Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike

by Mark Abernethy

  That’s context one.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, wide-eyed.

  ‘Context two, I’ve got Hassan Ali back in Indonesia, I’ve got confi rmation that Mossad is here chasing him because Hassan’s crew heisted two mini-nukes from Dimona six years ago, but they only used one. And I have a payment of thirteen million US taking place between two accounts that have only been used once before - and that was ten days before the Kuta bombings. That same channel was used again two days ago.’

  ‘I see,’ said Watson.

  ‘Do you?’ asked Mac, his voice shrill. He hadn’t had enough sleep in the past week and he was sick of being patronised by his colleagues.

  ‘Okay, okay!’ snapped Atkins. ‘Time out.’

  ‘What? There’s a difference for you?’ asked Mac.

  Watson looked at the carpet, trying to subdue a smile.

  ‘Know something, McQueen?’ asked Atkins.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll tell me.’

  ‘The last eighteen months, two years, have been so peaceful up here in our little section.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. And some of us were wondering what would happen to that when they decided to send the old bull back into the china shop.’

  Mac smiled at the ceiling, refusing to be baited.

  ‘And over the past few days, McQueen, I’ve been seeing this whole chip on the shoulder thing about - what do you call it? - offi ce guys.’

  ‘Nine-eleven Commission said it too, Marty.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Atkins, sarcastic.

  ‘What, you didn’t read it, Marty?’

  Atkins just stared at him, so Mac turned to Watson, asked her too.

  ‘Shit,’ said Mac, shaking his head. ‘I thought I was the cowboy.’

  Atkins and Watson looked at each other.

  ‘Well,’ said Mac, ‘for those who can’t be bothered reading one of the seminal commentaries on their own profession, allow me to paraphrase: the fi eld guys from the Agency and Bureau called it in, and the offi ce guys went to lunch.’

  Atkins threw his pen on the desk. ‘Screw you, McQueen.’

  ‘What it said.’

  ‘Well let me tell you it from the offi ce guy’s perspective, okay McQueen? Field operators to us mean sloppy reports, shonky expense claims, secret stashes of money, unauthorised identities and fake passports that they get from God knows where.’

  Mac shrugged. Guilty, Your Honour.

  ‘Oh, and the weird conspiracy theories that they dredge up from their own paranoia. And through all this it’s my job to ensure they remain safe. Not just you, McQueen, but all of you.’ Atkins was shouting now, red in the face.

  Watson moved her weight around in her chair, uncomfortable with the exchanges.

  ‘Then, when you guys have undermined the system as far as you can take it, you turn around and want the system to work for you,’

  said Atkins.

  ‘Okay,’ nodded Mac.

  ‘No - not okay, McQueen. Yesterday we had what I thought was an adult chat. When you left I trusted you to get out to Hatta and get on that frigging eight o’clock to Perth. You said yes and you lied to me.’

  ‘So what about this mini-nuke?’

  ‘We’ll handle it from here, McQueen.’

  ‘ No way! ‘

  ‘No way? Shit, mate, you only came back on board four days ago, as a fi nance guy. You’re being run out of Australia, by Davidson, remember that?’

  Mac nodded. Davidson’s whereabouts had become a riddle in itself: was there actually a problem with his controller being off the air for two days? Or was Mac being overly sensitive about the way his voicemail had locked out?

  ‘Anyone heard from Davidson?’ asked Mac, looking for a reaction.

  ‘Anyone?’ asked Atkins. ‘Should we go and ask everyone in the section?’

  ‘Okay, have you heard from him?’

  ‘When, McQueen? I mean, come on! Yesterday? Last week?’

  ‘I can’t get him on his mobile, voicemail’s locking out.’

  Atkins looked genuinely confused and frustrated with the diversion. ‘Okay, okay, I’ll try to raise him, see what’s going on. But back to this other matter - I’m only talking to you because of your track record, but get this straight, McQueen: you’re economic and fi nance. The CT stuff has moved on, okay?’

  ‘So who will handle it, Marty?’

  ‘Feds, maybe. It’s a police matter, counter-terrorism, right?’

  ‘Who’ll brief the Feds if I’m on a plane?’

