Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

Turning to his right, Mac came almost eye to eye with a tall Vietnamese woman, her long black hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  ‘Guess the humidity makes our visitors dress local,’ she said, an Aussie accent evident in her English. ‘My dad always wore the ones with the silk-cotton blend this time of year.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mac, trying to make light. ‘I think mine’s a –’

  The shop owner interrupted, running around the counter and grabbing Mac by the collar. ‘See, it silk, it silk,’ said the owner, nodding furiously at what Mac assumed was the tag of his shirt.

  Tensing as he realised the owner was scared, Mac heard the woman rattle off a Vietnamese phrase that sounded something like, It’s okay, no trouble.

  ‘Wow,’ said Mac, looking for her backup at the glass entry. ‘Making sure I’m not overcharged, eh? This must be the tourist police?’

  ‘No,’ said the woman. ‘Just the police.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac, keeping the smile on his face.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ she said, and led Mac to the door of the shop, her black slacks swishing.

  Mac thought about running out the back door and into the alley, making a dash for it. But he knew that if he went out that door there’d be more Cong An and perhaps a long stay in the basement of some shithole.

  Pushing the colonial door back on its spring hinge, the woman pulled down her sunglasses and waited for Mac. Walking past her, his heart pounded up into his chest as he emerged onto Dong Du Street and looked around, feeling like a tin duck on a sideshow rail.

  ‘Tea?’ said the woman, perhaps enjoying Mac’s discomfort.

  ‘Well . . .’ he said, making a show of looking at his watch.

  At the kerbside the Cong An from the back of the motorbike sat in the passenger seat of a white Camry, chewing gum.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, flicking her head. ‘Green tea with a dose of jasmine – it’s the best cure for the heat.’

  Mac followed her into a cafe. Casing the other customers and the rear exit as he sat, Mac assessed his chances of attacking the cop and using her as a shield so he could leave out the back. But he couldn’t see a gun on her – the slacks and the simple white blouse didn’t leave much room for a holster.

  ‘Name’s Richard,’ he said calmly.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Richard Davis, books executive, from Brisbane.’

  ‘Nice work,’ said Mac. ‘Have to beat that out of the night manager?’

  ‘No,’ she said seriously, before realising she’d missed the joke. ‘I’m Captain Loan,’ she said, pronouncing it low-arn.

  ‘Captain?’ said Mac, shaking the hand she’d offered. ‘That’s a pretty name.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Loan, her glacial demeanour cracking for a second. ‘It’s Chanthe – Chanthe Loan.’

  ‘That’s an Aussie accent,’ said Mac, as the tea service was placed on the table by a stooped old woman. In Vietnam the women never seemed to stop working, even the old ones.

  ‘Sure,’ said Loan. ‘Last two years of high school in Melbourne and then Monash for three years.’

  ‘What did you study?’

  ‘BA – philosophy major,’ said Loan, pushing her sunnies up into her hair. Mac put her at thirty-four, thirty-five. ‘Now some questions for you, Mr Richard.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mac.

  ‘How well do you know James Quirk?’

  Mac liked her craft – she built the assumption into the question, so to answer was to verify the assumption.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Mac, sipping the tea. ‘I know of him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Years ago, when I was starting in the books business, he hosted an Aussie exporters bash up in Manila. I was at the barbecue and the piss-up.’

  ‘You were in Manila?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mac, warming to his back story. ‘And we’re in Indo- nesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.’

  ‘I don’t care about we, Mr Richard,’ she said with a patient smile. ‘It’s you I’m interested in.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘This is your fourth visit to Vietnam?’

  Mac shrugged. ‘That many?’

  ‘Sell many books?’

  ‘Not enough, I’m afraid,’ said Mac. ‘There’s only one buyer in Vietnam so there’s not many ways into the market. You come runner- up in the beauty parade, there’s no one else to dance with.’

  The captain levelled a cold stare at him. Mac reckoned she was wondering whether his reply was an insult to communist governments or a fair depiction of doing business with them.

  ‘What about Mrs Geraldine?’ said Loan. ‘His wife.’

  ‘What?’ said Mac, genuinely surprised. ‘Quirk’s wife?’

