Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Mac looked at it. Couldn’t get the picture. He grabbed his Nokia, dialled a number in Jakarta, Telekom Indonesia.

No connection.

Mac swore. He’d forgotten the state of the Indonesian phone system. Telekom Indonesia installed cellular towers where the tourists were starting to come, but the locals had no coverage even a few clicks out of the towns.

They drove back towards Palopo. Mac used a pay phone on the outskirts. Called an old mate at TI, an engineer called Dougie Foster.

They swapped greetings, then Mac said, ‘Mate, I’ve got some numbers.

Can you run them?’

‘Shoot.’

Mac read the numbers. The lone wrong ‘un was a Manila area code. A silent address. Mac asked for as much info as he could get and Dougie told him to hang on. After a few minutes he came back. ‘Got a pen?’

Mac wrote it down. He had the telecom exchange that the number would have been connected to, and Dougie gave him an area: Intramuros, a suburb on Manila Bay that Mac knew well.

The other fourteen numbers were closer to home. Dougie said,

‘You’re in luck, Mac – there’s only eight numbers on that series.’

Mac wrote it down. They were heading north again, for Tenteno.

They made good time on the road to Tenteno. Limo drove the Patrol, Hard-on rode shotgun. Spikey was in the middle of the back seat, Mac and Sawtell either side. Mac’s wrist was now bandaged and Limo had slipped him some anti-infl ammatories. But he agreed with Mac – a chipped bone in there somewhere, and the only cure was going to be resting the thing, something that was not going to happen on this trip.

They’d be arriving in Tenteno after dark and Mac wanted to case the place, have a chat to whoever was around. He wasn’t expecting miracles.

This was Sulawesi, the world’s eleventh largest island and basically unpopulated. Fishing villages dotted the coastline and highland tribes did their thing in the interior. It was all rainforest and mountains, and people trying to win forestry and mining concessions. If the trail went dead in Tenteno, Mac would give the intel guys in Jakarta a chance to come up with some piece of genius. That would set the hounds running.

If the mole was in Jakarta, he or she would make a move. Which would give Mac a chance to pull a counter-ambush.

But the trail didn’t go dead.

Mac and Spikey went into the general store on Tenteno’s main road as soon as they’d driven around the small lakeside town. The store owner was helpful, but didn’t know anything. Spikey kept it calm, doing small talk. Mac watched the owner clench and unclench his left fi st. He only did it once but it betrayed nerves.

Mac strolled out of the store, motioned to Limo and the others to drive round the back. He walked down an alley between the store and another wooden building, and came out in a rear yard.

There was a lean-to on his left. Boxes and drums of cooking oil were stacked to obscure what was in the structure. Mac walked around the makeshift wall, saw a tarp covering a large shape and whipped it off, revealing a silver Accord. Same rego as the one behind Minky’s.

Coming in through the store’s back entrance, Mac took the owner by surprise. The bloke’s eyes widened as Mac said to Spikey, ‘He stays there, he doesn’t move, right?’

It was near to closing time anyway so Mac fastened the front door and pulled the blinds. ‘Tell him this,’ said Mac to Spikey, not taking his eyes off the owner. ‘Tell him he’s harbouring a vehicle known to have been used in the terror bombings around Tenteno.’

Spikey rattled it off and the owner gulped, shook his head, gabbled something back at Spikey.

‘He says it couldn’t be,’ said Spikey.

‘Tell him if I’m wrong I can get my friends at the POLRI or Kopassus to come up here and check it out for us. Might all be a huge mistake,’ said Mac, winking at the store owner.

The owner shook his head, fear in his eyes.

Mac pressed for the breaking point. ‘Tell this guy that it might even warrant a visit from the boys from the BIN. And tell him, Spikey, that those boys will get to the bottom of it real fast by getting his wife and kids into the cells and helping him to remember. Memory is a funny thing.’

When Spikey had translated, the owner went quiet, looked at the fl oor.

Breaking point.

Mac started again, Spikey interpreting. Yes, the store owner knew the blokes in the silver Accord. They had been going out on the remote road to Sabulu. They’d made the trip several times and yes, they’d headed out that morning.

Mac got Spikey to ask what kind of people were travelling. The owner said two Javanese and one pale person.

‘Yankee?’ said Mac.

The owner nodded, said something to Spikey: a tall American.

Could be Garrison, thought Mac.

The three men had been travelling in a white LandCruiser, said the store owner. Mac’s attempts to get deeper information met with shrugs. Yes, there may have been more than three and yes, one may have been a woman. The bloke had been paid to mind his own business, and that’s what he had done. Mac believed him. He sliced the telephone lead with Spikey’s Ka-bar and moved outside.

It was dark but some light from the back of the shop spilled on to the Accord, a 2002 model. Mac tried the doors. Locked. After putting a rock through the driver’s side, Mac fl ipped the hood, and unplugged the howling alarm. That brought Sawtell and the others to the party.

‘This it?’ asked Sawtell.

Mac nodded, reached for the door handle, pulled on it.

Sawtell’s mouth fl ew open, wide-eyed, his hand reaching out.

Limo covered his eyes. Hard-on turned away.

Spikey stared at him like he was an honest-to-God dumb-ass honky motherfucker.

‘Shit, McQueen! Holy fucking shit!’ said Spikey.

‘Maybe to you that’s a car, McQueen!’ gasped Sawtell. ‘But to us, that’s a fucking bomb!’

Mac looked down at the open door, looked back. Limo was peeking from behind his hands. Sawtell looked at the sky. Spikey still stared.

‘Sorry, boys,’ said Mac.

Mac stood back, let Spikey check the vehicle for pressure plates, wires and anything tricky on the ignition column. Then Mac had his turn. He went into the boot, the glove box, the centre console, the spare wheel bay, the centre armrest of the back seat, the tool box, the ashtrays, the radio and the storage compartments. Not much.

Chewing gum wrapper again, Bartook Special Mint. Someone liked to get close to the ladies without scaring them off. Someone liked to rip it open in really thin strips.

He asked for a fl ashlight and got under the car. Positioned himself right beneath the windscreen washer reservoir and shone his torch straight up through the transparent plastic. It was a classic place to hide stuff and some people still thought the old places were best.

Nothing.

Then he started on the carpets and before he got far he found something under the driver’s seat. He fi shed out a key and shone the fl ashlight in again to see if there was anything else. He quickly went over the rest of the car’s interior.

Coming up empty-handed, he turned his attention back to the key. Hard-on asked what it was. The other soldiers groaned as one, as if to say, What does it look like, lame?

It had a diamond-shaped, black plastic key ring with the letters MPS stamped on it in silver. The key was big, German, expensive and made of forged alloys suggesting a serious lock. The number was 46. Someone had lost a key. He wondered if they would come back for it.

Mac trousered it.

He turned back to the owner of the place, who was looking unsettled about what Mac had done to the Accord.

‘Don’t worry, sport,’ he said to the bloke. ‘I bet it’s overinsured.’