The Ill Wind Contract by Philip Atlee

Author:Philip Atlee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2020-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

The seat in the old plane fitted me like a metal body truss; it had not been constructed with my size in mind. As we circled for altitude Hatta began to brief me. His group was led by General Haris Nasution, Defense Minister, General Suharto, commanding the army’s Strategic Reserve Forces, and General Sarwo Edhy, commanding the army’s crack paracommando forces. I had never heard of the last two men, but Hatta assured me both were important and on the list of eight marked for death.

The opposition was headed by Dipa Aidit, head of the Indonesian Communist Party, Foreign Minister Subandrio, and Generals Supardjo and Dhani. Dhani was in command of the Indonesian Air Force, with headquarters at Halim Air Force Base, south of Djakarta. The warrants had been sworn out by Lieutenant Colonel Untung, commander of the Tjakrabirawa, the elite corps that guarded the presidential palace.

“Then Untung must be Sukarno’s man,” I interrupted abruptly. “Where does the Bung stand in all of this conniving?”

Hatta shrugged. “No one knows,” he said slowly. “He plays each side against the other.”

I stared at him, because for the first time the conviction had gone out of his tone. He fell silent, and in an hour we were landing on the airstrip beside the Senajang sports complex, outside Djakarta. This huge collection of barracks, stadiums, and pools had been built several years earlier by the Soviet Union, as evidence of their solidarity with Indonesia. That premise had been fractured by Sukarno’s love affair with Mao.

The pilot of our Hercules had had to call several times for landing permission before the runway lights came on below, and immediately after our gear touched, the lights went off again. It was a moonlit night, but our pilot wisely stopped at the center intersection until a lighted jeep came out of the semidarkness to guide us to the parking area.

Everything was on schedule. Colonel Hatta and I stepped off the plane and were promptly arrested. Flanked fore and aft by leveled carbines, we were marched to a darkened barracks and locked in. Hatta kept growling considerable static, and after an hour an apologetic major released us und restored our side arms. We were taken to a communications room with a direct military line to General Suharto’s KOSTRAD headquarters on Merdeka Square, opposite the presidential palace.

Hatta talked to General Suharto himself for several minutes, making notes. Then turned to me. He said that the coup instigators were assembling at the Halim Base, General Dhani’s headquarters. That Subandrio, the Foreign Minister, General Supardjo, and Lieutenant Colonel Untung were all there. That Sukarno’s private plane, a $2,000,000 Lockheed Jet-Star, had been taxied out of its hangar and its tanks topped off. The whereabouts of the president was unknown.

Earlier that night Sukarno had made a speech in one of the suburbs and was reported to have gone from there to meet his fourth wife, lissome Japanese beauty Sara Ratna Dewi, at the Nirwana Night Club on top of the Hotel Indonesia. She had left her party there, but neither she nor Sukarno could be located.

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