Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Mac got on the cheapo phone, called DC and got a listing for Camp Enduring Freedom in Zam. He mumbled the number to himself as he dialled, wondering if one of these days his knack for short-term recall of numbers and names was going to evaporate. You only got it with practice.

The switch came on the line. Mac asked for Captain John Sawtell -

US Army Special Forces. After Mac didn’t settle for ‘not available’, the bloke said Sawtell was in the mess. The bloke asked for a contact number and Mac said he’d try back soon.

They got to downtown in twenty-one minutes. It was eight-thirty pm and still somehow the rush hour. Mac got out of the cab with the mail centre bag, walked fast through a large shopping mall and came out the other side, on a whole new block. There was a big cab rank out the front of the mall – lots of Vientas lined up waiting for shoppers, lots of drivers in white trop shirts, black chinos and plastic sandals, leaning on hoods, smoking, talking on mobiles, shooting the shit.

Mac walked the line, the bag under his arm. He was looking for someone in his mid thirties, someone with overheads and middle-class aspirations. Someone with kids.

Someone with shoes.

He focused on one guy, about fi ve-eight, oval face, sensitive expression and a full head of black hair. He was groomed, no sandals and there was a dark blazer hanging against the inside right door. The guy had pride and his cab looked clean.

Mac stopped, gave the bloke a wink. ”Zit going, champ?’

The driver was all smiles.

Mac sat up front, had a natter with him. His name was Rami, which in Indonesia could have been his fi rst name, a contraction of his surname, a family nickname from childhood or a name given to him by his local religious teacher when he came of age. You never quite knew in Indonesia. The bloke could have gone his entire life being known simply as Rami and that would not have been considered strange or unhelpful in the archipelago.

Rami was trying to fi nish an IT qualifi cation at a local technology college, but he had to drive a cab to fi nd the money and that meant studying part-time. Which slowed the whole middle-class dream to a crawl. Rami shrugged. What could you do? Couldn’t ask your wife to work when she had two kids.

‘Maybe we can help each other out,’ said Mac.

Rami dropped Mac in an area four blocks south of the British Embassy residential compound. Mac got out, looked around, walked to the rear of the Vienta. Rami joined him. He opened the boot. Mac put his plastic bag with the ovies, MPS key and Heckler in the trunk, jamming it behind the back seat so it didn’t slide around.

Rami shut the boot lid. Mac put a hundred-dollar greenback in the breast pocket of Rami’s white trop shirt, held two more US hundred-dollar notes up in front of the cabbie’s disbelieving face.

‘Here’s the deal, champ. Six o’clock, on this corner, tomorrow morning. You get the rest of the money. Sound fair?’ Mac winked.

‘And no one touch the bag,’ said Rami, underlining it with a stern Javanese shake of the head.

Mac had no choice but to trust him. He didn’t feel entirely safe without the Heckler but he was close to making something happen with Diane and he wasn’t about to blow it by trying to smuggle a handgun into the British Embassy compound.

He walked the remaining blocks, crossed the street, stopped and looked in window refl ections. Stalked the few cars allowed to park around the embassies, looking for eyes. Around this area of south Jakarta your average punter couldn’t just park and have a nosey-poke.

Anyone on the streets would be diplomatic, intelligence, cops.

He doubled back and presented himself at one of the glass-cage gatehouses that had sprung up all over South-East Asia in the past fi ve years.

‘Richard Davis. For Diane Ellison. Thanks, champion.’

Mac waited by the gatehouse in early evening heat. The sky was orange-red – a tropical barn-burner of a sunset. Behind the bullet-proof glass a big Anglo was looking over the shoulder of the local guard, checking out Mac’s passport. The big bloke looked up at Mac’s face, looked back, leaned further over the guard’s shoulder, fl ipped at the passport and looked up again.

Mac winked. ‘Look better with the goldilocks, huh?’

The mo was in the container, the contacts were in the jar but his hair was still black.

The big Anglo was expressionless.

Mac had him as former HM Customs, intel section – big, beefy, red-faced sort of bloke who clocked faces like he was a biometrics computer. It had been a long day and the last thing Mac needed was some customs robot getting in his face about where he’d been and what he’d been up to. Just some old chat, maybe throwing in one of their trick asides about swimming at a Darwin beach or the famous train journey from Madras to Chennai. Mac had had his hairy moments in many airports with blokes just like old Beefy here, and he didn’t have the ticker for it after the kind of forty-eight hours he’d just been through.

Beefy smiled, said, ‘No luggage, Mr Davis. Not intending on staying?’

‘That depends on her ladyship, champ. She might get lucky.’

Beefy snorted, smiled, slipped the passport back under the glass.

Mac gave him the wink and giddy-up. Beefy stepped away from the bullet-proof screen, shaking his head slightly, keyed the radio hand-piece on his left shoulder, mouthed something. Came back, fl ipped his head to the right. The pedestrian gate slid straight back into the gatehouse. Mac said, ‘Thanks, lads,’ and walked into the residential compound of the British Embassy. Just another Aussie sales dickhead with a thing for tall blondes.

He didn’t have to wait long, only about ninety seconds before a sapphire-blue Jag came around a corner between a stand of topiary.

Mac went to get in the front, by habit, then realised Diane was in the back. He slid onto leather, into air-con, smiling at the fi gment of his marriage fantasies.

”Zit going? All right?’

‘Ooh, the hair, Richard! I love it!’ she said.

Mac felt the car surging forward as he was pulled down into a kiss. He felt Diane’s breath blowing out of her nostrils like plumes of desire and he got his arms around her waist. She shifted her mouth to his jaw and then his left ear, which tickled.

‘God it’s good to see you again,’ she whispered, then kissed him on the mouth, slipped her right hand down to his bicep, sinking her talons into it.

Mac fi nally came up for air. They were driving what he reckoned was north. He pushed his hair back, thinking, Do I have enough Brut on?

Is she going to get black dye all over her hands? Is it kinky if another bloke’s sitting two feet away?

Mac sat back, took her in. She was smiling, pale eyes sparkling in a strong, oval face. Intelligent and not cowed. She fi lled out her sky-blue linen dress, which came to just above the knee. Black shoes with a single strap, cute little gold watch on tanned skin. Mac was used to birds in Levis and runners, boardies and tank tops. Diane was a whole other level.

‘Where we going?’ he asked.

‘Sunda Kelapa – that fi sh place we got trashed at once.’ Diane said it with an air of smiling collusion, as if her world was made of two people and Mac was one of them.

Sunda Kelapa was the original fi shing village Jakarta had been built around. It was still used for fi shing and was probably the only part of Jakkers where you’d see a man in a sarung who wasn’t hamming for a tourist photo. It was old-school Jakarta and after dark there was a chance of being mugged. Mac let it go. He wanted one night of non-paranoia. He’d leave the worrying to the driver, who seemed to know what he was doing.