Second Strike am-2

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Jen, I can’t discuss -‘

  ‘ Fuck, Macca!’

  ‘Okay. Yes, she was my partner -‘

  ‘Oh that’s great, Macca. Partner, yeah, right!’

  ‘Jen, look I need -‘

  ‘Macca, I have a partner, okay?’ she snapped. ‘But that doesn’t involve me in the same bed, or running around pretending to be his wife.’

  ‘I wasn’t in the bed with -‘

  ‘Oh whatever!’

  He tried to think of something to say but there wasn’t much point. Jenny had hung up.

  CHAPTER 39

  Carl wasn’t guarding Diane’s room and there was no sign of Danny Fitzgibbon, so Mac pushed at the door to Diane’s room with one arm, keeping the chocolates and the fl owers hidden behind his body.

  Peeking around the door he saw an elderly Indon woman sleeping on her back. Pulling back out into the hallway Mac looked around, wondering what the hell was going on. It was a new shift and nurses and orderlies rushed past him like he wasn’t there. Down at the nursing sister’s station, the supervisor didn’t know who he was and didn’t want to give out any information about a patient to a non-family member. Tired and confused, Mac turned from the station to fi nd a younger nurse approaching him. ‘Hello mister. You Mr Richard?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘Miss Diane give me this,’ she smiled, pulling something from the pocket of her tunic. It was a piece of folded paper of newsprint quality. Bloody Diane had torn a page out of her Gideon’s.

  Written in dark blue biro was the message, Dad wants me in the compound. Sorry. Beneath were an address and phone number with the Sydney 02 prefi x and the words Sarah + Felicity.

  He thanked the girl, and asked her when Diane had left.

  ‘Hour go, mister,’ she said.

  On the way out Mac saw a young woman with a shaven head, gaunt face and sunken eyes. She was being pushed the other way in a wheelchair.

  ‘G’day,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Well, hello,’ she gushed with a big American smile that lit up the corridor. Mac had her as northern California.

  Mac presented her with the fl owers and chocolates. ‘Don’t eat them all at once. Might get fat,’ he said with a wink.

  She was still laughing as he got into the lift.

  The Nokia trilled as they stopped and started through the Jakarta traffi c.

  Snapping out of his reverie about Diane and Hassan, Mac looked at his phone. ‘Hi, Jen,’ he mumbled, wary of another attack.

  ‘Sorry about before. I forgot to ask – how are you, darl?’

  ‘I’m fi ne, really,’ he said.

  ‘You sure?’ she pushed. ‘Is the gig over?’

  Mac wiped his face as if the harder he pushed the more he’d drive away the fatigue. ‘Some loose ends. Another two days, max,’ he said.

  There was a long pause, then Jenny spoke. ‘I’m sorry about Diane.

  I mean, you know, is she okay?’

  ‘Yeah, she got one in the shoulder but it was the one in the stomach that was tricky.’

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Yeah, there’s a lot of internal bleeding and they had to operate on the intestine – took three inches out of it, apparently. She’s in a lot of pain but the liver’s only grazed and can heal by itself.’

  ‘Shit, Macca!’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, trying to stay strong despite his fatigue.

  ‘So, the shooters got away?’

  ‘For now, but she hit one in the leg -‘

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘And we know who they are.’

  Silence stretched between them.

  ‘ We? ‘

  ‘Well, you know, the guys.’

  ‘Chrissakes, Macca. What happened to due diligence and a bit of low-risk corporate cover?’

  ‘Jen…’

  ‘Don’t Jen me! When we went out the other night you said it’s like being a lawyer or an accountant, only not using your real name.’

  ‘Well, look…’

  ‘You said it wouldn’t be like the old days.’

  Mac slumped in the Mercedes’ dark leather seat, knowing he had said exactly that.

  ‘So, what’s the latest with George and the Cambodian?’

  ‘Gone to ground – the Cambodian, anyway. George has an alibi, doesn’t want to press charges.’

  ‘ Charges?!’

  ‘Yeah – his lawyer said his client was prepared to let it go.’

  Mac humphed. Here they were, the cop and the spy, thousands of miles apart, and each scared of the danger their spouse was in.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ said Jenny, changing her tone to conversational.

