Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Mac didn’t believe that last bit himself. Sawtell didn’t believe what he’d just heard.

They stared at each other. The audience looked on.

‘I guess that’s it, huh?’ said Sawtell.

Mac deadpanned. Nodded.

The dry-cleaner episode went fast and well. Mac played the dumb-shit Anglo salesman looking for his local businessman contacts. He described Fancy Pants and Ray-Bans and through Bani he explained that he had lost the piece of paper that said where they were staying.

The dry-cleaner told Bani where to go. A hotel in the middle of town.

Bani made one last push, unbidden, asking the dry-cleaner something else. The dry-cleaner answered, giving Bani the name of Fancy Pants. Seems there’d been a delivery to the hotel.

Bani was beside himself with excitement when they got back to the Patrol. Mac gave him a pat on the back, Bani beamed. Then Mac stopped it dead, told the kid not to get in.

The boy almost cried. Mac pulled an envelope out of his safari jacket, told Bani he had to make a promise. ‘If you take this, if you accept this gift, then this is the deal: I want you to go home, pack a bag and catch the midday bus to Makassar. Got it?’

Bani nodded, sniffl ed.

‘I want you on that bus. There’s a letter in there for Brother Tom at the Makassar Brothers’ school. Got that? He’s a friend of mine, I’ve called him this morning. He’s expecting you. His pupils go to university, in Surabaya. You want to go to university, Bani?’

Bani looked up at Mac. Nodded, looked into the envelope. Saw a wad of greenbacks, looked confused.

‘That’s the deal, Bani. You did good work here today, but this is the deal, huh?’ Mac shook the boy’s hand. ‘You beauty.’

Bani hugged him. Mac saw the crucifi x again, through the gap in the boy’s trop shirt. Sadness fl ooded him. ‘ Dominus vobiscum,’ he said, pointing at the cross.

Bani smiled. ‘ Et cum spiritu tuo. ‘

They parked by the fi shing wharves, two blocks away from the Grand Hotel. Mac told Sawtell the name of Fancy Pants, then he got out of the Patrol. Grabbing the wheelie bag from the rear luggage compartment, Mac said he’d see them in fi fteen minutes.

The Grand Hotel was a seven-storey modern place, built for the thriving tourism industry. Mac moved along the drive-through area that led into the lobby. Palms rustled overhead as he doubled back and walked down the side road and into the car park in the back. He did a slow circuit among about fi fty cars and minivans, looking for a silver Accord and anything else that might look out of place. There were no eyes, no silver Accord. He was nervous and the Beretta sitting in the small of his back gave him little comfort.

He came in the front entrance, amidst a crowd of Japanese businessmen in golf clothes, and had a good nosey-poke at the reception staff as he walked past into the dining and bar areas. They seemed to be the real thing, although most Indonesian hotels had at least one person reporting to POLRI, the military or the intel agencies, depending on which department was protecting the place.

There was no one untoward or out of place in the eateries. Mac had a very strong sense of those who were professional watchers, and those who were not. All he could see in the Grand Hotel were civilians.

There was a solid patch of wet down his back when Mac got back to the Patrol. Limo had kept the motor running and the air-con felt icy as Mac got back inside. They confabbed: Mac grabbed the Shell map, sketched the layout on the cardboard cover. Then he handed over the operation to Sawtell.

‘I want the girl alive, okay?’

Sawtell barely heard him. He’d turned deadly serious, muttering, the crew all ears. They transformed from laidback boys to killers in a split second. A special forces hallmark.

Limo got the Patrol moving, they drove the two blocks and pulled into the car park behind the hotel. Not even nine in the morning and it was already thirty-eight degrees and dripping humid. Mac’s stomach churned, his right wrist ached, the greasy omelette breakfast wanted to come up.

Limo backed the Patrol up to a hedge and the Berets walked around to the back, opened the doors and got into their weapons cache. Most of the chat was aimed at Hard-on, whose surname was Harding. He seemed to be the key guy. They focused down like Mac wasn’t there.

Mac had done lots of snatches in his career; he was known for it.

But he didn’t want to go into these building situations with a military crew. They trained together, they did this as a job and one loose screw in the unit was going to get Mac shot. Or it would distract one of the military guys and risk him being shot too.

The lads tooled up and walked across the car park. Casual but menacing. They wore stadium jackets and fi eld jackets concealing M4 carbines, a sort of shortened M16. Mac was sure there’d be some stun grenades in there too.

He sat in the driver’s seat with the diesel running. When the Americans were all inside he slowly pulled away from the hedge and rolled towards the lobby area. The place was not busy. One tour bus sat away from the lobby entrance, the driver smoking, reading a newspaper.

Mac looked in, saw the desk guy being marched to the elevators with Sawtell and Spikey. Hard-on scarpered, probably for the stairwell.

Limo stood like a rock in the middle of the lobby, big bulge under his stadium jacket.

Mac had insisted they dispense with fi eld radios on this trip, hence the Nokias. If Garrison was out there with the girl, he was expecting military to come after him and he’d be prepped to pick up the fi eld radio signals.

Mac parked out on the street in the pre-arranged RV. He thought about Minky’s girl and how he was going to introduce that topic to Sawtell.

Four minutes later, Mac’s Nokia trilled. It was Sawtell, displayed as JS.

‘Yep?’

‘We’re here. Nothing,’ said Sawtell, panting slightly. ‘Manager says they checked out last night, in a hurry, no idea where they’re headed.’

‘Is he lying?’

‘Shit, McQueen – that ain’t my thing.’

Mac thought quickly. He could go in there and break the guy real fast, make him remember. But the whole thing was dragging on and there was no telling who was protecting the hotel. It was a big tourism concern, which meant someone was paying for the staff to turn up and not steal from the Westerners. The call might have been made already and Mac didn’t want to be a sitting duck when the POLRI commander or Kopassus colonel turned up.

‘Is there anything there? Anything they’ve left?’

The sounds of Sawtell snapping at Hard-on and Spikey echoed from the background. Sawtell came back on the air. ‘A few things.’

‘Get ‘em,’ said Mac, ‘and ask the manager what they were driving.’

Sawtell came back, said, ‘Silver Accord.’

‘How many?’ asked Mac.

There was a pause, then, ‘Three. Anything else, McQueen?’

‘Yeah,’ said Mac. ‘I want the phone logs from that room.’

‘Got it. See you soon.’

The Berets got to the Patrol at a canter. They piled in, Mac pulled out quickly and drove north, out of town. No music now, adrenaline retreating. After twenty minutes they pulled into a bushy wayside area.

Hard-on pulled out a bed sheet, put it on the ground and opened it.

First impressions: Mac could smell the Old Spice wafting off the sheet. He saw several empty steel bandage containers and a ripped-up chewing gum wrapper, shredded thin and purposefully, bits of loose foil everywhere. A surviving piece of green paper said BARTOOK

SPECIAL MINT. There was a paperback book in Tagalog. Not much.

Sawtell had the phone logs. There were fi fteen outbound calls, made in the last nine days. One number wasn’t like the others.