Double Back (5 page)

When Mac first spotted him, Martin Atkins was sitting at a small tea stand in a side avenue of the Bird Market, about sixty metres into the sprawling mass of Denpasar’s Satrya Markets. On either side of Atkins were lines of birdcages stacked four or five high, their owners walking back and forth with their money pouches, ready with extended hooks should anyone want to inspect a bird.

Ignoring Atkins on the first pass, Mac came back the same way five minutes later having made a few zigzag and double-back manoeuvres to shake whoever was following. Taking a seat in the shade of the tea stand, Mac asked the old lady for a green tea and turned to his controller when she’d left.

‘Marty,’ said Mac. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Not bad,’ said Atkins, sipping his tea. ‘You’re late.’

‘I’m alive – it’s a preference of mine.’

Atkins looked away, gave a slight sigh. His hair was a shade darker than Mac’s blond, but otherwise they were similar in age, build and background. Where they differed was the emphasis of their professional lives. Mac lived his life as if every day could be the one where he was kidnapped or killed. Atkins wanted to be like Greg Tobin – an office guy with a management instinct rather than any field craft. Waiting for a contact in a market was unnatural for Atkins; he’d rather be around the corner, in his office, writing a memo that made himself look like the only smart man in a sea of dumb-arses.

‘There’s a package waiting in your hotel,’ said Atkins, looking away. ‘You’re Richard Davis, going in from Denpasar on the morning flight, a businessman from Arafura Imports. You’re based in Sydney and you’re looking for sandalwood opportunities, especially Catholic icons – Mother Marys, that shit, okay?’

‘Turismo?’ asked Mac.

‘That’s the one – Terri has you in a long-term room, for three weeks to start with and then on a needs basis.’

Terri was the accountant who ran the ASIS front company in Sydney. She took the calls and cleared the mail for Mac’s forestry consulting firm, his textbook company – Southern Scholastic – and various other shams, such as Arafura Imports. When people tried to verify Mac’s business bona fides they usually got a total going-over as regards their creditworthiness and corporate registrations. Mac always felt comfortable that Terri dealt with the back office.

‘So what’s the gig?’ asked Mac, smiling at the old lady who brought his tea.

‘Find Blackbird, establish whether it’s viable to start running her again…’

‘And?’

Looking away at the crowds, Atkins attempted to make himself seem relaxed. ‘If you can do so covertly, establish what’s meant by “Operasi Boa”.’

Mac paused, wondering where that had come from. ‘Boa?’

‘Like I said.’

‘Like a feathery scarf?’ said Mac, making sure he had it right.

‘That’s it, McQueen. Operasi Boa.’

Staring at each other for several seconds, they broke with smiles.

‘What’s the secret, Marty?’ said Mac. ‘What is it?’

‘That’s your job, mate.’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Mac, too tired for the hokey-pokey.

‘All I know is what I’ve been briefed on,’ said Atkins. ‘The Canadian was tasked with getting Blackbird to find out about Boa.’

‘And?’

‘We don’t know if he did, or if the meet happened,’ said Atkins, gulping his tea. ‘It’s probably best if you start from scratch rather than guessing at what Boa might be.’

Smiling, Mac decided to let it go, though taking craft advice from a man who did management courses at Melbourne Business School was a little rich. ‘You weren’t running the Canadian?’

‘I was,’ said Atkins. ‘But a week before we lost him, our higher-ups got a hard-on for this Boa, so I became a conduit. You know how it is.’

Nodding, Mac knew how it was. ‘So who is he, this Canadian?’

‘Bill Yarrow – wanted by Canadian Customs for import fraud. Owes them millions in unpaid excise. It’s in your package.’

‘But I’m not looking for him?’

‘If he turns up, bring him in,’ said Atkins. ‘He’s of interest, sure, but the priority is Blackbird.’

‘Who’s my contact?’ said Mac.

‘Blackbird,’ said Atkins, his face grim.

‘She still around?’ asked Mac.

‘We have to establish that one way or the other,’ said Atkins.

‘How do I get to her?’

‘We use a cut-out – but I can’t send you to him,’ said Atkins. ‘He’s in a sensitive position and we’ve guaranteed his anonymity.’

Mac nodded, thinking. A cut-out was an unidentified person who communicated via drop boxes. The theory was that using cut-outs protected the local asset from being compromised, and left the intelligence officer as an unknown person who just left and received notes in a pre-arranged place: the drop box. But while the theory of cut-outs worked well on a whiteboard in Canberra, they were merely a professional challenge to Mac and people like him.

