Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  Mac’s voice dropped. ‘I saw a shrink for eight weeks in 2002.’

  ‘Where?’ said the doctor.

  ‘Manila – Dr Lydia Weiss, a Canadian. I didn’t declare it.’

  ‘Why did you see her?’

  Mac looked at the eye chart and the plastic skeleton for inspiration but found his gaze returning to the doctor’s face. ‘Some children were hurt during an operation – I felt I hadn’t done enough to protect them.’

  ‘You blamed yourself?’

  ‘At a point where I could have covered their interests,’ said Mac, thinking it through, ‘I looked after my own interests. I couldn’t really . . . well, I couldn’t talk to anyone. You know, I started self-medicating and –’

  ‘Alcohol?’ said the doctor.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And once that became a problem, you saw Dr Weiss?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Mac. ‘I used a false identity.’

  ‘And you improved?’

  ‘Yeah. It was good, actually.’

  ‘Good for you – that all sounds healthy,’ the doctor said, making a quick squiggle and shutting Mac’s file.

  Mac sensed a trick. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Sure,’ said the doctor, emotionless. It was a joke in the armed forces that to be a naval ship’s doctor, you were first checked to ensure you had no pulse. When everything went to crap on a ship, the doctor had to be as calm as a lizard sunning itself.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac.

  The doc gave him a sudden smile. ‘You felt terrible about those children, which is a healthy reaction. And when you realised you were drowning those feelings in booze, you found a professional. I have no problem with that, Alan.’

  ‘But I didn’t declare it,’ said Mac.

  ‘You have now,’ said the doctor with a wink as he stood. ‘We clear?’

  ‘Crystal,’ said Mac.

  Chapter 6

  Mac was halfway to Canberra in a navy car when the Nokia buzzed – a text from Rod Scott, Mac’s original mentor in ASIS.

  It said, Nosebag fgc 1pm?

  Getting the driver to drop him in the suburb of Garran, Mac ambled three blocks to the entry gates of Federal Golf Club, sweating in the late spring heat and deafened by the roar of cicadas. Checking for surveillance as he walked to the clubhouse he scrolled through messages on his phone: several voicemails and two missed calls – numbers he didn’t recognise. Dialling into voicemail, he heard Jenny reminding him to pick up a smoked ham from the German butcher, and then a second message from Jen, upset after reading the news about Ray Hu. Jenny didn’t know Ray Hu and his wife Liesl as well as Mac did, but the four of them had enjoyed some big nights on the grog and Jenny adored Ray’s sense of humour.

  He tried to filter out the emotion as he walked through the sunshine. The assessment had turned out okay, if you took the hangover out of the equation. The full medical had been followed by a short psych interview and a session that used to be called ‘the polygraph’ but now included a voice-stress analyser – a lie detector that identified variations when interviewees were asked about drugs, child porn and undeclared holidays with their Chinese lover. There’d been a twenty-minute debrief, where an office guy from the Firm grabbed the file of an old operation in the Philippines and quickly quizzed Mac on the basics, looking for any discrepancies between the official record and Mac’s recollections – the same debrief Mac had done with many operatives from the Firm.

  Strolling past the practice tees, Mac watched a man in pressed golf shorts stare impassively as a woman swung, topped a ball, and then threatened to hit the ground with her club. The bloke reset a new ball without meeting her eyes, and Mac marvelled at how quickly a married man got himself trained.

  Moving up the steps and into the dining room, he found Scotty sitting at the bar, reading the Australian and nursing a glass of beer.

  ‘Man’s not a camel,’ said Mac as Scotty stood. ‘There a beer round here for a bloke?’

  ‘Shit, mate,’ said Scotty, his round face ripped with a smile as he shook hands. ‘Forty years old and still in shape – what’s your secret?’

  ‘Lots and lots of bullshitting,’ said Mac, as Scotty motioned with two fingers to the barman.

  ‘Yeah, well, how come I ended up looking like Buddha?’ said Scotty, leading Mac out into the dining room.

