small Colt handgun that was gripped firmly in a beautifully manicured hand. Rahmid Ali’s other hand screwed up a small piece of paper and threw it at Mac. It bounced off his damp forehead as he lifted his hands in surrender.
‘This is a little dramatic for me, Mr McQueen,’ said his captor. ‘Can we talk now?’
Staying as still as he could, Mac let Ali talk. Since being let loose on his first work-alone assignment six years earlier, Mac had dreaded the moment a Chinese or Indonesian agent got hold of him and demanded answers. He’d trained for it, thought about it and done all the mock exercises, and for good measure, he’d never tried to establish the identity of other field guys. He’d cultivated his own ignorance so if someone really wanted to pull his teeth and get intimate with the crocodile clips, they’d get a few corporate front addresses and nothing more. Now, sitting in Santa Cruz cemetery, a bit zonked from dehydration and the heat, he wasn’t sure he had the fortitude for an interrogation.
‘Things aren’t what they seem,’ smiled Ali, gesturing Mac up with the Colt.
Standing slowly, Mac let Ali expertly frisk him, taking the Beretta from his waistband and the Nokia from his breast pocket. Then, feeling a small push, he moved out onto the path and waited for instructions.
‘Get your hands down,’ said Ali. ‘Go right.’
Mac did as he was told, his brain racing for the options. Either Ali was going to torture him and get one or two basic answers, or he was going to take him into the trees by the wall and execute him. Either way, Ali was heading to the wall where Mac was meeting Bongo. Would Bongo come looking for him? Probably not, mused Mac. Having created the diversion, Bongo would want to be heading away from the fire. He wouldn’t even get out of the car.
Entering the shade of the trees, Ali kept his distance and gestured for Mac to sit down against the wall.
‘Please listen,’ said Ali, voice controlled. ‘You must hear something.’
Pulling a folded sheaf of white A4 paper from his back pocket, Ali tossed it at Mac and shook a cigarette from a soft pack.
‘Read it,’ he said, as he lit up and inhaled.
There were three pieces of paper, stapled at the top left corner. The first page bore the Indonesian Army crest of a large eagle, wingtips touching over its head, a red and white shield on its chest. At the head of the document was the heading OPERATION EXTERMINATION, with the injunction in large bold type: GENERAL STAFF – EYES ONLY.
Scanning it, Mac picked up the gist from the intro and the headings. It seemed the Indonesian military intended to intimidate the Timorese population out of voting for independence; they were going to kill, imprison and deport pro-independence figures and their families, and if the ballot still favoured independence rather than integration into the Republic, the military and its militias were going to destroy public infrastructure, destroy crops and livestock, burn villages and
…
Mac had to shake his head, get his eyes focused. The heat and fear were killing him.
Having wasted the villages and their farms, the military would engage in mass deportations of East Timorese to West Timor – the Indonesian side of the island – and Irian Jaya. The document was chilling; East Timor was a subsistence economy. If you wiped out the villages, the livestock and the crops, you’d be looking at a famine. The Indonesians had already killed a third of the East Timorese population since their invasion in 1975. Adding famine and mass deportations was a blueprint for genocide.
Throwing the paper on the soil beside him, Mac shrugged.
‘Proud of yourselves?’
‘Not me, McQueen,’ said Ali. ‘The generals.’
Mac wasn’t sure what that meant. ‘Is this new?’ he asked, nodding at the papers on the ground.
‘You read it before?’ asked Ali, still steady.
‘Well, I think we’ve come to conclusions about -’
‘Have you seen that document?’ Ali insisted, his eyes on Mac’s.
‘No,’ said Mac, ‘but the generals releasing their documents in English is a nice touch, Ali. On a silver platter for the Australians to go running off on a wild-goose chase.’
‘We translate them,’ said Ali. ‘And get them to your guys at the section in Jakarta.’
‘Really?’ said Mac, surprised.
‘Really.’
‘This one?’ asked Mac.
Ali paused, exhaled his smoke and finally broke his stare with Mac. ‘No, McQueen – not this one.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because your people aren’t interested,’ said Ali.
Mac blinked hard to maintain concentration. ‘You said we – who are you, Ali?’
‘I’m working for the President.’
‘Oh really?’ scoffed Mac. ‘Don’t tell me, personally working for Habibie, that it?’
Ali stared back, no comment.
‘Okay,’ said Mac, slightly intimidated by a direct approach from the President’s office. ‘What do you want?’
‘We need enough people in your DFAT and ASIS, and your armed forces, to see this. It’s genuine.’
‘Why not go direct to the Prime Minister’s office?’ asked Mac, confused now. Presidents dealt with prime ministers, not with spies crawling around in cemeteries, pretending to be sandalwood merchants.
‘No use,’ said Ali and shook his head. ‘The Australian government has been swayed by the generals’ propaganda, and the President is in no situation to stop this Operation Extermination. He wants a genuine ballot and a peaceful transition to independence if that’s what East Timor wants.’
‘He told our Prime Minister that?’
‘Sure,’ smiled Ali. ‘The ballot is being held at your government’s urging, remember?’
Mac nodded. ‘So the generals undermine the President, and -’
‘And your government sides with the generals, tells the world that the militias are not connected to the military, that it must be rogue elements, right?’ Ali said. ‘The President can’t do this alone from Jakarta – he needs Australian government help. If the Aussies will change, the Americans will also change their East Timor posture.’
‘Shit,’ said Mac, sensing a trick. ‘You’re good, mate. You’re very good.’
‘I can’t do anything more, except ask you to get this to the right people – people with open minds, if they still exist.’
‘So, you BAKIN?’ asked Mac, meaning Indonesia’s version of the CIA.
‘No,’ said Ali, lighting a new cigarette. ‘I was Kopassus intel -’
‘Oh, great,’ said Mac. ‘Now I’m feeling comfortable.’
‘But I became a military attache and then diplomat under Soeharto, and I spent a decade in France in private business.’
‘So?’
‘So, I was asked to come back by my president – he needed an untainted intelligence operation that answered only to him. An inner circle.’
‘Secret too, right?’ smiled Mac.
‘I’m still alive aren’t I?’
Mac mulled on how quickly Ali would be assassinated if the generals knew he was doing secret intel work for Habibie.
‘So why me?’
Ali laughed, and looked down at the handgun that was still steady at Mac’s heart. ‘There is a Javanese saying that you need a pure heart to be a pure warrior.’
Now Mac laughed. ‘Mate, I’m no warrior – you know exactly what I am, so spare me the Asian proverbs.’ His head swam with the possibilities: did Indonesia have a person in Canberra or at the Aussie Embassy in Jakarta? Who had fingered Mac as a man not with the pro-Jakarta program?
‘You have the papers, they are genuine,’ said Ali, looking around for an exit. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but you may as well hear it. I believe, from sources on the general staff, that the document I gave you is a false flag for another campaign.’
