Ablas approached the first three soldiers, two young men and one woman in her mid twenties. Another three soldiers stood behind them in full battle gear, body armour, helmets and M16s at the ready, guarding the final entrance. He joined the queue. Everyone was hot and impatient. He eventually reached the soldiers. They asked him the same questions that the Indonesian police guarding the gate had put to him.
‘Passport please, sir.’
He handed it to them with a smile, despite their serious faces.
‘What is your business here, sir?’
Mr Ablas began to reiterate what that business was when a middle-aged woman with her husband in tow pushed through. ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ she said, bustling past Ablas.
‘Ma’am, you’ll have to wait your turn,’ said one of the young soldiers, a private first class.
‘My passport — it’s been stolen.’
‘Sorry to hear that, ma’am, but you’ll still have to wait your turn.’
‘Excuse me, but I think I was before you,’ said another man in the line, annoyed by the woman’s attempt to jump the queue.
‘Can’t you let us through?’ asked the woman whose passport had been stolen. ‘We have planes to catch, connections…’
‘Doing our best, ma’am, but as you’ve been told, you’ll have to wait your turn, I’m afraid,’ said the female soldier, a sergeant, who had come to her comrade’s rescue. She impatiently waved Alex Ablas towards a table and a second x-ray machine, and then followed him over.
Ablas was then asked a third time to show his passport. The sergeant checked it, saw that the photo matched the holder and returned it to him.
‘This is your case, sir?’ the sergeant asked.
Ablas nodded.
‘Open it please, sir,’ she said, checking over her shoulder. The woman with the passport problem was still loudly chewing the PFC’s ear off. ‘We pay our taxes. I’m writing down your number, young man. We know a congressman…’
Ablas did as he was asked. He opened the case and turned it around so that the sergeant could see inside.
‘Turn the cameras on please, sir.’ The sergeant was obviously distracted by the argument behind her. Dedy Abimanu, alias Alex Ablas, turned each camera on and was relieved when green lights flashed on all three.
The sergeant picked up the portable scanner and touched the ‘self test’ button as procedure required her to do. The scanner’s LED display informed her that it was functioning properly. She waved the scanner’s nose over the case and its contents, and then held the sensor in the device’s nose over the cameras for the required time. The scanner took around thirty seconds to register the presence of C-4, RDX and a number of other explosives by examining the vapour released by each. She watched the scanner’s LED display impatiently while its CPU processed the make-up of the air sample tested. A watched pot never boils… And then, ‘Negative’. She put the scanner down, gave the cameras a cursory examination and lifted the protective foam, her concentration broken by the impatient old duck further back in the queue. She took out one camera body to see if there was anything under it and then replaced it. Nice-looking camera — new. The sergeant was vaguely interested in photography — something she would like to take up one day. Indeed, ordinarily she would have happily conversed with a professional photographer, but not at that moment. Too much going on.
‘Your business here, sir?’ she asked, closing the case.
‘Can you hurry, please,’ said the woman with the passport problem, now arrived beside Ablas with her husband. The sergeant sighed and felt sorry for the man. The woman had successfully bullied the PFCs and now, obviously, it was her turn.
‘Entry visa,’ Ablas said, his face serene, relaxed.
‘Keep your case on you at all times, sir,’ she said to Ablas, waving him through.
‘Sergeant. Sergeant!’ said the woman. ‘We have a plane to catch, if you please!’
Mr Ablas thanked the sergeant and moved on past the final armed guards, who ignored him completely.
The female soldier checked the purse of the impatient woman: compact, nail polish, wallet, notebook — those camera bodies were on the heavy side, weren’t they? — mints, sunglasses case…
‘Anyone can see my husband and I aren’t terrorists. Honestly…’ she said, as she stuffed everything back in her purse, huffing and puffing. Her husband shrugged apologetically at the soldier.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said the sergeant as politely as she could manage. She wiped her fingers absently on her fatigues. They felt waxy. Where’d that come from?
Mr Ablas made his way to the visa department. He took a number from the dispenser and sat on the one remaining chair. His number was three hundred and ninety-seven. The indicator on the wall said three hundred and seventy-eight. All three windows were occupied with problems. It would have been a long wait…
He opened the case on his knee, took the flash from its place and popped off the clear plastic shield in front of the bulb. Next he removed the bulb itself, and pulled a small wire from the socket and fed it into the female socket on one of the camera bodies. He clicked the flash’s switch to the on position, closed the case and waited calmly.
Exactly thirty seconds later, the timer in the flash sent an electric charge down the wire and into the camera body.
Kadar Al-Jahani heard the almighty blast over the noise of the city from four blocks away. Duat had already departed and was on a scooter climbing into the hills. A mushroom cloud of grey dust blossomed over the skyline, following the sound of the explosion seconds earlier. The city was silent for several moments after that, as if taking a breath, and then the chorus began: tens, then hundreds then thousands of horns blared in an impromptu salute. The US Embassy had been struck. Kadar punched a number into the stolen cellphone and let it ring twice before disconnecting: the prearranged signal. The move to a remote site on the island of Flores would begin immediately. The authorities — American and Indonesian — would swarm over the bombsite. Kadar Al-Jahani wondered how long it would take before the Americans connected him with the explosion.
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
‘Good evening. This is Annabelle Gilbert with the news. The United States Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, was struck today by a bomb blast at just after one pm Eastern Australian time. The attack is believed to have been carried out by one or more suicide bombers.
‘Reports from the devastation are still sketchy, but indications are that around eighty people have been killed and a substantial number wounded. Around fifty people are still missing.
‘No Australians are reported to have been in the building at the time.
‘The US Embassy building suffered major structural damage in the attack and may have to be completely demolished.
‘The embassy had been in a general state of heightened alert over the past six months since the American Express and Citibank buildings in London were attacked in a coordinated assault.’