  Eating from the buffet and downing two beers, Mac relaxed as he looked out the big windows and saw players teeing off at one and holing out at eighteen – the low-scorers obvious by how quickly they reached for their cards.

  They talked quietly, pulling up some of the memories from their first gig together in Iraq, at the finish of the first Gulf War.

  ‘See those AWB blokes are finally coming up for court,’ said Scotty, tapping his newspaper with his beer glass. ‘Poor bastards.’

  ‘Yeah – seems that Saddam was too pure to invade but too evil to do business with,’ said Mac.

  The Australian Wheat Board had secured some enormous supply contracts with Saddam’s Iraq in the late 1990s, which included side contracts to pay for in-country freighting of the wheat using a Jordanian trucking company. The trucking charge was paid from a UN escrow account which released otherwise-embargoed Iraqi oil revenues to pay for essential and humanitarian services – of which distributing wheat to Iraqis was one. It was just that the Jordanian trucking company was an Iraqi front, a way for Saddam’s regime to collect hard currency through the UN under false pretences. Now the AWB executives who paid the Iraqi trucking fee were turning up in court – a move that had surprised people in Mac’s world, given how relentlessly Australia’s diplomatic, trade and intelligence outfits had worked to ensure the success of Aussie wheat against that of Canada, the US and Russia.

  His first live operation was a wheat gig: four in the morning, riffling through the files of the state-owned freight forwarders in Umm Qasr, flashlight between his teeth, looking for the paperwork on Iraq’s wheat imports from Canada and the US. He was in a rush because the Canadian SIS operative who’d been masquerading as a journalist had been locked in an underground garage by Scotty. And at nine that morning the US and Australian naval clearance teams were going to declare the Umm Qasr port area ‘open’ and free of live ordnance and booby-traps. Mac had infiltrated the building at the Bulk Grain Terminal, found the files and got them out by secreting them in an Australian Navy air-compressor unit used for the clearance divers. When the port had been reopened and the Canadians had rushed in to secure the freight-landing records of several decades, they found the filing cabinets empty. While they gnashed their teeth and looked for a scapegoat, the files were en route to HMAS Kanimbla.

  ‘Makes you wonder why we were getting all that intel on North American wheat when the blokes who could use it were just going to get shit-canned,’ said Scotty.

  ‘Yeah, well the Canadians got their payback,’ sniggered Mac, referring to the fact that Canadian SIS had ensured that the Australian media was put on the trail of the AWB arrangements with Saddam.

  Iraq seemed like a lifetime ago, right back at the start of it all. Mac had moved quickly from being a teenage rugby league player in Rockhampton to a rugby scholarship boy at Nudgee. He’d gone to the University of Queensland and then into the DFAT campus recruitment process. In those days, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service didn’t advertise. It was a part of DFAT, sharing the stables with diplomats and trade commissioners, and the Firm didn’t let you know you were being considered for the spy game until they thought you might have the stuff. Times had changed, but back in 1990 the Firm essentially recruited from four universities and a group of about thirty schools. Nudgee College and UQ were part of the matrix.

  When Mac had realised what he was being offered, he’d had visions of dinner suits and glamorous women hanging around the baccarat tables. It was all he knew about the intelligence world
. But after six weeks of the ASIS field-craft program, he’d been whipped away to do basic training with the UK’s Royal Marines and follow-up with their Commandos program – a challenge he probably took too far when he completed the brutal swimmer–canoeist course in Brunei and qualified for selection in an SBS squad.

  It had been a whirl, and one in which few medium-term consequences were spelled out to a young inductee: namely, that the intelligence assignments involving paramilitary elements were carried out by a very small band of officers, and that the true nature of this work would often not be known to colleagues. He’d gone into ASIS feeling educated and special, only to get ten years down the track and realise he was never going to gasbag at a whiteboard, or sit in meetings all day trying to put the blame on someone who wasn’t in the room. Mac was isolated: he’d always be that Rockhampton footy player who did the dirty work.

  ‘So, you’re back?’ Scotty asked, after an awkward pause.

  ‘They pushed me up a grade and let me live in Queensland,’ said Mac. ‘Couldn’t argue.’

