Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Rami was early. So was Mac. They greeted each other on the arranged corner. Mac stood at the back of the cab, looked around for eyes while Rami popped the trunk from the driver’s seat. Mac leaned in, opened the mail centre bag and checked the fi ve strands of cotton he’d left across the velcro strap of his holster. The cotton was intact. No one had been in there.

Mac walked to the driver’s seat, gave Rami one of the hundred-dollar notes and said, ‘Gimme two minutes, champ.’

He leaned into the trunk and opened the toilet bag, got the moustache on in twenty seconds, took longer with the contacts, but still fast for a bloke with no mirror. Trousering the passport and key, he tied the neck-rag and then pulled out the black backpack and pushed everything into it.

There was a sudden racket, like mortar shells dropping on their tails and fi ring. Clunk! Whoosh! Clunk! Whoosh!

It scared the shit out of Mac, who hit his head on the boot lid as he swivelled to fi nd it was just the sprinklers going on at exactly six am, all the way up and down Embassy Row. He was labouring under a hangover that felt like a croc was trying to death roll his brain. The airport was going to be a hoot.

They made good time to Soekarno-Hatta. The air-con worked, which put a few more miles in Mac’s white shirt and chinos. He’d defi nitely have to buy more clothes in Makassar.

He made small talk with Rami, who was excited about the money.

His missus was excited too. Mac asked him to promise to use it for college. He had lived in South-East Asia long enough to know that when the missus of the house was a piece of work, it often meant household wealth was being siphoned to her parents or sibs. A weak husband was not a good thing to be in this part of the world.

Rami promised, laughed as he saw Mac’s worried expression, and said, ‘My wife is my friend too, yes? But it always good to do what she says.’

‘When she says it, right?’ said Mac.

Rami laughed, genuinely amused. ‘You married too?’

‘Nah, champ – but I’m aware of the general situation.’

Mac stood outside Terminal 1, Rami’s cab waiting in the honking traffi c of the set-down area. Mac’s pack was in the back seat and Rami was waiting for the last hundred-dollar greenback – waiting for Mac to take a quick recce and come out with the all-clear. The airport police and POLRI were at the other end of the apron and Mac reckoned it would be at least three minutes before Rami got a face full of German shepherd.

Mac still wore the specs, too-big clothes, his hair dark to match his black moustache. The coins were under his heels, the Heckler in his pack. The fear of God was in his head, helped on by his hangover.

The Heckler was a calculated risk. Domestic fl ights out of Soekarno-Hatta were checked by security, but they would be selective in their searches, and Mac was hoping no one would make him for a hijack risk.

Mac held up one fi nger to Rami, then walked slowly to the air-powered sliding doors of T1. Paused in front of the heavily tinted glass, looked at himself, controlled his shallow breathing, walked into the terminal.

The place was almost packed – long lines at checkin, cafes, ATMs.

Not bad for 6.50 am. Soekarno-Hatta had been stealing market share from KL, Singers and Honkers for several years and was now a Top Thirty airport by passenger movements. It suited Mac – he liked busy.

He liked Top Thirty because they were the airports the drug mules targeted, which meant the cops would be looking elsewhere. From Mac’s perspective, he wanted the men and women behind the two-way glass in the observation rooms to be looking for the real bad guys. It was another reason Mac fl ew Lion when he travelled inside Indonesia. The major Indonesian airlines – Garuda and Merpati Nusantara – were housed in T2, the international terminal of Soekarno-Hatta. And it was T2 where all the ghost-corridors and two-way glass and surveillance equipment had been laid out like a customs man’s wet dream. That was good for Beefy, but not for Mac.

Mac kept to the wall, staying relaxed in that nerdy way he’d developed for Brandon Collier. He walked down the side of the checkin hall where all the seats were arranged, heard families arguing about why a child couldn’t have Coca-Cola, watched businessmen reading the Jakarta Post, saw teenagers fi ddling with iPods, annoyed to be up so early with parents who so obviously sucked.

Mac kept his eye on the Lion Air suite of checkins. It looked clear. No eyes, no magazines being read upside down. He walked further, to the end of the T1-A section and as he was about to turn, saw something.

Totally froze.

Held his breath.

Hangover throbbed.

Walking south from T1-B, straight towards him, past the Air Batavia and Kartika Air checkin suites, was a person he recognised.

Shapely, tall, very good-looking. Female. Vietnamese-Australian.

Mac was hungover enough to actually say ‘Fuck’ as he turned as smoothly as he could.

A disaffected teenager looked up, a bit spooked that an oldie was more disaffected than her. He took off back to the Lion Air suite and around the corner. Back into the set-down area. He did it smooth but he was burning inside. The ASIS bird was there, which meant Matt was there.

He stood on the set-down apron, saw the sun coming up, felt the heat and humidity starting to move into the air. Airport police were walking the lines of cars and cabs, telling drivers to move on: beagles for drug mules, German shepherds for those with a reading disability.

Mac stared at Rami’s cab, coming to grips with something he’d just seen in the terminal. Something other than the ASIS bird. As he’d walked to the doors, he’d looked over to his right, where an Aussie surf clothes emporium beckoned shoppers with massive posters of young Anglos enjoying their unfettered lives in southern California and Surfers Paradise.

Dominating the main window was a huge poster of Kelly Slater, the famous Californian surfer. The surf company had named their latest range after him. They called it ‘SL8TR’.

Mac’s thought process had gone like this: that’s a clever marketing ploy in South-East Asia because of the acronyms and contractions the locals use with one another’s names. They contracted long multi-word names into one short one, such as Hispran, the Indon-Islamic leader from the 1970s whose full name was Haji Ismail Pranoto. Or they used acronyms, such as with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, known as SBY.

Once they had their contractions or acronyms, they fi led them down so they became a word in their own right. If you were an outsider, you could pick up the word but never know what it really meant.

Mac stared over Rami’s cab, out over the sprawling megalopolis of Jakkers, where the brown haze was starting to rise. Acid rose in his throat. When Minky had told him the name of the person who had snatched his daughter, he had said ‘Eighty’, but Minky didn’t mean eighty, like the number. He was using an acronym: AT, the teenage nickname for an aspiring actor from the southern Philippines, whose name had been Aldam Tilao – before he’d changed it to Abu Sabaya.

Abu Sabaya: pirate, bandit, terrorist and the most dangerous man in South-East Asia. Supposed to be dead.

Peter Garrison and Abu Sabaya. Two psychos. Two very, very smart psychos. Now acting together? In league with someone in the CIA?

Being helped by someone in ASIS? Or both?

It scared Mac. He had to get to Makassar, start putting this thing together.

He looked to his right, saw POLRI approaching, a shepherd straining on its leash.

Rami was in front of him. Right there in front of his face. Mac came to. Shook it off.

‘You okay?’ asked Rami.

Mac nodded, knowing there’d be little colour in his face, that his pupils were probably dilated. He turned to the POLRI guy, smiled, tapped his G-Shock. ‘My fault, offi cer – moving on now.’