Sword of Allah (18 page)

Like many Australians, Wilkes felt uncomfortable in the nation’s capital. It wasn’t a real city, more of a concept town from an architect’s portfolio, the streets too smoothly surfaced, the lawns too neatly manicured, the buildings too monumental, the shirts too stuffed, the cats too fat, and so on. It was a city built to house public servants and politicians, about as remote from the real world they were supposed to be administering as it was possible to get.

The commercial flight arrived bang on 1000 hours, the 737 touching down on a rain-swept runway. Wilkes was surprised to be met by a white government car, the sort reserved for the obese felines high on the totem pole. He looked out the window but only saw Annabelle’s face. Nothing had been resolved between them. Wilkes momentarily regretted slipping the ring on her finger. No, Annabelle is The One, he told himself. The details of their lovemaking flooded into his mind.
Yeah, we’ll sort it out.
The conviction that things would improve allowed Tom to mentally leave Annabelle at home, just as he had done physically before dawn, and concentrate on the day ahead. His mobile phone had gone off while he was in a taxi on the way to meet Annabelle at the television station the previous evening. The voice on the phone summoned him to Canberra. He’d had a feeling the call would come when he heard the news of the embassy bombing.

Australian representatives at USCENTCOM, the US military’s eye on the Middle East, had managed to convince the US Joint Chiefs of Staff that Australia should be deputised to patrol South East Asia, the argument being that Australia was a stable democracy with close proximity to potential trouble spots and, most importantly, national interests in common with the US. Since Afghanistan and Iraq, the SAS had become the sharp end of this new American appreciation of Australia.

The big Ford glided past the barricaded square dedicated to Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey, one of the great Australian leaders of the first two world wars. Wilkes looked out the window and allowed his eyes to drift up the single column on top of which perched an eagle. The
Ford bucked slightly as its front wheels took on the driveway entrance to the Australian Defence Force HQ, the Australian strategic command centre. Wilkes knew the building well. It was unprepossessing, built in the sixties from the materials popular at the time, and was sorely in need of a makeover. Scrap that, thought Tom as he looked up at the featureless concrete and glass block. What it needed was a wrecking ball.

The vehicle drove up to the temporary, sandbagged boom gate, a row of steel spikes set in the road twenty metres beyond it. Two troopers in full battledress, Kevlar helmets, body armour and Steyr assault carbines approached the car carefully from the rear three-quarter position, one soldier covering the other with his weapon raised and, Tom speculated, off safety. He lowered his window and produced his identity card for inspection. The hit on the US Embassy had obviously made everyone jumpy. The soldier relaxed when he saw who and what Tom Wilkes was. He let his rifle hang beside his arm by its strap, and called in the warrant officer’s numbers through a portable police-style microphone clipped to one shoulder. The boom rose. He was expected. The Ford rolled forward over the road spikes and headed for the front entrance.

Things had certainly changed, thought Wilkes. Within a couple of months of Bali, when the intelligence services gained some true inkling of the malice towards America and its allies in the region, all major government buildings had come under the control and protection of the military. Now, after Jakarta, caution would again be an around-the-clock reality until everyone got bored with it. Terrorists
would just have to wait a little until things relaxed before driving a truck bomb into the foyer and giving the bell on the front desk a ping. This protection duty added to the enormous pressure on the ADF’s resources. There simply weren’t enough soldiers to go round, which was why the task had recently fallen to the Army Reserve, the part-time soldiers. Wilkes wondered what the two men on the front gate did when they weren’t wearing combat fatigues. Ad execs? Estate agents? Hairdressers? Enough of that, he reminded himself, we need these guys.

Ten minutes later, Wilkes found himself outside the designated office. A familiar face appeared around the corner. ‘Thanks for coming down so quickly, Tom,’ said Graeme Griffin, shaking his hand. ‘Flight okay?’

‘Fine, thank you, sir,’ said Wilkes.

‘Good. Come on in.’ The Director-General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service was tall and lean. The handshake felt like holding five steel bolts. Long before ASIS, Griffin had been an academic, an associate professor in the political science faculty at Melbourne University. Rumour had it he’d also had a military background, something in black ops, but no one knew too much more than that. But these days, just about everyone claimed some kind of Special Forces background and Wilkes would have been far more impressed if he’d been something unusual, say, a palaeoanthropologist. Aside from that, the man was shrouded in mystery, appropriate for Australia’s top spy.

