‘So, she’d be?’
‘Almost eighteen months,’ Diane smiled. ‘And beautiful.’
‘So she looks like you?’
‘No - she’s a McQueen. Very stubborn.’
‘So, she’s running around?’
Diane nodded, gulped. ‘Dad says she’ll be a famous sports star
- she loves to swing her little racquet.’
As they talked about Sarah, Mac felt that old cold feeling come back - the one he got before he went into the fi eld. It was like an old friend, whispering in his ear, saying, Get these bastards.
His eyes must have been hardening because Diane suddenly stopped herself.
‘Need to know about the shooters?’
Mac nodded.
It was almost two am when Freddi pulled up in front of the Shangri-La. They walked through into the BAIS operations post behind the front desk, the images bloke, Fanshaw, leaping up as he saw them.
Freddi said something in Bahasa to Fanshaw and the bloke sat down and rolled the chair up closer to the keyboard. They stood over his shoulder, looked at what he had.
‘This is waiter on opening reception,’ said Fanshaw, pushing his glasses up his nose as a black and white image resolved, giving proper defi nition to a blown-up still from a surveillance camera. The person in the photo was early thirties, Javanese or Malay - or perhaps something else. He knew he’d be on a camera and had worn large owlish spectacles and kept his face pointing down, the mark of a pro.
In the photo they looked at, he was bending into a wheeled cabinet with the fi nger foods.
‘Can I see one of him moving?’ asked Mac.
Fanshaw played a segment with the waiter walking past the bottom third of the frame. Mac saw that strange bum-out walk he had noticed on the fi rst night.
‘This is footage of the tennis courts,’ said Fanshaw, then played what was a horror story. The camera was a medium fi sh-eye mounted on the top of the rear fence, looking down on the fi rst and second courts, so that the clubhouse was in the middle of the frame.
They watched transfi xed as Michael Vitogiannis stood with hands on hips, hamming it up for someone on the side of the court: Diane.
Then out of the clubhouse came Alex Grant in whites carrying a tray with a glass jug and three glasses on it. He turned with a smile to the other two as a uniformed waiter walked past him, in a hurry. Alex looked to his right to see why the employee was walking onto their court, and then the waiter pulled a handgun from under his tunic, aimed up, and shot Michael Vitogiannis what looked like three times, judging by the recoils and puffs of blue smoke.
Before the fi rst shooter fi nished, another waiter ran up behind Alex Grant with a handgun and dropped him with one shot behind the ear. Alex went down, dead. The fi rst waiter jogged back to the second and then suddenly he staggered, hit by a shot to the thigh. The second shooter aimed up and shot at an unseen target: Diane. Then they turned and ran across the other tennis court, the fi rst shooter limping and the second shooter moving with that distinctive gait
- bum sticking out slightly, hips moving freely.
Freddi asked Fanshaw something, and a bad-quality security video came up on the large computer screen. The time code said it was from
‘02 and Fanshaw identifi ed it as security video from the Kuta Puri during the time the Hassan and Samir crew were in Kuta. Fanshaw ran some footage of a group of men walking down a path that connected the street with the bungalows area of the Kuta Puri. They were all looking down and the video, which had been shot at night, was bad enough that they looked like they were walking on the moon. In spite of the bad quality, two people stood out: one for his walk, the other because he was built like a gorilla. The one with the distinctive walk was the waiter Mac had spotted at the opening reception, the one who gunned down Alex Grant and Diane.
Mac looked at Freddi, wide-eyed. The whole operation to buy the enrichment algorithms from Bennelong Systems and then dispose of the vendors had been carried out by the Hassan crew. It was the same crew that had been in Kuta on the night of the Bali bombings; the same crew that ran the clandestine nuclear weapons network for Pakistan’s national hero and supplier of enriched uranium to Libya, North Korea and Iran, Dr A.Q. Khan. It was the same people who had shot a girl and snatched a boy while escaping from the jungles of Sumatra, an incident that had seen Freddi moved out of the fi eld for a while and Mac off to see a shrink.
The years peeled back and Mac was once again in that jungle on the coast of Northern Sumatra, shooting those two blokes on the
.50-cal gun, missing the one who’d been standing behind them.
The one with that strange walk which turned into a strange run. The same one who’d been watching them at the reception dinner at the Shangri-La, before shooting Diane.
