Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Don’t touch that,’ said Mac, as he saw Urquhart eyeing the discarded M16. ‘Don’t even look at it.’

  The Chinese ran up, yelling their commands as the lead soldier slapped Urquhart with his rifle stock, dropping him to the floor. The shattered door into the office swung open and Joel Dozsa clicked his fingers, directing the soldier with the medic’s kit towards Lance.

  ‘Well, well,’ said the Israeli, a small smile appearing. ‘A real little Aussie reunion, eh, McQueen?’

  ‘It’s over, Dozsa,’ said Urquhart, his voice slurring through his busted lip. ‘You know it.’

  Dozsa’s cigarette was still smouldering and he sucked on it. ‘What I know is that you should wear a pad before you go into a gunfight.’

  One of the Chinese translated for the others and they laughed as Urquhart sat upright and looked down at the wet patch around his groin.

  ‘Pissed myself,’ he said, and passed out.

  ‘What were you thinking, Davo?’ said Mac, hissing slightly as they watched a Chinese medic working on Lance. ‘You run into a building, shooting at everyone? That was the plan?’

  Urquhart patted the mouse-sized lump under his left eye. ‘I agree – but Lance felt he couldn’t just walk away.’

  ‘How’d you get here?’ said Mac, keeping his voice low in front of the Chinese. At the other side of the destroyed office quarters, Dozsa spoke into a radio headset.

  ‘Came in on Luc’s plane,’ said Urquhart. ‘Followed Bongo and Didge to the North Air offices and decided to wait for Luc to return and see if we couldn’t pay for a ride.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we’ve been here most of the night, trying to work out how to do something useful, especially after Bongo took off with McHugh,’ said Urquhart. ‘We were waiting for the soldiers to go and we thought they’d all been flown out – then we came in through the roof, saw Dozsa shoot Sammy, and decided we’d better do something before he shot you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mac. ‘I don’t think he’s going to kill me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, mate,’ said Mac. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t think the currency is the end of it.’

  ‘Look, I –’ started Urquhart.

  ‘Don’t tell me another lie, Davo,’ said Mac, staring him in the eye. ‘You know where all these US dollars are going?’

  ‘We’re trying to track them, but –’

  ‘But you’re not going to tell me?’ said Mac. ‘Jesus, you people are amazing – are you seeing this shit? Are you seeing where these little secrets end up?’

  ‘Don’t take it personally, Macca,’ said Urquhart, looking sincere. ‘Most of Canberra is out of the loop on this.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Mac spat. ‘We don’t know if China’s going to democracy or military dictatorship, so the Prime Minister’s office just makes sure we’re buddies with all of them?’

  ‘What can I say?’ Urquhart smirked. ‘I’m just a poor Queensland boy who loves his cheap plasma screens.’

  ‘What was the point of withholding this from me?’

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to be you,’ said Urquhart. ‘I came up here on instruction from the Prime Minister – no one from the intel community was to be indoctrinated.’

  ‘So how did I end up here?’

  ‘You mentioned working with the Cong An . . . on the McHugh issue.’

  ‘What’s so secret about that?’

  ‘Because it’s about currency – vast amounts of US currency in our neighbourhood – and the less people who know about it the better,’ said Urquhart. ‘Currency responds to sentiment, you know that.’

  ‘I could have been more use if I’d been brought into it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Urquhart. ‘But there was an embarrassment factor . . .’

  ‘Embarrassment?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Catching up, I see,’ said Dozsa, approaching the two Australians as he peeled an orange. ‘But we might have to cut it short – we have a plane to catch.’

  ‘To where?’ said Mac.

  ‘Not so fast,’ said Dozsa, popping a piece of the fruit in his mouth.

  Two Chinese soldiers uncuffed Mac and Urquhart and lifted them to their feet. Tottering slightly on his shot leg, Mac was steadied by the soldier’s grip on his shirt.

  ‘I think we might talk alone,’ said Dozsa, guiding Mac by the arm.

  ‘I want to check on Lance first,’ said Mac. ‘Let me give him something to eat at least?’

