you have to consider that he’s probably still connected with some key players in the islands. After all, he was ambassador for four years before the wheels came off.”
“Got it,” Bolan said, “but how do we figure he might be mixed up with the ambush?”
“He might not be,” Brognola conceded, “but when you figure he was replaced over there by the guy who blew the whistle on him, it’s fair to say he’d have an interest in seeing all hell break loose and have the new ambassador take the heat for letting things get out of hand.”
“That’d be going to a lot of trouble for not much in the way of payback,” Bolan said.
Brognola nodded, adding, “Or maybe the ambush is just the beginning.”
2
Banda Aceh, Indonesia
“Of course we had nothing to do with it!” Noordin Zailik snapped into his speakerphone. The provincial governor, an obese man in his late fifties with dyed black hair, leaned forward in his chair and slammed his fist hard on a large oak desk where the phone rested alongside a stack of paperwork and a few objets d’art accumulated during his term in office. “The ministry agents were there because poachers had been reported in the area. For no other reason!”
“What was that noise?” a man with a calm, sonorous voice asked over the phone’s speaker. Ambassador Robert Gardner was on the line from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta.
“This noise?” Zailik bellowed, thumping the desk a second time. “It’s me cracking heads trying to find out who was behind those killings! I’m being framed and you know it!”
“I’m looking over the intel,” Gardner responded, his voice taking on the tone of a school teacher whose patience was being tested by a problem student, “and I have to say, all the evidence seems to point to—”
“I don’t care where the evidence points!” Zailik interrupted. “Do you really think I’d be so stupid as to place a hit on some low-level GAM lackeys? You think I don’t know how something like that would backfire on me at the polls?”
The governor glared at the speakerphone, waiting for an answer. He could imagine Gardner smirking back in his office, taking pleasure in riling him. It’d been like this from the moment Gardner had taken over as ambassador. Always so smug and condescending, just like his predecessor.
Zailik was still waiting for Gardner to respond when his personal secretary appeared in the doorway, holding a clipboard, an urgent expression on her face. The governor signaled for her to wait a moment, then leaned toward the speakerphone.
“I have an important meeting to get to,” he told Gardner coldly. “Think what you want, but I’m telling you I had no hand in this and when I prove it I’ll be expecting an apology!”
Zailik pressed a button on the phone’s console, abruptly ending the call. He glanced back at his secretary. Ti Vohn was an attractive woman in her early thirties, conservatively dressed with her dark hair pulled back from the high cheekbones that adorned her oval face. Zailik’s wife had raised a fuss when he’d hired the woman, but he’d refused to let her go. There were days, like this, when he wished his wife’s jealousy had some foundation.
“What is it, Ti?” he asked, trying his best to offer the woman an inviting smile. “Good news, I hope.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Vohn responded.
Zailik slumped in his chair as the woman explained that investigators combing the rain-soaked Gunung Leuser ambush sites had yet to find any evidence to refute the prevalent theory that Interior Ministry agents had carried out the GAM killings before dying when their Jeep had subsequently gone off the road as they were leaving the scene. The placement of logs across the mountain road seemed to be the work of illegal loggers who had been attempting to slide fallen trees down to the river for transport away from the park. It appeared merely coincidental that the ministry troops had crashed into the inadvertent barricade before the loggers could move the trees off the road. The investigators were still looking for the loggers but suspected they had fled the area once they realized what had happened. The rain had washed away any tracks that might have provided clues as to the direction they might have taken.
Preliminary autopsies showed that the victims had died of blunt trauma injuries likely incurred when the Jeep had plummeted into the ravine. And, as Zailik feared, little headway had been made regarding the logistical nightmare of rounding up the area’s population of thousand-pound crocodiles so they could be x-rayed for any trace of those ministry agents still reported missing.
As he absorbed the news, Zailik stared dully out his window. A storm front had long passed, and morning sunlight shimmered on the black domes rising from Baiturrahman Grand Mosque, located a short walk from the governor’s residence in downtown Banda Aceh. Why was Allah testing him like this? Zailik wondered fleetingly. First the tsunami, then having to deal with scandal-plagued reconstruction efforts. And now this. Whatever had happened to the dream of his governorship being a stepping stone to the presidency of all Indonesia? As it was, Zailik knew he’d be lucky to win another term as head of this godforsaken province.
Ti Vohn was eyeing Zailik expectantly when he turned back to her. He told the woman to line up a call so that he could arrange to allocate more manpower to the investigation. Somewhere out in that overgrown wilderness there had to be proof that would vindicate him, and he needed to find it as quickly as possible.
“Before I do that, there’s one more thing,” his secretary told him. There was a tinge of reluctance in her voice.
“More bad news, I trust,” Zailik groused.
“There’s a demonstration at the mosque.”
Zailik shook his head miserably. “Let me guess,” he ventured. “They’re waving placards calling me ‘GAM butcher’.”
“I’m not sure of the wording, but they’re holding you responsible,” the secretary replied. “Word is they plan to march through town to gather more supporters, then continue the demonstration here.”
“And burn me in effigy, no doubt.”
Zailik eyed the clock on the wall next to him. In a couple of hours he was scheduled to fly to Takengon for a fund-raising dinner. In light of events, he’d planned to cancel the appearance, but now the idea of pandering for campaign contributions seemed less burdensome than having to contend with an angry throng of GAM sympathizers.
“Round up the motorcade,” he told his secretary. “I want to leave early for the airport.”
“I’ll make the arrangements,” Vohn responded. Almost as an afterthought, she mentioned, “They’re still doing repairs on the main road, so traffic might be a problem.”
Without hesitation, Zailik responded, “Then we’ll take the back way.”
AS SHE LEFT the governor’s office, Ti Vohn almost felt sorry for Zailik. The man was clearly so obsessed with proving his innocence that he wasn’t thinking straight. Send more men out into the jungle? Chase after crocodiles the size of small dinosaurs hoping to find clues tucked away in their bellies? It all seemed so foolish. Why couldn’t he see that his resources would be put to better use investigating likely suspects instead of going over the same ground again and again? And then there was the matter of moving up his departure time for the airport.