  ‘Yes – Geraldine McHugh.’

  ‘Never met her,’ said Mac, trying to figure out what she was getting at. ‘I don’t know Jim Quirk either, except to say hi.’

  ‘So you do know him?’

  ‘Except to say Hi, remember me from that trade barbecue in Manila? I was the one who got pissed and knew all the moves to “Greased Lightning.”’

  She smiled quickly and recovered. ‘Never met Mrs Geraldine?’

  ‘Look, Captain Loan – I met Jim once, years ago. I’ve never met Geraldine. Can you tell me what this is about?’ Mac tried to hold her gaze as she stared at him.

  ‘I thought you’d tell me what this is about,’ said Loan.

  Standing, she downed the remaining tea and shook Mac’s hand. ‘Thank you, Mr Richard,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ said Mac, watching Loan move to the door. ‘Why tomorrow?’

  ‘That’s when you tell me why a man who doesn’t know Jim Quirk is waiting outside his house.’

  As she walked away, Mac wondered if this woman was going to be a problem. His mind spinning, he became aware of the tea woman standing over him.

  ‘One dollar, mister,’ she said, jutting out her chin. ‘You pay now.’

  Chapter 15

  The streets got darker the further Mac’s cyclo ventured into the sector of Saigon that sat between the huge boulevards of Ham Nghi and Nguyen Hue. Rounding a corner, Mac found himself in a street which was home to a market in the day, a place where hotel managers warned the tourists against going.

  Paying the rider, Mac slipped out of the cyclo seat and clocked the washing lines that spanned the street three storeys up, the kids squatting at buckets of water on the footpath, having their evening bath, and the tiny restaurants and cafes that advertised themselves with a paper lantern hanging over the doorway. The whole place reeked of old cabbage and dry sewer drains.

  Walking into a dimly lit hole in the wall called the Green Duck, Mac spotted Tranh against the wall and sat beside him.

  ‘Eaten yet, Mr Richard?’ said Tranh, who was sitting cross-legged on the chair, eating with chopsticks from a bowl.

  ‘I’ll have what you’re having,’ said Mac. ‘And a beer.’

  When Tranh yelled at the man in a singlet behind the counter, Mr Singlet had to stop yelling at his wife, who was also yelling. The duo stopped and stared at Mac, but within forty-five seconds Mac had a bowl of duck and noodles and an icy Tiger beer.

  ‘Got the alternative vehicle?’ said Mac, when Mr Singlet had gone back to the open kitchen and resumed the marital yelling contest.

  Tranh finished his duck and wiped his chin. ‘Out the front.’

  ‘Good.’ Mac didn’t want to rely on a van the cops were interested in. ‘But before we head off, let’s get a few rules out of the way, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Actually, there’s only one rule I want to talk about. We’re a loop of two – we have a conversation, and it doesn’t get reported to anyone else, okay?’

 
‘Okay, Mr Richard,’ said Tranh.

  ‘So it’s a choice, and I’m giving you the choice right now,’ he said, pointing his chopsticks at Tranh. ‘If you want to drop out of this gig, you can walk away now, tonight. You’ll get paid, no hard feelings.’

  Tranh gulped. ‘Yes, Mr Richard.’

  ‘So – you in or out?’

  Tranh looked Mac in the eye. It was an intelligent and honest face. ‘I’m with you, Mr Richard.’

  ‘Okay, Tranh,’ said Mac slowly. ‘Then we are the loop, and that means no more talking to Captain Loan. Understand?’

  Tranh’s face dropped. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Richard.’

  ‘I don’t care about sorry, mate,’ said Mac, feeling for the bloke. ‘When people leak it’s always the innocents who get hurt. So you need to feed Captain Loan, keep her happy, but tell me first and we’ll put some sugar in her coffee, okay?’

  ‘Sugar?’ said Tranh.

  ‘Keep her sweet,’ said Mac.

  ‘How did –’

  ‘She didn’t give you up, so don’t worry about that,’ said Mac, smiling. ‘I worked it out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She asked me about everyone in Saigon,’ said Mac, ‘except the bloke driving the Uc around in the van.’