‘Who is he?’ asked Mac.
‘Lempo,’ said Freddi. ‘Father is Sri Lankan, mother is Malay. He’s an associate of Hassan, based in Dubai.’
Mac nodded, the pieces coming together.
‘What’s in Dubai?’ asked Mac, knowing already.
‘Khan’s operation,’ said Freddi, almost whispering. ‘The nuclear network.’
CHAPTER 36
Exhaustion had crept up on Mac and was taking hold. His vision blurred at the sides and he had that buzzing in his temples, usually a sign for him to call it quits for a few hours. Diane was safe. Carl knew what he was doing and he’d have no problem dropping a bad guy when the time came.
It was more his own safety Mac needed to worry about. Someone on the inside had employed Lempo and his sidekick, got them rostered on to the conference and let them do their surveillance and the hit.
There was also Hassan’s core of actual businesspeople and lawyers present at the signing over of the enrichment codes and navy C and C
systems. That’s why Grant and Vitogiannis were so edgy at the evening function and then in their morning meeting: they had the physical CDs or USB plugs, a part of the deal that Mac had seen as a letter in Alex Grant’s iDisk. As soon as Hassan signalled he had everything from the Bennelong transaction, Lempo came in and did the chop.
Diane probably wasn’t supposed to be part of it. But they knew about Mac - they’d sent someone up to look after him and they knew he was in his room.
Before he went to sleep Mac needed to know about the hotel. ‘Fred, can we get any footage on the shooter who went to my room?’
Freddi asked Fanshaw, who shook his head. ‘Waiter wore a black cap and walked backwards down to your room,’ said Freddi, tired too.
‘He knocks on door, no one answer and he give up. Nothing there.’
Mac looked into Freddi’s eyes. They had shared a lot in Sumatra but they were still members of rival intelligence outfi ts. Mac wanted more. ‘Fred, someone in this hotel was working for Hassan on the inside.’
‘You get some sleep, McQueen - leave that to us.’
‘Mate, my colleague is in a hospital bed under guard. And I can’t stay at this hotel until I know there’s no one coming for me.’
Freddi chewed his gum slowly.
‘Besides, Fred,’ said Mac, lowering his voice, ‘I’m not going to hang around getting in your way - I’m going out to fi nd these pricks, understand?’
Freddi sighed, resigned. ‘Okay, McQueen. But I do all the talking, okay?’
The elevator opened at B2 and Mac walked behind Freddi down a green lino-clad corridor with bad fl uorescent lighting. From somewhere they could hear yells and thumps, as if there was a volleyball game in progress. They pushed through a swing door and walked into a smoky room with three BAIS guys in it, all staring through glass at an unconscious man in another room, tied to a bolted-down chair, his shirt missing and layers of dried and wet blood down his face and chest.
Mac recognised one of the BAIS guys: Ishi Yusgiantoro, one of the top domestic operations people in Indonesian intelligence and a former commander in Kopassus’s Group 4. Ishi had done some nasty work in East Timor in ‘99. Now in his mid-fi fties, he
looked as tired as Mac felt. Ishi listened to Freddi explain what Mac was doing down in the heart of BAIS, then slowly turned to Mac, eyes sceptical.
‘McQueen?’ he asked.
‘Alan McQueen,’ Mac answered, hand extended. ‘ Apa kabar? ‘
There was a two-second silence, then Ishi shook Mac’s hand, smiled and they all started laughing, even Mac. It wasn’t every day that an Anglo working in Indonesia bothered to say g’day in the local tongue.
As the laughter died, a BAIS guy sitting on the bench table said something to Freddi, and they laughed again.
Mac gave Freddi a look.
‘He say, It true - he crazy,’ said Freddi.
Ishi pulled a pack of smokes from his pants pocket and pointed through the glass. ‘He work at Lar - okay?’
‘The inside guy?’ asked Mac, staring at the man in the interrogation room.
Ishi nodded as he lit up and took his fi rst drag. ‘He say he only feed information for money. Don’t know who they are. We check phone log - pre-pay phone.’
‘How did he get paid?’ asked Mac.
‘Cash, US dollar,’ said Ishi, dragging on his smoke. ‘He met at river three time; fi rst two, just young businessman.’
Ishi clicked his fi ngers and the man on the table brought a fi le over.
