His plot misfired catastrophically. The ambush had failed and now his two fellow warlords were seeking Sinar’s head as fervently as they sought independence from Jakarta.
With his disgruntled “Army of God’s Sacred Vengeance” scattered and laying low – and with both government security forces and revolutionary assassins on his tail – Muhammad Sinar found himself a man hard on the run.
Accompanied by his last two trustworthy bodyguards, Sinar shifted his name and the place where he slept daily. He’d had no chance to rest or to rally his troops. Even if given the opportunity, he would have few resources to rally. His faction was breaking up. His people were no longer willing to follow a man perceived as a loser. Escape from his predicament could only come through death or a miracle, with the former seeming far more likely than the latter.
And now, apparently, that death was upon him.
“Who are you?” The foolish, instinctive demand rasped from Sinar’s lips as he smelled the stink of his own sweat and fear.
“That is irrelevant.” The replying voice spoke Bahasa Indonesia, the approved universal tongue of the archipelago, but not with a Javanese or Sumatran accent. It was more the structured formality of the Straits Chinese. In the dim streetlight filtering through the curtains, Sinar became aware of three men standing at the foot of his bed.
All three were indeed Chinese. The two who flanked the third were young, powerfully built and clad western style in jeans and dark shirts. Gun steel glinted in their hands, making a grab for the pistol hidden under the mattress seem a very bad idea. Despairingly, Sinar wondered what had happened to his bodyguards.
The central Chinese read his thoughts. “Do not concern yourself with your guards, Mr. Sinar. One is unconscious; the
other, regretfully, is dead.”
This man was decidedly different from the others: elderly, slightly built, almost frail, his white, short-trimmed hair glowed in the feeble illumination. He wore a dark suit and tie and he seemed to radiate an aura of calm, precision and order.
“What do you want?” Sinar demanded, somehow sensing that death would not be forthcoming, at least not instantly.
“I have come to present you with this.”
Sinar started as a heavy manila envelope plopped onto the sheet beside him.
“Enclosed you will find a set of maps and directions to a group of three hidden
arms caches located on the northern coast of Sumatra. In each cache you will
find weapons, ammunition and other military equipment suitable to your needs
and adequate to make you the equal of the local government security forces and
the decided superior of your enemies within the Merdeka movement. Also in the
envelope you will find an amount of money that no doubt will prove useful. Use
both as you will.”
Fingering the envelope, Sinar felt the bulge made by a thick sheaf of cash.
This was incredible, impossible. He had feared death – but instead a miracle had come out of the night. Here was all that he would need to restore himself in the eyes of his followers and resume his march to power. One instinctive reaction was to suspect a trap, but if his proclaimed benefactors had wanted him dead why not simply kill him here and now? Why bother with sophistry?
“Who are you? Why do you do this?”
“As I stated, who we are is irrelevant and why we do this is our concern. Good
night, Mr. Sinar. Our business is concluded.”
The elderly Chinese began to turn away, and then hesitated. “Oh and do not discommode yourself concerning the body of your late guard. We
will deal with it. Please offer our regrets to his family.”
And then, as silently as they had come, they were gone. They might have been a desperate man’s dream, save for the envelope they had left behind.
Sinar lit the room’s single small lamp. With his pistol at his side, he eagerly scrabbled through
the contents of the envelope, examining the maps and counting the cash. A
thousand questions should have plagued him at that moment, a thousand answers
demanded for them. But for Muhammad Sinar all such questions had been washed
away by thoughts of triumph and revenge.
Jakarta, the Island of Java, Indonesia
1402 Hours; Zone Time, September 15, 2008
As the island of Java is the heart of the Indonesian archipelago, Jakarta was the heart of Java. With a population of over ten million, it is the fifteenth largest city in the world, its population density per square mile being one of the highest on the planet. In a distilled form, it possesses all of the mind-boggling contradictions inherent within twenty-first century Indonesia.
Reefs of modern high rises hung above an ocean of shantytowns and shops peddling the cheapest plastic tourist kitsch. The perfume of walled tropical gardens contrasted with the stench of motor exhausts and sewage-polluted canals.
Above all, the inherent, almost instinctive friendliness and amiability of the Javanese people clashed with a growing unease and anger.
In central Jakarta could be found the Lapagang Merdeka (Freedom Square). In colonial times it had been a military parade ground. Now it served as the physical core of the Indonesian Governmental bureaucracy. Encompassing almost a full square kilometer, the Presidential Palace, the Parliament building, Army Headquarters, the National Museum and the Ministry of Finance were spaced around its perimeter. The United States Embassy and a variety of banks, hotels and upscale businesses could also be found there.
The square itself had been decorated with a selection of heroic statuary commemorating great moments in Indonesian national history. Dominating its center was the MONAS, the National Monument. Built by the Soviet Union in 1961 in honor of Indonesian Independence, the gigantic marble obelisk rose one hundred and thirty-seven meters to a tip jacketed in thirty-five kilograms of pure gold.
No longer impressed, the city’s inhabitants referred to it as “President Sukarno’s last erection.”
Freedom Square was a natural locale for a political protest, the logical place for the Indonesian people to rally, provided the government that purported to represent them would permit it.
There had been no single call or spur for this day’s demonstration. The people simply started to stream inward toward the Square from the slums and the universities and from the other lesser demonstrations flickering and sputtering around the city. The involved peoples had no single grievance, nor were they of any one faction. They were as many and varied as the cultures of Indonesia itself, which meant they encompassed an incredibly broad spectrum.
They had but one point in common. They wanted things to be better.
They were tired of uncertainty. They were tired of corruption. They were tired of perceived government lies and favoritism and perceived religious and racial persecution. They were tired of political solutions that seemed to solve nothing. In the way that a mob can become like an angry, cranky child, they wanted someone to make their world immediately right, even though they themselves had no valid solutions to offer.
Like rivers growing in the rain, the trickle became a flow and the flow a flood.
The floods were dammed at the edge of the Lapangan Merdeka. The police blocked the demonstrators, keeping them from the square.
The security forces did not dare allow the floods to meet and become an angry ocean of demonstrators. The groups must be kept separated and thus manageable. Should they combine, the outcome could be disastrous for Jakarta and the Indonesian government.
The accumulated anger was not for the government alone. Many of the factions involved held deep animosity against each other. If they met and clashed, the effect might be similar to slamming two chunks of weapons grade uranium together.
Already reports were coming in of factional clashes on the side streets, pro-something versus anti-something else. The police could only hunker behind their clear Lexan riot shields and pray that the dam around the square would hold. If it didn’t, water cannons and tear gas wouldn’t be adequate.
There would be tanks and machine gun fire in the streets before nightfall.
*
He was unobtrusive, a slender dark-skinned, dark-haired man in a city of slender dark people. But a skilled ethnologist or an old East Indies hand might have been able to note the hints of facial caste and accent that would mark him as a Bugi.
