Several soldiers from the PNG army wandered around, ignoring their presence, coming and going from the large hangar that doubled as a storage facility and garage for various army vehicles. A flight from Mt Hagen in the highlands arrived, a largish Saab turbo prop. The stairs were wheeled across, the door opened and a small number of passengers disembarked: Europeans, PNG businessmen and several highland tribesmen compete with bird of paradise feathers and boar tusks through their broad noses, and the ubiquitous koteka, an incongruous clash of the ancient with the present. Wilkes was in the middle of wondering whether the tribesmen had been offered tea and coffee along with the other passengers when he was distracted by the arrival of an executive jet reversing its engines on the runway.
The Cessna Citation rolled off onto the taxiway that would bring it to the banyan tree that Wilkes and Monroe had retreated under. The door in the fuse cracked open and the co-pilot popped his head out and then exited, offering a hand to a woman dressed in military fatigues who was descending the narrow stepladder. She declined assistance.
Wilkes watched her as she walked towards them, a backpack over one shoulder, M4 over the other. She seemed comfortable enough. ‘Morning. Lovely day,’ she said, swinging her pack off her shoulder and placing it beside Wilkes’s and Monroe’s gear.
‘Gia,’ said Monroe, standing and giving her a blokey handshake. ‘Glad you could make it.’
Wilkes settled for a simple ‘Hi.’ He’d told her where they were off to and the reasons why, and the deputy station chief had immediately demanded to come along. Wilkes was unsure about her presence. The New Guinea highlands were tough going at the best of times and they were headed way off the beaten track. ‘Don’t worry about Gia,’ Monroe had said. ‘She knows her limits.’ Ferallo was plainly determined and had more than enough seniority for Wilkes’s initial reluctance to metamorphose into a shrug.
‘You boys look thirsty,’ she said, breaking out Cokes from her pack, tossing one each to Wilkes and Monroe. ‘The bird has a fridge,’ she explained, gesturing at the jet behind her.
The Citation’s engines throttled up, the noise killing any attempt at conversation. Monroe and Wilkes sat, backs against the tree trunk, leaving room between them for Ferallo. The executive jet’s nose wheel turned as the throttles were goosed, the pilots waved, and the aircraft swung away on its short taxi to the runway.
‘So, what gives?’ said Monroe suddenly. There were ten minutes or so before the helo was due to arrive to take them up to the Western Highlands — another of Monroe’s CIA specials, no doubt, thought Wilkes — and so there was time to pump Ferallo for details of the mission Wilkes would not normally be privy to.
‘About what?’ said Ferallo, blinking innocently, face blank.
‘C’mon, Gia, don’t be shy. We’ve been jumping out of planes, playing Johnny Adventure…what’s been going on?’
Ferallo belched quietly, the back of her hand attempting to politely disguise the fact as she put the empty Coke bottle on the ground. She’d been authorised to debrief them and there was no time like the present. ‘Okay, well, the biggest development? When it’s all said and done, it turns out Duat was just a patsy, a flunky used in a scam,’ Ferallo said as the heat caught up with her and the beads of perspiration began to gather on her forehead.
‘What do you mean?’ Monroe said.
‘He was being used.’
‘How…?’ asked Wilkes.
‘Before we knew what this was all about, Kadar Al-Jahani met up with three men at a cafe in Rome. We — the CIA — caught some of that meeting on tape. You remember, Atticus?’
‘Yeah, I remember,’ said Monroe, brushing the flies away from his face in a constant salute.
‘At the time, we didn’t know what the conversation was about, did we? But, with the benefit of hindsight and a dash of insight, well, we’ve filled in the gaps. There was a Saudi, a Yemeni and a Palestinian —’
‘Hey, is this the one where they each jump out of a plane and yell, “God, save me”?’ said Monroe.
‘Not unless all three were financiers of terror.’
‘You’re getting it mixed up with the one about an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman,’ said Wilkes, taking a swig of his Coke.
‘Guys?’ Ferallo was doing her best impression of an impatient assistant deputy CIA chief.
‘Sorry, it’s the heat,’ said Monroe. ‘So, they were financiers?’
‘Yep. They were known to the Israelis. Mostly, they underwrote the purchase of weapons for the Palestinian Intifada against Israel. They gave Kadar Al-Jahani a bunch of money ostensibly to set up a second Islamic front. The stated objective of this front — and a very noble one in the eyes of their associates in Hamas and Hezbollah — was to divert attention and resources away from the Middle East, and thus give everyone there a little more room to move.’
‘To make more murder and mayhem,’ Monroe added unnecessarily.
‘One would assume so,’ Ferallo said, now also swatting at the flies. ‘It appears these associates in terror supplied Kadar with the VX and the drone. Launched against the appropriate target, so the idea was, this WMD would be the catalyst for Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to rise up and create the South East Asian Islamic super state.’
‘Hit an oil field and ignite a whole region,’ said Monroe.
Ferallo nodded. ‘Only Kadar Al-Jahani and his financier friends forgot to mention to Duat that they were also business partners. In oil.’
‘What?’ said Monroe, frowning, the revelation throwing him somewhat.
‘I think I get it,’ said Wilkes, shaking his head in amazement.
‘Well then, can you help me?’ Monroe said.
‘Did they buy shares in Saudi Petroleum or something?’ said Wilkes.
‘Sort of. They bought “warrants”. In Exxon. For a small outlay, a warrant gives you a large exposure to the market, so you can make a lot. You can also lose everything. Only these guys had no intention of losing. They bought several million of these warrants, over a short period through various intermediaries,’ said Ferallo. Wilkes impressed her. He was an action man with, obviously, something solid between the ears. She’d asked him to have a drink with her several months ago and he’d declined because he’d become engaged to his TV-land girlfriend. A pretty reasonable excuse. Particularly as Ferallo remembered having a little bit more in mind than a cocktail. Now she wished she’d pushed him a bit harder. And there was news on the engagement front — apparently, the wedding was off.
‘Think insider trading, Atticus,’ said Wilkes. ‘If a WMD is launched against an entire oil field, then everyone’s going to think terrorism has a new focus — interrupting the world’s oil supply. National economies would teeter. After an initial dip oil prices would go through the roof, as would oil shares. If you know that’s going to happen beforehand, you could make a killing.’
‘Appropriate for a bunch of terrorists,’ said Monroe with a snort.
‘If the price went up thirty percent as the result of the attack, a conservative rise experts tell us, Kadar Al-Jahani personally would have made around five hundred million US,’ said Farallo.
Monroe whistled.
‘And Duat knew nothing about any of this?’ Wilkes asked.
‘No. We believe he wasn’t part of the deal. Kadar was siphoning off money for the purchase of these warrants from the money made running guns and smuggling drugs. Not even the moneyman we arrested in Sydney was in on it.’