  ‘We have a guest.’

  ‘Yeah?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Yeah, young Thai boy. They found him wandering around out the back of here, in the middle of the night, virtually naked.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Ke – but we’re not sure. He got handed to the AFP as a foreign national and they asked us to take him while they talk to DFAT and Immigration.’

  ‘He getting along with Rachel?’

  ‘ She likes him, but he doesn’t talk at all.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. He’s very scared of something.’

  Mac’s breathing started getting shallow on the third unsuccessful call to Tony Davidson. In his profession, when something potentially random happened three times in sequence, it was never a coincidence.

  Spies who believed in mere coincidence and synchronicity either got shot or outsmarted. More worrying than the three strikes, Davidson’s voicemail was no longer activating. The phone was just ringing out. In the Commonwealth’s secure phones, you had to input your security PIN to clear voicemail. If you tried to tap into one of those voicemail accounts without the PIN, the system would shut itself off automatically and the phone would ring out.

  So there were two scenarios: someone had stolen Davidson’s phone and was trying to access his voicemail. Or an unfriendly was hacking into the ASIS voicemail servers, trying to have a nosey-poke but closing the system in the process.

  Nervous, he dialled and waited. Joe Imbruglia’s mobile went straight to voicemail, so he left a message and then rang the embassy in KL. He was put through to Joe’s offi ce but the assistant said he wasn’t around. She was probably lying, but Mac let it go and left a message.

  He needed to widen his cell but his instincts told him not to call Garvs or Atkins. In the Royal Marines they’d told the lads that the best soldiers balance instinct with training, self-preservation with teamwork. Mac never got to be the best soldier but he had learned to move with his instincts rather than against them.

  ‘Everything okay, Mr Davis?’ asked Edwin, coming out of chauffeur mode, his inner-cop emerging.

  ‘Yeah, mate.’ Mac exhaled, looking out his side window.

  Edwin looked at him, questioning.

  ‘Actually, no, Edwin – it’s not,’ said Mac.

  Edwin looked back at the boulevard. ‘Just checking, Mr Davis, ‘cos we got us a tail.’

  ‘How many and for how long?’ asked Mac, as he pulled the Heckler from his backpack, checked for safety, checked the mag, checked for load and held it low.

  ‘One car, two people,’ said Edwin, very calm. ‘White Toyota, three cars back. They been with us since before the hospital, now they back.’

  ‘Pro?’ asked Mac, not turning.

  ‘Yes,’ said Edwin, looking in the rear-vision mirror.

  ‘Can you give me a mirror, mate?’

  Edwin adjusted the passenger-side mirror until Mac said, ‘That’s it.’ The two men tailing them were in a Camry and Mac made a mental note of the numberplate as they came to a red light on Sundiraman.

  Mac asked Edwin to fi nd the worst traffi c snarl in Jakarta and make no attempt to lose the tail. They moved off, drifted left into Bonjol, and moved into traffi c that worsened as they went south.

  ‘We’re looking for a blind corner, mate,’ said Mac and the
n pointed at a left turn that was particularly congested, probably people lining up to get into one of the fi nance district parking buildings. There was a big bank on the near corner, and if the traffi c moved as expected, they’d lose the tail pretty fast.

  Looking in the side mirror Mac saw that the Toyota had slipped back to fi ve cars behind and the lane further out. It was a typical pro choice to change distance and angle, and it aided what Edwin and Mac were about to do.

  Grabbing one of the cushions Edwin kept in the back seat, Mac held it ready. As they got to the left turn into the side street, there was a break and Mac said ‘Now!’ Edwin didn’t hesitate, driving smoothly into the inside-most lane and hitting the indicator to go left when the traffi c started moving: everything legit, nothing rushed. The Toyota now had two lanes to cross and fi ve cars to close on if they wanted to keep eyes, and they’d be the ones drawing the attention, not the Mercedes. Keeping it smooth, Edwin took the Merc casually with the traffi c into the side street, where the height of the buildings on both sides made the space dim.

  They were into the street when they heard the Toyota’s horn blaring as the driver tried to cross the lanes.

  ‘Can you give me an hour?’ asked Mac, his breath raspy.

