Cut to the Chase (32 page)

‘And watch the bloody road; they drive on the left in this country,' grated Juan, as Tara appeared to stray over to the right.

Kalim reminded Wallace of a branch manager he had once worked for while he was employed in the insurance industry. His modus operandi was that if he didn't think of an idea but somebody else did, and it worked, then he worked on the assumption that it was so obvious that he would have thought of it, given time. He gave nobody any credit on the basis that he would have thought of it eventually. He and Kalim must have studied the same management textbook.

Confronted with Kalim's angry rhetoric they lapsed into sulky silence, while Wallace tried to stop fainting from sheer fright. He was somewhat intrigued with Tara's comment, that Wallace was the only one who knew they had killed Ravindran. Were they aware that McKay was in the reckoning or not? Did they believe that Wallace was alone and that the canal venture was his own escape plan? On the other hand, how had they located him? How did they know where he was?

‘What are we going to do then?' Tara still seemed determined to have his say.

‘Just keep bloody going!' snarled Juan. ‘And keep your eyes on the road, I've told you once to keep left. We'll decide what to do when we get there. Don't worry about our friend for now, he's sleeping nicely.'

‘The hell he is!' their friend thought. Their friend had decided that sleep or feigning unconsciousness was the best solution while he nutted it out. He had no wish to be in the same world as Kalim and his henchmen while his mind worked overtime. To be awake could mean being involved in desultory conversation with Kalim, while he told Wallace what a clever fellow he was and how stupid Wallace was. Alternatively it would be a series of threats and Wallace was scared enough as it was.

The car was being flung around violently giving birth to a wild hope that they would be picked up for speeding, but as usual there was never a policeman around when you needed one. Wallace reflected bitterly that if England was anything like Australia the police were probably wasting time booking motorists for speeding on freeways.

One piece of information was that Tara was clearly not Indonesian; if he had been he wouldn't have had to be reminded to drive on the left hand side of the road, while Juan appeared to be either Spanish or Portuguese.

The car eventually drew up at an old house that seemed to be in the inner fringes of a small town, Wallace couldn't see too much as he was examining it through half closed eyes, but wherever it was it wasn't Stourbridge. He was still lying back on the back seat trying to look as if he wasn't conscious, but whether he was convincing them he wasn't sure.

The car pulled up around the side of the house and Wallace was manhandled out. Any hopes he had of being observed by passers by were dashed when he found that the drive had curved around the side of the house which was surrounded with high foliage. He decided to come round after his head came into contact with a door post, reminiscent of the stay at the Knightsbridge apartment. Wallace wondered if this house was registered in his name as well.

‘Where do we put him?' Tara asked.

‘In the attic,' snapped Juan, and added with a note of sarcasm. ‘That's upstairs on the top floor.'

‘How long should he stay there?' asked Kalim. Wallace still wasn't sure who was in charge of this operation, Juan or Kalim.

‘Until we decide how to dispose of him,' snapped Juan. ‘But for now he stays locked up.'

Wallace nearly genuinely passed out from sheer fright there and then, he avoided that condition when his head hit and dislodged a picture from the wall; the resultant pain ensured he stayed awake. He was hustled upstairs and landed on the floor of an attic with a crash; he heard the door slam and was left alone with his thoughts.

Two hours must have elapsed before a key grated in the lock and he was manhandled out by Tara and Fino, both of whom were previously encountered in the Knightsbridge apartment. He made feeble attempts to struggle and was promptly slammed against the wall.

‘Careful Fino, we don't want any bruises,' cautioned Tara.

Wallace was in full agreement with Tara. He was pulled to his feet and was frogmarched to another door which was slammed behind him. He was thunderstruck to find himself in a small bathroom.

‘We'll give you ten minutes, Wallace,' he heard Tara say through the closed door.

