Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘You investigating?’ said Mac.

  ‘Yeah – the AFP teams from Honkers and Manila were held back for some reason.’

  ‘Any leads?’

  ‘Apparently there was a vehicle chase through Cholon after the murder, and the staff at the club say an Australian soldier was acting strangely during the incident.’

  ‘No wonder they called you guys,’ said Mac, his heart sinking.

  Jen yawned. ‘We’re only observing – no investigation – but Saigon police are linking the Quirk murder with the disappearance of an Australian woman called Geraldine McHugh.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, Macca – and she’s Jim’s wife.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Mac, with no conviction.

  ‘So, I was going to call you anyway,’ said Jen, as if he was ninth on her to-do list. ‘Remember that creepy friend of yours from Nudgee? Urquhart?’

  ‘Davo,’ said Mac. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Chester brought him along to our breakfast meeting this morning,’ said Jen.

  ‘Did he elaborate on how you could aid his career?’

  ‘He did better than that. He warned me off the McHugh line of inquiry.’

  ‘What did he say?’ said Mac.

  ‘National interest, blah blah, regional security, wank wank – said the government would thank me to oversee the murder inquiry and then go home.’

  ‘And you said?’

  ‘I said, “Dave, there is no McHugh line of inquiry, but thanks for the tip-off.”’

  ‘Don’t stir him, Jen,’ said Mac, laughing reluctantly. ‘He may look like a wax dummy, but he can hurt you.’

  Mac could hear more talking behind Jen. ‘I have to go, Macca. And call Sarah, okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mac, knowing that he wouldn’t.

  Chapter 39

  Standing in the cool of a fruit shop on Dong Du Street, Mac inspected the oranges while watching the sedan pull up in front of the cafe where he’d first spoken with Captain Loan. She got out of the passenger seat of the car, grabbed her phone and day book and walked to the cafe, flicking back her long black ponytail with a shake of her head.

  One man remained in the sedan. Walking towards the car from the rear, Mac blindsided the cop, who was looking up and down the footpath. At the last minute, Mac banged his hand on the bonnet of the car as he walked around it, startling the driver.

  Inside the cafe, Mac saw the captain at a table, talking into her cell phone. As he sat down she smiled and quickly finished her conversation.

  ‘Well, Mr Richard,’ she said, reaching out for a businesslike handshake. ‘Nice to have you back.’

  ‘Back?’ said Mac, wondering where this was going.

  ‘You crossed into Cambodia three days ago,’ said Loan with a kind smile. ‘You crossed back into Vietnam about sixteen hours ago.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Mac, as green tea arrived.

  ‘Had a chance to think about Miss Geraldine?’ asked Loan, preparing the tea.

  ‘From what the Aussies are saying, I gather she works for Australian Treasury and she was divorcing Jim Quirk,’ said Mac.

  ‘What else are they saying?’

  ‘That whoever warned Anglos about Cholon, they weren’t kidding.’

  ‘You go down to Cholon, Mr Richard?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mac. ‘Some great nightclubs down there.’

  ‘You don’t look like a book salesman,’ said Loan.

  ‘You don’t look like a detective,’ said Mac.

  ‘I showed the Mekong barman this picture,’ she said, pulling a colour print from her day book. It showed Mac emerging from the Grand Hotel, his face partially obscured by a baseball cap. ‘He said this was the Aussie soldier he served the night James Quirk died.’

  ‘I’m not a soldier,’ said Mac.

  ‘To Vietnamese people, you look like an Aussie soldier.’

  ‘We all look the same, right?’ said Mac.

  ‘I think you were in the Mekong Saloon the night Quirk was murdered.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mac, his heart thumping. ‘I was pretty hammered that night.’

  ‘What is it, the hammered? You mean you were drunk?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mac. ‘I might have been in there for one drink – I couldn’t swear to it either way.’

  ‘So it might have been you?’

