Rebels of Mindanao (4 page)

Hargens grabbed Thornton by his safari jacket. “Wait. We trust you. You don't trust yourself. We need your help. It's time to do your duty, again.”

Hargens was convinced Thornton was the guy they wanted for the mission, and time was getting short. “I have a job that needs to be done, directly for me, without CIA involvement or knowledge. The State Department is OK with this, thanks to Charlie Downs being involved. Major Hayes here will provide some limited support in the field.

“Between you and me, the CIA screws everything up. They don't know the territory and could embarrass the U.S. more than help.”

“You don't surprise me by saying that.” Thornton was getting interested. “What do you need? Want me to operate a safe house for you in Mindanao?”

“More than that, your place could become an
unsafe
house. I want you to go after a target, a Turk, named Mahir Hakki. Al Qaeda recruited him to bring in enough money to seed a revolution. Just take him out, quietly, and then the rest of the job can be left to the Philippine Army.”

Hargens continued. “Thornton, there could be some good incentive in all this for you, like that retirement fund you never earned anyplace.”

That seemed to pique Thornton's interest. “Luke, you've attracted my attention.”

“We can help you locate the target,” Hargens continued. “Hakki has exactly five million U.S. dollars with him, mostly in hundred dollar bills. Make him disappear.” Hargens zeroed in for the kill. “And Tom, maybe you did not do all you could have for Charlie on that Eastern European assignment, maybe you should have continued to serve. And maybe you can help him and me now. Maybe you can solve our problem—and your own.” Hargens was sincere and convincing. “Charlie still trusts you, you know.”

“And what do I do with the cash after I get this Hakki guy?”

“We don't care if the cash disappears. That would be the best solution for all of us, the U.S., and the Philippines.”

Thornton considered the general's offer. “And you would give me some support in the field?”

“Not much. That's the deal. But Major Hayes can show you some new toys we have, and he can get you some local assets.”

P
hilippine Airlines flight 193 angled upward, arching out of Changi Airport and over Sentosa Island, leaving Singapore receding into the mist as Elaiza heard the captain announce, “Mabuhay, and good morning ladies and gentlemen, our flight is expected to arrive in Manila on time at 1:47
PM
, Western Pacific time.” She looked out her window, saw Sentosa Island as that small strip of beach, the southeasternmost chip of Asia, where she had had lunch only yesterday, sparkled green and grew smaller.

Flashes reflected off flat surfaces in an area of buildings that is now a war memorial but once was Changi Prison, one of the many Japanese POW camps where thousands of captives were tortured to death or expired alone: British and Australian citizens-citizens of the lost empire on which the sun never set, until it set in 1945, Americans, and her own countrymen.

As the pilot continued with the usual boilerplate notices that she
ignored, Elaiza Otakan plugged in the earpiece of her iPod to block out the cabin clatter. The slow beat and haunting melody of the song she listened to captivated her, and the lyrics made her think it was written just for her:

dreams, rushing in, knowing what the end is, did you get everything you asked for, dreams, rushing in, dance floor, dance floor. Dreams, rushing in, tick tock, tick tock
.

She took off her Nikes and pulled her white-cotton-stockinged feet up onto the seat, sitting on them like the college girl she could almost pass for, flipping through the airline's monthly magazine. The tune suffused her brain, mixing with her recent memories and future plans. She thought about what her American boss, Major Hayes, had told her on the phone when he called from Manila the day before, and wondered what he wanted her to do that was so important to have her fly back to the Philippines before her job in Singapore was done. He wanted her to meet him in Davao City, where all the trouble was brewing. What possible urgency could there be to derail her important assignment to track the state visit to Singapore by the Philippine President? It was her first overseas assignment out of Manila for the Americans, and she had wanted to do it right. Something important must have happened. Her boss organized his time well, writing details down in that leather-covered diary he always carried with him. The major was not inflexible, but rather hesitant to make sudden changes in plans without a very good reason. Or, maybe it was because she was the lowest-ranking Philippine citizen working in her department, and the youngest. Maybe they just wanted to check her out, to see how she performed.

