Mark Abernethy - Double back

They barely acknowledged Mac as they walked past, their faces the mask of constant exertion worn by their profession.

When Bongo appeared five minutes later, it was with a middle-aged Timorese man who shook Mac’s hand and introduced his workers: the two young men Mac had watched before.

‘We got a ride, brother,’ said Bongo.

‘Are we, I mean, this is okay?’ said Mac, unsure of the deal.

‘Yeah, it’s cool,’ said Bongo, gesturing for his M16. ‘Fishermen don’t care about politics – they’re too busy or too tired.’

They made their way into the back of the vessel and Mac found a good position on a pile of canvas bags, hoping he could grab some sleep. As they sailed around the point at Carimbala, Bongo lit a cigarette.

‘Get anything from Florita, McQueen?’

‘She said that Maria had been meeting with Sudarto, in his car. Know anything about that?’

‘No, I would have told you,’ said Bongo.

‘Well, it’s made everything more complex. What do you make of it?’

‘Can’t say, brother,’ said Bongo, shrugging. ‘The Canadian never really spoke to me, and I wasn’t in the room when he met with Blackbird.’

‘What about the last time?’

‘Well, yeah – I was checking the windows and balcony when he started into conversation with Blackbird. Normally, I’d secure the room and wait outside. I think he was stressed, like he wanted it over. It was a strange afternoon.’

‘You never saw Blackbird with Sudarto?’

‘No,’ said Bongo, ‘but it wouldn’t be unusual.’

‘No?’

‘Benni Sudarto is Kopassus intel, so maybe he’s not answering to SGI.’

‘Okay,’ said Mac.

‘This SGI is a taskforce, right?’ said Bongo. ‘You ever been on an intel taskforce?’

‘Yep,’ said Mac, thinking of the intelligence empires that are so vigorously defended every time one agency is expected to cooperate with another.

‘So maybe Benni gets his own suspicions about locals working in the taskforce, and he questions them – puts some pressure on, see who cracks. You know how that works, McQueen.’

Mac sure knew how that worked, but Florita’s tone of voice suggested a closer relationship between Blackbird and Sudarto, unless that was just a sixteen-year-old getting it all wrong.

‘And you know something, McQueen?’

‘What?’

‘Benni got it right – he made Blackbird. By the way, what did you agree to with Florita?’

‘I said I wouldn’t tell anyone about those girls being with the soldiers, in case Marta’s father found out.’

‘Okay,’ nodded Bongo, looking away.

‘Florita said he’s strict – I guess he’d blame her, right?’ asked Mac.

‘No, probably not,’ said Bongo, condescending. ‘They don’t tell the father in case he go shoot some Indonesian soldiers, and that’s no good for anyone.’

‘Really?’ asked Mac.

‘The father will kill anyone who messes with his daughter,’ said Bongo, chuckling at Mac’s expression. ‘That what strict means in East Timor.’

The point south of Dili’s main wharf area came into view shortly after 2 pm, just as they were finishing a meal of rice and fish served in a banana leaf. Pulling out his Nokia, Bongo dialled a number and spoke Bahasa Indonesia in a friendly tone.

The vessel slid into a small fishing wharf and, jumping onto the pier, Bongo and Mac waved their farewells, Bongo saying something and pointing at the M16s in the back of the boat.

Making their way down the pier, Mac felt paranoid, seeing a hundred chances for one of the locals to pick up a phone and inform. At the chandlery store, Bongo paused in the shadows and lit a cigarette.

‘So, we walk into Dili?’ asked Mac.

‘Thought we’d get a cab, like normal people,’ said Bongo, winking.

From a distance, a deep whining sound vibrated and got louder as Mac pushed further into the shadows of the chandler’s, his overwhelming fatigue now making him anxious.

‘UN,’ said Bongo, pointing to the pale blue sky. A white C-130 transporter plane with United Nations painted in black down the tail section of the fuselage flew over their position, lining up for a run at Dili’s Comoro Airport.

‘Democracy – we deliver,’ said Mac.

‘That thing?’ asked Bongo.

‘Probably the voter kits,’ said Mac. ‘From Darwin.’

Mac watched a Toyota minivan approaching down the white gravel road through the palms and the fishermen’s shacks. It pulled up with a crunch and the driver leapt out and came around to open the sliding door.

‘Greetings, Mr Manny,’ said the smiling driver.

‘Hi, Raoul,’ said Mac as he followed Bongo into the van.

‘Hello, mister,’ said Raoul, slamming the door.

They drove for twenty-five minutes and when Raoul pulled up it was two blocks away from the eastern wall of the Santa Cruz cemetery – the same wall that Bongo had been perching on when he shot Rahmid Ali.

Grabbing the bottles of water supplied by Raoul, Bongo and Mac walked the streets to Santa Cruz cemetery. It was the steaming hot middle of the day and many Timorese were having a post-prandial sleep. Dogs slept, a horse-drawn cart clopped past and two old women gossiped under a Bintang umbrella half a block away. No one showed any interest in them and they got into the shadows of the trees along the eastern cemetery wall and stealthed north until they found the tree that gave easy access over the wall.

Waiting for five minutes on the top of the wall, they cased the cemetery for Brimob cops and, when the ground looked clear, they dropped down in the cover of trees on the other side.

‘So where’s this body?’ asked Mac as they regrouped, now regretting that he’d insisted on searching Rahmid’s corpse for the car keys.

‘There,’ said Bongo, kicking a branch out of the way and sitting down with the two big bottles of water.

Following Bongo’s finger, Mac saw a fresh grave with a pile of reddish earth piled on top, the casement and tombstone not yet in place.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Mac muttered, as he found his own patch of dry leaves and lay down in the merciful shade.

‘What?’ demanded Bongo, his voice sounding half-asleep. ‘It was the best I could do, brother.’

‘Is there a prayer for this?’ said Mac, his brain now floating on a lilo. ‘I mean, that’s consecrated ground, right?’

‘What about, Sorry, boss – I’ll make this fast?’ whispered Bongo.

Laughing with his entire body, Mac let himself go into sleep. ‘You’re a lunatic, Morales.’

‘Man’s gotta do, McQueen,’ mumbled the big Filipino. ‘Man’s gotta do.’

His beeping G-Shock stirred Mac at 8 pm. Shaking himself awake, he turned to Bongo.

‘Keep your fluids up,’ said Bongo, passing a water bottle. ‘You okay?’

‘Yep,’ said Mac, the act of sitting up causing a sensation in his brain like motion sickness. ‘How we looking?’

‘Half-moon, no Brimob – we’re clear.’

‘Guess we should find a shovel,’ said Mac, cricking his neck.

‘Got it,’ said Bongo, pointing to a gravedigger’s shovel in the leaves in front of him. ‘Cheap locks.’

Rahmid Ali’s shattered, bloody face looked out at Mac after clearing just a metre of soil, but he kept digging around the body to get good access to his pockets. Something squeaked in a tree, causing Mac to drop his shovel and reach for his Beretta.

‘Just a bat, McQueen.’

‘Yeah,’ said Mac, resuming his digging. Now that he’d had some sleep, the memory of the death camp in Memo was affecting Mac big time. He was feeling drained and morose.

Lowering himself carefully into Rahmid’s shallow grave, so he didn’t touch the body buried beneath, Mac started with the dead man’s breast pocket and then frisked down his torso to his chinos. Checking in the pockets of the dirt-covered pants, Mac again came up with nothing. He wasn’t certain what he’d been expecting: spies made a habit of not carrying too much with them, certainly nothing that could illuminate their identity. That’s why Bongo had only briefly ratted Rahmid before burying him, concentrating instead on a search of his room.