Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

After he’d fi nished eating, Hemi came over with a mug of coffee.

‘Some shit last night, huh?’

Mac nodded. He’d never been shot at that much for that long.

He was still a little jangled and deafened by the experience.

‘Yeah, wouldn’t want to go to a party up there,’ said Mac. ‘If that’s what they’re like on a week night, imagine them on a Saturday when they’re really on the piss.’

Hemi laughed. ‘Like some of the pubs back home, eh?’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Fucking Gisborne. Heard of it?’

Mac shook his head.

‘Fucking hard case.’ Hemi shook his head.

Mac asked him about the girls.

‘They’re doing all right,’ said Hemi. ‘The little one is fi ne but the Aussie girl’s still asleep. Don’t know what they were feeding her.’

Mac’s job had been to snatch Judith Hannah, but not interrogate her. That had been made plain by Garvey back in Jakkers. They’d given him nothing to go on, no reason to talk with her. Even in his initial briefi ng with Sawtell back in Jakarta, the whole emphasis had been on Garrison, not Hannah.

But Mac didn’t give a shit now about what he was supposed to do.

Minky was dead, Limo was dead, Hard-on had half his arm shot off, Hannah was in some kind of coma – probably drug-induced – and there was a little girl, now without a dad, who might or might not have been subject to unwanted sexual attention.

So Mac didn’t give a rats about what Jakarta wanted.

He poured another cup of tea from the silver pot. ‘Hem, tell me, who was doing the shooting last night?’

Hemi shrugged. ‘Dunno, really. Looked like locals, I suppose.

Organised though. Trained, I reckon. All kitted-up. No sarungs – that what you mean?’

Mac nodded. ‘Well, yeah. Any Anglos in there?’

Hemi did the theatrical frown. Shook his head. ‘Mate, it was dark, eh? All I know is they knew what they were doing – didn’t run, kept fi ghting. Not a bad outfi t really.’

Mac thanked him and got up to go. Then turned and asked if there were any special handshakes he needed to know in order to get in and see Cookie. Hemi said he’d handle it. He went to a wall-mounted phone, spoke briefl y. Put his fi nger on the hook, let it go, called someone else. Came back.

‘Mosie will meet you at the gate.’

Mac breathed the steamy equatorial air as he wound his way up the drive to the mansion. He had this place as Dutch-built. It was elevated and Sonny was right, it had been built precisely in the right rise of the valley to get both the breeze from the west off the Macassar Strait and the southerly that came up from the Sunda Sea and Flores. The rainforest came right to the edge of the driveway. Amazingly coloured hornbills strained the breaking point of branches as they gnawed at the fruit. There were also piping crows and cicadabirds, and the racket they made, along with all the insects, made the air vibrate.

By the time he got to the gate, the back of his ovies were wet with sweat. The black iron-work gate was at least two storeys high and wide enough for three trucks to pass through abreast. Those Dutch must have been a paranoid bunch. A bored-looking local made no attempt to leave the glassed-in guardhouse. Probably orders from Sonny. Moses appeared on the other side of the gate, said something to the guard, and the small walkway gate next to the guardhouse swung open silently. Mac walked through and the two men greeted each other with a thumb-grip handshake.

‘Set, brother. Nice work last night,’ said Mac.

Moses grinned big. ‘Set, brother. Set.’

Moses wore olive fatigue shorts, Hi-Tec Magnums and a black polo shirt. He’d dumped the webbing and the SIG and now had on a hip rig with a large handgun in it.

Behind Moses three children were playing on a groomed and irrigated lawn. It extended all the way to the swimming pool area and the four-storey white mansion.

He recognised one of the kids as Minky’s girl. She ran with the other kids, laughing. She wore a new white linen dress. She and another girl about her age teased a younger boy with a ball. Piggy-in-the-middle stuff, and the boy was about to lose it.

Moses turned and snapped something. The girls gave him a cheeky look. Minky’s girl held the ball out to the boy, and when he went to grab it, she pulled it back. The girls ran up the lawn, shrieking with delight.

The boy lost it.

Moses rolled his eyes and they walked across the lawn. He put a friendly hand on the crying boy’s shoulder and the boy leaned into the Fijian, walked alongside muttering something, probably about girls.

In the wealthy Indonesian families, they had a word for people like Moses that translated loosely as ‘house boy’. Moses’ job was to ensure that the family was safe from bandits, kidnappers, slavers, thieves and assassins. He was a hell of a thing to look at: about six-four, one hundred and twenty-fi ve kilos and all muscle. According to Hemi, Moses was part of the same clan that included General Sitiveni Rabuka, the military strongman of Fiji. Mac remembered a bunch of journalists once asking Rabuka about his boxing and football prowess, and the general had laughingly remarked that he was the small one of the tribe.

Moses kind of explained that.

When Mac asked about Hannah, Moses led him behind the mansion to a modern annexe that at fi rst glance looked like a guest wing. But when they walked into the air-con comfort, Mac realised it was a small hospital the size of a large vet clinic.

They got to a door. Moses knocked, opened it and Mac saw a nurse – a young local woman – wiping Judith Hannah’s forehead with a wet towel, talking low and sweet to the girl. Hannah had a drip in her arm and her eyes were still shut. Pale, sickly.

‘Billy don’t want her talking,’ said Moses. ‘She gotta rest, brother.’

Mac looked at Mosie, thought about arguing. Thought again. Mac had a good idea what was wrong with Judith Hannah. A fast and clumsy way to get people talking was to hit them up with overdoses of scopolamine, which was a truth serum of sorts. Trouble was, it was derived from the Datura family of plants which also had hallucino-genic properties. It was a dangerous way to mess with someone’s biochemistry. When you’d got the story you wanted, you administered a ‘hot shot’ of scopolamine and morphine which induced amnesia in the short term. Secret police used it more than spooks.

They headed for the house, running into Hard-on and Billy, who were on the way out. Hard-on’s arm was now totally strapped and in a sling.

Mac gave a wink. ”Zit going, boys?’

They went through the tradies’ entrance into the mansion and both men kicked off their boots. Mrs Cookie demanded it and Sonny had warned Mac that ‘the missus of the house is a real piece of work’.

Mac had grown up in a house where the missus was a piece of work and he knew the secret was to do it her way.

Moses took them through. Cookie stood from the desk, asked how the girl was going. Moses said, ‘Real good, Mr B. She a happy one, that one.’

‘All that screaming?’

‘That lil’ Santo, Mr B. Girls gang up. Two on one, not fair.’

Cookie put his hand up, like Yeah, yeah.

Moses was dismissed. He gave Mac the wink as he shut the door behind him.

Mac and Cookie sat on the white leather sofas. A housemaid came in with green tea and left. Cookie lit a smoke and they did small talk about Australia and big boarding schools. Cookie had been schooled at Xavier College in Melbourne, where he’d acquired the accent and the ockerisms. ‘The culture of that place was “fi t in or fuck off”, so I went local.’

They talked about Australian politics, the problems with Melbourne Football Club and Aussie-Indon relations. Cookie was well read, smart.