Golden Serpent

CHAPTER 17

Mac hit the fi rst toll road, to Mojokerto, paid in cash, keeping off the databases. There were toll roads all the way west to Jakarta and he could have used the e-tag on the rental car to speed straight through and be billed when he took the Civic back. But if Matt found a one-off credit card usage, he could cross check it with the toll road databases and the rego of the rental car. He’d have the time and everything.

He stuck to the speed limit while trucks fl ashed past him. No excuses for the POLRI to pull him over. A white Commodore followed him for a while so he pulled over, let them pass, got right in behind them. The Commodore took an off-ramp fourteen minutes later.

He pulled into a shopping area, bought water, fruit, cotton buds and nail polish remover. Sat in the car park, removed his mo. He did it slow. If you looked after those things you could get three uses out of them – maybe four if you weren’t getting into fi ghts.

He found a local band on the AM radio dial playing covers of Billy Joel, Phil Collins and Olivia Newton-John. Hard to tell if they were in Bahasa or bad English. He’d re-strapped his wrist but the worst seemed to be over. The swelling was on its way down and the lump behind his ear was much better. He felt okay and kept his spirits up by slugging water from a large bottle on the seat beside him. And tried to sort himself out.

Garvs had said, ‘It’s over.’ It was far from that for Mac. He’d been through this before, in East Timor. The politicians and Service lunchers had wanted him out, but Mac had gone back in. That had been a clearer scenario and he’d been vindicated, made the offi ce guys look good. This wasn’t clear, and Mac was confused about his next move. He didn’t know what Garrison was up to, didn’t know what his connection might be to someone in the Service. He needed to know more about Eighty and where he fi tted. He also had no backup in the embassy, since there’d be a general low-level alert out for him.

Mac’s main role at the Service was in trade, banking and fi nance.

It wasn’t what they’d sent him to the Royal Marines for all those years before but it’s what he’d spent most of his time doing. That’s where Mac overlapped with Judith Hannah. She was tailing the Chinese intelligence blokes who were working on a maritime security system to protect Chinese trade. Indonesia was the key to it, given it had the world’s worst piracy problem in the world’s most valuable shipping lanes: the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea.

Mac and others – including many people in the US State Department – knew that the Chinese approach to maritime security was ultimately the establishment of a Chinese naval base in Singapore.

They’d been hinting at it, enlisting cocktail drinkers to it and generally seeding the idea for most of the 1990s. It was a simple piece of arithmetic: if your booming economy relied on making lots of stuff really cheaply, then you had to be able to transport lots of stuff really cheaply. Every time there was another act of piracy in the South China Sea, another maritime terrorist warning in the Malacca Strait, or another bluewater heist in the Java Sea, you added more slices of a per cent to the costs of your goods. Once those slices rose too high, either your profi t margins eroded or your buyers in Italy, Bahrain, Malaysia or Australia had an excuse to buy elsewhere.

And the Chinese economy was not able to handle an erosion of margin.

China had annoyed the region and the Americans by trying to establish a PLA navy base in the Spratlys in the 1990s, as an attempt to patrol the South China Sea. But the People’s Republic really needed to have its ships on the Malacca Strait. It couldn’t get a base in either Indonesia or Malaysia and the Chinese had threatened to go to Burma, which would mean pumping billions into the Burmese junta’s military.

It could even end up in an independent Aceh.

But it really had to be Singapore – ethnically Chinese, the unoffi cial banker to Chinese Communist Party cronies, and the controlling maritime presence in the Malacca Strait.

What had infuriated the PLA generals was the successful lobbying in the 1990s for the US Navy to build a military pier at Singapore’s Changi Naval Base. On completion in 2001 the pier was large enough to birth a Nimitz-class supercarrier, making it essentially the US

Navy’s hub in the western Pacifi c. Far from dousing the naval base aspirations of the Chinese, it merely intensifi ed their efforts. Even during Mac’s time in South-East Asia, Singapore had turned into a lobbying bazaar where every offi cial, professional, business person or public servant now had strongly held views on Chinese naval involvement in Singapore. The Chinese-Singaporeans were either pro-or anti-PRC; they either took their messages from the CIA or the MSS – China’s Ministry of State Security. You could go to cocktail parties or symposia where the room was divided in two.

