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Any lingering doubts Ped had about micro-targeting and the power of social over mainstream media were obliterated by the results in Kentucky and Oregon.
Hunter had peppered television, radio, newspapers with her face-morphing ads implying Garland’s public donation site was a con. She also got plenty of free airplay from her Battle of Kentucky re-enactment from a media desperate to engineer a closer contest. Slam-dunk elections were ratings killers.
Sniping from beyond the 500-yard line, Jin and the Ciph had zeroed in on voters and reinforcers with morphing faces of real people – often from the targets’ neighborhoods – saying they’d donated. The battery of morphing faces saying Yes ended with a dog barking – a clever play on the concept of every man and his dog, and a humorous counter to Hunter’s tired use of celebrity.
Jin had also been right about one of the faces in Hunter’s ad. The Ciph tracked him down not to the streets of Kentucky but to Hunter’s campaign office in Washington, where he worked as a search engine optimizer. His name was Walter Binchy, and Jin’s take on the Where’s Wally puzzle books went viral until he was outed.
Ped took Kentucky 24 to 22, Oregon 15 to 13 – narrow victories but hugely significant given Hunter’s Second Battle of Kentucky gamble. He now needed just 36 delegates to get over the line – Hunter an unattainable 148. Ped’s spin doctors went into overdrive to convince the media their man was on track to the White House.
*****
The cab ride to the port of Padangbai on Bali’s south-eastern coast had been a diversion, though Bec only found out when they arrived.
Jay had chatted away to the driver about how they were heading to Lombok, more specifically to the Gili islands popular with backpackers, peppering him with questions about travel options. A fast boat direct to Gili Trawangan was recommended, along with a hotel near the night market.
As soon as the cabbie was out of sight, they walked out the back of the ferry terminal to where a Balinese man was waiting in a black Toyota Hilux. Jay introduced him as Wayan, an old mate. Bec knew from experience the gaps between the lines would only be filled when Jay was ready.
They doubled back across the island via a bewildering series of minor roads to avoid Ubud and join up with the highway to the north near Mengwi. Bec hovered in the yellows, even though she knew Jay’s account of what went down after the alarm went off in the drug lab down south was sanitized for her benefit. Orange was banished to the sidelines as Jay and Wayan jabbered and joked like they were heading down the road to a picnic at Reedy Creek.
The road started climbing after Luwus, and they got their first view of mountains to the west, dominated by the 7000-foot Batu Karu. They passed motorcycles laden with brooms, chickens in baskets, plastic toys, household goods, and schools of waving girls hanging over stone fences with blue and green ribbons in their hair.
By the time they reached the town of Batu Ritu, Bec needed a restroom. Wayan obliged, pulling into a parking lot beside a raised podium. Bec would later look back at the fiberglass cat-like animals mating on the railing, and the woman in the orange fluoro vest who greeted them before her feet touched the gravel, as a double warning unheeded. But when a girl’s gotta go....
On the path down to the restroom, Bec declined several offers of the tour, agreeing to a quick coffee to get the woman off her back. What she didn’t realize, as she squatted uncomfortably over the porcelain pan sunk into the ground, was that the cute cat-like creatures in cages outside were luwaks – Asian palm civets with a penchant for coffee berries.
After nearly wiping her hands on a towel that would have defeated the purpose of washing them, Bec allowed the woman, as promised, to lead her further down the path for a coffee. They arrived at a platform overlooking a valley terraced in dark green bushes, with a wooden seat beside a table covered in jars and small glass cups.
Bec would later claim she was just being polite, had difficulty understanding the woman’s accent, that she told her repeatedly all she wanted was a quick cup of coffee for using the restroom.
Fifteen minutes later she’d sampled Bali Coffee which, according to the laminated A3 information sheet, spurs the brain positive thinking; Robusta Coffee which slows down aging; and Ginger Coffee, make your brain send the active message on the body. Bec only got two sips into the Luwak Coffee before she grasped the woman’s explanation of how it was produced. The battery-caged animals were force-fed coffee cherries, then pooped them out ready for collection and roasting.
Bec tried to pay for what she’d tasted so she could escape, but the woman refused, leading her up another path to, surprise, surprise, the store. She was trying to choose between Mangosteen tea or turmeric and ginger when Jay rescued her.
The ribbing from her two friends – underscored by Wayan’s exaggerated head-shaking – lasted all the way to Bedugal, a town on the edge of Lake Bratan with lime green and blue-domed mosques. Soon after they’d left the main road to head along a ridge high above Lake Buyan, Wayan got a phone call. The conversation was in Balinese, but Bec read concern on his face through the rear vision mirror.
‘Translation?’
‘At Munduk, police road block. They only check foreigners.’
‘Might be nothing to do with us,’ said Jay, ‘but I’d rather not chance it Wayan.’
‘I know quick way.’
