Mark Abernethy - Double back

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.