  Edwin nodded, kept his eyes in the mirror as Mac took off his seatbelt, turned to his headrest and jammed the cushion in to simulate a head. The traffi c stopped totally and Edwin smiled. ‘Good time to go, Mr Davis.’

  Mac thanked him as he leapt sideways out of the black Mercedes with his backpack and made straight for the kerb and into the side entrance of the bank building. The glass doors and windows of the bank were very dark and Mac surveyed the street from behind an internal pillar. It took forty seconds for the Toyota to draw level with the bank and neither of the men even looked sideways. They were hunched over, totally intent on the Mercedes, which was going about its business as if nothing was amiss.

  Mac got his breath back, and released the Heckler before taking his sweaty hand out of the backpack. He looked around, smiled wanly at a security goon. The adrenaline rushing through him felt harsh, almost foreign – he’d been out of the fi eld for too long. Needing to move before he got the shakes, he exited through the front doors into the heat and humidity of early afternoon, wondering if there was a backup car and whether he’d been made. It hardly mattered now, and as he walked up the vast leafy boulevard of Bonjol he tried to process what he’d seen in that Toyota.

  Operation Mainstreet was now under surveillance by a couple of Anglos, and one of them was Anton Garvey.

  CHAPTER 40

  Mac stopped three cabs and got in the fourth, which took six minutes to get to the Australian Embassy. He left a tip as he got out then walked towards the security gates. The local bull didn’t know who Mac was, so he made a call and soon an Australian Protective Service bloke called Ollie came down the drive to collect Mac and walk him up to the embassy building.

  ‘Been looking for you, know that Macca?’ said Ollie in low tones as he issued a temporary security pass.

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ lied Mac, no idea what he was talking about. ‘Just ducking in to see Atkins.’

  After Ollie gave him the pass, he gestured to the walk-through scanner. Mac opened his pack, handed Ollie the Heckler and walked through the scanner.

  Using the stairs, Mac came out on the fi fth fl oor, the intelligence section and home to ASIS in Jakarta. Padding down the chocolate carpet he walked past closed offi ces and open cube farm areas – where Mac was housed when he had to work in the section. There were admin people on the inside of the walkway and IOs on the outer, enjoying the natural light that passed through the blast-proofi ng and the bullet-hardened windows.

  Most fi eld guys rarely worked at the embassy. If you were working a corporate cover you operated behind a facade for Southern Scholastic Books or Goanna Forestry Consulting. A lot of the time you’d be lunching, ‘viewing’, ‘inspecting’ and having as many revealing discussions with as many businesspeople and government offi cials as possible. Most guys working cover – and they were still all male – wouldn’t come near an embassy for months, perhaps for their entire rotation in-country. But it was from here that they were

  ‘controlled’, and to most fi eld guys who worked intel in Jakarta this fl oor was simply known as ‘the section’.

  The teak door to the offi ce Mac intended visiting was open and he could see a tallish young woman with dark shoulder-length hair remonstrating with someone he couldn’t see. He ducked into the coffee area, grabbed a white mug with KPMG stamped on it, and made himself a cup of tea. Leaning back, he checked the offi ce again, then looked at his watch. He had another half-hour at least before Garvs realised Mac wasn’t in the Shangri-La Mercedes. When Mac dealt with offi ce guys, he liked to do it one-on-one. When there were two of them in a room, they encouraged the worst in each other.

  A sign on the wall said: Adults clean up their own mess! Mac chuckled

  – bloody secretaries! He fl ipped the Lipton bag into the rubbish bin under the counter and wiped up the milk dribble on the formica.

  The woman he glimpsed in the offi ce looked like she was leaving so Mac headed straight into the offi ce, stood beside her and looked down on Martin Atkins, whose eyes expanded like saucers.

  ‘I have just one thing to add,’ said Mac, taking a slug of his tea.

  ‘Either put Isla Dunford in the fi eld, or I’m quitting – that’s it, I’m out of here.’

  Isla fl ashed a big grin at Mac, and looked back at Atkins. ‘See Martin? If McQueen says I’m ready, then it’s time to give me a turn.’

