‘Nah – it’s hush-hush.’
‘Hushed up?’
‘Well…’
‘Come on, Jen.’
She looked at him like she might be going too far.
‘Okay. Gary was in Bangkok a couple of years ago, at a maritime security symposium – one of those events that the British put on.
Turns out one of the guys who gave a paper at the symposium is running the show at the Manila thing.’
‘Know who he is?’
‘Gary couldn’t be sure, but he was ninety per cent certain the guy was DIA.’ Jenny shrugged. Threw the pad aside.
The evening was over. Mac made a promise to himself; that he would make it up to Jen. She’d recovered from her annoyance, but Mac knew there were other things she wanted to discuss, possibly even the future and commitment. It might have been. Before Diane.
‘By the way, Jen,’ he said, stepping to the front door, ‘you don’t think I’m racist, do you?’
Jenny thought about that, and said, ‘No. No I don’t.’
They stared at one another, Jen imploring him with her beautiful dark eyes. Mac knew what she wanted. She wanted him to unload, talk about stuff like fear and regret. But he couldn’t. He felt blocked up, like he had a piece of concrete in his throat. As her eyes softened, his were getting harder – she reached out, he defended. He wanted to tell her he had another bird but he didn’t know how to say it.
So he said, ‘Thanks, mate,’ and did the Harold.
Jen shifted her weight. Both hands in the back pockets of her Levis.
He saw her staring at the ceiling as he slipped out. A proud girl.
I don’t cry, understand?
Mac took the third cab that stopped. He trusted too-easy cabs like he trusted fi sh and chips in Alice Springs. He went north to the retail district in downtown.
The DIA connection was odd. The Defense Intelligence Agency was a super-group connecting all the military intelligence outfi ts of the Pentagon into one collection and counterintelligence bureau. It was extremely powerful and operated in a far less publicly accountable way than the CIA. Globally connected, it had at its heart one of the most powerful networks of any intel organisation, with 1.4 million defence personnel who could become agents, co-optees and sources at any time. It could use more than seven hundred bases and facilities in forty countries. What was a DIA guy doing shutting down a section of Manila’s container terminal? What was in the missing container?
It spelled ‘United States military’ and Mac knew only one person under that heading who he could call right now: John Sawtell.
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.’
CHAPTER 19
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?’