  Mac shrugged. ‘I went to five or six bars in Cholon that night, and I could only name one of them. But I think I’d remember if I killed someone.’

  ‘I didn’t say you killed Quirk. I think you were there, at the Mekong Saloon.’

  ‘And I’m open to the suggestion that I was,’ said Mac, ‘but I couldn’t identify it by name or show you on a map.’

  Captain Loan stared at him for twenty seconds before Mac looked down at his tea.

  ‘Same night, there was an altercation about ten blocks north-east of the Mekong Saloon,’ said Loan. ‘A fight between men, some shots fired. When we arrived, there was an unconscious man on the street – and he won’t talk. A woman saw it all, says a local man and an Aussie soldier were travelling on a motorbike.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mac, cold sweat on his brow. ‘She get the rego plates on the bike?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wish I could help,’ said Mac.

  ‘You can,’ said the captain. ‘I think Tranh was riding that bike – tell me where Tranh is hiding.’

  Mac snapped out of his dissembling autopilot. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He didn’t cross back into Vietnam with you,’ said Loan. ‘So where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mac repeated.

  She leaned towards him slightly, adding a threat with her body language. ‘Where did you last see him?’

  ‘Phnom Penh,’ said Mac.

  ‘That’s a big city, Mr Richard.’

  ‘At an apartment building, on the west side – over by the InterContinental.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Look,’ said Mac, gulping at the tea and trying to keep down the anxiety. ‘What’s this got to do with Jim –’

  ‘I asked you a question,’ said Captain Loan, abandoning the charm offensive. ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were ambushed in the lobby, lots of gunfire,’ said Mac, searching her eyes. Was the other cop about to fly in? Was the conversation being taped? ‘I was blinded by a burst of concrete dust, and when I recovered, Tranh was gone.’

  He wondered how fast his red consular passport could be pouched into Saigon and whether Tobin would allow its use if Loan threw him in the basement. If he pushed Tobin to invoke the passport it would mark the first time in his eighteen-year intelligence career that he’d reverted to ‘declared’ while in the field and asked for consular protection.

  Loan held his gaze. ‘I thought we were going to cooperate, Mr Richard. That was my impression.’

  ‘I am cooperating,’ said Mac, his voice croaking slightly.

  Her face changed. ‘You know Alphonse Morales?’

  ‘No,’ said Mac, too fast.

  ‘Really? I saw a photograph of you two together. Our intelligence people showed me a file on Morales, and there was a photo of you and him in – where was it? Dili?’

  ‘Oh, you mean Bongo?’ said Mac, forcing a laugh. ‘I got confused. Yes, I have hired Mr Morales on occasions, for protection. Dili was not a safe place for an Australian salesman in the late 1990s, as I’m sure you can appreciate.’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ she said. ‘You know Morales is in Saigon? Asking questions about Geraldine McHugh?’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Mac, his throat rasping like sandpaper.

  ‘Why didn’t you file a missing-persons report in Phnom Penh? And why not inform police in Saigon that your Viet
namese driver is missing?’

  ‘I was scared,’ said Mac. ‘I thought he might have been mixed up in things I couldn’t understand.’

  ‘I think you know what he’s mixed up in,’ she said. ‘Should we go down to the station?’

  Mac didn’t answer, toying with the idea of declaring himself consular and making a call to Scotty or Tobin; he also toyed with the idea of hitting her and running.

  ‘I don’t want you in the cells, I don’t even want you in the criminal system,’ said Loan, leaning back as she looked around the cafe. ‘I can help you with McHugh, but I want Tranh.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mac, his heart fluttering with adrenaline. ‘I don’t even know his last name – I should have filed a report. I apologise.’

  ‘His last name is Loh,’ said the captain. ‘But if he were being formally introduced, it would be Loh Han Tranh.’

  Breathing deeply through his nose, Mac tried to process the information. Tranh was a Loh Han? The most powerful tong in Cholon? At what level had this gig been compromised?