Griffin led the way through the door. The room was darkened, but there was enough light for Wilkes to recognise some increasingly familiar faces. Lieutenant Colonel
Andrew Hardcastle, standing, winked. What’s he doin
g here?
Atticus Monroe gave him a nod, and so did Gia Ferallo. Wilkes returned the gestures. There was someone seated at the large black oval table he didn’t know.

‘I believe you’re familiar with everyone here except for Captain Ali Mahisa from Indonesian counter-terrorism. He’s currently attached to Indonesian special forces – Kopassus.’

That caught Wilkes by surprise. Mahisa stood and shook Wilkes’s hand, and accompanied it with a slight bow. ‘Warrant Officer Wilkes. Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ he said formally.

Wilkes was not so sure he was all that pleased about it.

‘The captain was here on a familiarising tour with the Australian Federal Police, learning our investigation methods. After the weekend’s atrocity, his mission has hardened up considerably. A larger task force is being put together combining the captain’s unit, the AFP, CIA, ASIO and ASIS to target and dismantle terrorist groups in the region. Captain Mahisa has some knowledge of the Babu Islam group, the people currently under our microscope. He’s the nearest thing we’ve got to an expert on these people.’

Mahisa gave a smile, projecting it around the table. Wilkes ran an eye over him. He was part Malay, part Indian, with an open, friendly face. He was also quite short and thin, with a vascular neck that became more so when he talked. He looked fragile, but appearances, Wilkes knew, could be deceptive, especially if the guy was special forces. Wilkes found it strange – a little uncomfortable – having a friendly chitchat with someone from the Indonesian Kopassus. Not so long ago, he’d been shooting
holes in the captain’s buddies. What the hell. Wilkes decided that the discomfort was something he’d better get over fast if he had to work with this man. And besides, the problems Australia had had with Indonesia recently were because of a few rotten apples within their military. The Kopassus were still Indonesia’s bad boys but the country was supposed to be an ally, not an enemy. Wilkes took a seat beside the captain.

A face flashed up on the screen. The Indon with the gold tooth. Then, beside it, the photo of the man behind the machine gun.

‘Duat and Kadar Al-Jahani,’ said Griffin, taking a seat. Hardcastle also sat. ‘We’ve talked about these two already. Just to recap: Kadar Al-Jahani, Middle Eastern terrorist of note, explosives expert, a vicious character. Duat, another pea in the same pod. Suspected of bombing churches, leader of Babu Islam, a rabble with a cause – the cause being the transformation of Indonesia into a fundamentalist Islamic state with Sharia law imposed. We’ve known for a little while that these two have joined forces. Why? Aside from gunrunning and drug smuggling, we weren’t sure. Now, well, we’re getting a few clues.

‘Babu Islam were like many similar groups – plotting grand schemes but with no serious member base and not enough funding to pull them off. The best they could manage was the odd homemade device capable of killing and wounding a few unfortunates who happened to be worshipping God at the wrong venue.

‘Kadar Al-Jahani’s arrival has changed everything. He’s given BI credibility and that, combined with adequate funding, makes them particularly dangerous. Now, the forensic
reports from last week’s attack in Jakarta are still preliminary, but we’ve got something to go on with. Atticus?’

Jesus, forensics? That was quick, thought Wilkes, but he guessed it was to be expected. The chances of nailing the perpetrators of these kinds of crimes – the
who
– depended on knowing as much as possible about the
what
and the
how
, as quickly as possible. The fact that Griffin put Kadar Al-Jahani and the forensics report from the shattered US Embassy in the same preamble told Wilkes a lot already.

Monroe tapped the manila folder in front of him a couple of times before speaking, either getting his thoughts in order or attracting attention – Wilkes wasn’t sure which. He said, ‘The explosive materials used in the embassy bombing were beyond those normally associated with your backyard terrorist. The device was complex and sophisticated. It wasn’t a fertiliser bomb. That’s to be expected, anyway. Those sort of devices are bulky and wouldn’t get within a hundred metres of the embassy.

‘The bomb used was a two-stage boosted variety. A compound called lead styphnate was the primer material. That detonated around two kilograms of tetrytol. Over the top of that was around seven kilos of HBX – a combination of RDX, TNT, powdered aluminium and D-2 wax.’

