Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

2 DOUBTS

Adhi Wulandari was an ambitious perantara insinyur, an intermediate engineer, with a midsize electronics company in Jakarta. He had just survived a big layoff. This had been the first time the company had let go more than just assemblers. Two friends from his department—one from New Zealand and one from Singapore—were the company’s only foreign-born employees. Without warning, they had been told to pack up the personal contents of their cubicles and were escorted out the door. It soon became apparent that all of the others singled out in the layoff were non-Muslims, leaving the company with a one hundred percent Muslim staff. The circumstances of the layoff troubled Wulandari.

The next day, word came of a lucrative new video camera assembly contract. Why would the company need to lay off anyone when they’ve just received a new contract? Wulandari wondered. Everyone else seemed happy to still have their jobs, so they didn’t ask many questions.

While reviewing the drawing specifications for the new assembly contract, Wulandari noticed that the drawings were incomplete. The diagrams showed only one half of a clamshell housing marked CAMERA CASE, a battery, and a digital timer. The large round center section of the housing was a blank spot in the drawings, marked simply as CAMERA POSITION (TBD). The empty space also seemed unusually large for a digital camera, given their recent miniaturization. Even stranger, there were no molded projections in the plastic to hold a camera in place.

All of the parts for the assembly project came in from several other subcontractors: 252 unmarked gray plastic cases from an injection molding company in Tasikmalaya, boxes of aluminum screws from a fastener supply company in Banjarsari, 252 five-year-life 48-volt lithium manganese dioxide batteries sourced from China, bundles of green LEDs from a parts vendor in Jakarta Tangerang, and 252 generic programmable digital timers made by Omron.

The battery specification also struck Wulandari as unusual. Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries would have been a better choice for a camera system. Why would they specify a 48-volt disposable battery, and why did they need one with such a high voltage and amp-hour rating? He surmised that they wanted to emplace “set and forget” espionage cameras for several years, but the specifications still seemed incongruous.

When the 252 timers arrived, he grew even more suspicious. They were packed in cardboard boxes labeled OMRON AUTOMATION—a major electronics company in Jakarta Selatan—but the timers themselves were completely unmarked. Every other electronics subassembly he’d ever worked with had carried at least a maker’s name and part number. The lack of any markings further piqued his curiosity.

The camera boxes had only a pair of 48-volt DC power input wires, a mini-USB controller port, two pairs of 20-centimeter-long 48-volt output wires, and another 40-centimeter pair of thinner leads in a contrasting color, with smaller connectors that were attached to the low-current, low-voltage green status light LEDs. These were left dangling for later assembly, which was not common practice.

Wulandari asked his supervisor why they were doing only part of the assembly, but the senior engineer offered no explanation. “I don’t know. We are just the subcontractor.” And when Wulandari asked about the customer, his boss said, “They tell me it is a secret project for the BIN. I think it must be some kind of spy camera.” The Indonesian Badan Intelijen Negara—the Indonesian equivalent of the CIA—was notoriously secretive. Another employee, however, was told that it was a project for the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space or Lembaga Penerbangan dan Antariksa Nasional (LAPAN). Wulandari didn’t know who to believe.

Wulandari also raised concerns about the flimsy aluminum screws that were specified for mounting the camera’s timer and battery, as they would be easily deformed when the cameras were eventually serviced. Once again, his concerns were brushed aside. “I have no idea why aluminum. That is just what they ordered.”

After all of the parts had arrived, the assembly of the cameras was completed in just one week and resulted in a very profitable contract for the company. The 252 camera housings—with batteries and timers installed and LEDs attached—were then packaged and sent by truck to another small company farther south in Banten Province, ostensibly for installation of the cameras.

The camera case contract was soon forgotten by most of the company’s employees. But Wulandari’s doubts about it persisted until almost three years later, when the camera cases made news headlines, erasing all doubt about their true purpose.