‘I don’t want to know your name, and believe me, mate, you don’t want to know mine,’ said Mac. ‘What I need is everything you have on Blackbird, okay?’
The bloke, early forties and intelligent-looking, started with dignity but quickly fell into a sobbing mess. ‘She’s beautiful young girl, from good family, just trying to help her people,’ he cried, tears streaming down his face. ‘Why do these Malai take her? What right have they?’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Maria. Maria Gersao.’
‘You think she’s still alive?’
‘I have heard,’ sniffed the cut-out, pulling himself together.
‘Heard what?’
‘That she in the mountains, being interrogated.’
‘Lots of mountains round here, mate,’ said Mac. ‘Can we narrow it down?’
‘People say Maliana, in Bobonaro, which is -’
‘Yeah, I know. You said interrogated – about what?’ asked Mac, trying to test the rumours. ‘What would she know?’
‘I don’t know – I just organise the meetings,’ he stuttered. ‘I was never there. But she worked for the army in Dili and someone tell me she working on the intelligence floor – maybe she seeing things, hearing things, yes?’
Envisioning the first-floor admin section he’d seen on his trip to Damajat’s office, Mac realised Blackbird would probably see all sorts of documents and security pouches in the course of a week. If she was young and cute, the Indonesian officers might have assumed she was stupid and gradually treated her as if she wasn’t there.
‘Was she hearing things about Bobonaro?’ pushed Mac.
‘I don’t know, I -’
‘Did you hear things about Maliana?’
‘Yes, yes I did,’ he sparked up. ‘They say Sudarto is now based up there, and Damajat take a trip there three weeks ago.’
‘What about the Canadian?’ said Mac.
‘I didn’t know he was Canadian till he was beating me,’ said the cut-out, pointing briefly at Bongo. ‘He had a code name, I was the cut-out – you know?’
‘The code name?’
‘I’m not supposed to say that,’ said the cut-out, flinching as Bongo shifted his weight.
‘Starts with “centre”,’ said Mac.
‘Okay – “stage”. It’s Centre Stage.’
‘So you heard nothing about the Canadian?’ asked Mac.
‘Nothing.’
‘I told you – I won’t hurt you, mate,’ said Mac, increasing his grip on the bloke’s elbow. ‘But this is important. So think – a successful white man disappears in Dili, and no one knows anything?’
‘Nothing,’ said the cut-out, looking at the ground.
Mac was momentarily overcome by dizziness and he shook it off before continuing. ‘What do you do? For a living?’
‘I don’t know, that’s not part -’ he started, before Bongo fronted him, looked him in the eyes.
‘Well? Not a state secret is it?’ asked Mac.
‘I’m a lawyer.’
‘Really?’ asked Mac. ‘Anything we should know about?’
‘That’s a breech of my security,’ said the cut-out, trying to look at Mac instead of Bongo’s menacing face. ‘I’m not to be indentified!’
‘Then I guess you won’t be needing that retainer from us any longer?’ Mac needled.
‘That’s not fair – I did my job!’
‘You doing any legal work for the generals?’ asked Mac.
The cut-out kicked at the dirt, his face changing from defiance to shame. ‘These people have made us slaves and whores, Mr Skippy. And like everyone else around here, I have to act like one of those things to make a living. What would you know about having to live like that, huh?’
Mac was about to say something clever about life in Rockhampton but then he saw tears in the man’s eyes.
‘You ask the Brimob and army,’ said the lawyer, crying now. ‘They say I make the paperwork – I make it legally clean – for their courts; you ask the Falintil, and they call me a whore who sleeps in the murderer’s bed.’
‘Okay -’ said Mac.
‘You ask my children, Mr Skippy, and they say their father alive and can buy them shoes.’
‘Look -’ said Mac.
‘So do not come into my world and be the judge of me!’ yelled the cut-out, whipping his elbow out of Mac’s hand.
‘Okay then,’ soothed Mac, shaking his head slightly at Bongo, whose hand was going for his Desert Eagle. ‘On your way.’
Rubbing his wrists, the cut-out sniffed back tears, wiped his eyes with his forearm and looked from Mac to Bongo and back again, sensing a trick.
‘I mean it,’ said Mac. ‘On your bike.’
As the cut-out exited the car park, Bongo turned to Mac. ‘That stuff about the Canadian – he was lying.’
‘I know,’ said Mac, ‘but now he’s a liar who might feel he owes me something.’
CHAPTER 16
Finishing his breakfast mango, Mac reached for the coffee pot and refilled his cup.
‘So where’s Jessica?’ he asked Bongo, who was eating toast opposite him in the Turismo dining room.
‘Don’t know,’ said Bongo, making a show of checking his G-Shock. ‘Told me she was starting early – thought we were meeting here.’
‘Meeting?’ said Mac, suspicious.
‘Told her we could give her a lift somewhere, help her out, you know?’
‘Bongo!’ said Mac with a growl.
‘I know what I said yesterday,’ conceded Bongo. ‘But she’s serious about her father, so now I think it would be best if we keep her close and stop her getting into trouble. She has no idea, brother.’
‘She having any luck with her old man?’
Bongo stopped his chewing. ‘Her luck is not being arrested, not being killed. She’s been in all the wrong places.’
‘Fuck,’ muttered Mac.
‘Yeah, I been trying to keep an eye on her, but she’s got the strong head.’
Checking for messages on his Nokia, Mac pondered the day ahead. He and Bongo were heading into the mountains, up to Ainaro and then down to the coastal plain on the south side of East Timor. That’s where the sandalwood growers operated, and if he wanted to stay sweet with the military-commercial oligarchy that ran East Timor, it would help if he appeared to be doing business. On their way back to Dili, they were going to follow up on the papers Bongo had retrieved from Rahmid Ali’s room. There was an Indonesian Army corporate front that Ali had been interested in, operating in the highland border region of Bobonaro, where it looked as if Blackbird was being kept.
But first Mac wanted to make sure Jessica wasn’t doing anything stupid. She was smart and funny, but she had that North American assumption that the world was going to accommodate her assertiveness. That was fine in a bar in Santa Monica, but you only had to make one mistake in South-East Asia and you could find yourself in prison, or a lime pit. Mac felt protective about the girl, and Bongo looked uneasy about her no-show too.
Mrs Soares brought a new pot of dark Timorese coffee and Mac asked her if Miss Jessica was about.
