‘So, how do you know what Kadar was up to?’ asked Monroe.
‘Do you remember the Defence Intelligence Organisation guy — Felix Mortimer?’
Wilkes nodded.
‘Yep, I remember him. Big guy, smart, bad dresser,’ said Monroe.
‘Yeah,’ said Ferallo. ‘He figured it out. Kadar Al-Jahani gave up a series of numbers when he was being interrogated. Everyone thought it was some kind of code that would lead to the location of the weapon, the Sword of Allah.’
Monroe had wondered what the Arabic lettering on the nose of the UAV in the photos had meant.
‘Sword of Allah. He was a general in the time of the prophet Mohammed, and Kadar Al-Jahani was big on the legends,’ Ferallo continued. ‘Anyway, the numbers represented a swift code. That’s a code used to identify a bank and its branch. The numbers were a simple exposition to letters in the alphabet, minus one then plus one for each subsequent number.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Monroe.
The frown on Wilkes’s face told Ferallo he didn’t either.
Ferallo retrieved a notebook from a side pocket of her pack and flipped it open. ‘I thought you might like to see this,’ she said. Hand-drawn on the page was a grid of numbers and letters.
‘Okay, look here. These were Kadar Al-Jahani’s numbers: 1511472723.’ Ferallo wrote the numbers down, then underlined and circled various numbers and figures on a grid while Wilkes and Monroe looked over her shoulder. ‘Start with the number 1. Add one and the corresponding letter is B. Subtract one from the number 5 and the corresponding letter is D. Follow the series and the 11 becomes an L. “BDL” is the acronym used for the Banco di Luca in its swift code. Once you get a grip on that, the rest is easy. The full swift code is BDLCHZ2D, a particular branch of the Banco di Luca in Zurich.
‘The password to Kadar Al-Jahani’s account was “Khalid bin Al-Waleed”, otherwise known as…’
‘The Sword of Allah,’ said Wilkes.
Ferallo smiled. ‘Give that man a cigar. The numbers given up by Kadar meant absolutely nothing until we knew what we were looking for. And we’ve got Mortimer to thank for that.’
‘Shit,’ said Wilkes, shaking his head in disbelief. Wilkes remembered the flight to Guantanamo Bay and the conversation he’d had with Kadar Al-Jahani. He never would have guessed that the man’s motives had been anything other than idealism. ‘When this is all over, Atticus, we should buy Mortimer a beer.’
‘That might be a bit hard to arrange,’ said Ferallo.
‘Why?’ asked Atticus.
‘He’s dead,’ Ferallo said.
‘Oh?’ Wilkes swatted at the flies. ‘How? What happened?’
‘Had a heart attack,’ said Ferallo. ‘Lots of stress, bad food and no exercise.’
‘That’ll do it,’ Monroe agreed.
Ferallo continued: ‘Anyway, Duat’s motivations in all of this were pure, if you can call wanting to kill a lot of innocent people in a most unpleasant way pure,’ said Ferallo, as the familiar beat of a helicopter’s rotors signalled the arrival of their transport.
‘So it was just about money?’ said Monroe.
‘No, it was about kingship. Kadar Al-Jahani would have been extremely wealthy and, if the other half of the plan had worked and they’d ended up with a fundamentalist home in Asia, he and his cronies would have ruled it.’
‘And everyone would have lived happily ever after,’ said Monroe.
‘Everyone except Duat. He’d have figured the doublecross sooner or later…if they’d ever let him live long enough, that is.’Wilkes stood as the helo approached, taxiing towards them in a slow hover three metres above the blistering blacktop.
‘Do you feel sorry for him?’ Ferallo asked.
‘Who, Duat?’ said Wilkes. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘You know muruk means “cassowary” in Pidgin?’ said Gia Ferallo as they stopped for a rest on one of the high passes that separated Muruk’s village from their destination.
‘The bird? No, I didn’t know that,’ said Wilkes, looking down on the jungle spread out below them. He had a vague feeling of déjà vu, accentuated by the presence of Timbu and Muruk, the chief’s young son. ‘And I didn’t know you spoke the local lingo either.’
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘It’s here, in the tourist phrase book.’ Ferallo held up the small booklet she’d been reading and wiggled it.
Wilkes felt more relaxed about the trek this time, partly because they weren’t on the tail of a hostile war party, but mostly because he was in-country on official business at the invitation of the government of Papua New Guinea, and was therefore entitled to carry the M4/203 and the ugly sawn-off Remington pump strapped to his pack. And he was wearing military fatigues.
Atticus and Ferallo also carried M4s, not because the rifle was necessarily their preferred choice of weapon but because it was light and reliable. When Wilkes had told them how hard the going would be, Ferallo was disbelieving. But she was a believer now, stripped down to a navy singlet soaked with sweat. And featherweight though it was, the Bushmaster M4’s seven kilos loaded had become a dead weight as they trudged the narrow, slippery mud paths that snaked up and down the hills. Yet Ferallo hadn’t complained about the mud, the climb, the weight, the mosquitoes or the leeches, and Wilkes had to admit he was impressed. And surprised.
‘So why would the chief name his son after the cassowary?’ Ferallo asked Timbu.
‘Well, the cassowary is a big, flightless bird. Weighs around sixty-five kilos and stands around one and a half metres tall,’ said Timbu, amused at Ferallo’s naivety. ‘And the thing has a temper. When it’s pissed off, it can be pretty frightening. Has a sharp toenail over a hundred millimetres long that it uses like a dagger. Corner one and it’ll kick you, and maybe disembowel you. Don’t think of it as being like an oversized chook.’
‘Oh,’ said Ferallo, giving Muruk a friendly, respectful smile he readily returned.
Timbu took a long drink of water from his canteen and ate some yam to keep up his energy levels. The interpreter was keen to return to the highlands when Wilkes had put it to him. Resolving unfinished business was just part of it. After the last trek with Wilkes where he witnessed first hand the damage being done by the flood of weapons, Timbu had decided to enter politics, to defend the rights of the highland people, and try to stop the gunrunning.
‘So, Tom. Tell me again why we couldn’t just take a helo in?’ said Monroe, half joking, as he adjusted his pack’s shoulder straps.
For the simple reason that if Duat were at the village or in its vicinity, they didn’t want to telegraph their presence and spook him. But Atticus knew that and so Tom didn’t feel the need to repeat it. ‘Come on big, tough CIA guy,’ said Wilkes. ‘The walk’ll do you good.’
‘Yeah, yeah…’ said Monroe. Trekking through the bush was hard going and Monroe was a city boy, more at home in the jungle of the concrete variety. But he was first and foremost an adventure junkie, and meeting challenges — especially challenges of the physical and dangerous type — was his ‘thing’.
The conversation trailed off rapidly as they resumed the climb, walking in single file, leaving each with their private thoughts. Wilkes and Monroe had decided to come to Papua New Guinea directly from the terrorists’ camp on Flores. Wilkes’s hunch appeared to be reinforced by the terrorists’ own meticulous records. While most of the detail on the design, construction and flight plan of the UAV had been destroyed, the Babu Islam encampment had been run like a military establishment and spreadsheets were kept on nearly every facet of camp life. Even down to how much rice was consumed.