The prisoner said, “I require a doctor.”
“How does Gumalar know this?” the Dragon said. “Where’s the leak?”
“We found people working for you,” the prisoner said. “Over the past few days. Five of them. They gave us enough information to know about your meeting, to know where to watch for you.”
“Where are my people?” The Dragon’s voice went low and cold.
The prisoner shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You have a staff?” Choate asked.
The Dragon didn’t look at him, stare locked on the prisoner. “I have informants. Who feed me info I sell to CIA.”
“You had informants,” the prisoner said.
The Dragon gave the prisoner a jaw-snapping slap. “Where do I find Gumalar?”
“You can’t touch him.” The prisoner finally spoke with defiance in his voice.
On the radio, a news report began to play. Two men identified as agents of Badan Intelijen Negara, the Indonesian government’s intelligence service, had been found shot to death in a park.
“Oh, shit,” Choate said. “You killed good guys.”
“Good is relative,” the Dragon said. “Our target has the good guys on his payroll.”
“You can’t touch Gumalar and I don’t know where he is,” the prisoner said.
“Then what use are you?” the Dragon said. He fired once, the bullet making a hard, percussive noise in the tight confines of the car.
“Jesus, he could have told us more!” Choate yelled.
“Hardly,” Choate said. “Pop the trunk.”
Choate, hands shaking slightly, obeyed. The Dragon got out of the sedan, went to the back. Froze.
Choate hurried out of the car. In the truck was a large plastic bag. Inside of it, smeared with gore, were a bunch of severed hands. Big, calloused ones; smooth feminine ones; ones wearing rings; others bare of jewelry.
Choate leaned away from the car and fought down the urge to vomit.
“Ten,” the Dragon said after a moment. “There are ten. My five informants.”
“So . . . what do we do now?” They sat in the dark throat of a Jakarta bar, miles from the park, miles from the dump.
“Gumalar’s leak is because he has someone big inside BIN in his pocket. So this stays an off-the-books job for the Agency.”
“I was told to follow your orders,” Choate said. He wasn’t comfortable with this, but orders were orders.
“Then we stick with our original plan. We need to find the money trail this Gumalar fucker is using to finance terrorism. We find the money, we tie him to it, and we kill him along with his terror cell contact. We make it look like the terrorist turned on him. Keep CIA’s nose out of it.”
“And you need me to find the money trail.”
“Gumalar owns a large bank here. It’s going to undergo a cyber attack in twelve hours. You’ll be called in as a representative of the IT support company to repair and inspect the databases. You’ll need to run a query against the five aliases that Gumalar’s terror cell contact has been using. We’ll use that information to find him, so we can get him and Gumalar together for a meeting and take them both out.”
“Running a query will leave an electronic trace. Gumalar may have those accounts tagged to take note of a query.”
“You’re supposed to be smart. Deal with it.”
Choate said nothing.
“I’m not big on coddling, kid,” the Dragon said.
“Not expected or wanted.”
“You won’t have long to do the trace. Get the account information and then get out. I don’t want you stuck inside his bank all day; you’d be a target if they know your face.”
“How did you get these aliases?”
“My contacts.”
“Did your contacts know about our targeting his bank?”
“No,” the Dragon said after a moment.
“I really dislike the hesitation you just showed.”
“They didn’t know.”
Choate tapped fingers on the table. The adrenaline rush faded. “We need to report back to the Agency.”
“Of course. But the mission goes on.”
“That’s for the Agency to decide.”
“The Agency can decide what the hell they want. These bastards don’t get away with killing my people. I run my network like a nice little family business. I took care of these folks, their families. I had their loyalty. They have mine.”
“All very noble,” Choate said. “But I’m not going on a suicide mission.”
“Fine. Get Agency approval. Be sure and mention I saved your life.” The Dragon got up, finished his beer. They got up, left money on the table, went to a small house of the Dragon’s on a quiet street.