Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

And the Chinese economy was not able to handle an erosion of margin.

China had annoyed the region and the Americans by trying to establish a PLA navy base in the Spratlys in the 1990s, as an attempt to patrol the South China Sea. But the People’s Republic really needed to have its ships on the Malacca Strait. It couldn’t get a base in either Indonesia or Malaysia and the Chinese had threatened to go to Burma, which would mean pumping billions into the Burmese junta’s military.

It could even end up in an independent Aceh.

But it really had to be Singapore – ethnically Chinese, the unoffi cial banker to Chinese Communist Party cronies, and the controlling maritime presence in the Malacca Strait.

What had infuriated the PLA generals was the successful lobbying in the 1990s for the US Navy to build a military pier at Singapore’s Changi Naval Base. On completion in 2001 the pier was large enough to birth a Nimitz-class supercarrier, making it essentially the US

Navy’s hub in the western Pacifi c. Far from dousing the naval base aspirations of the Chinese, it merely intensifi ed their efforts. Even during Mac’s time in South-East Asia, Singapore had turned into a lobbying bazaar where every offi cial, professional, business person or public servant now had strongly held views on Chinese naval involvement in Singapore. The Chinese-Singaporeans were either pro-or anti-PRC; they either took their messages from the CIA or the MSS – China’s Ministry of State Security. You could go to cocktail parties or symposia where the room was divided in two.

But when Mac knocked this around with what Cookie had told him, he came up with nothing. What did a CIA rogue like Garrison and his Asian friend called Eighty have to do with Chinese maritime security issues?

It didn’t make sense.

Mac fi lled up at the Pertamina roadhouse just out of Bandung, dashed into the gents and pulled out the dark contacts. He bought a coffee and a roti and grabbed a white plastic table by the window. The coffee was crap – there was no excuse given the island they were on. Nibbling on the roti, he fl ipped through a transportation trade mag that had been left on a neighbouring seat.

Mac read the editorial: about the importance of foreign investment in vital infrastructure. The boring stuff. The kind of issues that Mac did for a living. He was even driving on the result of some of his work: the Trans-Java Highway. It was going to be completed over the next decade and would cost billions more than the government had.

The missing link was foreign investment and the problem was a thing called sovereign risk – the risk to bankers that the government would renege on loans, resume assets or fi x components of the market so investors couldn’t make an economic return on the asset. The way around the sovereign risk issue hinged to a certain extent on internal regulations and anti-corruption measures; but it also rested on the banks being able to own not only the asset, but the land it sat on. That was a big cultural problem in a place like Indonesia, where the ability to control territory or shipping lanes was the source of all power.

Mac and a Malaysian spook worked on it for years and fi nally found the gap – one of the big Golkar powerbrokers was a fi rm opponent of ceding land titles to foreign fi nanciers. A Suharto-era, old-school oligarch, he was TNI-aligned and steadfast in his opposition. He was also homosexual. Least, that’s what Mac took from the video footage and recordings he had of the bloke. Mac and his counterpart had a word in the shell-like with a couple of lads from BIN – the president-controlled intelligence service, which luckily had its own rivalry with the military-controlled intel group called BAIS. They sat back, waited for the announcement. Later, it was the Malaysian and Aussie bankers who announced they were taking fi rst lick at the low-hanging fruit that was Java toll roads.

He fl ipped on, a typical Indonesian journal in that it was written in both Bahasa and English. He was about to chuck it aside when something caught his eye, and he fl ipped back. There was a half-page display advertisement in black and white. Mostly in English, the banner read SURABAYA PORT STORAGE, followed by the acronym SPS. The artwork showed a group of gabled dock warehouses and a cartoon man in overalls holding a key. They were short-and medium-term freight transit facilities, self-service and non-bonded.

Down the side of the ad was a list of Surabaya Port Storage’s other sites. Mac felt his pulse lifting. Looking around the room out of habit, he ran his fi nger down the list and found it two from the bottom: Makassar Port Storage (MPS).

Mac got into character, convinced himself that the number on the MPS key was 46 and fed some change into the roadhouse TI phone.

Rang the direct number on the magazine ad. It answered in three. Mac said, ‘G’day, that Gerry?’

There was a confused sound at the other end, whispering, someone who didn’t have English handing over to someone who did.

A new male voice, slightly younger, came on the line. Said, ‘Hello?’, like he was asking a question.

‘Yeah, sport, Collier here. Brandon Collier from Orion.’

‘Hello, Mr Brandon.’

‘Mate, having one of those days – had a bunch of stuff in number forty-six. But I’ve just got the consignment and it’s all linen, mate.

Those useless bastards got me the wrong goods.’

Silence.

‘So I’m trying to work out what’s been left in forty-six, if what I’ve got is the frigging linen consignment. With me, sport?’

‘I not know, Mr Brandon.’

‘Can’t you just have a look for me, champ? I don’t want to send someone all the way to Makassar just to look in the damned shed.

With me, sport?’

‘Can’t look, Mr Brandon. No rule.’

Mac wanted to keep the bloke talking in the hope he’d just go and have a peek, see what was in the joint. But there was something else there – fear. They probably had his family or had threatened to do something similar to what they did with Minky if any Anglos or POLRI turned up for a butcher’s. Mac decided not to push it. He’d just have to look for himself.

Mac made it into Jakkers in one go, without getting lost. The outer and inner freeway rings of Jakarta were notoriously confusing, especially where they interchanged. Even the locals who drove them every day found them a nightmare. The worst was a three-level interchange which saw extra fl yovers being added every ten years to alleviate the confusion that had been created previously with the one below. A total Barry Crocker.

It was early evening when he drove through the leafy affl uence of south Jakarta. The Australian Embassy was on one of the grandest boulevards, called Rasuna Said. Mac skirted it, then made for a commercial area. He pulled into the off-street car park of a large private mail centre. It was fl uorescently lit inside. Walking in, Mac made for the service counter. A middle-aged Javanese face stared back blankly.

‘Georgie, it’s me, Richard.’

Georgie’s face sprang to life. Big smile. ‘Mr Richard – I did not know it was you.’

‘Like the hair, mate?’ he said, pulling the black hair off his face and smiling.

Mac found that joking about sudden changes of appearance was better than trying to fool people with it – especially people you knew, and wanted to use.

‘Mate, I left my key at home,’ said Mac, slapping at his pockets.

‘How’re the kids by the way?’

‘Teenagers! Mate! Forget it!’

Georgie waved his hand dismissively and walked behind the bank of mail boxes. He kept talking. ‘I say to my son yesterday, “How come you turn fi fteen and you suddenly the genius? You’re having the lend.” ‘

Mac loved it when Indons went all Strine on him. That was Indon Aussie diplomacy, right there.