was virtually a master presentation. Addressing friendship groups within Australia where the third party countries were America, Britain, Canada or New Zealand were stock items. Altering the name to the country concerned was the first step, then culling newspapers and consulting consulates to find what was topical and appropriate was the next.
Wallace had a few words on the telephone with Alex Miller, the Commercial Attaché at the Australian Embassy…the man on whose appointment list he should have been when he saw Major Lincoln. Miller was most helpful in supplying some current agreements and petty differences between Indonesia and Australia.
Wallace had also been put in touch with the secretary of the Society who had given some dates relating to Indonesian history and details of political personnel. All Wallace had to remember was to keep off East Timor, still a touchy subject between the two nations, anything to do with off-shore oil exploration and any mention of a couple of islands where there were internal disturbances from independence groups.
The previous night in the bar, Wallace had met an American from Boston staying on the same floor. He had an unopened bottle of Scotch in his room so they went up later and had a go at that. He also had a telephone that worked and Wallace had been able to make some calls from there as well. Warren Hamilton was a computer software whiz kid, bugs had developed in some software supplied to the Jakarta office of an American company and he had been sent over to sort them out.
Like most Western companies, when it came to sorting out computer problems, whether straightforward glitches or at worst, viruses, they preferred to have their own nationals fix it sooner than anyone from the indigenous population. Fears of industrial espionage, like leaving a bug that could transmit information to a rival; or even sabotage, were rife. Warren was a good sort, he had played some college Grid Iron football, and, to Wallace’s surprise, had some knowledge of Australian Rules. He was also an avid follower of the Boston Red Sox and they talked baseball for much of the evening.
In the morning he was awoken by the sound of activity outside, squinted at his watch and was astonished to find that it was 4.30 am. He could hear the usual bustle in the streets outside and went over to the window to have a look. There was a mosque at the end of the street and crowds of people were heading in that direction. He went back to bed but found that he could not woo sleep again. He gave up the unequal struggle and returned to work on the presentation for the Society.
He took a stroll after breakfast, feeling satisfied with himself. He felt that he could talk for about an hour, which was long enough, maybe too long, for anyone to listen. He managed to reach the park over the road without too much difficulty, apart from narrowly escaping death under the wheels of a taxi and being hooted and cursed by the drivers of about 17 other vehicles.
That was another factor that Clive Passay had mentioned, the road rules appeared to be non-existent, while the ratio of aggression and bad manners rose in inverse proportion to the amount of road rules. Vehicles scurried around the streets as though they were the only ones within a seven kilometre radius, and once Wallace saw a car mount the pavement when taking a left turn when there was insufficient room on the carriageway, while warning signals for left and right turns appeared very late, if at all. Miraculously he didn’t see any actual collisions, they seemed to have a hairline warning system to avert actual contact, but pedestrians had to take their chances.
At 10.00 am he returned to the hotel and gave the presentation another run through and polish before he went for a pre-arranged cup of coffee with Warren. Warren had two other Americans with him; they were recent arrivals and also staying in the hotel. Since like tended to attract like they had all locked onto each other.
Chapter 3
'I consider it a great honour and privilege to be asked to address your society…’ Wallace began, and looked around the gathering. He was thankful that none of his agents in Melbourne or Sydney, nor any rival circuit speakers, were at hand to see and count the audience. It consisted of about thirty people, many of whom appeared to be in an advanced state of senility and two of them had fallen asleep before Wallace had even risen from his seat, a bad start as three more were away with the fairies after he had been speaking for fifteen minutes.
Wallace was standing at the end of a room that was not unlike the Parliament House seating arrangement at Canberra, with raised seats on each side of the room rising towards the roof.
He struggled on, the speech was still not as it should have been, he had not had as much time for preparation as he would have liked, but as they were dropping off to sleep all over the place he doubted whether anyone would notice. He noted with interest an elderly gentleman in the front row who was desperately trying not to drop off, each time his eyes closed he jolted himself awake. He had the problem in that being in the front row he was only too well aware that the speaker would be keeping a steady eye on him!
Then there was a latecomer, he entered by the far door and slid into a seat at the rear. He looked breathless and was younger than the average member of the audience. At a guess he was in his early thirties; he was dressed in casual trousers and an open necked shirt.
Wallace continued, trying hard not to look at the clock, he had given himself at least one hour but doubted whether he would be able to go on for that long without repeating himself. He was also finding himself addressing an audience that was virtually unconscious.
He began to realise that his knowledge of Indonesia was limited, despite hasty mugging up since the interview with Major Lincoln. He had, during the quick chat with the President of the Society beforehand, made some comment about the roads and how they drove on the right hand side of the road, only to be informed that indeed Indonesian vehicles drove on the left hand side, the same as Australia. Wallace realised he should have known that, having traversed the city streets, but had other things on his mind and had not really noticed. Since the entire country had been a Dutch colony before the 1939-45 war he had assumed that they would have followed the Continentals, but maybe the Japanese occupation during the war had had some effect that had stuck after the war.
The speech finally drew to a close; the atmosphere was stifling in the hall which had no air conditioning. Then he noticed that two men had appeared at the door at the top of the left hand row of seats, the same door through which the late arrival had entered. To Wallace it looked as if they were guarding it.
Wallace turned to catch the eye of Mr Roeg, the bearded patriarch who was the chairman for the day. It had been agreed that Wallace would tip him off when he felt he was running out of steam. Roeg was a realist and knew Wallace had been co-opted at short notice and that it was likely the drying up process could set in early.
In any case, Wallace had been going for over half an hour and that was as much as had been expected, with maybe three quarters of an hour the maximum. To earn $1,000 US might seem extortionate for that length of time, it was, but ASIO in the form of Bramble was either paying for it or subsidising it and for the wear and tear upon Wallace’s nerves he considered it was worth every cent. Roeg nodded, wriggled in his chair and then shuffled his papers to acknowledge that he had received the message and was ready for the winding up.
According to Major Lincoln, Roeg was a member of some government department and quite influential, a man who had a bee in his bonnet about a South Pacific Federation embracing Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines and Singapore, together with a few other island states and federations in the general area. Wallace had some sympathy with the idea from an economic point of view, and probably from a security outlook when one considered the huge Asian countries to the north, but Roeg’s idea was that Indonesia should exert a dominant role in this grouping and Wallace wasn’t too sure about that.
The address finally came to an end, the applause echoed around the hall which indicated that some were still awake. Roeg stood up and proceeded to give the vote of