  ‘Loh Han?’ said Mac, very carefully. ‘As in Vincent Loh Han – the gangster?’

  ‘Tranh is Vincent’s nephew,’ said the captain, in a tone that had lost its hardness. ‘I want him back.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘I took the Vietnamese version of my name when I went to university in Melbourne,’ she said. ‘I was born Loh Han.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Mac, his heart rate hitting one-seventy.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know who you are, Mr Richard, but I don’t want you in the cells and I don’t want you claiming consular protections. I will help you find Geraldine McHugh, but –’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Mr Richard,’ she said, eyes full of fear and violence, ‘Tranh is my brother.’

  Chapter 40

  Mac stayed quiet in the back seat of the Cong An car as they pulled up outside the Mekong Saloon. Mac and the driver followed Captain Loan into the nightclub where a few patrons nursed their drinks while a young girl writhed around a pole.

  A heavyset manager appeared and walked towards Loan, but backed off when she raised her badge. Ascending the stairs that Mac had climbed just a few nights ago, they reached the mezzanine, the manager chirping beside Loan like a bird.

  Mac couldn’t understand what they were saying – he didn’t need to. It was obvious the manager was nervous and not used to the police being allowed in this building.

  Stopping beside the door that led to the sealed computer room, Mac pointed. ‘I heard someone yelling, like they were being attacked,’ he said, trying for a truthful feel. ‘I wandered up the stairs and saw a man – an Anglo man – being dragged through this door.’

  ‘Who was dragging him?’

  ‘There were three men – they looked Eastern European, maybe Middle Eastern. Swarthy and tanned,’ said Mac.

  ‘And then?’ said Loan.

  ‘I said something like, “Hey – cut that out,” and one of them turned and came at me.’

  ‘He attacked you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I attacked him back and followed the kidnap victim.’

  ‘Into here?’ said Loan, pushing at the door and then clicking her fingers at the manager to unlock it.

  ‘Yep,’ said Mac.

  At the end of the corridor they pushed through another door and Loan’s colleague hit the lights. In front of them was the internal glass office, with the exit door on the far side.

  No computer.

  ‘The man was screaming, so I kicked through the door and stood right here,’ said Mac. ‘The man – Jim Quirk – was sitting at a computer terminal.’

  ‘In there?’ said Loan.

  ‘Right in front of us. The terminal was the kind where the keyboard is built into the screen and hard drive part of it.’

  Putting her hands on her hips, Loan surveyed the room. ‘Where did Quirk die?’

  ‘Right here,’ said Mac, as they walked to where the computer had been. ‘The leader, the Middle Eastern bloke, smiled at me and shot Quirk.’

  Mac’s throat had dried up; he needed a glass of water.

  ‘Shot him?’

  ‘In the head,’ said Mac, still haunted by that night. ‘Then he ducked out that door.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I left the club, got Tranh to get me as far away as possible.’

  Crossing her arms, Captain Loan breathed out and looked at the ceiling and the walls, observing her environment like an interior decorator asked to quote on a job. Turning to her colleague, she rattled off a series of commands in Vietnamese.

  Grabbing the car keys from the other cop and drawing Mac out by the arm, Loan walked swiftly down the corridor and then out of the club.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ she said as she started the car and made a fast phone call. ‘Now I have something to show you.’

  Eight minutes later, Mac got out of the car in a rear parking compound and followed Loan in the back door of the criminal investigation centre for the Saigon Cong An – the first precinct building.

  Inputting a code at a security door, she pushed through and then hesitated. ‘You armed, Mr Richard?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and they walked into the police station, took a left and went down two flights of stairs. Yells and demands echoed around the concrete-clad basement as they fronted a desk that looked like a nurses’ station and Loan snapped a few words at the young Cong An attendant who wore full greens.

  Writing in the day book, the woman in greens stood and led them down to a grey steel door with a small window and the number 8 painted below it in white.