  Something moved in Atkins’ eyes, and when Mac clicked he couldn’t help a nasty laugh. Garvs had once been a good friend but he wasn’t a person you’d put up against Hassan. He wouldn’t trust Garvs to make the cops focus down on the various trails.

  ‘Shit, Marty, not him,’ said Mac.

  Atkins steeled himself. ‘Bray will put you on the fl ight, but I expect you to debrief and do handover with Garvs before you leave.’

  Mac got up, trying to suppress his fury.

  ‘And McQueen? No funny stuff - full handover brief, right?’

  ‘You okay, Macca?’ asked Barry ‘Boo’ Bray as they headed for Soekarno-Hatta Airport. Mac had showered, washed a load of product through his dark hair and changed his dressing at the hotel before scarpering.

  ‘Um, yeah, thanks,’ said Mac, distracted and feeling a jumble of emotions. The handover with Garvs had been a disaster. It was a fob-off, a pro forma debrief in which Garvs showed very little interest in what Mac was saying. It was true that Mac was no longer in the inner sanctum of the fi rm’s ct work out of Jakarta, but whatever they were really up to, he was too exhausted to fi ght anymore.

  ‘You, know,’ said Boo, his small blue eyes beaming out of a big ruddy face that featured blond mutton-chops. ‘I used to run into the shit all the time in the navy.’ He chuckled. ‘All shades of it.’

  ‘Yeah?’ asked Mac. ‘Thought you were military police?’

  ‘I was, mate!’ he laughed. Boo Bray was a big, stroppy former navy MP who now ran what was known as the I-Team, a fl ying squad of cops from the Australian Protective Service who removed badly behaving Australians from embassies, army bases and trade missions all over the world. ‘But, shit, Macca - there was always a captain’s favourite, an admiral’s nephew, a politician’s son. Mate, you know how it is.’

  Sniggering, Mac looked out on the Java Sea as they fl ashed up the freeway. It was late afternoon and he was being escorted to the 8.15 pm SIA fl ight to Singers and then Brissie. ‘Yeah, Boo - I know how it is.’

  He got a three-pack of wine for Jenny and a Singapore souvenir T-shirt for Rachel. Then he got a bigger T-shirt too, for Sarah. They gave him his requested seat - 11A - on the Boeing 777 and the fl ight took off out of Changi at the scheduled time of 11.45 pm. He ate the meal and drank two glasses of red, and when he ducked into the lav he transferred his numbers from ‘phone’ to ‘SIM’, pocketed the SIM

  and chucked his Nokia in the bin. The hosties made up the airbed and he kicked his shoes and pants off and curled up under the sheet and blanket.

  He’d made a call to Diane on his way from Halim Air Base to the embassy and they’d talked for twenty minutes. She was getting better although her father was a wreck, blamed himself and the diplomatic upbringing for getting her into the life. And because of the environment, he didn’t want Diane’s mother or Sarah in Jakarta.

  Mac wondered if he’d played it right with Diane. He’d thanked her for her mum’s phone number in Sydney and then asked if he was allowed to be called Dad. Diane had hesitated, and Mac thought he’d blown it. Then he realised she was crying.

  ‘Yes, of course that’s okay,’ she sniffed. ‘She’ll need that - I need that.’

  The lights were down in the cabin and as Mac dozed he thought intermittently about Freddi and Purni, Atkins and Garvs, and people like Danny Fitzgibbon, the MI6 stooge. He wondered why he couldn’t just take the easy way, as Garvs had.

  The problem between the fi eld and the
offi ce was one of focus: if you existed in an offi ce environment, your daily rationale became the accumulation of brownie points. It was a normal human response and good, smart people got sucked into it every bit as much as the born toadies. But when you worked in the fi eld, success had nothing to do with simply creating impressions. You got it wrong in the fi eld, you could die. You got it wrong in an offi ce, you had emails and memos to prove it was someone else’s fault.

  Mac didn’t see himself as a bull in a china shop but he was stubborn and that formed part of his stamina. Blokes like Mac, Davidson, Freddi and Ari had the heart to keep on going through all the pain, tears and disappointments. It was stubbornness - and Hassan Ali and his crew were about to feel what genuine Queensland stubbornness was all about. Yes, he’d called Diane, but he hadn’t called ahead to Jen - because when he landed in Brissie, he wasn’t going home.