But when Mac knocked this around with what Cookie had told him, he came up with nothing. What did a CIA rogue like Garrison and his Asian friend called Eighty have to do with Chinese maritime security issues?

It didn’t make sense.

Mac fi lled up at the Pertamina roadhouse just out of Bandung, dashed into the gents and pulled out the dark contacts. He bought a coffee and a roti and grabbed a white plastic table by the window. The coffee was crap – there was no excuse given the island they were on. Nibbling on the roti, he fl ipped through a transportation trade mag that had been left on a neighbouring seat.

Mac read the editorial: about the importance of foreign investment in vital infrastructure. The boring stuff. The kind of issues that Mac did for a living. He was even driving on the result of some of his work: the Trans-Java Highway. It was going to be completed over the next decade and would cost billions more than the government had.

The missing link was foreign investment and the problem was a thing called sovereign risk – the risk to bankers that the government would renege on loans, resume assets or fi x components of the market so investors couldn’t make an economic return on the asset. The way around the sovereign risk issue hinged to a certain extent on internal regulations and anti-corruption measures; but it also rested on the banks being able to own not only the asset, but the land it sat on. That was a big cultural problem in a place like Indonesia, where the ability to control territory or shipping lanes was the source of all power.

Mac and a Malaysian spook worked on it for years and fi nally found the gap – one of the big Golkar powerbrokers was a fi rm opponent of ceding land titles to foreign fi nanciers. A Suharto-era, old-school oligarch, he was TNI-aligned and steadfast in his opposition. He was also homosexual. Least, that’s what Mac took from the video footage and recordings he had of the bloke. Mac and his counterpart had a word in the shell-like with a couple of lads from BIN – the president-controlled intelligence service, which luckily had its own rivalry with the military-controlled intel group called BAIS. They sat back, waited for the announcement. Later, it was the Malaysian and Aussie bankers who announced they were taking fi rst lick at the low-hanging fruit that was Java toll roads.

He fl ipped on, a typical Indonesian journal in that it was written in both Bahasa and English. He was about to chuck it aside when something caught his eye, and he fl ipped back. There was a half-page display advertisement in black and white. Mostly in English, the banner read SURABAYA PORT STORAGE, followed by the acronym SPS. The artwork showed a group of gabled dock warehouses and a cartoon man in overalls holding a key. They were short-and medium-term freight transit facilities, self-service and non-bonded.

Down the side of the ad was a list of Surabaya Port Storage’s other sites. Mac felt his pulse lifting. Looking around the room out of habit, he ran his fi nger down the list and found it two from the bottom: Makassar Port Storage (MPS).

Mac got into character, convinced himself that the number on the MPS key was 46 and fed some change into the roadhouse TI phone.

Rang the direct number on the magazine ad. It answered in three. Mac said, ‘G’day, that Gerry?’

There was a confused sound at the other end, whispering, someone who didn’t have English handing over to someone who did.

A new male voice, slightly younger, came on the line. Said, ‘Hello?’, like he was asking a question.

‘Yeah, sport, Collier here. Brandon Collier from Orion.’

‘Hello, Mr Brandon.’

‘Mate, having one of those days – had a bunch of stuff in number forty-six. But I’ve just got the consignment and it’s all linen, mate.

Those useless bastards got me the wrong goods.’

Silence.

‘So I’m trying to work out what’s been left in forty-six, if what I’ve got is the frigging linen consignment. With me, sport?’

‘I not know, Mr Brandon.’

‘Can’t you just have a look for me, champ? I don’t want to send someone all the way to Makassar just to look in the damned shed.

With me, sport?’

‘Can’t look, Mr Brandon. No rule.’

Mac wanted to keep the bloke talking in the hope he’d just go and have a peek, see what was in the joint. But there was something else there – fear. They probably had his family or had threatened to do something similar to what they did with Minky if any Anglos or POLRI turned up for a butcher’s. Mac decided not to push it. He’d just have to look for himself.

