‘Yes. I prefer not to know what the development program is up here,’ said Mac, ‘but all it takes is one set of loose lips in your operation, and then we have customs sniffing around our containers and the whole thing goes pear-shaped.’
‘I see what you’re saying,’ said Damajat, motioning for Amir’s driver to escort Mac to the car for a lift back to the Turismo as arranged. ‘But you should not be concerned, Mr Davis.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ said the major-general, slightly raising the manila folder in his hand. ‘We have friends where it counts.’
CHAPTER 21
Mac turned the corner of the warehouse to find Amir Sudarto leaning against the waiting LandCruiser, his black SIG Sauer aimed at Mac’s chest. As Mac slowly raised his hands, the driver pushed him in the back, making him stumble forwards.
‘Well,’ said Mac, seeing there were two soldiers beside Amir. ‘This’ll certainly be a secure ride.’
As the two soldiers closed in from his sides, Mac lurched to his right, grabbed the driver by the wrist and swung him into the other thug. Caught by surprise, the soldier pulled up his gun as Mac leapt over the driver and lunged at the soldier’s throat, grabbing it with his right hand as he got his left hand on the gun wrist.
Falling to the dirt, Mac twisted so he landed on the soldier then headbutted the bloke’s teeth. Using his momentum, he ripped his right hand away from the throat and got both hands on the soldier’s gun hand. Pulling up, Mac aimed the captured gun – hand and all – at Amir and pulled back on the soldier’s trigger finger as his assailants advanced.
Nothing. Not even a click.
Sudarto walked up and trod on Mac’s left wrist, preventing Mac from rolling away. Then Amir Sudarto’s gun came down between his eyes.
‘So,’ said Amir, smiling. ‘They say you were in army, but don’t know what safety is, right?’
The driver laughed, but the other soldier on the ground touched his bloody bottom lip and spat at Mac.
Amir’s smile suddenly hardened. ‘Time for chat, right, McQueen?’
They dragged Mac through the shower block of the Ginasio, into a dank room with a concrete floor and high frosted windows with wire through the glass. The Kopassus thugs made him kneel at one end of the room, hands and ankles wired behind him and wire flex around his neck. Then they walked away, leaving Mac with his fears.
Mac’s old footballer’s knees started to seize on the wet concrete as the blood dried in his nose. Forcing himself to keep his breathing regular, he worked it through: Amir Sudarto knew his name, which meant they’d levered the truth out of Bongo or got a surveillance shot of Mac and run it past some corrupt friendlies, most likely CIA or NICA. Or perhaps Amir was sent to do the dirty work by his big brother, Benni. There was a chance that Benni Sudarto was running a separate operation with a different agenda to that of Damajat and his commercial masters. Mac had no idea what it was, but the fact that Amir had grabbed Mac in the car park – not in the Lombok AgriCorp building – suggested a side venture.
Mac tried to think quickly about what Amir wanted and how far he’d go to get it. The Indonesians had already retrieved his phones and the materials that Damajat had given him, but the leaked documents from Rahmid Ali were hidden in Bongo’s Camry.
Sounds of beatings and pleading echoed throughout the vast building. People cried, men yelled; women screamed, voices threatened and hard objects hit soft flesh. Mac didn’t expect to walk out of the Ginasio.
Voices came closer and then there were footfalls in the shower block and Amir Sudarto was standing in front of Mac. One of the soldiers from the car park – the driver – put a shallow box on the wooden slat seat. Mac could see his own phone, Damajat’s Nokia and the list of items to be procured.
Sitting down on the slatted seat in front of Mac, Sudarto stretched his thick legs in front of him, taking his weight with his arms, muscles flexing under his green trop shirt.
‘Tell me what I need, McQueen, and I’ll make it fast and… relatively painless, okay?’
‘Can we define relatively?’ said Mac, the wire flex digging into his larynx.
‘Don’t be funny,’ said Sudarto, the trace of an American accent a reminder of his stint at Northwestern. ‘We’re in this situation, right? But we’re both soldiers, and I’ll give you the fast way if you cooperate.’
‘Thanks for the offer, but it sounds too much like suicide, maybe euthanasia. And I’m Catholic – see what I mean?’
Sudarto’s nostrils flared and he looked away.
‘What brought you up here?’ asked Sudarto.
‘Major-General asked me for lunch, remember?’
‘What were you looking for in his office?’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘So what’s this?’ said Sudarto, reaching over and picking up Damajat’s Nokia.
‘It rang,’ said Mac, shrugging and stalling for time.
Sudarto bounced his thumb across the keypad of the phone. ‘No it didn’t. Last received call 11.39 this morning.’
Looking down at Sudarto’s black Hi-Tec boots, Mac concentrated on his breathing and remained silent, stony-faced.
‘Major-General Damajat keeps his phone in his desk, so what were you looking for?’
Mac shrugged it off again, trying to find a part of himself that wasn’t swamped with fear.
‘What about Dili?’ asked Sudarto, pulling a cigarette packet from his breast pocket and fishing one out with his teeth. ‘What’s happening in Dili?’
‘Looking for sandalwood opportunities, and -’
‘Come on, McQueen,’ snapped Sudarto. ‘We’re past all that.’
The accepted style of interrogation in the intelligence community was to ask a number of narrative and factual questions over and over, find the inconsistencies and work at them. While working at the inconsistencies you suddenly dropped a clanger into the dialogue to surprise and confuse the interviewee. Mac expected a clanger in the next few minutes to try and knock him off his game.
‘Do you know a man called Alphonse Morales?’
‘No,’ said Mac.
‘Known to most people as Bongo?’
‘I may have met him, I don’t -’
Sudarto gestured to his sidekick and a black-and-white eight-by-five print was suddenly thrust in front of Mac’s face. It was a telephoto shot of Bongo at the wheel of the Camry, with Mac shutting the passenger door. Mac’s mind completed the picture – it had been taken just before he’d crossed the road to the wall of the Santa Cruz cemetery.
‘Oh, you’re talking about Manny? Manny Alvarez?’ said Mac, using Bongo’s NICA cover at the Jakarta Shangri-La.
‘Don’t be clever, McQueen,’ snapped Sudarto, lunging forwards and backhanding Mac across the face so hard that it sent him sprawling sideways.
The sidekick picked him up, put him back in the kneeling position, blood again pouring from Mac’s nose onto the concrete.
‘I met Manny when he was a concierge at the Lar,’ continued Mac, ‘and he agreed to do some driving for me in Timor.’
Lunging forwards again, Sudarto hit Mac with a backhand-forehand combo, spraying blood across the room. Although he stayed upright this time, Mac wondered how many of the heavy strikes he could take.
He was in big trouble: the Bongo connection put the conversation right back in the meet that had gone wrong, where the older Sudarto brother had shot Bongo. It meant the Sudartos had connected all the dots – the Canadian, Blackbird and Operasi Boa – which had led him to Mac. But was there anything else? What else did he
