was a member of the militant Jemaah Islamiyar [JI] group, and active in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand – all countries in the region that weren’t seeking to establish a Muslim fundamentalist state.
Jemaah Islamiyar means ‘Islamic group’ in Indonesian. Over many years they had attacked US and western targets all over South East Asia. George and the Yes Man weren’t the only ones who suspected that JI was a wholly owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda. Others argued that they weren’t too closely linked, and that JI’s original goals didn’t fully dovetail with the global aspirations of Osama’s boys. Whatever, it was only after the Bali nightclub bombing in October 2002 that the US finally designated them a foreign terrorist organization – something Malaysia had been wanting for years.
Indonesia had been the principal obstacle: the overwhelming majority of its 231 million population were Muslim – the largest Muslim population on the planet – and it hadn’t been willing to alienate its own people until JI had been caught planning simultaneous truck-bomb attacks against US embassies in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, even Cambodia.
My eyes were still on the mosque, but my ears were with the tableful of Brits knocking back the Tiger beer. They’d just been watching a government commercial during half-time, warning that if you were caught using a pirate satellite card you were liable to a fine of up to the equivalent of five thousand pounds, ten years’ imprisonment, and a whipping. ‘Shit,’ Suzy muttered, ‘you don’t want to mess with Murdoch, do you? It’s almost safer being a drug-dealer.’
The call to prayer stopped and the electric organ sparked up again, this time announcing the appearance of the Phantom of the Opera.
‘Taxi’s here.’ Suzy gave a slight nod in the direction of the workshop area, as a knackered red-and-yellow- topped Proton saloon pulled up. The cracked plastic Teksi sign on its roof disappeared from view now and again as a bus or truck rumbled past. The last four numbers on the plate were 1032, and that was the VDM [visual distinguishing mark] we’d been given. The driver was definitely our man.
I caught a glimpse of him waving no at a group of tourists in brand-new counterfeit Nike T-shirts. They drive on the left in Malaysia, and the vehicle was parked with the driver at the kerbside, so I couldn’t see his face clearly. In the glow from the neon sign he seemed to be lighter-skinned than the target, but not as light as the locals. Maybe he was Indonesian. He stayed in the cab, reading a newspaper with his arm out of the window, a cigarette in his mouth. He was the source, the one responsible for informing on the target. Perhaps he even knew what the target was up to. Whatever, he was the one who was going to help us.
We didn’t know the source’s identity, and I didn’t want to. He probably felt the same about us. All he would have been told was that people were going to be waiting out there for him to finish his part of the job so that they could do theirs. Once he was finished, that was it, he was out of the equation.
Now all three of us were waiting for the target to show his face, while everyone around us was either swigging beer, watching TV or comparing sunburnt shoulders. Suzy got out her guidebook again. It would have looked unnatural for both of us to be looking over there and not saying anything.
3
Worshippers began to emerge from the mosque and before long there was a frenzy of cars and scooters revving up in the parking lot. The first vehicles tried to edge out into the traffic, but nobody on the road was giving them an inch. The air was filled with the din of horns and screeching brakes.
Suzy rested her guidebook on the table and I looked up. The target had come out of the door and was soon climbing back over the fence. The source waved, then got out of his cab. In the stronger light I could see he was definitely Indonesian, with high cheekbones, short black hair and a moustache, about the same height as Suzy. His stripy shirt hung out of his jeans, maybe because his massive shoulders were stretching the material so much – he looked as if he’d forgotten to take out the extra-wide coat hanger before putting his shirt on.
The two men came together without greeting, then went through the same door the target had come out of. Suzy packed her book back into her bag as the Brits eyed up a group of girls walking by, and the organist got a ripple of applause. The source was coming out again, carrying some sort of white box with a handle. As he got nearer to the taxi I could see it was a cardboard gift pack of six bottles of wine, with the sides cut away to make the labels visible. He went round to the passenger door, the side nearest us, and opened it, placed the box carefully in the footwell, then walked back round the front of the cab, climbed in and the vehicle started rolling. It was all over and done with in less than a minute.
Suzy’s hands were securing the rolled-up top of her bag as the taxi melted into the traffic. ‘So much for Muslims and alcohol, eh? Maybe it’s Ribena.’
The Brits next door cheered and slapped the table. It wasn’t Suzy’s joke: Leeds had scored.
As we sat there and waited, I felt in my trouser pocket for the bike key. The target would be leaving for work soon. Even terrorists need to make money and have a cover story.
He was illuminated by the sign as he came out a couple of minutes later. He was a little early tonight. There was normally a fifteen-minute window after prayers before he set off. His white shirt was now tucked into a pair of black trousers, and he was wearing black patent leather shoes. He crossed the fence once more and headed to his Lite Ace, dodging the puddles in an attempt to keep his shoes clean.
I got to my feet. ‘Right, might as well get back to the hotel.’
Suzy nodded and stood up. I picked up my helmet, putting it on as I walked to the bike. She hooked the bag over her head and shoulders, then put her helmet on as I kicked up the side-stand and turned the ignition. She waited while I revved up and added our share of black exhaust to the rest as I manoeuvred the bike with my feet to get it facing the road.
The Lite Ace moved towards the mosque gates. There was no indication of which way he was turning, but if he followed his own script of the last week and a bit he should be going with the traffic: to his left, our right. Suzy climbed on, and fiddled with her helmet to buy us time while we waited for the Lite Ace to get on to the road. My head was already hot and sticky inside the crash helmet, which stank of years of tourists’ greasy hair. The plastic strap under my chin was slippery against my two days’ growth.
She tapped me on the shoulder, just as the Lite Ace merged with the traffic. We turned right, against the flow, in front of the massed headlights, and began to take the target. There were four cars and a swarm of Honda 70s between us. He slowed for a group of tourists crossing the road, then accelerated to catch up with the flow. We followed, stopping and starting, guided by his flickering right brake light. If I lost him, this would be an excellent VDM for me to look out for either in the dark or in general traffic confusion. I knew it was there because I had slipped out with a screwdriver a couple of nights ago. If whipping was the penalty for using a dodgy satellite card, I dreaded to think what it would be for tampering with a vehicle.
The cars and heavy vehicles came to a halt again, but the scooters carried on weaving in and out. Instead of following suit, I stopped and kicked down into first, kept the clutch in and stayed well back.
Suzy adjusted herself behind me, wiggling her arse either side of the seat to unstick her thin trousers from the plastic. Her right hand was round my stomach and the bag was squeezed between us; her revolver, an old six- shot .45, Second World War vintage, almost silver with wear, dug into the small of my back as I inhaled another lungful of exhaust fumes.
Keeping two vehicles behind the van, I played the cautious tourist, making no attempt to copy all the others on two wheels. My legs were sweating inside my cheap night-market trousers, and it was nice to get a bit of breeze through my trainers as we moved.
There was a burst of light inside the Lite Ace before cigarette smoke leaked from the driver’s window. Suzy leant forward over my shoulder and breathed in deeply, then I could hear her laughing behind me. I didn’t know whether to be pleased she wasn’t flapping on the job, or to flap myself because she wasn’t. I liked people who got scared.
The coastline of Penang was low-lying, but as soon as you turned inland you began to climb. The target worked as a waiter in a Dutch restaurant up on the high ground in the centre of the island; I knew we’d be coming up to some lights soon, and he should be turning right. But something was wrong. He wasn’t moving into the right- hand lane; instead he fought his way past the traffic at the junction waiting to turn inland.
