“Logistics and transport, for a second,” MacIntyre added. The admiral sat half turned, facing Tran with his arm hooked over his chair back. “You’d have to be able to move your hijacked cargoes in to your sales points, and supplies and equipment out to your raider bases regularly and without arousing suspicion.”
“We’re also talking about a big-bucks business operation here,” Christine Rendino added, booting up her laptop on the table across from Tran, “something you couldn’t conduct in a waterfront dive. You’d have to be able to access some pretty rarified circles in the area of banking, international trade, and finance, as well as high-level regional government.”
Captain Garrett crossed to the wardroom’s sideboard and removed a water-filled spray bottle from one of the cupboards beneath it. “I would project, then, that our piracy cartel must control at least one legitimate maritime shipping line with regular traffic routes and ports of call both inside and out of Indonesian waters, an internationally rated bank, and a major trading house or brokerage. Am I correct?”
Returning to the little palm, she lightly misted its glossy leaves.
“Exactly correct, Captain,” Tran replied. “However, there are two additional factors that narrow the field even further. Merely controlling these enterprises is not enough. They must be under tight, personal control, a rarity in these days of corporate entities. And finally, the driving force behind the cartel must be an individual who understands the culture of the Bugis sea clans in depth. He must be able to work with them and, most importantly, he must be trusted and respected by them. He cannot be an outsider.”
Garrett set the spray bottle on the sideboard. “That should narrow the field considerably. How long is our list of suspects?”
“Suspect, Captain: singular. In my investigations I have found only one man who seems to meet this convergence of factors.”
Popping the latches on his briefcase, Tran removed a folder. Placing it on the wardroom table, he flipped the folder open, spreading out the eight-by-ten news file photographs he had collected from the archives of the New Straits Times.
“This man.”
Captain Garrett returned to the table and joined her fellow officers in an examination of the pictures. She studied them for a long moment. “What’s his name?” she inquired quietly.
“Harconan. Makara Harconan. His father was a member of one of the old Dutch colonial families that managed to hang on after Indonesian independence. His mother was the daughter of a major Bugis clan leader.”
“Oh, yeah, Mommy,” Christine murmured, glancing up at Amanda. “You can buy me one of these for my birthday.”
Tran suppressed an ironic smile at the comment. As a police officer, Tran knew image rarely meshed with reality. Makara Harconan was an exception to the rule. He was the way a pirate king should be, very much in the classic Errol Flynn mold. Only the strength in those hard-lined features and the defiant boldness in those dark eyes were the real thing and not born from any school of acting.
Amanda Garrett slowly leafed through the photo file: Harconan in an evening jacket, escorting a prominent Singapore starlet; Harconan in a business suit, disembarking from an airliner; Harconan shirtless and smiling, leaning back against the rail of a Bugis schooner. Lightly she traced the curve of his jaw with a fingertip. “What’s his story?”
“As I said, the Harconans were one of the old Dutch East Indies colonial families that stayed on after Indonesian independence. Apparently a very tough and stubborn lot, well versed in political infighting and in the accumulation of influence. They had to be, to survive both the Sukarno and the Suharto regimes.
“From his father’s family, Makara inherited a number of assets, a small merchant’s bank with branches in Jakarta and Singapore, several small coastal cargo vessels, and an interisland trading firm with outlets on the major Indonesian islands.”
Captain Garrett tossed the file back on the tabletop. “There are your three major elements.”
“The beginning of them at least,” Tran replied. “However, what he inherited from his mother’s side was perhaps more critical.”
Captain Garrett leaned back against the table. “Go on.”
“From what I have learned, Makara Harconan had no great bond with his Dutch father. I suspect that his parents’ marriage was one of political expediency, an attempt to buy an ‘in’ with the Bugis clans. Be that as it may, the relationship between the father and the half-caste son never grew close.
“The same could not be said of the boy’s feelings for his maternal grandfather. The mother’s father took over the role of the male parent. As Makara grew toward adulthood, he spent the majority of his holidays aboard his grandfather’s trading schooner, learning of his Bugis heritage as well as the ways of the sea. By the time he was fifteen, he was a master seaman capable of navigating a pinisi from here to New Guinea and back. I suspect he did so more than once.”
Tran noted how Garrett smiled, her eyes distant. “What a marvelous childhood to have,” she commented. “Most kids only get to dream of sailing away to the South Seas.”
“Indeed. From all I can learn, Harconan and his grandfather developed a fierce affection for each other. There was only one drawback to the relationship.”
“Which was?”
“The grandfather was also one of the most notorious and ruthless pirate captains in the archipelago,” Tran replied. “The old renegade apparently schooled the boy in that as well. On this point, naturally enough, I have only the vaguest of coast rumors and supposition to go on. But in his teenage years, Harconan may actually have sailed on a number of raiding expeditions with his grandfather, very possibly being involved in the boarding and fighting. Also in the killing.”
“Damnation,” MacIntyre scowled. “I suppose you can say the boy came by it naturally. It’s in his blood.”
Tran lifted his hand in an open palm gesture. “More importantly, Admiral, it’s in his mind. Makara Harconan is a man between two worlds, the world of the western-oriented twenty-first century and the more ancient and lawless realm of the Bugis sea gypsy. Being intelligent, aggressive, and educated to think outside of conventional morality, he has learned how to apply the tools and lessons gained in one world to the other.
“When he was eighteen, Harconan was sent to college in Europe for six years, first studying economics and business administration at the University of Amsterdam, and then attending the Dutch Maritime Academy, earning his merchant officer’s ratings. Upon his returning home to Indonesia, he requested and obtained a placement aboard one of his father’s coastal freighters. To no one’s surprise, within a year he was commanding the ship.
“At that moment, almost to the day, the affairs of the Harconan family took a sudden dramatic upswing. Makara Harconan, it seemed, had a magic touch at nosing out profitable business, inevitably from islands with large Bugis colonies on them. It also seemed that his competitors were dogged with ill fortune. Some of them even had ships and cargo disappear completely.”
MacIntyre glanced down at the photos on the tabletop. “Damn peculiar coincidence, that.”
“Is it not? To proceed, by the time he was thirty, Harconan was the director of one of the strongest regional shipping lines in the archipelago. Harconan Seaways was also the premier moneymaker of the Harconan family holdings.”
Garrett frowned and sank into a chair across the table from Tran. “How big of an operation are we talking about?”
Christine Rendino fielded the question. “Currently, Harconan Seaways flags a total of nine vessels. Six of them are good-sized motor coasters working a series of scheduled and unscheduled interisland routes from the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea clear across Indonesia and up into the Philippines.