  The Mekong Saloon was lit up and buzzing as they made their first pass, Mac riding pillion on Tranh’s motorbike. It wasn’t how Mac enjoyed travelling but in Saigon it was fast and anonymous, and he liked that Tranh had a solid 400cc trail bike, not one of the flimsy step-throughs.

  Circling back, they parked in a service alley and Mac pulled some money out of his pocket. ‘Buy a magazine, get some food from a vendor,’ said Mac, handing over some dong. ‘Just stay in sight of the entrance, okay?’

  Walking across the road, he remembered something. ‘And stay off the phone – I don’t care if your mum or girlfriend calls, keep the line free, okay?’

  Nodding to the doorman – a squat Filipino – Mac slipped into the Saloon. It was a dark, loud pit, with a mix of the young crowd and expat businesspeople.

  Moving to the busy but not crowded bar, Mac ordered a beer and looked across the auditorium, a space dressed up to look like an old French saloon. It was expensively fitted out, except that where the can-can dancers should have been were naked women of various stripes, squirming around shiny poles to a disco version of ZZ Top’s ‘Arrested for Driving While Blind’.

  ‘Mot Tiger, cam on,’ said Mac as the barman swaggered over and threw his vodka bottle in the air, catching it backhand. Dickhead Barman was a language spoken all over the world.

  Paying with dong, Mac moved to a stand-up table near the far wall, checking for eyes. He may have been slightly ahead of himself by entering the club, but now that the Cong An was taking an interest in Quirk he wanted to push the operation along, stick his nose where it didn’t belong before the fuzz scared everyone away.

  ‘New wee, mister,’ said the young girl with the bag of magazines and newspapers. ‘Tine, new wee, new paper?’

  Putting a day-old South China Morning Post on his table, she gave him the look and Mac sighed, pulled out some dong and gave it to her.

  As the child walked away to harass a table of German tourists, Mac realised there was a mezzanine floor looking down on the main room. It looked quieter up there; if nothing else it would be a much better place from which to survey the club.

  Mac stepped over the rope across the stairs and ascended into semi-darkness where the tables and chairs sat in an eerie silence compared to the noise down below. There was a disused bar, secured by a pull-down grille; there were two locked doors along the rear wall and a corridor at the end of the balcony section.

  Moving to the balcony rail, Mac looked down on the pole dancers, but kept his head back.

  His phone vibrated against his leg and he answered it immediately.

  ‘Hey, mate,’ he said to Tranh.

  ‘I think Apricot’s on his way,’ said Tranh, breathless. ‘A car just pulled up and they got out and walked into the club. I called as fast –’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Apricot and three others,’ said Tranh.

  ‘Locals?’ said Mac, sticking his head over the balcony. Below him two Euros in trop shirts pushed through the club, a third bringing up the rear. Between them, and not looking happy, was Jim Quirk.

  ‘Okay, mate,’ said Mac, ‘I see ’em. Keep the lines open and bring the bike to the front.’

  Ringing off, he watched the leader – a burly, bald guy with a red shirt – unhitch the rope on the stairs and wave the rest of them through.

  Pulling back into the shadows, Mac found a dark alcove and decided to observe. He didn’t want to go back to Scotty and admit he’d blown the operation because he’d been blueing in a strip club in Chinatown. Besides, he wasn’t armed, and the way those trop shirts were hanging he figured Quirk’s friends were.

  Spilling into the mezzanine area just ten metres away, the two thugs pushed Quirk against the wall and stood around him, hands on hips. Quirk, still in his suit, was a mess; it looked like he’d been crying.

  Approaching the group, the man in the red shirt walked up and kneed Quirk in the balls, grabbing a handful of hair as the Australian bent double.

  ‘We were just starting to make friends, eh, Jimbo?’ said Red Shirt in an accent that may have been Turkish or Bulgarian. ‘And now, you make me very angry.’

  ‘I’ve done what you wanted,’ said Jim, purple in the face.

  ‘No, Jimbo,’ said Red Shirt, as he nodded his head at a henchman. ‘I don’t care about the codes – the deal wasn’t the codes, the deal was access.’