  Dozsa paused for two seconds. Mac’s request was cheeky, but Dozsa knew it was a professional courtesy to allow a bleeding man to get some sustenance.

  Handing over the peeled orange to Mac, Dozsa turned to Urquhart. ‘The only reason you’re alive is that you followed his instructions, you know that?’

  Gulping, Urquhart nodded. ‘Yep – I know that.’

  ‘Good, because I’ll kill you if you disappoint me. Understand?’

  Urquhart stammered as Dozsa turned away.

  The medic had a drip into Lance, who’d been stripped to his waist. Bandaged dressings seemed to hold his arm to his body and there was a thick pad bandaged to his neck, the dried blood caked on the scalp beneath his dark hair.

  ‘You know, Dozsa,’ said Mac, as Lance’s eyes opened, ‘the thing to do would be to get him out of here, fly him into Phnom or even Saigon.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen, McQueen. I’ll keep him alive, that’s my best offer.’

  Mac looked at Lance. ‘Bad news is that you lost a lot of blood, mate. Good news? There’s nothing left to bleed out.’

  A small smile creased Lance’s pale face and he nodded very slightly.

  ‘I want you to have something to eat, mate. You’re going on a plane ride and in your state you need something in your belly, okay? Your body needs all the help it can get right now to replenish the blood.’

  Mac offered a segment of orange to the young Aussie. ‘Your mind will play tricks on you, telling you you’re not hungry, but that’s just the metabolism wanting to shut down. Instead, you must eat and the easiest thing to digest is fruit, okay?’

  Nodding again, Lance opened his white lips as Mac put the segment in his mouth.

  ‘Don’t waste your strength chewing – just swallow it,’ said Mac.

  Lance swallowed it down.

  Responding to another radio call, Dozsa squeezed the button on his headset and wandered to the other end of the office.

  ‘So?’ said Mac, feeding Lance the orange but looking at Urquhart, who had wandered over. ‘Embarrassment?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Urquhart, squirming.

  ‘McHugh’s a spy, so the Yanks decide to drop her?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Urquhart, returning to his slippery Canberra persona.

  ‘You want me to issue a CX saying David Urquhart pissed himself when the bullets flew?’

  ‘Fuck off, McQueen.’

  ‘Then talk.’

  Looking at a place on the nylon-carpeted floor, Urquhart took a breath. ‘McHugh was part of a sting – a joint operation between US Treasury and the Australian Prime Minister’s office.’

  ‘Sting? Who was being lured?’

  ‘The Chinese. The Yanks had logged a number of highly sophisticated firewall and VPN attacks on their Treasury servers. The attacks were coming out of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region where the MSS have their cyber teams.’

  An attack from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was bad news – those MSS teams rarely failed.

  Mac thought about it. ‘Are the US Treasury’s servers linked to any other system?’

  ‘No, but the Chinks didn’t need to enter through a connection to the outside world,’ said Urquhart. ‘They were trying to listen to signatures created by data going through the Treasury�
�s internal routers.’

  Mac had more questions but Urquhart glanced over his shoulder then continued.

  ‘McHugh was supposed to masquerade as a visiting Aussie Treasury wonk with vaguely left-wing views . . . a full US Treasury visiting fellowship, access to the US Eyes Only stuff. You know – the Yanks letting the junior partner into the liquor cabinet. Grimshaw called it a honey pot.’

  ‘Grimshaw designed this?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Urquhart. ‘He called McHugh the “bait”.’

  ‘Hoping the MSS would try to turn her?’

  ‘That was the plan,’ said Urquhart. ‘Then we’d be inside their camp and, right when we can do most political damage, we brief the Journal, the FT and the Shimbun in Tokyo, and expose the Chinks for the rogues they are.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But,’ said Urquhart, lightly fingering his split face, ‘Joel Dozsa turned up in Washington.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And turned her for real,’ said Urquhart, avoiding Mac’s eyes.

