The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,76
can block the road then. If he’s wearing his uniform, he should be able to get the Porsche to stop without any fuss.”
Perkasa looked at the diagram she was drawing in her notebook as she talked. “And we’ll come from behind and seal off any chance of him reversing,” he said.
“Exactly. Then, one way or another, we get him out of the car. Hopefully Waru can talk him into doing it peacefully. If not, then we’ll do it forcefully,” Ava said. “Now, I want his wrists, eyes, and mouth taped as quickly as possible. There isn’t any point in giving him time to memorize faces or licence plate numbers.”
“Okay.”
“Then we bundle him into the trunk of Waru’s Pathfinder and off we go.”
“What about the Porsche?”
“Obviously we’re not leaving it there. One of us has to drive it back to Waru’s.”
“Let me explain all of this to them and then we’ll figure out who drives what,” said Perkasa.
“While you’re doing that, I need to use the washroom,” Ava said.
She scrubbed her hands with soap and then splashed cold water on her face. These are good men, she thought as she looked in the mirror. Not too many questions, not at all concerned about the why of it all. It was just a job, a well-paid job, that needed to get done. She’d been lucky with Uncle’s men over the years, and it felt to her that she’d drawn well again.
Her opinion didn’t change when she returned to the lobby. The three men had moved to one sofa, her notebook in front of them, their faces calm, focused. Perkasa looked up. “They like this plan, and the early morning timing is good.”
“Who’ll drive the Porsche?”
He smiled. “We all want to, but given that Waru is going to be in uniform and I think I should stay with you, Prayogo is the choice.”
“That’s fine with me. How about any questions they have?”
“Waru did ask how long you think you’ll have to hold the banker at his house.”
“Not past Sunday, I hope.”
“And they suggested that we drive the routes tonight, the one from the house to the cut-off and the road to the golf course. It will give us a better sense of the time involved, and Waru would like to pick out in advance the best place to intercept the banker.”
“Of course,” Ava said. She had taken that for granted but was pleased to agree to it as their idea.
“Well, then, we should get going,” Perkasa said. “It will be dark soon enough.”
( 27 )
They drove twenty kilometres, almost straight west of the city, in Waru’s Pathfinder, Perkasa and Ava riding in the back, Prayogo up front with his brother.
CitraLand — “the Singapore of Surabaya,” as sign after sign proclaimed — was a grouping of developments. Cameron’s house was in CitraGarden, Lampung. The roads were beautifully paved, divided by landscaped meridians that must have taken an army of labourers to keep so immaculate.
Ava looked out at row after row of white stucco houses with red-tile roofs, wooden trim, single-car driveways, and small front lawns. She had seen developments like this outside of Bangkok. It was the Asian interpretation of a North American subdivision, its focus on clean, new, and organized.
Waru led them through the grid, the houses getting gradually larger and beginning to show some variety in architecture. When they reached a street where the houses sat on quarter-acre lots, he slowed down but didn’t stop, pointing left to a two-storey building behind a four-metre brick wall. Ava glanced at the pale blue stucco house with its swooping red-tile roof. Then her attention was drawn to the interlocking stone driveway, where a black Porsche Targa was parked. It was the only car in sight. The licence plate matched the number Indra had given her. The son of a bitch is home, she thought. The wrought-iron gate fronting the driveway was agape. How easy would it be?
Perkasa looked out the back window in the direction they had come from. “There’s only one road out of here that leads to the highway. We can wait for him at any spot between here and there.”
“I don’t want to take the slightest chance of losing him,” Ava said. “So we’ll wait down there, at the end of this road, with the car facing him. We should be able to keep him in sight without getting too close.”
“Ava, have you given any thought to what we’ll do if Cameron doesn’t follow our script?” Perkasa asked.