Mac made it into Jakkers in one go, without getting lost. The outer and inner freeway rings of Jakarta were notoriously confusing, especially where they interchanged. Even the locals who drove them every day found them a nightmare. The worst was a three-level interchange which saw extra fl yovers being added every ten years to alleviate the confusion that had been created previously with the one below. A total Barry Crocker.

It was early evening when he drove through the leafy affl uence of south Jakarta. The Australian Embassy was on one of the grandest boulevards, called Rasuna Said. Mac skirted it, then made for a commercial area. He pulled into the off-street car park of a large private mail centre. It was fl uorescently lit inside. Walking in, Mac made for the service counter. A middle-aged Javanese face stared back blankly.

‘Georgie, it’s me, Richard.’

Georgie’s face sprang to life. Big smile. ‘Mr Richard – I did not know it was you.’

‘Like the hair, mate?’ he said, pulling the black hair off his face and smiling.

Mac found that joking about sudden changes of appearance was better than trying to fool people with it – especially people you knew, and wanted to use.

‘Mate, I left my key at home,’ said Mac, slapping at his pockets.

‘How’re the kids by the way?’

‘Teenagers! Mate! Forget it!’

Georgie waved his hand dismissively and walked behind the bank of mail boxes. He kept talking. ‘I say to my son yesterday, “How come you turn fi fteen and you suddenly the genius? You’re having the lend.” ‘

Mac loved it when Indons went all Strine on him. That was Indon Aussie diplomacy, right there.

Mac was laughing when Georgie got back in front of him. ‘Mate – he knows it all. Just ask him!’

‘It true,’ said Georgie with the Javanese wide-eyes. ‘It true!’

Georgie put down some letters, and the package Mac had parcelled up the night before. Consular mail sure beat the public version. Georgie put it all in a white plastic shopping bag with the mail centre’s logo on it.

There was a stack of TI phone cards on a rack behind Georgie.

Mac asked for a 10,000 rupiah version, paid in cash and left.

He opened the package in the Civic. Everything was there. He put the Heckler in the centre console and unfolded the blue ovies, pray-ing he hadn’t chucked the key in some fi t of effi ciency. Shaking the ovies, out came the cheapo pre-paid phone he’d bought in Makassar and the black diamond MPS key ring followed it.

He was about to start the Civic, but saw a TI phone booth beside the mail centre and decided to save the pre-paid phone for the more important calls.

Secretaries put him through to PAs, and fi nally Diane came on the line, ‘Richard! How are you, darling?’

Mac could have been a pool of melted heart, right there on the pavement. He choked a little. ‘Yeah, no worries.’

She chuckled, she pouted. She was making up with him and Mac was dissolving into his shoes. Total squirrel-grip.

He apologised for doing a runner in the restaurant and Diane apologised for dumping him by voicemail. They had a laugh. Diane said they should apologise a bit more personally over a few chardies.

Mac said how was tonight? Diane didn’t hear him right. So Mac lied that he was in Utara – the north of the city. Diane was speechless for a few seconds.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

‘Something caught in my throat,’ she said, then gathered herself.

‘So where are you staying?’

‘Well, I was going to check into the Sultan. I’ve just got into town.’

‘Why not stay down here?’

‘Where – at the embassy?’ asked Mac.

‘Sure. I’m in one of the cottages.’

‘Okay,’ said Mac. ‘What’s the secret handshake?’

Diane gave him the drum. Said she’d have his name at the gate.

‘See you at nine, darling.’

Mac signed off, breathed out. There was at least one game that he was playing in.

He pushed in the TI card and dialled again. Jenny Toohey came on the line. ‘Can we talk?’ he asked.

She said sure, she was going to be home at seven.

He was about to make another call, but hesitated. The last few days had seen him surviving more attempts on his life than he was happy with. He wondered about tempting fate. Wondered who really gave a shit about Garrison and his snatch on Judith Hannah. Maybe Garvs was right. Perhaps he should walk away and leave the whole wash-up to the politicians.

He looked into the middle distance. Tapped himself on the head with the blue plastic receiver. Tried to make himself see it the cynical way. Tried for once in his life to think like an offi ce guy. But he couldn’t make it come. He looked up at the sky, said, ‘ Faaarrrk!’

Then he called Lion Air, and booked the morning fl ight to Makassar.