‘This is waiter on opening reception,’ said Fanshaw, pushing his glasses up his nose as a black and white image resolved, giving proper defi nition to a blown-up still from a surveillance camera. The person in the photo was early thirties, Javanese or Malay – or perhaps something else. He knew he’d be on a camera and had worn large owlish spectacles and kept his face pointing down, the mark of a pro.
In the photo they looked at, he was bending into a wheeled cabinet with the fi nger foods.
‘Can I see one of him moving?’ asked Mac.
Fanshaw played a segment with the waiter walking past the bottom third of the frame. Mac saw that strange bum-out walk he had noticed on the fi rst night.
‘This is footage of the tennis courts,’ said Fanshaw, then played what was a horror story. The camera was a medium fi sh-eye mounted on the top of the rear fence, looking down on the fi rst and second courts, so that the clubhouse was in the middle of the frame.
They watched transfi xed as Michael Vitogiannis stood with hands on hips, hamming it up for someone on the side of the court: Diane.
Then out of the clubhouse came Alex Grant in whites carrying a tray with a glass jug and three glasses on it. He turned with a smile to the other two as a uniformed waiter walked past him, in a hurry. Alex looked to his right to see why the employee was walking onto their court, and then the waiter pulled a handgun from under his tunic, aimed up, and shot Michael Vitogiannis what looked like three times, judging by the recoils and puffs of blue smoke.
Before the fi rst shooter fi nished, another waiter ran up behind Alex Grant with a handgun and dropped him with one shot behind the ear. Alex went down, dead. The fi rst waiter jogged back to the second and then suddenly he staggered, hit by a shot to the thigh. The second shooter aimed up and shot at an unseen target: Diane. Then they turned and ran across the other tennis court, the fi rst shooter limping and the second shooter moving with that distinctive gait
– bum sticking out slightly, hips moving freely.
Freddi asked Fanshaw something, and a bad-quality security video came up on the large computer screen. The time code said it was from
‘02 and Fanshaw identifi ed it as security video from the Kuta Puri during the time the Hassan and Samir crew were in Kuta. Fanshaw ran some footage of a group of men walking down a path that connected the street with the bungalows area of the Kuta Puri. They were all looking down and the video, which had been shot at night, was bad enough that they looked like they were walking on the moon. In spite of the bad quality, two people stood out: one for his walk, the other because he was built like a gorilla. The one with the distinctive walk was the waiter Mac had spotted at the opening reception, the one who gunned down Alex Grant and Diane.
Mac looked at Freddi, wide-eyed. The whole operation to buy the enrichment algorithms from Bennelong Systems and then dispose of the vendors had been carried out by the Hassan crew. It was the same crew that had been in Kuta on the night of the Bali bombings; the same crew that ran the clandestine nuclear weapons network for Pakistan’s national hero and supplier of enriched uranium to Libya, North Korea and Iran, Dr A.Q. Khan. It was the same people who had shot a girl and snatched a boy while escaping from the jungles of Sumatra, an incident that had seen Freddi moved out of the fi eld for a while and Mac off to see a shrink.
The years peeled back and Mac was once again in that jungle on the coast of Northern Sumatra, shooting those two blokes on the . 50-cal gun, missing the one who’d been standing behind them.
The one with that strange walk which turned into a strange run. The same one who’d been watching them at the reception dinner at the Shangri-La, before shooting Diane.
‘Who is he?’ asked Mac.
‘Lempo,’ said Freddi. ‘Father is Sri Lankan, mother is Malay. He’s an associate of Hassan, based in Dubai.’
Mac nodded, the pieces coming together.
‘What’s in Dubai?’ asked Mac, knowing already.
‘Khan’s operation,’ said Freddi, almost whispering. ‘The nuclear network.’
CHAPTER 36
Exhaustion had crept up on Mac and was taking hold. His vision blurred at the sides and he had that buzzing in his temples, usually a sign for him to call it quits for a few hours. Diane was safe. Carl knew what he was doing and he’d have no problem dropping a bad guy when the time came.
It was more his own safety Mac needed to worry about. Someone on the inside had employed Lempo and his sidekick, got them rostered on to the conference and let them do their surveillance and the hit.
There was also Hassan’s core of actual businesspeople and lawyers present at the signing over of the enrichment codes and navy C and C systems. That’s why Grant and Vitogiannis were so edgy at the evening function and then in their morning meeting: they had the physical CDs or USB plugs, a part of the deal that Mac had seen as a letter in Alex Grant’s iDisk. As soon as Hassan signalled he had everything from the Bennelong transaction, Lempo came in and did the chop.
Diane probably wasn’t supposed to be part of it. But they knew about Mac – they’d sent someone up to look after him and they knew he was in his room.
Before he went to sleep Mac needed to know about the hotel. ‘Fred, can we get any footage on the shooter who went to my room?’
Freddi asked Fanshaw, who shook his head. ‘Waiter wore a black cap and walked backwards down to your room,’ said Freddi, tired too.
‘He knocks on door, no one answer and he give up. Nothing there.’
Mac looked into Freddi’s eyes. They had shared a lot in Sumatra but they were still members of rival intelligence outfi ts. Mac wanted more. ‘Fred, someone in this hotel was working for Hassan on the inside.’
‘You get some sleep, McQueen – leave that to us.’
‘Mate, my colleague is in a hospital bed under guard. And I can’t stay at this hotel until I know there’s no one coming for me.’
Freddi chewed his gum slowly.
‘Besides, Fred,’ said Mac, lowering his voice, ‘I’m not going to hang around getting in your way – I’m going out to fi nd these pricks, understand?’
Freddi sighed, resigned. ‘Okay, McQueen. But I do all the talking, okay?’
The elevator opened at B2 and Mac walked behind Freddi down a green lino-clad corridor with bad fl uorescent lighting. From somewhere they could hear yells and thumps, as if there was a volleyball game in progress. They pushed through a swing door and walked into a smoky room with three BAIS guys in it, all staring through glass at an unconscious man in another room, tied to a bolted-down chair, his shirt missing and layers of dried and wet blood down his face and chest.
Mac recognised one of the BAIS guys: Ishi Yusgiantoro, one of the top domestic operations people in Indonesian intelligence and a former commander in Kopassus’s Group 4. Ishi had done some nasty work in East Timor in ‘99. Now in his mid-fi fties, he looked as tired as Mac felt. Ishi listened to Freddi explain what Mac was doing down in the heart of BAIS, then slowly turned to Mac, eyes sceptical.
‘McQueen?’ he asked.
‘Alan McQueen,’ Mac answered, hand extended. ‘ Apa kabar? ‘
There was a two-second silence, then Ishi shook Mac’s hand, smiled and they all started laughing, even Mac. It wasn’t every day that an Anglo working in Indonesia bothered to say g’day in the local tongue.
As the laughter died, a BAIS guy sitting on the bench table said something to Freddi, and they laughed again.
Mac gave Freddi a look.
‘He say, It true – he crazy,’ said Freddi.
Ishi pulled a pack of smokes from his pants pocket and pointed through the glass. ‘He work at Lar – okay?’
‘The inside guy?’ asked Mac, staring at the man in the interrogation room.