‘This is Lempo,’ said Ishi, handing over the black and white surveillance photo. ‘Taken in Cairo fi ve month ago.’
Lempo was a good-looking citizen of the world, sitting in a cafe in his white shirt and aviator sunnies. A middle-class hit man.
‘He in ISI, then he not. Then he in Pakistan army, then he not. Then he working for Khan, then Khan is stopped,’ said Ishi and shrugged.
‘What’s he doing now?’ asked Mac, the fatigue pulsing behind his eyeballs.
‘Khan been stopped,’ speculated Ishi, sucking on the smoke, ‘and Lempo and Hassan building own nuclear market now, yeah? Master retire, student now boss.’
Mac nodded. ‘What about the third meeting?’
Ishi pulled out another surveillance pic: a computer-enhanced black and white still from a security video. It showed a thick-set Pakistani man standing at a counter, his enormous shoulders and neck crowned by a big helmet of black hair. Mac’s skin crawled.
‘Mohammad Ali Shareef,’ said Ishi.
‘Gorilla,’ Mac mumbled.
‘ Benar,’ said Ishi, before adjusting back to English. ‘Yes, you’re right. Our man in there say he got Lempo and the other one their waiter jobs, but he don’t want to feed desk information. So they send Gorilla, and our man change mind.’
‘Where were they staying?’
Ishi looked at him, then yelled something at his crew. A man with his feet on the table leapt up and walked out a door on the left side of the room. Through the glass Mac saw the BAIS operative approach the unconscious hotel worker and kick him hard in the right kneecap.
The hotel guy woke up screaming, his voice squawking out through the speaker system. The sounds bounced back and forth, the hotel guy crying and begging while the BAIS guy hectored, slapped and threatened to punch.
After two minutes the sounds died away and Freddi turned to Mac. ‘Good call, McQueen.’
‘Why?’
‘One of Lempo’s gang dropped a matchbox when he lighting cigarette,’ said Freddi. ‘Our man pick it up - they were staying at the Galaxy Hotel.’
It took a little less than an hour for the Indonesian counter-terrorist police - D-88 - to clear the Galaxy Hotel for booby traps, trip lines and pressure pads. Mac stood with Freddi and Ishi behind the BAIS
LandCruiser while the guests milled around on the street, a side-feeder to the boulevard of Diponegoro. It was 3.06 am and Mac yawned as the D-88 captain approached Ishi, the visor on his black helmet pushed up. They swapped words and Ishi moved towards the Galaxy, Freddi and Mac following in his wake.
The D-88 captain, who smelled of stress and Old Spice, said nothing on their ride to the seventh fl oor. Getting out, they moved down a narrow corridor with walls that needed new wallpaper before stopping at a room with the door open. Inside were two single beds, a door to the toilet/shower area and a window looking over the night lights of Jakkers. Some of the carpet had been pulled up and inexpertly put back; there were gouges in the plasterboard under the light switches where the D-88 debuggers had checked for any nasties that might be lurking. The intensity of the IED-driven confl icts in Afghanistan and Iraq had bred paranoia in the Americans. And given that D-88 was American-trained and equipped, Mac wasn’t surprised that this was how they treated a terrorist lair.
They wandered around the room, which looked clean. Mac did the fi rst thing he always did and went straight for the rubbish bin, picking up and checking the dark green metal container. They stripped the beds, fl ipped over the mattresses, went through every drawer, lifted the cistern lid on the lav and had a nosey-poke behind the TV.
They looked at one another, shrugged.
They had similar luck in the next three rooms. They’d already been cleaned out, by people who knew to hide the same things that Mac and Freddi were looking for.
Mac was close to calling it a night. The shooting was now a police matter. Hassan’s gang had their pictures all over the POLRI, customs and port authority systems - and Mac couldn’t do much more. If tomorrow brought more information, then people like Freddi and Mac were more likely to be anticipating Hassan’s next move than catching him. Mac also had the feeling that Davidson was about to pull him out - Mac’s assignment was economic and contracted and the ASIS hard-heads in Jakkers would probably take over.
In the last room they checked, Mac noticed one of the beds - it didn’t look right. He slid it away from the wall, sending a cockroach scurrying up the wall. Searching around the bedhead Mac found a small white notepad from the Danau Toba International hotel. Freddi snapped on a latex glove and picked it up by the corner. There was nothing written on it but Freddi turned it into the light and it seemed likely the BAIS techies would fi nd latent writing on the pages.