  ‘I’m going to be running you for a while, you okay with that?’ said Scotty, levelling his gaze.

  ‘Not like the Firm to give me a choice.’

  ‘Not a choice – just courtesy.’ Scotty held up two fingers to the waitress. ‘You’re old school, mate. Not many of us left.’

  Scotty had been seconded into the Firm after a stint in the Australian Army’s Intelligence Corps. He could inveigle himself under a corporate cover along with the best, but he also had big forearms and hands that could hurt.

  Mac scanned the room for eyes and self-conscious newspaper-reading. ‘So, what’s the gig?’

  ‘One of ours – from Trade – logging a lot of unaccompanied hours,’ said Scotty, eyes lighting up as the next round of beers arrived. ‘Long lunches, early departures, vague diary – that sort of thing.’

  ‘Surveillance?’

  ‘Nothing yet. I’ve had a look at the notes, and had a chat on the phone with the consulate.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Saigon,’ said Scotty. ‘We need to design an approach, get eyes on this guy, write an initial report.’

  ‘And if something’s cooking, get close?’

  ‘That’s why I like you, mate,’ said Scotty, sipping on the beer. ‘You’re faster than a robber’s dog.’

  ‘Why me?’ said Mac, watching the husband and wife from the practice fairway making their way onto the first tee. ‘Joe’s in Manila and Terry’s in Honkers – they can’t do this?’

  ‘Greg wants an outside team.’

  ‘Outside team? Thought I was back in?’

  ‘Special Projects,’ said Scotty, looking at his hands. ‘Welcome aboard.’

  ‘Even after Singers?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Scotty. ‘I looked at the report – you did it by the book. Who’s to know where Lao was leaking? I’m betting his wife.’

  ‘You think?’ said Mac.

  Scotty shrugged. ‘The wife might have been the real boss and she went straight to the MSS when she knew he was going to Singapore.’

  ‘You couldn’t have hooked Garvs for this?’ said Mac, trying to figure out how Jen would react to him leaving again.

  ‘Garvs?!’ said Scotty with a smile. ‘I remember that gig in Manila. I had to go in there and find the silly prick.’

  ‘That wasn’t his fault, was it?’ said Mac, chuckling.

  ‘Shit, mate – I found him in a bar in Angeles City, so pissed he couldn’t work out why these ping-pong balls were flying round his fucking head!’

  Beer spurted out of Mac’s nose as he laughed. ‘Shit, Scotty. You’re a worry.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Scotty, mischief in his eyes, ‘I need an opera- tion going down the toilet, I’ll call Anton Garvey. But I want this done right.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac, recovering. ‘Who’s the target?’

  Scotty and Mac looked out at the first tee, where the wife was readying herself with a three-wood.

  ‘Jim Quirk,’ said Scotty from the side of his mouth, as the woman swung like a cheap robot and topped her ball for a first shot of about seventeen inches.

  Mac paused. ‘Mate, I know Jim – you aware of that?’

  ‘Yep, Macca,’ said Scotty. ‘Let’s do this once and do it right.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac.

  Down on the first tee, the woman stamped her foot as the husband teed her up with a new ball. Her second shot was a flier. As she got in the cart she was smiling again.

  Chapter 7

  Grabbing a BRW and making for a corner armchair in Canberra airport’s business lounge, Mac thought about Jim Quirk, a young trade secretary at the Aussie embassy in Manila when Mac had his first diplomatic placement as a second-secretary. They hadn’t been enormously close, but they’d had a few laughs and Mac remembered Quirk had been a schoolboy star at cricket or footy, something like that. He could catch up on the details later; for now he wanted to get a good look at who had followed him up the ramp. Holding the magazine in front of his chest, he eased back and watched a fortyish Anglo male with dark hair saunter into the lounge, a black computer bag over his shoulder. The man poured a mug of coffee and walked directly towards Mac, a smile on his face.

  ‘G’day, mate,’ said Dave Urquhart, an old school friend of Mac’s who had been around the intelligence traps for years.

  ‘Davo,’ said Mac, standing and shaking hands. ‘It’s Alan.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Urquhart, observing the etiquette that you let a spy who might be using a cover tell you the name he was using.

