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Leaning forward, Mac kept Davidson’s warning in mind. ‘Sir, I don’t know.’

The room broke into laughter, the Prime Minister finding that particularly funny. But beside him Mac felt the ONA leader bristle.

‘Could I ask it another way?’ said the Minister for Foreign Affairs, whose jolly round face belied a great intellect. ‘How does politics in Jakarta relate to Timor – in your opinion?’

‘I don’t think you can separate the economy from what’s happening in East Timor.’

‘You can’t?’ asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

‘Well, the Asian economic crisis has uncovered institutional and sociopolitical cracks that were papered over by the trappings of middle-class success. The economy meant the end of Soeharto, the economy started the street riots and the capital flight of the Chinese business elite, and the economy is also seeing the rise of Megawati and the interference of the IMF…’

‘And?’ asked the minister.

‘Well, General Wiranto runs one of the largest financial institutions in Indonesia – the military – and at a time when the rupiah is fifteen per cent of what it was worth two years ago, export resources such as those on East Timor are not to be relinquished lightly – they represent earnings in US dollars and deposits in Singapore bank accounts.’

‘You’re saying this is about money?’ asked the Minister for Defence.

‘I’m saying that Wiranto is stuck between a president who wants the East Timorese to vote on independence, and a general staff that doesn’t want to lose income and power. The claim that it’s all about Wiranto making a run at the presidency – well, he’s had opportunities for a coup, and he hasn’t taken them; he was offered the powers of dictatorship by Soeharto. Most Indonesians think he’s a constitutionalist.’

‘What about Wiranto’s role in this violence? In East Timor?’ said the Minister for Foreign Affairs, looking out the window.

‘Can’t comment, sir – all the intel I’ve seen says the militias are controlled and funded from Jakarta,’ said Mac.

‘That what the locals are saying?’ asked the minister.

‘No, sir – the locals are worried about jobs, mortgages and prospects for their children, not a bunch of communists running around in the hills of a province that they couldn’t even find on a map.’

The meeting ended forty seconds later and Mac noticed the ONA guys sulking while the politicians smiled at him.

As Mac exited through the anteroom, Sandy Beech was still seated, talking on his mobile phone. The one Australian who was actually on the ground in East Timor was not going to be heard.

Davidson wasn’t in his office when Mac arrived slightly late. He was annoyed with himself – Davidson was not only Mac’s main mentor in the firm, he also shouted the best lunches of anyone in the RG Casey building.

‘Alan?’ asked the secretary.

‘Guilty,’ said Mac, taking the note she passed him.

It was a tasking: back to Jakarta, reporting to Greg Tobin in the Indonesian capital.

Breathing out, he tried to stop himself swearing. Only a few hours ago, the DDG was telling him to stick around, that he was needed during the East Timor crisis. Canberra had always seemed a little tame, but after the chat with Gleeson and the ONA briefing, Mac had glimpsed a fresh start to his career: getting back into the management end of the intel networks, golf at Federal, skiing at Thredbo, a few beers with the lads at Bruce when the Raiders were playing. It was how the office guys worked it and it had seemed within his grasp.

Collapsing on the sofa opposite the secretary’s desk, he punched a number into his phone then stared blankly at Davidson’s note as he waited for his boss to answer. He was tired and dreaded the thought of another fifteen hours in planes and airport lounges.

‘Tony, just got your note,’ he said when Davidson picked up.

‘I’m in a meeting, mate,’ said the West Australian.

‘Thought Gleeson wanted me around?’ Mac pushed.

Down the line it was obvious that Davidson was excusing himself from his present company.

‘Yeah, mate,’ said Davidson, slightly breathless, a few seconds later. ‘But Gleeson gets a call from McRae at National Assessments – they were at Sydney Uni law school together, right? – and McRae is going off his trolley.’

‘About me?’ said Mac.

‘Yes about you!’ snapped Davidson. ‘What’s this shit about Wiranto being a misunderstood genius -’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘- a constitutionalist?! Shit, Macca.’

‘I thought they wanted my HUMINT,’ said Mac, referring to human intelligence of the type gleaned from interaction with people.