‘What’s the cycle?’ asked Mac.

‘Santa Cruz cemetery, twenty-one left, seven right, Mondays and Fridays.’

It was currently Wednesday.

‘And what’s our status with the Indons in Timor?’ asked Mac, knowing that although the Indonesia-backed militias were clearing villages in the lead-up to the independence ballot, the Australian government was holding off on sending in a presence.

‘Our status is a friendly neighbour, giving moral support at this difficult time,’ said Atkins.

They both chuckled. The Australian government had Royal Australian Navy surveillance vessels – declared and covert – steaming the Timor Sea, right across the underbelly of East Timor; there were RAN clearance divers not only in Dili’s harbour, but in Atambua and Kupang – the heart of Indonesian Timor. There was nothing friendly about the Timor Gap gas fields off the south coast of East Timor, gas fields that Australia felt it was better placed to control than Indonesia.

‘By the way,’ said Atkins, ‘the phone lines are compromised out of Dili, and that includes cellular. There’s a radio for emergencies at Santa Cruz thirty-five right, seven left. Otherwise, you collect the intel and walk it out. To me, okay?’

Accepting Atkins’ handshake, Mac stood to go before noticing his colleague’s discomfort and pausing.

‘Anything else?’ said Mac, scoping the crowded market for eyes.

‘Look, mate, after the Lok Kok thing, they want me to ensure… I mean, it’s not my -’

‘No firearm – that it?’ said Mac, breathing out.

‘Wasn’t my call,’ said Atkins. ‘I’d never search you, but just so we’re clear.’

Walking up Veteran Street in the heat of late morning, Mac paused by a juice bar near Puputan Square. His hotel, the Natour Bali, was just around the corner in downtown, but he didn’t want to head there just yet. He was tired and needed sleep, but he wasn’t going to nap until he worked out who his tail was and what he wanted.

After buying a watermelon juice in a flimsy plastic cup he strolled into Puputan Square, glancing sideways behind his sunnies as he put the straw in the hole. His tail was a mid-twenties local in black slacks and white trop shirt pretending to browse at a newsstand thirty metres away. The tail’s eyes flicked up momentarily as Mac looked away and kept strolling casually into the square towards the Bali Museum – a sprawling complex of temple-like buildings which doubled as museum pavilions.

Falling in with a party of Dutch and American tourists, Mac wandered across a lawn and through a large temple gate, trying to place the tail. He was a pro, although he didn’t have a military build. Mac made some jokes with the Americans in order to give him sight lines on his six o’clock, but he couldn’t place the bloke’s intention. It wasn’t a hit, which was just as well because Mac wasn’t armed. If the tail wasn’t a shooter, then it remained to be seen if this was about contact or surveillance. Either way, Mac wanted to seize the initiative and panic some answers out of the bloke before he could think too clearly.

Turning to listen to one of the Americans’ jokes, Mac saw the tail merge with a guided tour party which was moving towards Mac’s group. Mac continued walking with his party into the north pavilion which was cool, thanks to the high, vaulted ceilings of the tropical architecture. They walked through the exhibits of giant Balinese dance puppets, demon masks and shadow puppets. Some of them were centuries old and reflected a culture that the Dutch, Catholics, Javanese and Muslims had been unable to dilute. Keeping the jokes going with the Yank couple behind him, Mac was able to slow his group until the guided party were almost merging with the Dutch and Americans.

Up close he now saw that what had passed for boyish at a distance was more like chiselled early thirties. Sighting a lump on the guy’s right hip under his trop shirt, Mac decided to play this carefully.

After half an hour in the Bali theatre pavilion – where Mac heard a commentary from an American about why George Bush’s son should be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee – they moved out into the midday heat, which Mac put at around thirty-six degrees, ninety-five per cent humidity. Moving across another long lawn to a temple gate, Mac saw his chance and abruptly split from his group, then walked towards a smaller gate on the edge of the lawn to his right. Without looking back, he ducked through the temple gate into a serenity garden. Continuing to walk at pace, Mac bounced out of the heat, up some stairs and into a service pavilion which had a large hardwood-lined hall containing a drinking fountain and seats for mothers, with toilet entrances along the far wall.

There was a fair amount of traffic into the gents, and Mac moved with it, guessing correctly that the toilets would also have an external entrance. Then he scythed through the milling tourists and skipped down the steps outside, jogging across a lawn and through another temple gate, throwing himself against the flat of the far wall.

