The nurse smiled, nodded and opened the door wider for him.
‘She just woken up, Mr Alan.’
Inside was a woman lying supine on a bed, bandaged like a mummy, wires holding her hands up in muslin slings. Her face seemed fi ne but there was a lot of bandaging and cotton netting around her head which suggested bad burning. Mac sensed from the profi le of the bandages that she’d lost her left ear.
‘Bronwyn Bruce?’ asked Mac.
The girl nodded, whispered, ‘Yes.’
‘I’m Alan McQueen, Australian Foreign Affairs.’
‘Hello,’ came the whispered reply.
‘I met your brother and husband and mum this morning – they were looking for you. They thought the worst, so I’m going to tell them you’re here, okay, Bronwyn?’
She nodded, and Mac let himself out into the hallway, fi shed for the card in his breast pocket, found David Bruce’s hotel number and called. The desk guy put the phone down and three minutes later David came on the line. He sounded empty, fl at.
When Mac told him the news, he started crying.
‘Thank you, thank you, Mr McQueen,’ he managed when he got his breath back. ‘Thank you so much. Is everything fi ne? I mean -‘
Mac told him as much as he knew, told him the suite number and let himself back into the room. ‘They’re on their way,’ said Mac.
Bronwyn nodded slowly and Mac was going to let her get some rest but noticed her hands were moving about on the wires, trying to touch her belly. Then Bronwyn’s eyes darted down to her stomach and they went wide, like she’d been slapped. ‘My baby,’ she whispered, her bandaged hands straining to reach her belly. ‘My baby’s gone.
My baby!’
Mac didn’t understand and looked at the nurse.
‘Bronwyn come in with baby,’ said the nurse, making a shape of a pregnant woman.
Mac looked down at Bronwyn’s abdomen, which was fl at, and the nurse gave him a look that said more than a million words.
‘ My baby, my baby, my baby, where’s my baby? ‘ Bronnie’s face was screwed up in anguish, her voice getting louder. ‘ I want my baby, oh God, God, oh my God, my baby, I want my baby! ‘
Mac stood there feeling as sad and useless as he’d ever felt.
He couldn’t do anything for the woman – couldn’t even hold her bandaged hands for fear of hurting her, and he couldn’t say anything.
What was there to say? It’s okay? It’s going to be all right? It wasn’t okay and it wasn’t all right. She’d been fi re-bombed and lost her baby. It was all wrong.
Bronwyn’s voice was becoming hysterical, building and building like a storm. Soon she was screaming for God, for her mother, for her baby, then demanding she be allowed to die. Her screams were so loud and disturbing that a doctor and nurse ran in to see what the commotion was about, by which time Bronwyn’s face was purple and she was trying to pull off her bandages.
Mac backed out of the room into the corridor, where staff were gathering. Other patients emerged into the corridor, worried by the cries that signalled pain well beyond the physical. Mac saw Jenny approaching down the hall and told her what was going on. She walked into the room and a few seconds later Bronwyn’s screams had subsided into loud sobbing. As the noise level got lower Mac heard Bronnie crying, I can’t, and Jenny saying, Yes you can.
Mac couldn’t get enough air and, fi nding a rubbish bin, vomited into it through mouth and nose. His knees were weak so he sat on the lino fl oor and prayed for that girl. From inside the room, he heard Bronnie beg to be allowed to die.
The nurses cleared the corridor and Mac was about to check on Ari when the Russian limped up to Mac’s end of the hallway, ashen-faced. When Mac told him what was happening, Ari shook his head at Bronnie and Jen’s conversation, which seemed to echo through the wards. ‘It is not right to make the womens sound like this,’ he said, looking up at the ceiling.
Just then Mac saw Bronwyn’s mother, husband and brother at the end of the hall. He stood in a hurry, opened the door to the room and motioned Jenny over. Bronnie’s lips were swollen – she didn’t take her bloodshot eyes off Jenny.
