the lobby the Korean started yelling into his mobile phone again, this time in his native tongue. The bloke was so loud Mac could hear his voice echoing from upstairs.

‘The dining room is open when?’ Mac asked Mrs Soares, who told him, ‘Ten minutes.’

The chalk under his door hadn’t been pushed back to the wall and the Doublemint stick was exactly as Mac had left it. Cranking out twenty push-ups and fifty sit-ups, he had a quick shower with very poor pressure, and dressed in fresh clothes. Then he lay on the bed thinking through what he wanted to do and how hard he was going to push things. He wanted to get an early night and walk out to the cemetery at Santa Cruz before dawn. It wasn’t a perfect way to trace Blackbird, but it was a start: get eyes on the cut-out, follow him and get him talking. For now it was the only approach he had.

What he knew for certain was that finding the Canadian was going to have to be dropped from his unofficial task list. The entire feeling in Dili was extremely dangerous and if the priority tasking was Blackbird and Operasi Boa, then he’d have to leave the Canadian to someone else.

Was he scared? Damned right he was.

The dining room was small and only three tables had been set. Mac took the table at the far wall, wanting a better observation point over Rahmid Ali. He expected Ali to have recovered from the morning’s conversation, and be ready to try another tack.

The specials blackboard said that ‘Baucau Chicken’ with rice was the chef’s recommendation for the evening. Chicken in East Timor was prepared in the spicy Portuguese style and was usually – for some reason – served cold. There’d be plenty of chances for cold chicken at the roadside warung that infested East Timor so Mac chose the fish of the day and asked for a beer.

The Korean announced his presence even before entering the dining room, yelling into his phone as he walked in and looking around with studied contempt. Putting the phone to his chest, the Korean faced Mac with his bottom lip slack, eyes yellowed with hard liquor.

‘That it?’ he asked, pointing at the specials board with his cigarette.

Giving him a wink and a nod, Mac decided not to engage the Korean in actual conversation. Snorting at Mac and then shaking his head in disbelief, the Korean swaggered out of the dining room leaving a fug of smoke and BO.

Relaxing into his chair, Mac mentally prepared his next twenty-four hours, trying to forget Benni Sudarto peering through that window at the Damajat meeting. Mac reckoned there was a fifty per cent chance he’d been made and it remained to be seen what Sudarto was going to do about it. Would he assign a tail, let Mac run? Would he shut Mac down and start pulling teeth? Feed him up with bullshit and send him back to Atkins with tall tales designed to confound Canberra? Or was he just keeping an eye on who Damajat was entertaining?

Slugging at the beer, Mac wondered how long he could keep his nerves at bay with alcohol. Catching a movement from his right Mac put his beer down. Expecting Ali, Mac found himself looking at a woman instead – early twenties, blonde and very attractive.

‘Is this the dining room?’ she asked in a North American accent, the set to her face making the question into a joke.

‘Actually, it’s the broom closet but we hide them away when we hear there’s an American coming to stay.’

‘Special treatment for special guests, huh?’ she smiled, open and natural.

‘Nah,’ drawled Mac. ‘Just means we can charge more for the room.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ she said, rolling her eyes.

‘What can I say?’ said Mac, standing. ‘You guys’ll pay anything.’

The woman laughed and Mac took a step forward, offering his hand. ‘Richard – how do you do?’

‘Jessica.’ Her handshake was firm. ‘Don’t tell me – went sunbathing, fell asleep on one side?’

Touching the scorch mark on his cheek, Mac retorted. ‘Cheeky Yanks!’

Sitting, he gestured for her to join him. ‘No sunbathing on this trip, I’m afraid – here to buy sandalwood, of all things. And you?’

‘I’m Canadian, actually,’ said Jessica, turning serious as she sat, ‘and I’m looking for my father.’

Slipping through the tropical darkness, Mac stayed in the shadows of the trees that lined most of the avenues in Dili. It was 3.58 am according to his G-Shock and he was making good time, slipping along one of the minor streets behind the Dili Stadium, heading inland from the harbour.