Gulping for air, the burn on his face now throbbing with his pulse, Mac waited for the tail to follow, wondering what he’d do against a gun. Scanning through the trees along the brick and stone fence, he noticed a guard house set-up on the wall between the temple gate and the next pavilion. It looked ornamental but it might give Mac the advantage of higher ground should he need it.

Moving to his right through banyans and ferns, Mac got under the guard house while staying hidden by the foliage. He clambered up one of the mini-banyans, pushing his right foot against the flat bricks and grabbing onto the ledge of the guard house. Throwing himself across from the tree to the guard house, he scrambled into the small structure just as the tail came through the temple gate. From his hide, Mac saw the tail scout the lawn in front of him and then the trees against the wall on either side of him. Clearly thinking there was no way Mac could have got across the lawn without being seen, the tail started walking casually in Mac’s direction, just a relaxed tourist interested in the vegetation.

Controlling his breath and wishing he’d put more analgesic on his burn, Mac ducked down and looked through the filigree masonry of his hide as the tail drew almost level with the guard house. The bloke was about to move on when something caught his eye and he moved closer to the wall in front of Mac, looking at a broken banyan branch.

Shit! thought Mac, as the tail moved closer to the branch. Mac had no choice. Driving upwards with both thighs he jumped clean over the masonry railing of the guard house, between the trees and onto his adversary. The Indonesian didn’t see Mac until the last second, but he managed to lift his right forearm as Mac descended onto his chest. The air expelled from the tail as he was catapulted backwards, Mac on top on him as they rolled onto the lawn. Grabbing for the gun at his hip, the tail was fast to react but Mac grabbed his wrist, threw a right elbow into the bloke’s teeth and then twisted the tail’s right forearm into a wrist-lock before he could recover from the blow. Gasping with the pain, the tail attempted a kick but Mac put more pressure on the wrist-lock and the resistance stopped. It didn’t matter how pro you were, no one wanted a broken wrist.

Reaching for the bloke’s holster, Mac grabbed the small automatic handgun and threw it into the bushes before using the wrist-lock to get the tail on to his feet and into the cover of the trees. The tail’s lips were white with the pain of the wrist-lock as they moved into the shade, and suddenly he went slack. As Mac tried to compensate for the man’s slump, the tail reacted, throwing his right knee into Mac’s groin and then a knife-hand at his throat. Stumbling from the pain in his groin, and taking the throat-shot on the carotid, Mac ducked and weaved to his left as the tail gave himself enough room to launch a roundhouse kick from his right leg. Mac was waiting for it, and was already weaving to his right, leaving the tail open to a right-leg kick. Mac took the opening and connected perfectly with his own roundhouse to the tail’s supporting leg. Taking Mac’s kick directly on the anterior cruciate ligament, the tail collapsed with a groan, his knee a misaligned mess. As Mac dived on the man, looking for a carotid choke-point to end it quickly, there was a familiar feeling of steel pushed against his scalp behind the right ear followed by a hammer cocking. Immediately, Mac removed his hands from the tail and let his quarry roll away as a hand grabbed a fist of his hair and the barrel pressed further into his scalp.

Kneeling in the pale brown banyan leaves, hands in the air and panting, Mac wondered where he’d thrown that handgun. And then, suddenly, it felt like time for a prayer – at least if he was going to die, it would be in a Balinese serenity garden.

‘So, McQueen,’ came an Asian male voice with a faint American accent. ‘You called?’

Panting, Mac slowly turned to his right. The gun in his face was a chrome Desert Eagle.45, the forearm was massive and the large round face was as serious as anthrax.

‘Hi, Bongo,’ Mac rasped. ‘How’s it going?’

Denpasar’s traffic echoed into the silence between Mac and Bongo. Through the opened ranch sliders on the first-floor balcony overlooking Chinatown, Mac was dimly aware of the tail sitting on a lawn chair smoking a cigarette, a bag of ice strapped around his left knee. Inside, Mac and Bongo sat under a ceiling fan, talking over a low coffee table.

‘Look, Bongo,’ said Mac, gazing down the navel of the Desert Eagle, ‘let’s start this again, okay?’

Bongo looked from his position on the sofa. ‘What, you started for a first time?’

Mac leaned forward from the armchair and grabbed a bottle of Vittel. ‘I wanted to talk, Bongo, that’s it.’

‘McQueen just wants a chat – first time for everything.’

‘You know I don’t want to kill you, mate,’ said Mac, the adrenaline of the fight subsiding.

‘Well someone does,’ said Bongo, pulling the lapel down on his trop shirt to expose a large surgical dressing taped on his left shoulder.