  Not yet.

  CHAPTER 49

  The Toyota Aurion was new and the air-con worked well. Mac headed north on Highway 1, his backpack next to him on the seat as he slugged water and thought about his next moves. The Tony Davidson puzzle had now turned into a serious headache. With all the other things on his mind, getting hold of the guy hadn’t been his biggest concern. But a controller of Davidson’s experience didn’t simply go off the air, even if he was travelling in Europe or North America, getting more operators on board. Davidson was a believer, and once the wheels started turning he wouldn’t just switch his phone off for three days and he wouldn’t duck a voicemail from an operator who was active, as Mac had been in Jakkers. There was also the voicemail locking out. Mac couldn’t believe it would have stayed that way for three days, not if all Davidson had done was forget his PIN. If he was having phone dramas, his corporate front in Perth would have known and they would have been briefed to deal with Mac.

  Having checked the Perth corporate front and Davidson’s mobile when he’d landed in Brisbane, Mac was now going to check out something for himself before he went home. Not a lot of people knew that Davidson had bought a place with his wife, Violet, in Noosa.

  For some reason, old spooks from all over the world bought their retirement homes in Noosa, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, about two hours’ drive north of Brisbane. There were blokes from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore. Not to mention a lot of Poms. Mac had no idea of the Davidsons’ address, so he would have to extemporise.

  The second task was to catch Hassan on his way into Australia, or, if Hassan was already in Australia, fi nd him. He needed more than he had, which was nothing. If his own colleagues in Jakkers wouldn’t come across, then the chances of getting the AFP or Queensland cops interested were very low. Perhaps nil. In fact, Atkins’ decision to fl ick-pass the Hassan project to the Feds seemed strange given there were lots of trails you might follow as an intel guy that would not look at all promising to a cop. It wasn’t a refl ection on policing, it was just that cops had to have a case, and a person to prosecute. Cops had to appeal to lawyers. For an intelligence offi cer, it was more likely to be a situation that was developing, a set of conditions reaching a critical point. Passing intelligence to the AFP or the military was quite normal, mused Mac, what was strange was that Mac hadn’t been asked to write a report that would go to either of those organisations, and he had been excised from the loop, so he wouldn’t be briefi ng anyone.

  Which meant it would fall between the cracks. Probably had already.

  The turn-off sign for Mooloolaba loomed in green and Mac kept to the left lane. He had an idea for getting more info on Hassan, but it was his third task that was troubling him: telling Jenny about Sarah and integrating her into their lives.

  Mac’s pie was hot and greasy and went down nicely as he monitored the shop across the street, a phone dealership specialising in several mobile carriers. Through the shopfront Mac watched the manager, a porky Australian who looked nosey, maybe even familiar.

  Just along from Porky’s shop was a Vodafone outlet. Mac could see a blonde beach girl mucking around on the store computer and chewing gum. It was only 10.41 am and this clearly wasn’t rush hour.

  Pushing into the Vodafone store, Mac smiled. ‘Hi … Melanie,’ he read off the name-tag, ‘just need a pre-paid starter pack, thanks.’

  Waving her hand over her shoulder, Melanie rattled off the cap plans for the phones that were on the wall behind her.

  ‘That hundred-and-twenty-nine-dollar one, thanks,’ he said, with a wink and a smile.

  Melanie rolled her eyes ever so slightly and bent down to the cupboard behind her, slid the door back and came up with a red box.

  ‘Know how to start it up?’ she asked, chewing furiously.

  ‘Yeah, sure. Thanks.’

  ‘That’s a hundred and twenty-nine dollars.’

  Mac fi shed out a slab of notes and put down three fi fties and three twenties.

  Melanie turned to the laptop on the counter, switched from Solitaire to the customer-ware, looked out on the street and said,

  ‘Name.’

  ‘Thorn - Bruce Thorn, no e. ‘

  She typed it in and without looking up said, ‘ID?’

  Slapping his pockets, he looked behind him, and turned back.

  ‘Shit, sorry, I think my wife grabbed my wallet to go and get some things …’

  He slapped again. ‘Actually, we’ve just got off a fl ight from Singapore and I have a boarding pass with my passport number.’

