'Taxi's here.' Suzy gave a slight nod in the direction of the workshop area, as a knackered red-and-yellow-topped Proton saloon pulled up. The cracked plastic Teksi sign on its roof disappeared from view now and again as a bus or truck rumbled past. The last four numbers on the plate were 1032, and that was the VDM [visual distinguishing mark] we'd been given. The driver was definitely our man.

I caught a glimpse of him waving no at a group of tourists in brand-new counterfeit Nike T-shirts. They drive on the left in Malaysia, and the vehicle was parked with the driver at the kerbside, so I couldn't see his face clearly. In the glow from the neon sign he seemed to be lighter-skinned than the target, but not as light as the locals. Maybe he was Indonesian. He stayed in the cab, reading a newspaper with his arm out of the window, a cigarette in his mouth. He was the source, the one responsible for informing on the target. Perhaps he even knew what the target was up to. Whatever, he was the one who was going to help us.

We didn't know the source's identity, and I didn't want to. He probably felt the same about us. All he would have been told was that people were going to be waiting out there for him to finish his part of the job so that they could do theirs. Once he was finished, that was it, he was out of the equation.

Now all three of us were waiting for the target to show his face, while everyone around us was either swigging beer, watching TV or comparing sunburnt shoulders. Suzy got out her guidebook again. It would have looked unnatural for both of us to be looking over there and not saying anything.

3

Worshippers began to emerge from the mosque and before long there was a frenzy of cars and scooters revving up in the parking lot. The first vehicles tried to edge out into the traffic, but nobody on the road was giving them an inch. The air was filled with the din of horns and screeching brakes.