  Atkins froze, unsure of his next move. ‘Ah, yeah,’ he said, leaning forward mechanically and putting both hands on the Australian hardwood desk. ‘I heard the endorsement, Isla, but it’s more than just having a turn -‘

  ‘Sure is,’ said Mac. ‘They gave us three when I started.’

  ‘Well actually -‘ spluttered Atkins.

  ‘They said, If you don’t fuck up, you’re in the fi eld – if you’re hopeless you can drive a desk. How it worked back then.’

  Atkins was standing now, hands up in a gesture of I’ve heard enough.

  Isla got the message and turned, smirking at Mac as she did.

  Mac looked her up and down, gave her a wink. ‘I’ll get this sussed, Dunford,’ he said, returning her smile. ‘How does Bangers sound?’

  When Mac looked back at Atkins he was reclining in his leather swivel chair, one foot on the desk ledge, hands clasped across his shirt-and-tie-bound stomach.

  ‘Have a seat, McQueen,’ he said, fl icking his eyes at the door.

  After closing the door, Mac took a seat and waited.

  ‘You serious about Dunford?’ asked Atkins absently.

  ‘Sure, Marty. She was in a craft session I was doing in Canberra four years ago.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mac, nodding. ‘She did a couple of things better than any of the blokes. Great vision, she saw the wood and the trees. And she’s a very good listener. Unbelievable recall and comprehension.’

  ‘Still, it’s not everything, is it?’

  ‘Near as dammit,’ said Mac. ‘It’s about eyes and ears – that’s what we do.’

  Atkins made a face, looked out the window. He was forty-two, thinning sandy hair, a handsome rectangular face and piercing grey-blue eyes.

  ‘So, Marty,’ said Mac, changing the tone. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  Atkins levelled his gaze at Mac. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno, Marty, could be the heavyset bald bloke. He was sitting in the front seat of this car, tailing me to compromising locations such as the fl ower markets and the hospital.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Atkins, rubbing his temples.

  ‘What I said, exactly,’ smiled Mac. ‘Here I am at MMC, trying to visit a girl who was gunned down doing a job for the Australian Commonwealth, and I’ve got the fi rm following me around.’

  ‘Okay, McQueen.’


  ‘And I’m thinking to myself, This can’t be right; surely the organisation that missed two Bali bombings, an embassy bombing and a hotel bombing can’t now be wasting resources tailing one of their own

  …’

  ‘I said okay!’ snapped Atkins.

  Mac took an extra-loud slurp of tea, hoping to make Atkins wince, which he did.

  Atkins put his foot down from the desk and sat upright. ‘Where’s Garvs?’

  ‘Chasing dandelions.’

  ‘I mean, he’s okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ shrugged Mac, ‘but you should be more careful. This is Jakarta. You follow the wrong guy in this town and you end up in the dentist’s chair, maybe a surprise visit from Captain Crocodile Clips.’

  They stared at each other, Atkins looking away fi rst. ‘Look, McQueen, fact is they’ve pulled the plug. Canberra wants you on the next available.’

  Mac’s heart sank: that’s why Joe and Davidson weren’t talking. The word had gone out and the Service was doing what it so often did to its own people.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just took the call,’ Atkins said, palms turning up. ‘You know how it is.’

  ‘Do I?’ said Mac, face icy. Atkins would almost certainly have made the call to Canberra himself, demanding the authority to have Mac recalled. The whole thing had been hatched from Jakarta, and the way these things worked, it could be a case of ASIS being asked to back off by the Americans, the Indonesians or the British.

  Mac stole a look at the time: eighteen minutes til Garvs put in a call, did some heavy breathing.

  ‘So,’ said Mac, ‘who are we protecting today? Musharraf? Khan?

  Hassan?’

  Atkins’ eyes fl ickered at the mention of Hassan, but he recovered quickly and laughed. ‘That’s quite a collection, McQueen.’

  ‘Well?’

  Atkins stood, looked at this own watch. ‘There’s that eight o’clock fl ight into Perth, right? Then a connecting to Sydney.’

  ‘Make that Brisbane.’

  ‘Sure – make it anything you want, McQueen. As long as you’re going out to Hatta this arvo, we don’t have a problem, okay?’