‘What is it?’ said Jenny as she stepped outside.
Mac tilted his head. ‘This is the husband, mother and brother.’
Jenny nodded. ‘Which one’s the husband?’
‘The taller one, Gavin.’
Jenny walked up to the party and gave her AFP title. ‘Bronwyn is doing well but Gavin, I’m going to have to ask you a favour.’
‘Yes,’ he said, laden with fl owers but his mood switching to fear.
‘I’m going to need you to be strong for your wife, okay? This is a time for Bronnie, not for the rest of us. Can you do that for her?’
Mac moved away, grabbed Ari and left. As he went through the swinging exit doors at the end of the ward, he looked back and saw Gavin sagging, David and Jenny holding him up by his armpits.
Flowers spilled on the lino.
CHAPTER 10
Ari stopped outside the hotel and Mac started to get out then paused and looked back at the Russian – one leg of his Levis looking like shorts, the other like jeans.
‘So, what have we got, mate?’ asked Mac.
Ari shrugged, chewed his gum.
‘We’re chasing Hassan, who apparently works for Khan,’ said Mac.
‘And Khan makes nukes and sells them to terrorists, right?’
Ari frowned. ‘Maybe.’
‘So, these bombings are nukes?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Ari, seemingly unconvinced.
‘Come on, mate,’ snapped Mac. ‘I’m in this now.’
Ari looked at Mac, looked away slightly, looked back.
‘This big explosion, with hole under road. This is very large bomb, or -‘
‘So they’d need a foreign group for that, right?’ said Mac.
‘You need person who can get bomb, person who can use bomb, and also way of bringing this bomb into Bali, yes? I am not thinking that young man with sarung and big smile is doing this, yes?’
Mac nodded. ‘So tell me about Hassan Ali.’
‘Not much to say,’ said Ari. ‘We was watching Hassan and his peoples for two weeks, fi rst in Java and then in Bali, yes?’
Mac nodded, impatient.
‘So on morning of the bombings, Hassan group split. My colleague follow one group back to Java and I stay here, watching the Puri. Then
– ‘ Ari made an explosion gesture with his hands.
Mac had a hundred things on his mind, what with the role he’d been assigned to with the bombings, now called Operation Alliance.
He couldn’t get his mind around all the facts, and he was tired.
With the terror of the gunfi ght and the emotional scenes they’d just witnessed at the hospital, his mind was a blur. He swung his legs out of the car, but stopped as he suddenly remembered that face in the gloom, at the back of the pantry on Penang Princess.
‘Was Abu Samir in the Java crew?’ asked Mac.
Ari fl inched, his grey eyes squinting and glowing like pack-ice.
‘What is it you know about Samir?’ he spat aggressively. Just as quickly the Russian recovered, exhaled and thumped his right palm on the Camry steering wheel.
‘Sorry, McQueen,’ he said, grabbing his smokes from the centre console and sparking one. Looking in the rear-view mirror, Ari’s expression suddenly changed. ‘It is the fucking BAIS again.’
Mac turned and saw a black LandCruiser parked behind the Camry.
Freddi was probably waiting for Mac to get out.
Mac faced Ari again. ‘So?’
Ari stared through the windscreen and sighed. Intel people hated giving too much away, even if it could help them in the medium term. ‘You say and then I say, yes?’ He wound down his window, fl icked an ash.
‘We had eyes on Samir, off Flores yesterday afternoon,’ said Mac, not much to hide. ‘On a JI freighter.’
‘Local eyes?’ asked Ari.
‘It’s confi rmed. It was Samir,’ replied Mac.
Both men sat pondering, getting the timeline right. It seemed like Abu Samir had left for Java on the morning of the bombing and boarded Penang Princess. If the alignment was as it seemed, they could have both Hassan and Samir for the Kuta bombing – the ‘pro’ crew Freddi Gardjito had warned Mac about.