  He put down the boarding pass and pointed to the name and the passport number beside it. ‘That should do it. They just need a register of who I am, right?’

  Unfortunately, Melanie wasn’t thick. ‘That’s not ID. You could have picked that up off any plane,’ she said. ‘People leave their boarding passes in those seat pockets all the time.’

  The other phone shop was run by Spiro, who was sweating and smiling when Mac walked in from the heat. Mac selected the same pre-paid phone, pulled out the same amount of cash and did the same spiel with his boarding pass. Spiro didn’t fl inch, writing him up and getting him on the phone to the activation call centre right there in his shop. Mac had a new phone within three minutes, a receipt in his new name and, as a reward for good service, Mac also bought two-hundred-dollars worth of pre-paid credit and a car charger for the Nokia.

  Capitalism worked best in the owner-operator model.

  ***

  He took the Marcoola road, amazing views of the South Pacifi c on his right, the sprawl of new housing cutting into the rainforest on his left. These days holiday houses had three toilets, three-car garages and things called media rooms, where people watched third-rate television in fi ve-star luxury. In the old days, Frank and Pat would take the kids up the coast to Five Rocks at Byfi eld National Park, with a tent and a surfboard, snorkelling masks, fi shing gear, a crate of beer and a few casks of wine.

  They’d stay for ten days and never hear a phone or a television. The adults around the camping site would get on the drink and the kids would stay out in the vast sand-dune systems that lined the coast.

  Jenny often told Mac to grow up and get with the modern world, but when he saw the look-alike suburban houses they were building on the Queensland coast he wondered how it had become so expensive to enjoy the sea.

  Mac took it easy along the coast road, keeping his water intake up and letting the Nokia charge beside him on the passenger seat.

  He drove through Coolum, Marcus and then Sunshine Beach, fi nally coming around the point and descending into Noosa. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and Noosa was a beautiful sight: beach on the right, lagoon over on the far left and national park to the north.

  He drove down the main drag of Hastings Street and found a park. Crossing the road, he walked into a luxury apartment building at the south end of Hastings and booked a room as Brandon Collier.

  The manager, Janice, took his passport and photocopied it but didn’t check the photo. She left him to fi ll in his own details on the register, so h
e changed his passport number to a 1800 booking number he could see on the desk blotter. Janice wished him a happy stay as she passed the key and told him where he could park the car.

  Inside he cracked a VB from the mini-bar, put on some shorts and sat on the patio overlooking Noosa Beach. In a few days the Christmas holidays rush would be on and there’d be no rooms in Noosa for any kind of money. Grabbing a pad from the courtesy writing desk, he wrote a list of names, and then put his old SIM into the new Nokia, transferred the numbers to ‘phone’, before inserting his new Vodafone SIM. Then he went down the list, ringing one number after the other. There was Lloyd at Trade, Jonesy at EFIC, Pete Dury at DFAT

  and another call to Albany Trading Asia, Davidson’s corporate identity in Perth. No one knew where Davidson was, none had heard from him. Mac made his last two calls to ASIS head offi ce in Canberra and Southern Scholastic Books in Sydney, impersonating Martin Atkins to the receptionists. Nothing. Tony Davidson - ASIS’s former head of operations for the Asia-Pacifi c region - had fallen off the map.

  Looking at his G-Shock, Mac decided to call Freddi. Mac had a new, clean phone so if there was any surveillance it would be at Freddi’s end, where BAIS had pretty good security. Freddi answered on the second ring.

  ‘Hey Freddi - Mac.’

  ‘What up?’

  ‘What I wanted to know. How did yesterday pan out in your fi rm?’

  ‘Just hear back from Australian side - saying no to in-country cooperation on Hassan. So I cleaning up the untidy ends up here, yeah, but no pursuing into Australia.’

  ‘Any ends you can tell me about Fred? I’m still on this.’

  ‘Nothing to interest you. I showed you the latents, from Galaxy Hotel pad, yeah?’

  ‘Um, there was more than one?’

  ‘Yeah, there was other one, but it bad quality. Techs say only sixty per cent. I’ll send it if you want.’

  Reading the apartment company’s fax number from the footer on the writing pad, Mac asked him to address it to Brandon Collier and spelled it for him. ‘Can you let me know when it’s coming, Freddi?’