The point south of Dili’s main wharf area came into view shortly after 2 pm, just as they were finishing a meal of rice and fish served in a banana leaf. Pulling out his Nokia, Bongo dialled a number and spoke Bahasa Indonesia in a friendly tone.
The vessel slid into a small fishing wharf and, jumping onto the pier, Bongo and Mac waved their farewells, Bongo saying something and pointing at the M16s in the back of the boat.
Making their way down the pier, Mac felt paranoid, seeing a hundred chances for one of the locals to pick up a phone and inform. At the chandlery store, Bongo paused in the shadows and lit a cigarette.
‘So, we walk into Dili?’ asked Mac.
‘Thought we’d get a cab, like normal people,’ said Bongo, winking.
From a distance, a deep whining sound vibrated and got louder as Mac pushed further into the shadows of the chandler’s, his overwhelming fatigue now making him anxious.
‘UN,’ said Bongo, pointing to the pale blue sky. A white C-130 transporter plane with United Nations painted in black down the tail section of the fuselage flew over their position, lining up for a run at Dili’s Comoro Airport.
‘Democracy – we deliver,’ said Mac.
‘That thing?’ asked Bongo.
‘Probably the voter kits,’ said Mac. ‘From Darwin.’
Mac watched a Toyota minivan approaching down the white gravel road through the palms and the fishermen’s shacks. It pulled up with a crunch and the driver leapt out and came around to open the sliding door.
‘Greetings, Mr Manny,’ said the smiling driver.
‘Hi, Raoul,’ said Mac as he followed Bongo into the van.
‘Hello, mister,’ said Raoul, slamming the door.
They drove for twenty-five minutes and when Raoul pulled up it was two blocks away from the eastern wall of the Santa Cruz cemetery – the same wall that Bongo had been perching on when he shot Rahmid Ali.
Grabbing the bottles of water supplied by Raoul, Bongo and Mac walked the streets to Santa Cruz cemetery. It was the steaming hot middle of the day and many Timorese were having a post-prandial sleep. Dogs slept, a horse-drawn cart clopped past and two old women gossiped under a Bintang umbrella half a block away. No one showed any interest in them and they got into the shadows of the trees along the eastern cemetery wall and stealthed north until they found the tree that gave easy access over the wall.
Waiting for five minutes on the top of the wall, they cased the cemetery for Brimob cops and, when the ground looked clear, they dropped down in the cover of trees on the other side.
‘So where’s this body?’ asked Mac as they regrouped, now regretting that he’d insisted on searching Rahmid’s corpse for the car keys.
‘There,’ said Bongo, kicking a branch out of the way and sitting down with the two big bottles of water.
Following Bongo’s finger, Mac saw a fresh grave with a pile of reddish earth piled on top, the casement and tombstone not yet in place.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Mac muttered, as he found his own patch of dry leaves and lay down in the merciful shade.
‘What?’ demanded Bongo, his voice sounding half-asleep. ‘It was the best I could do, brother.’
‘Is there a prayer for this?’ said Mac, his brain now floating on a lilo. ‘I mean, that’s consecrated ground, right?’
‘What about, Sorry, boss – I’ll make this fast?’ whispered Bongo.
Laughing with his entire body, Mac let himself go into sleep. ‘You’re a lunatic, Morales.’
‘Man’s gotta do, McQueen,’ mumbled the big Filipino. ‘Man’s gotta do.’
CHAPTER 27
His beeping G-Shock stirred Mac at 8 pm. Shaking himself awake, he turned to Bongo.
‘Keep your fluids up,’ said Bongo, passing a water bottle. ‘You okay?’
‘Yep,’ said Mac, the act of sitting up causing a sensation in his brain like motion sickness. ‘How we looking?’
‘Half-moon, no Brimob – we’re clear.’
‘Guess we should find a shovel,’ said Mac, cricking his neck.