Wallace made good use of the time allocated, it was nearer twenty minutes as it turned out, it seemed even Tara had reservations about invading a man when he was conducting personal business. The toilet break was undoubtedly for their own selfish purposes, there was no point keeping anyone incarcerated in what was virtually a prison cell without relief. Tara even knocked when he considered time was up, Wallace was incredulous at that. As he was hustled back to the attic along the landing he heard sounds coming from the open door of another room on the same level and caught a glimpse of a radio transceiver, a computer, keyboard and monitor screen.

He landed back in the small room. For the first time he had a good look around. There was an accumulation of junk as would be found in any attic anywhere. The ceiling was pointed, indicating the apex of the roof. He looked up, there was a small skylight in the roof, and there was also a small window about shoulder high. He peered through the latter and could see the road running across the front of the garden, there seemed to be a fair amount of traffic on it.

He sat on the floor with his back against a mattress leaning against one wall and puzzled over his predicament. One point was now clear, he had been set up in Knightsbridge in retaliation for acting as messenger boy for Major Lincoln in Jakarta, but in the main because he was handy, it wasn't an outright retaliation. He had merely ‘made himself available' and drawn himself to their attention. Ravindran had obviously been targeted for some time, either it was a case of waiting for a scapegoat to present itself which was what had occurred courtesy of Bramble and Major Lincoln, or else the assassination had been planned for a particular period of time and Wallace's Jakarta activities had slotted in nicely.

McKay had appeared to be of the opinion that in an operation like that there could have been more than one scapegoat staked out, and Wallace happened to be the most convenient geographically and chronologically. Now Kalim wanted Wallace silenced because he knew of his complicity; had matters gone according to plan Wallace would have probably died of severe poisoning or a drug overdose kindly administered by Juan and Kalim.

Taking care to not become drunk had ensured that his intake had been minimal, but what had been ingested was enough to make him very ill. This resulted in his stomach rejecting whatever poison matter that had later been imbibed so that Wallace had vomited it all back up. That salmonella ridden meat pie he had purchased beforehand from the street vendor had done its job well and caused him to vomit out much of the poison. So when Kalim knew Wallace had survived, he had to be killed off as a possible informant who would prejudice Kalim, but did he know that McKay was in the background?

What Wallace didn't understand was why the Indonesian Police Force was apparently trying to assassinate people, that is, whether Kalim was a member of the police, and if he was, whether he was working on their behalf or had his own agenda. Wallace had tended to believe the former, had he not seen him with his own eyes entering the police building in Jakarta? Yet it was possible he was working on his own, not for the police. Kalim could not possibly have known that Wallace had seen him enter the police building. As for Ravindran, he had not struck Wallace as being a dangerous extremist, he seemed to be more of a moderate or centralist, but perhaps that was the type that Kalim didn't want in the equation.

Wallace was still feeling the effects of the recent beating, his body decided to take matters into its own hands to begin the healing process. He was still puzzling over the problem when he fell asleep.

He awoke with a start and found the sun was streaming in through the side window. That meant the window was facing east, though he wasn't sure how that knowledge could assist. He heard activity outside, somebody was using the toilet, the cistern flushed and then there were heavy footfalls. About ten minutes passed and then the door opened and Tara stood framed in the doorway. He jerked his thumb to the right; Wallace cottoned on and trooped out.

Tara had a gun stuck in his belt and looked as though he knew how to use it; his hand was never far from it. He jerked his thumb again; Wallace got the message and headed for the bathroom. Tara left him to his own devices and Wallace attended to his ablutions and managed to swill down some water from the tap as he had a foul taste in his mouth. Once again, surprisingly, Tara knocked, and he was escorted back to the attic.

He wondered how long they intended to keep him there. He was escorted to the bathroom about four times the next day and found that the door to the radio/computer room was usually ajar when he passed by it. The escort was Tara most of the time, though occasionally it was his partner in crime, Fino. Where Tara was of dark colouring but had a European look about him – Wallace hazarded a guess that he could be of Spanish/Indian extraction – Fino looked to be more of a Filipino with a bushy head of hair. Fino was more of a sadist than Tara, to him being a gaoler was an art, he never missed an opportunity to put in an elbow or a fist, Wallace wondered if he had ever been a Rugby League forward. Tara kept his distance and merely ensured that Wallace did what he had to do and no more.