‘Gunshot?’ said Mac.

‘Wasn’t no mosquito, brother. Why don’t you start by telling me what’s going on? Then we’ll have something to talk about.’

‘You know I can’t tell you what I’m doing. Come on, mate,’ said Mac. Bongo understood the rules of their profession.

‘Then I can’t help you, McQueen,’ he said, lighting a smoke.

‘You can tell me what happened at the meet, the last one with the Canadian,’ said Mac, sensing Bongo had a story he wanted to get off his chest.

‘I could tell you lots of things, McQueen, but we should start with what you gonna tell me.’

Sipping on the water, Mac shrugged.

‘Like, you tell me why a meet run by the Aussies suddenly turns into an ambush?’ Bongo said.

‘Mate, I wasn’t -’

‘Like, how is it that a shooter walks out of a door at this meet and starts putting holes in me?’

‘Shooter?’ said Mac.

‘Three, actually,’ said Bongo, smoke streaming out of his nostrils.

Pausing, Mac tried to stay clear about the story. ‘Well, Dili’s a bit lawless right now, Bongo – maybe they saw the Anglo with a local minder and decided there was some cash?’

‘Did I say they was militia?’ snarled Bongo.

‘Not militia?’

‘You think I’d get jumped by some hairy kid with a Castro T-shirt?’

Mac shook his head. Bongo’s reputation put him out of the amateur leagues.

‘So what happened?’ said Mac.

‘I was bodyguarding this Canadian dude for the Aussies,’ said Bongo, his gun holding steady. ‘We go into this mansion in Dili and the Canadian asks a pretty local girl about Bow or Boa – something like that – and the shooting starts.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Like I said, McQueen – I’m wondering why the Aussies put me in that shit?’

‘Okay, Bongo,’ said Mac, eyeing the gun. ‘I’m going into Dili and I want a heads-up – no one on my side has details of the Canadian or the meet, and I don’t like flying blind. I heard that the Canadian had a minder down there and you were the first person I thought of. So I took a punt, put the word out through Saba.’

The heavyset Filipino contemplated the floor between his feet and then looked back. ‘Maybe we can talk some more, but what’s in it for me?’ he said.

Having worked with a lot of soldiers over the years, Mac knew they saw their priorities in terms of duty, money and payback, in that order. Bongo’s sense of duty might have evaporated when he went freelance, but that left two incentives.

‘I can offer you money or payback,’ said Mac.

‘I’ll take both,’ said Bongo.

‘You’ll have to work for it,’ Mac countered. ‘Maybe I can keep you on the payroll? I’d have to okay it, but -’

‘And the payback?’

‘Well that’ll come down to circumstances, right?’

Bongo didn’t look convinced.

‘Okay, mate,’ said Mac, trying to salvage the deal. ‘I’m going to need some protection down there, and if the shooter comes into the open, you take your shot and I look the other way. Fair?’

‘Maybe.’

‘But only once I’ve got what I want,’ said Mac.

Mac’s tension eased as a smirk creased the sides of Bongo’s mouth.

‘What’s funny?’ asked Mac, smiling tentatively.

‘Nothing, brother,’ said Bongo.

‘Come on,’ said Mac.

‘Well, this one won’t come into the open,’ said Bongo, stubbing his cigarette in the ashtray.

‘Why? Who we talking about?’

Bongo grinned. ‘The shooter – it’s Benni Sudarto.’

Mac’s tension returned twofold and his face must have told the story because Bongo slapped his leg with his gun and laughed at the ceiling.

‘Still wanna go to Dili, brother?’

The shower pressure was strong by Indonesian standards and Mac savoured it longer than he normally would. He was tired, needed a nap – and the stress of the Sudarto information was playing tricks on his facial muscles, making them twitch and spasm across his forehead and jaws.

Drying off, he grabbed a Bintang beer from the mini-bar, pushed through the bungalow’s French doors and looked around the tropical gardens of the Natour Bali Hotel. There was an out-of-sight splash from the pool and, diagonally opposite, two housemaids giggled outside a room. Otherwise, it looked clear.

Pulling back into the room, Mac opened the A4 envelope and shook the contents onto the writing desk. There was a one-page work-up for his cover, both personal and corporate. He already knew his Richard Davis and Arafura Imports details, but he’d never used the sandalwood trader pretext in East Timor, so he memorised the three commercial contacts he would approach and had a quick read of the magazine clippings and LexisNexis printouts about sandalwood prices, the Christian icon trade and the main importer into Sydney.

