‘Leena, can you get me our person in SingTel, get me a street address for a Singapore mobile number? I’ll hold.’
Waiting for Leena to complete the inquiry, Mac wondered about Operasi Boa, the mere mention of which had resulted in Blackbird and Bill Yarrow being snatched and Bongo shot. Weren’t the Indonesian military now beyond embarrassment? This was an organisation that had systematically terrorised and repressed East Timor for twenty-four years, in which time they’d already wiped out a quarter of the province’s local population.
‘SingTel confirms a physical address at that mobile number,’ came Leena’s voice over the phone.
Writing the address on his pad, Mac wasn’t overly hopeful about what it would yield. Commercial front organisations were set up the same way all over the world and the goal was to avoid being surprised.
As he went to sign off, a small column of letters grabbed Mac’s attention. Looking down the column of the logs, most of the spaces in the column had a dash, which was why he hadn’t noticed it, but at the end of the document a few lines of the column held a simple letter ‘S’.
‘Leena, what does the S mean on these sat-phone logs?’ asked Mac.
‘Which bill is it?’ she asked.
Looking around the header, Mac found the TI logo. ‘It’s Telkom Indonesi, and underneath it says Powered by InMarSat.’
‘Okay,’ said Leena, the sound of a pencil clicking against her teeth as she flipped through her telecom manuals. ‘The S on the TI sat phone means setempat.’
‘Remind me…’ mumbled Mac, embarrassed that he had such basic Bahasa Indonesia after working for so long in South-East Asia.
‘Setempat means local – a local call.’
‘Okay,’ said Mac, his adrenaline pumping in his temples. Running his finger down the last page to Rahmid Ali’s final activity on the sat phone, he found a cluster of calls made to an ‘S’ number during the two days that Ali had been in Dili. Maybe Rahmid’s connections weren’t in Jakarta or KL. Perhaps they were in Dili the whole time.
Reading out the number, Mac asked for a reverse-listing. He wanted a street address.
‘Nothing on that one, Albion,’ said Leena.
Looking back at it, Mac saw the last numerals were 4216.
‘Leena, try it again, but the last digits are four, two, zero, zero.’
Tapping rang out from a cheap keyboard. ‘No luck there.’
‘Okay, try four, zero, zero, zero, as the last four digits,’ said Mac, massaging the side of his face.
The keyboard rattled again and Leena – warming to the chase – chuckled. ‘That’s pretty good, Albion.’
As he listened to Leena read the street address, it immediately registered and Mac could see it as if he was standing there. He didn’t need her to give the listing’s name; it was PT Watu Selatan.
‘Thanks, Leena,’ he said, signing off and walking around the room. Watu Selatan was a large organisation, and the next challenge was to find out who sat behind the extension that Rahmid Ali had called. Mac had been in there, sat with Adam Moerpati, and Moerpati had tried to butter him up, get him into the Resende.
Staring at the phone logs from the other side of the room, Mac told himself it couldn’t be – Habibie’s personal intel operators surely wouldn’t be that brazen… would they?
Sitting at the desk again, Mac picked up Adam Moerpati’s business card and looked down the list of phone numbers. The first was for the switchboard, the second was his direct number: it ended in 4216.
‘Well, fuck me,’ whispered Mac in the gloom. The President’s men weren’t simply brazen, they were near suicidaclass="underline" they had a spy across the road from army headquarters.
CHAPTER 33
After walking each side of the street for six minutes, Mac moved to the entrance of a three-storey building tucked between Denpasar city centre and the suburbs. Having been identified by the receptionist, who pushed a button on her desk to unlock the glass entrance door, Mac walked into the nondescript offices of Triangle Associates, a once-thriving Perth construction consulting firm. Aussie SIS had bought out Triangle’s partners in 1991 and slowly let the best people go. Now it was operating in Denpasar and headed by Martin Atkins, which – Mac used to joke – was where you landed when you got rid of your best people.
‘Macca!’ said Atkins, reaching out a hand of greeting in the lobby. ‘Sorry about the change of plans, but someone flew in overnight.’
Leading Mac through to the meeting room, Atkins chirped on about the weather and Indonesian politics. Mac’s heart sank as a fifty-something Anglo male with a bullfrog neck stood and held his tie to his stomach.
‘G’day, Alan, how’s it going?’ said the bloke, trying an overhand shake.
‘Not bad, Carl,’ said Mac, looking into the wonky eye of Davidson’s long-time rival, Carl Berquist. ‘Didn’t expect you to be here.’
‘Oh, you know, mate,’ said Berquist, trying to be chummy. ‘Just keeping an eye on what we’re up to.’
Mac managed not to snigger at the optical reference – Berquist’s punter’s eyes could be disconcerting if you hadn’t been around them for a while.
‘And I guess Tony’s in Canberra, keeping an eye on your analysts, right?’ said Mac, trying to make it light but failing.
Atkins gave Mac a death stare.
‘Alan’s been in the field for a while – tough time in East Timor,’ said Atkins, then held up a finger to Berquist. ‘One minute, Carl?’
Turning to Mac, Atkins was white-lipped as he led Mac out of the room by the elbow.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, McQueen?!’ he hissed as they reached the water cooler in reception.
‘Me?!’ said Mac, furious. ‘What the fuck are you doing, Marty?’
‘I’m debriefing you on fucking Masquerade, McQueen. It’s what we do, mate!’
The receptionist, a young Anglo woman, cleared her throat and disappeared through a door behind the desk.
‘See what you’ve done now?’ said Mac, aware that a couple of former footy players arguing might seem intimidating.
‘Grow up, Macca!’ said Atkins, as he straightened his tie.
‘I don’t need to be lectured on how debriefs work, Marty,’ said Mac, pointing at the meeting room door. ‘But we don’t debrief to the analysis and assessment people.’
‘Gee, sorry, Macca. Didn’t know you were making the rules for Aussie intelligence now.’
‘We do it the way we do it so I can say things to you informally that might not go into the CX.’
‘You think Carl can’t tell the difference?’ demanded Atkins, as furious as Mac. ‘He’s a director, Macca! He was spooking when you were in primary school.’
‘So they say, but Tony’s the relevant director,’ said Mac.
‘Relevant?!’ growled Atkins. ‘Try some relevant manners.’
‘Me?!’ snorted Mac, breathing shallow. ‘That’s rich.’
‘Yes, manners! You’re not going to come into my office and speak to the director of analysis like that, mate. Not how it works,’ said Atkins, his face red.
Taking a breather, Mac and Atkins put their hands on their hips.
‘You could have told me, mate,’ said Mac, taking the edge off his voice. ‘Frankly, I would have liked some warning that I was going to be discussing Masquerade in front of someone like Carl Berquist.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Atkins.
‘Come on,’ said Mac, trying to push Atkins back to the meeting room.
‘No,’ said Atkins, shrugging off the hand. ‘What did you mean by that comment?’
‘Come on, Marty – Berquist is pure Jakarta Lobby.’
‘What lobby?’ snapped Atkins.
‘You know, the ones who say there are no militias in East Timor, and if there are, they’re not connected to the military, and even if they are connected it’s a rogue element, but even if they’re not, they’re a calming influence on the violence, et cetera, et cetera…’
‘Oh, that lobby! You mean the people who want some kind of evidence of homicidal militias controlled and funded from Jakarta before we write reports that the Prime Minister is supposed to rely on? Is that the conspiracy we’re talking about?’