Steel security gates silently swung open, and the AMG purred up a long driveway through extensive manicured gardens. With dawn painting the sky, scores of shabbily dressed men were already out pruning, sweeping and hosing. The driver negotiated an elaborate turning circle with a leaping bronze tiger fountain at its centre, and pulled up beside a flight of white marble steps that swept up to the house – if you could call it that, for Wijaya Suyanto’s residence was the third biggest in Indonesia, and its three storeys and 2000 square metres of decadent baroque opulence were testament to her father’s pervasive influence over four decades of corruption.

Angka stiffly held the car door open for Sura. Ignoring him, she got out of the car and made her way up the stairs to the vestibule where the skins of sixteen Balinese tigers carpeted the floor. Their heads mounted on the walls seemed to gape in surprise that extinction was the price of such excess. Reaching the inner courtyard, with its genuine Florentine marble fountains, she turned left and made her way to the inner sanctum, a soundproof room her father rarely left, and her mother was not permitted to enter. Sometimes, Sura wondered how the great man had ever found the time to breed.

As usual, he was working. The office was dominated by a huge photograph of her father standing arm in arm with the former president, Suharto, founder of the Golkar party, the leadership of which he aspired. As ever, her father was immaculate: jet-black hair combed to perfection across his box-like head, crisp tan uniform replete with campaign and medal ribbons, and a large solid gold badge that proclaimed his name to the world. Wijaya meant ‘victorious’, and her father had made it his life’s business to live up to it.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘What was so important that I had to reschedule my briefing?’

Feeling light-headed, Sura stepped up to his massive desk.

‘Father, I have something for you.’

When she passed him the display box, she realised her hands were shaking. The general ran his finger over his golden initials and raised a shrewd eyebrow.

‘It’s not even my birthday, Sura. What are you up to?’

‘Please just open it, Father.’

She held her breath as he beheld what lay inside.

‘Oh, these are absolutely splendid,’ he said. ‘Genuine first-rate examples. A Knight’s Cross and Totenkopf insignia in silver? This must have cost you a fortune.’

‘Look at the reverse, Father. The initials.’

A rare moment of surprise transformed his usually blank features.

‘M. H!’ he exclaimed. ‘No, I don’t believe it!’