An involuntary shiver running through his frame, he ordered Juara to return to the truck, then climbed inside himself and drove off into the night.
As with any deadly combustion, the Jakarta massacre was inevitable once its explosive ingredients made contact under flashpoint conditions.
The protest organizers, mainly university students belonging to various political elements loosely gathered under the 'pro-democracy' umbrella — and, in fact, representing everything from mendicant Communists to militant ultra-Nationalists — had been planning the demonstration at the Cultural Center for a great many weeks, distributing jargonistic leaflets, fliers, posters, and placards; slogan-emblazoned T-shirts and baseball caps; even compact discs filled with fiery speeches and protest anthems meant to be ratcheted from boom boxes during the rally. On and around Indonesia's largest campuses, movement leaders had sought out converts with the zeal of religious proselytizers, gaining thousands of student supporters and managing to stir up a large percentage of the usually apathetic working class, which had endured four years of grinding deprivation after the Asian economic bubble suddenly burst.
Although the cohesive force binding the groups together was fragile, they possessed unanimity in their weariness with skyrocketing inflation, discontent with a government that had stubbornly resisted economic reforms, and anger with their President, in part because of his see-no-evil attitude toward bureaucratic corruption and waste, and in part due to his refusal to dismantle the state monopoly of key national businesses, all of which were controlled by his seemingless endless multitude of brothers, half-brothers, sons, son-in-laws, and nephews.
Together the dissidents constituted a populist force to be reckoned with.
The government, however, had also prepared itself for a coordinated display of muscle.
Concerned that the unrest spreading through the nation's campuses, villages, and cities would eventually open the door to outright rebellion, many ruling party officials had concluded that strong action was needed to counter a perception of government weakness. All knew that quashing the protest in the manner of the Chinese in Tiananmen Square might provoke international condemnation, and potentially damage relations with their Western and Japanese allies. Yet after weighing that risk against the real or imagined likelihood of a full-scale people's uprising, certain influential aides to the President decided it was worth taking, and gained his approval of a scheme that would show their tolerance with dissidents had finally reached its limit.
According to reliable estimates, the throng of protesters was nearly five thousand strong at the height of the rally, and their complaints ranged from the dead serious to the frivolous. There were men with signs denouncing repressive social policies, demanding industrial privatization, and decrying the lack of variety offered by their cable television servers. There were women campaigning for better educational opportunities, new laws to prohibit workplace discrimination, and the scarcity of cosmetics due to import bans. There were journalists of both sexes crying out for freedom of the press, urbanites lamenting the absence of reliable public transportation, suburbanites complaining about their neglected roads and highways, and environmentalists calling out for the emplacement of stricter pollution controls. There was was even a small but vocal group of gourmands expressing outrage over the recent closings of several four-star restaurants.
While fewer in number than the demonstrators, the military troops deployed to manage and contain them were clothed in body armor, and equipped with a wide range of weapons and crowd-suppression gear that gave them a considerable defensive and aggressive edge.
They also had a dirty little secret up their collective sleeve: plainclothes security agents pretending to be demonstrators and dispersed throughout the crowd. The infiltrators' job was to incite a confrontation with the troops, who of course knew of the plan, and would respond with a swift and violent show of force against the real protestors. It would not matter whether their reaction was criticized as excessive by those with a human rights agenda; quite the opposite, its clear and desired message was that the government was finished with civil disobedience, and would begin to punish agitators in the severest manner regardless of anything its critics might say.
To make things look good, the first staged incidents were kept at the level of pushing and shoving matches, the 'protesters' getting increasingly out of control, the soldiers showing restraint and discipline in driving them back. The clashes gained in frequency, following a realistic pattern of escalation, and soon the troops were being pelted with rocks and bottles. Tear-gas grenades, pepper spray, water cannons, and riot batons were used to subdue the rock-throwers, who were dragged from the scene in hand-and leg-cuffs.
Next, several of the government plants at the skirmish line began hurling gasoline bombs, covering the area with orange splashes of flame and dark clouds of acrid smoke. That no more than twenty people were engaged in this conduct went unnoticed in the milling confusion. That every one of the bombs were either intercepted by the soldiers' ballistic shields, or tossed intentionally wide of where they could do true harm to their supposed targets, also escaped detection. The image of the troops being physically assaulted, firebombs rupturing around them, was the excuse they needed to move into full offensive mode.
Shotguns and automatic rifles were brought out of mobile arsenals and chambered with lethal ammunition. Armored personnel carriers rolled into the mob, provoking exponentially greater anger and hysteria. A young man rushed in front of the lead APC, and was run over before its driver could halt or swerve, the vehicle's treads flattening him horribly, leaving him a mangled and bloody corpse. A young woman who had been near his side leaped upon a trooper in hysterical retaliation, cut open his cheek with a shard of broken glass, and was beaten to the ground with nightsticks and brass knuckles. A couple of men who tried coming to her aid were clubbed unconscious. Somebody triggered an automatic pistol, and by that point it hardly mattered whether the person was a uniformed trooper, an undercover provocateur, or an actual protestor who had been driven to a frenzy by the violence.
The troops smashed into the crowd from all directions, letting loose with their heaviest firepower. Live parabellum rounds poured from their guns. People trying to flee were trapped in the press of bodies and fell screaming and crying, swept with gunfire, slipping on their own blood, crawling through pools of blood.
The television crews already on the scene were speedily joined by satellite crews that could provide live coverage of the melee.
Watching the event closely on television, Nga Canbera couldn't decide how to feel about it. He had poured a fortune in rupiahs into financing the demonstrators, caring nothing about most of their issues, but liking to play political games with the administration, largely because he resented the competitive advantage held by the President's businessman relatives — and in particular by one of his sons, a former college classmate who owned a bank that was propped up by government loans and investments, and consistently outperformed his own as a result.
Still, Nga found the rabble crude and undeserving of sympathy. Would the crackdown play to the ruling party's advantage, or further inflame its domestic opposition? And what if the International Monetary Fund withheld the balance of its economic recovery package, or even aborted it entirely in a knee-jerk spasm of humanitarianism? What effect would such a turn have on the Canbera family's holdings.. and most perplexingly, why hadn't he asked himself that before?
It was all very confusing and intimidating, especially when he stopped to consider that his involvement with the students would only be the beginning, the very tip of what would surface if someone started digging around in his affairs… and that his complicity, however indirect, in the killing of the American spy could be the very thing that led to where his secrets were hidden. Kinzo's thinly veiled warning was well taken — there was so much, so much that could bring catastrophe upon him. And what would Kinzo have said if he'd known about his role in what General Kersik and the others were plotting? Nga didn't understand how the game could have gotten so complicated and dangerous, how it could have gotten so big. He felt in over his head.
He stared at the television. At the armored cars, the troopers, the pathetically frightened demonstrators being cut down in their tracks as they tried to scramble to safety. The President and his advisors deserved credit, at least, for having the courage to strike decisively, to chance the repercussions of bold action rather than wait until the wolves were at their door.. and perhaps, Nga thought, there was something invaluable to be learned from that, a clue to what his course ought to be.
Again, it all came back to the words of advice Kinzo had offered. If Max Blackburn's employers began tracing the circumstances of his death, it would inevitably lead to Nga's own door. How, then, to preempt such an investigation? Yes, Marcus Caine eventually would be feeding on UpLink, devouring UpLink — Nga was no less confident of that than before. But as he had tried pointing out at the Thai's dismal hiding place, the process of consumption would take time. Too much time.
