Mark Abernethy: Second Strike

Mac looked into the crater. Muddy water sat at the bottom and there was gravel up the steep sides. He took in what lay behind: a fl attened Sari Club. The Sari had been a large, three-storey structure occupying virtually an entire corner site. It wasn’t some fl imsy shack.

The buildings behind the Sari had the strangest damage: concrete had been blasted off the load-bearing beams, leaving nothing but the reinforcing steel which was twisted and bent.

Mac turned one-eighty degrees and saw Paddy’s Bar, which was still largely intact, the buildings beside it fi re-damaged but still standing. Even to the untrained eye, the thing that had fl attened the Sari was clearly different to whatever had hit Paddy’s.

Pulling his CoolPix from the chest pocket of his overalls, Mac took a few snaps. Intel people generally relied on newspaper archives and magazine stories to remind them of what they’d seen, but Mac liked to have his own records, liked to review pictures he’d taken himself.

Finding the non-pattern was easier when you’d been standing in the very spot from where the photo was taken.

He took two shots of Paddy’s and then moved in an arc, taking what would be a panorama of images when he played it back as a slide show on a computer. He was halfway through his arc when he heard a crunch of gravel to his right.

‘I’ll get you a postcard, if you ask nice.’

Mac took his eye from the camera, turned to Freddi Gardjito and smiled.

‘How’s it going, champ?’ said Mac, shaking Freddi’s hand.

They talked a while, affable enough for a couple of spooks who might be acting contrary to each other’s interests. Freddi was Mac’s age and had a similar history: good degree from a university, in his case the University of Surabaya, then army offi cer training which had seen him operating with Kopassus and spending time in the notorious Group 4 – the Kopassus plainclothes intel outfi t. From there it was into BAIS, Indonesian military intelligence.

Under Suharto BAIS had been the most violent intel and secret service outfi t in South-East Asia. Before the Americans had got into trouble for rendering terror suspects to Egypt and Pakistan, the CIA had used BAIS when it needed to get to the bottom of a memory problem. In the post-Suharto world, BAIS had more constitutional fetters on its behaviour, but somehow the mystique prevailed: high-level cops and politicians steered clear of BAIS.

‘Like the view?’ asked Freddi, hands on his hips. For a Javanese he was tallish – fi ve-eleven – and built strong enough to strain at the dark blue shirt and fi ll out his trousers. It didn’t matter what nationality you were, special forces required a certain build.

‘What happened here?’ asked Mac.

‘That’s what you’re here to tell us, eh Mac?’

They stared at each other – both deadpanning, eyes hidden behind dark sunnies, Freddi chewing on gum.

‘Gimme a chance, Freddi,’ grinned Mac. ‘Only got in a few hours ago.’

‘Well we’ve got three blast sites. This one, that one,’ he said, jigging his thumb over his shoulder, ‘and one outside the American consulate in Denpasar. The embassy one was a shit-bomb.’

‘A what?’ asked Mac.

Freddi waved him away. ‘Forget about it.’

‘Any suspects?’

Freddi shrugged. ‘Guess that’s why we need the Aussies, eh?’

‘Told you, mate: I just got here.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Do I, Freddi?’ said Mac, pulling a bottle of Evian from his pack and slugging at it. He offered it to Freddi, who shook his head.

‘Sure, Mac. It’ll be, “The terrible Muslims, the violent Asians who think life is so cheap, have bombed themselves again. ‘Cos that’s what these Asiatics do – they blow themselves up, and take others with them.”’

Freddi shifted his weight. ‘Something like that, eh Mac?’

Garvey wouldn’t have taken that shit, not from an Indon. But Mac liked to get the local perspective, liked to see it from their angle. He nodded slightly, enough so as not to give Freddi any confl ict to go on with.

‘So what’s with the hole?’ Mac pointed into the crater, perplexed by the size and the depth of the thing. ‘What made that?’

Freddi moved forward to the edge of it and looked down. ‘Well, whatever it was, it wasn’t no local IED.’

‘Reckon?’ said Mac, who had already decided that if JI was running around with a couple of improvised explosive devices, they’d be big enough to do the Paddy’s blast, but not this: not concrete blasted off its reo rods fi fty or sixty feet away.

‘Yep,’ said Freddi, putting his hand out for the water after all. ‘I’m betting there were two crews on this – the pros and the patsies.’

When Mac’s phone went off, Freddi raised his hand and walked away with the water. Mac looked at the phone screen, which said Scare Me – Mac’s code for SCM, or Service Chief Manila.

‘G’day, Joe,’ said Mac.

‘Red setter thirty,’ replied Joe Imbruglia, and then hung up.

Mac stared at the phone. He was too tired for this shit so early in the day. He was expecting plane loads of federal cops, DFAT and Australian military to descend on the place in a few hours and most of them would be trying to prove they were better investigators than the next guy. Each Commonwealth agency would be travelling with its own public affairs fl ak and it would be down to Mac to control what they released and what messages they gave to reporters. And now his station chief was going all cloak and dagger on him.

Mac moved south down Legian Street and saw a Wartel store on the right. There were hardly any TI phones in Kuta so visitors used private phone agents who sold you phone cards that only worked in their phones. Mac bought a pre-paid mobile phone and SIM card set and headed for Poppies Restaurant.

He turned right on to Poppies Gang, a secondary road that ran west from Legian Street to the ocean at Kuta Bay. There was an attractive woman outside the restaurant spruiking for customers. The blasts had cleared out the foreign tourists and the watering holes were empty. Mac walked on, doubled back, cased the place and looked for eyes. He hated the feeling of being trapped in a restaurant or bar. He liked exits.

Finally walking up to the woman, he asked if they were open. She almost hugged him, then virtually dragged him into the cool of the place. He asked to sit down the back, near the fan, as the heat built to what Mac reckoned was going to be thirty-seven degrees. After ordering green tea, rotis and nasi goreng, he tore open the mobile phone and put in the battery and the SIM. Once the girl had walked into the kitchen Mac reached behind him, unplugged the fan and plugged in the phone to get some charge. When the plain silver Nokia had some juice it worked without dramas, and he texted in the codes from the SIM and then input another code to activate the extra credit he’d bought.

Mac waited in the cool for the girl to come back with his stuff.

His watch said it was twenty-one minutes since Joe’s call. He ate then sipped the tea, and when his G-Shock said it was 10.34 am local he called the pay phone that looked out over the back gardens at the Manila Hotel.

After ringing once, a man’s voice said, ‘Red Setter.’

‘Albion,’ said Mac.

Joe read out a new mobile number and hung up. Then Mac rang the mobile number with a Philippines prefi x and was through.

‘Christ, Joe – what’s this about?’ snapped Mac as the connection was made.

‘Mate, you know what Commonwealth phones are like,’ said Joe.

Mac snorted. One of the fi rst things he had learned at ASIS craft school was how to run a phone surveillance, and his fi rst sit-ins were listening in on Commonwealth employees – the ones who were having affairs, trying to buy drugs, that sort of thing. ‘Yeah, of course, but what’s up?’