Sadly, the latest addition to this thin library is unlikely to do much to lift the nation's profile. Merdeka Square by Kerry B. Collison is a plodding, uninspired piece of "faction" covering those same events of 32 years ago. Essentially, Collison's tale tracks the scheming of the U.S., Soviet and Australian intelligence agencies as -- to the concern of all of them -- President Sukarno begins to lean toward China.

The novel revolves around a small cast led by Australian operative Murray Stephenson, whose professional abilities are largely eclipsed by his sexual achievements. He sleeps with his boss's wife and is involved with an activist from the Gerwani communist women's group, as well as with a follower of the Subud Islamic sect who turns out to be the conduit between the CIA and the Indonesian intelligence body BAKIN.

Apart from the Australian cast and some Indonesian military figures, the other leading characters are left largely undeveloped and appear on the page as mere shadows. Even the remarkable and vivid Sukarno is portrayed in a ghost-like manner. Oddly, the most colorful descriptions are reserved for the Soviets, whose alleged body odors are apparently an obsession with Collison.

Merdeka Square's account of the events surrounding the 1965 coup attempt is most notable for how it differs from the official version long promoted by the government. And this is why the novel, for all its shortcomings, is the talk of Jakarta's chattering classes. Indonesians all know the authorized account of what happened on Sept. 30, 1965. It is enshrined in a lengthy film shown without fail on television on each anniversary of the botched uprising. According to this account, the communists were the sole villains.

Among their sundry sins, they abducted six senior officers from their homes in the middle of the night, tortured them and dumped their bodies down a well near the Halim military airport.

The insurgents captured vital installations such as the state radio and effectively controlled the capital. Somehow, though, they overlooked the Strategic Reserve led by a certain Maj.-Gen. Suharto. He took advantage of this blunder to rally government forces and win the day. In doing so, he saved Indonesia from a future tied to China and set upright a strategic domino that looked like tumbling.

Collison's account is different in that it includes the theory that, at the time of the uprising, a Council of Generals led by Defense Minister A.H. Nasution was already plotting a CIA-backed coup to depose Sukarno and get rid of the communists; and that a Soviet-supported move was afoot to undermine China's influence in Indonesia. Given the political climate of 1965, the attempted coup and its aftermath were no small sideshow. U.S. forces were in combat in Vietnam and Washington was fearful communism would march through Southeast Asia.

According to Collison's version, the leftists were forced to bring their putsch forward to head off the Council of Generals, which had scheduled its own coup for Armed Forces Day, Oct. 5. The generals, for their part, had grown alarmed by Chinese shipments to Indonesia of small arms under an agreement between leftist Air Force commander Omar Dhani and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai.

The author is careful not to directly challenge the authorities' version of what happened on Sept. 30. Instead, he leaves it to the spectacularly unsuccessful Jakarta KGB chief, a Col. Kololotov, to muse about the role of Suharto. "The colonel had lived in the dark world of subterfuge and lies long enough to realize that even in a land where people thrived on the mystique, the simple explanation of how the general managed to be overlooked on that fateful night just did not wash for him."

The controversy over Suharto's role then and up to his inauguration as president in 1968 is not new -- though discussion of the matter has necessarily been muted. Harry Tjan Silalahi, a pro-New Order student leader in 1965 and long a major presence in the influential Center for International and Strategic Studies think-tank, insists talk of any involvement by Suharto in the uprising "is all nonsense."

Commenting on the known relationship between Suharto and coup leaders Lt.-Col. Untung and Lt.-Col. Latief, he says that these men were Suharto's subordinates in his Diponegoro command in Central Java. "[Revolutionary commanders] Sudirman and Nasution were both friends of the leader of the [Muslim separatist] Darul Islam rebellion," says Harry Tjan. "But that doesn't mean they were involved in the Muslim separatist movement. Jakarta was a small place in those days." Harry Tjan's view is simply that Suharto was a man who acted coolly at a critical juncture.

Talk of what may or may not have happened more than three decades ago is now purely academic, of course. Suharto has ruled Indonesia with a tough hand but has brought solid advances to his people. As for Merdeka Square (Sid Harta Publishers, Hartwell, Victoria, Australia, 554 pages, HK$135, paperback), it contains enough dramatics, skullduggery and derring-do to overcome its labored prose. And, for local readers it has reawakened a passion for discussion of what really did happen in those heady days that shaped modern Indonesia.

There has been no word on whether the book will be banned. Even if it is, it will continue to circulate, thanks to Indonesia's photocopy culture. If nothing else, Merdeka Square will allow Indonesians to muse on what the fate of their country might have been if the communists and their supporters within the military had had a better grasp of revolutionary tactics.

Ho Chi Minh was striving to extend his hold over all of Vietnam; Laos and Cambodia were leaning worryingly to the left; and Malaysia was fighting a communist insurrection. At the same time, the Soviet Union was witnessing its influence and investments in Indonesia sour as China increased its hold on political life.

Among the G-men watching these developments was Harvey Barnett, head of Australia's ASIS external security agency. In Merdeka Square, he is Harry Bradshaw, whose sexual adventures land him in a Soviet entrapment. His man in Jakarta is Murray Stephenson, clearly modeled on Murray Clapham, at the time an Australian embassy employee. Turning up in Jakarta not long after the events of October 1965 was Kerry B. Collison, an Australian air force communications specialist and linguist -- and now author of Merdeka Square. His main task was to move secret traffic to the agency's headquarters in Melbourne.

Both Clapham and Collison quit the Australian services while in Jakarta and stayed on as businessmen. Clapham now maintains a presence in Indonesia from his base in Singapore. His interests are in mining and air transport for the oil industry. Collison, despite being granted Indonesian citizenship, left to plow new pastures. He is believed to now live in Yangon.

If Collison missed the attempted 1965 coup, he clearly arrived in Jakarta soon enough afterward to absorb much of the atmosphere. Even 30 years later, many keenly remember how the city was alive with intelligence agents. Today, while the need to keep an eye on Indonesia has lost the urgency it once had, the major nations with an interest in the area continue to maintain watchful operations. Only the Russians have substantially downgraded their network from the days of the Soviet Union, and this for financial reasons.

With the approaching end of the Suharto era, the stakes are as high today as they were in 1965. With billions of dollars of investments dependent on continuing stability, the world's spies again have good reason to follow and influence Indonesia's course of events.

-- By Keith Loveard