‘Yes, Macca – and fucking ONA have been carefully building a picture for the Prime Minister of Wiranto as a man who wants to be president and will inflict any atrocity on Timor to support that. And you walk in there and make him out to be some confused teenager -’

‘Actually, I said he was probably responsible for the militias in Timor,’ said Mac, not wanting to argue with his biggest supporter. ‘But Wiranto believes in constitutional government: he could have taken over when Soeharto was toppled, or launched coups when the riots started in Jakarta or when Habibie announced the East Timor ballot – but he didn’t. My point was the economic crisis puts him under pressure from his own generals to hold East Timor, that’s all.’

The sound of Tony Davidson sighing hissed out of the phone. ‘I happen to agree with you. But that’s not where the firm or National Assessments or even the government is headed right now, okay? Gleeson wants you back in the field.’

‘Jakarta?’ said Mac.

‘The section’s got something for you,’ said Davidson, referring to the intelligence section at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

‘Pay rise perhaps?’ said Mac, but the line was already dead.

The driver gave him a sealed envelope as they came into Jakarta in the white Holden Commodore. The note said: Lunch 1300. Usual place. CR.

CR was Cedar Rail – the internal code name of ASIS’s Jakarta station chief, Greg Tobin, and the usual place was the only place they’d ever met in Jakarta. Mac didn’t mind Tobin as much as some spooks did, but he was hoping that his boss didn’t want to play cloak-and-dagger. He was too tired for that shit.

Mac got out of the Commodore in the heart of Mega Kunigan – Jakarta’s version of The City in London – and walked two blocks north to the JW Marriott. Casing one side of the street, he suddenly crossed at a green signal and stared at the window displays on the other side, checking the reflections. Jakarta was a town of violent surprises – a sort of Australian version of what Vienna had been for British intelligence in the Cold War.

Satisfied there were no tails, he got to the Marriott early and sat in the enormous lobby for ten minutes, reading the Jakarta Post. Even when Greg Tobin sailed through the marble-lined area with Anton Garvey in tow, Mac remained seated for a few minutes, looking for signs of surveillance: eyes peering over newspapers, reception staff suddenly picking up a phone, people whispering into their shirt cuffs. Mainly, Mac waited to see if anyone came through the main doors thirty seconds after Tobin, looking too innocent. That was always the giveaway – no one entering the Marriott was entirely innocent.

Seeing nothing suspicious, Mac threw the Post on a coffee table and sauntered through to the buffet restaurant, with its open kitchen and talkative cooks. Greg Tobin stood with a smile and shook Mac’s hand.

‘G’day, Macca,’ he said, with all the toothy charm of a politician. ‘How are you, old man? Not too serious I hope?’ He pointed at Mac’s face as he sat, a masculine look of feminine concern.

‘No worries, Greg,’ said Mac. ‘Just a scorch.’

‘I missed you, darling,’ said Anton Garvey, tanned and bull-like. ‘You don’t phone, you don’t write.’

‘Garvs, you old tart!’ said Mac, shaking the big paw. Anton Garvey had been in the same graduate intake as Mac, back in the early nineties. They’d become close friends very quickly, not least because they’d both been boarders at famous St Joseph’s schools: Garvey at Joeys in Sydney and Mac at Nudgee in Brisbane.

The three of them small-talked, each of them playing their roles. Tobin, a year older than the other two, saw himself as the going-places leader-of-men. The former crown prince of the St Lucia campus at UQ acted as if he ruled the world and was merely waiting for his business card to reflect it. Garvey was the corporate man – not spectacular enough for a starring role, but a reliable team guy who didn’t like too much divergence from authorised behaviour. Mac seemed to have become the ruthless loner, a description he had loved as a younger man but which, at thirty, was starting to isolate him; the events in Canberra had made him feel as if he were cast as a paramilitary rather than a whiteboard warrior.

They got through lunch and Tobin ordered another round of Tigers before leaning into Mac’s intimacy zone. ‘Got something I need you to do, Macca,’ he intoned with a perfect combination of authority and charm. ‘Special assignment.’

‘One of those management courses in Canberra, eh Greg?’ joked Mac.

‘Well,’ said Tobin, clearing his throat and swapping looks with Garvey, ‘not quite, old man.’

Looking around the restaurant, Mac saw foreign business people trying to shake money out of the tree that was Indonesia. ‘So what’s the gig?’

Stroking his tie, Tobin reached for his beer. ‘We’d like to get a better idea of what the Indons might be up to.’