In a plastic folder were the printed catalogues for Arafura’s distribution, with the icons divided into Mexican and Guatemalan imports and their price per hundred. Mac put these pieces of collateral aside – they’d be making the trip with him.

Three code names were mentioned in the operation outline: Blackbird, he was aware of; Centre Stage was the official name for the Canadian; and Mac recognised his own ASIS moniker, Albion. There were also frequency settings for the radio set, should he get that desperate. He didn’t need to memorise them; there were only three frequency/bandwidth combinations used by the firm in contact with the Royal Australian Navy, and Mac knew them by heart.

He thought about the mission brief Tobin and then Atkins had outlined for him: find out if Blackbird was still able to be operated by Canberra, and then work on the question of Operasi Boa. What was it? When was it happening? The Canadian was not top of the list, but he was included in the official tasking. His background was also mentioned: YARROW, William Donald, DOB 07/04/1949; graduate of McGill University; accountant from British Columbia. CEO of an import/exporter and distributor, exploring opportunities in Bali and East Timor. Yarrow had apparently cheated millions from Canadian excise over the years, and was wanted by Canada Customs and Revenue Agency for fraud and evasion. Though Canberra didn’t consider the Canadian all that important, Mac decided to make his own decision about him.

Fishing a box of matches from the writing desk drawer, Mac put all the briefing papers in the steel rubbish bin, lit the A4 envelope and threw it in. As the flames consumed the brief, he dug out the Cathay Pacific sewing kit from his toilet bag and ran a cotton line from the French doors to the handle of a coffee cup, which he then looped over the bedpost. There was already a chair under the main door handle. As he crawled under the sheets Mac wondered about the trip to Dili and whether he was doing the right thing by running his own intelligence gathering separate to Atkins and Tobin. It was a bad habit of his, and one that had not made him any friends on the higher rungs. There were always good reasons for staying with the program and going along with the information you were being fed, but Mac had already found an information gap between Atkins and Tobin about Boa and he hadn’t been comfortable with Garvey’s furtiveness.

Mac was someone who actually worked out the placement of the aircraft’s exits every time he flew; he read the fire-escape diagram on hotel room doors. During his time in the Royal Marines, Mac’s section leader, Banger Jordan, had drummed into the Commando candidates the credo: there is no mission without an exit. ‘If you don’t know how to get out, then don’t go in!’ he would scream at them in his thick Geordie accent.

Lying in bed, he let the scenarios unfold without forcing them too much. Tobin’s and Atkins’ assertions that they didn’t know the fate of the Canadian or of Blackbird seemed genuine because Bongo – who was there – had escaped from the mansion in Dili with a chunk missing from his shoulder and with the Canadian and Blackbird still in the room. Alive.

The complication came with Captain Benni Sudarto. Sudarto’s presence in that meet had aroused Bongo’s anti-Australian instincts, because Sudarto’s training had included time at Duntroon and several rotations in the Australian SAS. So Sudarto had been trained at Australia’s elite army academy, mused Mac, but he was also a certified thug, murderer, torturer and filler of mass graves.

Benni Sudarto had moved quickly through officer school and special forces training and then opted for Indonesia’s violent special operations regiment, Kopassus. Over the years, Mac had followed Sudarto’s career, which could also be plotted by cross-reference to Amnesty International reports. Having made his name in Aceh and Ambon, Sudarto had really become famous in East Timor, hunting Falintil ‘terrorists’ through the mountains and shutting down villages.

But the part of Sudarto’s story Mac was most interested in was the last sighting of him, in that room in the mansion, shooting at Bongo. According to Bongo, Sudarto had been in plainclothes, and so had his two henchies. A Kopassus captain suddenly working without his uniform meant one thing: Group 4, Kopassus intel – and that was a problem for Mac.

Group 4 was a secret unit of Kopassus that performed an amalgam of roles, including military and civil intelligence, SWAT-like operations and a secret police function. As East Timor headed towards their independence ballot, Mac wondered what Group 4 was doing there and why they were ambushing Canadian and Philippines nationals. It seemed like an overreaction, or perhaps a panicked reaction. Sudarto was too smart to start shooting for no reason. He was secreted during the ambush, he was doing surveillance, he obviously had Blackbird made and no one on the Australian side had been aware of it. He had the information superiority which gave him the chance to feed all sorts of rubbish back to ASIS and play Canberra for fools. But, instead, he’d broken cover and started putting holes in the players.

The last thought Mac had before he fell asleep was: why?