What’s your cover – Homo from Manila?’
‘Lady man from Angeles City,’ smiled Bongo, extending his big paw.
Shaking, Mac sat and eased back in the chair as Mrs Soares came into the beer garden. Over Bongo’s shoulder, Rahmid Ali was reading a newspaper two tables away.
‘Tell you what, Mr Alvarez,’ said Mac. ‘Man’s not a camel.’
As Mrs Soares walked away with their order for beers, Mac became aware of Rahmid Ali at his right shoulder.
‘Ali!’ said Mac. ‘Care to join us?’
Standing, Bongo put out his hand.
‘This is Manny Alvarez, another sandalwood trader…’
‘And coffee,’ chimed in Bongo.
‘From Manila. We’re just wondering if we’re the luckiest guys for having no competition around, or if we just don’t know the bad news?’
‘I think many businesses not letting people come to Timor for a while,’ said Ali, a hint of anxiety about him. ‘I won’t join you. Just wanted to apologise for offering you my fax number. I wasn’t trying to get you in trouble, Mr Davis.’
Laughing it off, Mac and Bongo watched Ali go as the Bintangs arrived.
‘So, Mr Davis,’ said Bongo, lighting a Marlboro and exhaling into the banyan. ‘What we got?’
Going over his first day and night in Dili, Mac told Bongo about the competing military-commercial interests in Dili – one of which seemed to be run by Kopassus and the other by the mainstream army. Then he admitted to his failed attempt to follow the cut-out, the meeting with Damajat and the Sudarto sighting.
‘If you met Amir, then you met Benni’s younger brother,’ said Bongo. ‘He spent a lot of time in Aceh with Kopassus, but I saw him around Dili when I was bodyguarding the Canadian.’
‘Well, shit,’ said Mac, sipping at the cold beer. ‘He’s bigger than Benni.’
‘Amir’s scholarship at Northwestern?’ said Bongo. ‘That was for wrestling, brother. These people don’t fuck around.’
‘Nice family,’ said Mac.
They talked it through and Mac admitted he needed to see the note in the drop box and then collar the cut- out. The rest of the gig would follow from that.
‘Okay,’ nodded Bongo. ‘I got an idea. But if Benni’s in Dili, then he’s still my priority, right?’
‘Sure, mate. Got a car?’ asked Mac.
When Bongo gave him a what the fuck do you think? look, Mac got to his feet and stretched. But Bongo didn’t move.
‘Had a chat with the girl,’ the Filipino mumbled, peeling the Bintang label.
Mac sat down again. ‘Oh, yeah?’ he said, sensing trouble.
‘Yeah, Mr Davis, and she’s a nice girl.’
Nodding, Mac waited for it.
‘She’s Canadian and she’s looking for her father,’ said Bongo, slugging at the beer but not taking his eyes off Mac.
‘Look, mate…’
‘It’s a sad story, and she’s gutsy for coming down here,’ said Bongo. ‘But let’s not promise this girl something that might get all of us killed.’
‘Shit, mate, I -’
‘I don’t understand you Anglos,’ interrupted Bongo as he rose from the table and flicked his cigarette butt. ‘You think you are the only ones who get horny?’
CHAPTER 14
Bongo came out of the Chinese general store with a pack of smokes and a small paper bag. Flicking his rupiah change to the kids in the shade of the awning, he got into the Camry. They drove south-east for a few blocks before Mac looked into the paper bag and found several strings of large red firecrackers, the ones called ‘Thunder Bangers’ when Mac was a kid.
‘Diversion, huh?’ said Mac, nervous.
‘Keep it simple, McQueen – what I tell the Yankees.’
Passing the Dili Stadium, they turned left into the boulevard fronting the main gates to the Santa Cruz cemetery. Forty metres on, Bongo stopped the car and left it running to keep the air-con blasting.
‘Meet you at the north wall,’ said Bongo, lighting a Marlboro and checking the rear-view mirror. ‘Reckon you got five minutes, seven at the outside. And remember, brother – wait for my signal.’
Nodding, Mac slipped out of the car and onto the footpath, then Bongo did a U-turn, and headed back to downtown. Mac tried to cross the road casually, resisting the urge to run. There were slow-moving locals in the shade, a few mini-horses pulling their little carts and a handful of Timorese on pushbikes. Making it to the trees against the cemetery wall, Mac hid in the shade, feeling ragged from nerves and the intense heat. He’d dehydrated and exhausted himself in West Papua, and he should have taken a week off to recharge. But here he was again, talking to himself and losing track of time while he tried to work.
Two minutes later, Mac heard shouts and saw smoke rising over the houses from two blocks away. He waited, and waited, and then they started: a few bangs at the start, and then multiple noises, like a gunfight. One minute later a Brimob troop of four ran out the main gates, babbling excitedly as they cocked their M16s. Mac wanted to get running, find the gravesite and retrieve the message but the call didn’t come. As he made to key his phone and call Bongo, the phone rang.
‘Give it thirty seconds, brother,’ said Bongo.
‘Really?’ panted Mac.
‘Yep…’
As Mac waited, another troop of four Brimob stormed out of the cemetery.
‘Didn’t want to run into them, right, Mr Davis?’
‘See you in five,’ answered Mac, and set off.
Scaling the wall he landed in the shelter of the trees. The locals in the graveyard – mostly women, children and grandparents – mobbed together like sheep waiting for the wolf to show itself. In the massacre at the Santa Cruz cemetery in 1991, more than two hundred Timorese mourners had died after Indonesian soldiers and their irregular ‘teams’ had opened fire.
So the locals didn’t feel safe in the cemetery anymore, and Mac was with them on that. He watched as they flocked towards the south of the cemetery, which put them further from the site Mac was focused on. When the ground in front of him looked clear, he broke his cover and stealthed through the plots. Making good time, he reached the twentieth path and paused behind a white crypt with a gold-painted crucifix over the door. Panting, he cased the area while the firecracker bangs continued.
Crossing the path Mac walked in a crouch between the plots, irritated that the cemetery was so spotless that there wasn’t even any long grass or wild shrubs to hide in. The twenty-first path looked different by day, but Mac was alone and the locals had moved a hundred metres away. Mac crept towards the Salazar grave, trying to stay lower than the surrounding headstones.
Crawling the last few metres, he got into the lee of the casement and lay flat on the brown grass around the plot, listening for vehicles or footfalls. Raising his head slightly, he realised the bangs had stopped but the smoke was now high in the sky. Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself to his elbows and slid the casement sideways, opening it easily to reveal the cavity.
Which was empty.
Mac paused for a second, the ramifications pounding in his head.
‘It says,’ came a voice very close by as Mac started in surprise, ‘ She’s not here. In case you’re wondering.’
Very slowly, Mac turned his head away towards the neighbouring gravestone, and found himself facing a