  One of the henchmen peeled away from the group, unlocked a door and walked through, light spilling out.

  ‘So, Jimbo,’ continued Red Shirt. ‘We’re going back to the computer, and we’ll start again, and then everyone’s happy. Okay?’

  As they moved towards the open door, Mac’s heart pumped in his neck. He’d heard enough. Quirk was selling something – codes, access, whatever – to foreign nationals, and if he could extract the traitor from this mess, the Firm could take it from there, do the debriefs and the prosecutions. But right now he couldn’t just stand by and let a bunch of Turks slap an Aussie consular official. It didn’t work that way for Mac.

  Red Shirt slapped at his trouser pocket and gabbled something in a foreign language to the henchman in the white trop shirt. Mac knew that language but couldn’t place it. Not Turkish . . . perhaps Hungarian?

  The henchie took off for the stairs and vaulted down them. Stealthing back to the balcony, Mac watched him stride out of the club. Forty seconds later, he was walking back into the Mekong Saloon, jiggling something in his hand and making straight for the mezzanine stairs.

  Red Shirt had disappeared into the room with Quirk and the door had almost swung shut. Moving to the head of the stairs, Mac ducked down and waited for the footfalls to reach the top. As the white shirt rose above the banister wall, Mac powered off his right leg and threw a fast right-hand uppercut. He caught the thug on the right jaw rather than the point of the chin and the victim staggered backwards but not off his feet. Throwing a left elbow into the bloke’s temple, Mac followed it with a straight right in his teeth which sent the man into the wall, spraying the white shirt with blood.

  Using the wall for balance, the man stood straight and kicked Mac in the groin as he reached back for his handgun. Doubled over with the kick, Mac managed to keep the momentum going forwards and launched himself into a basic finger-strike to the eyes. As the man’s hands came up to his face in a reflex action, Mac threw a hand hold under the bloke’s chin and swept with his left leg, slamming the thug to the ground and smashing his head into the carpet.

  Mac pushed the thug’s jaw to one side and struck him hard with a carotid punch to the neck. Watching the man’s
eyelids flutter and his eyes roll back, Mac shoved his hand under the trop shirt and pulled out a matt-black SIG Sauer handgun.

  Checking for load and safety, Mac dropped the clip into his hand and saw it wasn’t full – four, maybe five rounds remaining. As he heaved for breath in the semi-darkness, the voice of Red Shirt echoed out into the mezzanine – Mac’s victim was being called.

  Moving along the wall, Mac tried to work his chest to control his breathing. He was nervous and sparking with adrenaline, and he made himself do what they used to tell them in the Royal Marines Commandos: if you couldn’t control anything else in your environment, at least control your breathing.

  Gulping as he got to the doorway, he took a deep diaphragm breath and eased around the corner, squinting slightly into the fluorescent light. Holding the gun cup-and-saucer, he pushed on the door and as it swung back he arced back and forth, waiting for the shot opportunity. But it wasn’t a room. He was looking down a corridor, with a security door at the end.

  ‘Shit!’ he said, standing back a half pace and checking on the thug in the white shirt: still dazed.

  Looking down the hallway again, Mac saw a potential trap. He saw bad odds, he saw zero element of surprise, he saw a situation that gave his wife the right to say, You said no more field work!

  Mac’s breathing had slowed to normal but his pulse thumped in his temples as he moved down the corridor as fast as he could without running. The gun’s hatched grip swimming in his hand, he checked on the door – it was locked.

  Tapping on it with the SIG, he mumbled a generically male series of monosyllables and stood back, holding the weapon against his thigh. Watching the handle move down until it clicked, Mac took two steps forwards and brought his foot up parallel to the ground in a hard kick, sending his hundred and five kilos into a small point above the lock.

  Hearing the grunt of surprise as the steel door flew back and whacked into flesh, Mac thumped open the door with his left shoulder and burst into a small room, gun held in two hands. The thug lying on the floor was groggy and his forehead was split from the blow, but he had managed to pull a handgun from his waistband. Throwing himself to his side, Mac shot the thug in the face and then throat before rolling once and springing into a crouch as he looked around for Red Shirt.