The food that was allowed was hardly in the gourmet class, he had some burnt offerings twice, early in the morning and late at night. When the night one came he was certainly ready for it. It was slid in through the slightly opened door and the empty tray was collected an hour later. He wondered whether the food could be drugged or poisoned, but the pangs of hunger were extreme and he attacked it with gusto.

On the third morning Kalim came to see him, he ignored the empty tray, presumably the collection of this item was for those lower in the pecking order, the Finos and Taras of this world.

‘Oh…!' Wallace said when he realised that it wasn't Tara. Kalim gravely inclined his head.

‘Good morning, Wallace,' he said, Wallace noted the absence of any courtesy title. ‘You are comfortable?'

Their eyes met and for a brief moment, as Wallace cast his eyes around the Spartan surroundings and then back at him, there was a fleeting moment of humour.

‘You are wondering why you are here?'

‘The thought had crossed my mind,' Wallace answered, determined to show no fear until forced to.

‘You are here because you know too much, you know that Ravindran was killed on my orders and you are the only one, apart from my colleagues, who knows that.'

And McKay, Wallace thought, and looked down in case he betrayed any emotion of triumph that could give that away.

‘Why me in the first place?' he asked, though McKay had already given an inkling.

Kalim shrugged and he gave a half smile. For the first time, since the death of Ravindran, Wallace caught a glimpse of the old Kalim, the gentleman who had entertained so well in Jakarta.

‘You were convenient, Mr Wallace,' he said and Wallace noted the addition of the courtesy title. He leaned against the wall, his jacket fell open and there was a shoulder holster peeping out beyond his lapel. ‘You were very convenient, and we were able to find out much more about you during the ensuing months than I obtained from you in Jakarta.' He gave a half smile and gave an outward gesture with his left hand. ‘Truly, hell hath no fury…as you Australians would say…and this was indeed so in your case, very much so.'

There was a pause, and Wallace inclined his head to one side, he didn't quite follow.

‘Ravindran was becoming a nuisance. He was providing a focal point of resistance to the local government. If there was to be a revolution ousting the Indonesian Government he could be a popular figurehead…no…more than that, a popular leader. That would never have suited us, we wanted no interim leader like the Russian Kerensky in 1918 to act as a bulwark between us and a state run under religious law…you understand?'

Wallace nodded, he was beginning to. Kalim was an undercover man for a group who were planning a long term take-over for one of the islands, to be run as an independent, religious state. And one island under fundamentalist control could act as a springboard for taking over the whole country, the domino principle. Ravindran was a moderate who would have run a secular state and therefore had to be removed. Wallace began to go cold, why was Kalim telling him this? Was he confident that Wallace would not…or could not…talk?

‘But why me…how did…?'

‘You told me you were coming to London, you remember that? It coincided with the dates when we knew we had to dispose of Ravindran. Ideally we wanted to be rid of him two months before that, but knowing you, an ASIO agent, were coming here we could afford to wait. We booked a lease in your name for the Knightsbridge flat with information we had obtained on you; then used the apartment ourselves. We took care not to be seen, but merely made some noise now and again, used the telephone and paid the cleaners and the rent.'

An ASIO agent…Wallace cursed Bramble soundly. ‘Just a little job' he had said… Christ Almighty!

‘Then the night came when we disposed of Ravindran and we left you in the flat. We gave you a lethal dose, we thought, or one that would make you mentally incoherent. The police were supposed to put it down to an overdose, possibly suicide.'

Wallace felt himself go numb with horror. The thought of being framed was not horrific, though bad enough, the thought of being drugged and rendered unconscious he could not take. The thought of physical injury, even one resulting in a permanent limp – say – was frightening but not horrific, but the thought of possibly being rendered mentally incapable was terrifying. Wallace felt himself becoming queasy and Kalim saw his reaction.