Major Hayes had given her the iPod for her twenty-ninth birthday present last month, and Mrs. Hayes let her download some of her CD's. They told her she could make good use of it on her Singapore trip. She could listen to the latest hip-hop tunes while she lounged around the hotel pool, they said, as if she would have any time for that.

The flight reached cruising altitude and she rearranged the small foam rubber airline pillow under her head and sat back up straight in her economy seat, trying to get comfortable for the long flight.

As her mind drifted, she remembered when she was just eighteen and traveled overseas for the first time, coming to the city she was flying away from today. It was good that she knew Singapore; the Americans needed someone who spoke the languages and knew her way around. It was a big opportunity for her to show her worth.

She had left her village in Agusan del Sur in central Mindanao for Singapore to escape that Japanese madman. Mr. Ono was actually a great benefactor and probably thought of himself as a humanitarian, but he had been mad enough to cultivate a young Filipina girl, starting when she was barely twelve, thinking he could eventually take this young virgin with him to live in Japan. That was the madness part; everything else about him was gentleman. After she graduated she had sent him a letter, thanked him for having paid the church school's tuition for her high school education, returned the support money he had sent to her, and left for Singapore to fulfill an
au pair
contract with a rich Chinese family whom she grew to know and love.

The Japanese owed the Philippines billions in reparations for the rape and pillage of the islands during World War II. Now, almost sixty years later, who had won that war? Elaiza considered her educational advancement as part of the spoils of that lost war. Japanese businesses were sitting on the land, owned factories, controlled major sources of food and raw materials, and set low salaries for the men and women they employed. Not just the Japanese, of course, but also the Germans, the Dutch and even the World War II victorious Americans participated in the downward bidding.

She dozed. Her neighbor, a bit too loudly waking her, asked, “Are you going home?”

Reluctant to start a conversation, Elaiza simply answered, “Yes.”

“Me too! I've been working for Toshiba for two years. I'm an electronics engineer. Going back home.” Her fellow traveler was a proud guy.

“That's great. Welcome back.” She thought that would end it.

But the engineer continued, “What did you do in Singapore? Were you a maid?”

The assumption took her back. “No, I was on a business trip for my employer.”

He was a religious person, and talked to her about God's blessings, which gave them the opportunity to work overseas and to send money back to their families and churches.

Elaiza and her engineer neighbor debated their country's future while they ate the cold-plate lunch served to them some hours into the flight. She asked how he thought their country could break out of the vicious economic cycle. She thought but did not say that the church kept the people quiet, the “opium of the proletariat,” and it also kept them over-populating the islands, putting millions into the work force in the last decade, with little useful work available. Proving once again the validity of the law of supply and demand, wages were low and the majority of families had trouble affording food every day. The irony: Christian values that encouraged large families bred unemployed workers, and the hopeless and landless ones in the provinces tended to become Communists, joining district leaders who promised a shared title to the fertile fields of rice and fruit. She hardly listened to the engineer's explanation of religion as a business philosophy; she had heard so many versions of hopeful stories in a land where there was mostly bad news.

When she finally told him, “Excuse me, please, I'm very tired,” and plugged her earpiece back in, he got the message and returned to reading his book.

Elaiza had found the way to make her own future. Thanks to her good education and excellent language skills, she was fluent not only in English and Tagalog, and had good enough Chinese that she had learned from the kids she cared for, but also knew several local dialects from her home island of Mindanao. Before the embassy job, she had always planned for any eventuality, starting with her first Singapore adventure, which she saw as a step to personal freedom. She would never let herself have to depend on anyone.

