‘So the Guild was still around in the late sixties?’

‘Small but influential, and they instigated a crazy project where an overrun Israel could trigger bio-weapons in its cities. This theoretical device would kill Arabs but not Jews.’

‘You having a lend?’ asked Mac.

‘They were nervous times in Israel, paranoia was rife and the ultra-right found the means to give it a shot.’

‘And?’ asked Mac.

‘The project went nowhere – officially at least. The government of the day wouldn’t buy into it and it’s rumoured the results were embarrassing. Apparently, Arabs and Jews have similar genetics – the Ethno-Bomb would have killed the lot of them.’

‘Enter Lee Wa Dae,’ said Mac.

‘Well, enter North Korea in the late 1980s,’ said Jim. ‘Kim Il Sung was ailing, his son Kim Jong Il was a lunatic with an obsession about magic shows, and a bunch of shady scientists – one of them from the Guild’s original project – talked Little Kim into reviving the Ethno-Bomb.’

‘Who was this one aimed at?’ asked Mac.

‘Easy. Which race would the Kim family annihilate if you gave them a button to push?’

‘The Japs, of course,’ said Mac. ‘So what happened to that Ethno-Bomb?’

‘Clinton happened. You remember that warming period, five years ago, when Daddy Kim was dying and Jimmy Carter got the North Koreans to shut down the spent-fuel extraction and the uranium enrichment, in exchange for the United States trading with them again?’

‘Yeah,’ said Mac.

‘Well the Commies were required to shut down their bio-weapons research at the same time.’

‘But they didn’t?’ asked Mac.

‘Technically they did. The bio-weapons projects left North Korea, but an enterprising Korean found a country willing to host the Ethno-Bomb program, keep it going, for a nice fee, paid for by heroin money.’

‘You’re kidding,’ said Mac.

‘No, McQueen – the person was Lee Wa Dae, and in Indonesia he found a man who ran spurious research projects to line his own pockets.’

‘Ishy Haryono,’ said Mac, painful images from Lombok AgriCorp filling his mind. ‘Why Timor?’ he croaked.

‘It’s isolated, it’s poor, it’s run like a medieval fiefdom,’ said Jim. ‘And the Western media doesn’t give a shit about it. It’s the way it seems to go in South-East Asia – you wouldn’t believe some of the wacko shit happening in northern Burma.’

‘So what’s the ethnic divide in -’

Mac trailed off, suddenly recalling that the native Timorese – the Maubere – were Melanesian, unlike the Malay ethnicity of the Javanese.

‘Shit,’ he mumbled. ‘Operasi Boa wipes out the Melanesians, but not the rest?’

‘Seems to be what they’re working on,’ said Jim. ‘Europeans and Asians get a bad cold from this weaponised SARS, but the Melanesians have no defence. They last two days, tops.’

It was some time before the door to the safe swung back, revealing Tommy pointing a gun into the airless room.

‘The fuck?’ muttered the burly DIA analyst, before shoving the gun into his waistband and moving to aid Jim.

‘Day off?’ asked Mac, forearm shielding his eyes from the glare.

‘Dentist,’ said Tommy, helping Jim to his feet.

They recounted the events to Tommy as the US military doctor dressed Jim’s wound. The bullet had torn a hole but the slug hadn’t stayed in the flesh. Bongo’s wound was more like a nick, and while the doctor strapped bandages around his thick neck, Jim hit the phones.

‘You leading a charge?’ asked Mac.

‘This has gone on long enough,’ said Jim, rustling a key chain and opening a steel gun cabinet against the wall. ‘I like letting a target run as much as anyone, but DIA’s involvement in this thing has become plain embarrassing.’

Joining Jim at the gun cabinet, Mac made his case. ‘I want to be part of it, Jim,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve earned it.’

‘You think I’d leave you behind, McQueen?’ said Jim, passing a Kevlar vest. ‘We can’t do this with American soldiers, so you’re up.’

The unmarked Cessna Citation jet reduced throttle as it approached the island of Alor. Inside, Mac and Jim faced one another while Bongo and Tommy were belted into the facing seats on the other side of the small cabin.

‘Yes, sir, that’s affirmative,’ said Jim into his sat phone. ‘No direct actions, sir, you have my word.’

Hanging up, Jim grimaced. ‘Tommy and I are tasked for retrieval of Simon – nothing else. We can only carry firearms for self-defence.’

‘That’s about as useful as a bicycle pump in a hen-house,’ said Mac. ‘Any word on Simon?’

‘The guys at Halim say an army Huey took off from Denpasar just after 1500 hours, bound for East Timor. They picked up some radio chatter – an American male talking to an Indonesian. I’m assuming we’re following Simon to Neptune, although it’s hard to tell – he’s dumped his sat phone, which had a beacon in it.’

‘Might get there at the same time if he’s humping it in a Huey,’ said Tommy, looking up from the laptop he’d taken from the DIA office. Every Pentagon-issued computer backed up to a central hard drive and Tommy was reviewing Simon’s shadow computer via a satellite broadband link with the Department of Defense in Washington DC.

‘What have we got, buddy?’ asked Jim, growing more nervous the closer they got to East Timor.

‘I’m searching his sent emails for clues,’ said Tommy. ‘Any ideas for a word search? I’m betting if there’s any correspondence with Lombok or Wa Dae, he’s done it in a rush, done it from a DIA email server, but embedded it in a legitimate email. There’ll be a type of email that has an innocuous first paragraph, followed by the real message.’

‘What have you tried?’ asked Jim.

‘Mum, birthday, darling, golf, fishing, skiing, shares, mortgage – all the basics…’

‘What about you, McQueen?’ said Bongo, who’d filled his own canvas bag of weapons at the DIA offices. ‘You get those special forces of yours to pitch in?’

‘Probably not,’ said Mac, thinking of the political considerations that meant they had to rush the Blackbird snatch and then disappear from Bobonaro. ‘But I can try.’

Unbuckling and moving forward in the cabin, Mac powered up the Harris radio that was built into US military aircraft. Shielding the settings from his comrades, he found a frequency on the UHF band, picked up the chunky handset and keyed the mic.

‘Six-Three, 63 – this is Albion, copy?’

Waiting, Mac could envisage Robbo’s crew trying to stealth up to a militia or a Kopassus troop, and getting his annoying message.

‘Six-Three, 63 – this is Albion, are you copying, over?’

A faint sound of static hissed from the earpiece and Mac was about to contact the navy’s Shoal Bay comms centre in Darwin when a familiar Aussie voice crackled into Mac’s ear.

‘Albion, Albion this is 63 – please confirm ID, over.’

The cheeky bastard, thought Mac. ‘Six-Three – bullriders from Narrabri wear skirts, confirm, over.’

‘ID confirmed. And you’ll keep, Albion,’ growled Robbo. ‘You’ll fucking keep.’

‘Six-Three, we might need fire support at Neptune, can do?’

‘Negative, Albion – currently Mars-bound and covert, over.’

‘Understand, 63 – good luck, over.’

Sitting back in his seat, Mac buckled up as they swooped onto the tiny island that lay between Dili and Flores. As they depowered on the plantation runway, Mac looked out his window and saw an unmarked Black Hawk being refuelled beside a red Quonset building.

The Citation’s co-pilot unlatched the door and they all unbuckled.

‘What about MIT10?’ said Jim suddenly.

‘Shit, that’s right,’ said Tommy, fingers flashing on the keyboard. ‘He had that golf shirt with the logo -’

‘MIT10?’ asked Mac.

‘Yeah,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s an MIT alumni association.’