  Blood roared through Mac’s temples; if he’d previously been equivocal about Bongo retrieving McHugh, he was now entirely focused on getting her to Canberra and doing a very long debriefing. Once someone had crossed the line, you either had to forcibly retrieve them, or drop them. The Aussie intel community was small – small enough that when one person went bad, the effect on many covers, assets and networks could be fatal.

  ‘That’s not good,’ said Mac, grinding it out like he was chewing rocks. Urquhart recoiled slightly.

  ‘Look, it was supposed to be run by Grimshaw and –’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Mac, holding his hand parallel to the floor to indicate he’d like less volume. ‘So why Dozsa – why did he turn up?’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Urquhart, his eyes refocusing. ‘You don’t know, of course.’

  ‘Know what?’ said Mac.

  ‘Dozsa was refused a tenured position at Duntroon, almost twenty years ago.’

  ‘Actually, I did know that,’ said Mac, glad he knew at least one part of the McHugh screw-up. ‘Just don’t know why.’

  ‘Not why,’ said Urquhart, happy to have the information upper hand again. ‘But who.’

  ‘Who what?’ said Mac.

  ‘Who he was grooming.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Officer candidate GB McHugh,’ said Urquhart, enjoying him- self now.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Mac, his mind spinning.

  ‘Oh, there was that too,’ said Urquhart. ‘Lots and lots of that.’

  Chapter 51

  Mac squinted in the mid-morning sun, limping behind the soldier through the compound. There were no signs of the Chinese mown down by Bongo’s firing practice in the Little Bird and the place had a feeling of calm. It was being shut down.

  The soldiers carried standard Chinese AK-47 rifles and no side arms. Thinking about the chances of taking one soldier, disarming him and turning on the other, Mac decided to wait for a better opportunity. With Dozsa now possessing two Aussie hostages, the dynamic had changed, and Mac was not moving easily on his shot calf.

  Dozsa waited for him, sitting on the hood of a white LandCruiser in the machinery shed, peeling another orange.

  ‘I have given this some thought,’ said the Israeli as Mac got out of the sun. ‘I don’t want to kill you, McQueen.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ said Dozsa, popping a segment of the fruit in his mouth. ‘I think you can be of some use.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mac. He was exhausted, but he still had enough energy to kill this person.

  ‘You’ll deliver a message to Grimshaw.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ said Mac.

  ‘Because you’re going to tell him to get out of Indochina, or these Aussies will die.’

  ‘You think I’m a messenger?’

  ‘I think you’re an Australian spy, Mr McQueen, and you would not want it being said in Canberra that you could have saved your countrymen but chose not to.’

  Smiling, Dozsa lifted a mobile phone from the pack and Mac could see from its red light that their conversation was being recorded. Dozsa was an intel lifer, and he knew this was one interaction Mac did not want emailed to the ASIS brass.

  ‘If it’s about saving Australians,’ said Mac, ‘give me the keys and I’ll take the lads now.’

  ‘No, I’d prefer they keep me company on the next stage of our adventure.’

  Breathing out, Mac eyed the orange; Dozsa split off a chunk and threw it to him.

  ‘I deliver a message – that’s it?’ said Mac, wolfing down the juicy morsel. ‘Why wouldn’t I grab a crew of hard boys and come back at you?’

  ‘Who says I’d be here?’

  ‘Why not just call Grimshaw?’ said Mac.

  ‘An annoying unmanned aircraft has been circling us all night, Mr McQueen, and I don’t feel like pinpointing myself just yet,’ said Dozsa, observing Mac with eyes that seemed to have no pupils. ‘Unless you’d like to use my phone, provide some target practice for the US Navy?’

  ‘I’ll pass,’ said Mac. ‘So Grimshaw leaves Cambodia, and you release Lance and Urquhart – that’s the deal?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Dozsa. ‘Grimshaw has some property of mine and I want it back.’

  ‘Find a FedEx office.’

  ‘No, McQueen – you will put it in my hand, and with no funny business, no conversations with people I don’t like.’

  ‘This property involved with your counterfeiting?’