She saw the Philippines not as a developing country, but rather as a disintegrating economy, a banana republic in the purest sense, hamstrung by a primitive infrastructure and arcane attitudes. How could her country make it into the world-class society the forward thinkers visualized? How does one implement structural changes that conflict with the old cultural values? That's what she had wanted to hear from her President in his speech tomorrow. Professional, living wages would have to
be paid to government bureaucrats and officials to encourage them to be honest, which meant taxes would have to be increased to cover the costs. But higher costs of doing business meant that businesses would relocate elsewhere—Vietnam, China, Bangladesh, anywhere else—putting still more desperate workers into the streets, adding to the growing constituency for the Communists, or worse yet, Muslim Communists.

In fact, it was being reported that revolution in the Philippines was imminent and that conflict with the Communists and their New Peoples Army, NPA, was near, at the same time that the underpaid and prone-to-insubordination Philippine army was in rebellion against the current president and his regime. She realized that the salaries of even the well-educated were oriented toward bottom feeding; educated professionals could not afford to send their kids to college unless one of the spouses went overseas to earn a few dollars or euros as cleaning women or nurses. So the entire system in the Philippines was ripe for corruption. A small, or larger, cash “facilitation” presented with a wink would ease documents through the system, secure a position for a professional, find a parking place, or clear legal or illegal goods through customs. It was pervasive. No wonder that a junta of old army generals was threatening yet another coup, adding to the less than world-class image of her homeland as seen by the rest of the world. Well, maybe she could help do something about it some day, another reason for her to have taken that electronics course the Americans sent her to. It felt good to do such things, and even better to get paid for it.

The pilot came back with welcome news: “Good afternoon, we are 114 nautical miles from Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The weather is good; the temperature is 88° F. We will be landing at 1:51
PM
local time.” The aircraft was going into its final approach pattern. Before landing, she selected the same tune as before on her iPod, the words so appropriate:

When approaching an airport a pilot must call at least ten miles before approaching, tick tock, what you do and what you think you can do, what you are and what you do, looking out at pebbles on the dance floor, what you need is what you get, tick tock, dreams rushing, knowing what the end is, dreams rushing in, dance floor
.

Would her dreams come true in the end, she wondered, as they flew in low over the Great Smokey Mountain Range, the deprecating name Filipinos gave to a high stack of trash coincidentally located along the flight path. The dump, home to hundreds of destitute, was a colorful pile steaming with last week's rotting garbage and smoldering from the combustion of whatever the bright red and blue plastic bags contained. Green scum floated on stagnant pools between shanties with rusty corrugated steel roofs pushed together to form a village. She had flown into the dirtiest city in Southeast Asia, the contrast more vivid with the image of Singapore, the cleanest city in Asia, still fresh in her mind.

She had a too-long layover, waiting for Philippine Airlines to announce the inevitable delays for her connecting flight to Davao City, sitting on uncomfortable benches in the holding pen in front of gate nine, she had time to continue to think and remember.

The afternoon thunderheads were beginning to form when they called her flight to Davao City, and in an hour and a half she would be back in Mindanao.

S
heik Kemal looked up and nodded at his visitor, motioning him to sit down. Mahir, not easy to impress, was impressed. Sheik Kemal was the epitome of a sheik in Mahir's imagination, wearing a long white robe and a red and white headscarf with a black braid (possibly an important member of a Saudi tribe), plain black socks, simple black shoes, and a solid gold Rolex President weighting down his left wrist. The sheik tore a leg off the grilled chicken that had been served on newspaper lying in the middle of the low table before him and sucked on it. He looked up at Mahir and made a sweeping gesture of welcome. “Our friends in Istanbul have told me about you. Join me in this meal and we will talk.”

Mahir sat down opposite Kemal and pulled off the other chicken leg. They exchanged pleasant conversation for a while until the sheik eventually described the undertaking proposed for his guest. Mahir's eyes gazed around the room while he listened, and Kemal took it to be indecisiveness,
rather than the contemplation it was. Mahir's mind worked best while he focused off into the distance.