14. Two weeks later – late November 2011. ASIO headquarters, Canberra.
"Wisnu!" she called, as she spotted the Head of her Indonesia department walking across the outer office. He looked over and came to lean in her doorway, muscular and lean.
"Yes, Ilian?"
"Are you making any sense of what, if anything, is going on between Capricorn Downs and Indo?" The younger man pulled a face and came to sit down opposite her.
"Yes, no, not really. The business is definitely a front for people we know are financiers for JAT and other extremist Islamist groups. However, as a genuine business it is actually going far better than it ever has, running cattle and selling them both locally and, increasingly, as live exports back home and is also being used for legitimate training of young Malaysian and Indonesian agricultural students. However…" His voice, still bearing faint traces of the Indonesia he had left with his Indo-Chinese parents when he was a young teenager, tailed off as he gathered his thoughts.
"However?" the woman prompted. He was a bloody good team leader but he did like to draw things out.
"There have been some unexplained movements of money in and out of various accounts, including those for Capricorn Downs here and others in Indonesia, Vanuatu, the Bahamas and Switzerland. In line with Rashid's rumoured background we suspect money laundering but can't prove it so that's still on watch. And there are still – odd – people coming and going. All legitimate, through Brisbane or Cairns, but they tend to pick up hire cars in Cairns and then disappear for a week to a fortnight and don't show up anywhere else in that period, which isn't normal for tourists. If we weren't watching the area we probably wouldn't even have picked them up." He hesitated again before coming out with the final observance. "A couple of them are suspected of being active commanders in Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid and Abu Sayyaf but again there's no proof. We're waiting for information from our compatriots in the appropriate intelligence communities."
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, staring both at and through him before commenting quietly,
"It's not looking good, is it?"
He shook his head.
"No. But we still can't pin anything down. It's all suspicion and circumstantial evidence at the moment."
She fixed her unnerving, blue-green gaze on him, her face as hard and unyielding as though it was carved from marble.
"Okay. Keep on it. I've got a bad feeling about this but we'll get the bastards sussed sooner or later so we can boot them out before they get a chance to do whatever it is they're planning. Keep me posted."
Wisnu stood to go.
"Will do."
She smiled suddenly, looking much softer.
"Thanks."
Swinging around in her chair, she stared sightlessly out over the vista of Lake Burley Griffin, shimmering blue against the low-lying city and khaki hills beyond while she wondered what they were missing…