  ‘You should stop this word, counterfeit,’ said Dozsa. ‘I produce currency with real paper and ink; real printing techniques and the crowning glory . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Actual serial numbers and security features.’

  ‘That’s the SN and SF,’ said Mac, almost to himself. ‘Shit, Dozsa – you’re producing US hundred-dollar notes with authentic serial numbers?’

  ‘That’s the US Treasury’s nightmare,’ said Dozsa, laughing. ‘When a glut of notes hits the street and their own people can’t tell the good from the bad.’

  ‘You’re a lunatic, Dozsa,’ said Mac. ‘You trigger a currency collapse that hurts China and you have no idea where that leads.’

  ‘I guess a strong man has to step in and stabilise the situation?’

  ‘General Pao Peng? He’ll destabilise this region with his Greater China fantasies,’ said Mac. ‘A hundred years of war is the price China will pay for grabbing its cheap coal and oil.’

  ‘You’d be surprised how many American corporations would love to deal with a China that doesn’t have to negotiate for its fuel.’

  ‘Spare me the conspiracies, Dozsa,’ said Mac, annoyed.

  Lighting a cigarette, Dozsa feigned boredom. ‘I’m busy, McQueen – will you do it?’

  Mac’s calf ached. ‘What’s this property I’m retrieving?’

  ‘A memory chip,’ said Dozsa. ‘It’s white.’

  Mac was confused. ‘I thought you guys had that?’

  ‘We did,’ said Dozsa. ‘But the Americans took it.’

  ‘If they took it, wouldn’t Grimshaw have sent it to DC by now?’

  ‘If he knew he had it, he’d have sent it on.’ A smile creased the side of Dozsa’s mouth.

  ‘What does that mean? How do I retrieve a memory chip from Charles Grimshaw when he doesn’t know he has it?’

  ‘You steal it from him, McQueen,’ said Dozsa, exhaling a plume. ‘You’re good at that, I hear.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘It was on Tranh,’ said Dozsa, eyes boring into Mac’s. ‘I believe Grimshaw now has it.’

  ‘Tranh?’ said Mac, blindsided. ‘Tranh Loh Han?’

  ‘Your driver. He’s an assassin.’

  ‘
An assassin?’ said Mac.

  ‘For the Loh Han Tong,’ said Dozsa.

  ‘He had this chip?’ said Mac, reeling.

  ‘We think he stole the chip from your hotel room.’

  Rubbing his temples, Mac tried to rewind the last few days and be clear about the events. It didn’t add up.

  ‘But you killed Tranh,’ said Mac. ‘Why didn’t you take the memory chip?’

  ‘Who said I killed Tranh?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I think it was your American friends,’ said Dozsa. ‘We were in the basement car park when the shooting started.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Mac. ‘The Americans killed Tranh and grabbed the chip from him, but they don’t know they have it?’

  Dozsa smiled. ‘In the shootout Tranh dropped his mobile phone and the Americans retrieved it.’

  ‘You know this?’

  ‘The property manager played me the security tape from the lobby.’

  ‘Tranh dropped his phone. So what?’ said Mac, irritated.

  ‘So, the chip is an SD,’ said Dozsa. ‘It fits into Nokias. I have good reason to believe that Tranh stole the chip from your room and was carrying it in his Nokia – it’s how a lot of Asian criminals courier information from one place to another.’

  ‘You had good reason?’

  ‘If Tranh had given that chip to his real employers, McQueen, I’d have been contacted very quickly and we’d be negotiating a price,’ said Dozsa. ‘The chip isn’t in Tranh’s luggage and it’s not with his employers. So it’s in that phone.’

  Mac’s head was spinning. ‘If you’d lost track of it, how did you know the chip was in the hotel room?’

  ‘That piss-ant of yours – his name’s Lars?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Mac.

  ‘Our pretty operative put a little device on his shirt, and –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Mac, knowing about the micro-transmitter. ‘So how did you print all this currency without the protocols on that chip?’

  ‘Without?’ said the Israeli, confused.

  ‘The chip – the BEP protocols,’ said Mac. ‘That’s the memory card, right?’