  Mac’s mind spun as he looked around for a backup man or a partner. Was this an approach? They made small talk, but Mac was nervous – the woman sitting on the other side of the coffee table was within earshot.

  Dave Urquhart had been at Nudgee College with Mac but then he’d gone to the University of Sydney to do law and economics and Mac hadn’t reconnected with him until he’d started turning up in briefings. Mac knew that Urquhart had started at the Firm, but as his career took off he was used as a political liaison guy, between ASIS and the Prime Minister’s office for a start, and then later between the Office of National Assessments and the government. There’d recently been a new oversight office established called the National Intelligence Coordination Committee, with a new national intelligence adviser appointed to assist the Prime Minister. Mac had heard that Urquhart was working for that adviser while apparently still trying to stay close with ASIS.

  ‘So, where are you off to, Davo?’ said Mac, searching his old mate’s eyes.

  ‘Darwin,’ said Urquhart, looking upwards to his left; a lie.

  ‘Nice up there right now,’ said Mac.

  The woman opposite them closed her laptop, put it in her carry case and left.

  ‘One of yours?’ said Mac, nodding after the woman as she left the business lounge.

  ‘Shit, Macca,’ said Urquhart.

  ‘Well?’ said Mac.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘She only typed when we weren’t talking,’ he said. ‘Gotta learn to listen over your own key strokes.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Urquhart.

  ‘And she dressed professional, but with secretary make-up.’

  Urquhart sighed. ‘All right, all right.’

  Mac was enjoying himself. ‘She one of those ASIO idiots?’

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ said Urquhart, turning and looking him in the eye.

  ‘So make yours,’ said Mac, checking his watch.

  Urquhart sipped his coffee. ‘We had a look at the Colmslie report. Bad business.’

  ‘I wasn’t thrilled,’ said Mac.

  ‘Sad about Ray, huh?’ said Urquhart.

  ‘He knew the risks,’ Mac replied. ‘Listen, who do you work
for now?’

  ‘The government, mate,’ said Urquhart, in a tone Mac didn’t like.

  ‘Government?’

  ‘Executive arm. So I guess there’re some questions in your mind, right?’

  ‘About Colmslie?’ said Mac, annoyed that his old friend had turned the tables, made him chase the subject.

  ‘Yeah – everything’s going gangbusters and then, boom, the trail goes cold.’

  ‘The trail goes cold?’ said Mac. ‘Shit, mate, you’ve been watching too much TV.’

  ‘Come on, Macca – I know you.’

  Mac sneered. ‘Oh really? So tell me what I’m thinking.’

  ‘You’re wondering if you can hit me and get away with it.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Mac.

  ‘Look, you put together an operation that was supposed to turn a Chinese spy, and then right at the point you get him in the hotel room and talking, he’s assassinated. A little too convenient, right?’

  Mac controlled himself. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Enlighten me,’ said Mac, amazed that the slippery machinations a sixteen-year-old had used at boarding school had been honed into the weaponry of a first-class political shit.

  ‘Okay,’ said Urquhart. ‘It was a joint taskforce, but Operation Kava was the Firm’s gig, right?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It was a closed shop – no one else knew the plan, the venue, the timing . . .’ He tailed off, numbering them on his fingers.

  ‘Of course it was closed,’ said Mac. ‘What was I going to do? Take an ad in the Straits Times?’

  ‘So you’re okay with how it happened?’

  ‘No, I’m the opposite of okay – what are you getting at?’

  Urquhart leaned towards Mac, his eyes goldfish-like. ‘If there’re any rotten apples in the barrel, then the political will exists to move on that right now, understand?’

  ‘The political will?’ said Mac, deflated. He was tired, he was hungover, he was forty, and his head still ached from being pistol-whipped. Now someone from the Prime Minister’s office was asking him to work against Aussie SIS. The Firm wasn’t perfect, but the day Mac honestly felt endangered by a colleague, he’d leave. Until then, he’d keep the family fights in-house and he’d hold the line, like everyone who worked around him.