Ferallo interrupted. ‘What does all that mean?’ She beat Wilkes to it. He wasn’t up on these Gucci explosives.

‘A small bang turns into a bigger bang and ends with a very big bang,’ said Monroe, realising he’d confused things rather than made them clearer. ‘Okay, look. This device was a work of art, put together by someone who knew their shit. All up, the bomb weighed around fifteen kilos.
Not a lot of bulk. That’s how they managed to get it inside the embassy. But it gets better than that.

‘The HBX? That’s the real mother explosive here. It has a lot of RDX in it. We think it had been moulded, shaped to look like camera bodies. The same stuff was used as the camera’s case. It’s stable and can be made to look like metal, the giveaway being a waxy feel.

‘The tetrytol, a kind of pre-explosive explosive used to set off the HBX, lined the case. The detonator, we think, was a camera flash, but we’re still not sure.’

‘How did it get in the embassy?’ asked Mahisa.

The memory of Sergeant Hennert, the marine with two amputated legs, came into Monroe’s mind, complete with the sounds and smells of the makeshift hospital. He took a deep breath to expunge them. ‘A surviving witness believes a man posing as a photographer, with a British passport and press card, carried the device into the visa department. The witness, a sergeant on duty at the time, was vaguely suspicious about it but too late to stop the bomber from doing his thing.’

‘What about detection? Didn’t they have scanners?’ Ferallo asked.

‘Yep. There were some other weird chemicals involved. The bomb experts believe complex masking agents they’re yet to identify were used,’ said Monroe.

‘The point is,’ said Griffin, ‘this has Kadar Al-Jahani written all over it. The RDX, the sophistication of the device…’

Tom Wilkes was no explosives expert, but he’d handled enough of the various types to agree that whoever built the bomb had had extensive military training and
experience. ‘Is the identity of the British suicide bomber known?’ Wilkes asked.

‘No,’ said Monroe. ‘Whoever the so-called photographer was, there was nothing but atoms left of that sucker. He’d have been almost on top of the device when it blew. And it goes without saying that we doubt he was British, by the way.’

There were a dozen photos of the embassy before and after the explosion on the table. Wilkes sifted through them. The building was destroyed from within, the two remaining wings either side of the centre of the explosion teetering inwards. Various people, both western and Indonesian, were picking through the rubble, risking their lives in a further collapse to hunt for clues.
Just fifteen kilos of explosives…!
‘Shit,’ said Wilkes as he looked at the devastation. ‘How did they get the explosives into the country? Or did they buy them in Indonesia?’

Mahisa jumped in. ‘We don’t know. Obviously, these are military explosives. I would like to guarantee that they didn’t purchase these things from someone in our army, but unfortunately I can’t.’

Mahisa’s candour was disarming. Once, not so long ago, a question like that would have been met with instant denial no matter what the facts, but the world had changed and maybe Indonesia had changed with it.

Griffin leaned back in his chair. ‘As the captain says, Tom, that’s a mystery, but we suspect it came in the same way those guns are getting into Papua New Guinea.’

Mahisa frowned, the smile long gone. ‘More than seventeen thousand islands make up Indonesia and we don’t have the resources to patrol all of them. There are many
ways to bring contraband into the country. Smuggling has long been a problem.’

‘Frankly, Jakarta is worried,’ said Griffin. ‘And so are we, along with the US, of course. We believe the embassy bombing is the entree.’

‘Has anyone claimed responsibility for it?’ Hardcastle asked.

‘No, and that concerns us greatly, Colonel,’ said Griffin, resting his chin on his knuckles. ‘Usually, when a bunch of lunatics does something this crazy, they put their hands up to claim it. Gives them publicity and credibility amongst all the other crazies. But not this time. We believe this is all just some kind of demonstration – a private signal. But to whom? And why?’

‘We were aware that Babu Islam had a training camp up in central Java,’ said Mahisa. ‘We raided it and those of several other groups as a matter of course after the bombing, but BI’s camp had been vacated. We are investigating internally to see if there was a tip-off from someone in the TNI, the army, but we don’t think that will lead us anywhere positive. Now, unfortunately, we have no idea where these people have gone. Their sudden disappearance is a further indication of their guilt, we believe.’