‘Up to?’

‘Yes, Macca – in Timor.’

Mac could feel Garvs shifting his weight, uncomfortable.

‘What about Atkins?’ said Mac, assuming that the firm’s man in Denpasar, Martin Atkins, was the Timor guy.

‘Marty’s a controller now, mate,’ said Tobin. ‘He’ll be running you, actually.’

‘So we don’t have someone in Dili?’ said Mac.

‘We did,’ said Tobin, gulping at his beer, avoiding Mac’s eyes.

‘And?’

‘And we need a good operator to replace him,’ said Tobin, now looking at Mac.

‘Replace him? What happened to our guy?’ said Mac, his gut turning icy.

‘Don’t know,’ rasped Tobin, ‘but we’d like to have a chat.’

Garvey came back to the table with two Heinekens and switched the discussion to the rugby league action of the past weeks.

‘The problems started with those hits on Martin Lang,’ said Garvey before he found his seat. ‘Can’t run around with your head sticking up like that – did you watch it?’

‘Highlights on satellite,’ said Mac, his mind elsewhere.

Garvey scoffed. ‘Cowboys game was okay, but shit, Macca – losing to the Roosters?! That hurt.’

‘Why not get us an HR course in Oz for the grand final,’ said Mac, sipping at the beer, ‘if Tobin’s game?’

‘Might work – get you retrained on the expenses protocol, mate.’

‘Get you an equity officer,’ said Mac. ‘Rid you of these negative gender-based attitudes.’

‘I’ll write a memo, get it moving,’ said Garvey. ‘By the way – see fucking Hugh Jackman’s doing the grand final anthem this year? That bloke a poof?’

‘Nah,’ said Mac. ‘It’s just the teeth, and he can dance.’

Around them the patrons in the Bavaria Lagerhaus – mainly expats from the embassy precinct of south Jakarta – were getting drunk and yelling at huge TV screens broadcasting sports from around the world. Europeans pointed in disbelief at Steffi Graf playing in a tennis final, North Americans barked at a NASCAR race at Michigan and the Aussies were glued to Aussie Rules footy.

‘So, Garvs – what’s with Dili?’ asked Mac. He was fairly strong on the Jakarta political economy side of it, but the TV reporting showed the island itself in meltdown and he needed some more background before reporting to Martin Atkins in Denpasar.

Looking at the label of his beer, Garvey made a face. ‘You heard Tobin. We had someone – a Canadian businessman, actually – keeping an eye on things for us, but he’s dropped off the map.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘It started with a meeting,’ Garvey shrugged.

‘You asked him to do something?’

‘Yeah, we picked up on Indonesian chatter and we wanted him to ask Blackbird about -’

‘Blackbird,’ interrupted Mac. ‘The girl who works for the Indonesian military?’

‘That’s her,’ said Garvey, nodding. ‘She’s been feeding us for a few months – works in the admin section of the TNI headquarters in Dili.’

TNI stood for Tentara Nasional Indonesia, the armed forces of the Republic and known until recently as ABRI. The military stood to lose the most from East Timor voting on independence from Jakarta, partly due to loss of power and partly because they owned most of the commercial concessions in the province. The logging, the coffee plantations, the oil and gas, and the sandalwood exports were all owned or controlled by military brass or Soeharto cronies. The new president, BJ Habibie, complicated matters: he was a non-military politician removing the army’s lucrative Timorese concessions.

‘So, Garvs, let’s get it straight. Was this Canadian treading on the army’s toes? I mean, was he messing with the generals’ interests?’

Looking uncomfortable, Garvey tried to avoid the question. ‘Look, Macca, let’s just say it was our fault, okay? We asked him to make a simple inquiry and he disappeared.’

‘Was he alone?’

‘Fuck, Macca!’ said Garvey.

‘What?’ said Mac. ‘What’s the secret?’

‘No, Macca, he wasn’t alone. Least, I don’t think so.’

‘So?’ said Mac, looking around to make sure no one was listening in; the Lagerhaus was owned by a former Indonesian intelligence agent and you never quite knew who was lurking.

‘Look,’ said Garvey, ‘Tobin wants to keep this simple – find what happened to the Canadian, find Blackbird, debrief and get out of Dodge. That’s the gig.’

