Gordon Kent - Hostile Contact

Jerry lay full length, looking over the edge of the platform. “They need a few elephants,” he muttered. From up here, he could see most of the meeting site—the back of the bench, but not its legs because of the foliage, about three feet of path to the left of the bench, the side from which Bobby would come; and a little more on the side where he hoped Dukas would come.

“I want the big ice bucket placed up here, okay? Roll it in a floor mat; I can lie on that.”

“You going to—?” Bobby stopped himself. He had been about to ask a question. Piat ignored it, concentrated on the bark path beyond the bench. Have to wait until they’ve got the photo. Then shoot? Or wait until he starts out. He tracked an imaginary figure back toward the exit to his own right, seeing the path here and there as a red-brown stain among the green leaves and the flowers. There was one place that might do. Have to be ready, shoot as he moves into the open. Bang. Not such a long shot, but iffy because of the visibility.

Then noise and a lot of running around; I leave the gun, just like Oswald in Dallas; I head for the stairs —He raised his head to look at the steep, winding staircase, then craned to look down. There was better cover from the leaves where he was, one now-huge tree masking most of the front of Treetops. A sober man without a hangover could shinny down the old scaffolding unseen. Climb down, no sweat, there’s a lot of uproar, our team is making noise and providing a diversion—what? He looked up at the glass roof, saw the lines of water pipes up there. He studied the vast space. “Can you get a stun grenade, Bobby?”

“Not so easy. Maybe.”

“Try.” He didn’t like the idea of the stun grenade; it was distasteful to him—unprofessional. However, he would have to be out and away before the Jakarta cops arrived. Not good to get caught up in all that now that he wasn’t Agency any more.

Jerry got up and tried to brush the pigeon shit off his front, but the headache knifed back when he bent too far. “I think we’ll need four guys,” he said. He took ten American hundreds out of his wallet and handed them over.

Ten minutes later, they were standing outside the Orchid House.

“You know Si Jagur?” Jerry said.

Bobby Li grinned. “Everybody in Jakarta know Si Jagur.” Si Jagur was a seventeenth-century cannon that sat in a public place and was both a totem and a sort of pet, also a good place to meet for a date— See you at Si Jagur.

“Fatahillah Square,” Jerry said. “You’re going to go check it out every day. Here’s the deal: when our man’s ready to make the meeting, he’ll leave a chalk mark on Si Jagur. A circle with a little tail, sort of a letter Q. Got that? On the left-hand wheel as you stand behind the gun. Okay? He leaves the mark, that means the clock is running and the first meeting time is next morning at nine-ten. Mmm?”

“I got you, Andy.”

“I want you to check Si Jagur every day, starting today. You’ll have to set up a route that takes you there, going someplace you usually go. Mmm?” Jerry wanted something sweet, which he hoped would absorb or minimize or anodize or do whatever the hell sugar did to alcohol. If the alcohol he’d taken in was still alcohol, and not some poisonous shit that it turned into after it hit the gut. “You know the drill—you make walking by the cannon look normal. Okay, you know all about that.” He also wanted a drink. “One of these days, you’ll see the mark. Then you let me know at once. I’ll give you a comm plan.”

“Okay I ask a question?”

“Ask.”

“How soon this guy going to leave the mark, Andy?”

Piat, hands on hips, inhaled and exhaled noisily. It was another flaw in Suter’s goddam plan. “Soon, I hope.” When Dukas gets around to it , he meant, but Suter had believed that Dukas was smart enough to find the comm plan quickly and to see that it was an anomaly. Well, maybe. We hope. “Soon.” He liked Jakarta, but he didn’t want to grow old there.

Jerry wanted to go back into the Orchid House and sit down. He liked the bizarre mixture of smells—earth, flowers, rot, bark. But he had other things to do. “I’m leaving,” he said. “You hang around for fifteen, twenty minutes, check out the way you go into the Orchid House to make the meeting. Then check out Si Jagur, then start to get your shit together. Okay?” He smiled into the small man’s eyes. “Good to be working together again, Bobby.” He put out his hand.

“Yeah.” Bobby’s face was sad. “I can’t believe George dead.”

“For his memory, Bobby. Hmm? Loyalty—that’s what this is about. Loyalty to George.”

Dulles Airport.

The summer evening looked golden through the great windows. Incoming aircraft winked like stars in a sky still too light to show the real ones. Alan walked with his bad arm around Rose, in the other the carry-on that was his only luggage. “Seems weird, going halfway around the world with less stuff than I’d take to the beach.”

She had her right arm around his waist; she squeezed. “I’ll miss you.”

“Not the way I’ve been the past few weeks, you won’t.”

“Even that way. Mikey cried when I told him you were going. It’s bad for him, you getting hurt, then you were so—so—”

“Crazy.”

“Whatever, and now you’re going away…”

There are few good conversations for a parting. Kids, the dog, her airplane, goodbye, goodbye. I love you, I love you.

She stared at the security gate and the metal detector. “Jakarta,” she said, as if she could see it there. “I’ve just never heard anything good about Jakarta.”

He kissed her. “You will.”

Jakarta.

The next day, Jerry Piat slept until noon. At four, he went to Hilda’s and a whorehouse and several bars.

Bobby Li ran around Jakarta, stopping four times at his business, which was only an office and a storage space; a woman old enough to be his mother answered the telephone for him and kept the place clean. He visited Si Jagur; he bought a much-used SKS with a scope and wrapped it in a grass mat and took it out to a suburb where a petty gangster named Ho had a fiefdom of about three square blocks.

“Got a job,” Bobby said.

Ho grunted and looked at the rolled mat. “I don’t shoot guys,” he said.

“Surveillance job. I need you and three others. You use a camera?”

Ho grunted.

“Use it good?”

Ho grunted.

“You use a telephoto?”

Ho grunted, but without conviction.

“Okay, I get you a point-and-shoot.”

They talked money. Bobby made a deposit from the bundle Andy had given him. He handed over the roll with the SKS in it. “Pay some glue-head to put this up on the old platform in the Orchid House. You know, the Treetops? Some doper who’ll do it but then forget it, okay?” He peeled off another hundred, tore it in half, and put half in Ho’s hand. “I’ll check five o’clock this afternoon. You get the other half if it’s been done right.” They talked terms some more, then communications, and Bobby told him he and the team would have to be ready to move on short notice. That required another deposit.

He went to the street market and bought an Olympus point-and-shoot cheap, probably ripped off from some tourist, loaded it with 400-speed film and took it back to Ho, who held it in his fat hand and looked puzzled. Bobby explained how it worked.

He tried to buy a stun grenade.

He told his wife nothing was wrong when she asked what was wrong.

He went to a different street market and bought six Walkabout radios.

He met with Andy and the team. He told Andy he needed more money.

That evening, Alan Craik landed in Jakarta.