‘Got it,’ said Bongo, pointing to a gravedigger’s shovel in the leaves in front of him. ‘Cheap locks.’
Rahmid Ali’s shattered, bloody face looked out at Mac after clearing just a metre of soil, but he kept digging around the body to get good access to his pockets. Something squeaked in a tree, causing Mac to drop his shovel and reach for his Beretta.
‘Just a bat, McQueen.’
‘Yeah,’ said Mac, resuming his digging. Now that he’d had some sleep, the memory of the death camp in Memo was affecting Mac big time. He was feeling drained and morose.
Lowering himself carefully into Rahmid’s shallow grave, so he didn’t touch the body buried beneath, Mac started with the dead man’s breast pocket and then frisked down his torso to his chinos. Checking in the pockets of the dirt-covered pants, Mac again came up with nothing. He wasn’t certain what he’d been expecting: spies made a habit of not carrying too much with them, certainly nothing that could illuminate their identity. That’s why Bongo had only briefly ratted Rahmid before burying him, concentrating instead on a search of his room.
‘Nothing,’ muttered Mac, checking Rahmid’s rigid legs before trying to turn over the body. ‘Can I get a hand?’ he groaned as he tried to shift the deadweight.
Mac checked the back pockets and then frisked the backs of Rahmid’s legs.
‘Maybe the shoes,’ said Bongo, looking around the cemetery, SIG Sauer held behind his back.
Sliding his hands down Rahmid’s ankles, Mac felt something just above the left shoe.
‘Here we go,’ he muttered and pulled up the trouser cuff. There was a bulge on the outside ankle under a dark sock. Pushing his hand inside, Mac felt a Velcro flap.
‘Sock-pock, yeah?’ asked Bongo.
Mac pulled out a wad of US dollars, which he handed up to Bongo.
‘Thousand-dollar notes,’ sighed Bongo as Mac reached for the other ankle. ‘Six of them.’
‘Toyota key,’ said Mac, smiling as he held up his find. ‘One of them.’
Waiting on the cemetery wall for the 9 pm rendezvous with Raoul, Mac played with the Toyota key in his pocket. Short of discovering a cache of secret documents, or a well-used cell phone in that car, Mac would be leaving for Denpasar with nothing concrete. He’d sighted Rahmid Ali’s documents, allegedly a cry for help from a beleaguered Indonesian president. And he had the documents that Bongo had found in Rahmid’s room at the Turismo. He’d let the analysts at the section in Jakarta pick over whatever he could bring them, but it felt incomplete. He’d been sent to find Blackbird and establish the meaning of Operasi Boa; he’d done neither.
‘Don’t be hard on yourself, McQueen,’ said Bongo, picking up on Mac’s contemplation. ‘You’ve done the best you could – you were never going to walk in here and work it out in two days. Dili’s very complicated.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Mac, tired and hungry. ‘But I’ve been thinking that the key to it was really the Canadian – that’s where I should have started.’
‘Yeah, well you have a few things to take with you.’
‘Not much, mate,’ said Mac.
‘Not much, sure,’ said Bongo. ‘But forget these boys in the office, right, brother? They think secrets are just thrown in our face. What do they -’
‘What?’ said Mac.
‘You know, McQueen, they think -’
‘You said face,’ replied Mac. ‘Secrets thrown in our face.’
Bongo looked confused but Mac was already down the inside of the wall and casing the cemetery for Brimob.
‘Where you going?’ hissed Bongo. ‘Raoul’s here any second.’
‘Hold that cab,’ said Mac, setting off.
Creeping among the white crypts of Santa Cruz, Mac got within twenty metres of the Salazar grave and crouched as he cased the immediate area for ambushes. When Bongo had spoken about things being thrown in his face, Mac remembered the note Rahmid Ali had retrieved from the drop box at the Salazar grave. He’d read something from it, then balled it in his fist and thrown it at Mac’s face. What had Rahmid said? Something like, She’s not here.