‘Who was with the Canadian?’ said Mac, knowing that Garvey would break.

‘Shit, Macca. I’m actually not supposed to know that.’

‘So who told you?’

‘Scotty.’

Mac laughed. Rod Scott was one of the Old School of Australian intelligence, from the Cold War days. After his recruitment and his year with the Royal Marines in Britain, Mac had been rotated into the end of the first Gulf War where Rod Scott had been his mentor and guide. Scotty had showed him where to burrow into a government structure as a war ended, how to get the files and the influence you wanted, how to apply for and get the appointments that would ensure wheat contracts, oil concessions and construction work for Australian interests in the post-war rebuilding. His outrageous stories about Imelda Marcos were legendary and Mac knew that if a rumour came from Rod Scott, it was probably true.

‘Who, exactly, was there?’ asked Mac.

‘Well, Blackbird, for a start,’ said Garvey. ‘Like Tobin told you.’

‘She was there when the Canadian disappeared?’

‘Could be like that – or the Canadian never got to the meet.’

They stared at each other, Mac giving his old mate the don’t-fuck-with-me look.

‘This is why they want it kept simple,’ said Garvey. ‘The last thing we need is you chasing ghosts all over Timor, doing your superhero thing.’

‘Might help, that’s all,’ said Mac.

‘Mate, Marty will take you through that – he’s your controller on this, okay?’

‘Who else was there?’ Mac pushed.

‘Tobin will have me shot if I tell you that.’

‘I never liked you much anyway.’

‘I’m not saying any more,’ said Garvey, standing to go. ‘Let’s just say we’re fairly certain he had muscle with him at the time.’

‘Who?’ asked Mac, getting annoyed.

‘Don’t make me say it, mate,’ said Garvey, grabbing his mobile phone from the table.

Watching Garvey move towards the exit beneath the faux Bavarian tack hanging from imitation hewn wood beams, the picture finally came together, and Mac knew why the firm wasn’t admitting to the full scenario.

‘Not Bongo?’ Mac called to his friend’s back.

As Garvey hit the swinging door with his shoulder, he raised his middle finger without looking back.

Mac waited seventeen minutes for the signal from the Lagerhaus security guy that Saba – the bar’s owner – was ready to see him.

Bongo Morales was a former Philippines NICA operative who’d been trained in special forces by the Americans for CT work in Mindanao. Because he had a Javanese mother and spoke fluent Bahasa Indonesia, he’d later worked as a freelance hit man in Aceh, hunting the separatist GAM guerrillas for Indonesia’s military intelligence. Bongo was smart and dangerous, with a reputation that could easily hurt politically ambitious people like Tobin – hired guns were always the easy way of getting violence off the books, but when things turned bad they could be a liability. Mac suspected that Bongo was being excluded from the official record because the ASIS lunchers didn’t want to justify his presence in a ministerial memo, known as a CX. If Bongo was being excluded, it was because something went wrong in Dili and Mac didn’t want to land in that disintegrating city with Bongo holding a grudge against Australian intelligence.

They moved down the corridor and the Lagerhaus security guy searched Mac for weapons before leading him into Saba’s office, a white-tiled bunker with a desk at one end and a sofa and armchair set-up in the middle. A middle-aged Javanese man walked around the desk and shook Mac’s hand, gesturing to the sofa.

‘Mr Mac,’ smiled Saba, a flash of gold at the bottom of the right front tooth. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while.’

‘Been up in Mindanao,’ said Mac.

‘Not Irian Jaya?’ asked Saba, using the Indonesian term for West Papua. ‘That wasn’t you at Lok Kok?’

Mac laughed and so did Saba. Spies liked to one-up each other with superior information.

‘It’s nice up there this time of year – nice and cool,’ said Mac, brushing a phantom crumb from his chinos.

‘So what can I do for you?’

‘Remember a bloke called Bongo?’ asked Mac.

‘Maybe.’

‘I need to talk – and I mean talk,’ he said.

Saba nodded and Mac pulled an old credit card receipt from his wallet, wrote his mobile number on the back.

‘A message?’ said Saba, slow and steady like the first sentence of an interrogation.

Mac thought about it. ‘Tell him a blackbird sings but I don’t know the tune. Can do?’

‘Maybe,’ shrugged Saba, folding the receipt into an origami bird.