‘Let’s just call them Falintil, okay, Carl?’ said Mac, refusing to be baited. ‘They got word of a refugee camp for the villagers moved out of the south coast – a camp that no one seemed to return from.’
‘We confirmed this?’
‘They took me to the camp,’ said Mac. ‘I sighted as many as a hundred and thirty bodies.’
‘But we didn’t confirm that this was the camp?’
‘Falintil identified it.’
‘What about the identity of this Antoine, Ant -’
‘Antonio? No, I didn’t confirm his ID but I sighted the camp and the bodies and the bulldozer was on an army truck and the intel spooks escorting it were -’
‘We know who ran the camp?’ interrupted Berquist.
‘Antonio was a soldier in the local regiment, the 1635, and he was ordered -’
‘But we didn’t confirm who Antonio was, or if he even exists?’ asked Berquist.
Mac felt physically exhausted and overwhelmed by Berquist’s relentless style. Worst of all, Berquist may have been right: all Mac had was a visit to what he thought was a death camp, a run-in with some Kopassus spooks and a bulldozer driver. The only evidence for Antonio’s identity was the say-so of a guerrilla commander.
‘You’re right, Carl,’ said Mac, beaten.
‘You obviously saw a lot of corpses at that camp,’ said Berquist. ‘And it’s affected you. But that doesn’t mean foul play, does it? Perhaps they were sick?’ He turned to Atkins, who nodded.
‘Here’s another scenario,’ said Berquist. ‘The militias clear some villages on the south coast, the refugees are walking west and they catch, say, typhoid, and the Indonesians try to quarantine them in a remote camp.’
Remembering Davidson’s warning to do the debrief in a friendly manner, Mac shifted the focus of the conversation.
‘I’ve told you about the Lombok AgriCorp facility, Carl. What do you make of that?’ said Mac.
‘Could be legitimate, yet confidential,’ said the director of analysis. ‘Most armies have R amp;D programs. The Australian Army spent years trying to develop counter-malaria medicines, all of it hush-hush.’
‘So why is Lombok such a secret?’ asked Mac, genuinely interested.
‘Maybe they don’t want nosey Aussie spies finding out what they’re doing. Our own CSIRO is all security- vetted now,’ said Berquist, referring to Australia’s scientific research agency. ‘You have to go through ASIO to work there.’
‘Something’s going on up there,’ said Mac. ‘Yarrow was procuring for Lombok AgriCorp and he was associated with the bag-man for the North Korean Army’s heroin business.’
‘But you didn’t bring the procurement list?’ asked Berquist, already aware that Mac had lost it when he was caught.
‘No, Carl,’ said Mac.
‘No Blackbird? No Canadian?’ asked Berquist, his voice clear and neutral.
‘No, Carl – and no fingerprints, no confessions, no smoking gun,’ said Mac, before a sudden insight made him sit up straight. Mac remembered the vial he’d grabbed from Damajat’s office. It had gone in a consular pouch from Darwin to the US Defense Department’s lab contractors in Denpasar, and the return address was the building they were sitting in.
‘The vial,’ said Mac, clicking his fingers. ‘I grabbed a vial from Lombok AgriCorp – from Damajat’s office. It should be here.’
‘It is,’ said Atkins, producing a bubble-wrapped courier bag and sliding the vial onto the table.
‘Well?’ asked Mac.
‘Trial vaccine,’ said Atkins, pulling a letter from the bag and flipping pages over. ‘The lab says it’s a vaccine for something like a, what’s it called? Here it is – a community-acquired MRSA. A powerful pneumonia, apparently.’
‘Vaccine?’ said Mac, reaching for the letter.
‘It gets better,’ said Atkins, pointing at the pages in Mac’s hands. ‘All of these vaccine programs – if they’re legitimate – have their own ID number, a sort of registration with the World Health Organization. It’s all on a database, mate, and Lombok AgriCorp has one.’
‘Shit, Marty,’ said Mac, heart not in it. ‘We’ve got North Korean drug dealers and people like the Sudarto brothers connected with this, and we’re supposed to believe it’s a vaccine?’
‘We?’ asked Atkins, deadpan.
Mac glared at Atkins for a solid seven seconds, then broke it and looked down at the letter and spectral analysis from the American lab. Berquist and Atkins had played him perfectly. He was so tired, so upset by what he’d seen in East Timor, that he wasn’t entirely sure where the facts stopped and supposition took over.
‘I guess I should tell you why I’m here,’ said Berquist. ‘DG sent me up to retrieve you, Alan.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, there was a formal complaint lodged by the Republic of Indonesia,’ he said, pulling a black-covered dossier from his briefcase and opening it. ‘They cited a theft from their vaccine program, an attack on an army garrison at Maliana resulting in seven Indonesian deaths. They’ve implicated you in the bombing of a fuel store in which two buildings were razed and three army staff cars written off.’
‘I see,’ said Mac.
‘There was also the assassination of two Indonesian army officers and two army personnel at an unspecified location outside of Memo, and the execution of four Indonesian soldiers at a checkpoint between Balibo and Batugade.’
‘The streets aren’t safe anymore,’ quipped Mac.
‘This isn’t a joke, McQueen!’ snapped Berquist. ‘East Timor is sovereign territory – it’s Indonesia! Our friends and neighbours, mate!’
‘I know,’ sighed Mac.
‘This job isn’t a licence to go playing Rambo, okay?’ said Berquist. ‘I thought that had been spelled out after the Lok Kok debrief.’
Mac looked at his hands.
‘The frigging diplomats were running round Canberra all day yesterday trying to pin this on us, and they’ve succeeded,’ said Berquist, referring to the fact that Australia’s SIS shared the same corporate stable with the diplomatic corps from Foreign Affairs.
‘It’s what they do,’ said Mac.
‘And our thoughtful Javanese neighbours included a bill,’ said Berquist, holding up a page of figures to Mac. ‘Three hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars – US – for one military heavy road transporter and one D6 bulldozer that they found at the bottom of a gorge on the road to Balibo.’
‘Okay.’
‘There’s a bill for the fuel and cars, a draft note to the UN, given that we’re so involved in the promotion of free and fair elections in East Timor. Oh, and you might like to see these,’ he added, pushing several black-and- whites across the conference table.
Mac saw a still of himself bending over the tray in Damajat’s locked cabinet and a time-series of Bongo, walking across an open area with a G3 in his hands, fire spewing from the barrel.
Mac shrugged. ‘Busy night.’
‘The Indonesians have identified one Alphonse Morales as the man in those pictures,’ said Berquist. ‘They say he was working with an Australian claiming to be Richard Davis, but who is known to their intelligence as an undeclared ASIS officer, previously associated with embassies in Jakarta, Manila and Singapore.’
‘I see,’ said Mac.
A knock sounded at the door and the receptionist stuck her head in, looked at Atkins and mouthed the words, Tony Davidson.
‘I’ll call him back,’ said Atkins.
‘He’s at the front desk,’ whispered the girl, with a sense of drama, before slipping back out and closing the door.
Face darkening, Atkins stood, not sure who to look at. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, smiling without conviction.
‘Whatever happens here today, mate, there’s a way back, okay?’ said Berquist suddenly.