‘I’ll get this down to the guys,’ said Freddi. ‘Might be useful.’
Mac nodded, but his mind was spinning back into the past, into a place of terror. The Danau Toba was in Medan, northern Sumatra.
CHAPTER 37
Edwin was waiting out the front of the Shangri-La in the black S-class when Mac got down there at 8.11 am. They sped south through the heat and traffi c while Mac got on the phone to Saba, the owner of an expat bar called Bavaria Lagerhaus in the embassy district of south Jakarta. Saba said he’d have his bodyguard waiting in the rear lane in ten minutes.
Edwin parked half a block away and Mac got out, walked the opposite side of the road looking for eyes. He ducked into a neighbouring park for some triangulated counter-surveillance, and then crossed back and nipped into the rear lane, his empty backpack over one shoulder. Saba’s bodyguard was waiting. A heavyset Javanese sporting a gold watch, he patted down Mac’s pants and shirt then fl icked his head slightly, indicating it was okay to enter. Closing and bolting the door behind them, the bodyguard walked past Mac, past the stacked boxes of Tiger beer and Beefeater London Dry, into a storeroom. After fl icking the lights, he walked to the end of the room, his chromed Desert Eagle handgun now obvious beneath the trop shirt.
The left wall of the room was lined with large black locker boxes used by intelligence people working in Jakarta. A former spy himself, Saba allowed other spooks to keep their undeclared belongings in this room. The bodyguard stood by Mac’s locker - number 9 - selected a key from a retractable chain. Pulling out his own keyring, Mac joined the bodyguard. They inserted at the same time and turned their keys.
The front of the locker folded down to create its own little picnic table, and Mac pulled the steel drawer out onto it. There were three cushion-sized clear plastic Ziploc bags fi lled with cash in denominations of US dollars, rupiah, Singapore dollars and one bag with a mix of yen, Aussie dollars and pounds sterling. There were also several packs of passports, drive
rs’ licences and credit cards, held together with rubber bands. He picked up the pack in the name of Brandon Collier, his unoffi cial cover - the one that ASIS didn’t know about - and put it in his pack, along with a black vinyl toilet bag with a full disguise kit.
At the rear of the drawer were three guns and boxes of ammo.
You weren’t allowed to touch fi rearms in Saba’s joint, so Mac pointed at the Heckler & Koch P9S handgun in the dark blue nylon hip rig and one box of .45 loads. The bodyguard picked them up, put them in Mac’s pack. Then Mac took out the bag of mixed currency and a handful of US dollars, about $5000 worth.
Mac paused as he returned the cash bag. Lying along the bottom of the drawer was a yellow A4 envelope, unmarked. He’d forgotten all about it but it came back to him now. After the Kuta bombings, Mac had written a report on the pursuit of Hassan Ali’s gang and its terrible conclusion in northern Sumatra. He’d technically been seconded to BAIS under Operation Handmaiden so the debriefi ng to his controller, Joe Imbruglia, had been short and dense, and the bits and pieces he’d copied and kept in this yellow envelope were probably looked over quickly by Joe and just as quickly forgotten.
The cries from Canberra after Kuta had been deafening and Joe and Mac had moved on quickly into a series of more urgent operations assisting the Australian Federal Police and Indonesian National Police track down the local bombers, the ones that BAIS called ‘the patsies’.
In those days ASIS had so much egg on its face for missing the signs of an attack on a popular Australian holiday destination that they’d all worked like mules for the next six months, an era when some of ASIS’s best young talent walked away, unwilling to work around the clock for seven days a week.
Mac had fi led his report, stashed his mementos, and plunged into the fi eld to chase down tangos in the jungles of South-East Asia. He was part of the crew that nabbed one of bomber Amrozi’s associates. They knew from monitoring mobile phone traffi c between numbers in Amrozi’s phone that one of the bombers was hiding out in a village in central Java. There had been a bunch of Aussies and Indons in plainclothes but it wasn’t until they got there that they realised that no one had seen a picture of the bloke. So Mac had told one of the POLRI guys to pounce on the next bloke who answered his phone. They were in the main market square of the village when Mac dialled the number and a young Indon in a Pepsi-Cola T-shirt had answered his phone. Gotcha.
Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike Page 24