the Liberty.
The intersection on the other side of the bridge was snarled too.
So Mac ran straight across it, to the amazement of the locals who peered at him like he might be an escaped lunatic. In late November and early December, south Sulawesi had average temperatures not too different to Sydney. What was different was the humidity, and Mac could barely get air into his lungs. He got to the other side of the intersection, stopped, hands on hips, gasping, looking to the sky like he was searching for more air.
He heard a voice. Looked down. A cabbie was leaning through from his seat, smiling. ‘Hey boss. Where we going?’
Mac got into the cab. ‘Sedona, thanks, champ. Fast as you like.’
Mac wasn’t a fan of the Sedona. It was great for tourists and business people, but for someone always thinking about how to leave the place without being snatched or killed, it wasn’t so great. It was a high-rise hotel, for a start, meaning limited escape opportunities. And it fronted a major boulevard, which made it a lot easier for people to put surveillance teams in the area without being picked.
Mac was looking out over the sea and the historic Fort Rotterdam from his fourth-fl oor room at the Sedona for one reason: the Sedona didn’t always check or photocopy passports. So for now, he was Gary Penfold.
Mac turned to the paper bag on the room’s letter-writing table, emptying its contents: hair dye, nail polish remover, cotton buds and a bunch of recharge cards for the mobile. He picked up the Schwarzkopf 10N blonder – the most powerful you could get – and had a read of the instructions. Then he set to work on the mo: took his time stripping it with the nail polish remover. Next, he shook out the hair dye pack, mixed the two liquids in the bowl, got into the shower, wet his hair down, and then got out. Stood there in the bathroom painting the 10N onto his dark brown hair with the black brush, latex gloves on both hands. Dark brown, of the type he’d dyed himself with two days earlier, was about the darkest you could use and still reverse it with a chemist product. Anything darker and the only thing he could have used would be a peroxide. If he did that, he’d end up walking around Makassar with his hair all frizzy and screwed up, looking like a punk surfer.
He sat in a chair at the window, a shower cap on his head and a towel round his waist, watching the pinisi sailing boats coming and going from the old harbour between the new commercial ports. The pinisi boats were ancient working craft that still hauled sandalwood and cloves from the river systems and coastal towns down to Makassar.
The G-Shock sat on the table counting down twenty minutes. The phone was plugged in and charging. Mac picked it up and hit redial.
He got through to the switch bloke, who recognised Mac’s voice.
Bloke did a hissy sigh, so Mac wound him up, said, ‘Hi darling -
I’m home.’
Another big sigh. A click and a clunk. Mac thought he might have to have a word in the shell-like, but then suddenly it was a voice he recognised. ‘Hello. Hello!’
‘G’day, champ. ‘Zit going?’ said Mac.
Sawtell laughed. ‘I knew it was you. We had Taylor running around worried about some psycho with an Aussie accent.’
‘I’ve been called worse.’
‘I bet you have.’
They had a bit of a chat. Mac wanted to follow through on Limo, wondering if he could contribute to the pension that traditionally accompanies a dead soldier. Sawtell said the envelope had already been sealed and went with Limo’s effects to his mum. But thanks anyway for the thought.
Then Mac tried to ease Sawtell into things. ‘That’s some shit you guys have got up in Manila, huh, John?’
‘Manila? Yeah, we’re on stand-by. SEALs are already up there.’
‘Pretty big, huh?’
‘It sounds it. Dunno what they have.’
‘It’s chemical or bio, isn’t it?’
Sawtell laughed. ‘You playing me, my man?’
Mac laughed too. He couldn’t play John Sawtell, as much as he’d like to.
‘Where are you, anyway?’
‘Lombok,’ said Mac.
‘How’s Judith?’
‘She’s good. But still wasn’t talking when we got into Jakarta.’
‘How’s she now? She remember anything?’
‘Mate, it got taken out of my hands. Delivery boy. You know that movie.’
‘Sure do, my man. Sure do.’
‘Anyway, mate – I’ll let you go. Be careful up there though, eh?
They’ve shut down the whole port. Got DIA running the show, what I hear.’
‘Not for long.’
Mac said ‘No?’, trying to keep the curiosity out of his voice.
‘DIA are just securing the place,’ said Sawtell. ‘Doing the media and government control, what I hear. They’re waiting for the Twentieth to come in from Guam.’
Mac tried to remember. The Twentieth? What the fuck was the Twentieth?
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘The comms guys?’
Sawtell sniggered. ‘No, man. CBRNE. The big leagues. All that wacko scientist shit.’
Mac said, ‘Fuck!’ Couldn’t help himself.
‘That too. I’m on need-to-know – can’t tell my boys. You know how the guys get when they know they goin’ to be round that shit.’
Mac did know. CBRNE stood for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and enhanced Explosive. It was the skunk-works end of warfare and your average soldier would pull any sickie, come up with any kind of excuse, to stay away from anything that had CBRNE attached to it. Which was why people like Sawtell were given orders to stand-by on a need-to-know.
Mac’s heart was racing. CBRNE! He was getting a really bad feeling about the whole thing. The worst of it was who they were fl ying in – the Navy SEALs and Green Berets, hardly experts in chemical spills.
You didn’t pull in special forces to man road blocks and write press releases.
A trickle of Schwarzkopf 10N ran down his temple. ‘John – what have they lost up there?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Sawtell. ‘But Poppa Bear wants it back.’
Mac stepped out onto the waterfront drive of Somba Opu in front of the Sedona. Palms waved in the breeze that came off the Strait.
Makassar was one of the oldest ports on the planet. From a time when all trade was maritime, Makassar sat on the crossroads of the most heavily used shipping lanes: north through the Macassar Strait to the Philippines; south across the Java Sea to Lombok, Surabaya, Madura and Bali; west down the Java Sea to Singapore, Jakarta and Penang; east through the Banda to the Pacifi c. It was still strategic.
Mac wondered where Hannah’s expertise had fi tted with Garrison and Sabaya. Wondered what the MPS warehouse had in it.
Everything was coming back to maritime.
He was back in his well-fi tting khaki chinos and dark blue polo shirt. He looked at his refl ection in the hotel’s tinted windows and saw thin blond hair, short and pushed back from his face. He looked all right for someone who was exhausted, cut loose and scared to death.
He turned south, walked casually, some inoffensive Anglo waiting for his bird-watching tour bus to arrive.
If it was Mac doing the tail he’d only be looking at four or fi ve hotels, and the Sedona would be one of them. The Pantai Gapura would be another. So Mac wanted Ray-Bans to show himself.
The oldest trick in the military book also applied to being tailed.
If you’re smaller with less fi repower, don’t meet your larger adversary on the ground of his choosing. Be moving, be erratic, be nimble.
Mac knew his adversary was not going to do what he had to do in the street. He didn’t want to languish in a