Emotions Bec had been keeping in check roared into focus. Embarrassment at being duped at the coffee place, her pathetic inability to extract herself, the helplessness and loss of control over the change of plans and unfamiliar route, the fear of being hunted.
Wayan left the ridge, charging down steep, narrow, potholed, un-signposted roads, with Aristotle howling orange from the roof tiles, flags on bamboo poles, segments of umbrellas shading food stalls, in water tanks, cloth around shrines, in stacks of fluoro plastic crates full of trapped chickens on a flatbed trailer.
Bec, breathing and squeezing, and clinging to Mike like a life preserver, caught a glimpse of the north coast and Bali Sea. She held on to the image as Aristotle oscillated in the reds of graffiti on roller doors, the comb of a rooster scurrying across the road in front of them, until finally they reached the open flats on the outskirts of Lovina.
‘Now finish the dangerous road,’ announced Wayan.
*****
‘You must do something make Kaluraha gang very angry.’
Wayan was scrolling through social media posts on his phone, as he and Jay relaxed on beanbags in the tower room of Desa Global, the ecotourism venture Wayan ran with his wife Nyoman. The tower, above the yoga barn, gave three-sixty views over the fields to the town and sea in the distance.
‘What are you seeing online mate?’
‘It all over the Facebook and Instagrams. Kaluraha mengerahkan... how you say?... creep... spread... block road in Klungkung, Badung, Gianyar, Tabanan, Jembrana... I think you finish work, Jay. You plant jungle. No more new missions.’
‘She’s a long story mate. And what we’re doing here is a bit different. I’m sure the Kaluraha lowlifes will soon forget about us, get back to their money-making rackets and stand-over tactics. There’s bugger all in it for them hunting me and my friends.’
Jay drained the bottle, changed the subject.
‘What about you mate, and your wife? Tell me about your little operation here. Haven’t heard a squeak out of you since... where was it? Irian Jaya?’
Wayan handed Jay another beer and updated him. Life was good. Nyoman ran the not-for-profit café and yoga retreat. Wayan took tourists on personalized adventure tours, trekking, mountain-biking, snorkeling, and diving – off reefs near Pemuteran and in the national park on the north-west corner of the island. Profits from the social enterprise went to the poor and disabled in villages along the north coast.
‘Good for you mate. You still, you know, active in the movement?’
‘Not any more. Not from Irian Jaya time. We want make business big, have family. Nyoman hamil... how you say...?’
Jay shook his head. ‘You got me there, mate.’
Wayan made a ball shape with his hands in front of his stomach.
‘Pregnant? You mean Nyoman’s having a baby?’
Wayan beamed.
‘That’s fantastic news mate. Congrats.’
He held up his bottle, clinking a toast.
Jay watched two kites, shaped like birds with tails at least a hundred feet long, dueling above paddies to the west.
‘What about flying? Or is Nyoman and your impending fatherhood keeping you grounded?’
Wayan smiled.
‘I still have airplane. Tourists like see whales. It better than chasing dolphins with boat.’
‘You were also into hang gliding, if I remember rightly.’
‘I sell hang glider. Now, I try paraglider.’
Nyoman’s voice came up from below, calling them to dinner.
Jay drained his beer.
‘Look mate, before we go down, I’ve got a favor to ask.’
‘Whatever you want, Jay. I owe you.’
Jay had told him about their project to uncover the source of the drug that killed Charlie Scott, and most of the highlights reel from their time in Bali. But not everything.
‘I don’t want to put you and your family at any more risk than...’
‘Now who talk nonsense, man? What you want me do?’
‘OK. I told you about the packet of NuNu they tried to plant on Bec in Jimbaran. I thought she’d flushed it. Turns out she’s still got it. Wants to courier it to a lab in the States for analysis. Is that possible from here?’
Wayan nodded. ‘I will arrange.’
‘Cheers. We’ll be out of your hair soon. Bec’s booked flights to Auckland for Saturday.’
*****
Bali is not a large island. Ninety-five miles west to east, seventy north to south. Smaller than the state of Delaware. With the resources and street smarts at the disposal of the head of one of the island’s largest gangs, Montoya expected a quick outcome.
The stakes had been raised even higher by the arrival of the American journalist Mike Bullard, who had teamed up with Duggan and Corelli. Mugshots of the three targets were in the hands and on the cellphone screens of thousands of Kaluraha members, prospects, associates, business partners, and hundreds of cops and local government officials on the payroll in Denpasar and all eight of Bali’s regencies.
Montoya’s offer of a three-million-rupiah bounty – roughly two hundred dollars – had whipped the island’s underbelly into a frenzy. The bounty and the mugshots were being widely shared on social media, grabbing the attention of even law-abiding but cash-strapped Balinese outside the tentacles of Kaluraha.
Like the cab driver who had just reported taking three people fitting the targets’ descriptions to the eastern port of Padangbai. The tip-off earnt him the equivalent of a year’s wages, and the hunt was extended to Lombok and the neighboring Gili islands.
