Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t trust Charles, it was just that it was none of BAIS’s business where he was going. Mac moved south along the waterfront, savouring the late afternoon tropical breeze on his chest. Across the strait was the famous Komodo Islands where the giant monitor - the Komodo Dragon - created a cash fl ow for Indonesia’s tourism industry. Walking slowly like a tourist he looked for eyes, for pursed mouths and creased foreheads and non-leisure activities like reading a newspaper.
    After going round the block, passing all the non-offi cial tourism operators’ booths, nasi goreng stalls, restaurants setting up for the evening trade and T-shirt emporia, he came back around to the Bajo Hotel on Harbour Street. British backpackers milled in the lime-washed lobby, conspicuous in their lobster-red suntans and Bintang T-shirts. Moving through them to the front desk, Mac caught the eye of the young concierge, Davie.
    ‘Hello, Mr Richard, are you with us tonight?’ asked the smiling Indonesian.
    ‘Yep - same room,’ said Mac, forking over some rupiah as Davie got his board and pencil out.
    ‘And, mate, what’s the name of that bloke on the waterfront?
    Does the private boat charters?’ added Mac.
    Davie lit up. Indonesians loved being helpful to outsiders. ‘Rayah
    - he has the red cutter beside the Komodo Tours ship. Rayah my friend. You tell him and he give you good price.’
    Mac chuckled at that and fl icked Davie a handful of rupiah for his troubles, then he headed for the stairs that wound around the liftwell.
    Davie was now attending to a Scottish girl who wanted a doctor, so Mac passed the foot of the stairs and went straight through a side exit, down a corridor and out into a service lane. He doubled behind the Bajo Hotel and down to the port, found Rayah on the fi rst loop and cased him: watched for signs that he was expecting someone. Was he looking up and down the wharf? At his watch or mobile phone?
    Circling back to a payphone bolted against a chandler’s store, Mac put his TI card in the slot and phoned a mate of his called Philip who owned the beach cottages at Seraya Island - so close to Komodo yet so overlooked by European experience-seekers. He booked a cottage, circled back to a bar on the wharf and bought a case of Tiger. The price of the beers was exorbitant but not as bad as the prices charged on Seraya for Bintang. As the sun got close to the horizon, Mac walked up to Rayah and asked him how much to Seraya. Rayah threw out bunches of ten fi ngers several times, till Mac said, ‘Davie sent me.’ The bloke slumped and Mac handed him the beers, but kept his backpack.
    Mac lay on his back in the gentle swell off Seraya Beach as the orange of the Flores sunset slowly gave way to the diamond-studded velvet of the evening sky. He heard the generator start and the lights go on in the restaurant block. Letting his head dip under the water, Mac spouted sea water through his mouth; despite an evening meal of ginger chicken and beer, he could still taste the rubber of the rebreather mouthpiece.
    Relaxing his entire body he thought about the UN, thought about Ahmed Akbar. Thought about all the things he’d got slightly wrong on Penang Princess and how they might come back to haunt him. Images from that pantry fl ickered through his mind. Was it really the face of Abu Samir, the JI mastermind behind the Jakarta Stock Exchange bombing? He couldn’t be sure. He’d been so focused on getting Akbar out in one piece that the fl ash he’d had of a face in the dark could really have been anyone.
    Abu Samir did not have the same profi le on the FBI and CIA computers as Hambali or Mohammad Noordin Top - both of them JI operatives who hid out in Malaysia while Suharto went on a turkey shoot of Jihadists in the late 1990s. But if you asked any military intel or special forces person about the tangos they wanted to put away, Samir outranked everyone except Abu Sabaya. Samir was similar to Sabaya in that he didn’t think