  The attendant opened the door with a key from her retractable chain and Mac followed Loan inside. From behind a bolted-down desk, cuffed to a loop on the table, a thin Vietnamese man with bad teeth and big cheekbones looked at them wide-eyed. His left eye puffed closed and below it the prominent cheekbone split horizontally over a shiny skin-egg. Both nostrils were encrusted with blood.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Loan, and Mac took one of the interviewer’s chairs, clocking the detainee’s blood-covered white shirt, which seemed to have a corporate decal on it.

  ‘His English is okay,’ said Loan. ‘Want coffee?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mac. ‘Name’s Richard,’ he said to the man across the desk, giving him a wink.

  ‘I am Luc,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Mac.

  ‘I was attacked, and now I arrested,’ said Luc. ‘I told her this all. Many time, for all morning.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Mac. ‘Tell me the whole story.’

  ‘Okay.’ Luc indicated the embroidered decal on his shirt. ‘So I fly the plane for North Star airline.’

  Mac nodded. ‘At Tan Son Nhat?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luc.

  ‘KingAir, Dash-8? Something like that?’ said Mac.

  ‘Yes!’ said Luc, good eye opening. ‘KingAir 200 – also Fokker 27.’

  ‘Not the Friendship?’ said Mac. ‘I love the F-27. Grew up with those planes in Queensland.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luc. ‘North Star flying two F-27. They from TAA!’

  ‘Get outta here,’ said Mac. ‘Those TAA Friendships flew more outback miles than any other plane. Unbelievable.’

  ‘It true,’ said Luc, growing animated. ‘I tell Captain this, and she not know.’

  ‘Well, I know that those planes were easy to land and impossible to clean,’ said Mac. ‘So tell me.’

  The coffee was delivered and Mac offered his cup to Luc. Taking it, the man – who Mac estimated was in his late thirties – pushed his arms onto the table and eyed Loan before turning back to Mac with a conspiratorial look.

  ‘Y
ou must carry some strange passengers,’ said Mac.

  ‘Yes, and when I fly Mr Smith and his friends, it start normal.’

  ‘Who is Mr Smith?’

  ‘He the man who hire us two month ’go. We flew him Saigon to Stung Treng province and north from Banlung,’ said Luc. These were the wild northern provinces of Cambodia – the final outposts of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge and all the child slavery and heroin production that was part of the communist utopia.

  ‘What does Mr Smith look like, Luc?’

  ‘He not skinny, but not big neither,’ said Luc, looking at the table like he was appraising a wine. ‘He got tan, and he the bald.’

  ‘Strong eyes?’ said Mac.

  ‘Yes,’ said Luc, sitting to attention. ‘Very strong eye, very dark eye.’

  ‘You own North Star?’ said Mac.

  ‘No, mister,’ said Luc. ‘But Mr Smith only want deal with me. He pay in cash, but I the one who deal with it.’

  ‘What are you flying to Cambodia?’

  ‘People, bags,’ said Luc.

  ‘You look in the bags?’ said Mac, winking.

  Luc looked embarrassed. ‘Only once. It was much, much money – American money.’

  ‘Anything else you carry?’

  ‘Whatever they want.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Mr Smith have friends – maybe ten.’

  ‘Mr Smith’s friends – they businessmen? Engineers? Soldiers?’

  Shrugging, Luc looked away. ‘Some, like me; some, they are like you, mister.’

  ‘Aussie?’

  ‘No,’ said Luc, miming to indicate muscles.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Mac, aware that Loan was smiling beside him. ‘Five days ago, maybe Mr Smith is in a hurry. You remember that night?’

  Luc blushed through his facial injuries, averted his eyes.

  ‘It was a crazy night, huh?’ said Mac, nodding and smiling. ‘Lots going on?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luc.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Mr Smith call me on cell phone, tell me he need the plane urgent, right?’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Three in morning,’ said Luc. ‘My wife real angry.’